On Bush's State of the Union 2006

While I don't have a television, CTV has Bush's state of the union. I'm usually fine watching the excerpts, but I was curious to see what the GBJR admins plans on renewable energy. But boy, is this hard to watch real time. Especially, the clap trap. I mean does ""I ask you to renew the patriot act"" actually require a clap.

But I'm sure being there would have a different effect, as the crowd cams they used were all on the left side, and the republicans were all on the right. If the streamcast was in stereo, I might have had a better understanding of who was clapping. However, they did a good job of ensuring that only the clappers made it on film.

Anyways, the first part was all on terror, of course, and went about attacking dictatorships. Now I, more than anyone else hate dictatorships, but really, does every dictatorship have something to do with Weapons of Mass Destruction. No, of course not, and most don't purposely hover terrorists either. He later goes into the idea of hope, but it still has everything to do with terrorists it seems.

Once the external threats are done with it actually gets humourous. Bush actually pulls out a joke, when he says two of his Dad's favorite people are turning 60, which is himself and president Clinton. (As we all know from Clinton's relief love in with Sr.) But the funnier part follows when Bush talks about how congress defeated his bill to save social security, and the democrats for once cheer! You can tell from Bush's grimace that he wasn't quite expecting it.

Now, it gets to the ""Advanced Energy Initiative"", which he is promising to invest in clean and renewable energy. He is also promising to move cars to Ethanol within 6 years, and to pursue Hydrogen initiatives. I have to at least give him a little credit if he is looking to move ""beyond our petroleum based economy"", which I think Canada needs to do as well. Its too bad this isn't as long as his terrorism bit, but I guess his benevolence is to avoid oil cause it comes from terrorists, rather than avoiding oil because its bad for the environment.

There is a lot of other yada yada, but towards the end Bush is talking about public accountability. Which is good, but he lacks specifics which is disappointing. He spends more time on talking about how judges should be servants of the law (and whose law?) but I guess you can't expect that much on that. I'm sure its not really that big of a priority.