Articles by David Roberts

The unofficial ones were better than the soporific official response

Virginia governor Tim Kaine's Democratic response to the SOTU was not, as far as I can gather from reading around, very well-received. And it's not hard to see why. Even aside from his wandering eyebrow and the bizarre Colonial Grandma stylings of the background, he focused on the deadly boring themes of "good management" and "results." Zzzzzz ...

This was his devastating critique of Bush's conduct of the "war on terrorism":

Our commitment to winning the war on terrorism compels us to ask this question:  Are the President's policies the best way to win this war?

Woah, that's gonna leave a mark!

As for the energy stuff ... sigh. It seems that the Dems can hardly wait to hand this issue to the Republicans:

Mixed

Here are three reviews of the speech: From a professional TV critic, from average folk on the street, and from a conservative.

Guess which one this assessment came from?

George W Bush is arguably a better public speaker now than were Presidents Eisenhower, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and George H. W. Bush in their prime. ...

...

... His smirks are gone. The squinting has disappeared. The nervous rushing through a speech is a distant memory. Tics are nonexistent. The first half of his speech was completely devoid of any stumbles whatsoever. ... Indeed, Bush was devoid of Bushisims.

Bush exuded confidence through his steady eye contact and his lack of head jerking. He conveyed emotion without seeming exasperated. For once, he seemed to have spent more hours in a week rehearsing his speech than at the gym. ..

... Unless you were a die-hard Bush hater, he didn't seem smug or arrogant. Instead, his tone was conversational and relaxed.

Hazard a guess, anyone?

Maybe oil from elsewhere?

In an earlier post, I calculated (based on 2004 figures -- I may update them shortly) that Bush's "great goal: to replace more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025" would involve lowering U.S. oil consumption by 10.5% over 19 years. Not very ambitious.

But it's worth noting that even there I may be giving Bush too much credit. I'm assuming that he means to "replace" the Middle Eastern oil with alternatives -- biofuels, electric cars, hydrogen cars, whatnot.

It's at least possible, though, that he means to replace Middle Eastern oil with non-Middle Eastern oil. I'm no oil geologist, so I don't have a good sense of whether this is possible. But it's not outrageous to think we could cover that amount (10.5% of our oil use) by increasing imports from Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, and Nigeria -- and by increasing domestic production (read: drilling in Alaska and off the coasts). Since Canadian tar sands are under furious production, it's likely that Canadian imports are going to rise anyway.

So, it's possible that Bush's "great goal" could be accomplished without reducing U.S. oil consumption at all. We could, to use his own addiction metaphor, get our fix elsewhere.

But even I'm not that cynical.

A disinformation-cycle case study

A fascinating bit of forensic bullshitology by Tim Lambert, about chromium-6 in drinking water.