From Bush: U.S. on verge of energy breakthrough

The Associated Press reports that Bush has made the following statement:

"Our nation is on the threshold of new energy technology that I think will startle the American people," Bush said. "We're on the edge of some amazing breakthroughs — breakthroughs all aimed at enhancing our national security and our economic security and the quality of life of the folks who live here in the United States."

Later Monday, Bush visited the United Solar Ovonics Plant, which makes solar panels, in Auburn Hills, Mich., outside Detroit. "This technology right here is going to help us change the way we live in our homes," Bush told reporters.

OK. Is this like his statement in the State of the Union speech a few years ago that he was going to make a major push to develop hydrogenfueledd cars? Something that may someday be important but will have no effect in the next ten to twenty years? Or is it just something a speech writer has pulled out of thin air for him to say as a political "feel good" statement?

I hope is is telling the truth, that it means something and that it is near-term and not just political pie-in-the-sky-by-and-by.

More likely it issomethingg like Bush's promise last Fall to rebuild New Orleans after Katrina hit it. That was a feel-good statement designed to assuage the then high political demandthatt the government do something and do it immediately. Since then no effective steps have been taken by the federal government to do anything. Either there are no funds or the agencies that might have done something are so poorly managed that nothing they have tried has been effective. That is, there are real management problems.

In short, if Bush promises something it is a good idea to get someone else to verify that what was promised is real. He has no credibility.

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Addendum 02-21-2006
Here is one major reason why we can't trust anything Bush says. There is no coordination between what he says and what is really happening.

Bush was all set to make this big speech on how our technology is going to provide such great breakthroughs that we can anticipate much less need for foreign oil. He gave the talk at the Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Except that two weeks before he gave the speech, the government laid off 32 employees there.

The guy who is standing up there telling us what the government is supposed to be doing has no clue what the government he supposedly heads is actually doing.