ne day after President Bush vowed to reduce America's dependence on Middle East oil by cutting imports from there 75 percent by 2025, his energy secretary and national economic adviser said Wednesday that the president didn't mean it literally.
What the president meant, they said in a conference call with reporters, was that alternative fuels could displace an amount of oil imports equivalent to most of what America is expected to import from the Middle East in 2025

Of course it was. I mean, he certainly wouldn't want to prevent Exxon from having another record breaking year.

Or maybe that's not it, but it hardly matters.

Anyone who still thinks describing this administration as "Orwellian" is hyperbole isn't paying attention. Any of these guys can say literally whatever the hell they want and have a whole army of direct and indirect underlings twist, distort and recast it in whatever way (or, even better, in different and variously contradictory ways) they want. It's pure disinformation.

Of course, the SOTU is, and always has been in my memory, nothing but a PR event to restate strong points for your base and rally the troops. The fact that "journalists" still treat it as if anyone's saying anything fucking useful is another sign of their ongoing irrelevance. And the fact that lately you can't even take the rally cries at face value only exacerbates the problem..

KR Washington Bureau | 02/01/2006 | Administration backs off Bush's vow to reduce Mideast oil imports