ONE LAST THING ABOUT ARIANNA

She made a point about Bush's SOTU address that, once again, I should have realized, and it is this:

You know those 1.2 billion dollars he's gonna put into developing hydrogen cars? Sounds pretty groovy at first glance, huh? Well here's the thing. We've been developing hybrid cars for a while now. We have the resources to give hybrids a real fighting chance of playing a large role in the auto market. So suddenly Dubya wants to put over a billion bucks into developing a completely different kind of car? What's the logic behind that?

Here's the logic: By shifting the focus from hybrids to hydrogen cars, Bush is delaying actual change for the automobile industry. Committing to hybrids right now would be a significant change for automakers, and they, just like most other industries, fear fundamental changes like the plague, for cost reasons among others. With hydrogen cars, there is no immediate change; there is billions of dollars for research that will take years, but no actual change or pressure on the automobile industry.

The end result? The auto industry is happy because they get to string out real change, possibly for another decade, in the name of "research". Bush is happy because the $1.2billion to hydrogen car research somehow turns him into Julia Butterfly Hill. The lungs of America are just as unhappy as they were before, as significant drops in emissions, which could take place very soon, are again delayed for years. And in the meantime we're still funding terrorism. Oh and we're still giving Kyoto the finger. I really hate Bush, you know that?