Bush State of the Union: Work with me
 

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/01/...otu/index.html

Story Highlights
• President proposes tax deduction to help pay for health insurance
• Cut in gasoline consumption is needed, Bush says
• New Iraq strategy has "best chance of success," president says
• Bush pushes for temporary worker program

A few things I will comment on:

I don't like the idea of sending more troops to the war. The troops we have over their right now already give me the impression that things needs to be adjusted. I'm not saying they shoudl pull out, I am thinking that someone else needs to change the control and direction of what it will take to make progress. Why are we so worried about helping them create a government when the man leading our government is under constant fire. Kinda like football, I think the military needs a new GM or Head Coach. :D Then, this is all speculation, as I don't have a very good background and understanding for hwo things are actually going down over there.

Cutting the dependance on gas is a good thing. Creating more dependance on e85 is a bad thing. I was watching the ews last night, if every bit of corn we grow is used for energy, it will only generate about 15% of what we woudl need in a year. And e85 still has it's downfalls with gas milage (in some cases) and other smaller effects that are no where near what oil based fuel has. I do like the idea of looking into other bio-fuels for the next generation. Priarie grass is looking to be a big one right now with the right mixtures. I'll have to look more up on this later.

As for the immagration issue and border protection, I find it to be a lost cause. I was reading on another site where a guy was found to be in possesion of stolen items and said they where bought out of a van. The man was "illegal", but was a legal home owner so it sounded like deportation wasn't an option for being invloved with said activities. I was fucking shell shocked when reading this and frankly, find the whole situation around it to be hoarse shit. How many people do I know that work hard and work legal but aren't able to buy their own home yet. Yet some fucking border jumper can? What the fuck are our troops fighting for again?

Re: Bush State of the Union: Work with me
 

I had no idea this was on last night. Wish I would have watched it.

Re: Bush State of the Union: Work with me
 

you can catch it on MSN.com, they have the whole thing.
I personally LOVED the Democrat Responce, the final words of Jim Webb is fucking classic "Tonight we are calling on this president to take similar action. If he does, we will join him, if he does not, we will show him the way" LMFAO!!

Re: Bush State of the Union: Work with me
 

Ethanol isn't bad, corn based ethanol is. Corn has nearly doubled in price in the last year, good for the farmer but the consumer will start seeing more signs of it shortly. There are some new ways to make ethanol that are just coming around now, cellulistic ethanol seems to be the one with the most promise. This can be use on the switch grass that AJ was talking about. There are a lot of things coming out that could really change the future of energy, it is a pretty exciting time!

Re: Bush State of the Union: Work with me
 

There are many things about his speech that I think is nearly impossible. Two that come to my mind are his plan to draw 90,000 more people into the military and his plan to deminish oil consumption by 20% in 10 years. Yes, they might be doable, but from what I remember oil consumption keeps going up every year and we only draw 40-50 thousand people into the military.

I don't think legalizing every "illegal" that is in America and opening the border are the answers to the problem. These people will bring crime (as posted above) and have the huge potential to harm our economy.

I did like his words on securing Baghdad. I believe that Iraq needs to have a safe capital. Now how he does this is the question. My opinion is that the media should be displaced from where American troops are operating. Door to door inspections should be done and anyone with a gun should be "neutralized." Enough screwing around. I hate to say it, but if innocent people are harmed so be it. It would show the people that are conspiring to harm Americans to stop and buy into the system. If not, they are eliminated. The military started with this plan early in the "occupation" and it seemed to be working. Then a plan of engaging when harmed was adopted due to media coverage, which brings us to the current situation.

I'm curious as to what he meant by "the world will not allow Iran to develope nuclear weapons and we are working to make the Korean penninsula non-nuclear." We won't be able to talk Kim out of his weapons which he developed and I don't see how anyone can stop Iran from doing the same, unless military force is used.

If the president plans on accomplishing anything during his last two years in office, he should focus more upon domestic issues such as healthcare, education, immigration, and taxes (which I don't understand how he can pay off the deficit in 5 years).

Re: Bush State of the Union: Work with me
 

Wonderful, a whole new set of goals for our country but still no knows or can agree on how to accomplish them.
Might as well get up there and just say "We need to make the world safer and the people at home happier while improving their well-being." Then just leave. That is all the state of the union address is.

Re: Bush State of the Union: Work with me
 

:beer: I'll drink to that.

Re: Bush State of the Union: Work with me
 

The cool thing about a car that can run on alcohol fuels is that you can make alcohol from almost anything. Wood, grass, biomass or reclaimed garbage. Sure, you'd need specific plants that would take energy themselves, but after a while the output would be much greater than the origional input.

I have a headache and must eat.

Re: Bush State of the Union: Work with me
 

I watched a pretty sweet documentary on ethanol once. In Brazil, IIRC about half cars are set up for 100% ethanol while the half is E85. They went to a ethanol plant that made it from corn, but used the stalks as fuel instead of gas in production. I thought that was a pretty good way to do it.

Re: Bush State of the Union: Work with me
 

The State of the Union is much more than that. It's an outline for proposed policies and future issues which need (or at least should be) tackled. It's a speech that shows the people where we are going as a nation. Of course no one can agree on how to accomplish things, it's politics.

Re: Bush State of the Union: Work with me
 

From what I've read about Brazil, they should have claimed energy independance last year and they make their ethanol from sugarcane. Every new car that hits the road can run gasoline or ethanol. And Ford is putting most of them out.

Re: Bush State of the Union: Work with me
 

Yes and no. The problem with cellulistic ethanol is that there has yet to be any recommendations on how much biomass can be safely removed from fields without causing detrimental effects to the soil structure and whole carbon sequestration process. Plus, the issue of harvesting biomass is still in the air. My roommates are both heavily involved with biomass harvest through their graduate research:
http://www.iastate.edu/~nscentral/ne...c/stover.shtml
Correct and they're getting an incredible amount of ethanol out of their inputs compared to what we are simply because they're using sugarcane.

Re: Bush State of the Union: Work with me
 

What was most interesting about what I've read about Brazil is that the factories that make the ethanol do not use energy from an outside source. Therefore, the production of their main source for energy is completely renewable. Apparently they burn the waste material from the sugarcane to make power, which the plants run on.

Re: Bush State of the Union: Work with me
 

Yeah, sugar cane makes like 9x as much ethanol as the same amount of corn.

When I was talking cellulistic I was not talking about corn stalks and such, I agree that they need to be returned to the ground. I am talking switch grass and meniscus. There is a cellulistic plant under construction in NY already.