One 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.
I guess it depends on what "is" is.
Bush's verbal sloppiness is actually encouraging in one respect. Recall his oft-repeated promise to "double the federal commitment to the most critical basic research programs in the physical sciences over the next 10 years". When I heard that, I felt the disappointing sssshhhWMP of a large bag of money falling into somebody else's pocket—sure I do basic research, but in mathy computer science, not in any of the physical sciences. Close, but not quite. But now that the White Houwse has clarified that Bush didn't mean exactly what he said on Tuesday, now I can relax. My future funding is secure.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go buy some pony chow.
I think what Bush meant was "We're going to give increased subsidies to pharmaceutical and oil companies so that they can do more profitable research in the physical sciences."
Posted by: Matt | February 05, 2006 at 04:36 PM