Mr. Bush also announced at a speech during his visit to DuPont the day after his SOTU speech that his wish-list item of a 20% reduction in gasoline usage is approaching the status of a "government mandate".

And so,last night, based upon what I just told you -- based upon optimism, new science, progress that we have made -- I announced a goal for the country which is to reduce gasoline consumption by 20 percent over the next 10 years. If we are -- when we do that, it will mean that we have reduced the amount of imported oil from the Middle East -- or the equivalent of the imported oil from the Middle East by about three-quarters. And that's important. It's really going to be important for your children that this country has become able to -- be able to say to the hostile regime, leave us alone, you can't affect us, we'll protect ourselves in all kinds of ways from you.

And so I put out a mandatory fuel standard. This is a government mandate (emphasis mine) that says we'll be using 35 billion gallons of alternative fuels by 2017. This is a firm statement. You know, I signed an energy bill that had renewable fuel standards of seven billion gallons. And so this is five times larger than that. I base it on -- and this is a practical declaration -- and I base it on the fact of how much we've increased ethanol, but I've also based it on the fact that we're going to have breakthroughs in cellulosic ethanol, as well.

I can't imagine hearing him actually saying the words "cellulosic ethanol" and rumor has it he is planning to re-define the word "gallon". It will soon be the amount of liquid we presently recognize as a quart.

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Although this will probably prove to be the longest-lasting domestic legacy of the Bush administration (along with NCLB), it (like NCLB) will ultimately prove to have no meaningful effect and will instead become nothing but a ritualistic artifact among the various agencies.

Having worked within the federal trenches, I know first-hand how each new regulation must be certified under the Paperwork Reduction Act, and must be certified to have "no Federalism implications," and must have no Privacy Act implications. These are pro-forma rituals to which each new regulation must conform; regardless of the real implications of a new rule, it always seems miraculously to certify successfully under all these ritualistic constraints. Bush has simply created a new layer of empty, meaningless bureaucracy (which his party claims to abhor). However, his Executive Order does at least pay lip service to a new and improved Gettysburg Address, which, if it were delivered today, would promise that "government of the market, for the market, by the market shall not perish from the Earth."

I do find it interesting that a conservative would even admit that "market failures" actually exist. So, at least there's that.

Just like his misguided father, Bush thinks his Star Chamber bullshit can have real meaning and impact in a country which finds him increasingly irrelevant.

--Socialist With A Gold Card