LOL!!!-President Obama’s Message To House Republicans Talking Impeachment: Bring It On

[BlueStreak]

26. First, it is "contingent" not "contingency"

"There has been a large contingency of Republicans"

noun: contingent; 1. a group of people united by some common feature, forming part of a larger group.

I wish people who make a living using the language would take a little time to learn some of the most basic elements of the language.

But I digress. I agree with what Obama said. I wish he would include in these discussions the excellent progress that has been made on energy. Conservation efforts, many of which started before he took office, have us REDUCING our electricity demand (slightly) each year -- not growing. That is fantastic. And here's another fact that I don't recall him ever mentioning. In the last 2 years, wind and solar have been the largest source of net new energy. Some coal plants have been shut down or converted to more environmentally friendly natural gas.

This is not business as usual. We really are in a new era and Obama shouldn't be ashamed to talk about that. Hell, even BP, Exxon and Shell are peeing their pants talking about how committed they are to renewable, carbon-free energy. Sorely our President ought to be able to say a few words about this.

I'll give him credit for at least including a little fo this in the grab-bag of buzzwords that is the SOTU speech, but the interview shown in the OP was a perfect opportunity to get real about this. Here are the comments from the SOTU:

Now, it's not just oil and natural gas production that's booming; we're becoming a global leader in solar too.

Every four minutes another American home or business goes solar, every panel pounded into place by a worker whose job can't be outsourced. Let's continue that progress with a smarter tax policy that stops giving $4 billion a year to fossil fuel industries that don't need it so we can invest more in fuels of the future that do. (Cheers, applause.)

And even as we've increased energy production, we've partnered with businesses, builders and local communities to reduce the energy we consume. When we rescued our automakers, for example, we worked with them to set higher fuel efficiency standards for our cars. In the coming months I'll build on that success by setting new standards for our trucks so we can keep driving down oil imports and what we pay at the pump.

And taken together, our energy policy is creating jobs and leading to a cleaner, safer planet. Over the past eight years the United States has reduced our total carbon pollution more than any other nation on Earth. (Applause.)

But we have to act with more urgency because a changing climate is already harming western communities struggling with drought and coastal cities dealing with floods. That's why I directed my administration to work with states, utilities and others to set new standards on the amount of carbon pollution our power plants are allowed to dump into the air.

The shift -- (applause) -- the shift to a cleaner energy economy won't happen overnight, and it will require some tough choices along the way.

But the debate is settled. Climate change is a fact. (Applause.) And when our children's children look us in the eye and ask if we did all we could to leave them a safer, more stable world, with new sources of energy, I want us to be able to say yes, we did.