Insulted by your President much?

Saw this article in my paper this morning and have been worked up about it ever since. First of all, the audacity of the administration to have W speak to the nation (and the world) about our "addiction to oil" and what seemed like an aggressive and, dare I say, nearly laudable plan to reduce our dependence on all oil. I'm with ya so far, Georgie. That is, until his Energy Secretary lackey, Sam Brodman clarified the statements, no doubt in large part to the bitch-slapping he took from the oil and energy industry starting immediately after the SOTU address.

He basically said, "the president didn't really mean reduce oil consumption by 75%, it was an example that was misleading, what he really meant was..."

Beyond that insult came the injury of an administration official issuing an outright racist justification of Bush's targeting of Middle-Eastern oil when he "really" meant all kinds of oil dependence:

Asked why the president used the words "the Middle East" when he didn't really mean them, one administration official told Knight Ridder News Service that Bush wanted to dramatize the issue in a way that "every American sitting out there listening to the speech understands."

I'm sure said administration official "never meant it that way", but come on - his statement is obviously meant to heighten the fear-based stereotypes of and prejudices against the Arab world. Does he mean to say that every American wouldn't understand that we want to cut dependence on our own oil as well? OK, maybe he just thought that people in TX OK and California would understand, but the rest of us have no idea where oil comes from.

Really, Clinton has nothing on the kind of dishonesty and slick spinning that this administration has engaged in the past six years.