When most Americans look to biofuels, we see an opportunity for domestic sources of energy to replace some part of the oil we currently import.  We see a chance for American farmers to make money from the millions of miles we travel by car, instead of those funds going to dictators and terrorists.  We see a chance to use a fuel whose carbon content is recycled from one crop to the next, not released into the atmosphere after being sequestered for tens of millions of years.

But we don't see it the way the Bush administration see it.  To their eyes, ethanol looks like another way to relax environmental rules.  

As President Bush promotes ethanol as a green alternative to gasoline, his administration is quietly relaxing environmental rules for dozens of new corn-to-fuel refineries sprouting up across the nation.

With oil in the $75 range, and poised to go higher at any moment (the current crisis extends into Iran?  Rebels in Nigeria?  A deepening chill with Venezuela?  Russia gets tired of being talked to like a three year old? Mexico runs dry? Take your pick.), American automakers have responded by... designing new large SUVs.  It's hard to blame them, when there's little evidence that American consumers have shown any willingness to drive around in vehicles occupying less than an acre of road space.  

In fact, despite the rising costs of fuel, statistics out last week show that the average MPG grew from 21 MPG in 2005 to.... 21 MPG in 2006.  

But if there's one sure thing, it's that it will get worse.  As Jerome a Paris has detailed in his series of diaries, there's every evidence that the post-Katrina rise in oil prices is only a prelude to what's to come.  There's little to no capacity for expansion on the production end of the pipe, and an ever greater demand sucking at the other end.  You couldn't ask for a better formula for demonstrating the effects of supply and demand on prices.  Forget "price gouging."  That's only a distraction.  Oil prices are going to go up, and there's next to nothing any president or congress can do to prevent it.

So... what then?  Do we have to sit and take it on the chin?  Just exactly what are the options?  How will you get to work five years from now?  How about ten?

There are three kinds of State of the Union address.  

First come the kind of stirring speeches made by Franklin Roosevelt, by John Kennedy, and even by Lyndon Johnson -- the speeches that call us to great purpose.  These speeches take a chance, they go out on a political limb to offer America a change in direction.  They force both the president giving the speech and the public listening to stretch.

Next come the laundry list speeches.  These can often contain significant programs, but they lack any clear sense of direction, and often end up containing so many scattered ideas that it's hard to tell what the president really values.  Bill Clinton, take a bow.

Then come the speeches that tell us absolutely nothing.  No significant information.   No new ideas.  No guts.  No... anything.  That's what we got last night.