A year ago, I wrote a post titled State of Denial, which took advantage of a nifty New York Times feature that allowed one to search the State Of The Union speech to see what terms or phrases were used by our feckless leader. In today's recap of last night's speech, the NYT ran a sidebar called The Words That Were Used, but there was no search capability to enable further analysis.

Left to my own devices, I quickly turned to Gristmill and Reuters for perspective on what Bush had said about climate change and related efforts to stem the warming.

As you would expect, David Roberts is on top of things at Gristmill with a post titled Robust SOTU Debunkery.

Reuters, on the other hand, saw the glass as half full, covering Bush's commitment to promoting clean energy technologies and fight climate change through a $2 billion investment over the next three years to a new international fund.

Let us create a new international clean technology fund, which will help developing nations like India and China make greater use of clean energy sources.

Of course, even the Reuters piece couldn't avoid the conclusion that:

Unlike last year's State of the Union message, there was little in Bush's speech this year calling for a major overhaul of U.S. energy policy.

Some would say that's because Congress just passed major energy legislation — I'd say it's because the lame duck is still convinced that "aspirational targets" are the way to go.

Too bad the NYT word finder didn't have search capability this year. I would have loved to really compare this year's speech to last year's speech.

Popularity: 28%