Good morning. Thank you for coming to the inaugural meeting of gasaholics anonymous. My name is John and I'm a gasaholic. You see it all started when I was sixteen and I could buy and use gas and oil on my own. Just drive into the station, open the gas cap and mainline it, right into the tank. But soon enough I was back again for more. Then I bought a gas guzzler in the 90's. I'd take several shots a week. Pretty soon, when you live like that, you forget about the consequences. The Democrats told me I should get an attorney to sue the greedy oil companies who got me hooked on this stuff.

 I was in really sad shape. I forgot about the cost, the fumes, the oil slicks and the price to maintain my habit. I didn't care what it cost, because the truth is I had to have it ... at any price. I am so glad President Bush has put a name to our never-ceasing need for oil. It's an addiction. We can't help it. But we've got to overcome it. So stand aside alcoholics and drug addicts. Let a new addiction come front and center in American society... gasaholism.

 The President says we'll soon be powering our cars with hay and hydrogen. But who cares what it costs? I just know I will be more healthy and so will America. When we get rid of all that foreign oil, we'll have a national holiday and name it after another successful American experiment ... Prohibition! Here ends the lesson.

 The truth is that the "addicted to oil" comment was the worst part of President Bush's State of the Union Address. The truth is that oil is one of the cheapest forms of energy we have. It is why we use it. Here is another truth: the marketplace will decide when oil is too expensive and private industry, not government, will come up with the solution. When the technology arrives to make fuel out of hay or nitrogen cheaply, billions of dollars of venture capital will get behind it. And not until then.

 Many politicians are demagoging oil company profits. But oil company profits have lagged over the past ten years. Investors did better in Microsoft than Exxon over that period of time. And according to Rich Lowery of National Review Online, the federal government has spent $10 Billion since 2001 on alternative fuels and produced "nothing."

 The fact is that the American economy is much less dependent on oil than we were in the 1970's and 80's as we have moved more to a service economy. Adjusted for inflation, oil is still relatively cheap, especially compared to Europeans who pay $5 per gallon or more for "petrol." The real problem is that ten years ago 3% of Chinese were driving cars. It is now 13% of a very large number.

 So let's not get carried away with false political promises. America is not going to get off oil any time soon. That's why we need drilling in ANWR, refineries, nuclear energy, coal, solar and all the rest. And there is one party whose name starts with a "D" who is standing in the way.

 The one question I have for President Bush is this: Since when has a cure for an "addiction" been "more beer in the refrigerator." His speech-writer should be fired.

  John Pendleton