Correct use of the verb "to go"?

Question

I have just heard on the radio, and also notice that George W Bush used the phrase "I am going to go......"
MY father used to give me a clip round the earhole If I said that. He told me" You are either going or your not" You cannot be going to go.
Was he right>?

Answer 1

Katrina has the right idea, but the wrong tense.

"(is) going to [+ main verb] " is one of the two standard ways (along with "will") for English to express the simple future.
http://www.englishpage.com/verbpage/simplefuture.html

On the origins of this use of "going to" for temporal rather than spatial motion (and other languages that do the same thing) see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Going-to_future

(In Katrina's defnese, one can also speak from the perspective of the 'future in the past', as in "Yesterday I WAS going to. . . ")

Remember that, unlike many other langauges, English forms MANY of its tenses with the use of "helper verbs" rather than creating a variety of new forms for the basic (main) verb. Consider all the uses of forms of "have", "do", "be", "will". (I. . . "DO see"/ "AM seeing"/"HAVE seen"/ "HAD seen"/ "WILL see" / "AM GOING to see"/ "WOULD HAVE seen"/ "WAS GOING to see".)

In the case of the FUTURE English --unlike many (most?) languages-- does not even have any 'future forms' or endings to use with the basic verb!! So you MUST use "(is) going to" or "will" (or, in some instances,"shall").

Answer 2

No, he was wrong. The 'going' does not refer to locomotion, but is the symbol of the 'past continuous' tense. eg. I'm going to eat now. The 'go' refers to locomotion.