The Price of Leaving

At least that’s what I think I am paying for now. As you can see OPEC managed to not get consensus on production cuts. You know what this means? The frigging Saudis have decided that it’s ok to push back and keep us on the crack addiction known as oil now that I’m leaving. Those bastards have decided that since I have less than two months left in office, they can start hoodwinking the American public and I can’t do anything about it.

Gas prices are at multi-year lows, and if OPEC maintains this current rate of production, all of my efforts the last few years to keep oil  price high  and keeping America focused on going green might go to waste. Because in another year or two of this, no one is going to remember how much we are addicted to oil, and how painful prices at the pumps are. Come on guys, you didn’t think Gore’s film was what brought on all these alternative ideas right? It was capitalism and imagery, pure and simple.

Cost of oil going through the roof gives great imagery, and venture capital guys are busy linking oil to energy generation costs (think electricity), and then toss in Weird Al and his Oscar, and suddenly you have a winning combination with green tech. But it’s hard for consumers to keep stuff like this in their minds if they are too busy worrying about their jobs and thanking Allah that oil prices are at two year lows.  How do we know, have a look at SUVs, believe it or not, they’re making a come back.

I have half a mind to tell the Israelis to go bomb Iran right now, that’ll at least spike oil prices for a few weeks, enough for Barack to get in office and make sure that there is still momentum for green energy in next year. This sucks, all my efforts the last few years and taking public beatings are going to waste. OPEC managed to pull a fast one on me, dammit, I should’ve given the Israelis the go ahead to get Iran this summer.

My Last G8

Well, my last G8 meeting is done, and I have to say, it was pretty productive for a meeting of a bunch of talking heads who does nothing but babble on and on. But still, more accomplishments for the record books even though people won’t understand the impact of my accomplishments for decades to come.

I mean look at what was accomplished. I enlarged the tent once again and included countries like China, India, Brazil, all vibrant growing economies into the climate discussion. After all, it was high time that old Europe showed some respect to the new global growth engines instead of ignoring them like they did with the Kyoto protocols. We got a deal to halve the greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, sure some tree hugging nut jobs called it toothless, because not everybody could agree on specific targets.

Duh, you morons, we had to get everybody to the table first, you know there is a saying, Rome wasn’t built in a day. I’ve been working on this climate problem since I came into office, the brilliant move when I rejected the Kyoto protocols because it didn’t include everyone. What would be the point if half the world stopped emitting green house gases, but the other half doubled their emissions. You think pollution in China isn’t going to wind up in Europe or the states? We all live on this planet, and not in little silos. B ut then all these so called environmentalists are a bunch of liberal whiny Not In My Back Yarders (NIMBYs) like a certain someone who opposed the Cape Wind project even though he is such a progressive on environmental matters.

Besides the climate, we also talked about releasing food stocks to help with the growing price of food, we talked about holding a special forum focusing on energy efficiency, as well as alternative energy, and more refining capacities to tide us over in the interim, and of course helping out Africa by setting up a $60 billion dollar fund to fight disease. Where do you think most of that money will come from, of course, the good ol’ USA. Look at our track record, it speaks for itself. We’re the most generous country in the world, but we don’t ever get any credit for it. We know when leadership by example make sense, take Zimbabwe for example, even though we have countries like Russia opposing legitimate sanctions on dictators like Mugabe, I’ll keep pushing for it just like I pushed for Iraq. Because it was the right thing to do.

Speaking of Russia, I told the press that I found Medvedev to be a smart guy who understood the issues very well. But there is a very nice subtext that everyone might have missed, this is equivalent to my universally misunderstood look into Putin’ soul, which was equally brilliant since I pegged the guy for the snake in the grass that he was on the first meeting. My point to Medvedev was that I knew what his role was – mouth piece for Putin, and all he had to do was be a good lapdog and deliver my message. Very simply: there is gonna be a missile shield for Europe, we’re gonna keep pushing Iran until they give up their nukes. Like it or not, you guys have to know your place, which is somewhere behind Japan, China, and a bunch of other countries. Now since none of you were up close to Medvedev, you wouldn’t have seen the tiny beads of sweat forming as I was composing my message for him to deliver to Putin. Well, Medvedev, don’t worry, Putin probably know better than to give a brain hemorrhage to his meat puppet, after all, he would be forced to go through another election. So, get comfortable in your role, buddy, you’ll be in it for a while, at least until the next so called election you guys in Russia hold.

Anyway, all in all, I’m glad we were in Japan for the last G8. I really do like sushi, oh, and whale meat… it’s called Kujira in Japan you know. Tastes just like beef, too bad we can’t have that in the US. People will love seafood that tastes like beef.