World: This Is What Happens When

You spend all your political capital on trivia, before paying your bills


Apparently Our Esteemed Leader was forced to beg OPEC to consider raising production to feed America's oil habit. Apparently, being friends with Prince Bandar ain't worth squat when it comes to getting cheap oil.

All that warmongering Li'l Boots has been doing hasn't seemed to help his cause either. He's been killin' them Iraqis that are sitting on Uncle Dick's oil by the thousands. He's refugeed a few million. Why, the current estimates are that he's wiped out 2.5 per cent of the Iraqi population — for those who have trouble figuring it out, just imagine if you will that 7.5 million Americans got killed in the bombing of the twin towers. That would be most of the population of New York City. Or the combined populations of Los Angeles and Chicago and a few hundred thousand more.

And still the price of oil goes up. Maybe we oughta take up a collection and persuade Li'l Boots to swap out those boots for some good quality kneepads.

Or maybe there's some sleight of hand going on that we need to think about?

After all, WH as spokesweasel Dana "Math is hard!" Perino assures us, she:

disputed an OPEC charge "that our economy is being mismanaged," saying that "The United States economy is fundamentally sound with good structure."

"We are in a little bit of a slowdown right now. We have taken measures to mitigate against that, and we believe that we will see us pull out of this before the end of the year," she said.

Fundamentally sound? Does that mean we're pulling numbers out of our ass?

Because everyone we know has either been laid off, or is worried about being laid off. Houses are sitting on the market with no sales in sight. House prices are tanking. Companies are laying off workers and closing branches. And Ben Bernanke is warning us that small banks may be forced to close. We had no idea those were signs of a sound economy. Last time we saw a sound economy, companies were trying to hire people, banks were offering great interest rates on CDs and savings and investment packages, and people were laughing about being able to retire early.

OPEC ain't buying it, though:

The cartel's president on Wednesday blamed financial speculators and American economic problems, which have helped lower the value of the dollar, for the high oil prices. After the meeting, oil prices settled above $104 a barrel, a record.

Bush, who had said this week it would be a mistake for the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries not to raise production, was disappointed by the outcome of Wednesday's meeting, according to the White House.

It is the second time this year that OPEC ignored public calls from the United States to boost supplies. In January, Bush traveled to Saudi Arabia and urged producers to open their taps. But the plea failed to sway OPEC.

Back when the IdiotBoy was trying to get elected, he would assure the voters with bullshit like this:

"I would work with our friends in OPEC to convince them to open up the spigot, to increase the supply," Bush said at the time. "Use the capital that my administration will earn, with the Kuwaitis or the Saudis, and convince them to open up the spigot."

See, once you started that war, buddy, you lost a whole bunch of capital right there. Not that you had a whole lot to begin with, seeing as you never managed to successfully complete a single thing in your life. Gentleman Cs throughout college, admission to a school bought by your Daddy's money, one failed business after another from which Daddy's friends and Daddy's money had to rescue you.

No wonder the OPEC folks aren't giving you the time of day. They don't have to. Just better pray that they don't switch to selling their product in Euros. We're really fucked then.

Oh, yeah. Don't forget to ask Uncle Dick about the record profits that oil companies have been making since 2005.

Meanwhile, in SuccessBoy's other Arenas O'Success:

• Bomb blasts in Baghdad killed 55 people today.
  
  Better get John McCain over there quick, he needs to prove how safe and successful the surge has been before America commits to his 100-year war.
  
  
• Over in Afghanistan, NATO is considering asking the Russians for help. That should lead to some very interesting machinations in the nation of Georgia, which has been playing footsie with NATO, much to Putin's chagrin.
  
  
• Real-estate foreclosures are up by 71 per cent from last year, meaning we have almost as many people losing their homes as we have in prison;
  
  
• Our good neighbour to the north, Canada, has decided to keep its hands cleaner than ours — they're refusing to accept CIA evidence against "trrrrists" obtained through waterboarding. We remember when "waterboarding" was called "Chinese water torture" and we put to death Japanese troops who had used it against our troops.
  
  
• The dollar is at a record low against the Euro, the loony, the Japanese yen, and the handmade stone wheels used as currency in the remote island of PonderModhu.

Nice work, Stupie McChimpy! Time to do the victory dance!



Yes, he did. He really did.

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