earthfamilyalpha: Brunch with Mr. B

It's been a good while since my dinner with W. My guess is he'll be plenty available soon enough at that faux French coffee shop there at Prestwood Center trying to get donations for his little library if you want to chat with him.

Of course, "W" didn't do a thing I told him to do, he was too concerned with being validated by Cheney to seriously think about the troubles he was facing. Of course, when we visited back in 05, he had a brutal military occupation that wasn't going so well, but the economy was still pretty much running on kill, thanks to those geniuses on Wall Street who were trading each others credit default swaps like 9 year olds trade baseball cards. Sure, they have value, but only if everyone agrees that they are worth something. Otherwise, its the proverbial house of cards.

Well, you can imagine my surprise when I got a text message from a certain Blackberry in DC last week.

"Oz, NSA says you're in town, brunch?"

We met at that dumpy diner/bar there at 14th and G.

"So what do you think?"

"It's freaking amazing", I said

"How's the new digs"?

"I liked my little apartment better."

"I guess since its a Federal Building, you can't smoke in it?"

"These executive orders are pretty handy for stuff like that."

"How about Michelle?"

"I'm still working on that."

"Well, we've all got to stop smoking anyway."

"That's what I wanted to chat with you about. Now that I've made all these promises to move away from smoke, how the hell are we going to do it?"

"We'll, I don't have to tell you it's really hard to stop smoking. We humans have been doing it for about a half a million years. It's not the kind of thing you just go cold turkey on... or a heck of lot more than turkeys are going to grow cold.

Speaking of that, W really left you a big warm one didn't he."

"Everywhere I turn, there's a pile of dookey to the ceilings. Towards the end, he must have been blowing and going, the whole place was a wreck."

"So what are you going to do?"

"What do you think? Everything I can. What do you think?"

"Al's got it mostly right, there is a climate for change, and as he says, we must begin an emergency rescue of human civilization from the imminent and rapidly growing threat posed by the climate crisis. But he's too straight, and not nearly radical enough. Plus, he's telling everyone that our current resource binge and economic system can continue.

First though, you've got to talk to the people straight,"

"They're not ready."

"I know, but in a few months, you need to start breaking it to them slowly."

"What about our energy plan and this unified photonic energy web business you keep harping about?"

"Listen, you've got some really smart guys around you and I think I like Chu, but here's the overall plan as I see it."

I wrote my seven point plan down on the back of the napkin.

Barack looked at it and his left eye closed a little. "Man, this is going to be a challenge. Can we do this?"

"If anyone can pull it off, you can. Besides, we don't have any choice. If you want the kids to have any kind of chance at all when they're our age, we've got to begin the change now. Change got you elected. Go on and dance with her now, or you might not get a chance to dance with her after the break"

He put the napkin in his inside coat pocket and backed his chair from the table.

"What about the "R"s?"

"They're on their way to becoming Whigs."

I finished my decaf and he slugged down his orange juice.

The Service called in for his super low profile transportation.

It's not as nice as my Townie though.