Thursday, May 26, 2011

POLAND! A Post About Poland Finally, and Obama

Talk about your boring state visit.

Barack Obama will not be drilling for shale oil on his visit to Poland this weekend. Talk about your bummer of a trip.

Presidents have such boring jobs. Meeting this, meeting that, speaking here, greeting there, policy speeches to joint sessions of Parliament. You can only hope the food and wine are worth the trip. And you be sure that in Warsaw it will be. Exceptional cuisine. Why am I not invited?

The thing is, all Presidents do is meet and talk and meet and talk and figure stuff out. Most of it is figured out already by their aides (or minions as we like to call them). So President Obama will tell the Poles that there are still no missile shields coming their way. But F-16's, perhaps. The news is already in print, the outcomes predetermined.

The Poles desperately want missile shields aimed at Russia. The Russians desperately don't want the Poles to have them. Guess who wins that tussle.

The Poles also want U.S. assistance with extracting oil shale. And the thought was, President Obama could do a bit of the work himself. But no, it's all meetings all the time. Why?

I don't know. If I were the President, I'd want one of those giant sized Tonka trucks with a steam shovel on the front end. And I would like to move some dirt around. Can't we give the guy a break?

Because I don't believe in shale mining, I'd prefer to give the whole group of Central and Eastern European Presidents meeting together with Obama this weekend a shot at a playground I have in mind, a very big one up in the Zoliborz District. They talk enough. I say let's let them do some digging for a change.