45 ODD things about you! FILL IT OUT and pass it on and also back to the person who sent it to you! Learn 45 things about your friends, and let them learn 45 things about you! I stole this from mehinda 

1. Do you like blue cheese salad dressing? Oh yeah, can't get enough of that delicious mold!

2. Favorite late night snack? Almost all of my snacking is done late at night, and it generally involves black bean quesadillas or ham/corned beef/cabbage/swiss sandwiches or cereal.

3. Do you own a gun? No, though I do want to get a concealed carry license here at some point when I have the money.

4. What's your favorite drink at Starbucks or other specialty coffee shop? Espresso, the hard stuff.

5. Do you get nervous before doctor appointments? Nah, my doctor's a good dude. I did get nervous when I thought my heart was exploding, though.

6. What do you think of hot dogs? They are almost always great.

7. Favorite Christmas song? Bing's "White Christmas"

8. What do you prefer to drink in the morning? OJ or soda, which is bad, I know.

9. Can you do push-ups? Yes, but I prefer doing pull-ups.

10. What's your favorite piece of jewelry? I'll sub in "accessory" for this since I'm a dude and say my new Armani glasses.

11. Favorite hobby? Internet, kitties, Internet cats

12. Do you have A.D.D.? Not officially.

13. What's one trait that you hate about yourself? First that comes to mind is my inability to save money.

14. The last disease you contracted? A cold, currently.

15. Name 3 thoughts at this exact moment. 1. I'm tired. 2. I'm tired of my nose running. 3. I wish I wasn't so tired.

16. Name 3 drinks you regularly drink? Water, soda, milk (I'm not drinking booze, currently)

17. Current worry right now? MONEY, ALWAYS MONEY.

18. Current hate right now? Eh, nothing has my ire currently.

19. Favorite place to be? At home playing with my darling cats or playing video games while the cats sleep.

20. How did you ring in the New Year? In Chicago, attended a party, got pleasantly drunk.

21. Like to travel? Not particularly.

22. Name three people who will complete this: I feel like Amanda would, and perhaps my sister. Maybe Sara Bauer?

23. Do you own slippers? Yes, two pairs: One set of grey houseshoes and one that looks like gorilla heads.

24. What color shirt are you wearing? Grey.

25. Do you like sleeping on satin sheets? No, my leg hairs get snagged in it.

26. Can you whistle? Yes

27. Favorite singer/band? Spoon

28. Could you ever make it 39 days on the show Survivor? Nope. Nor would I really want to. I'm not much for the outdoors, frankly.

29. What songs do you sing in the shower? Jamie Lidell, Smokey Robinson, Sam Cooke, 112, any R&B I've properly memorized.

30. Favorite girl's names? Eleanor, Isabella, Irina, Guadalupe, many many other Latino ones.

31. Favorite boy's name? Benjamin, Andrew (it helps to like one's own name, but I wouldn't do a Jr. thing with my first son), Ignacio, many many other Latino ones.

32. What's in your pocket right now? Keys, BlackJack.

33. Last thing that made you laugh? The ESPN Soccernet podcast (talking about Maradona being Argentina's national team coach).

34. Like your job? LOVE

36. Do you love where you live? Oh it's fine.

37. How many TVs do you have in your house? For the first time in my life, zero.

38. Who is your loudest friend? I really don't have any loud friends anymore.

39. Do you drive the speed limit or speed? Slight speeding, generally to stay with the traffic flow.

40. Does someone have a crush on you? I'm guessing so.

41. What is your favorite book? Crime and Punishment, which sounds cliche I know, but it really is.

42. What is your favorite candy? PayDay.

43. Favorite Sports Team? Oy I have too many sports I follow. I guess right now I'd have to say Tottenham Hotspur.

44. What were you doing 12 AM last night? Playing with kitties!

45. What was the first thing you thought of when you woke up today? I hope my kitties didn't destroy anything.

Here's the thing, folks: Racism ain't dead. The Bush Doctrine ain't dead. Bible thumpers; bigots; Rush Limbaugh; "trickle-down" economic believers; selfish trust fund babies who worry exclusively about the capital gains and inheritance taxes; hypercapitalists; people who talk about the poor as though they're our nation's worst enemy and greatest shame; people who think we can just shoot our way out of our drug problems, our gang problems, our foreign policy disagreements; people who use words like "towelhead" and "sand nigger" unironically; people who use religion as a cudgel to beat people who think differently from them into submission, they're all still here, and they'll be here as long as humans walk the earth. President Barack Obama doesn't end any of this, let alone our economic woes, our very real debts, our deadly reliance on foreign petroleum, our pair of failed "wars," anything.

And I could go on about how a black president (and not just a rumored black president like Harding) is a symbol of freedom, of the American Dream, of our ability to truly pursue happiness, but you've likely already heard it all since Obama gave his keynote address at the 2004 DNC, since King and Ali and Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan and Elijah Muhammad and Mandela and Fred Shuttlesworth, since M. Gandhi and JFK and RFK and Frederick Douglass and Abe Fucking Lincoln. AND JESUS CHRIST. EQUALITY, LIBERTY, IT'S ON OUR FUCKING MONEY, PEOPLE.

You've heard all that. And the reality is, this election doesn't make anybody any more or less free. It doesn't put money in anyone's pocket or gas in anyone's car. It didn't give out a few million jobs and rehabilitate a few thousand criminals. It didn't stop -- or even really ease -- suffering here or anywhere else in the world. The president is one slice of our government, a government almost unimaginably huge and complex and weighed down with decades of expansion and contraction (and then yet more expansion) depending on who got what into which omnibus spending bill before midnight any given March or April or October in the District of Columbia, in well-furnished rooms on K Street with the blinds drawn, in plain daylight with the cameras of C-SPAN recording it all. Even if Barack Obama stepped down tomorrow to appoint JESUS CHRIST, SIDDHARTHA GAUTAMA AND ABRAHAM LINCOLN IN HIS PLACE, laws would still be written by Congressmen and Senators, votes for cloture and pieces of "pork" and reading things into the Congressional record and yielding time to the gentleman from Ohio would still rule the day. Nothing is fixed. Nothing is any more broken.

And everything in the paragraph preceding this one would hold true if it were president-elect John S. McCain and his lovely vice president-elect Sarah Palin. The world wouldn't end, nor would anything be fixed simply by the fact that they'd won an election, a popularity contest, a pageant.

But here's the thing: It feels different. Elkhart has a pretty sizeable minority population. As strange and reverse-racist and saccharine as this sounds, whenever I saw a black person or hell, even an Hispanic person today, I remembered we'd just elected a black president. And not because he's black, or even despite it, really. He's just another president, except for the fact that we've never had a president with skin any darker than ruddy pink or Georgia peach or Crawford-sun-baked brown. And when I thought about that, I got a little happier.

I know he's not perfect. I plan to hawk his every move just as I have the outgoing president (by the way, Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel? Not exactly an olive branch there, Barry) and hold him to the same high standards of the office that every president has faced. But when you're talking about blacks and Mexicans and Chinese and any other minority group, any other cultural swatch in this quiltlike republic, and when, in the back of your mind, you're cognizent of the fact that a minority, the son of an African dude, a guy who grew up in Hawaii and went to school in Indonesia or some crap and somehow still became the president of the Harvard Law Review is now the president of the United States, well it's not overstating it to say that in one very intangible, very intrinsic way, EVERYTHING has changed.

I don't care if that sounds hokey. I don't care if that sounds bright-eyed or naive or bleeding-heart or anything else. I have a half-black sister. I have Mexican friends, black friends. I know what these people face on a daily, hourly, constant basis. It's not overt, they're not being beaten with chains or lynched or burned or arrested for being in the wrong part of town or anything. But they see women clutch their purses or roll their windows up as they approach. They see people's eyes dart. They see people whispering or talking softly and wonder "are they talking about me?" and it's not a particularly far-fetched or paranoid proposition because more often than not, they have found people talking about them in hushed tones around corners or behind doors. To even comprehend for a moment what this is like is to know the horrible truth of being a minority, whether it's a black man in Manhattan or a white man in New Delhi. It's no wonder black men have hypertension and angina and all these other stress-related health issues in greater abundance than whites. It's no wonder the life expectancy of Hispanics in America is a few years shy of whites'. We talk about post-traumatic stress disorder in soldiers returning from war or from people who were abused as children, but what about current-trauma stress disorder? What about constant-paranoia due to the VERY COLOR OF YOUR SKIN stress disorder? This is why I tend not to make light of Michael Jackson's never-ending plastic surgeries. It's really not funny, even if you're the biggest musical talent in the world.

But now a skinny black guy from the South Side of Chicago, a guy with sticky-outy ears and a funny, vaguely menacing name, a guy whose favorite sport is basketball and is a nerd and knows Constitutional law inside and out, who's an academic and a philanthropist and a GODDAMN COMMUNITY ORGANIZER and not really all that much of a Socialist, even when you compare his platform to the way the GOP's vice-presidential nominee runs her state, but really, why is Socialism a bad word in the first place, a guy who seems to genuinely care about helping people and won't take away your goddamn guns or your goddamn wealth or your goddamn Bibles despite all the slings and arrows he's endured from the same people who would do all those things to "MUSLIM TERRORISTS" and "TOWELHEADS IN PAKISTAN" if given the chance, the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas is the president elect of these United States. My country.

And so when I look at a black man now, and I get a little giddy because I imagine a country where women don't clutch their bags a little tighter when that same black man just happens to be on the same sidewalk as them, and when I imagine that my sister, at 13, truly doesn't have a ceiling anymore for what she can do with her life, you'll just have to excuse me. I guess I'm just a wild-eyed, naive, bleeding-heart optimist. And I couldn't be much more happy to be one.

I haven't been much in the mood to write lately, though I do want to share my thoughts about election-y stuff eventually. For now, though, consider the possibility of a baby boom in July-August of next year, particularly in the Chicago area. I know if I had a girlfriend, I'd have been laying the ol' pipe for a long, long time last night. I've seen a fair amount of photos of couples looking very amorous at Grant Park last night, so that's just something to keep in mind. At least we know they'll be happy and open-minded, compassionate kids. Reckon any Republicans would have been similarly sexified had McCain won? Somehow I doubt it.

Props to Josette for bringing this to my attention the other night.

I was the 690th person to cast a ballot at the polling place for Osolo Township precincts 38 and 39. That was at quarter to 11 this morning, less than halfway through the voting day.

It's a gorgeous day today, meteorologically speaking, but it's also a good day to be out among your fellow citizens. Regardless of party affiliation, people in this corner of the world all seem to be smiling today, happy to be a part of this 232-year-old experiment we call democracy. Or maybe it's just the nice weather. It's probably both.

This is the first time I've ever seen anyone younger than me coming in or out of a polling place. In 2004 and 2006 I voted early; absentee, but in person, so to speak. The primary this year was exclusively older people, at least when I went. Today, the first three voters I saw were young white woman, young white woman and older black woman.

Then a bunch of old people, but then there were some more youthful-looking people! It took me about 20 minutes from the time I got in line to the time I put my ballot in the black lock box, and I probably saw at least 10 people I'd reckon were younger than me (I'm 26), plus a high-school kid who was either a poll judge's son or an especially civic-minded youngster.

I'm excited by all the reports of high voter turnout because frankly I've been a bit chagrined by my democracy to this point in my life. We're supposedly the world's only remaining superpower, and to get 50 percent of registered voters to the polls on any given election cycle is about the best we can muster. In Israel, something like 90 percent of voters cast their ballots. In Iraq it's damn near 100 percent, and those people have to risk their lives to go vote. In many more peaceful nations, turnout is low if it's anything less than 70 percent. Supposedly, we're expecting 60 percent today.

I hope we get more than that, but even 60 is a good first step toward reminding people of the importance and, really, the privilege of voting for one's political leaders. I know technically it's a right, but for so many people in the world, it's a treat. If we start looking at it that way, the future looks brighter for these United States.

I got a whole menagerie of different colored soccer stockings at the dollar store for ... well, a dollar a pair. Black and gold seen here, and I also got black stripes on white, red stripes on black and blue stripes on yellow. HOT STUFF. Not hot: My hairy legs. Sorry about that.

Just in case any of you can bring yourself to participate in an NBA fantasy league without choking on your own vomit, you're welcome to join mine. It's at ESPN.com and the name is The Unofficial Wizznutzz League (League). I highly recommend the namesake Web site, wizznutzz.com, for avant garde lulz during the basketball season. It's a public league, so I can't be held responsible if 9 random people jump in and you don't get a spot. If there's enough interest in this and that happens, I can always go start a private league just for us. Real special-like.

Also, this is all free. You can go do a search for "The Unofficial Wizznutzz League" here.

For all the things I disagree with him on, John McCain's statement that "the fundamentals of our economy are strong" is essentially correct. Politically tone deaf yes, but essentially correct.

And I think the Fed's decision (the correct decision) today to hold interest rates unchanged vindicates him a bit. The problems with Lehman, Merrill, AIG, etc. aren't so much a bellwether of a weak economy but a symptom of the long-running credit/mortgage crises. When you invest in bad loans or unsound markets during a strong cycle, you create a bubble in the market (think about the dotcom bubble at the turn of the century, only, you know, people live in houses). This is what countless investment firms have been doing over the last few years, unscrupulously inflating the market for mortgages and homes themselves. So when the natural market (minus the inflammatory speculation and market manipulation via the banks and investment firms) deflates, there's no value there to hold the bubble up. So then all these people who default on their loans are left in the cold and the banks and investors who hold those loans are left holding a worthless piece of paper. Companies always find the loophole to exploit and if there's talk on Wall Street of a "bubble" in ANY sector of the economy, that's a good indication that some sort of false capital creation is going on. THAT'S KIND OF WHY WE NEED REGULATION.

Now, even if Wall Street crumbled into a sinkhole under Manhattan tomorrow, the United States economy would still be the strongest and most versatile in the world. We have so much variety in our production, from metals to agriculture to banking, from textiles and automobiles to aircraft and guns, from medical care to tobacco and alcohol. We ain't exactly Turkmenistan, folks. A crumple in one sector of our economy will echo out across the markets (especially when it's something as key as real estate that crumples), but generally a dip in one sector heralds a rise in another. For example, now that these big investment banks with huge holdings in bad mortgages are failing, money is flooding into ... regular old banks. Regional banks from the Northeast to the Midwest -- Wells Fargo, S & T Bancorp, Key Bank, even Bank of America -- are seeing a rush of new investment because their bottom lines are solid. They provide a shelter in this storm of defaults, bankruptcies and foreclosures.

So, John McCain talks about how the fundamentals of the economy are strong, and he's right. But even though I agree with him on that point, that's not the issue right now. The issue is to stop financial institutions from continuing this predatory practice of investing in false markets, and because the free market necessarily dictates that companies do whatever they can to produce wealth for their stockholders, the answer is overhauled regulation. The Federal Reserve is signaling that the issue is the LIQUIDITY of certain markets, not the fundamentals. Set guidelines to keep us from repeating the Great Depression/Savings & Loan scandal/current mortgage crisis.

The fact that Wall Street brokers actively booed the Fed's decision not to lower key rates today shows me something: the central bank is acting in the best interest of the economy at large, the strength of the dollar, rather than catering to a specific group of flailing banks asking for bailouts.

David Foster Wallace hanged himself Friday at his home in California. He was 46.

1. Respect
2. Honor
3. Humbleness
4. Hope
5. Strawman
6. Strawman
7. More strawmen, shameless attacks on "respected" opponent
8. Promises without explanation
9. More promises without explanation (use our community colleges? teach bad teachers another trade? O RLY? Didn't he just slam Obama for "wishing" for more jobs?)
10. "Big project" the same as Obama's "big project" only slower and with more drilling (NOW)
11. Shamelessly exploiting POW years (the 100th time this convention!)
12. Maverick
13. Help me help you, help me help you

Oh yeah, and somewhere in there a Code Pink lady or two stood up, an Iraq Vet against the War stood up, and in response, the crowd mindlessly chanted USA! for about three minutes per instance, stopping the speech cold in its tracks each time. I thought our vets WERE USA! USA! It's not like they're Iron Sheik or something.

I must say, even though I know 1 in 4 U.S. voters still somehow support this president and think he does a good job, it didn't hit me until I saw a jam-packed hockey arena cheer the Decider on a 50-foot-tall screen, like something out of an old Apple commercial.

This country can still pack a hockey arena full of people who don't mind a few thousand deaths in a pointless war, a hockey arena full of people who apparently REALLY like big business (or are big business themselves, I know the Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorino was in the house), a hockey arena full of people who squealed with rapture as Fred Thompson harrumphed and ahemed his way through a speech with zero content and 100 percent biographical filler that's been known to all those folks since the 1970s anyway. Such a shame. At least it was a relatively small hockey arena.

I was really hoping to learn something about this candidate, this running mate, this party (and by the way, the word "Republican" doesn't appear anywhere inside the Xcel Center floor, it's all "McCain * Palin," hell, even the delegate credentials I saw didn't feature the party's name prominently [it was on the border]), but I guess I'll have to keep watching.

1. Last night, CNN's Campbell Brown TRIED to get McCain flack Tucker Bounds to name ONE thing Sarah Palin did as commander-in-chief of the Alaska National Guard, ONE order she handed down to those troops there that could illustrate any kind of judgment on her part one way or another. A relief effort, a clean-up, an emergency construction project, ANYTHING. Despite being asked three times in a row, he couldn't produce a single example.

2. Today the McCain campaign announces that, due to the fact that Campbell Brown's interview "crossed the line," McCain himself won't show up for his scheduled interview with Larry King.

3. The lulz I experience from this bit of drama-diva behavior nearly buries me in an avalanche of ROFL.

Hilarious.

Seriously, this chick has been the subject of more lawsuits and legal action over the last few years than she's had kids! Check this story out, from Wikipedia, about her time as mayor of .... some small-ass Alaska town.

"At the end of her mayorship, Palin attempted to build the Wasilla Multi-Use Sports Complex, a $15 million multi-use indoor ice arena, as her legacy. However, developer Gary Lundgren acquired the land before Palin could. Without the deed, Palin decided to build the arena there anyway, and attempted to acquire the land through eminent domain, but a federal appeals court ruled in favor of Lundgren. The case is in the process of being resolved in the courts. [13] It will cost Wasilla at least an additional $1.67 million to acquire the land [14] and Wasilla is still attempting to cover the budget shortfall by cutting library services, postponing capital improvement projects, and raising fees. [15]"

SERIOUSLY? Talk about balls. Who does that? That's on some claim-jumping, evil prospector hopped up on moonshine shit! And that was just a few years ago! Who just goes ahead and builds shit on other people's land and then tries to take it through eminent domain?!

Also, in more admirable news, she got appointed as a state ethics commissioner and then resigned after a year because the people in her own party were breaking the law and nobody would listen when she blew the whistle!

"Governor Murkowski appointed Palin Ethics Commissioner of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission,[17] where she served from 2003 to 2004 until resigning in protest over what she called the "lack of ethics" of fellow Alaskan Republican leaders, who ignored her whistleblowing complaints of legal violations and conflicts of interest.[18][3] After she resigned, she exposed the state Republican Party's chairman, Randy Ruedrich, one of her fellow Oil & Gas commissioners, who was accused of doing work for the party on public time, and supplying a lobbyist with a sensitive e-mail.[19] Palin filed formal complaints against both Ruedrich and former Alaska Attorney General Gregg Renkes, who both resigned; Ruedrich paid a record $12,000 fine.[3]"

And then she proceeded to win the governorship despite having no support from the GOP (clearly, they really get pissed off when you shut off their dirty money!) and despite being outspent by her Democratic opponent. That's pretty badass, I don't care what state you're in.

ALSO she's crazy hot and knows how to handle a gun. But then she evidently doesn't do any other fun stuff (drink, smoke, pose for smutty photos) because she's an Evangelical. Though she WAS a beauty pageant winner back in the day, so I've got my fingers crossed.

If I said I thought John McCain should be president; if I promised to vote for him and campaign for him and give speeches about how great he is and how important this time in history is and how necessary it is to have a great leader and how that great leader is John McCain, wouldn't it necessarily follow that I DON'T think he's an angry, misogynistic, confused, demented, corrupt, adulterous, immature, insane, old coot? I'd be dead wrong if I said that, but if I did support him, would I actually have to say those words to make it so, or would you just infer that from the work I was doing for him?

That's what I don't understand about the Republican strategy right now: They're trying to say Hillary and Joe Biden and various other Democratic leaders don't think Obama is ready to be president, or that he's not qualified, etc., largely based on things those people said during the primary season when THEY THEMSELVES were trying to become president. Hillary could have run off to Ibiza and danced the rest of the calendar year away and not lifted a finger to help Obama. Joe, if he really still felt like he said he did exactly 12 months ago in a debate (that Obama isn't qualified), could pull what Nancy Reagan did to McCain this go-round: tepidly endorse the party's pick because he's the party's pick and then retreat into his home for the rest of the election cycle.

So in response to people like Kay Bailey Hutchison and other GOP flacks who keep saying stuff like "Hillary has made good speeches but she's never really said she thinks he's ready to be president," I say this: By virtue of these people's saying and acting like they want Barack Obama to be president, it's implied that they also think he's ready to be the goddamn president. Why would Joe Biden want to add "running mate on losing 2008 ticket" to his resume if he really felt like Obama wasn't the guy to do this thing?

This isn't rocket science, people: If you don't think Obama has the experience to be president, fine! That's your opinion! (I just hope you didn't vote for George W. Bush in 2000 then because, wow, hypocrisy) But don't try to pretend like people who are spending their time and money to get Barack Obama elected are just foolin', just having a laugh. I know a lot of Americans are stupid and I'm sure you're counting on that to get your guy elected, but it's dishonest and it cheapens your message.

By the way, nobody has really come out and said that John McCain ISN'T an angry, misogynistic, confused, demented, corrupt, adulterous, immature, insane old coot. I guess until I hear otherwise, I'll go ahead and assume everyone thinks he is.

Your result for The Perception Personality Image Test...

NBPS - The Idealist

Nature, Background, Big Picture, and Shape

Take The Perception Personality Image Test at HelloQuizzy


I took this because styloroc_2000 did.

Ever have one of those conversations that affirms/reaffirms a belief in the basic goodness in humanity and, truly, all of existence? Ever have a talk that brings you to tears with the realization of the overwhelming, awe-inspiring power of love?

I had one tonight. I highly recommend it.

My wonderful and lovely and smart sister Sara gave me for my birthday a cutting board, which I'm already using the crap out of. She also got me three volumes of George Herriman's "Krazy Kat & Ignatz" compilations, the ones encompassing his work from 1933 to 1938. They're gorgeous books, with covers by other comics masters like Chris Ware, who did this one here:



It's amazing to see how edgy and psychedelic his comics were. In the volume pictured above, 1933-34, many of the comics were either never published or only published in two Hearst newspapers on Sundays ... and no place else. I'm sure his edginess and nonsensical plotlines are the reason his comics had a hard time getting a foothold in newspapers of the time.

My roommate, as a crime reporter, got to know many of the officers who work in our town. One in particular, Cpl. Dan Drust, she got to know well enough that she was able to do interviews with him, his younger brother and his sister about their shared love of skydiving. She wrote a story about the trio that she'd been shopping around to various magazines and other publications.

Yesterday afternoon near Delphi, Ind., Dan died in a skydiving accident. His main chute didn't deploy and his emergency chute either didn't open or he got tangled in it. The incident is still under investigation. He and his siblings had jumped from 11,000 feet. He died on impact. He was 36.

Dan and his siblings had grown up in an abusive home and they'd all fought turmoil both within and without to become upstanding and decent adults. Dan turned his feelings of frustration and helplessness as a child into a desire to serve and to help people. He loved being a police officer because he loved being able to help people, to protect them from harm or from themselves.

And thus my roommate found a connection with Dan and other officers like him: They live to serve and they love to serve. They put others before them in the line of duty as well as in their personal lives. My roommate does, too. This other-directed compassion and caring comes from a place of love. It's the backbone of human existence. It's how we keep going.

I'm sorry for Dan's family and friends and coworkers and I'm sorry for anyone who ever knew him. The world lost a good soul yesterday in the blue skies over central Indiana.

Hey thanks cell phone camera for focusing on the shit that's behind the shit that's right in front of you. Anyway, that's perhaps the most impressive, crazy, haphazard and delicious dagwood sandwich I've ever constructed. Let's break it down:

The last four slices (two heels) of my loaf of 12-grain bread
Two slices of colby jack
About three slices of roast beef
Four slices of peppered corned beef
About three slices of roasted turkey
A generous slathering of homemade guacamole
Chopped onions
Yellow mustard
Banana peppers

Oh my god I'm an evil genius. Such flavor insanity. And yet it worked fantastically.

I can't believe I missed this:

The American leader, who has been condemned throughout his presidency for failing to tackle climate change, ended a private meeting with the words: "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter."

He then punched the air while grinning widely, as the rest of those present including Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy looked on in shock.

*golfclap*