BREAKING NEWS: U.S. officials say $1 trillion worth of minerals have been found in the mountains and dry lake beds of Afghanistan!
In a related announcement, U.S. officials say the new U.S. colony of Afghanistan will be renamed, Pandora, and a team from Halliburton and Massey Mining will begin immediately extracting the Unobtanium from beneath the surface.
Seriously, $1 trillion in iron, copper, gold, cobalt and lithium in Afghanistan? What could possibly go wrong?
Forget the poppies, maaaan. Everyone will want to get mellow on the lithium…while also powering our batteries!!
Curiously, enough, the cost of the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan have, so far, cost $1 trillion. Well, waddya know? Guess, maybe, we owe Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz an apology for doubting them.
Meanwhile, in the Gulf of Mexico, officials with BP say they’ve discovered gold and cobalt pouring from the undersea volcano known as the Deepwater Horizon mine…er…well.
No, just kidding about that. Its still hydrocarbons and chemicals gushing forth to kill the Gulf.
But, they, the good news is President Obama will make his fourth trip today to the Redneck Riviera where he’ll get in a little beach time (unrefined oil and saltwater make an excellent SP 15 sunscreen, or is that STP oil treatment 15?). He’ll talk to the locals, assure them he feels their pain and, maybe, get in a little golf at SanDestin, now renamed OilSandsDestin.
No, just kidding about that, too. Remember, he’s lookin’ to kick a little ass so, BP officials, I don’t think I’d mess with him right now. I think he means it.
And to show he means it, he’ll address us all on the TeeVee Box on Tuesday night when he returns from the Coast Formerly Known as Emerald. He’s gonna tell us he will demand BP immediately set up an escrow account to make sure the money is there to repay Gulf Coast residents for their losses.
BP has, by the way, $7 billion in cash. Tony Heyward carries it around in a steel briefcase. It also has the capacity to borrow $15 billion and is – or was – expecting to make $34 billion this year. Costs of cleaning up this disaster will reach $123 million…and climbing. BP was planning to give its shareholders $10.5 billion of that cheese. They may have to take IOUs.
The President will have to take a break from kicking ass, however to hear the bitchin’ from oil industry workers about his moratorium on offshore oil drilling. Tobacco workers complained, too, about all that silly nonsense suggesting smoking kills.
Hey, Mr. President, here’s a thought: let’s retrain all those roughnecks and put them to work building solar panels and wind turbines and lithium batteries. I understand we just struck the mother lode. Just a thought.
Oh yea…and one final, little tinsy-tiny note: The National Hurricane Center center says a very unusual early season Cape Verde-type weather system half-way between Africa and South America might grow into the season’s first tropical depression.
The good news is forecast models are not – so far – giving it much chance to survive into a storm.
