There she is, sitting between W. and Vladimir (I call him Vladimir).  One wonders if she is asking Vladimir to stand up, walk behind her and massage her shoulders.

It is well-known that he speaks very good German -- but that is ironic, because he learned German while he was working in the KGB office in East Berlin.  Every time he opens his mouth and speaks in German, no doubt there are people in the West with long memories who shudder ...

As for the substance of the agreement, and the negotiations leading up to it, there was some conservative commentator on the NewsHour last night, who seemed quite pleased with the outcome, and who made the point that the Europeans are "process-oriented" and the Americans are "results-oriented."  That went right over my head.  My guess is that it has something to do with Merkel's satisfaction that at least the UN has been accepted by the US as the formal context in which these (apparently toothless, but whatever) discussions are supposed to take place.

I am disappointed with the relative reticence of Nicolas Sarkozy.  It seems that had he joined forces with Merkel in a more forceful way, they could have accomplished something more substantial.  None of the other leaders was in such a position of strength: Putin could not be distracted from his Third Reich/Cold War tactic; Prodi and Abe are politically weak at home; Blair is so negligible that one wonders why they even bothered to invite him; and Harper is as much W.'s lapdog as Blair ever was.  But Sarkozy could have done more, if he were really committed to the issue.  Instead, he seems to have played this cute game of not wanting to be seen as a clear opponent of the US just yet, on the one hand, and trying to win or maintain the approval of French greens, on the other, by expressing criticism and doubt after the statement was released.

Back to Vladimir: He and W. seem to have made up, by agreeing to have the missile defense system (which anyway no one believes really works) put in Azerbaijan.  Wow!, what a twist!  Who saw that coming?!  But a good thing it is, no?, just in time for the Bush family picnic.  I hope Vladimir shows up wearing a prisoner's overall, printed with the words "Property of Guantanamo Naval Base," as a sort of joke.

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!

One of Merkels chief climate advisers had the following interpretation, according to the Int. Herald Tribune.
"The United States is now on a bandwagon they cannot stop," said Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, a German expert on climate change who is Merkel's chief adviser on climate policy. "That is more than I expected. In a way, climate common sense prevailed at the last minute."

I think everyone can take it for granted that the next U.S. president is going to take global warming seriously. In that sense, the bandwagon is already rolling -- the public is on it, the states are on it, etc. The only real question at issue at the G8 was whether Bush would be able to run out the clock on his own tenure without doing anything, and in that he succeeded.

grist.org

You'r quite correct, Bush has some reason to celebrate. However, the goal of the process is not "Making Bush unhappy", that should be considered to be collateral damage. The importance of these statements is a growth in confidence about the future US policy, the growing certainty that the US will indeed collaborate (even if only halfhearted). This might help and influence policymakers creating new rules and business facing new investment right now allready. Or, by example, the knowledge that the US is on a train with only a very remote chance of jumping off, means that wind energy project currently undertaken see an increase in expected future revenue.

This aside, I do agree: it certainly could have ben better.

Is it 2009 yet?