Substantial Cuts

Some agreement.

World leaders agreed on Thursday to pursue "substantial" but unspecified cuts in greenhouse gases and pledged to reach a United Nations deal by 2009 on long-term measures to fight global warming.

Chancellor Angela Merkel, hosting the summit of the Group of Eight (G8) in the seaside Baltic resort town of Heiligendamm, had hoped to gain commitments from member countries to slash emissions by 50 percent by 2050.

Instead, the club of industrialized nations -- Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States -- agreed that "resolute and concerted international action" on climate change was urgently needed.

It's an agreement to have another meeting to have another agreement. It's a death by a thousand cuts. Substantial cuts.

And then, apparently Vlad Putin got sweet-talked into accepting the American missile defense plan that doesn't work.

U.S. President George W. Bush and Russian leader Vladimir Putin met for the first time following a series of diplomatic clashes that some analysts said heralded a new Cold War.

At the meeting, Putin proposed using a radar system in Azerbaijan to develop a missile shield as an alternative to a disputed U.S. plan to base it in the Czech Republic and Poland.

"We can do this automatically, and hence the whole system which is being built as a result will cover not only part of Europe but entire Europe without an exception," Putin was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying.

So if you funnel money into a Soviet satellite state, we cool. That's the message there.

If you read between the lines at this G8 Summit, you see that the rest of the world continues to get rolled by the Bush Administration. At least the Democrats aren't alone...