Is hell exothermic or endothermic?

This episode of Green Machine is the final one for 2008. What a year it has been! Thank G it’s over. Gasoline prices peaked in the summer and are now down to the price they were five years ago. General Motors and Chrysler are on life support and President Bush had to step in where congress refused by offering a bridge loan to these two once mighty companies. The bridge loans will only provide sufficient liquidity until President Obama take office and more money will be needed in February. Time Magazine does a person of the year. Green Machine follows suit by nominating the G Person of The Year, and without a doubt the G Person for 2008 is President George W. Bush. George’s Dad was also President of the USA and had the full name George Herbert Walker Bush (GHWB). His son will be remembered as George Herbert Hoover Bush (GHHB).

Green Machine believes that young GHHB went off the rails by his nomination of two totally incompetent Energy Secretaries. His first Energy Secretary was Spencer Tracy Abraham who lasted the entire first term with zero accomplishment. Spencer had lost his senate seat in Michigan in 2000 so he was out of work when he was chosen by GHHB for Energy Secretary. Spencer was chosen Energy Secretary for the single reason of being of Lebanese decent and GHHB believed that Spencer would have great working relationships with the Movers and Shakers (I would spell this Sheikers) of the oil rich Middle East. Spencer had zero knowledge of thermodynamics and was of no consequence except for helping the US disregard the Kyoto Protocol on global warming gases. The Bush first term was almost entirely focused on the post 9-11 response and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as the global war on terrorism. Spencer left office in February 2005 to become a consultant. I can only imagine how well his clients have done. Had we opted into Kyoto in 2001, GM and Chrysler would already have fuel efficient vehicles and would not need a bailout.

GHHB’s second energy secretary, Sam The Sham Bodman, has already won the Green Machine’s Gangrene Prize. What make me particularly mad about Bodman is he has a PhD in Chemical Engineering and unlike Spencer the Dispenser he had a full comprehension of the laws of thermodynamics and simply chose to ignore them for political gain. Now that I have lambasted the Energy Secretaries of the past eight years I will point to Harvard MBAs next. The three most incompetent MBAs from this prestigious school are GHHB, Hank Paulsen, and Rick Wagoner. All three of these HBS alumni have in large measure contributed to the current economic malaise. If I have to pick the least impressive one of these three, it is Rick Off The Wagon Wagoner. He is the magician of the year by making GM disappear.

There is great debate whether hell is exothermic or endothermic because we have the sayings “hotter than hell” and “when hell freezes over”. I will have to opine on this in a future episode of Green Machine now that our economy and environment is going to hell in a hand basket. I anticipate that 2009 will be a better year and there is no way possible that the next President, next Energy Secretary, and next Chief Executive Officer of GM will ignore science and the melting Arctic Ice Cap and believe the marketing of Hummers are good for the economy and environment. I wish all Green Machine enthusiasts a happy, healthy, prosperous, and low carbon footprint new year.