Donny, you're out of your element.

[INT. Fade in. An elegant Middle-Eastern residence. Several men in traditional garb and several in Western business attire sit in a half-circle around George W. Bush and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.]

BUSH: See, ah. The price ah oil's high. It's hurtin' the economy. In other words, it's bad for the economy. See, ah. When people buy things, they need money. In other words, they make purchases. That's why we call em consumers. Because they buy. But if they're buyin oil an it's expensive, then it hurts the economy.

ABDULLAH: What the fuck are you talking about?

Insofar as our government is meant to represent and concretize the will of the people, George W. Bush is really the best man for the job after all. He's so American it hurts. Here he is yakking to a bunch of Saudis about how high oil prices are tough on the American economy? You know what the Saudis are thinking? Not tough enough to make anyone quit buying it, dick.

On a perhaps more substantive note, the King of Saudi Arabia has got about as much ability to reverse or even substantially retard the long-term rise in petroleum prices as I do. There's only so much of it in the ground; there's only so much capacity to pump it out of the ground; and everybody wants it. The Chinese want it. The Indians want it. America wants it. The Europeans? Yes, they want it to. Not only for our cars, but for our plastics and our computers and our cell phones and our pharmaceuticals and our industrial products and processes and just about everything else we do, move, or make. Prices are high because demand is expanding at a faster rate than production. The King of Saudi Arabia could peel off the crust of the earth and pump the shit out with a sump pump the size of the moon and still prices would go up after a momentary levelling off.

Tough on the economy. Just you wait.