Bush News Conference, Health Care, Iran, Fart Jokes, Welfare, Conrad Burns, Bill Kristol, Clean Air, Cuba and American Taliban.

Idiots say the darnest things. After years of trying to implicate Iraq in the 9/11 disaster, Ol' Simple has a news conference.

In Monday's news conference Bush shows how hard it is to keep up with all that misinformation and accidentally let's the truth slip out.

The terrorists attacked us and killed 3,000 of our citizens before we started
the freedom agenda in the Middle East. They were ...

Q: What did Iraqi have to do with that?

Bush: What did Iraq have to do with what?

Q: The attacks upon the World Trade Center.

Bush: Nothing. Except for it's part of __ and nobody's ever suggested in
this administration that Saddam Hussein ordered the attack. Iraq was a __ Iraq
__ the lesson of September the 11th is: Take threats before they fully
materialize, Ken.

Another statement from that news conference that caught my attention was:

We reject the killing of innocents to achieve a radical and violent agenda.

Apparently, the killing of innocents is fine as long as you're trying to achieve a "noble cause".

After the news conference, Eugene Robinson of the WaPo, decided that Bush was on another planet. I like Robinson.

Here's another line from the president's news conference: "What's very
interesting about the violence in Lebanon and the violence in Iraq and the
violence in Gaza is this: These are all groups of terrorists who are trying to
stop the advance of democracy."

Now, whatever you think about George Bush's intellect, he knows full well
that the Hamas government in Gaza was democratically elected. He also knows full
well that Hezbollah participates in the democratically elected government of
Lebanon, or what's left of Lebanon. And so he has to know full well that
U.S.-backed Israeli assaults on Gaza and Lebanon -- even if you believe they
were justified -- had the impact of crippling, if not crushing, two nascent
democracies of the kind the Bush administration wants to cultivate throughout
the Middle East.

Bush is setting his sights on health care. My advice, don't get sick.

The initiative underscores Bush's belief that the nation's health-care system
would be more efficient if consumers could shop for the best care at the best
price, administration officials say. "The fact is, if you have excellent
information about quality, about service and about price, people make good
decisions," Bush said during a roundtable here to discuss the initiative.

If you believe that, check this out.

Iran wants to talk, Bush wants sanctions. Being the pampered, effete, rich, boy that he is and used to getting his way all his life, I'll bet he won't talk.

Iran offered yesterday to enter into immediate and "serious" negotiations on a
broad range of issues with the Bush administration and its European allies but
refused to abide by a U.N. Security Council demand that it suspend work at its
nuclear facilities by the end of the month.

It seems our President also loves fart jokes. Talk about arrested development.

He loves to cuss, gets a jolly when a mountain biker wipes out trying to keep up
with him, and now we're learning that the first frat boy loves flatulence jokes.
A top insider let that slip when explaining why President Bush is paranoid
around women, always worried about his behavior. But he's still a funny, earthy
guy who, for example, can't get enough of fart jokes. He's also known to cut a
few for laughs, especially when greeting new young aides, but forget about
getting people to gas about that.

Speaking of noxious gas, The Heritage Foundation is now saying that Bill Clinton was right on welfare reform. Of course that means he was wrong.

As a conservative analyst who spent much of the 1990s working against most of
Bill Clinton's agenda -- including even some aspects of his welfare reform
proposals -- it pains me to say this.
Bill Clinton was right.

If Republicans would just stick to waving the flag and thumping the Bible, instead of opening their mouths, they'd still look stupid, but not as stupid. Senator Conrad Burns of Montana show us why.

A new video released this week by his Democratic challenger, Jon Tester,
shows Burns, 71, joking to a crowd in June about how a "nice little Guatemalan
man" fixing up his house might be an illegal immigrant. "Could I see your green
card?" Burns tells the crowd he asked the man. "And Hugo, says, 'No.' I said,
'Oh, gosh.' "

One week after the green-card crack, Burns recounted in a debate how after
watching an interview on television of an illegal immigrant headed to Virginia
for work, "I told my roofer, you better go out and get your help, or you won't
get my house roofed."

But we all know that God made illegals to save Republicans a few bucks.

And why are so many of these wealthy, draft-dodging, neo-con, wimps so anxious to start another war? Bill Kristol showing how clueless he is.

KRISTOL: I think we could be in a military confrontation with Iran much sooner
than people expect. I don’t think this is an issue that’s going to wait two and
a half years until President Bush leaves the presidency. I think he will decide
at some point next year — in 2007 — he’ll have to make some very tough decisions
about what the U.S. and the world can tolerate in terms of this regime – this
apocalyptic, messianic regime — which has made clear that it would use — would
feel free to use weapons if it had them, that has very deep ties with terrorist
groups, what we could accept in terms of their nuclear program.

Israel seems to be doing it's best to keep things stirred up. With friends like this, Kristol might get what he wants.

JERUSALEM, Aug. 22 -- The Israeli government's plan to dismantle some Jewish
settlements in the West Bank and redraw the country's borders is being shelved
at least temporarily, a casualty of the war in Lebanon, government officials said.

The plan, which propelled Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to victory in March
elections and was warmly endorsed by President Bush as a way of solving Israel's
conflict with the Palestinians, is no longer a top priority, Olmert told his
ministers last weekend, according to one of his advisers.

Score one for the bad guys. Rupert Murdoch and our whore Congress screws us again. I guess I'll have to start going back outside to turn my antenna. A few years ago, local television station owners, read conclomerates, pumped a lot of money into Congress to keep satellite companies from showing any network coverage other than the locals. It's kinda like Congress passing a law saying that, if the town you live in has a newspaper, it would be illegal to read any other paper. All in all, it's just damned unAmerican.

Hundreds of thousands of Dish Network subscribers could lose access to shows on
traditional television networks as early as today after a Supreme Court
justice's decision yesterday that brings an end to lawsuits that have been tied
up in court for more than eight years.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas yesterday let stand a May ruling
by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit that ordered EchoStar
Communications Corp., the parent company of Dish Network, to stop transmitting
network programming to 800,000 subscribers -- those who live in mostly rural
areas too far to receive local stations with regular antennas.

But there's good news. Score one for the good guys, Bush and the polluters finally lose one.

Americans who live in areas with substandard air won another important round
last week in the tortured legal battle to force power companies, other
industrial polluters and the Bush administration itself to obey the Clean Air
Act. In a unanimous decision, a federal appeals court in Chicago upheld a
controversial provision of the act that requires older plants to install modern
pollution controls whenever they undergo physical or operational changes that
increase harmful
emissions.
The provision, known as New Source Review, has been critical to the efforts
of New York and other Northeastern states to reduce air pollution from
Midwestern power plants. But industry hates it, and the administration has spent
the last five years trying to get rid of it. This effort seemed very close to
success until the courts intervened, delivering two rebuffs in less than half a
year.

Say what you want about Cuba. But they are leading the way to a petroleum free future.

Cuba switched "the nation's agriculture from high input, fossil fuel-dependent
farming, to low input, self-reliant farming...farmers used new environmental
technologies offered as the result of scientific development--technologies such
as biopesticides and biofertilizers. Biopesticides developed the use of microbes
and natural enemies to combat pests, along with resistant plant varieties, crop
rotation, and cover cropping to suppress weeds. Biofertilizers were developed
using earthworms, compost, natural rock phosphate, animal manure and green
manures, and the integration of grazing animals. To replace tractors, there was
a return to animal traction."

And finally, who's keeping an eye on the enemy within? Certainly not Bush and the Republicans, who rely on their votes. But AlterNet is.

Two really devilish guys materialized in Toccoa, Ga., last month to harangue
600 true believers on the gospel of a thoroughly theocratic America. Along with
lesser lights of the religious far right who spoke at American Vision's
"Worldview Super Conference 2006," Herb Titus and Gary North called for nothing
short of the overthrow of the United States of America.

Hosting the "Creation to Revelation... Connecting the Dots" event was a
Powder Springs, Ga., publishing house, American Vision, whose pontiff is Gary
DeMar. The outfit touts the antebellum South as a righteous society and favors
the reintroduction of some forms of slavery (it's sanctioned in the Bible,
Reconstructionists say) -- which may explain the blindingly monochrome audience
at the gathering

At the heart of what was taught by a succession of speakers:

Six-day, "young earth" creationism is the only acceptable doctrine for
Christians. Even "intelligent design" or "old earth" creationism are compromises
with evil secularism.


Public education is satanic and must be destroyed.

The First Amendment was intended to keep the federal government from
imposing a national religion, but states should be free to foster a religious
creed. (Several states did that during the colonial period and the nation's
early days, a model the Reconstructionists want to emulate.)

The Founding
Fathers intended to protect only the liberties of the established
ultra-conservative denominations of that time. Expanding the list to include
"liberal" Protestant denominations, much less Catholics, Jews and (gasp!)
atheists, is a corruption of the Founders' intent.

Well, at least Tuesdays are usually better than Mondays.