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TOP STORY

Presidents Bush and Ahmadinejad were among the world leaders giving speeches to the UN General Assembly today.  George faced a dilemma--he didn't want to run into his Iranian counterpart, but he wanted to go to the gala lunch.  Luckily, the Iranian president wasn't hungry.


With time running out for the desperate people of Darfur, President Bush showed his priorities by spending most of his speech to the UN General Assembly today talking about other things.  But he did urge the UN to act, and named a Presidential Special Envoy to deal with Sudan--Andrew Natsios. 

Oh.
God.
Not.
HIM.

We talk with Sidney Blumenthal, author of the new book, How Bush Rules: Chronicles of a Radical Regime.  Blumenthal is a former senior advisor to President Clinton and a regular columnist for the online magazine Salon and for the Guardian newspaper in Britain.

And we talk to analyst Andrew Grotto from the Center for American Progress.  Grotto says it was no surprise that Bush made another one of his predictable campaign speeches to the UN.  Nor, he says, is it a surprise that Ahmadinejad slammed the US occupation of Iraq and questioned the legitimacy of the UN Security Council.

UNDERBELLY

If there's ever someone who failed up, it's George W. Bush.  As a businessman, his companies lost money and he became a millionaire.  In 2000, he managed to win the presidential election while losing in the polls.  And he appointed an attorney general (John Ashcroft) who had just lost an election to a dead guy.  George W. Bush is big on failing up, and on helping his friends do it.  And that's what he did today.

At the UN today, Bush had the opportunity to do something noble, to focus the world's attention on the crisis in Darfur and take bold action to save lives.  It wouldn't just have been the right thing to do, it would have been a classy political move that would have improved the degraded reputations of both President Bush and the United States.  Instead, he did his usual "war on terror" dance and burried two minutes on Darfur into the middle of his speech.  And he took "action" by appointing Andrew Natsios Special Envoy on Darfur.

Andrew Natsios, who managed the dissastrous "Big Dig" project in Boston.  Andrew Natsios, who assured ABC's Ted Koppel that reconstruction in Iraq certainly wouldn't cost the American people any more than $1.7 billion.  Andrew Natsios, who as head of USAID, explained  to us that Africans don't know how to tell time. 

Andrew Natsios has definitely failed up.  Now he's the man who will be the American point man in an effort to avert further disaster in Darfur. Lord forgive us.

CAMPAIGN COUNTDOWN

Montana's Republican Senator, Conrad Burns, has a fondness for ethnic slurs and taking money from lobbyists.  Unfortunately for him, the people of Montana have noticed.  Burns trails Democratic challenger John Tester 52% to 43% in a new poll.  It's likely to get worse for Burns, which means better for the Democrats in their bid to take over the Senate.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“If we could turn Congress into one big A.A. meeting, where people would be required to say what they mean and mean what they say, it would be a lot better Congress.”

       --Minnesota's Republican Congressman Jim Ramstad

PET STORIES

The invasion of the jumping carp! 
Solution: Carp cakes.

Are those two little monkeys in your pants?  Or...

EXTRA CREDIT

Getting a U.S. Defense of Freedom Medal for not suing Halliburton.