The Rooster's Perch: Fine Tuning By Brian House, London, KY, March 27, 2006 I have satellite radio in my truck. It was part of the deal when Tommy Baker sold it to me the other day. The good thing about satellite radio is that it lets me pick exactly what I want to hear without any interruption whatsoever. I can listen to Johnny Cash all day long or pick out the Frank Sinatra channel and join the Rat Pack for a while. Selective listening is a great way to separate you from the real mix of what is going on in the world. You never hear the news or even a weather report. If you want to drive blindly into bad weather the XM Radio will let you. President Bush is an XM state of mind these days, hearing what he wants to hear and blundering ahead oblivious to the storm awaiting the nation. Here are quotes from his press conference on March 21, 2006: "I'm also encouraged by the strength of our economy" He believes this even though General Motors is so troubled it is buying out every union worker on its payroll to avoid pension obligations. A robust economy provides for worker retirement rather than sending them packing with a cash payout that cannot pay for a serious regimen of cancer treatment much less a twenty-year retirement." When asked whether he agreed with Iraq's prime minister that Iraq was in a state of civil war with 50 to 60 people dying per day President Bush said, "I do not…. There are other voices coming out of Iraq….I understand how tough it is…I hear it from our troops. I read the reports every night. But I believe the Iraqis…" Yes he said it. No joke. He believes whom he wants to believe and it is the Iraqis he likes, not the prime minister he put in charge. On the danger of the Iranians having nuclear weapons – "…. if the Iranians were to have a nuclear weapon, they could proliferate." Really? I would never have known. On the impact of terrorists- "But we realized on September the 11th, 2001, that killers could destroy innocent life." How stupid. Killers by definition destroy innocent life. It took jets crashing into buildings for George Bush to figure that out? On whether he still felt good about deciding to invade Iraq- "I didn't really regret it. I kind of semi-regretted it." I know that is a real comfort to the families of the 2,316 U.S. troops who have died in Iraq as of March 20, 2006. During the President's press conference, which he called so he could tell the American people what was on his mind, he said not one word about Osama Bin Laden and precious little about the war in Afghanistan. I suppose that war is not on his XM channel. Had he been listening he would have heard that the government he has installed there is preparing to execute Abdul Rahman a 41-year-old man who converted from Islam to Christianity. Islamic law requires a convert to be executed and the moderate clerics Bush installed after the invasion are refusing to back down from this. The U.S. has 23,000 troops in Afghanistan. Germany has 2,700. Canada has 2,300 there and Italy has 1,775. All are Christian nations fighting for a country whose leaders will kill a fellow Christian for being a Christian. This is a madness even the Bush administration cannot spin into a positive. This is a president out of touch and ill-equipped to deal with the issues of his time. During his news conference President Bush admitted the war would not end during his presidency. In other words, all of these years after he landed on the aircraft carrier and "declared victory" the legacy of his presidency will be leaving our boys overseas in an unpopular quagmire of a foreign war. This is not new. A generation ago another Texan led us down the same road with his cowboy view of the world. Then it was Democrat Lyndon Johnson but the result was the same. Dead American troops in a war that had no justifiable basis in fact. Bush might have had a better perspective had he been in Viet Nam fighting rather than partying in Alabama. We can only hope that at some point we will have a president who will turn off his satellite radio and tune in to the real world and bring some intelligent leadership to this country.