Green Bean Almandine, The Mouth That Roared, The Grand Poobah of All That is Sandy, the Main Man In Charge of the Iranian Sound Machine, has declared that all the differences between ultra-pure and Oh, So Desirable radical Islam and the decadent west can be resolved if President George Bush agrees to an international debate with him.

I can see this now; a rerun of the old Monty Python routine. "Oh you wanted an argument. That's down the hall. This is abuse!"

First of all, just because a guy runs his mouth twenty-four seven doesn't mean that what comes out of it is intelligible. Second, this is just another attention getting device by a guy who obviously didn't get enough loving from his father.

For George Bush to take a bit of this seriously would be a mistake of interstellar proportions because the Iranian leadership just isn't of the same quality or ability level as, well, anyone else, anywhere else. This is a classic case of a guy with major insecurities trying to convince his captive constituency that he really is a big shot, a player on the international stage.

Talk about an Alligator Mouth overloading a Hummingbird rear end.

But look at how he displays his credentials and capabilities. "Hey Bush, c'mon man, I'll take you on. I'll take you on anytime, anywhere. Yeah, man, you don't scare me. I'll take you on with half my mouth duct-taped shut. C'mon, Bush! Hey, Bush, over here, look at me when I talk to you."

Then he turns his attention to England and warns the Brits that they better not overstep their bounds.

Oh, really?

Well, Beano Old Man, since you brought up Merry Olde England, I have a challenge for you.

How about you do a few warm-up rounds with Tony Blair, winner gets a dinner with Bush? Heh, heh.

Yes, I mean THE Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, the host/focal point of the Prime Minister's Questions, the best show on C-Span, wherein he takes on all comers from the House of Commons once a week when they are in session in London.

Have you ever seen that show? Have you ever seen a man who is more in control of the issues, the concepts, the theater? Wow.

Blair takes whatever questions are thrown at him, ranging from serious challenges to his policies and beliefs to left field questions from fringe elements. He handles them all with the same level of seriousness, the same level of knowledge and an incredible ability to change gears from subject to subject on an instant's notice.

In what has to be the best example of Democracy on Parade, the members of the house cut Blair absolutely no slack, with jeers, catcalls and boos a time-honored element that lend an air of combativeness to the proceedings. Blair takes them all on and never gets ruffled.

So, Green Bean, what do you say? You want a debate? You think you have what it takes to prevail on the international scene? Debate isn't such a big deal here in the US. Even though we sit through them every four years at election time, hardly anyone ever changes their vote based on the outcome.

But in England. Now that is the Land of Debates.

A few ground rules. You go to London. It's only right since you brought this up and I'm sure the Prime Minister would not want to be kidnapped and forced to convert to Islam at gunpoint. Let's face, it, you couldn't prevent forced conversions on a wholesale scale if your minions were so inclined.

And Blair gets a live feed to Al-Jazeera. No time delay, no cutting away every time you get your head handed to you. Oh, and an interpreter to interpret your interpreter just so the Prime Minister isn't told one thing when you have actually said something else. That should just about do it. What do you say?

In my opinion, Tony Blair will verbally fillet you. In the words of a knife-fighting expert I once knew in the Marines, he'll "cut you wide, deep and continuous. He'll slice you so sharp and so fine you won't know you've been carved up until you go home and get yelled at by your Mama for dragging your sorry, bleeding rear end around the kitchen."

The ball is in your court Bean. And if by some unexplained realignment of the cosmos, you take on Tony Blair and win, we'll let you come to the US and meet some of the people you've been threatening to bury in a nuclear holocaust.

You should be familiar with their type. After all, you and the World Terrorist Media constantly refer to President Bush as a "Cowboy." We'll introduce you to real cowboys, and I'm sure we can arrange for them to introduce you to some of their time-honored customs, and even show you some of their time-honored history.

Ever hear of Tombstone?

HURRICANE KATRINA VS. TYPHOON LAOGAI

The World Terrorists Media's (WTM) subsidiary, the American Terrorist Media (ATM) is taking a rare, self-generated opportunity this week to bash the living daylights out of President Bush, this time over the often replayed but never duplicated federal response to Hurricane Katrina that hit the Gulf Coast exactly one year ago this week.

The point of this unprecedented coverage of a one-year event is to remind voters everywhere that Bush is responsible for global warming because he refused to sign the Kyoto Treaty, which would have immediately ended centuries of fossil fuel pollution and thus instantly reversed global warming trends, regardless of the fact that India and China with a billion people each didn't sign it either.

Since he didn't sign on to Kyoto, using as a pretense its unfairness to American industry and the resultant loss of millions of American jobs, the earth kept warming up and the hurricanes got worse, culminating in Katrina, the mother of all hurricanes and by God, it would not have happened if it weren't for George Bush!

But tucked away in all the coverage of the recovery efforts in the Gulf region are a couple of notable contradictions to the ATM Bash Bush coverage.

Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour has given interviews showing just what can happen in a state hit by the largest natural disaster ever in the country's history, when you organize, get working, use the federal assistance available and rebuild. Mississippi is well on the way to being rebuilt.

Louisiana, by contrast, and especially New Orleans, still looks like a moonscape. One of the most glaring disparities in the cleanup efforts concerns the removal of abandoned cars left in New Orleans. As reported on Fox News, an auto crushing company from Texas offered to pay New Orleans $100 per vehicle, an estimated $5 million net to the city.

They agreed to bring in portable crushers, work 6 days per week and complete the job in 15 weeks. But Mayor Nagin refused saying the city would do the job. Now we learn it will cost the city $23 million to complete and the vehicles are still there.

Instead of netting $5 million, doing it Mayor Nagin's way costs the city $23 million for a net cost of $28,000,000. Remind me please, this is George Bush's fault ... how?

Now let's leap across the globe to China, where this has been an especially devastating year due to at least 8 tropical storms hitting the mainland so far, ranging from tropical storms to major typhoons. Thousands of residents have died, flooding has devastated wide areas, and more than a million people have been forced to flee their homes.

Two weeks ago, villagers in south China accused the government of failing to give adequate warning before Typhoon Saomai slammed into the region. Saomai, which hit China as a Category 4 storm with 135 mile per hour winds, was a near mirror image of Katrina.

Villagers said more than a thousand people died but that officials were covering up the actual death toll. News reports quoted villagers saying they didn't get sufficient warning about the approach of the storm, especially fishermen who don't watch TV while working on their boats.

Local officials are frequently accused of trying to conceal the extent of industrial accidents, natural disasters and other calamities, fearing both official punishment and public anger.

Hong Kong's South China Morning Post newspaper said the mayor of Fuding was confronted by angry villagers in Shacheng when he visited. "His car was surrounded by angry victims' families ... and was booed, pushed and pelted with stones," the newspaper said.

Then there was ... silence. Nothing more was said. The WTM did not descend on the region, the Chinese government was not called on the carpet, the Chinese administration was not blamed for a slow or insufficient response, and no public officials were pilloried for causing the storm in the first place.

Why, you might ask? I have a theory.

Laogai. The word, based on an acronym for the phrase "reform through labor,"
is the Chinese name for concentration camps that dot the Chinese landscape where "dissidents" are sent for criticizing the government. Many inhabitants of the Laogai are Christians who are confined at hard labor for daring to spread the word of Jesus Christ and his message of peace and brotherly love. Can't have that in a communist country now can we?

What do you suppose happened to the WTM after Typhoon Saomai? Where were the network anchors and others of the anointed elite, painting horrendous pictures of looting, physical crime, starving children, old folks without medicine? Where oh, where did they go?

Well, I guess they went back to Louisiana and New Orleans where you can criticize the government and blame the president for all kinds of natural disasters without fear of retribution.

And what about the villagers who protested, stoned the government and complained about inefficiency? Where did they end up? Do they have housing? Food? Medical care? Well, maybe. You see my theory is that the population of China's laogai went up in the last couple of weeks by exactly the number of villagers who protested government inefficiency.

Otherwise, the WTM would still be there with intrepid and dauntless reporters exposing all kinds of government inefficiency. Right?

Or are they just waiting for the Atlantic Hurricane season to deliver Hurricane Laogai right into their laps?