<“In Florida, Bush was reading to children in a classroom at 9:05 a.m. when his chief of staff, Andrew Card, whispered into his ear. The president briefly turned somber before he resumed reading. He addressed the tragedy about a half-hour later.”

Although the conspiracy nuts would have you interpret this as meaning Bush was reading the goat story for thirty minutes--a lie--this sentence means exactly what it says: There was a gap of thirty minutes between his notification on the second impact--and the realization that it was an attack, not an accident--before his speech to the networks on the subject.

Actual film of the class can be located here. I see the President continuing the reading lesson for all of two or three minutes before folding the book as his assistant prepares to take him out. Long download, but I do this stuff so you don't have to.

There is nothing odd about there being thirty minutes between his discovery that we were under attack and his making a formal prepared speech at the school to the networks about it. Maybe he should have just stood up immediately and made an impromptu speech based on minimal knowledge to the stunned kids and parents. Maybe he should have knocked over chairs running from the room. What do you THINK he should have done? Anyway, does it occur to your conspiracy-addled brain that a President who knew about the attack beforehand, or even set it up, would have acted more in the way you would expect, instead of oddly?

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you, Jordan. Well, Jordan, you're not going to believe what state I was in when I heard about the terrorist attack. I was in Florida. And my Chief of Staff, Andy Card -- actually, I was in a classroom talking about a reading program that works. I was sitting outside the classroom waiting to go in, and I saw an airplane hit the tower -- the TV was obviously on. And I used to fly, myself, and I said, well, there's one terrible pilot. I said, it must have been a horrible accident.

Well, considering that as you say there was no film of the first airplane hitting the tower until much later, it is obvious that Bush could NOT have seen the airplane hit the tower on a TV outside the classroom. Right? So, why did he say that? Why would he say that even if he was in on a conspiracy?

I don't suppose he could have really meant to say "THAT an airplane hit the tower?" Nah. Bush has such a solid reputation for crystalline, precise use of language and lack of awkward misspeaking that this couldn't POSSIBLY have been the case. This is especially true considering the obvious precise grammar and sentence structure of the rest of his statement.

Cripes.

Is that about it? Can we go back to the real world now? Save it for the cheesebrains that absorb this stuff uncritically. I'm sure there's lots of sites out there full of them.