old Satire Shmatire

Poor Jennifer Wilbanks, officially dubbed the "Runaway Bride" by the national media. First of all I'm really get she's alive and ok. So the 600 guests and 14 bridesmaids were a bit too much ay? Well if she thought she felt pressure from the whole marriage thing, the wall to wall media coverage ought to be a real treat!

In a statement as much about the apathetic political appetite of the American public as much as the power of network television, the White House scurried a bit to ensure live TV coverage of the Presidential news conference held last night. It turns out that this time period is also the middle of "sweeps" that absurd period of time when the networks pull out all the stops to hype the rating systems. This statistical anomaly results because the Nielsen rating system uses only a few weeks each year in which to calculate the rankings of the networks. It's the time of the year when we get to see memorable shows such as "Michael Jackson the Untold Dermitological Skin Story" or "John Ashcroft's all Singing all Dancing Gay Musical Theater".

According to an AP report, three out of four networks were loath to change the starting time of their programming for such stellar performers "Apprentice" and "Survivor", so the White House deftly agreed to modify the starting time. Georgy was uncharacteristically long winded and to his credit took quite a few questions, so when the appointed Donald hour arrived, the network simply cut away and it was on with the show!

It must be time to bring back Michael Powell and get the FCC to crack down on this misbehaver.

What a treat! A genuine prime time hour long news conference, beat still my heart. Well Georgy really put on a show. I have to say that he was in top form and for the first time I can recall didn't look or sound like a fool. He knew what he wanted to say, he had command of the forum and didn't stumble over any Bushims.

As to the substance, that's of course another matter. Let's see where shall we begin. Social Security, that 3rd rail of American politics seems to be burning Georgy. He proposes an alternative to the private savings account which is totally safe, investing in Treasury Bond. Ok but excuse me isn't that what we have right now? He touts that lower income people will be guaranteed the same return that exists with the current system. Everyone else will have some type of cut. Everyone else in this case turns out to be 70% of the population. Moving on to Energy, Georgy's program sounds like some legislation written by a bunch of oil execs. Drill for oil in Alaska, build more nuclear power plants providing government guarantees if there are delays, build refineries on closed military bases, and let the feds decide where to place Liquid Natural Gas ports, not those silly states.

We were supposed to be drinking lots of Iraqi oil by now right?