President Bush launched a preemptive strike at Surivor last night, knocking the king of reality television back an hour. Oh yeah, and he also held a press conference. The president focused on rising petroleum prices and his proposal to allow Americans to partially opt out of the government-run retirement program.

His solution to rising energy costs relied on four points: 1. Conserve. 2. Come up with "innovative and environmentally sensitive ways" to use energy resources. 3. Develop new energy sources (How about getting a hold of the stuff that powers the Tardis or the Millenium Falcon?). 4. Help energy consumers overseas. All of this was lame in a real Clintonian sense. In other words, it was a bunch of empty rhetoric designed to solve poll problems rather than real problems. There are two concrete proposals the president could have made that would have helped alleviate the gasoline-cost crisis. First, he could have proposed a federal gas-tax cut. State and federal taxes constitute about one-fourth of what you pay at the pump. A cut would have a major impact on gas costs, and by implication, inflation. Second, he could have more aggressively pushed for opening up the Alaskan tundra, and other domestic sites, to oil drilling. He failed to do this in his prepared remarks. If we continue to rely so heavily on Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, and other hostile regimes for oil, they will continue to exploit our dependence by gouging us. Better to diversify our supply by increasing our self-supply.

His proposal on Social Security, on the other hand, is worth pursuing--even if the polls say otherwise. America is the land of the free, not the land of the forced. Why should the government be allowed to compel me to participate in a retirement program I, and no other responsible person, would ever choose to participate in minus their coercion? This proposal should have preceded the president's many big-government schemes enacted in the first term. But better late than never. He deserves the support of conservatives on this one. It doesn't get us there, but it gets us closer.

So he said:

1. Quit drivin' so much.
2. Start dreamin' (gives you something to do on the bus)
3. Maybe we should think about trying to decide if maybe we want to encourage thinking about other kinds of fuel in next 25 years.
4. Help the Chinese to want less oil (also known as moving to Fantasy Land).

On the plus side, I will opt-the-f-out as soon as humanly possible. Grandma and Grandpa Hippie can bite me.

Also, the link to the MF is actually a link to a person's page that details how he built a PC inside an old Kenner Falcon toy. Totally cool.

He did propose "nuculer" power.

Speaking of the Millenium Falcon, everyone checked out the sweet trailers at starwars.com? "Revenge of the Sith" arrives in three weeks.

The President saved the most compelling argument for his Social Security plan until the very end of the press conference - too late for those veiwing on NBC, Fox, or CBS, as they saw fit to cut away in mid-sentence to return to the already-in-progress-opiate-of-the-masses-regulalry-scheduled programming.

When grandpa dies, under the current system all the social security $$ that he was due disappears, presumably to restock Ted Kennedy's bar.

Under the President's proposal, the money due grandpa (which will be my name someday, I pray)all his money can go on to his heirs.

Now that's what I call a worthwhile episode of "Survivor"!

Hey, whatever happened to "Open Thread" Friday?

You'd think that because this is DF's blog, he can do anything he wants!!

Hey, good news!!! A special re-run of Survivor will be aired as the original was cut short due to the Presidents speech.

Good thing we have our priorities straight in this country!!