Oct. 3, 2008

HOLLYWOOD--God bless America, and how’s everybody?

• President Bush urged the Senate to pass the bailout bill Wednesday. It ballooned from three pages to100 pages to 500 pages. To introduce a bill with that much pork in it during the Jewish holidays must be against some kind of law.

• President Bush’s low credibility rating and Congress’s low approval rating got the blame for the failure to get a Wall Street bailout bill passed Tuesday. So far all they’ve done is talk. Boone Pickens convinced them that wind can solve this crisis.

• Leonardo da Vinci was reported by art historians Tuesday to have placed eel on the table in his Last Supper painting, not bread or lamb as thought. It’s big news. If everything that slithers is holy, the dress code for Congress should be white robes.

• Congress met with bankers in a basement conference room of the Capitol Tuesday to discuss adding looser accounting rules to the bailout bill. That’s the perfect place to meet with bankers. You can’t kill yourself jumping out of a basement window.

• The U.S. Senate offered an amended version of the bailout bill Tuesday. It would double the depositor insurance for banks that invested recklessly because they knew the deposits were insured. Whenever you see an active land mine, plant flowers on it.

• New York cops said Monday a street robber seized $400,000 cash from an armored car guard and got away. It’ll be easy to catch him. Police are staking out every mattress store watching for someone who’s buying an extra-deep king.

• NBC’s Tina Fey doubled Saturday Night Live’s ratings with her Sarah Palin guest impersonations. The governor of Alaska is the biggest gift to comedians since Bill Clinton. It proves that not only is there a God but he does stand-up on Monday nights.

• Sarah Palin and her husband Todd were reported Thursday to have over $1 million in assets and an annual income into six figures. They need every penny of it. She’s got a wedding to pay for and you know how expensive shotgun shells are.

• The Phoenix spacecraft reported seeing falling snow on Mars for the first time Tuesday. It had to be done. You can tell Baby Boomers are in charge of the budget when NASA has to say they found signs of cocaine on Mars in order to get any funding.

• Laura Bush and her daughter Jenna just co-authored a new children’s book called Read All About It. It’s about a boy who doesn’t like to read books. He learns a bitter lesson when he grows up and refuses to read the Daily Intelligence Briefings.

• NBC News sent a reporter to Hanoi to track down John McCain’s prison guards and check on his torture claims. No one could believe NBC doubted he was tortured. NBC News is so deep in the tank for Barack Obama it violates the ban on waterboarding.

• Bill Clinton campaigned for Barack Obama in Orlando on Wednesday. He said Barack Obama has better answers on the economy than John McCain does. He sounded more sincere when he was telling state workers in Arkansas they make his knees knock.

• Former Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev teamed up with a Moscow tycoon to form the Democratic Party of Russia. The timing is no accident. The old communist didn’t think he could coexist with capitalism until he saw the bailout bill in Washington D.C.

Argus Hamilton is the host comedian at The Comedy Store in Hollywood. He can be reached for speaking engagements by e-mail at [email protected].