"President Bush announced that the federal deficit is actually $296 billion less than originally forecast. The president credits low unemployment, high job growth, and the fact that he did the math himself."
-- Conan O'Brien
"Any online gamblers here? Well, Congress is looking in shutting that down. There's going to be a massive congressional investigation of online gambling and they're going to shut it down. And when they get done with that, they're going to look into this North Korean thing."
-- David Letterman
"Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was in Afghanistan today where he promised to defeat the Taliban. Didn't we do that already? He's also sworn we will soon capture Saddam Hussein."
-- Jimmy Kimmel
"President Bush told People magazine this week that he's working on a solution for global warming. He says it will be ready in less than six months. It's called winter."
-- Jay Leno
"Of the over 100,000 wildfires that happen in the U.S. each year, not a single one would get started without the fire triangle: oxygen, heat and fuel. Fire needs all three to exist. It's like the three branches of our government: Legislative, Judicial and Executive. The fewer there are, the safer we are."
-- Stephen Colbert
-- Jon Stewart
And this segment would not be complete without Bill's NYT Bestseller List of the Future ...
1. THE BIBLE, by God with The Holy Spirit. (United States Government Printing Office, free; mandatory). The Word of God, quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. With a new foreword by Jim Belushi.2. A MILLION AND ONE LITTLE PIECES, by James Frey. (Random House, $43.95.) A memoir by the Viceroy of Iraq about his hardscrabble childhood that made him tough enough to quell the civil war in Iraq and divide it into a million and one self-governing "cantons."
3. THE DARK LITTLE BOY AND THE IPOD, by Thomas L. Friedman. (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, $47.95.) A columnist for the New York Times explains the connection between solving world conflict and a third-world boy by owning an iPod Shuffle.
6. HARRY POTTER AND THE CROSS OF NAZARETH, by J.K. Rowling (Scholastic, Inc., $34.95.) A young wizard realizes sorcery is evil, accepts Jesus as his personal Lord and Savior, and marries a young woman named Hermione, who wisely chose to abstain from sexual intercourse until marriage.
9. MY TOP STORY---AND MY BOTTOM STORY, by James D. Guckert (Random House, $39.95.) A memoir by Jeff Gannon, the 20-year veteran anchor of the CBS Evening News.
13. HAMMER TIME!, by Tom DeLay (Putnam, $48.95.) A former House majority leader of the Republican party recounts his time in prison, his conversion to Islam, and his later success on the PGA senior tour.
... and the explanation for Senator Ted Stevens of how the Internet really works:
The Internets is a series of gerbils, one gerbil for each "user." When you "send" a "message" (or, in Stevens-speak, "an internet"), the gerbil takes it down shorthand and scurries through a series of tubes to its destination. The gerbil uploads the message to the inbox (short for "Internets Box") and then presses the velvet-covered doorbell button. The receiver---say, Senator Stevens---may then safely peruse the porn ad. (Tomorrow we'll explain "SpamGuard"-- we don't want to overwhelm him.)Sometimes gerbils will stop to have wild gangbang gerbil sex along the way, which can result in delayed internet delivery. Twice a year the telecom companies clean the tubes by flushing them with water and a mild detergent, which also results in slight delays. But mostly the Internets operate smoothly, allowing for an uninterrupted flow of bogus information from the likes of Senator Stevens and Mike McCurry on net neutrality.
