"The Slowdown, Difficult Period, Rough Patch, Difficult Headwind, Tough Time Update": Despite the general air of panic throughout the news media and, like, the nation, President Bush has been working hard to convince everyone that we are not -- NOT -- in a recession. He has a lot of other words for it. On Tuesday, President Bush, wearing his favorite cash-colored tie, addressed Congress on this issue, suggesting they make tax cuts permanent to solve the non-problem. He also seemed to be kind of hung up on some sort of economic magic wand, or rather, the fact that he doesn't have one.

Senior Oil, Natural Gas & Kerosene Analyst John Oliver, aka Featherwick the Insuperable, addressed this magic wand issue. This segment was strange, but tremendously funny. This may or may not be because I love it any time a correspondent gets a little over-excited with glitter and confetti or mentions something related to Harry Potter. Anyway, Featherwick taught us that it's ridiculous to think that President Bush needs a magic wand to fix the economy, because he actually needs a very specific wand to do the job. In fact, he needs The Wand.



"Hillary Clinton: The Scranton Summers, Age 3": In this very brief report, Correspondent Jason Jones quenched our thirst for knowledge about Hillary Clinton's toddler years. After interviewing Clinton's former neighbor and resident super-nice old lady and childhood church friend, Jason Jones seemed rather pleased with his non-information. This was all right, but it came after a tough segment to top. I did quite enjoy how the former neighbor sounded absolutely horrified by the notion of toddlers in pantsuits.



The night's guest was Howard Dean, Chairman of the Democratic National Committee. This interview covered a lot of important topics, from the future of the Democrats to superdelegates to electability. However, I am not sure how well Howard Dean held up in this interview. He made a lot of points, but not all the best ones. At least he had the balls to joke around about his crazy "Hyeaaah!" from the 2004 election. Also, Jon seemed genuinely frustrated with the Democrats' fightin' spirit and strangely unaware of the way superdelegates work. I mean, even I know about that system. Hasn't he been watching The Colbert Report?



Moment of Zen: President Bush just won't let go of that magic wand. Did something happen to him at a Disneyland in his childhood?