President Bush has asked the networks to give him fifteen minutes of prime-time air on Thursday night to give a farewell address to the nation. The networks were non-committal at first, but the odds are in favor them granting the request. As a warning, this will likely delay the start of all your favorite Thursday shows.

Great, now among his other failings Bush has to preempt the first Smallville since November. The series was finally getting interesting again with the departure of Lana as a steady character and now the President is delaying the very special Legion of Super Heroes episode written by Geoff Johns. How dare he!

Seriously, he is the President and even with only days left in his administration, the office does deserve respect. I admit some curiosity about what he'll say on Thursday. Perhaps he'll declare martial law or start a coup d'état. Or perhaps it's all a big promotional scheme by Will Ferrell.

Amid controversy and the threat of certain world leaders boycotting the upcoming Beijing Olympics, the word came out yesterday that President George W. Bush would attend the opening ceremonies. According to the Hollywood Reporter, this is good news for NBC, and the companies that have bought advertising for the Games.

While I can see how a boycott based on human rights abuses in China and Tibet would be a serious problem for the network -- and it still may lose viewers who choose to individually tune out rather than give positive sanction to China's misdeeds by watching -- I don't see how NBC can think a Bush appearance will bolster ratings.

Here is an unimpeachable truth: anyone who wants to be president probably shouldn't be president. If you spend $400,000,000 for a $400,000 a year job, you're either stupid or corrupt or (most likely) both. In an ideal world, a presidential hopeful accepts the nomination with reluctance, George Washington style.

It's with this in mind that I'd like to start a movement to draft the one man who I think can turn this country around. The one man who has the credibility and the credentials to unite a society fractured by war and recession. The one man who connects with young and old; gay and straight; really, really gay and butchy gay. That's right, I'd like to nominate Simon Cowell for president.

When you think you know something so well, you don't realize that there might be some surprises waiting for you. Sure, surprises may be a bad thing, like when the love of your life tells you that they have been with someone else, but in terms of television surprises that is thankfully not the case, we have been privy to some great surprises this past weekend.

First off, you've heard. Jeopardy had its first three way tie in its decades long history. Alex Trebek's job must be as predictable as a bowl of cornflakes, so it's understandable and nice to hear him yelp in a cry of genuine surprise when the quick math was done and all the contestants would return to Jeopardy next week. In a mostly unexciting show, this was a very exciting moment for millions of Jeopardy fans everywhere.

In other surprising news...

Of course, the big news of the episode was the previous night's presidential address about Bush's new plans to move forward in Iraq. Such a historical speech was undermined by the fact that none of the networks managed to catch the first few words of the plan. I liked the audio that The Daily Show's crew managed to get... "Good evening. I am standing in front of books. Please don't let them eat me." Anyway, the gist of the speech was: "Sorry about the mess in Iraq. We're gonna send more troops."

Luton First recently surveyed a couple thousand ten year-olds to find out what they considered to be the best things in the world. God took the tenth spot, surprisingly enough. However, He topped the list of most famous people. I don't think I've ever heard God called "the Paris Hilton of deities" before... That's... one way to put it, I guess.

"More is Hell": Bush has been getting snippy. Jeez. That's no way to behave if you want to send more men to Iraq. And the president suddenly doesn't seem so quick to answer that we're winning in Iraq, anymore. And what's up with Tony Snow's sudden interest in grammar? Gerunds... Hm.

Ahhh. Live television. There's nothing quite like it, is there? Tonight, CNN cut to President Bush's speech on immigration a tad bit early. The president was actually rehearsing as CNN suddenly interrupted an anchor's pre-speech analysis by cutting to the President delivering a line from his speech. Then, the President stopped and looked away.

It turns out, it wasn't really CNN's fault. NBC was the pool network on the speech and it was supposed to keep up a graphic on the screen until a countdown showed up and then the President gave his speech. But, some NBC producer had the graphic taken down early so the network feed showed the President speaking. I would guess that the folks in the control booth at CNN crapped their pants when they saw the President appear on the network feed early, delivering his speech. Of course, all the conspiracy theorists will argue that CNN was trying to make the President look stupid.

The video of CNN's goof is after the jump (or catch it here later, if YouTube is busy):