THE PRESIDENT: Good afternoon. It's a real pleasure to be back here in Florida at the Hemlock Farms Discount Eldercare Facility. You know, since my first visit here back in May, my Communications Office staff has looked far and wide trying to find another low-income geriatric joint which is so telegenically white, so docile, and so conveniently close to my brother Jeb's beachside mansion. But as you've probably all guessed by now, they struck out, and so here I am again, breathing in the sour stench of your Depends, and listening to the wispy, rhythmic gurgling of your emphysema-ravaged lungs. And so once again, I want to thank you all for taking fifteen minutes away from today's Golden Girls marathon on Lifetime to be wheeled in here against your will and have me talk at you.

As many of you may have heard, last week Senate Democrats took shameful glee in killing a Republican Medicare bill which would have helped you people pay for almost 5% of those fistsful of pills you choke down every day. And afterwards, they had the gall to rub it in your faces. Senators Edward Kennedy and Tom Daschle, speaking to liberal Jewish reporters on the steps of the capitol, remarked "Look, Democrats know that any old person who isn't warped out of their mind by dementia is going to vote Republican anyway, so why should we do anything to preserve their lives? As far as we're concerned, the winged specter of death can swoop down and dance the Jason Vorhees with every last blue-hair in this country."

Well, the Democrats may not care about appearing to want to preserve the well-being of America's old people, but I sure do. And that's why today, despite the fact that Medicare reform is completely dead until after the mid-term elections, I wanted to make a solemn pledge to this country's Ensure drinkers: before my first term is up, my administration will secure full Medicare coverage for preventative embalming and cremation.

(Silence.)

Thank you. This plan is the first necessary step to provide immediate closure to superfluous seniors without destabilizing my geriatric political base. It is the first step, but it is not a substitute for privatizing Medicare completely, thereby fulfilling my obligations to the insurance companies who contribute so generously and so selflessly to my 2004 re-election fund. And that's why my administration has developed, with considerable assistance from the good folks at AETNA, a comprehensive blueprint for expanding free preventative embalming and cremation for all decrepit persons such as yourself. I trust that each of you can and will benefit from this - another point of light reflected brightly from my disco ball of domestic policy known popularly as "Compassionate Conservatism."

(Silence.)

Thank you all for appearing to listen - and God Bless America.

OK, somebody tell the head nurse she can give them back their hearing aids now.

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