THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. Please be seated. Today is Memorial Day, the day each year when Americans from sea to shining sea kick off their stanky winter boots, slip on a breezy new mesh wifebeater, and come together over smoldering barbecue grills and frosty 16 ounce cans of domestic brewhaha to celebrate the kickoff of the summer reality TV season.

Of course, Memorial Day is also one in an unfortunately ever-expanding succession of Federal holidays. Used to be, Americans could count on only having to miss work to celebrate the three holidays that matter: Christmas, Columbus Day and Superbowl Sunday. But over the years, Big Government Democrats have successfully mandated more and more bleeding heart so-called holidays that force our patriotic corporations to not only give lazy employees the day off, but to pay their sorry unionized asses for doing nothing but lounging around at home with their kids and spouses.

(Boos.)

Don't I know it! I mean, I'm all for "family values" and whatnot, just so long they don't get in the way of important stuff like 70-hour work weeks and mandatory Saturday productivity seminars. And that there is just the problem with this here Memorial Day, which not only deprives millions of Americans of the privilege of triple-overtime, but even has the gall to move around on the calendar every year so people lose their labor momentum over a 3-day weekend. And for what? So a bunch of wrinkled old ex-enlisted military grunts can pin on their little trinket hero medals, go visit some dumb arty monuments, and tell the rest of us we should get down on our knees and grovel just because once upon a time, a bunch of pizza-faced 18 year-olds they used to know took their last suppers at the all-you-can-eat Bullet & Shrapnel Lead Buffet?

Sorry, but I think I speak for most modern day war hawks when I say I have a hard time relating to that. I mean, I personally don't know anyone who ever died in a war - not even the two I started. Sure, just under 55,000 fellas my age may have bit the big one over in Vietnasia, but I never knew any of them. One or two might have been at Yale with me, but they sure as hell weren't connected enough to be in DEKE or S&B. So tell me again why we need to flush a whole day's worth of Gross National Product down the toilet just to sit around and think like a liberal about a bunch of sorry suckers whose daddies weren't important enough to get them out of combat duty?

Now don't get me wrong here. Me and Pickles love a good three-day weekend. In fact, we love them almost as much as all those thirty-day weekends we take in Crawford. I just don't think we need to bother mixing up a perfectly good keg party opportunity with all this so-called "Memorial" hubbub.

(Applause.)

Thank you. Feel free to correct me if I'm out of line here, but weren't all these dead soldiers they want us blubbering over just doing their jobs? Whether you get drafted, or join the service because you're too poor to pay for college on your own, once you're in, you're in. You do what they tell you. And if that includes getting your working-class or colored noggin blown apart like a balloon full of Jell-O, well then so be it. You many not get to be in a ticker tape parade or enjoy those VA benefits I'm working hard to eliminate, but whatever's left of you will get a free ride home in a comfy douglas fir sleeper box, and maybe even have its name carved in a big ugly slab of marble. Sure, it's no sweetheart National Guard gig like I went AWOL from, but then what is?

This year, some people insist that Memorial Day is more significant because of the very recent nature of the deaths of all those dozens of innocent American GI Joes I sent looking for non-existent WMD's when all I really wanted was to take out that dirty little sand nigger Saddam bin Laden. To those people I say, so long as you're capable of casting a ballot, I'll suppress my smirking contempt for your sentimentality just long enough to recite the tasty, emotionally pornographic sound-bytes that are at this moment scrolling down my TelePrompTer.

And so today, despite the shameless hypocrisy of the gesture, I'm appearing here before those of you who are so lowly as to have personally known or been related to a dead and/or missing soldier. Also on this day, let it be known that my family, while still deludedly convinced of its guiltlessness, is nevertheless silently grateful for your continued unquestioning cooperation and unswerving faith in the fiction that Gulf War forces died in the ambiguously irrelevant name of "defending freedom." For three generations now, the Bush dynasty has found profit in the carcasses of the disenfranchised who assume the discipline and duty of military life. And time after time, we have proven that the force of our vacuous moralizing is mightier than the drum-beating of any would-be truth-tellers.

And to the dead themselves I say this: your sacrifice was great, but not in vain. International energy conglomerates and World Trade robber barons alike can attribute their unimpeded march towards thousand-year dominance in part to your puny extinguishment.

(Applause.)

May God Bless America.

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