(Washington DC) Lehman Brothers is bankrupt, AIG has been swallowed up by the Federal government and Washington Mutual was sold to JP Morgan Chase. The American economy is in poor shape. And the American people are ducking for cover. Lucky for them, President George W. Bush is providing that cover.

This morning the President made an unprecedented speech from the floor of Congress. “People of America, people of the planet Earth, everything is okay. I’ve taken care of the economy. I did what a chief decider has to do. I looked the economy square in the eye and triple-dog dared it to fail…Everyone knows that the triple-dog dare is pretty ungoingungainstable. So that’s that.”

Using a phrase made famous in a movie, in this case A CHRISTMAS STORY, is risky. Other movies phrases: make my day, the force is with us and I drink your milkshake have failed when used against the economy. So can a triple-dog dare work?

“Oh you bet, the economy has got as good a chance of being triple-dog dared, as I do of making sweet sweet love to Angelina Jolie,” said Senate Majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV). “If President Bush can triple-dog dare the economy, then I can triple-dog dare Angelina to meet me at my condo at 10 PM tonight, with lube.”

“Okay, Senator Reid is being a sarcastic a-hole,” said Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL). “Angelina, with lube, is meeting me at my condo tonight….Also the President’s plan will work. A triple-dog dare is more than ungoingungainstable. It’s like the New England Patriots, unbeatable…I mean before they lost in the Super Bowl and to Miami.”

Senator Shelby is not completely wrong. Angelina Joie, with lube, is meeting him at his condo. (They are having a torrid affair.) And the triple-dog dare can work. In fact, it has worked for several past U.S. Presidents: FDR triple-dog dared Hitler into invade Russia during the winter, LBJ triple-dog dared black people to vote and President Reagan triple-dog dared the Soviet Union to overspend on defense and collapse.

“That’s exactly why I invented the triple-dog dare in the first place,” said 95 year-old inventor Malcolm Hendricks. “It’s for the President of the United States to use as a last resort and only once…I just wish Dubya would have used it against Bin Laden, to triple dog dare him to a bicycle death race or something, and I wish I would have copyrighted the phrase…Just the royalties from A CHRISTMAS STORY alone would have made my Golden Years a little more golden…Hey, since the economy’s going to turn around, can you spot me a twenty?”