From Holden:

The Social Security Demolition Derby arrived in Parkersburg, West Virginia, today but it did not stay long. Today’s Baboon-a-palooza event lasted a mere 32 minutes, where all the previous events averaged 90 minutes. This is only the 17th such event the Chimpster has held in the 37 days since he promised to visit 60 cities in 60 days, and it appears as though he’s growing bored with the endeavor.

There were no local sycophants invited to share the stage with Dear Leader in Parkersburg, which might explain why the event was stunted. Let’s see what he did say.

Bush continues to deny that Treasury Bonds are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States of America.

I have just come from the Bureau of Public Debt. I want to thank Van Zeck, Keith Rake, and Susan Chapman. Susan was the tour guide there at the Bureau of Public Debt. I went there because I’m trying to make a point about the Social Security trust. You see, a lot of people in America think there’s a trust, in this sense — that we take your money through payroll taxes and then we hold it for you, and then when you retire, we give it back to you. But that’s not the way it works.

There is no “trust fund,” just IOUs that I saw firsthand, that future generations will pay — will pay for either in higher taxes, or reduced benefits, or cuts to other critical government programs.

The office here in Parkersburg stores those IOUs. They’re stacked in a filing cabinet. Imagine — the retirement security for future generations is sitting in a filing cabinet.

He focused criticism on St. Ronnie today.

You know, in 1983, the issue came to focus, and President Reagan and Speaker Foley, as well as other Republicans and Democrats, set aside their partisan differences and said, look, we have an obligation to act on behalf of the country. And they came together and put what they thought was a 75-year fix to the problem. The problem is that the 75-year fix wasn’t a 75-year fix, because here we are, 22 years later, talking about it again. See, that’s a misnomer.

What was — I like the spirit of them coming together, trying to work it out. But they didn’t permanently solve the problem. See, the job of the President is to fix problems, not pass them on to future Presidents and future Congresses.

Here’s a claim that will require further scrutiny: have stocks averaged a 1000% percent rate of return since 1983? Could this possibly be true?

Since 1983, the last time Congress tried to reform stock investments — tried to reform, the stock investments on average have returned more than a thousand percent.

UPDATE: The Dow first hit 1100 in February of 1983, and broke 1200 for the first time in April (see this). A 1000% average rate of return is a bit of an exaggeration when you consider that for the past four years the Dow has struggled to stay above 10000, but it’s not off by too much.

UPDATE II: a trusted economist tells me that this claim is “gibberish”, as Bush is citing total return while claiming it is an average.

Finally, a little incoherence that even the White House’s transcribers could not comprehend.

I like the idea of encouraging an ownership society, where a mother or father, as a result of hard work, can set aside money, if he or she chooses, in a personal account that he or she can leave to whomever she wants, or ever [sic] he wants.