Category Archives: Satire

Humor, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Satire

My Fund-Raising Letter From The Donald

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I just got one:

Good day and compliments. This letter will definitely come to you as a yuuuge surprise, but I implore you to take the time to go through it carefully as the decision you make will go off a long way to determine the future and continued existence of the federal republic of America. First I must solicit your confidence in this transaction. This is by virtue of its nature as being utterly confidential and top secret.

Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Donald Trump, I plan to become head of state and commander in chief of the armed forces of the America. I need your help in freeing up funds at NBC and Univision which are presently trapped in that country. In order to commence this business I solicit your assistance to enable me to RECEIVE the said trapped funds.

My ordeal started immediately after I was attacked by a blond bimbo, obviously on the rag, on Fox News, and the subsequent criticism by all of the stupid people in the media. The present press and Republican clown candidates are determined to portray all the good work of my businesses in a bad light and have gone as far as revealing my past terrific liberal positions. As I am writing this letter to you, my daughter Ivanka is undergoing questioning with The View. All these measures taken by these stupid losers is just to gain recognition.

I and the entire members of my family have been held incommunicado since I was disinvited to the Red State conference, only able to talk to George Stephanopolous and others by telephone, hence I seek your indulgence to assist us in securing these funds we need to move forward in our campaign. We are not allowed to see or discuss with anybody. Few occasions I have tried traveling abroad through alternative means all failed.

It is in view of this I have mandated Bernie Madoff, who has been assisting the family to run around on so many issues to act on behalf of the family concerning the substance of this letter. He has the full power of attorney to execute this transaction with you.

NBC and Univision have a yuuuge amount of money that they owe me for breach of contract ($80,000,000,000.00) specially preserved and well packed in trunk boxes of which only I know about. It is packed in such a way to forestall just anybody having access to it. It is this sum that I seek your assistance to get out of there as soon as possible before the they find out about it and confiscate it just like they want to do to all my assets.

Please note that this transaction is 100% safe and we hope THAT THE FUNDS CAN ARRIVE YOUR ACCOUNT in latest ten (10) banking days from the date of receipt of the following information by TEL/FAX: 1-800-DONALDT: A SUITABLE NAME AND BANK ACCOUNT INTO WHICH THE FUNDS CAN BE PAID. PLEASE ENDEAVOR TO RESPOND BY TELEPHONE OR FAX. All you have to do is give me your bank account number for the transfer.

I implore you to please give consideration to my predicament and candidate in need.

My heart goes out.

[Monday-morning update]

Apparently Poe’s Law is strong with this one. Would it have helped if I’d started it off with “Dear Beloved in our Lord, and Praise be unto Allah”?

Humor, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Satire, Social Commentary, Weird

The Fake Black NAACP Leader

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Somehow, this story reminds me of my old satire about Trent Lott:

In a prelude to his upcoming appearance on BET, he appeared at a sparsely-attended press conference outside his local office, resplendent in a colorful daishiki, with his formerly shellacked hair frizzing freely in a three-foot diameter “afro-style” hairdo.

“As you all know, Bill Clinton was the first black president. Well, I’m the first black Senate Majority Leader. It’s truly a proud day for the Republican Party and the African-American community.”

“I know that many of you will be surprised to learn that I was ‘passing’ all of these years. It was a deep, dark family secret.”

“My great-great grandmother was a house nigra on a plantation outside of Biloxi. My great-grandfather was a mullatto, my grandmother was a quadroon, and my mother was an octaroon, which makes me a hexidecaroon. As all of you from hereabouts know, just a touch of one hair of the tarbrush means that I can never be truly white.”

I guess life imitates art, or something.

[Update a while later]

A lot more links: “She’s trans-black. Don’t shame her.”

Humor, Media Criticism, Philosophy, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Satire, Space, Technology and Society

Star Trek Heresy

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Matthew Continetti does not love Spock.

Last week, I tweeted that I was going to write a post about how Obama is not Spock like, but to the degrees that he is, I agree that it’s Spock’s most annoying traits.

[Afternoon update]

The gauntlet has been thrown:

Continetti just glosses over the sacrifice at the Battle of the Mutara Nebula, I assume because he knows it demolishes his case. What about the personal loss at the betrayal of Valeris? What about the hurtful but necessary decision — directly enforced by Spock — to let Edith Keeler die? How I hated him for that! But look, who among us wouldn’t let Hitler dominate the world in exchange for a lifetime of sweet sweet loving from young Joan Collins? Anyone? No one? Just me?

Heh.

Mathematics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Satire, Science And Society

The New Consensus Study

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…on evolution:

Our search resulted in 487,629 papers that mentioned “evolution” or “natural selection” in the abstract. However 451,412 of those could not definitively be placed into one of our seven position-defining categories*, no matter how hard we tried with our group of 20 reviewers. [The consensus view among us is that these reviewers are completely independent and objective; their common participation at our web site devoted to presenting pro-selection arguments, but nothing to the contrary, is just not relevant in this case.**]

Of the remaining 36,217 papers, 35,167 (97.1%) supported the consensus position that over half of the observed evolution over the twentieth century is due to natural selection. The fact that only 126 of these 35,167 papers were actually focused on critically evaluating the topic at hand, i.e. the different possible mechanistic explanations of observed evolutionary change and/or speciation (e.g. random drift, founder and other stochastic events, mutation rate variation, instantaneous genetic barriers, etc), is an irrelevant point, a complete red herring. We can reasonably assume that in at least the majority of 50% of the time, none of these 35,167 authors would indicate agreement with a position that they themselves had not carefully investigated, without having more than half of a predominantly pretty good reason for so doing***. It’s just not really half as difficult as people make it out to be when you boil it down. As we have now done. For you.

In conclusion, there is very clearly a very strong consensus as to the influence of natural selection on evolution during the twentieth century and this consensus has been increasing as the evidence increases. It is important that policy makers realize this and take action. Please pick this up and disseminate it widely so everybody knows about it; everyone else is, so you will be part of the consensus effort if you do. Thank you.

Heh.