Category Archives: Satire

NASA’s Latest Ambitious Plans

To send a man where many men (and women) have gone before:

The complex and dangerous three-day mission, dubbed “Chariot I,” is expected to pass through six states and include two brief transfers in Atlanta and Louisville in both directions, at a reported total cost of $360 dollars plus taxes and fees.

“For almost as long as our nation has existed, man has gazed upon a map of the eastern United States and dreamed of traveling to Cleveland, the largest metropolitan area in Ohio,” NASA administrator Charles F. Bolden, Jr. said at a press conference announcing the agency’s first major initiative since the discontinuation of the space shuttle program. “Until now, the immense physical and psychological risks involved in any manned mission had put that dream sadly out of reach.”

They’d never be able to do it that cheaply, unless they use Greyhound. As Clark Lindsey notes:

Of course, this mission cannot be carried out with a commercial bus but only with NASA’s $20B SBS (Senate Bus System). NASA has many studies to confirm this.

Though somehow, we never actually see their results.

Earth Week Carbonator Winner

Iowahawk has crowned the new champion:

I realize this choice is not without controversy, and that some Earth Day Cruisers may be grumbling about the contest being rigged. But before you send those “I wuz robbed” complaint emails, ask yourself this: did you fly a private 747 round trip to Chicago to deliver a 600 word, 20 minute speech touting….

[wait for it]

energy conservation?

It was no contest, really. Our monster trucks never stood a chance.

A Dispatch From Sequesteria

It’s a report chock full of grue:

Some of us from NRO were assigned to a cluster of hovels and lean-tos that has come to be called Ezra’s Alley. Others of us are acres away, on a strip they call Boehner’s Run. Still others are unaccounted for.

There is word of potable water and even some fuel on the other side of the river. But all of the crossings are controlled by the warlords of Alexandria and their confederates. From the tales told of their depravity, you’d rather drown than be taken alive.

Oh, the humanity.

No, Suzi Parker

Sarah Palin is not going to work for Al Jazeera.

Too good to fact check, I guess.

[Update a couple minutes later]

More scoops for Suzi. Heh.

Hopefully, her humiliation is just beginning.

[Update a few minutes later]
#suziparkerscoops

Iowahawk: “There are times when we should cease the cruel humiliation of a fellow human being. This is not one of those times. #suziparkerscoops”

The Full Romney Inaugural Speech

Like Ramesh Ponnuru, I’ve been dumpster diving, and acquired the entire draft of Mitt Romney’s speech for his inauguration (that Ramesh merely excerpted from an earlier one). The governor apparently wrote it despite the fact that he didn’t want to be president very much (thanks a heap, Republican establishment, for delivering unto us yet another outstanding nominee). Reading it in its entirety makes it little easier to understand President Obama’s Gettysburgesque speech on Monday. It does clearly illuminate the character of the monster who gleefully killed that unemployed guy’s wife with cancer, and tried to keep Sandra Fluke off the pill, along with the other women in binders.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Vice President Ryan, Mr. Chief Justice, members of the United States Congress, distinguished guests, and fellow citizens, each time we gather to inaugurate a president, we bear witness to the enduring strength of our Constitution. We affirm the promise of our democracy. We recall that what binds this nation together is not the colors of our skin or the tenets of our faith or the origins of our names. What makes us exceptional, what makes us America is our allegiance to an idea articulated in a declaration made more than two centuries ago. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.

But we also know that these truths are self executing, and that there is no need for the federal government.

Many say that a modern economy requires railroads and highways to speed travel and commerce, schools and colleges to train our workers. Some foolishly believe that a free market only thrives when there are rules to ensure competition and fair play. Many even claim that a great nation must care for the vulnerable and protect its people from life’s worst hazards and misfortune.

Well, that’s all nonsense. Travel and commerce worked just fine in the days of horses and canal boats — our nation sustained great economic growth then. And when you overeducate people, it just raises their expectations. Rules that ensure competition and so-called “fair play” just inhibit trade and development. And what kind of pansy nation have we become that we think we need government, and particularly the federal government, to protect us from misfortune. Grow a pair, people!

Just as I believe that we could have defeated the communists and fascists with muskets and militia, I believe that even if we do need railroads and highways, we don’t need a government to do it. We have learned from the last four years that it is a mistake to rely on each other and to work together. It is my firm belief that one man, by himself, can train the nation’s math and science teachers — and probably, if he really tries, the nation’s English teachers as well. One man, acting alone, can build all the labs and networks and roads we need. When he is not training those teachers. Yeah, I’m talking about the same guy. What we must resolve never to do is work alongside one another.

I’ll go farther and forthrightly state that the notion that every citizen deserves a basic measure of security and dignity is socialistic nonsense. In fact, the key to our country’s success is to have a shrinking few do very well, while the vast majority can barely make it. It toughens them up. Also, children born in the bleakest poverty must learn to accept their fate. That’s just the luck of the draw. The way to reform entitlements is to stop taking care of the generation that built this country. We’ve just got to go cold turkey on that.

And when it comes to freedom, obviously it is reserved for the lucky, and happiness is only for the few. That’s just the way it’s always been, and the way it should be.

I totally reject the overwhelming judgment of science. What do scientists know, anyway? I don’t need science when I have the Book of Mormon.

And even if it’s getting a little warm, and blizzardy and tornadoey, and the planet is on fire, we’ll be OK for a while, and even if not, I repeat, grow a pair, people! Anyway, we have no obligations to posterity — what did posterity ever do for us? We have obligations only to ourselves.

As for technology, I want to cede it to other nations. All it does is generate new products that most people can’t afford anyway.

And I want to come out firmly in favor of perpetual war. It pumps up the economy, and gets all those unemployed people off the streets, so I don’t have to look at them begging when I drive by in my limo. As president, I’m going to invade every country in the world that so much as looks crossways at us.

That’s all I have to say.

So God bless you, and go out and get a job.

Losers.

As Ramesh says, we really dodged a bullet there.

The Romney Inaugural Address

Heh:

We have learned from the last four years that it is a mistake to rely on each other and to work together. It is my firm belief that one man, by himself, can train the nation’s math and science teachers—and probably, if he really tries, the nation’s English teachers as well. One man, acting alone, can build all the labs and networks and roads we need. When he is not training those teachers. Yeah, I’m talking about the same guy. What we must resolve never to do is work alongside one another.

Has there ever been prior president so given to outrageous straw men and refusal to grant good faith to his political opponents?