Tag: Satire

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This Day in History

For Preventing the Poor People in Britain from being a burden to Their Country, and For Making Them Beneficial to The Public

Un hommage á Jonathan Swift

Whenever I travel the country and listen to the newscasts and read the papers, it has become evident that the poor are a significant burden upon the country. Instead of working, women go begging at food banks to provide for their children.  Others sit on the streets with their offspring begging money from their betters. Clearly these lazy creatures assume that we as a society have some responsibility to ensure the existence of their offspring. Moreover, since they have to care for their children, they obviously have no time to actually work to provide for their existence. Their lack of property and their inability to ensure their and their offspring’s survival is threatening the very nature of our society.  

I must first offer my apologies to Peter Townshend.  Pete, sorry, but I think that you would probably approve of this.  Please know that I mean no disrespect to the original song.  This is just political satire using one of your standards.

Normally I do not write highly political pieces, that function being done far better by others here, but tonight is an exception.  I hope that this gets my feelings about how the Republicans have taken what should be a foregone conclusion and twisted it to try to make their point, whatever that point is.  I have tried to be witty and not mean with it, but when talking ’bout Republicans sometimes it is difficult to keep from getting mean.

This is a bit of a departure in that I almost always write about things that have occurred in the past.  Tonight is is about something that is scheduled to happen in future.  I do not know about all of your tastes, but a cruise does not ring my bell as the ideal vacation for several reasons.

First, I like to make my own decisions.  That is why road trips are good.  You can go wherever you want, for good or ill, but the choice is yours.  The driver(s) control the destination.  On a cruise, that is not possible unless disaster strikes.

Second, with a self directed trip, one can choose his or her companions.  That is not possible on a cruise.  One never knows who will be in the next cabin.

Third, if one is driving, one can just stop and reconsider what is going on, and if one is not enjoying the trip, can turn around and just go home.  That is not possible on a sea cruise, unless one becomes violently ill (and that happens more often that the corporations that arrange them would like people to know).

With no more ado, here is my nightmare of a cruise from Hell.  The thing is just this:  I did not make it up from whole cloth.  It is being advertised on the Fox “News” Channel!  Here we go!

This is a rare piece, juxtaposed betwixt my regular pieces.  OK, now I got your attention!  I am sorry for the subterfuge.  However, this is actually a more important piece that the title indicates.  Unless you fall into one of the ten categories, there is NO reason to vote for a Republican.

I usually do not use satire in my pieces, except for small snippets, but this idea sort of  screams hyperbole.  I hope that this makes people think.  If it does, I succeeded.  If not, I failed.  You tell me in the comments.

It is not often that I have such a ripe opportunity to combine TeeVee, politics, the FOX “News” Network, the horribly biased Governor of Wisconsin, and my own parody songwriting skills into a post.  As a matter of fact, it has never happened before.  Please allow me to explain.

I usually do not do purely political pieces here, there, or anywhere, because so many other are much more talented than I am at it.  But I do keep an eye out for popular culture, and this opportunity just hit me in the face.  I do not have to explain how Governor Scott Walker, a Tea Party wingnut, has probably disqualified himself for holding a position of trust, but I will!  

In the kitchen, oftentimes we desire to thicken a sauce or a broth without significantly changing its flavor.  There are several ways to do this, and the physicochemical principles behind them are quite different in many cases.  One way of thickening things is just to reduce them (i.e., boil them down), but that often involves chemical changes that alter flavor.

Other ways of thickening things including adding small amounts of rather bland ingredients that cause the sauce or other material to become thicker without extreme heating, or to create a complex emulsion that thickens materials due to physical rather than chemical changes.  We shall examine some of both this evening.

I have been threatening to write this for some time and finally got around to it.  The hard core conservative pundits have no compunction about calling their political opponents different names (“Rahm, Rahmbo, Dead Fish”, for example) and sometime the progressive pundits do the same.

However, the more progressive pundits have better manners than the conservative ones.  Since I have no manners at all, I have no compunction for making up names.  Ed Schultz does quite a few, like Slant Head and The Drugster, but I find them sort of weak.  Olbermann did better with Lonesome Rhodes, but that still does not have as much punch as I would like.

To make this more fun, I shall list some names and give sort of riddle as a hint, and then ask readers to guess the identity of the person in a comment.  If you have better ones, or if I leave out a favorite target of yours, please comment as well.

Mitch McConnell on Sunday’s “Meet the Press’: “The President says he’s a Christian” I take him at his word”.

Stephen Colbert, last night’s “The Colbert Report”: O.K. Just like when Mitch McConnell says he’s not a Human-Turtle Hybrid, I take him at his word. And it’s not easy. I have a strong desire to feed this man lettuce and raw hamburger, but I take him at his word.

h/t tigerwater @ Dependable Renegade

OK, I admit that I got you to read this because of its title, but it is not too far from the plot of the old, classic horror flick.  In a nutshell, everyone turns against each other, except for the Living Dead that were united because they had no brain tissue of their own.

The classic line of the film was uttered by the Sheriff, who said, after being asked a question about the motives of the Living Dead, deadpan,, “They’re all messed up.  They’re dead.”

Thus is the performance of the entire cast of the unfortunate episode about the Shirley Sherrod episode, with everyone being brain dead except for her (who acted with dignity), the vile Breitbart, and the FOX “News” Channel.  Please read more.  This is more opinion than fact, but the film puts it in a sort of bizarre perspective.