Saturday, April 25, 2009

April Fool 2009

I had to go to the bank today but I couldn’t afford the fare to Washington.

This is all South Dakota’s fault.

Wall Street, Main Street, Mean Street. Did somebody switch the signs?

Toys Are Us

Since Wall Street feeds almost directly into Market Street circumstances have changed the two into Wal-Mart Street. Get your bib.

McDonald’s

You want to know what’s wrong with the economy? Rich people are skinny and poor people are fat. It just can’t work that way.

Which would you rather lose, your job or your mind? Are you losing your mind over losing your job? Or, have you already lost your job because the fear of losing it made you lose your mind? Does your job, even secure, make you lose your mind? Do you mind your job? Do you need a mind for your job? Was that burger with fries?

First Financial

Everywhere you go you see FF loans, FF bank, FF investments. You never see Last Financial anything because that’s you.

SAG

While the economy continues to sag the Screen Actor’s Guild, terrified that the studios might shoot another film in Hollywood, is demanding to be paid every time a fourteen year old whacks off to Netflix. Obviously, they are following the Detroit model that works so well for retired autoworkers. California leading the way again.

Rite Aid

The quickest way for the country to have affordable health care is to attack Canada and lose. As the Palestinians of North America we would be eligible for affordable prescriptions and could bitch about Ontario instead of Washington for a change.

Don Arrup
Satire1

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Ghosts Of Wealthy Families Riot Over Estate Tax

Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas and ten other democratic senators joined republican ranks voting to slash the so called “Death Tax” or estate tax that affects over one percent of population. “The children of multimillionaires are already suffering unspeakable deprivations as their grossly overcompensated jobs disappear here at home and their tax havens abroad open their books,” said Sen. Lincoln. “My Ouija board is rattling off the table with messages from deceased contributors demanding action.”

The current estate tax of forty five percent on the amount that exceeds 3.5 million for individuals and 7 million for couples might be cut to thirty five percent on the inheritance that exceeds 5 and 10 million. “Most of these children already had to endure growing up in affluence. Now they’re being asked to get by on just a couple of million bucks of unearned income.” Lincoln continued. “Family farms like Consolidated Foods and Mom and Pop stores like Wal-Mart might have to break up in order to pay the tax. Concerns that provide good jobs to their top management while only slightly exploiting their workers.”

Other democratic senators admitted to being haunted by the ghosts of their state’s wealthiest families. “I’ve got ghosts from my state waking me at night saying that inflation in Purgatory is eating up their life’s savings and even the prices in Hell have gone up,” said Senator X, another defection for the Democrats. “ In Hell, everyday is April 15th.”

Happy Tax Day

Don Arrup
Satire1

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Obama Promises To End Suffering Of Super Rich

President Obama in a press conference today stated that the United States would not stand by while both the country and the world’s super rich continue to suffer in this economic downturn.

“America will not stand by as zillionaires are reduced to billionaires before our very eyes. America will not watch hard working families who through sweat and sacrifice endured birth in order to make their dreams come true be reduced to almost imaginable wealth. Not only here in our country but around the world.”

“The American people are a generous and compassionate people and understand that the magnificent bounty provided us through this abundant land bestows on us an obligation to secure the massive fortunes of not only the super rich of our country but the super rich of the world as well. For one thing, few countries have the combined wealth to match their super rich citizens. Someone is going to have to pick up the slack and that someone is the American taxpayer who for generations has been the world’s guarantor of obscene legacies and amassments.”

“While we speak, the Rothschilds face foreclosure on their summer country and may soon be forced to abandon it to its native inhabitants if we do not act soon. The gross domestic product of France no where near approaches the loss the family faces if we do not step up to the plate and bail out these fabled folk. America does not forget that it was the Rothchilds who provided the credit line America needed when it and the world faced its darkest hours in the Second World War. The fact that the family also financed the Third Reich throughout its rise to power and conquest is beside the point. Hitler was never given the favorable rates America enjoyed and that was the difference that saved the world.”

“Tonight, as Americans gather in their boxes underneath their bridges sleepless with worry that the Rothchilds, Rockefellers and Hapsburgs may be facing deprivation I assure that we will identify any working American who has two nickels to rub together and that I will get one of those nickels to the Rothchilds and other needy families like them.”

Got any change?

Don Arrup
Satire1

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Ralf Kramden, One Of Us

Another Lost Episode and Decade of The Honeymooners

(Ralf Kramden enters his Brooklyn apartment. His wife Alice is ready to put out supper.)

Ralf
Hi Honey. Dinner sure smells great but before we eat there’s something I want to run past you.

Alice
More important than your supper? Well, lets hear it, Ralf.

Ralf
Alice, I’ve been thinking about this all day ever since I talked to McGinty down at the depot. We’ve got to buy this apartment.

Alice
Buy it? Ralf we struggle to make rent some months.

Ralf
Alice, the only reason we have trouble paying rent is because we pay rent. We’re just throwing money down the drain. We could be owners, Alice. There are only two kinds of people in the world, renters and owners. I’ve been a renter all my life. I want to be an owner.

Alice
We’d be the owners of a mortgage, Ralf. This place wouldn’t be ours for twenty or thirty years.

Ralf
That’s the beauty of it, Alice. This place will pay for itself. By the time we sign the papers and make a few payments this place will already be worth more than we paid for it. All we have to do is refinance and pay the original mortgage off with our profit.

Alice
What if the real estate market goes down, Ralf? Did you ever think about that?

Ralf
Real Estate doesn’t go down, Alice. Maybe a couple of times for a year or two in the past but there’s seven billion people in the world now and they all need a roof over their head. God isn’t making any more land and Global Warming is shaving off what little we had to begin with. I’m telling you real estate is going up. Pow, zoom, right to the Moon.

Alice
Just like the Internet was going to make millionaires out of everyone who invested in it ten years ago?

Ralf
This is totally different, Alice. I was right about the Internet. It’s bigger than ever. We just didn’t make any money on it, that’s all.

Alice
We lost money on it. Half of our lifesavings to be exact. And that’s only because I refused to let you invest my half.

Ralf
This is totally different, Alice. Big as it is, the Internet is still just air. I’m talking about this apartment. You’re not going to tell me this isn’t real.

Alice
The apartment is real, Ralf. No argument there. Its real estate that isn’t real. They’re asking for a quarter of a million dollars for this place.

Ralf
That includes the bathroom.

Alice
And we’re going to have to pay a maintenance fee every month almost as high as the rent we pay now along with the mortgage payments. Ralf, nobody in his right mind would loan us the money and where would we get the down payment?

Ralf
We’re already approved.

Alice
What do you mean we’re already approved?

Ralf
I called a couple of the mortgage lenders who have advertisements on the bus, spoke to each of them for a couple of minutes and they all approved.

Alice
Did you tell them how much you make?

Ralf
They didn’t ask. They just looked up our credit score and approved. Alice, we can sign the papers tomorrow and in a couple of weeks this place is ours.

Alice
Ralf, unless we have the money to buy this place outright signing papers won’t mean we own this place. It will mean this place owns us.

Ralf
Real estate has to keep going up, Alice. The bus drivers union has most our pension money tied up in it.

Alice
So we’re already overexposed with the real estate market and you want to gambol our personal savings on it too?

Ralf
Double or nothing, it’s the only way to get ahead. You don’t get anywhere in this life without taking a chance.

Alice
How about slowly adding to our saving account at the bank?

Ralf
Nobody’s more up to their neck in real estate than the banks. If it goes down the banks go down. But even then my union would just force the company to raise the fares. That’s the American way. You take a chance and if you screw up you find a way to make the other guy pay.

Don Arrup
Satire1

*This satire marks the first anniversary of Satire1 on the web. Thank you readers.