Hurry-Cane Health Care Bill

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) declared the third attempt to repeal and replace Obamacare dead after a five day attempt to resuscitate a warmed over clone of the last bill. Senators Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) spent an entire lunch break ten days ago carefully crafting an alternative health insurance proposal claiming that “not a millionaire will lose their Medicare” on. 

Libertarian Republican Rand Paul of Kentucky called the bill another “fake repeal” while John McCain (R-AZ) threatened to check back into the Hanoi Hilton for his brain cancer treatment if this bill passed.

Just after Senator David “Chick” Perdue (R-GA) complained that the Republican caucus has had nine months “enough time to bake a baby” to repeal Obamacare Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) pointed out the bill was crafted in less time then it took to conceive a child. 

“Bill Cassidy and the Slam Graham Kid should have just played another two holes of golf rather than waste time and paper on this bill,” Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) said. “You can’t write major legislation that affects the health of the entire nation by what comes to a premature ejaculation of a two handed circle jerk.“

Don Arrup

Satire1 

Trump Denies Entry to Jose and Maria

In an interview at the United Nations General Assembly yesterday, President Trump announced that hurricanes Jose and Maria were undocumented atmospherics and would not be allowed to cross United States borders.

Though none of the bills submitted in Congress extend a path of citizenship to hurricanes or typhoons, the president, uncharacteristically subtle, implied that those with northern European names (Harvey & Irma) were welcome while those with Hispanic handles were not. 

Representatives of the three quarters of a million New Yorkers of Puerto Rican descent protested  pointing out that Hurricane Maria was named after the most popular song from West Side Story. Trump said the song was about a Puerto Rican girl and Puerto Rico is where the hurricane is headed. 

“Houston will be protected in the future as we are going to extend the wall to protect us not only from invasion from Mexico but also from the Gulf of Mexico,” the president said. “This should also protect most of Florida. My first and most sacred duty as president is to protect the swing states in an election year.”

Meteorologists from across the globe concurred that hurricanes have never been recorded breaching the Great Wall of Kansas and that flood insurance costs in Arizona and New Mexico should come down. 

“The American people elected me because the American people want to suffer American disasters. Enough of these half assed, half spent hand me down hurricanes that a bunch of little tourist traps and tax shelters pass on to us after all the real drama is over.”

“There will be no more page two destruction, after the commercial coverage and unworthy of pundit pontification national “events” while these so called countries that are too small to even make a decent golf course out of grab all the attention and sympathy.”

Don Arrup

Satire1

iPhools

(Scene: The bridge of a 23rd century starship just after a huge pop bang boom!)

Captain Kirk

My god, what was that Spock?

First Officer Spock

We just went through some type of antimatter hurricane in space. We are presently following the heels of a giant hurricane on your home planet.

Kirk

I could use a weekend back home.

Spock

The computer indicates that it must have also been a time warp. The year is 10 iP.

Kirk

Ten years after the first iPhone?

Spock

Apparently. I’m picking up images of humans with earplugs visually submersed in the tiny screens they hold before them and follow.

Kirk

It must be the late teens of the twenty first century when the computer companies gave up on robots and decided to enslave their customers instead.

Spock

I’ve read that it took less than a decade. 

Kirk

The amazing thing is how blatant Apple was. They literally called the master bot iPhone. The small i was the customer who was surrendering himself to the capitalized super gadget. 

Spock

Yes, it was marketed as a useful tool when in reality it was turning the customers into useful tools. 

Kirk

App and plan buyers. Apple had competition but with people lining up for hours to sacrifice themselves there were more than enough suckers to go around.

Spock 

Smartphones and idiot buyers.

Kirk

In no time the foolphones were replacing human interaction.

Spock

Every one of the meager cognitive abilities humans had evolved were being replaced by apps.

Kirk

My grandmother told me her grandmother couldn’t add or subtract, had any idea where she was without GPS. She didn’t even have any idea what to feel or where emotions might come from outside of emojis. 

Spock

Perhaps it was senility.

Kirk

This is when she was twenty six and at the top of her class at Harvard Business School.

Spock

Didn’t a tycoon run the United States with Morse code in that period?

Kirk

I think Morse code was in the war century. Tweets. He ran the free world with Tweets.

Spock

Like Tweety Bird?

Kirk

Yes, the symbol was a bird. He must have been Tweety Bird or Twitter Bird. Blond fellow. Big pants.

Spock

Within a generation the eyesight of children was closer to a mole’s than that of their parents. The four fingers on each hand began to web and thumbs developed an extra joint. The memory area of the brain shrank from a baseball to a peanut. 

Kirk

People constantly documented their activities and tried to seduce their phones with naughty or humorous photographs of themselves to prove to their masters that they were worthy of them. 

Spock

From the images I’m collecting presently it appears that we are at the lowest point for the humans of Earth. Sensors are picking up what appear to be electronic mating calls. Apparently humans couldn’t even mate without their phones. 

Kirk

That was a long time developing and for many phone procreation was as far as they progressed.

Spock

Frankly Captain, I am surprised your species survived.

Kirk

The citizens of every country handed over their entire lives, relationships, finances, education, sanity and sovereignty over to Internet computers.

Spock

How did they ever free themselves from their phony fetish?

Kirk

Something newer and shinier came along.

Don Arrup

Satire1 

Yuma Owe Me An Explanation

Dear Bookbag,

After four visits in the first two days of my holiday weekend from Supervisory Special Agent Heffernan and Field Agent Anistossio and the six hour long “interview” at the FBI office below Chambers Street on Labor Day when I could have been fingering my flute to commercial soaked reruns of The Beverly Hillbillies I am a little ticked. 

Every time you and Midge go to a “pool party” North Korea ups their atomic pop somewhere underground in the Pacific where all pool parties take place. I know it only made the Times this last weekend but the pop off really was the week before as if you didn’t know. 

The Bureau wanted to know what an itinerant stage scribe and curriculum marm were doing at an outdoor North Korean reception in Baltimore drinking H bomb shots and Thermonuclear wine while President Trump’s and Xi Jing Ping’s pants were dropping faster than real estate prices in Seoul. I told them you two go wherever the wine is free.

Then they started asking why you two were no longer walking in the park formerly known as Robert E. Lee. I told them some hip shit hammer toe stories which they didn’t buy for a second so I went off into some Lady in the Lake Roland riff about a former Army sergeant penpalling the hotsy tot from his hometown high school and a mink pillbox virgin champagne pop what- 

did you know John Ashbery died? Later. Who doesn’t love dead poets? 

Supervisory Special Agent Heffernan wanted to know why you two were stirring up civil war in Korea just like you did in the United States before you started dating. 

I told them I didn’t know. Was it the sushi connection? Were you tired of people cooking meat on a table? And what they do to cabbage. Or was it that fat guy who dances to the music that sounds like a cat trapped in the back of an old television? Before flat screens.

They asked about your relationship and I told the agents that maybe Midge thought she was marrying Paladin from Have Gun Will Travel but she ended up with The Rebel Johnny Yuma. Not bad really. Most women of her shoe size thought they were marrying Paul Newman or Robert Redford and ended up with Mr. Ed.

They wanted to know if you still had that journal you kept of your adventures in Postbellum Texas and if you were still a Reconstruction Beatnik in your Confederate cap and buckskin shotgun low slung Remington Beals. Then they asked if you tore down Robert E. 

I told them I didn’t know. I did tell them that it wouldn’t surprise me. With Texas Ted and his grand old posse cruising back to DC, 10 gallon hats in hand and muddy boots to beg for what they voted against after Sandy nothing surprises me.

Heffernan and Anistossio eventually invited me to beat it and so I did. You probably are more Paladin today anyway. You dress really good for a straight guy. Not that I’d know. I surrendered to whatever doesn’t grab my ass every time I sit down. But I don’t miss Paladin like I miss Johnny Yuma.

Confederate ghosts spook some folks and comfort others. What statues stand for every community and generation will have to fight over themselves. There’s been a civil war over our Civil War fought left and right, North and South, in the light and shadows ever since Appomattox and sometimes it’s called civil rights. I guess it’s like our revolution. Never over. Never should be.

You ought to don your grey sky again and pony on down to Florida with a fuck it bucket. Bail out all the good folks who had their ass kicked by Irma. For all our politics and bullshit grandma and babies don’t have a color or accent when you’re pulling them out of the jaws of disaster. And whether the bronze boys are heroes or villains or North Koreans they won’t complain.

Don Arrup

Satire1