Prospectus for Ponzify, from McSweeny’s

Forget Facebook. Forget Groupon. Forget everything you know about Silicon Valley. Because Ponzify isn’t like other tech companies. We don’t promise results. We show them to you, on a piece of paper, that has your name and a monetary figure that increases every month.

Our business model is simple: Attract users, advertisers, positive press and a corporate buyer; then, pull the cord on that golden parachute and have cable news book you as an expert on startups from time to time. There may be a book deal in there, too. We haven’t decided.

Users love our product because it’s something free. Venture Capitalists love it because they can imagine themselves talking about it at T.E.D. or on Charlie Rose. Trust us: Once you invest in Ponzify, you’ll have a difficult time investing your money anywhere else ever again…

They came to hang a portrait of George W. Bush in the White House.

Obama was mostly nice, but couldn’t help himself to this:

“The months before I took the oath of office were a chaotic time,” Obama said, after explaining that the president’s job is isolating, and that he and Bush have a connection since so few have held the job. “We knew our economy was in trouble, our fellow Americans were in pain, but we wouldn’t know until later just how breathtaking the financial crisis had been.”

Obama did note the Bush tried to get it right. “Still, over those 2 1/2 months, in the midst of that crisis, President Bush, his cabinet, his staff, many of you who are here today, went out of your ways–George, you went out of your way–to make sure that the transition to a new administration was a seamless as possible. President Bush understood that rescuing our economy was not just a Democratic or  Republican issue, it was an American priority. I’ll always be grateful for that.”

He went on to say…

“But damn, Dubya, you really drove that car into a ditch. A bitch of a ditch! My choom gang, we got wrecked, but never that wrecked. But it’s all good, all good.

I got us out of Iraq, tidied up that mess…huh, what’s that? You negotiated the treaty that ended the war? Not according to Biden. Well anyway, nice painting.”

Bush was gracious nontheless. On the way out, Obama was heard whispering to Bush.

“You waterboarded. I smite them from the sky. Pussy.”

And don’t forget, you owe Uncle Sam a lotta dough.

I don’t ordinarily traffic in humor based on someone’s looks.

But Debbie is ugly in every way, especially her voice and her ugly politics.

…after news broke that Obama has “hacked” the White House website to promote himself in the bios of past presidents.

The speed of satire today is astonishing.

Plenty more of President Obama Zelig Obama here.

And speaking of Microsoft, there’s this nugget, from an editorial in the WSJ:

“When I hear people talk about the free enterprise system and entrepreneurship, I try to remind them, you know, all of us made that investment in Darpa [the Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency] that helped to get the Internet started,” said Mr. Obama. “So there’s no Facebook, there’s no Microsoft, there’s no Google if we hadn’t made this common investment in our future.”

Microsoft—a product of the Internet? That may surprise Bill Gates and Paul Allen, who founded the software company in 1975. The company didn’t introduce its first Internet browser for another 20 years, and in the meantime it became the dominant computer software company long before the Internet became economically important. The irony of Mr. Obama’s error is that for much of Microsoft’s history the Internet was seen as a threat to its desktop dominance.

There’s no doubt that Darpa has done many good things, but the point Mr. Obama misses is that Darpa is engaged in funding research. This is a proper role for government, especially on national defense. But Darpa does not attempt to commercialize products. Facebook and Google, like Apple and Microsoft, were founded by private investors.

The President likes to elide that distinction between government funding for basic research and commercialization, which is how his Administration lost so much money on stinkers like Solyndra.

Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters To Realize How Empty Their Lives Are

His site has plenty of funny stuff.

Obama’s website invited scorn with it’s The Life of Julia — see the original here.

It’s vision of a nanny state taking care of Julia through life was an invitation to satire.

IowaHawk is great, as usual.

Waznmentobe has another.

The Heritage Foundation has its version here.

“Yid with a Lid” has yet another, beginning with Julia surviving a botched abortion.

The Men in Julia’s Life by Helen Smith.

More to come, for sure.

Bob Gale:

…I know the president is a big basketball fan, so let’s look at that. NBA players make millions of dollars, but in order to excel in the game, you basically have to be tall. Really tall. Like 6′ 6″ tall. Is it fair that some people are born so tall they have this incredible advantage? I mean, seriously, it’s not my fault that I’m only 5’9,” is it? Sure, God says I’m not supposed to covet my neighbor’s height, and I wouldn’t do that, except that a guy who’s 6’10″ can make jillions of dollars playing basketball, and I can’t. Is that fair? Is it fair to actually have an institution that discriminates against short people, completely shutting them out of a potential career? Of course not. Now, certainly we could make basketball illegal, and that would solve the problem immediately, but the president likes basketball so he’s not going to do that. So I suggest a plan whereby NBA players aren’t allowed to make more than $50k a year. Then shorter folks wouldn’t feel discriminated against in having a high-paying job market denied to us. Surely, that would be fair.

The president went to Harvard. That’s a very elite school. A degree from Harvard opens a lot of doors that aren’t available to people who haven’t gone there. Is that fair? I don’t think so. A lot of perfectly intelligent people would like to go there, but either they can’t afford it, or they can’t get in, so they become very disappointed when they’re rejected. That doesn’t sound fair to me. I say we should  abolish Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford and all the elite universities. After all, if no one could go there, then no one would ever be disappointed that they couldn’t go there. Sure, it’d be sad to close  those revered institutions, but I’m sure their employees would understand that losing their jobs was a noble sacrifice to ensure a fair society. Then again, with unemployment skyrocketing, maybe that’s not a good idea. Maybe a better solution would be to simply rename every college and university in America “Harvard.” Then everyone could go there!  Only in America, right? How’s that for fairness?

The other night, my wife and I were watching a rerun of the classic film Gilda. As Rita Hayworth did her sultry number “Put the Blame on Mame,” my wife said, “It should be illegal for any woman to be that beautiful.”  (She’s also said that about Elizabeth Taylor, Angelina Jolie, and most of the women in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition.) Now, as a red-blooded American male, I’m not in favor of banning Rita Hayworth movies or the SI Swimsuit Edition, but my wife is right: it is unfair that some women can be that much more beautiful than others. I think most women would agree. Let’s face it, unequal beauty has been a serious women’s issue since the days of Snow White. So as much as I hate to suggest it, the president can do something about this unfairness: create National Disfigurement Clinics. When a girl turns 17, she’ll be given a beauty rating by a government board. If she’s too beautiful, she’ll be sent to a clinic where she’ll have a limb amputated, or have acid thrown in her face, or receive 3rd degree burns, just to equalize things for the girls who aren’t as beautiful. What could be more fair?

I would add: the USA is 223 years old and we’ve only had 44 presidents. How fair is that?

Obama should let more people have a turn by not running for reelection.

Silly season is upon us, and for the silliest so far, we have the dog stories. The Dem-Cong started this one, as James Taranto explained:

(click the image for more)

First, some background. Last week Byron York of the Washington Examiner reported that “some Obama staffers are reportedly obsessing over a nearly 30-year-old story about [Mitt] Romney’s dog”:

In 1983, Romney took his family on vacation and, faced with a packed station wagon, put his Irish setter Seamus in a travel kennel strapped to the roof of the car. Romney constructed a special windshield in an effort to make the dog more comfortable, but Seamus ended up relieving himself on the roof, which reportedly caused much consternation among the Romney boys. Ever since the story got out–it was reported by the Boston Globe in 2007, during Romney’s first run for president–Romney opponents have used it in semiserious and sometimes fully serious ways to portray him as insensitive.

“I have heard, in focus groups, the dog story totally tanks Mitt Romney’s approval rating,” Chris Hayes said on his MSNBC show. The Washington Post reported last month that the Seamus story “is ballooning into a narrative of epic proportions”:

Late-night host David Letterman has been giving the dog near-nightly shout-outs. There are parody Web videos, “Dogs Aren’t Luggage” T-shirts and Facebook groups. (“Dogs Against Romney,” which protested outside last month’s Westminster dog show, has more than 38,000 Facebook fans.) The New Yorker featured a cartoon, with Rick Santorum riding in Romney’s rooftop dog carrier, on its cover last week. In the five years since the story was revealed, New York Times columnist Gail Collins has mentioned Seamus in at least 50 columns.

In January Obama adviser David Axelrod–not to be confused with Axelrod, the Flying A Dog–blew a dog whistle. He tweeted a photo of the president with Bo, the White House canine, in what appears to be the back seat of a limousine. Axelrod’s comment: “How loving owners transport their dogs.”

Silly can be fun.

Jim Treacher recalled this man-eats-dog passage from one of Obama’s autobiographies:

“With Lolo [Obama's stepfather], I learned how to eat small green chill peppers raw with dinner (plenty of rice), and, away from the dinner table, I was introduced to dog meat (tough), snake meat (tougher), and roasted grasshopper (crunchy). Like many Indonesians, Lolo followed a brand of Islam that could make room for the remnants of more ancient animist and Hindu faiths. He explained that a man took on the powers of whatever he ate: One day soon, he promised, he would bring home a piece of tiger meat for us to share.”

Which has wrought some funny stuff. Go to ObamaDogRecipes.org for a collection of crowd-sourced satire.

Some favorites:

• Obama is now referring to Romney putting the dog on the roof as Meals on Wheels.
• “Pardon me, would you have any Greyhound Poupon?”
• Kibbles and Bitch
• Pugs in a Blanket

My favorite so far, by James Taranto:

“One time Barack Obama went to an Indian restaurant and ordered the lassi. Was he ever disappointed when the waiter brought him a yogurt drink!”

Income inequality is a blight upon America.

It must be stamped out.

Do whatever it takes. More taxes. Salary caps. Seizure of bank accounts. You name it.

Because how can we as a nation abide the fact that the median income in Mississippi is $36,646 and the median income in Maryland is $69,272?

It’s just so wrong.

From Maksim

Click image to see it full size.

Sandra Fluke need not shell out $1000 a year to remain barren.

For $500 she can get a new iPad, then get her guy pals to use it on their laps for a little while. The heat from tablet will simmer their little swimmers.

No pill? No rubbers? No problem — there’s an app for that.

Apple’s latest hot product is too hot for some customers. A comment thread with over 150 posts and over 14,000 views in the company’s iPad support forum suggests that the new iPad runs hotter than expected.

Many users commenting on the issue are careful to characterize the temperature of their new iPad as “warm” rather than “hot,” and say the temperature won’t affect their use or enjoyment of the device.

Some however insist the device is too hot to use comfortably. “The iPad 3 wasn’t hot, but warm enough to be uncomfortable,” said one person posting to Apple’s forum. “That plus the extra weight made it not worth the new display to me, as awesome as it is.”

Allysia Finley in the WSJ

Dear President Obama,

Can you believe the nerve of employers? Many of them still seem to think that they should be allowed to determine the benefits they offer. I guess they haven’t read your 2,000-page health law. It’s the government’s job now.

That’s a good thing, too. Employers for too long have been able to restrict our access to essential health services like contraception by making us pay some of the bill. Really, it’s amazing that we aren’t all dead. Now, thanks to you, we’ll enjoy free and universal access to preventative care just like workers do in Cuba. Even so, there are still many essential benefits that the government must mandate to make the U.S. the freest country in the world.

• Fitness club memberships. Most doctors agree that exercising is one of the best ways to prevent disease. However, gym memberships can run between $240 and $1,800 per year. Such high prices force us to choose between exercising and buying groceries. While we could walk or jog outside, many of us prefer not to. Therefore, employers should be required to pay for workers’ gym memberships. Doing so might even reduce employers’ health costs, which is why many companies already subsidize memberships. Those that don’t are limiting our freedom to exercise.

…

• Coffee. Studies show that coffee can ward off depression, Alzheimer’s disease, type 2 diabetes and sleepiness—which makes it one of the most powerful preventive treatments. Workers who drink java are also more productive and pleasant. While many offices have coffee makers, some employers—most notably those affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—continue to deny workers this essential benefit. All employers should have to provide workers with freshly brewed coffee. Oh, and workers must also be able to choose the kind of coffee regardless of the price.

Republicans might argue that requiring Mormon charities to serve coffee is a violation of “religious liberty” since the Mormon church’s doctrine proscribes coffee, but this argument is a red herring. Leading medical experts recommend drinking coffee. Moreover, 99% of adults have drunk coffee at one point in their lives (including most Mormons).

In The Know Panel Analyzes Obama’s Furious, Profanity-Filled Rant At Nation

From The Onion:

TOPEKA, KS—Planned Parenthood announced Tuesday the grand opening of its long-planned $8 billion Abortionplex, a sprawling abortion facility that will allow the organization to terminate unborn lives with an efficiency never before thought possible.

During a press conference, Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards told reporters that the new state-of-the-art fetus-killing facility located in the nation’s heartland offers quick, easy, in-and-out abortions to all women, and represents a bold reinvention of the group’s long-standing mission and values.

“Although we’ve traditionally dedicated 97 percent of our resources to other important services such as contraception distribution, cancer screening, and STD testing, this new complex allows us to devote our full attention to what has always been our true passion: abortion,” said Richards, standing under a banner emblazoned with Planned Parenthood’s new slogan, “No Life Is Sacred.” “And since Congress voted to retain our federal funding, it’s going to be that much easier for us to maximize the number of tiny, beating hearts we stop every day.”

Frank J. Fleming

It’s a crucial election year. As another global financial crisis looms and rogue states pursue nuclear weapons, the American people are desperately looking for a strong leader to show them the way to a brighter tomorrow.

So it’s unconscionable that the Democratic primaries have yet to produce a single serious candidate for president.

This election is a great opportunity for the Democrats. After the setbacks the party has suffered, the Tea Party is finally dying down, and people are getting fed up with the Republicans in Congress. If the Democrats could come up with a strong candidate for the White House, he or she would easily win the election.

Yet, for some reason, many of the most promising Democrats chose not to run in the primaries, and those who did run are not appealing candidates. Indeed, the front-runner who has swept the early primary states despite a lack of enthusiastic support, Barack Obama, is just not a viable candidate in the general election.

People were very excited about Obama when he first emerged on the scene in 2008, but as his campaign went on — and as he’s actually served as president — it’s become apparent to the general public that he’s simply not a serious candidate for the job…