Category: funny

From the greatest satire website ever, Iowahawk:

Flanked by officials from the United Elf Toytinkerers union, SantaCorp CEO Kris Kringle today told the House Ways and Means Committee that without immediate government financial help, his firm would be forced to declare bankruptcy, lay off thousands of elves and reindeer, and potentially cancel its annual worldwide Christmas Eve toy delivery.

[…]

Kringle and UET union president Binky McGiggles presented a draft emergency bailout plan to the committee calling for US $18 trillion in federal grants, loan guarantees, and sugarplum gumdrops that they said would keep the company solvent through December 26.

“We believe this proposal shows that management and labor can work together to craft a reasonable, financially responsible short-term survival plan,” said McGiggles. “After the new Congress is seated in January, we would be happy to return to present a long-term package to get us through April.”

[…]

“You might say it’s a perfect snowstorm,” said Merrill Lynch analyst Jennifer Rothstein. “The youth consumer market is demanding more for less, at a time when the government and courts have forced SantaCorp to lower its ‘good list’ credit rating standards. They face increased non-union competition from the East Pole, and huge increases in fuel prices for magical reindeer flying hay. It’s a hard sell for the investment community.”

[…]

“Almost every business in my district has had to adjust to the new economic climate, but SantaCorp seems to believe it can continue with the same old profligate giveaway business-as-usual,” said Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin). “I’m sorry for your situation, but it is difficult to justify giving trillions of US taxpayer dollars to a private company that is outmoded, headquartered offshore, and, frankly, imaginary.”

Kringle defended the company’s business practices and his reported 4 billion cookie annual salary, saying that the company was “doing the best we can under trying circumstances.” He also blamed the company’s struggles in part on federal environmental and safety regulations.

“Frankly the amount of paperwork you require is astronomical,” said Kringle. “OSHA inspections and reporting requirements have doubled our factory production cycle, and every time I tramp a little fireplace soot into a living room I have to fill out three separate EPA environmental impact reports.”

[…]

A full House vote on the SantaCorp is scheduled Friday morning, where it is expected to pass by a comfortable margin. President Bush has pledged to sign any and all bailout request from Congress until the end of his term, “no queshnions ast.”

“I want to insurer the American People and the evil doers that I and the Crongress and the Hankster [Treasury Sec. Paulsen] and Big Ben [possibly Fed Chair Bernanke] and [unintelligible] and me are unineted together to approve the financial aid and regulations and federal takeovers to get our American free ennerpise system back on track,” said the President, speaking from inside his new shoe-proof plexiglas enclosure.

This has to be fake, but it’s so funny:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vxzIamlzoA

H/t: Hot Air, Ace of Spades

Any by federales, I mean the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

And by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, I mean the G-men.

And by the G-men, I mean the guys knocking-in your door right now (Wired Blog):

DarkMarket.ws, an online watering hole for thousands of identify thieves, hackers and credit card swindlers, has been secretly run by an FBI cybercrime agent for the last two years, until its voluntary shutdown earlier this month, according to documents unearthed by a German radio network.

Reports from the German national police obtained by the Südwestrundfunk, Southwest Germany public radio, blow the lid off the long running sting by revealing its role in nabbing a German credit card forger active on DarkMarket. The FBI agent is identified in the documents as J. Keith Mularski, a senior cybercrime agent based at the National Cyber Forensics Training Alliance in Pittsburgh, who ran the site under the hacker handle Master Splynter.

The NCFTA is a non-profit information sharing alliance funded by financial firms, internet companies and the federal government. It’s also home to a seven-agent FBI headquarters unit called the Cyber Initiative and Resource Fusion Unit, which evidently ran the DarkMarket sting.

The FBI didn’t return a phone call Monday.

[…]

Threat Level admires Lord Cyric’s bluster, but thinks his days in the underground are numbered. The FBI almost certainly closed DarkMarket in preparation for a global wave of arrests that will unfold in the next month or so. The site was likely shuttered to avoid an Agatha Christie scenario in which a diminishing pool of cybercrooks are free to speculate about why they’re disappearing one-by-one like the hapless dinner guests in Ten Little Indians.

I do believe that the FBI is yelling “w00t” at all the information they have obtained on the “l33t” hackers.

H/t: Ace of Spades HQ

Seasoned Experts Prove Much Better at Guiding Hysterical Sell-Off:

Heeding the advice of those who know the markets better, most individual investors kept their cool during Wall Street’s historic plunge, allowing seasoned, market-savvy professionals to do the panicking for them.

“What we didn’t need last week was for every Tom, Dick, and Harry to stampede for the exits and sell everything they own,” said Steven Kasalackis of the Fidelity Magellan fund. “That kind of behavior should be left to the experts.”

Across the country, small investors offered similar sentiments, and expressed relief that steadier hands were running the ship aground.

“I kept telling myself I didn’t sell because of patriotism, but the truth is, I don’t have access to the kinds of information the pros have, and I didn’t want to panic with my money,” said Janice Leeman of Ocala, Fla. “I felt much more secure knowing that they were panicking with my money.”

Ironically, some small investors claim the sell-off bolstered confidence in their own stock-trading abilities. “All last week I kept thinking, ‘God, I’ve got to sell!” but I didn’t,” said Stan Persik, a realtor from San Diego, Cal. “Then when I saw the big guys were selling, I thought, ‘Ha! See, I was right!'”

Actually, the whole SatireWire site is great.

Somewhat dated through. Just replace “dot-comers” with “creditors” and “banks”.

This one was years ahead of its time: Record 75 Million Americans Now Pretending They Own Their Own Homes.