By John Semmens – Semi-News — A Satirical Look at Recent News

Irritated that the media would dare to pose a question about the legality of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s unsecured email communications, President Obama refused to comment, suggesting that “whether she did anything that was really wrong is a matter for voters to decide. And from what I’ve seen so far, she’s on her way to securing the Democratic nomination for president. I think that says the majority of Americans are okay with how she’s handled it.”

The media’s unwelcome inquiry was spurred by an 83-page State Department Inspector General’s report calling Clinton’s email operation an “inexcusable and willful disregard of the rules. Contrary to the Secretary’s public statements, her use of a private server was not ‘allowed’ as she has alleged. It was in direct violation of State Department regulations that the Secretary had previously cited in issuing punishments to lower-ranking violators. There is no record of her receiving a valid exemption from these regulations from any higher-ranking authority.”

A key piece of evidence in the IG’s report cited Secretary Clinton’s warning to all State Department personnel that “personal email accounts could be compromised and officials should avoid conducting official Department business from personal e-mail accounts.”

Among the classified information showing up in the Secretary’s unsecured email was long-time Clinton family confidant Sid Blumenthal’s message urging Hillary “to expedite the overthrow of Libya’s Mohamar Qadaffi before his scheme of establishing a 7-billion dollar fund of gold-backed dinars undercuts the U.S. government’s ability to control the oil industry.” The overthrow was expedited. Qadaffi was murdered and the country thrown into a chaos that later resulted in the assassination of US Ambassador Christopher Stevens in 2012.

Clinton campaign manager Robbie Mook denounced the IG report, calling it “as gross an invasion of privacy that any public figure has had to endure. The staff that were under Secretary Clinton’s direction were instructed to never speak to anyone, ever, on the topic of her private email account. That some of these staffers have talked to the Inspector General is a betrayal of the first magnitude. Those undertaking the tasks of governing this country need to know that their orders are heeded and obeyed. Sad to say, the Secretary’s orders on this matter were neither heeded nor obeyed. We’re confident that voters will correct this injustice by electing Hillary president in November.”

In related news, Judge Emmett Sullivan ordered that videos of Clinton aides’ testimony on the email scandal “be sealed so as not to unduly diminish Secretary Clinton’s chance of being elected president. If we want the best and brightest of Americans to seek and obtain the reins of power we need to protect them from excessive intrusion into their efforts to serve the public.” Judge Sullivan said he would allow “written transcripts to be released to the media” in order to “deflect charges of a ‘cover-up.’ The written word is a format with which the vast majority are not adept. Officially, the information will be available, but few will read it.”

Professor Resigns to Protest Freedom of Speech

Contending that “so-called free speech is delusional,” DePaul University sociology professor Dr. Shu-Ju Cheng has resigned her post in protest.

The event that spurred Dr. Cheng’s protest was the aborted speech of Milo Yiannopolis on the uiversity’s campus last week. Despite paying the university for security, student thugs were permitted to seize the stage and disrupt the speech. Cheng was outraged, not that thugs were allowed to drown out views with which they disagreed, but that Yiannopolis was invited “to air his anti-progressive message.”

“The whole concept of freedom of speech is an antiquated idea derived from dead white men,” Cheng contended. “The University has a social obligation to protect students from exposure to such intellectual pollution. No one has the right to speak out against progressive ideas. No one has the right to oppose social justice. The University’s negligence in enforcing correct ideology forced the champions of progressive thought to violently suppress an odious advocate of racist oppression.”

Cheng rejected University officials’ arguments that “the disruption of Yiannopolis’ speech and the confiscation of his $1,000 security deposit” could be an acceptable middle ground. “There can be no compromise with the advocates of ‘white freedoms.’ Merely making them suffer a little bit falls far short of what should be our goal. Only when the enemies of social justice are crushed beneath a righteous wave of revolutionary action can we afford to relax our efforts.”

In related news, MSNBC pundit Chris Matthews praised violent anti-Trump protesters for “rising to the occasion. The prospect of a Trump presidency has got to be terrifying for these outcasts of white society. Just because they lack the skill to articulate their grievances in a civilized fashion doesn’t lessen the importance or legitimacy of their cause. In a way, cracking heads can be a very forceful way to change people’s minds.”

Iowa Supreme Court Bans Life Imprisonment for Teen Killers

In a 4-3 ruling, the Iowa Supreme Court banned lower courts from imposing life sentences for murders committed by teen-aged offenders. The ruling came in the case of Isaiah Richard Sweet, who was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder for fatally shooting his grandparents.

Justice Brent Appel wrote that “a life sentence for a crime such as this is disproportionate. The victims were old and fairly close to a natural death. For their grandson to be sentenced to a life term that could easily amount to multiple decades is a punishment that I believe the victims themselves would have deemed excessive and cruel.”

Appel also suggested that “completely neutralizing this segment of the population may have unforeseen long-term effects. Science has found uses for viruses that were not conceived of in earlier periods. Who is to say that there may not be a genuine need that teen-aged murderers might perform for the benefit of the human race in the future? Perhaps their winnowing of the human herd by eliminating the weak or the gullible is a useful element in the further evolution of the species.”

Dissenting Justice Edward Mansfield called the ruling “a usurpation of legislative authority. Elected representatives made the law that allowed for these kinds of sentences on a case-by-case basis. The court has overstepped its bounds issuing a blanket cancellation of the act of the voters’ representatives.” Dissenting Justice Bruce Zage characterized the ruling as “judicial activism at its worst.”

Law Would Let FBI Read Everyone’s Email

The 2017 Intelligence Authorization Act would enable the FBI to obtain anyone’s email records without a court order. All the agency would need is a National Security Letter, which would allow the FBI get information from companies without their customers knowing they were being investigated. The bill is co-sponsored by Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-NC) and Vice Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif).

“If we want the government to protect us we must let go of our obsession with personal privacy,” Sen. Feinstein urged. “The police are consummate professionals, not nosy busybodies. Unless you’re doing something wrong you have nothing to fear.”

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore), the lone dissenting voice on the 15-member Senate committee, said he wasn’t reassured by “the bland assumption that government can do no evil. History is replete with incidences of government spying on its citizens for the purpose of repressing dissent and accumulating power. Under our Constitution the Fifth Amendment was expressly intended to require a dispassionate judge to assess the justification before police officials were granted permission to intrude into private matters.”

Sen. Burr wondered whether “Sen. Wyden might be unduly paranoid. Doesn’t the bipartisan sponsorship of this legislation provide sufficient reassurance of its benevolent intent?” and suggested that “the numerous examples of illegal intrusion into private affairs by government agencies has shown itself to be unacceptably dangerous. Giving these intrusions a statutory foundation will protect government employees from unnecessary impediments to their law-enforcement duties and undesirable repercussions from breaking the law.”

VA Waits for Ailing Vets “Not So Bad”

This week, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert McDonald rebuffed critics of the agency’s long queues for medical treatment of ailing veterans, comparing them to the long lines to get on rides at Disneyland. “No one is on the Disney Corporation’s case for the lengthy wait-times at their theme parks,” McDonald asserted. “Why should we get worked up over wait-times at VA hospitals?”

“You know, if people can tolerate waiting an hour for something as frivolous as a roller coaster ride shouldn’t they be willing to wait a reasonable amount of time for something as crucial as medical care?” the Secretary asked. “As every vet should be aware from his combat experience, sometimes you have to wait for the medic to get to you. Sometimes he can’t get there in time. It’s all part of the risk that each soldier took on when he enlisted.”

McDonald further insisted that “the veterans trying to get care at the VA are the lucky ones. They made it back. The unlucky ones died on the battlefield. I think it’s time for the survivors to count their blessings and stop whining about what, in the grander scheme of things, is really their good fortune.”

In related news, Reps. Joe Kennedy III (D-Mass) and Bobby Scott (D-Va) have introduced the “Do No Harm Act” in Congress. The bill bars anyone from using a religious objection to decline to perform or participate in a medical procedure mandated by the government. “The health of everyone is of vital concern to the government,” Kennedy declared. “No one should be allowed to interfere with the implementation of this responsibility. For example, under our bill, no doctor or health care facility could refuse to perform an abortion requested by a patient. Likewise, no patient could refuse to undergo an abortion if it is determined to be necessary. We need to get past the notion that health is a personal matter. The collective well-being of the whole has got to take precedence over selfish individual prejudices. Our bill will achieve that.”

A Satirical Look at Recent News

John Semmens is a retired economist who has written a weekly political satire for The Arizona Conservative since 2005. He says working on his satires is one of the ways he tries to honor the liberties our Founding Fathers tried to protect. 

Please do us a favor. If you use material created by The Arizona Conservative, give us credit and DO NOT change the context. Thank you.

By John Semmens – Semi-News — A Satirical Look at Recent News

The debate over a California initiative to legalize recreational marijuana sparked heated rejoinders from both sides this week.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R) suggested that legalization “will better deploy law enforcement resources. Energy that is now put into harassing inoffensive users of marijuana can be redirected toward suppressing more serious crimes like rape and murder.”

Leading opponent of legalization, Ventura Police Chief Ken Corney, president of the California Police Chiefs Association, challenged the Congressman “to name one so-called rape or murder victim who might otherwise have been spared if police officers weren’t occupied enforcing our drug laws.”

“Potheads like to portray dope smoking as a harmless activity, but its impacts are insidious and long lasting,” Corney maintained. “The harm to society is more pervasive than the more isolated rape or murder. Saving an entire generation from addiction and its ill-effects strikes me as more important than a futile effort to save the relatively few impacted by these other crimes, especially since the vast majority of police action on these comes after-the-fact. The true choice is between us basically ‘cleaning up’ after a rape or murder vs. proactively intervening to modify self-destructive behavior across a broader cohort of the population.”

Rohrabacher characterized Corney’s stance as “an example of the nanny-state at its worst. Misguided do-gooders once thought that using police to prevent people from ruining their lives by consuming alcohol was appropriate. Most now recognize what a mistake that was as it fueled the rise of notorious gangsters like Al Capone during Prohibition. Our modern-day repetition of that mistake with attempts to suppress marijuana provide the environment for violent drug-smuggling gangsters and the mayhem they inflict on communities across the nation.”

Zuckerberg Denies Suppressing Conservative News

Reports that Facebook moderators routinely suppress trending news favorable to conservatives were vigorously denied by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who claimed “I don’t even know who the leaders of the conservative movement are. So how can I or my employees be biased against them?”

This is the second display of ideological bias to issue from Zuckerberg this year. Earlier, the Facebook executive berated employees for abusing a company-granted “freedom-of-expression” policy to write “all lives matter” on a wall devoted to free expression in the company’s Melo Park, California headquarters. “I could not allow the insensitivity toward the ‘Black lives matter’ meme to sneak in under the protection of so-called ‘freedom of speech,’” Zuckerberg explained. “Freedom must be used responsibly and appropriately. No one has the right to utter opinions that are hurtful to others.”

Zuckerberg offered to “meet with alleged leaders of the conservative moment, if there are any of reputable stature, to discuss whatever objections they may raise to the way I run my company. However, this should not be construed as a capitulation to demands that I modify my policies. Facebook will never become a haven for anti-social and anti-progressive elements to air their perverted views.”

President Decrees New Nationwide School Restroom & Locker Room Law

In a bid aimed at “stopping a confusing patchwork of divergent rules,” President Obama issued an executive order mandating that every public school in the United States make all previously sexually-segregated restrooms and locker rooms open to persons of both sexes. Instead of relying on biological differences to determine which toilets, which showers, or which athletic teams students should have access to, schools must now use psychological differences. Biological males who think of themselves as female must be allowed to use facilities previously restricted to biological females, and vice versa.

Vanita Gupta, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division hailed the President’s action as “the final blow against the last barrier to a fully non-discriminatory society. This erases the false notion that biology is destiny. The presence or absence of physical attributes has for too long shunted individuals into roles they may not wish to accept. The President’s order frees everyone to be whoever or whatever they want to be.”

Gupta said she was “confident we will get universal compliance. Billions of dollars in federal aid to education can be withheld from school districts that refuse to obey the President’s decree. The price of archaic attachment to out-dated ideas will be too steep for financially strapped schools to pay.”

Judge Blocks Restitution to Innocent Man

Guillermo Espinoza’s efforts to retrieve $19,894 seized by Arkansas State Police were brought to an abrupt halt by Judge Chris Williams. State prosecutors asked that the money be returned to Espinoza since no criminal charges were being pursued against him. Williams rejected this request on the grounds that Espinoza had missed the 10-day deadline for filing the papers to initiate restitution.

As Williams sees it, “the rules on civil forfeiture are clearly spelled out in statute. Whether or not Mr. Espinoza was or wasn’t engaged in any illegal activity is irrelevant. Arkansas law gives the government the right to seize assets it deems may have a connection to a crime. Even if that connection turns out to be illusory, the procedure for reclaiming the seized assets is specified. Mr. Espinoza failed to adhere to that procedure. Thus, the State cannot return the money to him.”

“The civil forfeiture statute is not inextricably tied to the fate of any criminal investigation or prosecution,” Williams pointed out. “Over the history of this statute it has transferred over $80 million into the state treasury. Acquiring revenues is also a legitimate function of government. For me to deviate from the civil forfeiture statute in pursuit of some notion of judicial fairness would abrogate this important revenue-raising function of the law. That is beyond my powers as a judge.”

As an aside, the Judge speculated that “it is by no means certain that the public good would be better served by according Mr. Espinoza a just resolution of his case. The private uses to which he might put the money might easily be eclipsed by the public good that can be done by having the State spend that money on purposes of broader social benefit to all Arkansans.”

White House Dismisses Court Ruling on Obamacare

Federal Judge Rosemary Collyer’s ruling that the Obama Administration has been illegally subsidizing health insurance companies failed to faze the President or his minions.

Presidential Press Secretary Josh Earnest mocked “the impotence of the President’s political opponents. These court cases are an act of desperation. The GOP has lost this battle in the public arena. Voters reelected President Obama. That gives him all the mandate he needs to govern this country. Complaining that Congress never appropriated the money for the subsidies seeks to elevate a constitutional technicality above the will of voters.”

The “constitutional technicality” that Judge Collyer found persuasive in her ruling was from Article I, section 9: “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.”

Earnest contended that “a president’s executive action is, effectively, a lawmaking power. President Obama has used this power to bypass Congress’s refusal to carry out its responsibility to fully fund the Affordable Care Act. The President has said on numerous occasions that he will take action if Congress fails to do so. This is one of those occasions. He feels confident that this Judge’s ruling will be overturned by a higher court.”

“The stodgy old ‘separation of powers’ dogma is an impediment to efficient government,” Earnest added. “Each branch of government should be considered an alternate option for moving the country forward. Sometimes Congress may be the best option. Other times the Courts or the President may be. The crucial thing is to keep us on track for the advancement of progressive values and social justice. Since this is what President Obama has been doing for the last seven years there is no good reason for him to stop, no matter what anyone says.”

NYC Mayor Orders Bars to Serve Pregnant Women

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio banned bars operating in the city from refusing to serve alcohol to pregnant women. This is despite virtually universal medical advice against the consumption of alcohol by expectant mothers.

The Mayor said he is “cognizant of the damage that might be done to an unborn child if its mother imbibes, but the possibility of harm is not a sufficient reason for a business establishment to discriminate against these women. Under New York’s laws a woman has an unconstrained right to kill her unborn child if she so chooses. The less extreme option of merely damaging the child’s health by consuming alcohol is also her prerogative.”

De Blasio cautioned that his new edict “does not absolve bar owners from posting warnings about the dangers of birth defects from alcohol consumption by pregnant women, nor from being sued by any customers whose child may experience these defects. We are protecting the right of women to pursue happiness. We are not immunizing vendors from bearing the responsibility for the consequences to customers who consume their products.”

Clinton Foundation Scandals Pooh-Poohed by Insider

Bill Allison, a senior fellow at the Sunlight Foundation, a government watchdog group, labeled the so-called charity “a slush fund for the Clintons. Only a small fraction of the money raised is distributed as aid. The vast bulk of the money is used on administration, travel, salaries and bonuses, with the fattest payouts going to family friends.”

Clinton Foundation spokesman Craig Minassian asserted that “no laws have been broken. How any charitable trust spends the funds it receives is a matter of discretion. The donors all gave voluntarily. They wanted the Clinton family to have this money. We haven’t heard any complaints from them.”

One possible explanation for the absence of some complaints was that the governments of Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Qatar from which donations were obtained all got Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s approval to purchase $165 billion worth of armaments despite being ruled by authoritarian regimes guilty of numerous human rights abuses.

Minassian contended that the arms deals “were good for American businesses” and that “extracting cash from Middle Eastern dictatorships in order to pay for the salaries and perks enjoyed by Foundation employees is a good thing. Donald Trump charges Hillary with being crooked, but even he has got to be envious of the alchemy she has achieved via the synergistic combination of her public and private power.”

In related news, the hedge fund run by Chelsea Clinton’s husband Marc Mezvinsky suffered a catastrophic 90% loss. Mezvinsky issued a statement aimed at reassuring the general public that “neither the beloved former First Daughter nor I will experience any financial setbacks from this debacle. My commissions have already been collected and our assets are insulated from attachment. Our $10 million home is safe and our lifestyle will not be negatively affected.”

London Mayor Endorses Hillary, Warns against Electing Trump

Recently elected London Mayor Sadiq Khan formally endorsed Hillary Clinton for president and warned that “her Republican opponent’s ignorant anti-Muslim views will bring retribution.”

“The gift of Islam is free for the taking,” Khan said. “All are welcome to join the umma. Those who wish to remain unbelievers are free to do so, but they must show proper respect toward the one true religion. Mr. Trump’s proposal to ban Muslims from coming to America is disrespectful. Allah has given the world to Muslims. It is not for any unbeliever to say where Muslims may or may not go.”

Khan predicted that “any attempt to impede Muslim travel to America will invite attack. The Quran only binds Muslims to peaceful relations with unbelievers who accept their submission to Islamic law and pay the jizya. By announcing a policy of resistance Mr. Trump puts all Americans at risk.”

The Mayor advised citizens of the United States “to elect a person who understands the only peaceful way for Muslims and non-Muslims to interact. Secretary Clinton, in my opinion, is such a person. Voters should cast their ballots for her as if their lives depended upon it.”

Trump campaign spokesperson Katrina Pierson welcomed the Mayor’s comments saying “they help clarify the stakes of this election. The fact that a so-called ‘moderate’ Muslim is so quick to raise the threat of violence supports Donald’s advice of caution about who we allow into this country. At a very fundamental level, keeping out people who may believe they have a religious right or obligation to kill you seems like common sense.”

A Satirical Look at Recent News

John Semmens is a retired economist who has written a weekly political satire for The Arizona Conservative since 2005. He says working on his satires is one of the ways he tries to honor the liberties our Founding Fathers tried to protect. 

Please do us a favor. If you use material created by The Arizona Conservative, give us credit and DO NOT change the context. Thank you.

 By John Semmens – Semi-News — A Satirical Look at Recent News

This week Nevada District Judge Eric Johnson dismissed the ACLU’s case against the state’s school choice law. A change to Nevada statutes creating an education savings account (ESA) program that permits students and their parents to choose how to be educated was the source of the ACLU’s ire.

Author of the legislation, State Sen. Scott Hammond (R-Las Vegas) said his aim was “to enable families to completely customize their child’s educational experience, and ensure students can match education options and providers to their unique learning needs.” These accounts can be used to pay for private school tuition, online learning, special education services and therapies, textbooks, curricula, private tutors, and any other education-related service, product, or provider.

“Under this ill-conceived law state funds for education can be used in any manner seen fit by parents or their children,” complained ACLU spokesman Bertram Petty. “The legislature has heedlessly granted freedom to the uninformed. Neither parents nor students are qualified to decide such matters. Only the public school system has the expertise needed to guide each student toward the proper educational outcome.”

While the ACLU’s case was dismissed by one judge, another—Judge James Wilson of the First Judicial District Court of Nevada (Carson City)–issued an injunction preventing the funding of the more than 4,000 ESA’s requested and awarded under the statute. Petty praised Wilson’s action, calling it “a crucial bulwark against diverting state resources into unregulated private hands. The State has gone through an arduous process of extracting these funds from the private sector. We must not allow this money to be frittered away via the ignorant choices of parents and students.”

Senator Aims to Redefine “Violent Crimes”

New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker is seeking a redefinition of “violent crimes.” As a co-sponsor of the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act of 2015 (SRCA), Booker is urging “a candid conversation about how we determine whether crimes are violent or not.”

“For too long a racist mindset has dominated how we look at crime,” Booker charged. “In white society stabbing or shooting someone is considered abnormal and violent. This unfairly stigmatizes Black culture. Sentencing a minority offender based on white standards disproportionately impacts a vibrant segment of society.”

Booker urged that “we recognize the longer term history of racial oppression in this country and factor that into how we think about modern society. For hundreds of years Blacks were owned by whites and were brutally abused. This inculcated a predisposition to look to violence and brutality as normal tools for securing obedience and exploiting others. Is it any wonder that this would have negative repercussions today?”

The Senator recommended that “we cut the brothers some slack if the victim of his so-called violent act is a descendant of a former oppressor. This would be a kind of non-monetary reparation for crimes committed against his ancestors—a sort of social justice self-defense that ought to mitigate the punishment meted out to the brothers for taking unauthorized independent steps to right earlier wrongs.”

Both Democratic presidential contenders called Booker’s thinking “innovative” and “long overdue.” Sen. Bernie Sanders pronounced himself “an admirer of street justice that moves us closer to the redistribution of society’s wealth and privileges.” Hillary Clinton promised “it will be an approach that my Attorney General will take in all cases that come under federal purview and will guide my selections of future Supreme Court appointees.”

In related news, California’s decriminalization of shoplifting has been followed by a 100% increase in the practice. Gov. Jerry Brown professed not to be bothered by the phenomenon, cautioning that “we not jump to the conclusion that these guerrilla transfers of ownership are necessarily unjust. If we were to use need as our scale, it is by no means clear that shoplifting doesn’t result in a more equitable distribution of wealth.”

CPUSA Pledges to Support Democrat for President

The Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) has enthusiastically endorsed “comrade Bernie Sanders as the progressive choice to complete the socialist revolution in America,” but pledged its “support for whoever emerges with the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.”

John Bachtell, national chair of the CPUSA expressed his “pleasure with the progressive evolution of the Democratic Party. The Communist agenda has been totally absorbed by this mainstream Party. President Obama has taken this country further down the road than we could ever have hoped to do on our own. Although Bernie has been a long-time member of the revolutionary movement, Secretary Clinton’s promise to continue the policies of Obama give her enough credibility to be an acceptable second choice.”

“We had feared that it would take decades for us to realize our objectives of abolishing private property and eliminating traditional Judeo-Christian values that oppress alternative lifestyles,” Bachtell said. “But the massive voter support for Sanders and Clinton shows we are on the cusp of triumph. The extermination of greed and the age of absolute equality are now only one election away.”

Bachtell boasted that “we are especially elated by the peaceful acquisition of power that is at hand. Unlike Lenin or Mao we haven’t had to engage in armed conflict to overthrow the government. The expropriation of the expropriators will be attained by the freely given votes of the American electorate. By January of 2017, the armed forces and police will be under the control of a progressive government. Resistance will be futile and, where necessary, severely dealt with. It will be glorious.”

Pope Confuses Christians

Pope Francis startled many Catholics this week by likening Jesus’ admonition to his apostles to go forth and preach the Gospel to Mohamed’s call for Muslims to wage jihad against unbelievers, calling both “incitements to conquest.”

“In a way, beheading someone or blowing them up may be less intrusive than Jesus’ command to ‘love thy neighbor’ or to ‘turn the other cheek,’” Francis said. “The jihadi attacks the body, but the Christian missionary invades the soul. Even the most grievous injury to the flesh is transitory. But changing a person’s soul persists beyond his temporary Earthly existence.”

Francis went on to admire “the amazing fecundity of the Muslim people” and suggested that “Christians might overcome declining birth rates by interbreeding with them. European cultures have put a selfish search for well-being ahead of their obligation to be fruitful and multiply. Unlike Christian women, Muslim females do not disobey their husbands and submit to bearing many children. Unlike Christian men, Muslim males are lusty and unafraid of impregnating females even if they have to resort to rape to accomplish it. Perhaps by intermixing on a sexual level the best of both faiths could be achieved and the rationale for Islamic violence attenuated.”

In related news, Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton said GOP contender Donald Trump’s “anti-Muslim attitude is a disqualifying stance. They wouldn’t have to blow up airliners or decapitate hostages if they were assured access to America. Trump’s proposed ban leaves them no alternative but violence if they are to accomplish their political and religious objectives.” Clinton vowed she would “be pursuing a contrasting strategy of peaceful change. If we integrate them into our society as equals we may divert them toward using nonviolent means to implement their world view.”

“Ugly Women Will Put Hillary in White House” Says Dem

Former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell (D) bragged that “ugly women will put Hillary in the White House next November. Donald Trump may have sponsored beauty pageants, but let’s face it, the overwhelming majority of women are ugly. They’re going to vote for one of their own kind over a billionaire misogynist.”

“For one thing, the Democratic Party is a better friend to ugly women,” Rendell contended. “We give them what they want. We give them welfare, which comes in handy if you’re too ugly or nasty to hold onto a man. We enact laws that give them the right to sue anyone who looks at them or speaks to them in a demeaning or insulting manner. We made sure that Obamacare would cover all of the psychotropic medications they might need to adjust to their disappointment for being ugly.”

“What does Trump or the GOP offer them?” the governor asked. “The right to join the rat race and get ahead if they’re competent? That’s a pretty weak gruel. The free market offers that to everybody. A robust government is one that can give you more than you could get on your own. Letting people keep what they earn would be like having no government at all. We don’t think the majority of voters will opt to go that route.”

White House Defends Rhodes’ Lies

While Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes’ lies about the Iran deal are a self-admitted matter of public record, an irate GOP controlled Congress will not be permitted to call him to testify.

Presidential Press Secretary Josh Earnest brushed aside Rhodes’ admission in a New York Times feature article that “we fabricated the narrative and played the media like a fiddle,” as a “youthful mistake borne of an excess of enthusiasm. The fact of the matter is that Mr. Rhodes has the full confidence of President Obama and was carrying out his directives as he briefed the media regarding the delicate negotiations. No useful purpose would be served by having him appear before Congress.”

Earnest rejected GOP contentions that they are only trying to get to the truth about the Iran deal. “As a famous historical figure is reputed to have asked, ‘what is truth?’” Earnest replied. “Subjecting the President’s loyal adjuncts to a Congressional inquisition isn’t something we’re going to allow. The President has done what he has deemed best for the country. No one has the need or right to know anything more than that.”

In related news, Iranian lawmakers are preparing a lawsuit against the United States to seek compensation for damage inflicted by Washington’s “hostile moves.” The list of particulars for which the regime is seeking billions of dollars in damages includes “continued resistance to the will of Allah, interference with arms shipments to Hezbollah, and the attempted rescue of hostages by unauthorized incursions into Iran by the Carter Administration in 1980.” The Obama Administration is said to be weighing a “nolo contendere” plea. As explained by Earnest, “the President has already acknowledged the errors of prior administrations and sees no point in prolonging a case we cannot win.”

A Satirical Look at Recent News

John Semmens is a retired economist who has written a weekly political satire for The Arizona Conservative since 2005. He says working on his satires is one of the ways he tries to honor the liberties our Founding Fathers tried to protect. 

Please do us a favor. If you use material created by The Arizona Conservative, give us credit and DO NOT change the context. Thank you.