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

With a rash of news stories popping up contradicting the Obama Administration’s denial that the recent UN vote against Israeli settlements was, in fact, organized and led by Administration officials, President Obama charged the Russians with “once again exposing communications that were intended to remain private.”

One of these “private communications” entailed Secretary of State John Kerry’s meeting with senior Palestinian diplomat Saeb Erekat to coordinate strategy for advancing the UN censure of Israel. Another was Vice President Joe Biden’s phone call pressuring Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to vote for the censure.

“The revelation of official matters intended to remain confidential is precisely the same MO of the Russian hackers who tipped the recent US presidential election toward Moscow’s puppet—Donald Trump,” Obama contended. “This further provocation is an act so hostile that it qualifies as an act of war. Clearly, the retaliatory measures we have implemented thus far have been insufficient to deter our country’s greatest enemy.”

Konstantin Kosachev, head of the International Committee of the Russian Upper House of Parliament, called Obama’s actions “the agony of not only a lame duck, but of a political corpse.”

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s refusal to retaliate in response to the Obama Administration’s expulsion of Russian diplomats was labeled “yet another diabolical and sinister effort to mislead the American public,” Presidential Press Secretary Josh Earnest charged. “Imitating a reasonable demeanor in order to make President Obama appear hysterical and unhinged is meant to drive a wedge between him the people who have loved and admired him during his term in office. It won’t work. Americans will rally behind their President just as Americans rallied behind FDR after Pearl Harbor.”

Earnest’s prediction seemed to be born out when Republican Sens. John McCain (Az) and Lindsey Graham (SC), demanded an even stronger retaliatory response toward Russia. “I didn’t spend seven years in a Communist POW camp in Vietnam only to sit idly and let the Soviet Union mock our President,” McCain blustered. Graham called for “an internationally enforced ‘no fly zone’ that would shoot down any Russian military aircraft operating outside the borders of their country.”

President-Elect Donald Trump’s attempt to assert a plea for everyone “to remain calm until adults are in charge after the inauguration,” was labeled “another example of his lack of fitness,” by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif). “At a time when patriots ought to be backing our President, Trump is showing he has more in common with our enemy.”

In related news, Alan Dershowitz, professor emeritus at Harvard Law School and two-time contributor to Obama’s successful election campaigns, denounced the Administration’s anti-Israel stance as “an appalling betrayal by a man I was twice duped into trusting.”

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

On-Board a JetBlue plane at JFK Airport in New York City for a planned family vacation in Hawaii, Donald Trump’s eldest daughter Ivanka was accosted by another passenger Dan Goldstein, a Brooklyn lawyer. Goldstein’s harangue charged Donald Trump with “ruining the country” and Ivanka with “ruining our flight.” The “our” referred to his husband Matthew Lasner and their son.

Goldstein contended that “people like Trump and his ‘spawn’ have no business inserting themselves among those who don’t want them anywhere near us. She and her kids are a terrifying reminder that the Trump pall could plague the country for generations. They could have flown on their father’s private jet and spared the rest of us the trauma.”

Goldstein and his family were escorted off the flight by JetBlue security officials. “Given Mr. Goldstein’s insistence that Ms. Trump’s mere presence on the same aircraft would ruin his flight we had to save him from what he characterized as ‘trauma,’” said company spokesperson Sandra Sober. “At JetBlue we strive to meet our customers’ needs. Obviously, we couldn’t eject Ms. Trump just to mollify an agitated fellow passenger. She was peacefully minding her own business and even asked that we not make this into a ‘thing.’ However, the fact that Mr. Goldstein was visibly shaking we felt his mental health would be best served if we got him another flight.”

Goldstein took his removal in stride, asserting that “I accomplished my mission to show the Trumps that we average Americans will not submit to their tyranny. If my example inspires others to stand up to them perhaps the Trumps won’t be so eager to show their faces in public.”

In related news, a group of New York artists calling themselves the “Halt Action Group” demanded that Ivanka Trump take down the paintings she purchased from them to adorn her apartment. The demand followed her failure to separate herself from “the racism, anti-Semitism, misogyny, and homophobia your father has inflicted on this country.” HAG has been conducting demonstrations outside Ivanka’s family residence since late November. Philadelphia artist Alex Da Corte rejected the fact that Ms. Trump paid for the art, saying that “a mere exchange of money does not transfer ownership. Art always belongs to its creator. Others merely rent it subject to the approval of the creator.”

France to Prosecute Historian for “Hate Speech”

Morocco-born French-Jewish scholar Georges Bensoussan has been ordered to appear before a Paris court to answer criminal charges levied against him by the Collective Against Islamophobia in France. The allegation is that Bensoussan’s writings on the history of anti-Semitism in lands governed by Muslims “incites racial hatred.”

CAIF spokesman Massakir Heebes declared that “the attempt to promulgate anti-Muslim hatred under the guise of scholarship must not be permitted. The contention that the mistreatment of Jews depicted by Bensoussan is a historical fact is irrelevant. The Quran commands the oppression of unbelievers who pay the jizya and the slaying of those who refuse. Criticism of these religious obligations by those who are not Muslim are unacceptable. If the French courts won’t punish these offenders Muslims will be compelled to do so.”

Three prominent French writers and historians—Jacques Tarnero, Yves Ternon and Michel Zaoui—called the complaint against Bensoussan “scandalous. It is just more Islamist intimidation that confirms the essential truth of Professor Bensoussan’s work. Our nation is at a crucial crossroad. we must either defend liberal freedom of expression or be swallowed up in the barbaric prejudice of an intolerant cult.”

Berlin Terror Attack Inspires Action

Last Monday’s assault by semi-truck that killed a dozen Christmas shoppers at an outdoor market in Berlin has inspired European governments to swoop into action.

In Germany, the Merkel regime is desperately denying that the country’s open-borders policy toward Islamic immigration, including a conscious policy of converting many refugees into truck drivers by easing licensing requirements, might be an enabling factor in the spate of social outrages, rising crime rate, and now mass murder by lone wolf jihadi Anus Amri at the Berlin market.

Chancellor Angela Merkel attributed the offenses committed by Muslim refugees to “widespread Islamophobia among Germans unused to the different customs of our new residents. German women who neglect to cover their faces and go out in public unescorted are viewed as whores by the Quran. Muslim men who innocently try to solicit their services may elicit a negative response that stimulates their libidos. Also, our refusal to pay an adequate amount of jizya taxes to support the umma is an affront to their faith. The accumulation of our insults and disrespect is the root cause of the tragedy that has befallen our country. This is what we have to fix if we are to have any peace going forward.”

Bristol, England has increased police patrols in order to crack down on Islamophobia. Area commander for Bristol, Chief Superintendent Jon Reilly, said “the potential for retaliatory hate crimes against Muslims is our main concern. The momentary pain caused by being run over by a truck pales in comparison with the lingering dread suffered by Muslims fearing a counterattack from unbelievers. The psychological torment of never knowing when someone may look askance or mutter an inaudible derogatory comment has to be terrifying.”

“The fact that many so-called anti-Muslim hate crimes turn out to be hoaxes is, I think, further proof of how our intolerant society is driving these immigrants to imagine threats that could be real if they were carried out,” Reilly asserted. “Maybe the increased visibility of our anti-Islamophobia effort will reassure these immigrants that the government is on their side and channel them into prosecuting those who offend them in our courts.”

In Sweden, Anna Carlstedt, coordinator against violent extremism at the Civil Contingencies Agency went on Swedish Radio and blamed “white power” for the atrocities committed by Muslim refugees. “Everywhere these refugees look they see white people in charge,” Carlstedt observed. “If our power structure were more diverse perhaps they wouldn’t feel as threatened and wouldn’t lash out as much.”

In related news, less than 3 percent of the million Muslim refugees admitted into Germany have jobs, dashing the Merkel government’s expectations that “the more fecund newcomers would support the pensions of our aging native population.” The possibility that the final solution to the fiscal abyss posed by the government owing more to pensioners than can be paid might be through the massacre of non-Muslims as prescribed in the Quran is said to be discomfiting government planners.

40 Percent of Young Adults Living with Parents/Grandparents

The number of millennials who have not moved out of their parents or grandparents homes has climbed to a 75-year high of 40 percent. The high-water mark for young people “failing to launch” was set during the Great Depression. Its duplication after eight years of Obama Administration policies is seen by some as a poor legacy for the outgoing chief executive.

One who doesn’t see it that way is President Obama. “The Republicans do a lot of talking about family values, but it has been my policies that have brought succeeding generations under the same roof,” he boasted. “The whole notion that children should go out on their own is an American deviation from our species’ early roots. In the less developed parts of the world it is common for multiple generations to live in the same one-room dwelling. This seems more natural to me and is a goal we need to work toward both for the sake of the family and the ecosystem.”

“A key contributor to this salutary development has been our conversion of the workforce from 40-hour-a-week wage-slavery to part-time temporary ‘gig’ style jobs,” Obama added. “Nearly 95 percent of the new jobs created over the last eight years have fit this new model. It’s been a mutually reinforcing transformation. The income from a part-time job is usually insufficient to support an independent lifestyle. The lower demands on these employees’ time allows them to engage in more leisure activities if they can live with their parents. It’s a win-win scenario.”

The president expressed hope that his last-minute binge of regulatory actions imposing more costly regulations on businesses would “thwart Trump from imposing his workaholic vision on America. In my view, the new generation of Americans doesn’t want or need full-time jobs in order to live in harmony with the Earth. If Trump succeeds in forcing more people to live independently by giving up the leisure I’ve built into the system I believe voters will turn against him and return Democrats to power in the next election.”

Meanwhile, the First Family is in Hawaii enjoying what will likely be their last jaunt on the taxpayers’ dime. The current 16-day trip is estimated to cost more than four million dollars. This brings their eight-year total to a record-setting $85 million. Of course, millennials forced to live with their parents because they can only get part-time jobs are spared the ecologically harmful impacts of even a modest Hawaii vacation.

Actress Recants Abortion Wish

After expressing regrets that she had never had the opportunity to get an abortion, Lena Dunham, actress and producer of the pornographic HBO show “Girls,” recanted, saying that “while the experience of getting an abortion seemed magical, it dawned on me that a prerequisite would have to be having sex with a man or having some guy’s icky ‘juice’ squirted into me at a clinic. In retrospect, I realized that this would be too high of a price to pay for me to join the ranks of the brave women who have undergone this life-defining procedure.

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.

John Semmens — Semi-News — A Satirical Look at Recent News Amid all the caterwauling from Democrats about Russians supposedly hacking the Democratic National Committee’s computer system comes a report from the Republican National Committee that a similar attempt on their computer system was rebuffed. RNC chairman Reince Priebus explained “naturally, we were alert to the possibility that hostile entities might try to break into our system. To avert this threat we instructed all of our personnel to ignore and delete any emails from persons claiming to have millions of dollars intended for deposit to our account from a deceased African government official. The strategy was simple and easily executed. There were attempts to hack us, but none succeeded.” Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta characterized the RNC’s approach as “essentially racist in nature. Democrats would never slough off communications from Africans, especially messages offering money. We were running the most expensive presidential campaign in American history. The fact that the Russian hackers exploited our openness and financial need shows that they would stoop to the lowest and most devious level in their quest to steal the election for Trump.” Podesta dismissed the embarrassing content of the DNC emails published by Wikileaks following the hack as “an inherently unfair intrusion that ought not to have been allowed to affect the election. Voters had no right to see these emails much less act upon them. That they did is a travesty that greatly damaged our democracy.” “In a court of law illegally obtained evidence would be barred from being considered by the jury,” Podesta continued. “Likewise, the illegally purloined emails ought to have been barred from being considered by the voters. That they weren’t barred is a flaw in our electoral process.” Remedies suggested by Podesta included “near term actions to rectify the injustice done to Secretary Clinton by either persuading the electoral college members to cast their ballots for the winner of the popular vote or by having President Obama issue an executive order calling for a new election. If this latter option is chosen we should also implement protections against the publication of illegitimate information in this re-vote and in all future elections by requiring all campaign-related news to be cleared for accuracy prior to publication. In this regard, the measures being taken by Snopes, ABC News, Politifact and FactCheck.org to prohibit fake news are a good first step. Ultimately, we will need to establish a cabinet level Department of Truth to regulate what can be published on the Internet and elsewhere.” Democrats weren’t alone in alleging Russian skulduggery, former GOP presidential candidate Sen. Lindsay Graham (SC) also blamed the Russians for his failed bid to capture his Party’s nomination. “Given my credentials and platform it is inconceivable that I could have fairly lost to a political neophyte like Trump,” Graham argued. “Clearly, this isprima facie evidence of hostile interference.” The Senator announced he “will cross the aisle and vote with my Democratic colleagues to postpone the inauguration until the Russian hackers are fully investigated.” Meanwhile, the CIA declined to brief the House on the hacking issue citing “security” as its rationale. Agency Director John Brennan contended that “Congress is as leaky as a sieve. Briefing them is the same as broadcasting over open air waves. We need to keep a wrap on this to preserve the President’s tactical advantage of surprise over the Russians.” In related news, a post-election Wikileaks revelation indicated that Trump rivals Jeb Bush, Carly Fiorina, and John Kasich were given financial inducements by the Clinton campaign to refrain from endorsing their Party’s nominee following the GOP Convention in July. Dems Say Russian Hacking “an Act of War” President Obama ratcheted up the confrontational rhetoric the Democratic Party has leveled at Russia for allegedly “hacking the election to ensure their ‘puppet’ Trump would defeat Secretary Clinton.” Retiring Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev) called the hack “as bad as 9/11. The attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon only killed some ordinary Americans. The Russian hack blocked the ascension of the most qualified person to ever seek the presidency of the United States. That is a blow that will have negative reverberations for generations to come.” “The Russian interference in our election is a virtual coup against the American people’s right to choose their own leaders,” Obama declared. “It is worse than the attack Japan made on Pearl Harbor 75 years ago. The Japanese only destroyed a few naval vessels and a couple of thousand sailors and soldiers. The Russian intrusion has attempted to overthrow our entire government. Our response must be proportionate to this threat.” The President went on to promise that “we will strike back at a time and place of our own choosing. There will be no advance warnings. There will be no negotiations or compromises. Russia’s only escape from our wrath is to confess to their crime and pay reparations. As for Trump, this poseur who has steadfastly refused to acknowledge his complicity will be jailed or deported to Russia, if there still is a Russia after I’m done with them.” In his headlong rush toward nuclear brinkmanship, President Obama neglected to mention the illegal financial aid Saudi Arabia provided to the Hillary campaign. Neither did he remember his own efforts to intervene in the Israeli election to try to defeat Netanyahu. Presidential Press Secretary Josh Earnest insisted that these instances of meddling “are irrelevant since, unlike the Russian hacking, they didn’t succeed.” In contrast, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton’s former rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, advised that “we should not blame the Russians for the Democratic Party’s rigged nomination of the most unpopular presidential candidate in history for the Party’s loss in the presidential race.” Bill to Block US Funding of Terrorists Introduced Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ken) have co-sponsored the “Stop Arming Terrorists Act” to stem the flow of US tax dollars going to Middle Eastern terrorist groups. That such legislation might be necessary is shocking. “If you or I gave money, weapons or support to al-Qaeda or ISIS, we would be thrown in jail,” Gabbard said. “Yet, our own government has been covertly funneling American tax dollars to a series of Islamic fanatics for years. This is madness.” Massie maintains that “madness is too mild a term to use. The CIA has been arming bloodthirsty jihadis in multiple countries. This has amped up the carnage to levels of truly hideous magnitude. Monstrous would more accurately describe what our government has done. It must stop.” According to Massie, “the bill would prohibit the U.S. government from using American taxpayer dollars to provide funding, weapons, training, and intelligence support to terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS, or to countries who are providing direct or indirect support to those same groups.” CIA Director John Brennan opposes “the bill’s unwarranted restriction of the Agency’s flexibility in carrying out the Administration’s policy around the globe. These politicians don’t have the necessary expertise to judge what we do. Even worse, the idea that members of Congress would go public with this information strikes me as disloyal and treasonous. This is a threat that I think merits a more aggressive response.” 95 Poll Books Missing in Michigan Recount In the Detroit precincts where voter logs showed fewer people casting ballots than votes that were counted on election day the recount effort also discovered that 95 voter log books went missing. While the mismatch of counts and the disappearing books would seem to imply that election fraud played a role in boosting the candidacy of Hillary Clinton, Detroit elections officials insisted that everything was legit. Democratic precinct chairman Charlie Crook assured that “these little discrepancies happen nearly every year. The so-called missing logs were merely sent out for re-calibration. Now that they’ve been fixed the gap between voters recorded and ballots counted has been significantly reduced. If it weren’t for time pressure and excessive scrutiny by outsiders I’m sure a perfect balance could’ve been achieved.” NYC Muslim Hate Crime Hoax Yasmin Seweid, the 18 year-old girl who claimed Trump supporters harassed her on the city subway, lied. Nevertheless, her older sister Sara Seweid blamed “excessively zealous police work for blowing my sister’s alibi. She was out past her curfew and would have been severely beaten by our father for this infraction. Naturally, she made up the harassment story to avoid this beating. Now, as a result of the NYPD’s unwarranted investigation into this minor incident, Yasmin will be beaten.” The older sister charged that “insensitivity and ignorance of our culture has resulted in a completely avoidable outcome. But a combination of hatred for Muslims and love of Trump led the Jews on the police force to delve deeper into the event than they should have. If only Muslim values had more deeply penetrated the NYPD lassitude and indolence would have rescued my sister from the punishment her little white lie was meant to avert.” Ironically, it was the Seweid family’s anti-Trump posts on their Facebook page that encouraged police to pursue the story more vigorously. “The amount of venom aimed at Trump on this page combined with inconsistencies in Yasmin’s account of the purported incident raised our suspicions,” said Detective Leonard Brisco. “From there the hoax quickly unraveled.” Michelle Obama Says Trump Win Destroys Hope In a CBS News interview prior to her family’s departure for a vacation that will further its record-setting pace for taxpayer-funded personal leisure, First Lady Michelle Obama says “the election of Donald Trump has destroyed the hope that my husband brought to so many in this country. Hope is necessary. What else do you have if you don’t have hope? What do you give your kids if you can’t give them hope?” Michelle contrasted “the uplifting message we provided to America with the dreary future Donald Trump has promised. His vision of herding Americans back into the workforce will condemn people we’ve freed from drudgery to reenter the rat race where they will be forced to sacrifice their dreams in order to toil for their supper. Is this not a step backward toward the days when so many of our people were compelled to work for cruel masters?” “Millions of Americans will come to rue the day the country turned aside from the progressive transformation that has been underway for the last eight years,” she predicted. “Hopefully, the Trump interlude will be brief and voters will make a course correction to get back on the road to the promised land in 2020.” 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 award-winning “Dear Future Mom” video featuring children with Down Syndrome making the case for the value of their lives was banned from TV by France’s Conseil d’État (State Council). According to the Council, the video was deemed “too insensitive” since it was “likely to trouble the consciences of women who had made different personal life choices” (i.e., had aborted babies predicted to have Down Syndrome).

Council spokesman Henri Abattage defended the ban, maintaining that “our decision is in keeping with public perceptions of what is right. There’s a reason why 90 percent of the pregnancies afflicted with this syndrome end in abortion. Why should the minority who object to this medical intervention be permitted to discomfit the vast majority who approve of it? Television is a medium that ought to confirm widely held values, not disrupt them with contrary opinions, especially those that may cause psychological distress.”

Archbishop Joseph Kurtz, former president of the U.S. Bishops’ Conference, said he was “saddened but not surprised” by the ban. “First of all, a diagnosis establishes only a probability, not a certainty, that the child will have the syndrome. Many completely normal babies are killed by a hasty resort to abortion. Second, as the video clearly demonstrates, many of the afflicted are adorable and loving individuals whose right to live ought not to be callously dismissed. I encourage all members of every society to view this video.”

“Bishops can encourage all they want, but the Council will not neglect is duty to insulate the general public from offensive presentations of idiosyncratic perspectives,” Abattage promised. “There are boundaries that must not be crossed. This is one of them.”

TV isn’t the only avenue being closed off for communicating ideas out-of-sync with the culture of abortion. The French Parliament also enacted a ban on web site publication of messages that “discourage recourse to abortion.” Member of Parliament Rene Escargot explained that “the days when anti-social notions can intrude on people’s consciousness are over. Anyone attempting to dissuade a woman from exercising her inalienable right to obtain an abortion can and will be suppressed. It is the will of the majority.”

Group Says OSU Terrorist “Wrongly Shot”

The Ohio State University Coalition for Black Liberation held a rally to protest racist cops’ shooting black men. One of the “wrongly shot” individuals was Abdul Razak Ali Artan who ran over some students with his automobile and went on a rampage stabbing others until he was shot by campus police.

One of the rally’s spokespersons, Maryam Abidi characterized the shooting as “a disproportionate response. Artan was only armed with a knife. There was no call for police to escalate to the use of firearms.”

Abidi called the claim that the shooting was necessary to save the lives of others who might have been stabbed “a self-serving and tired excuse for police brutality. Whether Artan was a threat to others is irrelevant. He was still a human being entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The appropriate law enforcement response would have been a non-lethal apprehension followed by a fair trial.”

What constitutes a “fair trial” may have been illustrated by Above the Law Elie Mystal editor’s recommendation that black jurors should vote to acquit all non-white defendants accused of crimes against white victims. “I see it as a balancing out of the injustice inflicted on blacks accused of crimes against whites during the Jim Crow era,” Mystal said. “Will it mean exonerating some guilty men? Sure, but that will be payback for all the innocent blacks railroaded by racist juries across America for centuries.”

As it turns out, Artan posted a rant against the oppression of Muslims on his Facebook page prior to his violent attack on his fellow students. In the rant he cited the looks he feared he would get from other students if he tried to follow Islam’s daily calls to prayer, saying that “this would intrude on my right as a Muslim to receive the respect from unbelievers which the Quran commands. My only honorable course is to kill as many of them as I can before I am martyred for Allah.”

Despite the Facebook evidence, Associate Professor Pranav Jani lamented that “since the perpetrator was killed we may never understand why he lashed out like he did.” This sentiment paralleled Ohio Governor John Kasich’s fear that “we may never know the motive behind this unfortunate event.”

In related news, the Church of the Holy Trinity in Kristianstad, Sweden took pity on a group of Muslim refugees and invited them to make themselves a home on church property. Church officials were distressed to find feces and puddles of urine in the back pews of the chapel. In addition to not being housebroken, some of the men terrorized parishioners by screaming Islamic chants during church services, behaving inappropriately in front of young women in the church, climbing on the organ pipes, and, in one instance, trying to kidnap a baby about to be baptized. Unapologetic refugee Ibn Baddas proclaimed “all the world is for Allah and his believers. We should kill these kaffirs for trespassing on land belonging to Islam, but we are merciful.”

Obama Orders Review of Election Interference

President Obama ordered federal intelligence agencies to prepare a report on Russian cyber attacks that interfered with the 2016 election outcome and deliver it to him before January 20, 2017, “so I may take whatever action is required to restore integrity to the democratic process.”

Homeland security adviser Lisa Monaco called the investigation “crucial to the president’s decision on whether he may need to vacate the reported outcome. Rather than let the country to be locked-into accepting a new president illegitimately installed by the dirty tricks of a foreign government, the president needs the information necessary to support his continuation in office until a fair election process can determine a successor.”

“A concomitant concern is what sort of counterattack we may need to launch against the Russians for what would clearly be an act of war on their part,” Monaco added. “Putin may think his operatives have been clever enough to not have left a trace of a clue confirming their hostile intervention, but if, in the judgment of our experts, the conclusion is firm that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, the President is determined to strike back.”

Monaco insisted that “Trump’s assertion that the idea that Russia was involved and that thoughts of retaliation against them are ‘crazy ideas,’ heightens our suspicion that he may have been an active participant in their nefarious scheme to rig the outcome. His pre-election day contention that the process was rigged may have been a Freudian slip that tends to confirm to his complicity.”

Expenditures by the Trump and Clinton campaigns were also cited as “a virtual smoking gun” by Monaco. “In the end, Clinton outspent Trump by $565 million to $322 million. This plus the almost unanimous support from media outlets for Secretary Clinton argue that Trump’s apparent win must be regarded as highly improbable. Thankfully, President Obama is taking the unprecedented measures needed to protect the nation.”

In related news, recently defeated presidential candidate Hillary Clinton publicly urged Congress “to take steps to stamp out the epidemic of malicious fake news before it destroys the country. A deluge of false stories and outright lies enabled an unfit poser to eke out an apparent Electoral College majority over many say was the most qualified person to ever seek the presidency. Though efforts are currently underway to avert this travesty, it is also imperative that laws be changed to ensure that news be properly vetted by recognized and qualified journalists before it can be released to the public on any media platform.”

Clinton Campaign Tried to Silence Friendly Voice

While the official meme promoted by the left-stream media is that President-Elect Donald Trump is a threat to freedom of speech and freedom of the press, a story reported by MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski points in the opposite direction.

The co-host of the cable news network’s “Morning Joe” program related a pre-election day incident in which an irate Hillary Clinton campaign official contacted MSNBC executives demanding that she be punished for criticizing the candidate’s “taking the election for granted.”

“The thing is, I was worried that Hillary might lose the election and was trying to help her make a small course correction,” Brzezinski said. “This was around the same time that all the polls were showing her with a big lead. I thought the Clinton campaign was acting like the whole thing was already over and they could just coast to an easy win. I was giving them friendly advice. I didn’t think I did anything wrong. Yet, here they were calling for my head. The painful irony is that her arrogance may have been a factor in her losing to Donald Trump.”

In related news, the Dutch establishment’s efforts to stifle Geert Wilders—the leader of the right-wing Party for Freedom—may not work out as well as they hope. This week a Dutch court found Wilders guilty of “inciting racial hatred” when he asked attendees at a 2014 political rally whether they wanted “more or fewer Moroccans to be admitted into the Netherlands.” The court declined the prosecutor’s demand that Wilders be fined €5,000 and held that “conviction alone should be sufficient shame to drive Mr. Wilders out of politics.”

Like the United States’ Donald Trump, though, Wilders has been riding vocal criticism of unrestrained immigration to electoral success. The notoriety he has gained for speaking out on this issue now has his Party leading in the polls for next year’s scheduled elections.

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

Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) has joined with Sen. John McCain (R-Az) to modify the recently passed Justice Against Sponsors of Terror Act (JASTA). This law allows victims of terrorist attacks to sue the governments that provide funding and sanctuary to terrorists.

Graham is concerned that “the existing law can come back to bite us. When Congress overrode President Obama’s veto they were thinking ‘let’s make these Muslim governments pay for the damages done by the groups they harbor.’ What was overlooked was the possibility that our own government would be made liable for damage done by terrorists armed by the Obama Administration. Ambassador Stevens, for example, was killed by weapons our country supplied to Libyan terror groups. If the families of those killed in the Benghazi attack sued our own government the embarrassment and damage to our prestige would be incalculable.”

“Haste in amending JASTA is essential,” Graham urged. “If we don’t get this passed before President Obama leaves office we’ll have no chance to achieve the needed reform. A President Trump would surely veto such a change. A President Obama, who didn’t want JASTA to begin with, will readily sign an amendment limiting its scope.”

In a second legislative endeavor, Graham joined with Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill) to draft a bill that would bar Trump from deporting some of those in the country illegally. “This bill is necessary because all that currently protects these people from being deported is an Executive Order issued by President Obama,” Graham pointed out. “That Executive Order can be countermanded by Trump on his own initiative without the consent of Congress. Rule by a unilateral Executive Order from a President Trump without Congressional consent would be dictatorial. This is something we must not allow to happen.”

Obama to Admit Refugees Barred from Entering Australia

The Obama Administration has agreed to admit nearly 2500 refugees that the Australian government has refused to allow into their country for “security reasons.” The refugees are from terrorism “hot spots” and have been excluded for failing to clear the country’s vetting process.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va) have complained about the lack of transparency in the President’s actions. “In a matter having obvious security implications the President is obliged to consult Congress before agreeing to bring potentially dangerous individuals into the United States,” Grassley contended. “The fact that these men were not deemed a good risk by Australia raises a red flag we ought to heed.”

“What Senator Grassley and Congressman Goodlatte are overlooking is that, almost to a man, these refugees are Muslim,” President Obama observed. “For us not to admit them would essentially be a decision wrought with implications of religious discrimination. Their rejection by Australia makes it even more imperative that we offer them the refuge promised on our Statue of Liberty. The chance that a few of these men may go on to wage jihad against our citizens is the price we have to pay as a free nation.”

President-Elect Donald Trump challenged Obama’s contention and insisted “these are the type of people who must not be allowed into our country. The pledge on the Statue of Liberty is meant to allow people who believe in freedom to come to America. Islamic terrorists are enemies of freedom who kill and destroy for the purpose of replacing freedom with religious tyranny.”

Obama brushed aside the President-Elect’s objections, saying that “by the time he is in a position to influence immigration policy these men will be secretly distributed to undisclosed locations inside the country. He won’t be able to find them, much less have any hope of getting them out of America.”

In related news, the government was forced to suspend citizenship naturalization ceremonies after it became public that the FBI background check system hasn’t been working for an undisclosed period of time. Governor Jerry Brown (D-Calif) invited those seeking naturalization to “come to California. We will give you documents that will enable you to exercise all of the privileges of citizenship, including voting, in our state.”

EEOC Announces New Workplace Regs

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) announced new workplace regulations requiring employers to accommodate the languages spoken by prospective hires and current employees or “face sanctions including fines and/or revocation of permission to operate.” Oddly, the EEOC cited “the growing diversity of the nation’s workforce as the justification for the new rule.”

Under the new regulations requiring employees to speak or understand English is now deemed unlawful discrimination. “Employees have the right to communicate in a language of their own choosing,” EEOC Chairperson Jenny Yang argued. “It is the employer’s responsibility to learn the language of his employees or hire an interpreter if he can’t.”

The “Tower of Babel” implications of the new regulation didn’t faze Yang. “A polyglot environment is a vibrant environment,” she contended. “The opportunity for employers and employees to be exposed the cultural enrichment from such an environment is too good to pass up.”

Yang disputed critics fears that a “polyglot environment” might not contribute to business efficiency or success, saying that “immersion is a good way to learn a new language. Employers will find their horizons broadened in ways they didn’t think was possible. If they aren’t adept with languages their need to hire translators will stimulate employment by creating jobs.”

In addition to barring employers from requiring employees to understand English, the EEOC also barred requiring Social Security numbers as this “would present an insurmountable obstacle to those in the country illegally. The Administration has determined that immigration status cannot be used as a factor to exclude those without documentation from being hired.” Yang declared employers’ need for SSNs in order to comply with IRS tax collection regulations “not our problem.”

California’s Brave New World

While the most of the country has voted to veer away from the transformation of America spearheaded by President Obama, California has vowed to stay the course, at least on the environmental front.

In terms of air quality, the state has enacted new regulations to limit how much methane gas cows are allowed to emit while farting. California Air Resources Board science adviser Ryan McCarthy called the attempt “truly ambitious. No one really knows how we’re going to get this done. The State Assembly deserves credit for taking on a task that may well be impossible.”

“The obvious first response would be to change the cows’ diet to something less gassy,” McCarthy said. “But cows are evolved and have been bred to eat a high-fiber diet that may be inextricably linked to gassy emissions. Whether it is feasible in an economic or biological sense to shift them to different foods is unknown. Yogurt is a food that may help reduce gas, but trying to feed cows yogurt would create a circular conundrum. Clearly, we face a mountain of challenges if we are to achieve our objective.”

“A second response would be to design a system of capturing the emissions before they enter the air,” McCarthy added. “Attaining an effective seal strikes me as a major difficulty, as would separating out the solids from the gases. If we can recover the methane it could be used to power electric generators. This could offset some of the cost of the program.”

Meanwhile, judicial authorities in San Francisco have voided the City’s law against excreting in the streets. Judge John Stewart declared that “the ordinance against this is basically unenforceable. The penalty is a fine that the indigents living on the streets can’t afford to pay. It is also discriminatory against the homeless. Just because a person can’t afford rent doesn’t mean his bodily needs are negated. Until such a time that the City provides free housing with toilets for every resident it must endure public evacuation of the bladders and bowels of the less fortunate.”

DOJ Declines to Investigate Intimidation Against Trump Electors

Despite numerous reports of harassment and death threats against electors pledged to vote for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump when the Electoral College meets on December 19, the US Department of Justice, thus far, has declined to take any action. DOJ deputy press secretary David Jacobs cast the issue as “not yet ripe enough.”

“From what we have heard these electors have been called names and warned they could be harmed if they don’t switch their vote to Secretary Clinton,” Jacobs recounted. “Name calling is protected freedom of speech. Just weeks ago the two leading candidates were calling each other ‘racist’ and ‘crooked.’ Given such vituperation at the top it shouldn’t surprise anyone that the backers of the loser would vent in the way they have. In our view, bad-mouthing a few electors is better than rioting in the streets.”

“As for the death threats, without actual casualties it is difficult to determine their seriousness,” Jacobs continued. “Historically, it has been minorities that have been lynched for voting the wrong way—that is, against the white racists that controlled Jim Crow governments across the South. So far, none of the Trump electors have been lynched and none of the Trump supporters that have been beaten in the streets has been seriously injured. Unless this changes, the Attorney General sees no reason to get the Department involved.”

Ironically, the Jim Crow Era crimes cited by Jacobs were carried out by Democrats in support of racist governments run by Democrats. Given the widespread insanity emanating from the supporters of the defeated Hillary Clinton, it is impossible to rule out the possibility that the lack of casualties can be taken as a lamentation for a loss of passion among the Party faithful compared to times past.

Left Mourns Passing of Castro

This week, long-time Cuban dictator Fidel Castro died at the age of 90. He violently took over the government of Cuba in 1959 and ruled it with an iron fist for 50 years until his retirement in 2011. His 85-year-old brother Raul has governed the island the last five years.

Fidel’s rule began with mass executions of opponents by firing squad for the entertainment of cheering crowds at the Havana soccer stadium. Enemies who weren’t murdered were thrown into filthy prisons where they were tortured and abused. The vast majority of Cubans lived lives of abject poverty and oppression. Over a million of them escaped by floating to the United States, many on make-shift rafts.

President Obama called Castro “a man who has had an enormous impact on the people around him.”

Pope Francis called Castro’s death “sad news.”

Former President Jimmy Carter said he and his wife “remember fondly our visits with him in Cuba. He called me a friend.”

Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein praised him as “a symbol of the struggle for justice.”

Black Lives Matter issued a statement hailing Castro as “an inspiration for people seeking freedom and peace.”

In contrast, thousands of surviving escapees and their descendants living in the “Little Havana” section of Miami danced in the streets.

On the right, President-Elect Donald Trump excoriated “Fidel Castro’s legacy of firing squads, theft, unimaginable suffering, poverty and the denial of fundamental human rights” and pledged to roll back the Obama administration’s opening to Cuba unless his successors “move away from the horrors endured for too long, and toward a future in which the wonderful Cuban people finally live in the freedom they so richly deserve.”

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. 

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