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

This week, Brian Fallon, former press secretary on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, warned Republicans not to confirm Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court, saying “they will pay dearly at the polls for putting a man accused of sexual assault in this high position.”

“It’s not as if sexual perverts are underrepresented on the Court,” Fallon asserted. “They already have Clarence Thomas—an accused dirty talker—to protect their interests in cases coming before that august body. Do we really need to add an accused groper?”

Fallon pointed to the absence of proof of Kavanaugh’s innocence, calling it “very telling that Judge Kavanaugh cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Dr. Ford’s allegations are false. He lived in the general area and during the possible dates where and when the assault took place. The calendar of activities he offers in his defense is not comprehensive. It doesn’t account for every minute of his time over the summer of 1982. Further, in as much as Dr. Ford isn’t certain the attack didn’t occur in 1981 or 1983, there are a wide array of other possible opportunities for sexual assault that cannot be ruled out.”

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) concurred in Fallon’s analysis and added that “we need to keep in mind that it isn’t just one woman who has accused Kavanaugh. Two others have come forward to point the finger at him. How many allegations do we need to hear before we are persuaded of this man’s unfitness for office? If Kavanaugh had any decency he would withdraw himself from consideration.”

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) argued that “I can’t understand why my Republican colleagues don’t comprehend how the rude comments Kavanaugh made about flatulence and barfing in his high school yearbook disqualify him. This kind of immature behavior is not something we should tolerate from a man who aspires to sit on the highest court.”

Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) contended that “Mr. Kavanaugh’s anger over the allegations displayed a temperament inappropriate to what is expected of a Supreme Court Justice. Compare this with the calm demeanor demonstrated by President Obama’a appointees Sotomayor and Kagan during the hearings preceding their confirmations. This country doesn’t need one more angry white man in a position of power. Voters can ensure this doesn’t happen by electing Democrats to Congress who will put a stop to it.”

Meanwhile, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore) announced he is filing suit to ask a court to bar the Senate from conducting a vote of Kavanaugh’s confirmation “until a full record” is available. Asked to clarify what a “full record” entails, the Senator replied “I’ll know it when I see it. There are millions of pages of documents that Kavanaugh has touched in his career as a Bush Administration official and appeals court judge. I think it is only fair that the court hold up the confirmation process until these documents are fully reviewed and analyzed.”

Taxes Cost More than Food & Clothing

Bureau of Labor Statistic’s data on consumer expenditures for 2017 reveal that the average non-welfare-dependent family had to pay more in taxes ($16,749) than they did for food and clothing combined ($9,562). The 2017 tax burden was down from 2016’s $17,153.

Reactions to this data split along partisan lines. The Trump Administration lamented the continuing high tax burden, but took some encouragement from the decline from 2016 to 2017. Trump’s top economic adviser, Larry Kudlow acknowledged that “reducing the tax burden is an essential step in the President’s effort to revitalize the US economy. It’s a shame that the government takes such a large share of every wage-earner’s income. The modest progress we’ve made so far at least puts us on the right path.”

Democrats have a different perspective. “What Republicans aren’t telling voters is that a significant portion of the taxes go toward buying food and clothing for people who are unwilling or unable to buy it for themselves,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) said. “This is the ‘social safety net’ that was initiated by FDR’s New Deal back in the 1930s. Do voters really want to undo that deal? Is keeping a few hundred more dollars a year from your salary more important than being your brother’s keeper? We’re confident that Trump’s plan will be repudiated at the polls. Voters know that Democrats can be trusted to make better use of the nation’s scarce resources than the greedy individuals who clamor for tax cuts.”

New Immigration Standard Called “Unfair”

The Trump Administration’s new standard requiring immigrants seeking permanent residence to demonstrate they will not become welfare-dependent was assailed by top Democrats as “fundamentally unfair.” The new rule would require that would-be new residents have the demonstrated ability to earn an income greater than 250% of the poverty level. Over the last five years more than 70% of immigrants from Latin America fell short of this standard. In contrast, more than 70% of immigrants from Asia met the standard.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) charged that “it is the height of selfishness for a rich country like America to want to restrict the entry of indigent people across the globe from access to their rightful share of the Earth’s bounty. Our Statue of Liberty explicitly invites the poor and tired to come here. This latest attempt to require arrivals to be self-supporting reneges on this promise.”

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) saw an even more “sinister scheme to suppress Democratic votes. The right of people to elect representatives who will redistribute wealth from the haves to the have-nots is a fundamental principle of democracy. The restrictions Trump wants to place on who will be admitted as permanent residents violates this principle. The kind of self-sufficient people Trump’s immigration policy would favor are likely Republican voters. I don’t see how the courts could possibly allow this politically discriminatory new rule to stand.”

Meanwhile, U.S. District Judge Edward Chen wondered whether the policy “may be racist in intent. Racial minorities are disproportionately represented within the lower income groups. A rule that favors the self-supporting would tilt immigration away from Latinos and toward whites and those, like Asians, who act white. In my view this seems to violate the 14th Amendment.”

1st Amendment Protects Harassment

CNN host and legal expert Don Lemon chided Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex) for objecting to being harassed and threatened in public last week. Out for dinner at the DC restaurant Fiola, Cruz and his wife were accosted by activists from a group called Smash Racism. This group deems it their right to “disrupt the peace of right-wing scum.” Cruz and his wife temporarily left the restaurant and reentered later via the back door. Smash Racism has since added Fiola’s to their list of “right-wing scum,” warning the owner and his employees that “you are not safe.”

Lemon contended that “this type of citizen feedback is what Cruz signed up for when he decided to run for public office. As a so-called ‘strict constructionist’ of the Constitution, the Senator is well aware that freedom of speech protects a citizen’s right to approach him anytime and anywhere to air his grievances. There’s nothing in the First Amendment that says the speech has to be polite or that it can’t be loud.”

“I think the kind of citizen activism shown by Smash Racism is healthy for our democracy,” Lemon added. “We shouldn’t expect everyone to feign tolerance for abhorrent views or politicians. An insistence that decorum must prevail favors the more educated. If knowledge and verbal skills are allowed to dominate, famed political debaters like Cruz will thrive. But this shuts out the ignorant and inarticulate whose main hope of being heard is to drown out those they disagree with. Maxine has it right. We need to show supporters of Trump that they are unwelcome anywhere, anytime in our democracy.”

In related news, former President Obama bristled at the “passive aggression” shown toward him by young attendees at a recent speech of his and demanded that they “put down your damned phones and listen to me.” The great irony here was that many of the phones in use were free “Obama phones” given out during his administration.

Old Soviet Excuse Recycled

This week Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) tried to blame bad weather for the population drain affecting his state. Marc Molinaro, his Republican opponent in the race for governor, pounced on the excuse and pointed out that “Stalin and the old Soviet Union said the same thing after their disastrous collectivization of farms led to a sharp decline in output and widespread famine.”

“Weather is a variable that has always existed,” Molinaro observed. “Individuals have coped with it for thousands of years. The capitalism and free markets that have prevailed across the United States have enabled individuals to mitigate and overcome difficult changes in the weather. The decline in population in our state is more related to the high taxes favored by the Democratic Party. Productive people are taking their brains and their capital to states that have lower taxes. If we want to retain the best and brightest in our state we need to copy the policies of the low-tax states, not concoct lane theories blaming the weather.”

Cuomo sought to defend his contention by pointing out that “most of the states gaining population are warm-weather states. Since warm weather and low taxes seem to go together in the states gaining population, I defy anyone to prove that weather is not the primary cause of the population shift. I’m confident that voters will give me the benefit of the doubt when they go to the polls in November.”

In related news, President Trump told a United Nations audience that “socialism and communism only produce suffering, corruption, and decay.” The Washington Post’s global opinions editor Karen Attiah called Trump’s remarks “chilling. He’s basically disrespecting the social systems chosen by most other countries around the world. I mean, just this week in Venezuela, President Maduro announced that taxes would be raised to astronomical levels to save the socialist revolution. So, even if we suppose Trump is right in his analysis, destroying another country’s firmly held beliefs is no way to conduct diplomacy.”

Woman Arrested for Saving Dogs & Cats

In North Carolina, Tammie Hedges rescued 27 dogs and cats from drowning when Hurricane Florence hit the state. She provided shelter, food, and medicine to animals fleeing the flooding. After the storm ended she turned the rescued animals over to government authorities who promptly arrested her for “operating a shelter without a license.” She is currently out of jail on a $10,000 bond.

North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services spokesman, Henry Hoseman explained that “Ms. Hedges lacked the proper credentials to undertake the actions she took. She may have felt that she was doing the right thing, but she is not qualified to make that determination. We have rules for a reason. If we allow exceptions based on presumed extraordinary contingencies we open the door to an untold string of abuses and the inevitable tragedies that would ensue.”

Hoseman discounted the value of saving these animals lives by pointing out that “our state is overrun with dogs and cats. The fate of a couple of dozen pales in comparison with our obligation to enforce the laws against unlicensed animal care. If we make an example of Ms. Hedges others may be deterred from similarly taking the law into their own hands.”

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.” This post is also available on Facebook.

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, a New York Times story about a scheme in which Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein would wear a “wire” to secretly record President Trump and recruit cabinet members to activate Trump’s removal from office under the provisions of the 25th Amendment was blasted as “inaccurate” and “factually incorrect” by Rosenstein.

“It is shameful that a respected newspaper would rely on anonymous sources to defame me,” Rosenstein complained. “After all I have done to help the Times over the years acquire difficult to obtain information on sensitive topics from internal government archives, I can only regard this as a betrayal. They’re treating me like I am the enemy. I thought we were on the same side in the battle to save the country.”

Adam Goldman, co-author of the Times article with Michael S. Schmidt, acknowledged that “while a couple of our sources asked to remain anonymous their account was backed up by memos purportedly written by former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe that were forwarded to us by a person from the Mueller investigation who also wishes to remain anonymous. So, I’d have to say that our story is as firmly founded as any Times story.”

Rosenstein rejected what he labeled “a poor excuse for shoddy journalism” and asked that “we apply a little logic to this situation. First, based on my prior friendly cooperation the Times reporters should have checked with me before going on the attack. Second, the idea that I would participate in a cumbersome 25th Amendment process in order to rid the country of Trump is absurd. Third, let me point out that McCabe is currently under criminal investigation. Surely, that ought to raise a red flag as to his credibility.”

“Remember, it was me who appointed Mueller as Special Prosecutor,” Rosenstein added. “Given Mueller’s history of going above-and-beyond normal procedures to ensure the convictions of his targets why would I want to mess that up with a lame 25th Amendment gambit? Besides, with the contacts I have in the intelligence community I could easily find a person with the capability to permanently remove Trump from office if the Mueller effort were to fail. I think any reasonable person would have to side with me on this issue.”

Rosenstein’s denials were given short shrift by Fox News anchor Chris Wallace who judged Rosenstein’s protest to be “weak and lawyerly. I’d call it the kind of ‘non-denial denial’ that leaves room for later revisions if the real truth ever comes out.”

Dems Claim GOP Request for Evidence from Accuser “Unfair”

Christine Blasey Ford, the college professor who has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of groping her at a drunken party in somebody’s house near a park sometime in the early 1980s when both were high school students, has been resisting Republican requests for her to testify at the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) insists that “the Republican demand that it is the accuser’s responsibility to tell her story to them is an attempt to silence her. Christine has already done her part to put the ball in play with her accusation. It is now Kavanaugh’s job to prove that she shouldn’t be believed. Can he account for his whereabouts for all of his high school years and show that her story can’t be true? If not, then shouldn’t her account be the one we go with since he can’t disprove it?”

Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif), concurred with her colleague, saying that “Dr. Blasey has fulfilled her obligation by leveling the charge in the letter I received last July. She showed great courage in making her originally anonymous allegation. Now it’s up to the FBI to investigate to see whether it is true.”

Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) denounced Republican demands for evidence as “the same old suppression of women by white men that has stained America since its first days. I just want to say to the men in this country: Just shut up and step up. Do the right thing for a change and let us women rule for awhile.”

The procedure demanded by these Democrats is the exact opposite of what has been normal for this nation’s history. The first step in an allegation of a crime is the filing of a complaint by the claimed victim. The sooner this is done, the better. The complaint serves as the starting point for an investigation in which witnesses are interviewed and forensic evidence (such as torn clothing or traces of bodily fluids) is examined. Dr. Ford never filed a criminal complaint with any law enforcement agency.

In the more than three decades that have passed, any evidence that conceivably might have existed is unavailable. There are no contemporaneous witnesses. There is no forensic evidence. The only “evidence” is an unverifiable allegation made in a letter that Sen. Feinstein refuses to share with her Judiciary Committee colleagues. The Democrats are essentially arguing for a process that more closely resembles the 17th century Salem Witch trials in which the ravings of hysterical teenagers led to the execution of more than a dozen persons accused of witchcraft.

Former Vice-President Joe Biden rejected the analogy because “everyone knows there are no witches, but I know from my own experience that teenage boys grope teenage girls. Even if we can’t conclusively prove that Kavanaugh molested the teenage Chrissy Blasey, we do know that he was once a teenage boy. Since he fits the profile of a sexual molester based on this alone we cannot simply look away when the girl finally remembers 30 years later who got ‘handsy’ with her. So, to be on the safe side we must assume he’s guilty unless he can prove otherwise.”

Planned Parenthood Defends Using Tax Dollars on Campaign

Planned Parenthood Votes is focusing its political campaign expenditures on two dozen House races in hopes of aiding Democrats to retake the majority and ensure future federal disbursements to the organization. Deirdre Schifeling, executive director, defended the heavily government-subsidized organization’s partisan political spending.

“The survival of Planned Parenthood is at stake,” Schifeling contended. “Federal funding is the life’s blood we depend on to keep going in our mission to ensure that every woman who wants an abortion can get one whether she can afford it or not. But it’s not only the funding, we also need friends in Congress who support our efforts to monetize the discarded fetuses. Rather than just have these sacrificed individuals biological matter go to waste our ability to sell this material to willing buyers is a resource that must not be foreclosed to us.”

“The prospect that monster like Kavanaugh could be confirmed to a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court makes it imperative that we elect more Democrats,” she added. “I mean, here is a man who cruelly abused a teenage girl 35 years ago. Now he is on the verge of tipping the balance on the Supreme Court to overturn the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion. We need people in office who can be counted on to protect young women from the cruelty of being forced to give birth to unwanted children. A Democratic majority will protect abortion rights by impeaching Trump and Kavanaugh before they can do anymore damage to this vital civil right.”

Schifeling challenged the objection that recipients of federal subsidies shouldn’t be engaging in political campaigns by pointing out that “defense contractors reinvest a much larger amount of funds into promoting the election of legislators who can be counted on to support bigger subsidies for their companies. If it is okay for companies that produce weapons used to kill people to donate to the election of favored candidates than why wouldn’t it be okay for us to do the same?”

In related news, Leana Wen, Planned Parenthood’s new president, called abortion “a fundamental human right,” but expressed regret that “the 50% of aborted babies that are female will never get to enjoy exercising this right.”

New Videos Expose Government Subversion

This week, a new series of Project Veritas undercover videos was released. The videos show federal employees boasting that they are engaging in efforts to overthrow capitalism from within.

In one of the videos, Stuart Karaffa, a Management and Program Analyst with the Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations within the Department of State, told the Veritas investigative reporter “our goal is to resist everything, to F*ck sh*t up at every level.” Karaffa bragged, “I spend most of my workday on Democratic Socialist activity. I compose all my emails during the day, but I carefully wait until after 5:30 pm to send them. That way I can argue that my political activity is done on my own time. Maybe I’ll get caught, but it’s impossible to fire federal employees.”

In another, Natarajan Subramanian, an auditor with the US Government Accountability Office, told the Veritas reporter that “no one knows I spent six hours yesterday doing social media for DSA (Democratic Socialists of America). I break rules every day. At any point I can get fired. Do I care more about having this job, or do I care more about the movement? Obviously, the movement.”

In a third video, Department of Justice paralegal Allison Hrabar acknowledged using government owned software and computers to push a socialist agenda. Then, Jessica Schubel, the former Chief of Staff for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services during the Obama administration admitted that she wasn’t the only federal employee using her position to resist the Trump administration’s policies. “Sometimes we break the law,” she said. “But it’s for a worthy cause.”

Officials for the affected agencies speaking off-the-record vowed to “look into the matter.” All voiced doubts that anything can be done because “it’s very hard to oust even the most incompetent or insubordinate employee. The union opposes any corrective action. At best, we might be able to hire additional employees to do the work these people are refusing to do and, in fact, are undermining, but that’s a long shot. Basically, we just have to live with this kind of behavior as a natural outcome of a government as large as ours is. It’s simply too big to manage in any sensible manner.”

In related news, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton predicted that “after this election this president is going to wholesale fire people. We need a Democratically controlled Congress to block his power to get rid of executive branch employees who are bravely undermining him.” Her statement rattled Democratic pollster Nate Silver who said “I fear that there may be a sizable contingent of voters for whom the prospect of a wholesale firing of federal bureaucrats would be a good reason to vote for Republicans.”

Goverment Orders Opposition Leader to Undergo Psych Examination

The French government has ordered Marine Le Pen, leader of the right wing National Front Party to undergo a psychiatric examination “to determine whether she must be confined to a mental institution for her own well-being.” The proximate inspiration for this coercive order is Le Pen’s opposition to the continued importation of Islamic fanatics into France.

“This drastic move was made necessary by the earlier failure of massive fines imposed after Le Pen posted photos of ISIS terrorists massacring unbelievers on the Internet,” Macron explained. “In France we respect the rights of individuals to freely practice their religion. The tenets of Islam do not merely grant Muslims the right to kill unbelievers, it mandates it as an obligation to demonstrate ones commitment to the faith. Granted, it could be argued that this obligation conflicts with every French citizen’s right to life. It is the delicate job of the Government to try to balance these conflicting rights. Our efforts are impeded by interference of Ms. Le Pen’s nonconforming attitudes.”

“Let me emphasize that we are not meting out a punishment, but are seeking a cure,” French President Emmanuel Macron said. “It is the obligation of the state to see that every person is properly cared for. Idiosyncratic objections must not be permitted to divert us from this humane course of action.”

Gore Says Trump Should Be Terminated for Ethical Reasons

Former Vice-President Al Gore advanced the notion that “Trump’s Presidency should be terminated early for ethical reasons. Science has shown that climate change is the biggest threat the planet has ever seen. Not only do we see Trump denying this threat. His policies are exacerbating the threat.”

“The big economic boom that Trump is so proud of is a planetary disaster,” the former Veep contended. “More people working and more consumerism are accelerating the march to global catastrophe. After the eight years of hard work by the Obama Administration to throttle expectations it is disheartening to see that undone. The idea that everyone can prosper is unsustainable. People must get used to lower standards of living—smaller cars, smaller homes, less travel—if we hope to conserve enough resources for our leaders to continue the battle to save the planet.”

Gore vowed to “spare no effort and no expense in my mission to bring the message of simple living to every corner of the globe. I will speak to anyone who can pay my lecture fee. I will sell my books to anyone who can afford to buy them. No sacrifice is too great for me to make in this great quest I’ve undertaken in the twilight of my long and distinguished lifetime of service to the common good.”

In related news, Governor Jerry Brown (D-Calif) called Trump “a saboteur in the fight against climate change” and wished for “something to happen to this guy. I think Maxine’s suggestion that we knock off Trump is fundamentally on target. And our prisons are loaded with guys that could do the job. I’d pardon them tomorrow if I thought they could be trusted to get it done.”

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.” This post is also available on Facebook.

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, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough asserted that “President Trump is a far graver threat to America than the 9/11 attacks. The terrorists only killed a few thousand people, but Trump has poisoned the minds of tens of millions of voters.”

“There is no way that al Qaida could’ve hoped to seize control of the US, but seizing control of the US is precisely what Trump, with the aid of 60 million co-conspirators, has done,” Scarborough contended. “This is a sizable enemy within that is in the process of undermining all the progress toward socialism achieved during the Obama Administration.”

“We had an effective counter to bin Laden—a commando team hunted him down and shot him,” the MSNBC talking head observed. “Unfortunately, Trump has proven a harder target. The covert machinations of the US intelligence community were unsuccessful in preventing Trump’s election and their post-election scheme to undermine him has yet to succeed. Even worse, the booming economy resulting from Trump’s policies could sway voters to support candidates who will pander to individual selfishness rather than the collective solidarity and personal sacrifice that characterized the Obama years. I fear for the fate of my country if Trump’s lurch to the right isn’t stopped.”

An example of the personal sacrifice promulgated by the Obama Administration was a $90 million program that helped 55 Afghan women obtain jobs. The net cost to US taxpayers for each job p-lacement was in excess of $1.6 million. Each job paid an average annual salary of around $11,000. While this program would appear to have been a poor investment, Scarborough urged that “we look beyond the price tag. Having rich Americans pay millions to benefit a few dozen Muslims built bridges that the penny-pinching Republicans would never have accomplished given their near religious dedication to serving the personal greed that has been their Party’s main ticket to electoral success.”

Carter Weighing 2020 Presidential Run

Distressed by what he called the “human rights disaster perpetrated by President Trump,” former President Jimmy Carter said “I may have to come out of retirement to save the nation from his reelection.”

“My main grievance is the blatant inequality Trump is willing to foist on this country,” Carter complained. “When I was president the entire country suffered through a malaise, but we did it together as one united people. The prosperity Trump is forcing on the country has shattered this unity and encouraged individuals to compete to get ahead. I don’t believe this is what Americans truly want. Otherwise they wouldn’t have reelected Obama for a second term. Since he is barred by the Constitution from being elected president again I think I could offer voters a chance to continue his legacy by electing me in 2020.”

“If I were elected in 2020 I would begin by reversing every single policy that Trump has implemented,” Carter promised. “I would reclaim the government’s money that Trump’s tax cut foolishly gave away. I would rescind the deregulation that allows businesses and individuals the right to do what they think best and re-institute the strict government oversight that guarantees socially responsible decisions. I would end ICE’s persecution of international travelers and redirect the agency to adopt a more welcoming stance that would include helping these travelers to find public housing, sign up for government assistance, and register to vote.”

Kerry Bolsters His Foreign Policy Credentials for 2020 Run

Former Secretary of State John Kerry, a potential rival of Carter’s for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, sought to burnish his credentials by announcing that he has been secretly serving as an unofficial foreign policy adviser to the Iranian government. “I told them not to knuckle under to Trump’s pressure to discontinue their nuclear program,” Kerry bragged. “It is their ‘ace-in-the-hole’ for gaining the leverage they need to become a major nuclear power before Trump or anyone else can stop them.”

The aspiring would-be White House resident scoffed at the possibility that his advice to Iran might be seen as treasonous by likening it to the career path of New England Patriots football coach Bill Belichick. “Before he was the head coach of the Patriots he was the head coach of the Cleveland Browns,” Kerry pointed out. “Do we revile him for being disloyal to the Browns? Or do we admire his skill in guiding the Patriots to five Superbowl championships? I think voters will view my experience in advising Iran as a plus when compared to the lesser foreign policy accomplishments of the other contenders for the presidency.”

Professor Shoots Self to Protest Trump

At the College of Southern Nevada, Professor emeritus Mark Bird shot himself in the arm in a restroom as a protest against President Trump’s anti-gun control policies. “People like me should never be permitted to have a gun,” Bird said. “The demented Second Amendment guarantee of the right to bear arms clearly failed to prevent me from shooting myself. Trump’s unwillingness to repeal this Amendment is the cause of the injury I suffered from my self-inflicted wound.”

Bird acknowledged that “those who enacted the Second Amendment in 1789 inhabited a simpler and saner world than we do today. Back then most people died from causes—disease, Indian attacks, work accidents—that have been largely eliminated in our modern society. Today more survive and eventually succumb to the mental illnesses deriving from stress. We need to revise the Constitution to reflect this new reality.”

“Which people should have guns is something that the government should decide based on need,” Bird suggested. “If a person needs a gun to earn a living he probably should be allowed to have a gun. Soldiers, police, bodyguards, armored car drivers and armed robbers are the types of professions where access to a gun might be essential to success.”

Media Blames Trump for Hurricane Damage

This week, Hurricane Florence hit the Carolina coast of the United States. The Washington Post’s editorial board charged President Trump with “complicity.”

“The Trump Administration’s failure to sign the Paris Climate Accord combined with the surge in economic activity inspired by tax cuts and deregulation are directly responsible for any damage done by the weather in this country,” the editorial claimed. “The steps former President Obama took to subdue economic growth had put the nation on a path that could have prevented hurricanes from being so dangerous. The shutdown factories and lower incomes his policies achieved mitigated the environmental forces that contribute to bad weather. The benefits of those policies have been negated by the Trump Administration.”

The irony is that even though the United States has not signed the Paris Accord this country’s reductions in CO2 emissions has been larger than that of the European countries that did sign. In addition, nothing that the Trump Administration has done since coming to power in January of 2017 can be shown to have had any impact on this year’s hurricane season. Finally, it is likely that the suffering due to the economic depression resulting from Obama’s policies was worse than the damage done by hurricanes coming ashore in the United States.

In related news, a study from George Washington University’s Milken School of Public Health estimated that there were 2,975 “excess deaths” in the period following Hurricane Maria’s landfall in Puerto Rico. Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin blames Trump for these deaths. The fact is that the US government, at the direction of President Trump, did more than any other entity to aid Puerto Rico in the aftermath of this hurricane. Blame for the estimated deaths would more reasonably be attributed to the vulnerability of the island being in the path of major hurricanes, the poorly constructed housing typical on the impoverished island, and the inept local government that left a lot of the US-provided aid to rot before it could be distributed.

FaceBook Better Prepared for 2018 Elections

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg promised that “this year’s efforts to ensure the proper election outcome will be more successful than our 2016 intervention.”

“In 2016 our security safeguards didn’t prevent all nonconforming content from reaching voters.” Zuckerburg admitted. “Some anti-Clinton messages weren’t detected and blocked. Likewise, some pro-Trump messages still managed to get through. In the intervening two years we have tightened our measures. I am highly confident that we will have the maximum possible positive influence in determining who wins.”

As an example of the “tightened measures” Zuckerberg pointed out that “we have banned the #WalkAway movement that seeks to encourage millennials to desert the Democratic Party. Blocking this group should be decisive since they have no access to corporate money and rely entirely on grassroots efforts and individual donations.”

Brandon Straka, the founder of the #WalkAway movement, is a former liberal who left the Democratic Party because “it has devolved into intolerant, inflexible, illogical, hateful, misguided, ill-informed, un-American, hypocritical, menacing, callous, ignorant, narrow-minded and, at times, blatantly fascistic behavior and rhetoric.”

Straka said his turning point came after his liberal friends blamed him for being attacked by a homeless person who demanded money. “They said it was my fault for being a privileged white,” Straka recounted. “My ‘privilege’ is that I work for a living. I’ve never asked for a handout and don’t appreciate being designated as a nonperson who can be victimized by a parasite demanding my hard-earned income.”

In other election news, a Democratic Party activist seeking to register voters in the Somerville Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Massachusetts was observed tearing down and urinating on American flags that mourners had set up by some of the graves. A witness driving by snapped a photograph of the man and the pile of flags he urinated on. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) alleged that “the witness’ actions constituted an invasion of privacy and could be construed as an attempt to suppress the vote.”

Meanwhile, Beto O’Rourke, the Democratic candidate for the US Senate in Texas, hosted a private fund-raising event in New York City “because Texans are too stingy to pony up the millions I require for my campaign.”

Text Messages Prove Strzok a Liar

Newly released text messages between former FBI anti-Trump conspirators Peter Strzok and Lisa Page show that Strzok’s claim that “the media leak strategy” text revealed last week “was to discuss ways of preventing leaks” is false. In this week’s batch of newly discovered texts, Strzok wrote Page to tell her that “the Times is angry with us for giving the Washington Post the scoop on the leak about Carter Page and the FISA warrant.”

Strzok’s admission that he leaked classified information to the Washington Post would seem to invalidate Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s excuse for refusing to turn over the unredacted FISA warrant to Congress. Rosenstein, however, remains adamant about withholding this information insisting that “because a reporter at the Post has seen this classified information it doesn’t mean that anybody else should. It has been my experience that the Post can be trusted not to carelessly handle leaked information as well as to protect the identity of the leaker. Just because Strzok has stepped in it shouldn’t lead us to expose others who have successfully handed off classified information without boasting about it in a text.”

Rosenstein brushed aside Carter Page’s complaint that Strzok’s leak to the media led to him receiving death threats, saying that “if he hadn’t gotten involved with Trump in the first place none of this would’ve happened. He wouldn’t have been the patsy used as a pretext for the FISA warrant. The FBI would’ve had to find someone else to serve that purpose.”

Dems Object to Federal Pay Freeze

Democrats in Congress are calling for legislation to reinstate a pay increase that President Trump canceled by executive order. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md) labeled Trump’s pay freeze “an indefensible attack on the hard-working government employees who keep the country going.”

The reasoning behind the federal pay freeze is that government workers already earn far more for comparable work than their private sector counterparts. According data from Bureau of Economic Analysis, annual wages for federal government employees is nearly $89,000 vs. $59,000 for similar jobs in the private sector. When fringe benefits are counted, the gap widens to $127,000 vs. $71,000.

Raskin contends that the comparison is invalid. “Government needs to retain the best and brightest among the population,” the Congressman said. “We have to pay a premium to woo the elite performers away from the less important functions of the private sector. The actions of private sector workers are more limited in scope—affecting the narrow constituency of customers and shareholders. The actions of government workers crafting the rules and regulations that tell the private sector what to do are much more important and broader in scope. They deserve to be paid more.”

Rep. Scott Taylor (D-Va) pointed out that “a workforce that has become accustomed to higher levels of pay cannot easily adapt to lower than anticipated wages. If they become dissatisfied they are in a position to shut down the entire country. The country can survive if truckers, or steel workers, or construction workers go on strike, but can it survive if the people who write and enforce the regulations go on strike? I don’t think the American people want to find out. It would be better to pay now than be sorry later.”

Meanwhile, St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank President James Bullard credited President Donald Trump with boosting U.S. economic growth in a way that may prove to be sustainable by lifting productivity. “Trump’s impact isn’t the fleeting temporary bump from a government spending binge,” Bullard observed. “The tax cuts and deregulation he has championed have increased the real returns on private sector investment. As long as these returns aren’t undermined by policy reversals economic growth will tend to compound at higher and higher rates over time.”

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.” This post is also available on Facebook.

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

Former president of Planned Parenthood Gloria Feldt told a Cornell University audience that “abortion gives women an equal seat at life’s table. Putting all of the burden of child-bearing and birthing on women violates the Constitution’s equal protection clause. Abortion is the remedy. Freeing ourselves of the obligations imposed on us by a patriarchal society is the only way we can enjoy the same power that men have monopolized through a discriminatory reproductive system.”

Feldt’s remarks mirrored those of former First Daughter Chelsea Clinton who also advocated an economic rationale for preserving the court-granted right of reluctant would-be mothers to abort their unborn children. Clinton’s argument pointed out that “women who were freed by the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision from the encumbrance of an unwanted child were able to join the workforce and add half a trillion dollars to the GDP between the years 1973 to 2009.”

However, the research cited by Clinton was more ambiguous than she let on. On the one hand, one of the studies showing that women denied third-trimester abortions under some states’ laws suffered economically in the short term experienced economic outcomes equivalent to women who underwent first-trimester abortions after five-years. Then, too, the analyses of the income status of the women completely ignores the loss of the future economic contributions of the children killed by the procedure.

Meanwhile, at the Senate hearings on Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh pro-abortion activists became so unruly that more than 70 had to be arrested. Their outrage was stimulated by the portion of Kavanaugh’s testimony where he dared to offer an opinion that “when the Government forces someone to take an action contrary to his or her sincere religious belief or else suffer a financial penalty, the Government has substantially burdened the individual’s free exercise of religion.”

Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) complained that Kavanaugh’s perspective “elevated a strict adherence to the First Amendment over every woman’s right to have an abortion. It is a basic principle of legislation that a later law automatically modifies an earlier law. The Supreme Court’s 1973 decision essentially legislated a universal right to abortion for every woman in America. This later legislation clearly supersedes the 1789 adoption of the First Amendment’s protection of freedom of religion.” Unfortunayely for Hirono, her conception of the law contradicts the Supreme Court’s validation of Kavanaugh’s interpretation.

Clinton Stumps for Menendez in NJ

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is going “all-in” for the reelection of Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) despite the formidable cloud of criminality overhanging the Senator. Late last year his bribery trial resulted in a hung jury. Clinton will speak at a fancy fund-raiser for Menendez in October.

“I feel we are kindred spirits,” Clinton said. “Both of us have been unfairly criticized for our politics. The whole corruption case against Bob for the special favors he did for a constituent sought to punish him for behavior that is typically overlooked. Should a constituent be denied a senator’s services merely because he is also a generous friend? Bob, myself, and practically everyone I know has done something similar during our careers. In my case, the names of persons receiving special treatment from the State Department also being the same as donors to the Clinton Foundation was blown out of proportion as if it were some sort of quid-pro-quo rather than the odd coincidence it actually was.”

Clinton pointed out that “voters in New Jersey were too smart to be fooled by the innuendos thrown at me by Republicans and chose me over Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. I hope they will do the same for Sen. Menendez and give him the nod over his Republican challenger in this Fall’s election.”

Obama Claims Credit for Economic Boom

As we move closer to the mid-term election day, the stream of favorable economic news following the Republican tax cuts and President Trump’s moves toward deregulation has spurred former President Obama to step forward to try to make the case that his policies were the real source of the current boom.

In a speech at the University of Illinois, Obama attempted to persuade people that “the credit for the prosperity that is breaking out today truly belongs to me. The GOP tax cuts wouldn’t have been as effective if taxes hadn’t been so high during my term. Likewise for the deregulation. I mean, you can’t have deregulation unless you first have regulation.”

“And let me further remind everyone that today’s historic lows in unemployment for minorities hasn’t come without a significant cost,” the former president maintained. “Every Black and Latino forced off of welfare and food stamps and into a job is a person who has lost a substantial portion of his former freedom. The freedom to loll around has value, yet no one is pointing out the discomforts faced by those who have lost this freedom.”

Obama also wondered “whether herding minorities into wage-slavery might be evidence of Trump’s racism. The disproportionate racial impacts heralded by Trump and his ilk seems to vindicate Joe Biden’s prediction that the Republicans aim to put Blacks back in chains—maybe not literal chains, but social pressure to accept jobs when you’d really rather have the time to yourself. We need to resist this kind of bullying by electing Democrats who will undo the damage done by Republicans over the last year and a half.”

The former president’s pitch relies on the premise that minorities would prefer to be lazy louts rather than working to support themselves and their families. The evidence that might confirm this premise is mixed. On the one hand, Trump’s approval ratings among Blacks have breached the 30% mark. On the other hand, nearly 70% still disapprove of the President.

In related news, the South African government’s plan to expropriate white farmers’ land and maybe kill them at some point in the not too distant future has been followed by a drastic 29% decline in agricultural output this year. President Cyril Ramaphosa blamed the anti-social attitudes of whites for the decline contending that “just like Stalin, we are faced with our own kulak saboteurs who place their own well-being ahead of the demands of the collective. We will isolate these enemies of the state and subject them to a harsh lesson.”

Dem Uses Kavanaugh Hearing to Jockey for Position in 2020

Fresh from his preposterous antics in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the Kavanaugh nomination to the Supreme Court in which he characterized himself as a “Spartacus fighting against tyranny,” Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) brushed aside Wall Street Journal reporter Byron Tau’s attempt to ask him a question about it, asserting that “it is unconstitutional for anyone to question me about anything I said in Congress in any other place.”

Booker’s heroic moment came when he made a show of releasing what he called “wrongly classified documents that Republicans are trying to hide from the American people. I know that my violation of the rules could lead to my expulsion from the Senate, but the stakes are higher than my seat. Even if I am expelled, my fight for the truth will go on to the 2020 presidential election where my selfless sacrifice will demonstrate that I am the essential man needed to carry on the social revolution begun by former President Obama.”

One flaw in Booker’s grandiose plans, though, was the fact that the so-called “hidden documents” had previously been cleared for release by the Committee’s Republican majority prior to his stunt. Another flaw is that the documents that Booker accused the GOP of trying to hide actually confirm that Kavanaugh voiced opposition to racial profiling in the memos Booker held in his hand as he ranted against the Judge. Perhaps Tau’s knowledge of these facts may have been the main source of the Senator’s post-hearing snit.

Meanwhile, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif) mocked Judge Kavanaugh for carrying a copy of the Constitution in his pocket “as if it is some sort of bible. It’s only words—very old words. I find it scary that someone who aspires to join the Supreme Court would need such a crutch. I think we need Justices who are creative and open to new ideas if we hope to transform our form of government to keep pace with changing times.”

California Dems Vote to Seek Mutual Defense Treaty with China

Citing the “common interests we share with China,” eighty California State Assembly members have unanimously passed a bill to declare the legislature’s support for “a mutual defense treaty to deal with the threat posed to both our nations by the Trump regime.”

Assembly member Evan Low (D-Campbell) said “the Trump Administration’s policies constitute a mortal danger to every Californian. It is our natural right to sever the political bonds with his tyranny and seek new guards for our liberties. Given the military might of the armed forces controlled by Trump it is imperative that we, much like the confederation of colonies that sought independence from our British overlords in 1776, align with a foreign power of sufficient strength to deter the oppression Trump would impose on California.”

Among the specific grievances listed by the bill, Low highlighted “the most egregious of affronts to our state’s rights, including the interdiction of the immigrants needed to provide the votes necessary to reattach lands stolen from Mexico by United States aggression in 1848 and preventing the abolition of fossil-based fuels that would lead to a cleaner, greener environment.”

“I know some people will question whether China could be trusted to respect California’s independence,” Low acknowledged. “They say the Chinese one-party government is too different from our democracy. But wasn’t the same thing true during the American Revolution when the French autocratic government sided with the rebellion against the British? The important thing is that even though our two governments have a different form of rule we do share a common devotion to socially progressive ideals. I believe these shared ideals can be relied upon to ensure a live-and-let-live long-term relationship between the liberator and the liberated.”

In related news, Beto O’Rourke, the Democratic candidate for US Senate from Texas asked that the American flags be removed from the Veterans of Foreign Wars hall that he rented for a campaign rally in Navasota. A spokesman for his campaign explained “a lot of our supporters aren’t Americans. By virtue of great effort and arduous treks across the barren wastes of Mexico they have arrived in Texas in time to vote for Beto to represent them in Congress. Why should they be forced to look at a flag they consider a symbol of oppression?”

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.” This post is also available on Facebook.

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

Former San Francisco mayor and current Democratic candidate for governor of California Gavin Newsome has pledged to make health care free for all illegal immigrants if he wins in November. “When I was mayor I extended the boundaries of freedom beyond what is provided in any other city in America,” Newsome boasted. “The most well-known of these freedoms is, of course, the freedom to defecate in public without fear of penalty. But an overlooked freedom was using public funds to ensure that every undocumented person residing in the city received the same benefits that citizens are required to purchase under Obamacare.”

Newsome defended the disparate treatment by citing “the unforgivable gap between the wealth of those who have good-paying jobs, careers, and businesses and those who literally had nothing but the clothes on their backs when they crossed the border from Mexico. Those who have must bear the burden of caring for those who have-not. I look forward to expanding the advances I made in San Francisco into a statewide transformation of the way all Californians live.”

In related news, the public defecation that had previously been confined to neighborhoods infested with homeless vagrants has popped up at the SF airport where cabbies waiting to pick up fares have been relieving themselves on the pavement. Airport officials are outraged, but several cab drivers have spoken out in defense of the practice saying that the threat of sanctions against them for public defecation “is an infringement on the rights that were granted to everyone by Mayor Newsome.”

Staff Changes at the Special Prosecutor’s Office

Signs that Special Counsel Robert Mueller is about to ramp up the enforcement phase of his campaign against the Trump Administration was indicated by the departure of two lower-ranking prosecutors. The slots will be filled by two former military sharpshooters.

Peter Carr, a spokesman for the special counsel, explained that “the seriousness of the threat to the nation posed by President Trump combined with his power to thwart normal legal procedures has forced Mr. Mueller to consider a more forceful approach.” Carr cited the action taken to neutralize Osama bin Laden as a precedent for Mueller’s decision. “The nation didn’t limit itself to an impractical option of arresting and prosecuting bin Laden and we shouldn’t expect the Special Counsel to do so when confronted with the greater threat posed by Trump.”

Carr added “it is our hope that by being upfront in our announcement of the staffing adjustments that President Trump will take the hint and resign of his own free will. We’re not eager to get more blood on our hands than is necessary, but we will do whatever we have to in order to save the nation from a dangerous usurper.”

Sean Casten, the Democratic candidate in Illinois’ 6th Congressional District hailed the Special Counsel staff changes, calling them “the kind of ‘outside-the-box’ thinking we need in these perilous times. I thought I was the only one who saw the remarkable similarities between Trump and Osama. I’m glad to see that Robert Mueller is on the same page and is preparing to take the extreme measures required to deal with it.”

In related news, Georgetown University law professor Joshua Geltzer told a CNN audience that “it is not enough that Trump just be removed from office, all evidence that he was ever the president must be erased. Don’t think it can’t be done. There is historical precedent for such an erasure. In ancient times the names of reviled Pharaohs were chiseled off monuments. More recently, the Soviet Union erased the records of traitors from their history, even going so far as to retouch old photos. These erasures have helped deprive the disloyal unknowns hiding among the population from rallying around the memory of the enemies of the state.”

Along these lines, billionaire globalist George Soros is funding a Media Matters scheme aimed at eliminating Trump supporters from access to social media by the year 2020. David Brock, founder of Media Matters for America, bragged that “we will coordinate with Google, Facebook and Twitter to implement the suppression of anti-democratic content from conservatives, Republicans, and Trump supporters whenever and wherever possible.”

MSNBC Panel Agrees “Trump Supporters Are Selfish”

A panel hosted by MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle unanimously agreed that Trump supporters, unlike those who oppose him, are “selfish.” Ruhle set the tone, saying that “the morally reprehensible behavior of the President doesn’t seem to bother these people. I mean, there was the ‘Access Hollywood’ tape that should have destroyed him during the last weeks of the 2016 campaign. Now, there is a plausible contention that he had sex with Stormy Daniels ten years ago and paid her off to keep quiet about it. Is this the kind of person we want as our president?”

“What I am hearing from Trump supporters is their satisfaction with the job he is doing as president,” Ruhle said. “They like the tax cuts. They like the low unemployment. They like keeping immigrants from sneaking into the country. They like the ‘originalist’ judges he’s appointed to the courts. These are all selfish reasons for supporting Trump. They don’t consider things like how will Trump’s policies affect those who depend on government to support them, or that jobs are boring, or that the border with Mexico was established by conquest, or that a rigid adherence to the text of the Constitution limits judges’ ability to rule in favor of social justice. They are thinking about what’s better for them when they should be thinking about what’s better for others.”

Co-anchor Ali Velshi found Trump supporters’ opposition to government-funded abortions to be “an especially egregious example of selfishness. They’d rather have lower taxes than pay for women to terminate their pregnancies. Without access to free abortions more children will be born and the world will become even more clogged with unneeded humans.”

Billionaire Tom Steyer predicted that “this selfishness will not prevail at the polls. I’m seeing a lot of enthusiasm among Democratic voters. I think we will see victories for candidates who will undo the tax cuts, restore welfare benefits, open the border, and enact fully socialized health care. That’s where my money is invested.”

Blame for Chinese Espionage Coup Unclear

The execution of 20 CIA spies by the Chinese government during the Obama term was a serious setback for America’s national security. The question of who is to blame remains a matter of dispute. Candidates include Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif) and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

It was revealed earlier in August that a member of Sen. Feinstein’s staff for the last 20 years was, in fact, a spy for the Chinese government. Feinstein was a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee from 2009 to 2017 and would have been privy to a lot of classified material that might have been purloined by the Chinese spy she employed. She also has a history of lobbying for legislation viewed as favorable toward Chinese interests. She has attempted to rebuff accusations that she may be the person at fault for the loss of our spies in China by pointing out that “the spy on my staff was mostly a chauffeur and not an intentional participant in any discussions of classified information I may have had during the Obama years.”

It has also been discovered that in 2015 the Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) warned the FBI that a Chinese company had hacked into the unsecure computer that Clinton used when she was Secretary of State and implanted software that automatically sent copies of her emails to China. Unfortunately, the FBI agent that the ICIG warned was Peter Strzok who took no action to block this security breach. It’s possible that among the classified data transmitted by Secretary Clinton via her computer was information identifying the US spies that were later executed. In her defense, Clinton has asserted that “I would never knowingly have transmitted classified information that could have proved harmful to America’s interests.”

In its continuing quest to absolve Hillary Clinton for every crime she has committed, the FBI asserted that “we have no evidence that Secretary Clinton’s computer was hacked by the Chinese.” This assertion stands in contrast to the FBI’s assertion that Russians hacked her computer. The distinction is baffling since the FBI has never had access to her computer because she irreversibly erased all of its contents claiming that “all government-related documents had already been turned over and only personal correspondence remained”–a statement that has subsequently been discredited.

Dem Objections to Supreme Court Nominee Mount

Democrats’ objections to Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh continue to mount. Sen. Mazie Hirono (Hawaii) complains that “all I see from his record is a slavish devotion to the written law. I see no willingness to consider the unwritten law or the social justice implications of refusing to create new laws when circumstances warrant it.”

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (Conn) found “Kavanaugh’s lack of military experience a bit troubling. My Vietnam service has been an essential building block of my career. I couldn’t have been the effective senator I have been without it.”

Sen. Christopher Coons (Del) lamented “the inadequate paper trail provided by the Republicans. We need to see every document Judge Kavanaugh has ever touched if we are to give the fully informed advice and consent that the Constitution has assigned to us as senators.”

The “every document” demand amounts to nearly 3 million additional pages and would take many months to assemble. Right now the senators have access to 500,000 pages of documents—more than twice as many pages as have been provided for any previous Supreme Court nominee by either Party.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-SC) derided what he labeled “an insatiable appetite for irrelevant trivia. The key documents senators should be reading to evaluate Judge Kavanaugh’s fitness are his written decisions in actual cases. These are the instances in which a judge has to rule on the law. Any admin work he might have done before he was a judge isn’t pertinent to or indicative of his legal reasoning.”

Cuomo Attacks GDP as Measure of Economic Health

Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY), anxious to build on the momentum set in motion by his earlier assertion that “America was never that great,” demanded a better measure of the nation’s economic health. “I know that the Trump Administration is touting last quarter’s 4.2% rise in GDP as a sign that the economy is booming,” the Governor observed. “But is this really the best measure we can come up with? GDP growth never got as high as 3% during the Obama Administration. But can we really say that Americans weren’t better off then?”

“The problem with GDP is that it is founded on the notion that more is better—more output, more jobs, more profits—but is this true?” Cuomo asked. “More output means we have more stuff, but isn’t a lot of this stuff just more junk to clutter our lives? More jobs means less leisure—is this what we really want? And doesn’t more profits only encourage more investment and lead back to more output and more jobs in a kind of vicious circle?”

“I have a sense that people were really better off during the more stable years under the Obama Administration,” Cuomo imagined. “Fewer people were ensnared in the rat race. More were able to live worry-free on the generous benefits provided by the government. We need a better way to measure that type of intangible enjoyment of life so we can more fairly compare the peace and serenity of the Obama years with the crushing burdens of work that have inspired so many people to take to the streets and assault their fellow citizens now that Trump is president.”

Meanwhile, Cynthia Nixon, Cuomo’s opponent in the Democratic primary, has called for “less investment in law and order and more investment in free health care. Law and order has different impacts on different segments of society. Not everyone agrees that the current owners of property are morally entitled to hold onto it. Why should they vote for a governor who favors law and order? Free health care, on the other hand, benefits those on either side of the law. Both the victim of rape and the burglar shot by a home owner would benefit from the universal free health care program I will implement when I am elected governor.”

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.” This post is also available on Facebook.

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.