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

President Trump’s decision to give Attorney General William Barr a free hand in determining which documents related to the intelligence community’s covert operation to take down the Trump Administration can be opened to public inspection has led to major consternation among Democratic Party luminaries.

Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif) called the move to inform the general public “a cover-up and un-American. Secrecy is essential if our guardians are to keep us safe from the type of threat the election of Trump posed for our country. Granted, mistakes may have been made, but they were all in the pursuit of patriotic motives. That Trump would rip the masks off of these patriots is just one more piece of evidence demanding his impeachment.”

“I know that Trump apologists will argue that the federal intelligence community has no business trying to rig an election or to desperately try to reverse a horrific error made at the ballot box,” Schiff said. “But the fate of the country is more important than whether any one candidate is treated fairly or not. Sen. Sanders realized that and yielded to wiser heads who had determined that Sec. Clinton should be the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee in 2016. For that he deserves the respect and thanks of every right-thinking American. That Trump veered from this sterling example proves his unfitness for holding public office.”

As an example of the type of covert action that must be kept secret, Schiff lamented the revelation that “the attempt to entrap Papadopoulos by getting him to accept a $10,000 bribe that he refused to take is something that must never be exposed to scrutiny. This is the sort of standard method that has to be protected from prying eyes if it is to retain its utility going forward. Trump’s willingness to compromise our covert operations capacity in order to save himself and his cronies from what he has characterized as a ‘hoax’ and ‘witch hunt’ is treason.”

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), the chairman of the House intelligence committee, expressed his outrage over the idea that “anybody in the intelligence community did anything wrong. If we have learned anything from recent history it is that the government’s intelligence officers are the heroes that protect us all. To be effective they must be permitted to work behind the scenes. Drawing attention to them subverts their ability to do their job. I fear that Barr’s inquiry will drive them to have to use more extreme measures to carry out their duties.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) tried to adopt a more sympathetic sounding objection to this investigation of the investigators when she suggested that “Trump is suffering from a mental breakdown” and urged “his family and Administration staff to stage an intervention to relieve him of the pressures that have driven him mad. When I was at the White House the other day a member of his staff tried to talk to me. This display of disrespect—you know, I’m third in line to be president, I don’t talk to lesser beings—shows that his mind cannot grasp the narrative that the rest of us perceive. He is a clear threat to everything we all hold dear. I pray he gets help before he harms himself or someone else.”

In related news, Ann Ravel, former Federal Election Commission chair and current Democratic candidate for a seat in the California Senate, contends that “the First Amendment is responsible for more violent hate crime than terrorism” and demanded that “government authorities step up efforts to mute the dissemination of dangerous ideas. When people abuse freedom of speech to assail the government’s actions to control the population and ensure obedient behavior they’ve gone too far. Speech needs to stay within reasonable boundaries and government must adopt whatever measures are necessary to see that it does.”

Bureaucrats Object to Move & Downsizing

The Trump Administration’s plan to move two sections of the Department of Agriculture out of DC met with strenuous objections from the American Federation of Government Employees. Union spokesman Peter Winch complained that “they’ve already reduced full-time employees from the peak of 300 under the Obama Administration to 209. Forcing these lucky survivors to move to offices closer to the agricultural communities they serve adds insult to injury.”

“In this day of rapid electronic communication there’s no need for government employees to be located near the people they’re regulating,” Winch said. “Directives can be sent from Washington to any spot on the planet in seconds. Second, we question whether it is wise to convey a message implying that regulators should be on site before they issue orders. This implies a greater importance for listening than is warranted. The Department makes the rules. It is the obligation of farmers to comply. The traditional placement of employees in DC where they have more access to congress and can enjoy the morale boost that comes with being perceived as part of the governing class is a valuable psychological benefit that should not be denied to our members.”

Secretary Sonny Perdue called the union’s position “the exact opposite of what it should be. They posture as ‘public servants’ and laud their status as superior to people working in the for-profit sector of the economy. Well, in the for-profit sector meeting the customers’ needs is crucial to the survival and success of a business. By sending employees of the Economic Research Service (ERS) and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) to live and work closer to those the Department serves we will be moving a little bit closer to the private sector model that has, frankly, enriched the lives of billions of people around the world.”

Judge Denies Trump’s Right to Privacy

In Manhattan federal court, District Judge Edgardo Ramos dismissed Trump’s lawyers’ objection to breaching his privacy and ordered Douche Bank and Capital One to turn over his records to two House of Representatives committees.

Douglas Letter, general counsel for the House of Representatives, praised the decision, calling it “integral to proving that Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election. Admittedly, the Mueller investigation failed to find any evidence that Trump colluded with Russia, but that effort was rushed, under-manned and under-funded. That’s why we must take over and ensure that no stone is left unturned in pursuit of our objective.”

Judge Ramos used a “greater good” argument to justify “exceeding the ‘probable cause’ requirement that normally would have precluded this invasion of privacy. If we were talking about an ordinary criminal defendant there would not have been sufficient predicate for the action we are ordering. However, we are talking about the most powerful individual on Earth with access to the full resources of the federal government. The privacy of such a person must be secondary to the public good. Whether Congress once in possession of Trump’s banking records uses this information for the public good cannot be guaranteed, but trampling the constitutional rights of one man is a small price to pay if there is any chance that Congress will do the right thing. It is the collective benefit that takes precedence over any private benefit.”

In related news, the New York State Legislature has passed and Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) has signed a bill of attainder against President Trump. The new law retains the restriction on releasing confidential tax records of every other taxpayer except Trump. Cuomo says he is confident that this move is legal “because the US Constitution only bars Congress from passing a bill of attainder. Passing such a bill is a right reserved to the states under the Tenth Amendment.”

Hint of Possible Democrat “Dream Ticket”

A convergence of policy ideas between two of the 23 Democratic presidential candidates has progressives giddy over what some are calling a “dream ticket” pairing that could revive the flagging fortunes of two contenders mired in low single digits in the polls.

One of these candidates is Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (NY) who unveiled a proposal that would require insurance companies to provide fertility treatments. She explained her idea would “usher in full reproductive freedom rights for everyone. As it now stands, persons who cannot conceive are blocked from enjoying the right to abortion. It is fundamentally unfair that those who aren’t fertile should be denied access to this right. If I am elected I will immediately order those who can afford to purchase health insurance to include fertility treatments in the package of benefits. For those who can’t afford to buy their own coverage I will extend medicaid to cover this benefit.”

Meanwhile, Sen. Cory Booker (NJ) promises voters that if he’s elected he will establish “a special White House office to promote abortion on ‘day one’ of my Administration. When it comes to public policy, I always ask myself: ‘what would Spartacus have done.’ Clearly, he would have wanted to free every woman from the slavery of child birth and child rearing. Today, many women are denied their right to abortion. Conflicting messages in the media create uncertainty as to whether she should or shouldn’t get an abortion. My White House office will alleviate uncertainty by using a president’s access to the media to broadcast an unmixed message of a woman’s unalienable right to terminate her pregnancy at any time before she takes the baby home from the hospital.”

Planned Parenthood spokesperson Adora Slaughter called for a merging of these two candidates’ highly compatible policy platforms into a ‘dream ticket’ that will bring this issue to the forefront of the 2020 campaign. Their ideas break new ground and fills a gap in conventional views on the issue. They unshackle our thinking from the old ‘safe and rare’ trope that more aged candidates like Clinton and Biden have used in the past. With Booker at around 3% and Gillibrand at less than 1% in the polls maybe a Booker/Gillibrand ticket can help elevate both of them and increase the odds of abortion remaining an unconstrained right for the foreseeable future.”

Candidate Denounces “Gilded Age”

Presidential contender Sen. Amy Klobuchar D-Minn) gave a dire prediction that “Trump’s economic policies are pushing this country into a new gilded age where citizens’ lust for prosperity and wealth undermines their willingness to support progressive values. Left unchecked, it won’t be long before everyone has a good job, a nice home, plenty to eat, and the cash for the extras that make life more fun. There will be no more oppressed classes, no need to organize for social justice, the end of welfare as we know it, and no reason to ever vote for Democrats.”

Klobuchar’s pessimism was bolstered by the disappointingly sparse audience attending her speech. “I would’ve thought there were more than 125 people at Dartmouth who should hear my message,” the Senator complained. “It’s as if almost everyone has forgotten the inspiring leadership of President Obama’s call to sacrifice for the common good. We need to pull away from the materialistic propaganda pushed by Trump and the Republicans. Comfort is overrated. Toiling shoulder-to-shoulder without hope of personal reward is what brings people together into one collective whole. The 2020 election may be our last chance to preserve this dream for how humanity can save itself from selfishness by electing me.”

Meanwhile, in her own bid to stymie the evil effects of prosperity, rival Democratic presidential contender Sen. Kamala Harris (Calif) promised to make union membership mandatory for holding a job. She is particularly peeved that “some states have allowed their inhabitants to decline joining a union, yet still be able to keep their jobs. They say everyone should have a right to associate or not at their own choosing. I say this is selfish. Society has the right to require that people be organized for the common good regardless of whether they like it or not.”

“Stupid Nationalists” Lambasted

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker took to the airwaves ahead of scheduled parliamentary elections to lay into “stupid nationalists” who object to the European Union’s open borders policies and centralization of power.

“These populist, nationalists, stupid nationalists, they are in love with their own countries when they should be showing a greater appreciation of what we’re doing for them,” he said. “This is a revolting repeat of the same attitudes that resisted the unification of Europe achieved by the Germans in the early 1940s. Why must every little pipsqueak country insist on going its own way? It’s not as if their peculiar national cultures have any real lasting virtues worthy of perpetuating.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel seconded Juncker’s remarks. “If we had been able to sustain the accomplishments of our earlier effort just imagine how much better things would be on this continent,” she mused. “The petty bickering of untermenschen like Orban would never have arisen. There would be order and discipline that would have been the envy of the world. Well, we weren’t able to sustain that progress, but we’re at another juncture where we face a similar decision on whether to build a bigger and better state or to lapse back into the primitive forms of organization that our political opponents demand. I am hopeful that voters will make the right choice.”

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.” His work has been cited on the Rush Limbaugh program. 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, the number of announced Democratic presidential contenders reached 23. The crowded field left many desperate to generate interest in their candidacies. Front-runner, former Vice-President Joe Biden vowed to give free health care to illegal aliens. Reminded that these immigrants already receive this benefit, Biden insisted that “it’s not free enough. They’re forced to seek out clinics to get these services. When I’m president we’ll have an outreach program that requires doctors to make house calls so immigrants can enjoy these services in the comfort of the free public housing the government provides for them.”

Nomination rival Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass) pointed out that “sick people aren’t the only ones desperately in need of free services. Many are overburdened having to care for children they neglected to abort. The kinds of day-care available now are meager. Under my plan, every parent will be awarded $15,000 per year, per child. This will give them the purchasing power to afford the high-quality care that they deserve.”

“Not good enough,” complained Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt). “Sen. Warren would leave the task of choosing providers to the parents, who are not qualified to make the right choices. True socialism mandates that all children be enrolled in a collective system that can guarantee identical treatment is meted out to every child from birth to college graduation. This is the only way to ensure that all are properly indoctrinated.”

With the concurrence of Sen. Kamala Harris (Calif), Sen. Cory Booker (NJ), and Kirsten Gillibrand (NY), Warren called Sanders’ approach “too communistic at this stage of the country’s transformation. We need to work toward that ideal more gradually by using some of the mechanisms already in place. That’s why we advocate federal grants to pay down student debt. It’s too early for an overtly regimented fully communist system. The current ideological indoctrination being carried out by most public and private schools is fully compatible with the recommendations laid out by Marx and Engels in their 1848 Manifesto.”

Concerned that this approach “neglects the less intellectually endowed,” nomination rivals South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, former HUD Secretary Julian Castro, former Rep. John Delaney (Md), former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii) call for a “universal basic income.” “A traditional core constituency of the Democratic Party has been those lacking the ability to cope with the educational environment or to master the skills and self-discipline required to hold down a job,” Buttigieg said. “By guaranteeing every American a basic income regardless of whether they’re unable or unwilling to work we will extend the benefits of prosperity to all.”

Financing all the promised free stuff received little attention from the majority of the contenders. In a bid to sell himself as the “centrist” among the leftist horde, Biden explained that “I will personally repeal the Trump tax cuts and enact any new taxes needed to secure the money necessary.” The newest contender, New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio declared “There’s plenty of money in this country. It’s just in the wrong hands. When I’m president we will seize that money so it can be utilized to fund whatever the government determines is most useful for the benefit of the masses.”

In contrast, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke offered voters a free viewing of him getting a haircut and massage. He claims that “letting the common people see how their betters live is an inexpensive way of boosting their morale. Their existence is pretty dull compared to ours. Celebrities like the Kardashians have brought joy to the masses by generously sharing their daily activities with them. I’m just following their good example.”

Trump Praises Buttigieg’s “Healthy Choice”

Confounding the media’s efforts to characterize President Trump as “anti-gay,” the President praised South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s marriage, calling it “absolutely fine. I think it’s something that perhaps some people will have a problem with. I have no problem with it whatsoever. I think it’s good.”

“By restricting himself to having anal sex with a single faithful partner he is avoiding the type of health risks that plague individuals who seek out multiple hook-ups with random strangers,” Trump explained. “So, I think he has made a wise and healthy personal choice. His political choices, on the other hand, aren’t so wise or healthy. He’s immersed in the insanity of the Democrat Party’s big-government agenda to promote programs and policies that will bankrupt the country and impoverish the American people.”

Unmoved by Trump’s tolerance, Buttigieg pointed out that “your vice-president refuses to accept anal sex as a natural appetite and bodily function. This kind of homophobia is hurting other people. Having him as your running mate proves you are unfit for public office.”

In related news, Buttigieg, a self-proclaimed devout Christian, asserted that “Christianity has extremist factions that are just as dangerous as Islamic jihadis. For example, many Christians reject the idea that gay marriage is legitimate. How is this different from Muslims stoning gays?” Apprised that Muslim stoning definitely does not entail making gays smoke weed until they get high, Buttigieg acknowledged “well, maybe I chose a bad example to illustrate my point, but there is no denying that Christians can be as bad as Muslims. That’s why I believe in turning the other cheek.”

Dems Assail State Laws Restricting Abortion

This week, Alabama and Missouri enacted legislation severely restricting abortions carried out in their states. In Missouri, abortions after eight weeks of pregnancy were banned. In Alabama all abortions except those necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother were outlawed.

Sen. Kamala Harris (Calif) called these laws “an invitation to inflict the nightmare from The Handmaid’s Tale on the women of this country.” Unfortunately for her argument, in The Handmaid’s Tale fertile women are enslaved, raped, and forced to bear children for the ruling class. Neither of these state laws does anything remotely like that. These laws aim to protect unborn humans from being murdered in the womb.

Margaret Atwood’s novel wasn’t the only textual source cited by Harris for her opposition. She also claimed that “these laws are an unconstitutional violation of the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decree that a woman’s right to abort her unwanted child is an unalienable right. The Court, in its wisdom, discerned that the fetus has no rights which society is bound to respect.”

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (NY) concurred with her colleague and added her contention that “these laws violate our Christian faith. Christians believe in free will. A woman’s decision to terminate her pregnancy is an exercise of free will. Government has no authority to interfere in such a decision. What it does have is an obligation to make sure that every woman in America, no matter what state she lives in or how much money she has in her pocket, can have guaranteed access to safe, legal and free abortion. This means public funding of the procedure. That’s why the Court should also overturn the Hyde Amendment that prohibits federal taxpayer money from being use to finance these procedures. If the Court hasn’t done this by the time I become president, I will do it by executive order.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif) also insisted that “preventing mothers from disposing of unwanted children is unconstitutional. It’s the type of cruel and unusual punishment that is banned by the Eighth Amendment. Trump’s refusal to send federal troops to arrest the Alabama legislators who committed this atrocity will be added to the list of offenses for which we will impeach him.”

Meanwhile, Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold has banned Coloradans from traveling to Alabama, “lest they be stranded there without access to safe and free abortions. Abortions are a constitutional right enacted by the Supreme Court. Until such a time that the Court slaps down Alabama’s attack on this right I cannot allow our state’s inhabitants to take the risk of traveling to this dangerous ‘no-go zone.’”

New York May Move to Restrict Residents from Leaving

As the flow of residents leaving the state has negatively impacted the taxes that can be extracted from these mostly well-off individuals, the government of New York is weighing options to rectify the situation. An idea gaining traction is the imposition of a “certificate of need” to determine whether each resident desiring to emigrate can demonstrate a sufficient urgency justifying the request to leave.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) averred that “we need to reconsider the notion that a resident can decide whether to leave the state without justifiable cause. We understand that the desire to avoid the high taxes we impose is a strong motivating factor for the individual to move out. However, such a decision has anti-social connotations and negatively affects both those left behind and the governments that must care for them.”

“The really bad aspect of the situation from our perspective is that the out-migration is heavily weighted toward those who have money,” Cuomo explained. “They leave behind a growing cohort of persons who depend on the government for necessities like food and housing. This aggravates a cycle of dwindling means to sustain a proportionally increasing dependent population. I believe we have a moral obligation to intervene to prevent this from spiraling out of control.”

“We have regulatory precedents on which to craft an appropriate response,” Cuomo continued. “On a personal level, residents of this state must prove to the satisfaction of the government that they have sufficient need for a firearm before we issue them permission to carry one. I think we can use a similar approach to the emigration problem in that before anyone can legally move out of the state he must persuade regulatory authorities that his need to do so is sufficiently dire to justify it. If authorities are not persuaded that the proposed move benefits both the individual and the state, permission would be denied. The individual and his taxable assets would be required to remain in New York.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom called Cuomo’s idea “intriguing. For too long we’ve allowed a knee-jerk acceptance of individual freedom to run roughshod over every individual’s duty to do what’s right for the collective welfare of society. This ‘rugged individualism’ is not a modern way of thinking. It’s time we realize that letting everyone do as he pleases at the cost of leaving his fellow man to fend for himself is morally wrong. Maybe it’s time for government to step in to force wayward individuals to do what’s best for all.”

Comey Credits Communist Past for His “High Moral Character”

Under continuing investigation by Attorney General William Barr for his “strange” decisions and actions regarding the Trump candidacy and presidency, former FBI Director James Comey cited “my earlier communist ideology for providing a steady ethical weather vane to guide me toward doing the right thing.”

Comey dismissed contentions that federal law enforcement officials should not interfere in political matters as “bourgeois delusion. The higher duty is to the collective well-being of mankind. Sometimes following the law fulfills this duty. At other times going beyond the bounds of the law may be required in order to achieve this duty. The clear consensus of those of us working for President Obama was that Donald Trump presented the most severe threat to the collective of any of the candidates running in the 2016 campaign. Recusing ourselves from using the vast powers at hand was not an option.”

“We would have succeeded if Rosenstein hadn’t double crossed us,” he complained. “He was supposed to testify that Trump ordered him to write the memo advising that I be fired. That would have clearly established the charge of obstruction. But he weaseled out, saying he needed to preserve his options in case things went south. Now he’s out there pretending he was some sort of a mole inside our conspiracy to save the country from Trump. It’s disgusting to see that some people have no sense of honor or integrity.”

The former FBI Director expressed “profound disappointment at the failure of our efforts to accomplish the mission” and admitted that “I am also hurt that fellow communist John Brennan is now breaking ranks and trying to save himself by blaming me for all the laws that were broken. I wrote the book on loyalty. Brennan should follow the lead that I laid out in my book. We still have allies within the government and we should all stick together during the perilous times to come. In the long run, communism will win. Marx clearly laid that out in his dialectical materialism analysis of history. Getting there with as little damage as possible to the true patriots must be our common goal.”

For his part, Brennan questioned “whether Comey truly understands the principles and methods of the fight for the communist revolution. Accusing others has a long history within the communist movement. Lenin and Stalin set the example. That Comey would complain rather than accept the blame the movement has decided he must in order to advance the revolution is a betrayal of the ideals the movement is trying to implement as the new ethos for the working class utopia.”

Colorado/New Mexico Immigration Tiff

Colorado’s Gov. Jared Polis (D) is miffed that New Mexico’s Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) has been busing unwanted illegal immigrants into his state. “She’s the one who left the border open for the swarms of immigrants and asylum seekers that have caused her state so many problems,” Polis said. “Now she trying to smuggle them into Colorado. It’s a sneaky underhanded trick.”

Grisham defended her actions saying that “it is only fair that the burdens be shared among the states. Gov. Polis is a supporter of open borders. Why shouldn’t his state welcome the arrival of people all we Democrats agree ought to be allowed into America? It’s not as if I acted unilaterally. We coordinated with Annunciation House, a nonprofit that works with migrants along the El Paso, Texas/Juarez, Mexico border to accomplish the transport of our excess supply of asylum seekers to an area comparatively deficient in the quantity of these public charges living within their state. Besides, the number transported so far is only 55 persons. Polis is making a mountain out of a molehill.”

“It’s not the quantity that is the issue,” Polis objected. “The issue is our being forced to take people we don’t want in our state. If we had been consulted in advance we would’ve contributed money to have these people bused to Mar-a-Lago. That’s where all the refugees should be sent to teach Trump that the transformation of the United States via floods of immigrants cannot be stopped.”

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.” His work has been cited on the Rush Limbaugh program. 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

Frustrated with the unsatisfactory results of the Mueller Report, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif) wants to initiate Congressional trials for members of the Trump Administration “who defy our demands for documents and testimony.”

Schiff characterized these prosecutions as “mini-trials that could be conducted without the presence of the accused. They would be tasked with a simple decision: has the accused complied with our demands or not. The House would render judgment and determine whether the accused would be jailed, fined, or both. With fines running up to $25,000 per day of continued disobedience, not to mention the legal fees involved in hiring defense attorneys, could quickly become financially ruinous. I think this would tend to inspire cooperation.”

He likened this approach to “the financial pressure Mueller applied to General Flynn, which, as we all saw, induced his cooperation. Or in the case of Michael Cohen resulted in a plea of guilty to a non-existent crime. It is time we ran with the baton that has been passed to us by Special Counsel Mueller for the next leg of our effort to rid the nation of Trump and his henchmen.”

Schiff ally, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY), who vigorously denounced the GOP in 2012 for holding former Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt for his many refusals to respond to Republican subpoenas during the “Fast and Furious” gun running operation carried out by the Obama Administration, rejected any comparison. “First and foremost, President Obama was a Nobel Prize winner,” Nadler pointed out. “That alone should put anything he did above reproach. Second, the claimed ill-effects of Fast and Furious were insignificant compared to the widely acknowledged threat to world civilization presented by President Trump.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif), though, offered a word of caution, pointing out that “over 60 million deplorables voted for Trump. Our prisons are apt to become quickly overloaded if we have to start jailing all those disloyal to the long term consensus between the Washington Republicans and Democrats who have cooperatively and convivially shared power since the 1930s.”

In related news, Democrats in New York State have introduced a “bill of attainder” that would authorize the state’s tax commissioner to hand over the confidential income tax returns of any New York resident to Congress. As Gov Andrew Cuomo explained, “we need to be able to breach the wall of privacy in order to assist Congress in its efforts to rid the country of dangerous persons like Donald Trump.”

Sanders Brandishes Progressive Credentials

Irked by rival contender for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination former Vice-President Joe Biden’s claim to be the most progressive candidate in the race, Sen. Bernie Sanders (S-Vt) advised voters to “look at our comparative actions. Claims should be backed up by deeds.”

“I have been advocating for socialism for decades,” Sanders boasted. “Meanwhile, Joe has been groping and sniffing every female he can get close to. I ask: which of these behaviors is the more progressive?”

For his part, Biden pointed out that “free love has long been an integral part of progressive doctrine. By taking the initiative to show my love for those humans within my reach I am in step with this doctrine. I am not ashamed of this and I urge voters to compare my style of progressivism with Bernie’s insistence that murderers and rapists in prison be given the right to vote.”

Sanders characterized Biden’s view as “self-serving and exploitive. My love for all of humanity, even those who stray from moral norms is more Christ-like than anything Joe has done in his entire life. Not only do I think that felons should be able to vote for who shall govern America, I have also hired one as a senior campaign adviser.” The felon hired by Sanders is Charles Rocha, was convicted for embezzling money from the United Steelworkers Union. Rocha used the money to buy to buy hockey tickets and golf trips, expenses he asserted were necessary for his “mental well-being.”

In related news, Biden asserts that the US “has a moral obligation to provide health care for everyone who needs it—including those in the country illegally. I know Republicans will claim that this is fiscally beyond ours means, but they lie. America is the richest nation in the world. Our citizens spend a lot of their money on non-necessities. They could easily get by with a lot less. What I am suggesting is that we repeal the Trump tax cuts and take people’s excess income and use it for the nobler purpose of healing the sick regardless of where they came from or how they got here.”

Kerry Defends Undermining Trump’s Iran Policy

Former Secretary of State and failed 2004 presidential candidate John Kerry brushed off President Trump’s charges that he is illegally undermining the Administration’s policy toward Iran. According to various media reports, Kerry has been secretly advising the Iranian dictatorship and its European allies to ignore Trump and stick with the deal he and former President Obama made.

Kerry asserts that he is “representing the true consensus of opinion on the proper relationship between the United States and Iran—one based on mutual trust and respect. Trump’s attitude of America first and his publicly expressed suspicion of Iran’s motives threatens the gains made during the Obama Administration.”

To bolster his case, Kerry cited Trump’s moves to curtail the funding mechanism he and Obama contrived to seal the so-called nuclear deal. “These funds are a vital part of Iran’s outreach to its allies around the world, “ Kerry said. “Without them Iran’s quest to fulfill its religious obligation to spread Islam throughout the world could be crippled. Weapons critical to Hamas’ efforts to eliminate the Jewish occupation of Palestine and end the Jewish conspiracy to make soft drinks excessively fizzy in order to make Muslims fart more during Ramadan need these funds. Trump’s attempts to try to interdict these funds aggravates global warming.”

Comey Calls Deep State Conspiracy “Totally Normal”

In a “town hall” on CNN, fired former FBI Director James Comey contended that the “operation” to surveil a presidential candidate is a “totally normal activity for the FBI to undertake. After all, intelligence gathering is an essential tool we use to defend the United States against all enemies—both foreign and domestic. Trump isn’t the only candidate who has been a focus of this sort of investigation. He is merely the first to have survived such an effort.”

Comey explained that “inserting covert agents into the Trump campaign was standard procedure. Sending our guys—Mifsud and Halper—to tell Papadopoulos that the Russians had ‘dirt’ on Clinton was crucial to establishing the predicate for later steps taken to obtain FISA permission to wiretap the campaign. Without the implication that there was a direct link between the campaign and the Russian government I doubt the court would’ve granted the access we wanted. We all knew that the link was bogus, but with national security at stake we felt the ruse was necessary.”

Despite the fact that the Special Prosecutor’s report on Trump Russia collusion found no evidence to support the accusation, Comey says he remains “optimistic that obstruction of justice charges may still take the President down. When suspects are interviewed numerous times small variations in their testimony can be construed as lying. Lying to federal law officials like the Special Counsel or agents in the FBI is illegal. So, even if there is no actual crime per se, any variations from one account to another can still be prosecuted.”

When CNN’s Anderson Cooper pointed out that Comey, himself lied to Trump when he assured him he was “not a target of the FBI investigation,” Comey advised Cooper that “the courts have long sanctioned lying by law-enforcement personnel in order to entrap suspects in the act of obstructing the investigation. It’s a stacked deck, but it is a court approved bias in the application of laws regarding perjury.”

Meanwhile, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) chided Trump for “unnecessarily embarrassing the hard working government officials who so patriotically strove to remove him from office. There was no need to shame FBI employees like Peter Strzok and Lisa Page for cheating on their spouses, denigrating Trump’s deplorable supporters, and misusing government equipment or employees like James Comey for leaking classified information, forgiving Hillary Clinton’s technical crimes and lying to the American people. The President’s descent into this kind of indecency is just further evidence of his unfitness for office.”

Pelosi Demands that Trump “Self-Impeach”

Weary of battling with the President, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) demands that he “self-impeach. Almost everyone in Washington agrees that he is the most despicable person to ever hold public office. Just the other day Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer expressed the same opinion. And behind closed doors, most of our Republican colleagues concur. Surely the hatred of this man has reached critical mass.”

Pelosi suggested that “impeaching himself might be the only way to avert the intelligence community from arranging his assassination. He should take a lesson from history. If the CIA could successfully eliminate as beloved a man as President Kennedy, there should be little doubt that they could similarly take out Trump.”

“Of course, a possible downside is turning Trump into a martyr and seeing Pence use that to push through legislation that we wouldn’t be able to block,” she feared. “But I’m pretty confident that our media friends won’t let that happen. After the past three years of endless vilification directed at Trump, I believe promoting a ‘sic temper tyrannis’ meme is well within our grasp. However, our hope is that our GOP friends can go to Trump and persuade him that life as a private citizen is preferable to a bullet in the head, an unfortunate accident or terrorist attack. In any case and by any means, we cannot accept a second term for Donald Trump.”

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.” His work has been cited on the Rush Limbaugh program. 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

Despite the fact that the copy of the Special Counsel’s released to the public shows less than 10 percent was redacted and despite the fact that a completely unredacted copy is available for key members of Congress to read (an opportunity no Democrat has yet to seize), Rep. Jerrold Nadler, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, demanded that Attorney General Barr turnover a completely unredacted copy or join him in petitioning the courts to void the law prohibiting grand jury testimony and classified information from being published.

“Speaker Pelosi has already publicly characterized Barr as immoral, unethical, corrupt and unpatriotic,” Nadler pointed out. “If Barr wants this vilification to stop he will need to accede to our demands. Just because Special Counsel Mueller declined to press charges against many of those who testified in his grand jury proceedings doesn’t mean they should get off scot-free. Everyone knows that Trump and his minions represent the dregs of humanity. Anything we can do to make this clear to the American public is vital to the survival of our democracy. Having the means to publicize selectively edited excerpts from the redacted portions of the report is essential to this effort’s success.”

Sen. Dick Durbin seconded Nadler’s remarks and added a demand that Barr “recuse himself from any further involvement connected with any investigations of the heroic government officials who have been covertly working to reverse the monumental error of electing Donald Trump president. He should follow the example set by his predecessor Jeff Sessions, who correctly stepped aside to allow the intelligence community to continue their efforts to save the country from this tyrant. There is no good reason why these patriots should have their livelihoods endangered and their reputations smeared for doing the right thing.”

Barr rejected these demands, pointing out that “my predecessor’s dereliction of duty is not an appropriate model for how an Attorney General should proceed. Whether those who spied on and conspired against candidate, and later president, Trump, thought they were doing the right thing shouldn’t shield them from the consequences of doing illegal things. We will continue to investigate, and if we find evidence that supports the prosecution of any of the individuals involved, those prosecutions will go forward.”

A most disconcerting development for the Democrats was the release of CNN poll results indicating that nearly 70% of respondents favor the investigation being carried out by the Department of Justice. Even worse, 76% of Democrats surveyed endorse this investigation. CNN talking head Chris Cuomo pronounced himself “gobsmacked by these results. This is contrary to everything I believe should have happened based on our reporting. How could our audience have gone so far off the rails?”

Meanwhile, Late Show host Steven Colbert expressed a desire to “wring the neck” of Barr, citing “the Constitution’s unalienable right of the people to abolish the government and institute a new government more to our liking” as a justification. “Trump and his henchmen are on the verge of undoing the legacy left us by President Obama,” he said. “Surely, this warrants the same sort of extreme action taken by the Founding Fathers to end the tyranny they faced in 1776.”

China’s Role in US Politics

Former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton called for Chinese hackers to “get Trump’s tax returns” and suggested that “our media would richly reward you.” She intended these remarks as a reminder of Trump’s jibe during the 2016 campaign asking if the Russians could find the 30,000 emails she deleted and advising them that they would be richly rewarded by the US media.

However, Clinton’s joke is not only stale, it runs counter to her repeated claims that Trump’s 2016 joke was “proof he colluded with Russia.” If her copycat call for Chinese intervention in the 2020 isn’t a lame attempt at humor, then by her own previous reasoning it implicates her in a scheme to illegally secure foreign meddling in the next presidential election.

Whether Clinton could credibly pass off her remarks as a joke is dubious, though. The Clinton’s have been the recipients of Chinese money in the form of contributions to Bill’s 1996 reelection campaign and donations to the Clinton Foundation.

Continuing this tradition, the current front-runner for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, Joe Biden, also has had some questionable interactions with the Chinese government. After a 2013 visit to China to discuss trade and technology, Biden’s son Hunter’s company received a $1.5 billion equity investment from the Chinese government. Coincidentally, Biden now downplays the idea that we have anything to fear from China’s theft of technology from US companies or its hostile moves in the South China Sea.

Rival presidential contender Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt), though, criticized Biden’s “casual dismissal of the Chinese threat. Their unfair trade practices may enrich their American friends in high places, but they are stealing jobs from American workers. From his words and his deeds it is clear that the American people shouldn’t trust Joe Biden to defend their livelihoods if he were to become president.”

O’Rourke Touts “Budget Green New Deal”

Democratic presidential candidate, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (Tex) sought to stake out a middle ground vs. more radical opponents by offering what he dubbed “a Budget Green New Deal” with a price tag of only $5 trillion vs. the $93 trillion over ten years cost estimate of the American Action Forum.

“The key to cost-effectively achieving the desired results is to focus on the minimal public sector outlays required to simply outlaw all fossil fuels and police the enforcement of this rule,” O’Rourke explained. “Others have gone astray by trying to calculate the huge private sector costs in terms of lowered employment and lowered standards of living. In my view, these are not legitimate problems. They are features.”

“Global warming was not a threat before fossil fuels took over our economy,” he pointed out. “Consequently, the most expeditious path toward averting its catastrophic consequences is to simply reverse course. Folks were able to live meaningful lives without the polluting modern conveniences that we’ve become addicted to. Sure, walking rather than driving to work narrows the scope of employment opportunities, but it also means that buying local will be the only viable option for most people. This will help people to get to know their neighbors in a way reminiscent of bygone days.”

Beto’s proposal was assailed by rival presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) who pointed out that “in bygone days there was no public welfare program. Everyone was forced to support themselves or rely on the kindness of others. Today, government benefits provide for the needs of those unable or unwilling to work. The $88 trillion Beto proposes we could save under his program would deny this population’s right to sustenance.”

For his part, O’Rourke maintains that “the millions of newcomers crossing into our country from Mexico are used to working for a living. This will benefit many in unexpected ways. Many Americans who come home from a day at the office to face a plethora of household chores will be able to acquire one or more of these newcomers ready to perform these chores. New social bonds between master and servant will enrich lives currently wasted on idle entertainments like TV, video games, and joyriding. Life will be more earthy and fulfilling.”

Dem Touts Abortion “Efficiency”

The argument for late-term abortion and infanticide reached a new low in the Alabama House of Representatives this week when Rep. John Rogers (D-Birmingham) opposed legislation that would outlaw abortions except in cases where the mother’s life was imperiled by letting the pregnancy result in birth.

Rogers vociferously denounced “the foolish and futile effort to prevent expecting mothers from disposing of children they do not want. The toll on society from blocking the birth of unwanted individuals is vast. Everyone connected to these children, as well as the children themselves, are headed for immense suffering and expense. Handling the problem before it can fester into a societal scourge by terminating the fetus is both more merciful and efficient.”

Fellow Democrat Rep. Merika Coleman (Birmingham) defended Rogers’ position, saying that “until we can assure that every child has adequate health care it makes sense to winnow the herd of those most likely to suffer under the present horrific inadequacies of the system. If we can’t guarantee a child will have a happy life I see no problem from sparing them pain by euthanizing them before they are aware of what’s happening. Even if they suffer a few moments of pain during the procedure they are saved from a wasted lifetime.”

Despite Democrats’ objections, the law passed the House. It is also expected to pass the Senate. The ACLU of Alabama promises to sue. Executive Director Randall Marshall called the legislation “unconstitutional. In 1973 the US Supreme Court decided that women have an unalienable right to abort unwanted children. Since federal law is supreme, no state has the authority to infringe on this right.”

Jeb Bush Defends Sanctuary Cities

Seeking to ensure that he can never again run for office, former Florida Republican Governor Jeb Bush took issue with current Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis’ support of legislation aimed at penalizing cities that provide sanctuary for illegal alien criminals.

“I just don’t see sanctuary cities as a problem,” Bush asserted. “Immigrants coming to the United States is an act of love. We should all be welcoming them. It shouldn’t be left to a daring few communities to bear the sole burden of sheltering them.”

Even in the case of immigrants with a criminal history, Bush was adamant that “the fact that criminals come to the United States shows that they, too, love us. They could have continued their profession in their countries of origin, but they took the trouble and effort to come here. That ought to count in their favor.”

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.” His work has been cited on the Rush Limbaugh program. 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.