IPFS John Semmens

SEMI-NEWS: A Satire of Recent News

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SEMI-NEWS/SEMI-SATIRE: June 4, 2017 Edition

Pullout from Paris Climate Accord Widely Denounced

This week, President Trump announced that the United States is pulling out of the Paris Climate Accord. The move was widely denounced.

Former President Barack Obama, who unilaterally committed the US to the accord without seeking the consent of the US Senate, denounced Trump's action as "a betrayal of the future" and called for state and local governments to ignore Trump's stance and "independently implement the agreement."

California Governor Jerry Brown (D) followed Obama's advice and announced that "California will sign a separate climate treaty with China. I cannot remain passive and allow an insane and deviate President Trump to undermine the commitments made on behalf of the world by President Obama."

In step with the incivility that has marked much of the opposition to to the Trump Administration, the German newspaper Berliner Kurier ran a story with the headline "Earth to Trump: F*** You!"

The governments of Germany, France and Italy flatly rejected Trump's suggestion that the Accord be renegotiated to better balance the obligations imposed on the participants. "Let me say to the Americans what they said to Germany so many years ago: 'we will accept nothing less than unconditional surrender,'"Chancellor Angela Merkel declared. "The European powers are united on this matter and will not hold back in our efforts to accomplish this goal."

The first blow in the "European powers" campaign to force the US to yield will be shining green lights on public landmarks like the Eiffel Tower and Empire State Building. Both New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo professed "our solidarity with our European allies in opposing Trump's crimes against humanity. We look forward to the day when he and his henchmen can be put on trial and hanged like the crypto-Nazis they are."

France's President Emmanuel Macron promised that "France will open its borders so that Americans seeking to escape from Trump's tyranny can find refuge in our country. I call for all scientists and responsible citizens of America to join the resistance if they can. And if they can't, flee and we will help them organize a 'Free American' army that can take back their country."

The antagonism for Trump was undiminished by National Security Agency whistle blower Edward Snowden's assertion that "I have documents showing that the CIA invented 'Global Warming' to both scare people, and divert their attention from other human-made dangers."

Global warming hoax profiteer and former US Vice-President Al Gore dismissed Snowden's claim as "irrelevant. How the idea originated isn't as important as the fact that it is now the universal consensus of those who control the levers of power around the world. No one can stand against us, especially someone with such a puny core of support as Donald Trump. He will be taken out one way or another, as Kathy Griffin so artfully predicted just a few days ago."

In related news, the desiccated comedian Kathy Griffin, who posed for a photo with a simulated severed head of President Trump, has hired celebrity lawyer Lisa Bloom to protect her from the Trump family harassment she claims "is ruining my career and peace of mind. Can't they take a joke? I never had any negative feedback for my humor from the previous administration." A Trump tweet asked "Why would she? As obnoxious as her ass-kissing of Obama was, I'm sure he loved it."

New Cache of Clinton Emails Released

This week, Judicial Watch released a cache of over 2,000 of then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's emails. The documents confirm that classified information was being illegally shared with persons lacking the security clearance to receive them.

In a bizarre twist, Clinton attempted to characterize this as "evidence of the massive Russian conspiracy to deny me my right to be president. If you will notice, one of the emails alleges that my trusted aide Huma 'hooked up people from the Russian American Foundation with the right people at the State Department.' Since this email dates from 2010 it proves that Trump and the Russians engaged in a long-term plot against me and that Donald Trump is not legally our president."

"An additional email reference to a mysterious US-Russia Cultural Sub-Working Group shows that Russian naval forces were deployed to smuggle in the 1,000 robots who fabricated all the incriminating emails later published by Wikileaks," Clinton contended. "Surely, this is this smoking gun that Congress is looking for in the quest to oust the usurper and award the presidency to me."

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton had a different take on the email contents: "The casual violation of laws concerning classified material and noxious influence peddling show the Clinton State Department was 'corruption central' in the Obama administration. No wonder Clinton's allies in the State and Justice Departments have been slow-walking and hiding these emails."

In related news, former Democratic National Committee Chair, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla) blamed Congress for not stopping her from committing a series of network security violations while she headed the DNC. "The multiple offenses would have been far fewer if someone had stepped in early to prevent me from breaking the law," she rationalized. "I mean, if what I did was really so bad, wasn't it someone's responsibility to intercede before I went too far? Why should all the blame be put on me?"

Senator Says Knowingly Infecting Someone with HIV Shouldn't Be Felony

California State Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) has drafted legislation that would downgrade knowingly exposing someone else to HIV or AIDS from a felony to a misdemeanor.

Weiner called the current law "unfair. It discriminates against gays who must engage in anal sex because they were born without the vaginas, which are exclusively provided to women. Requiring a gay man to disclose he has HIV effectively shuts down his sex life. Threatening him with a felony conviction is too steep a penalty given that advances in HIV therapies have greatly extended survival time for those infected."

The Senator also angrily demanded that GOP opponents of his bill "butt out. They're not gay. Their voters aren't gay. They don't have any skin in the game. Why should they have a say in whether the law is changed?"

Sen. Jeff Stone (R-Murrieta) disagreed, saying "it's not a gay issue. It's a public health issue. By lessening the penalty for infecting another person this bill would increase the risk to the gay community Sen. Weiner wants to free from discriminatory treatment under the law. The current law seeks to deter those with HIV from having unprotected sex with an unsuspecting victim, just like our DUI laws seek to deter impaired drivers from killing unsuspecting victims in traffic crashes."

Sen. Richard Pan (D-Sacramento), a physician, voted for Weiner's bill arguing that "imprisoning those who infect others will just throw them into an environment where anal sex is rampant. The impact on the prison population is proportionately larger than the impact on the general population outside of prison will be if we simply let violators off with a nominal fine, as this reform legislation would do."

In related news, the city of East Lansing has barred Steve Tennes and his family from selling their organic produce at the local farmers market because the family doesn't support gay marriage. Tennes is mystified by the City's action. "I don't ask the sexual orientation of my customers," he pointed out. "Gay or straight, if they want to buy, I want to sell." Democratic Mayor Mark Meadows rejected Tennes' "noncompliance with City policy. Approval of gay marriage is a crucial part of who we are and who everyone in town needs to be. It is Mr Tennes obligation to know the sexual orientation of his customers. Blandly offering to sell, no questions asked, won't get him out of meeting this obligation if he hopes to do business here."

ACLU Opposes Criminalizing Female Genital Mutilation

The American Civil Liberties Union has taken a stand in opposition to a proposed Maine law that would make it illegal for parents to mutilate the genitals of their daughters.

"This bill unfairly targets Muslims for carrying out traditions of their faith," charged ACLU spokesman Oamshri Amarasingham. "Jews are allowed to mutilate their sons. Why shouldn't Muslims be permitted to mutilate their daughters?"

Sponsor of the bill Rep. Heather Sirocki (R-Scarborough) disputed the comparability argument. "Circumcising males only removes a portion of the penis' foreskin," she pointed out. "It does not destroy the possibility of sexual performance or satisfaction that the removal of the clitoris does. The female mutilation targeted in my bill would bar this barbaric practice for anyone who is not a consenting adult."

Amarasingham countered that "this 'barbaric practice' is protected under the Constitution's freedom of religion clause. As much as some might object, the state has no authority to intervene. The advocates for humane treatment of little girls have no more right to intervene than the opponents of abortion have to stop a mother from terminating her unwanted baby. Cultural norms are changing. I believe the day is not far off when a Muslim majority will reshape our laws to respect their way of life."

Times Editor Rejects Concept of Thoughtful Disagreement

This week, Pulitzer award-winning New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet told a gaggle of leftist loons that "we don't need to subject ourselves to the erroneous views of our antagonists. The concept that liberal society has room for thoughtful disagreements is out-of-step with the modern progressive way of thinking."

"Its long past the time when progressives had to put up with the rantings of the right as a sop to supposed civilized behavior," Baquet said. "The need for us to pretend to be tolerant of our enemies no longer exists. Why should we listen to ideas that have been discredited? Why shouldn't we be smashing the faces and cracking the skulls of those who assert that individual freedom to deviate from the path of social justice is an inalienable right? The struggle against bourgeois reactionaries can't afford to be squeamish. They want us to have a discussion? Okay, as long as we can kick the crap out of them while they talk."

Baquet hastened to remind his audience that he was "of course, speaking hypothetically. I'm a journalist and these are just my objective observations on the current state of affairs under the Trump tyranny. And even though I sympathize with those fighting against this tyranny, I would never officially take a position one way or another as to who is right and who is wrong."

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