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

Candidate for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt) took direct aim at the prosperity message of the Trump reelection campaign in his bid to become the nation’s next leader. “Wages may be up and unemployment at record lows, but the Trump economy lacks the social cohesion needed for a true human society,” he asserted. “Before capitalism supplanted feudalism there were solid social bonds between lords and serfs. Neither class could renege on its social responsibility to the other. Now employers can simply dismiss employees if they are redundant or unproductive and employees are free to seek other jobs just to get higher pay. This needs to stop.”

Sanders went on to propose a plan that would require government approval for businesses to discharge employees or for employees to leave their posts without good cause. “Society invests a lot of social and economic capital in the ways we do business,” Sanders pointed out. “This includes things like public schools and public infrastructure. We cannot allow this investment to be squandered due to personal greed. Under socialism it is government’s responsibility to ensure that this doesn’t happen.”

The candidate said he would “expect all parties to cooperate in the transition to socialism. I will be patient, but only up to a point. If resisters obstruct change, assets will be seized and non-co-operators can be sent for reeducation. Greed will be exterminated and need will replace it as the factor allocating resources and rewards. We will finally achieve the utopia promised by Karl Marx where all toil for the common good.”

In related news, rival contender for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, former Vice-President Joe Biden also criticized the Trump prosperity. “During the Obama era, young men like my son were able to make millions of dollars,” he said. “Under Trump’s policies, young men are being forced to work for much smaller gains. I just don’t buy the argument that millions making small gains outweighs the opportunity to strike it rich without having to put in such long and hard work. I think most voters will agree with me on this.”

Test Shows Dems Dumber than Average

While the guests and host on CNN’s Don Lemon program got some good laughs among themselves pretending that Trump supporters are ignoramuses, the General Social Survey (GSS)—a test of verbal ability and science knowledge contradicts their premise.

Most interesting in the latest edition of the GSS was the finding that less than half (49.6 percent) of the Democrats participating in the test were able to select the correct answer regarding whether the sun orbits the Earth or vice versa and whether it takes a day, month, or year to complete one orbit. The average correct response rate for all test participants was higher than for Democrats alone, but still a dismal 57.1 percent.

Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez called the comparison “unfair and racist. The Democratic Party is home to a large percentage of African-Americans and Hispanics who have been under-educated in our public school systems. It’s not fair to compare their knowledge vs. whites who are naturally more attentive and well-behaved in school. Besides, is knowledge about whether to Earth orbits the sun or not an important factor in deciding who to vote for in an election?”

In related news, Perez accused Trump of “poaching voters. For decades the Democratic Party has depended on the votes of minorities to win elections. Now polls are showing that Trump has a 42 percent favorability rating among blacks. And an alarmingly large portion of the black vote may go to Trump in 2020. His programs promoting increased economic prosperity among African-Americans unfairly invades our Party’s territory. We are going to ask the FCC and FEC to bar any broadcast appeals from the Trump campaign targeting the minority vote.”

Moscow Irked Over Zelensky’s WWII Comments

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov expressed his displeasure with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s true observation that “it was the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 that led to the start of World War II. A secret clause of this pact allowed Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union to jointly invade and dismember Poland.”

Peskov adamantly disagreed, saying that “we do not accept this statement. We consider it erroneous and offensive. As President Putin pointed out last month, it was collusion between Poland and Hitler that led to the Nazis invading Poland in September 1939. It was only later in the month when Russian troops moved in to protect the eastern half of Poland from being overrun by Germans and gave us the opportunity to execute the 10,000 Polish Army officers who opposed the gift of communism Stalin wished to bestow upon them.”

Sergei Naryshkin, head of Russia’s foreign intelligence service, also complained that “Zelensky is getting increasingly drawn towards ideas of Ukrainian nationalism and independence that are out-of-line with the international socialist movement. We may have to seize more than just the Crimea to stem this reactionary trend.”

CNN Mocks Trump’s Virus Task Force

This week, President Trump formed a team of health experts to address the coronavirus outbreak. The problem, according to CNN, is that this team is not “diversified.”

CNN analyst Brandon Tensley lamented the lack of any minorities on the task force. “All we heard from Trump was that he was choosing the best experts in the world for this job,” Tensley said. “President Obama would not have been so single minded. When he had the opportunity to appoint a task force to deal with the 2014 Ebola outbreak he carefully balanced expertise with the need to provide opportunities for minorities to advance their careers.”

“Over the long term, lack of racial and gender diversity is a more serious threat than any disease we might face,” Tensley maintained. “Disease strikes indiscriminately without regard to race or gender. It is an equal-opportunity slayer of humans. Lack of diversity is an insidious prejudice eating away at social justice. I, for one, would much rather risk a less effective effort against any virus than the failure to achieve more opportunities for minorities to advance. I think the majority of people would agree with me on this.”

In related news, presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) suggested that “we might want to consider China’s proposal to cull the segment of the population that is suspected of carrying the coronavirus. If by sacrificing some we can save the larger collective I think it is a step we must contemplate. I would hope that the culling could be carried out in a fashion that has all racial and ethnic groups equally represented.”

Chief Justice Censors Senator

At the impeachment trial of President Trump being conducted in the Senate, Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court John Roberts refused to carry out his duty to read a question posed by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ken). Paul tried to ask what involvement Rep. Schiff’s staff might have had with Obama Administration holdovers in efforts to oust Trump from office.

Roberts, as had Schiff before him during the House impeachment investigation, said he “blocked the question because it might lead to the disclosure of the whistle blower’s identity. The government often relies on confidential informants to build a case against a lawbreaker. The future willingness of persons to levy charges against public officials could be negatively affected if they had to come forward and face possible cross-examination under oath. This, in my opinion, is a greater threat to our democracy than denying the accused the presumed right to face his accuser.”

Though the so-called whistle blower’s identity is widely known—both Schiff and Roberts have to have known his identity in order to block questions that might lead to naming him—his long-term animus and scheming against Trump is not. In 2017, long before the July 2019 Trump-Zelensky phone call, Eric Ciaramella was active in plotting how to remove Trump from office. Surely, this animosity should raise questions concerning the veracity of the so-called whistle blower’s accusations. Surely, the defense should have a right to cross-examine him under oath so jurors could assess his credibility.

Schiff praised Roberts’ “courage in defense of those of us fighting against the tyranny Trump would inflict on this country. Many of my staff have put in long hours working under the radar with fellow patriots to unseat this monster by whatever means we can. It is good to know we have an ally ensconced at the highest level of our government.”

Warren Wants to Criminalize “Disinformation”

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass) promised to enact censorship of misleading political speech if she becomes president. “We need new laws that impose tough civil and criminal penalties for disseminating false information related to U.S. Elections,” she says.

“Trump is the poster boy for disseminating false information,” Warren claims. “He has sent thousands of lies over electronic media—both on Twitter and Face Book. These include assertions that his policies have been good for the middle class and minorities when everyone knows they are not. These lies influence how people vote. That undermines democracy. I hope that the FEC is active in shutting down this disinformation in the run up to November, but clearly we need stronger laws that will more effectively deter this scourge.”

“Following my victory in November I will assemble a task force to propose meaningful sanctions on violators,” Warren vowed. “Assets of offending businesses will be seized. Corporate executives will be prosecuted. Individuals will be sentenced to community service working for socially progressive organizations in a bid to reeducate them and save them from harsher punishments.”

Pelosi Threatens Second Impeachment

Miffed that Trump “has not sufficiently appreciated the humiliation of being impeached,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) warned “we will impeach him again if voters don’t turn him out of office this Fall.”

“When I think about how President Clinton was unfairly impeached and has to bear that stain forever I see the need for further action against Trump going forward,” she explained. “So far, three presidents have been impeached. But Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton were only impeached once. Next year we will make Trump the first president to be impeached twice. Even if we can’t get a conviction, he will still be impeached forever—twice. He will be the only person in history impeached twice. The only way he can avoid such a stain on his reputation in the history books is to resign like Nixon did.”

In addition, Pelosi demanded that Trump’s impeachment defense team members be disbarred. “If Bill Clinton could be disbarred for lying about sex, then all the lawyers who lied for Trump in the Senate trial should be disbarred as well,” she added. “Informed opinion is unanimous that Trump is guilty. Any lawyers who help a guilty man escape punishment should not be allowed to practice law.”