By J ohn Semmens — Semi-News — A Satirical Look at Recent News

The revelation that the site of the most recent school massacre had an armed police officer assigned to the school “disproves the conservative contention that ‘hardening the target’ is the way to go if we want to stop these kinds of gun tragedies,” says Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn).

The Senator was referring to the fact that an officer from the Broward County Sheriff’s office was permanently assigned to the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida where expelled student Nikolas Cruz killed 17 students and faculty members last week. The assigned officer, Deputy Scot Peterson, declined to engage the shooter and opted to remain outside while the massacre was unfolding.

“The deputy understandably chose to wait in a safe place for back-up to arrive rather than risk his life in what might have been a futile attempt to stop the shooter,” Blumenthal observed. “I think this shows the flaw in President Trump’s suggestion that qualified and trained faculty members should carry concealed weapons to deter armed intruders. A better plan would be to eliminate guns from our society. If no one had guns, no one could be shot. I think that’s the way to go if we really want to end these senseless crimes.”

Elie Mystal, editor of the “Above the Law” legal blog, backed Blumenthal’s argument, saying that “arming teachers would have a disproportionate racial impact. More black students will end up being murdered by their teachers. Statistics already show that minority students are punished at rates far exceeding their proportion of the school population. Arming teachers will just ratchet up the penalties from detention to death.” On the other hand, if Assistant Football Coach Aaron Feis had been armed he would have had an alternative to using his body to try to shield students from Cruz’s bullets.

Cruz’s deadly assault didn’t come out of the blue. There were plenty of warning signs that were ignored by the FBI, the Broward County Sheriff, and school officials who made a deal with law enforcement to go easy on student criminals so the school could qualify for more federal aid. “This widespread dereliction of duty shows why a law enforcement approach just won’t work,” Blumenthal argued. “Other countries that have disarmed the civilian population don’t have these kind of problems. We don’t see massacres like this in China or Russia. America needs to get past its obsession with our Second Amendment right to bear arms as a so-called bulwark against the theoretical oppression of a tyrannical government. Worse things can happen, as the Parkland incident has so clearly shown.”

Ironically, right now, a crew of several Palm Beach County, Florida, police officers are guarding Peterson’s home around the clock. This gives him more protection than law enforcement gave to the thousands of students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

As horrific as mass shootings in the United States have been, the toll in victims has been far short of the millions that have died at the hands of governments, like China and Russia, that have disarmed their populations. And on a per capita basis, the United States has fewer mass shoot victims than many European countries that have stricter gun control laws than we do—including Norway, France, Switzerland, Finland, Belgium and the Czech Republic.

In related news, despite unrelenting media and political propaganda aimed at demonizing guns, a recent poll conducted jointly by ABC and theWashington Post caused consternation by revealing that 57% of respondents felt that more stringent measures to deal with mental illness would be the more effective way of reducing mass shootings (President Trump’s suggestion) than the 28% who felt that stronger gun-control laws are the way to go (Democratic Party’s position). MSNBC host Katy Tur called the poll results “disappointing considering all the effort we’ve been putting into trying to shape the narrative on this issue.”

Chicago ID Card Will Allow Illegals to Vote

In a bid to “harness the political potential of adding hundreds of thousands of new Democratic voters,” the City of Chicago has authorized government-issued photo ID cards for all residents, including “undocumented persons” in the country illegally.

State Board of Elections spokesman Matt Dietrich said “the determination of who will be allowed to vote will be in the hands of local election authorities. There is no state law requiring proof of citizenship in order to register to vote. All you have to do is check a box on the voter registration form that says ‘yes, I am a citizen.’”

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel called the card “an ingenious counter to the Trump Administration’s efforts to deny voting rights to immigrants, the homeless and those recently released from prison. There are 109 different local election authorities in Illinois. There’s no way his federal goons can keep track of what all of these dispersed centers of election registrations are doing. Between this ID card and our sanctuary city policy I’m hopeful that we will make it impossible for any Republican to win any elective office in the state.”

Abbas Threatens Terror Attacks if US Cuts Aid

President Trump’s decision to reduce US aid to Palestine has so angered Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas that he has vowed “to send wave after wave of terrorists to bomb, shoot, stab, or run over Americans wherever we can find them—even in the United States. You think things have been bad with the occasional attack on the Jews occupying our land, well they are about to get a whole lot worse. President Obama gave us money with the understanding that we would confine our attacks to the Jews. Trump breaks this deal at his own risk.”

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) agreed with Abbas and labeled Trump’s cut in aid to the PLO “a rash move. President Obama’s payments to the PLO were an important plank in his policy of transformation for America and the world. You can’t just remove that plank and not expect there to be consequences.”

In a later, off-the-record conversation with Democratic colleagues, Pelosi expressed regret for “not thinking of a similar ploy to deter the recent GOP tax cuts that have severely hurt California taxpayers. The cap in the deductibility for state and local taxes in the GOP legislation has hurt upper income Californians who are our Party’s biggest donors. If we could’ve thought of a way to unleash MS-13 gang members on the rest of the country we might have swayed enough GOP moderates to kill the Trump bill.”

In related news, Pelosi suggested that a more cost-effective method for discouraging illegal border crossings into the United States “would be to mow the grass. Without the concealment provided by tall grass those trying to sneak into America would be easily seen. The embarrassment alone would, in my opinion, be a significant deterrent. I mean, who wants to be seen while committing a crime? I think it would be cheaper and more effective. With Trump’s wall idea, border crossers could use the wall to hide and climb over it after border guards left the area.”

Islam’s Priorities Clarified

In a lecture on religious doctrine, prominent Australian Muslim preacher Mohamed Hoblos told a gathering of the faithful that “a person who murders someone or rapes a child, but prays daily as prescribed in the Quran is better in the eyes of Allah than the one who doesn’t commit any of these sins, but doesn’t pray, Any person who misses one prayer without a good excuse is worse than a murderer, worse than a rapist in the eyes of Allah.”

Hoblos explained that “Allah does not want the faithful to sin. Not murdering or raping people is to be preferred, but it is better to sin and pray than it is to not sin and not pray. Daily acknowledgment of the greatness of God is more important to your salvation than good behavior toward others, even if they are fellow Muslims. Of course, the best way to achieve salvation while still sating your desire to hurt people is to select your victims from among those who are unbelievers. That way you can fulfill your obligation to wage jihad against the unbelievers and earn your reward in paradise.”

Meanwhile, Muslims in India are enraged by Pampers Baby Dry Pants. The disposable underwear has a cartoon drawing of the face of a kitten on it that local Islamic loons imagine spells out the name: Mohammed. Thus far, a few of the pull-up underpants have been publicly burned in protest. Fanatics are calling for a boycott of the product, demanding a change in design and an apology for “this act of sheer desecration” and warning of dire consequences if their demands are not met with appropriate alacrity.

Venezuelans Lead World in Weight Loss

Last year the inhabitants of Venezuela led the world in weight loss with an average decline in weight of 24 lbs. per person. President Nicolas Maduro lamented that “the outcome would’ve been even better if more of the largest losers had been able to survive. Still, we are showing the gringos how to fight climate change.”

Former US President Barack Obama hailed the country’s mass starvation method of weight loss as “a remarkable shrinkage of Venezuela’s carbon footprint. The sacrifices made by their people to reduce global warming have been truly heroic. One of my biggest regrets is that I was unable to lead the United States to make a similar effort. Our prosperity feeds our gluttony at the expense of the planet’s environment. More than 70% of Americans are obese. It’s a sad contrast to the nobility shown by Venezuela’s amazingly lean people and its government’s bold leadership.”

While many might consider the price the people of that country have paid for this environmental achievement—hunger, poverty, and death—excessive, Maduro boasts that “socialism has cured a problem that capitalistic societies have created. Rather than rape the land with our plows to grow food to make us fat, our people have eaten garbage the bloated Yankee pigs would consider spoiled, rotten, or stale and thrown away. This is why, like cockroaches, progressive societies will prevail when the veneer of civilization is torn down and cast aside.”

A Satirical Look at Recent News

John Semmens is a retired economist who has written a weekly political satire for The Arizona Conservative since 2005. He says working on his satires is one of the ways he tries to honor the liberties our Founding Fathers tried to protect.

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