SEMI-NEWS/SEMI-SATIRE: May 19, 2024 Edition
NFL Brass Rejects Player's Traditional Values
This week, Harrison Butker, a player on the Kansas City Chiefs football team gave a commencement speech at Benedictine College--a small Catholic liberal arts college in Atchison, Kansas. In this speech Butker said to the women graduates "some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world, but I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world."
USA Today featured a column denouncing Butker's "extremist, Neanderthal views." On ABC's The View, the panelists chastised Butker for "not following the example of Jesus, who as those familiar with the Bible know shunned marriage, hung out with a group of men--some of whom deserted wives and families--and traveled around the Holy Land bumming food and shelter from working people." Change.org circulated a petition asking the Kansas City Chiefs to cut Butker from the team. And an as yet unidentified Kansas City municipal employee doxxed Butker so that people angered by his speech could visit him personally to rebut his "heresies."
While Butker's words seem well within the scope of traditional Catholic values, the National Football League's senior vice president and chief diversity and inclusion officer, Jonathan Beane hurried to distance the NFL from its content, saying "Mr. Butker's views are not those of the NFL as an organization. The blame and the shame are entirely his. While there are no current plans to expel him from the league, as some have demanded, we cannot rule this out if public outrage forces our hand."
In related news, sales of Butker's #7 team jersey have surged. On-hand supplies have reportedly sold out, but the jerseys can still be obtained on back order for those willing to wait.
Bragg Justifies His Priorities.
While Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg has been pouring his energy into prosecuting Donald Trump for the crime of winning the 2016 presidential election against the heavily favored former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, crime in New York City (NYC) has taken a dismal turn. In 2023, of NYC's 109,000 prosecuted arrests only 7% resulted in imprisonment. Worse, over 70% of NYC's reported crimes remain unsolved. Repeat offenders, some of them violent, are routinely released without bail while awaiting prosecutions that may never occur.
Bragg insists that "my priorities are not out-of-whack. All the assaults, robberies, rapes, and murders that are being put on the back burner while we are seeking to put Donald Trump in jail are small potatoes compared with the existential threat Trump poses for our democracy."
"Think about it," Bragg urged. "If Trump is put in jail he can't be president no matter how many folks vote for him. If he can't be president he won't be the Commander-in-Chief of an army that could shoot citizens down in the streets. He won't have his finger on the nuclear missile launches that could kill hundreds of billions of innocent people. He won't be able to reverse the progress that has been made to avert the climate change that will destroy the planet. Thwarting these potential colossal crimes far outweighs the importance of pursuing and jailing the relatively petty crooks we've been giving second chances."
Whether Bragg's ambitions for incarcerating Trump will be fulfilled have been thrown into doubt by the extraordinary flimsiness of his case against him. This week, star witness Michael Cohen couldn't even convince die-hard Trump hater Anderson Cooper of CNN of Trump's guilt. "Not only is Cohen's testimony inconsistent with past sworn statements he's made," Cooper observed, "the events he claims to recall aren't even physically possible within the time frames he says the occurred. If I were on the jury I couldn't see myself voting guilty after hearing Cohen's mishmash of conflicting accounts."
Bragg was not fazed by Cooper's assessment nor that of others with trial experience, saying "what these people are overlooking is the most important reason why I will win this case. The jury is comprised of New York City residents. Ninety percent of them hate Trump and will take this opportunity to hurt him. The other 10% will be too scared of the 90% to go against them. Trump is toast."
Other interested parties were not as confident as Bragg. The prospect that Trump might not end up in jail, but be reelected president has Stormy Daniels and her husband Barrett Blade "thinking we might have to leave the country. Bragg assured us that Stormy's testimony would seal the deal, but now that Cohen's gibberish has destroyed the chance for Trump being convicted we've got to consider our exit strategy. Right now Montenegro is looking pretty good."
DHS Defends Privacy of Terrorists
Fox News reporter Bill Melugin's request to know the nationalities of persons on the terrorist watch list arrested after illegally entering the US was rebuffed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Spokesperson Ikhil Yudhimmi explained that "the privacy interests of those apprehended outweigh the minimal level of public interest in such information."
Melugin found the rejection and explanation "inane. I did not ask for any names, IDs, addresses, or law-enforcement information. The people on the terrorist watch list are not families with children seeking a better life. They are suspected of being here intending to attack, damage, and kill. Knowing where they come from is a matter of public safety."
Yudhimmi emphasized that "being on a watch list is not the equivalent of being convicted of a terrorist crime. If the countries or origin are revealed it would just trigger an outburst of the kind of racist and un-American Islamophobia that President Biden has repeatedly warned us against."
"Ridiculous." Melugin said. "The reality is that these are people who surreptitiously crossed our borders and weren't discovered until they have been arrested for a crime other than illegally evading our laws regarding how they got into the country. At that point, their malign intentions have already been demonstrated. Information on their country of origin could assist in the development of more effective countermeasures. Such an issue also may have significance for voters trying to decide whether to stay the course with President Biden or choose a different person to defend citizens from hostile foreigners."
In related news, this week a Border Patrol agent told News Nation's Ali Bradley that "the Mexican drug cartels are the ones who really control our border now. All we are allowed to do is let in whoever the cartels bring to the border into America, give them some paperwork, and either release them on their own recognizance or put them on planes or buses to take them wherever they want to go inside our country. It seems unlikely to me that this is what most Americans want, but we won't know for sure until after the elections in November."
Despite Polls, Biden Is Confident of Reelection
Though recent polls of registered eligible voters in swing states show former President Donald Trump is ahead of him, recumbent President Joe Biden remains confident that he will be reelected. He has been telling donors that "the polling data is wrong because it only includes registered voters. It completely overlooks our strength among unregistered and ineligible voters, our robust ballot harvesting operation, the proliferation of unsupervised drop boxes where anyone--registered or not, eligible or not, citizen or not can deposit as many ballots as they desire."
"A new study published by Just Facts found that up to 27% of non-citizen adults in the US are now illegally registered to vote," Biden pointed out. "I'm willing to bet that nearly everyone of these folks will by voting for me because I'm the one who kept the borders open so they could get in. Many have publicly stated that they came here on my invitation. It is Democrats around the country in sanctuary cities and states who are appropriating the money to feed and house these people. Can there be any doubt that Democrats will be rewarded with their votes for our generosity?"
"Republicans know this," Biden insisted. "That's why they seem so desperate to enact the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act requiring that proof of citizenship be shown for a voter to obtain a ballot. This bill will never pass in the Democrat controlled Senate. Even if by some fluke it did, I will veto it. Republicans will be able to say that they tried to keep non-citizens from voting, but the fact is the millions of foreigners that I have brought into this country will add millions more votes for Democrats at all levels of government."
Contrasting Views on Climate Change
On the one hand, William McGuire, an Emeritus Professor of Geophysical & Climate Hazards at University College London, says "the only realistic way I see emissions falling as fast as they need to, to avoid catastrophic climate breakdown, is the culling of the human population by a pandemic with a very high fatality rate. It looked like the coronavirus pandemic might do the trick, but its lethality was way over hyped by the World Health Organization. Maybe a breakthrough in ongoing gain-of-function bioweapons research can boost the death toll from the next pandemic to the 90% fatality rate that is needed to save the planet."
On the other hand, Dr. James Enstrom, an Emeritus Research Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Public Health and Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, says "there is no Climate Crisis." He along with 1600 other scientists signed an open letter to the California Air Resources Board (CARB) saying that "the modest warming California has experienced has been beneficial. Higher concentrations of CO2 increase plant growth, food production, and drought-resistance of the Earth."
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) pointed out that "Pope Francis agrees with me and almost every other government leader in the world that the climate crisis is real and must be addressed by strong counterbalancing measures to eliminate the CO2 threat. In fact, I will be jetting over to the Vatican to confer directly with the Pontiff face-to-face. I'm proud to be able to say that I've played a key role in outlawing the sale of internal combustion powered vehicles in my state within the next decade, replacing fossil fuel power generation with wind and solar generated electricity, and convincing our citizens to accept the sacrifices in lifestyle that will be needed to revert to a more natural mode of living."
Enstrom predicted that "the sacrifices the Governor is trying to impose on the population are not only unnecessary, they are counterproductive. The public funds "invested" in so-called green energy have been largely wasted. Solar and wind are unreliable sources of power generation for a modern lifestyle. A consensus between politicians and a religious leader is not a persuasive reason for ignoring the real science on the subject. The amazing progress in human survival, prosperity, and comfort over the past few centuries has been due to the expanding scope of individual freedom of enterprise. Suppressing this freedom with mandates issued by politicians like the Governor is a formula for disaster."
Dems Warn Potential Trump Donors
Rumors that former President Trump has asked major oil companies to donate a billion dollars to his campaign has irked Democrats such that Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md) warned the eight energy company CEOs that were said to have had dinner with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort last month "to not put all your money on one horse in the race. If that horse loses the race you could suffer much more than the loss of your investment."
"Giving money to both sides has been a long-term insurance policy that has spared your industry from extinction," Raskin reminded. "If you think times have been tough under Biden with drilling leases being canceled and taxes being raised, imagine how much worse it could become if your product were to be outlawed. As you may have noticed, the Biden Administration and several Democratic governors haven't been shy about putting the internal combustion engine cars on the road to oblivion. I know you're thinking the elimination of gasoline burning cars will put a big dent in your profits and that you have nothing to lose by trying to elect someone more favorable to your business. Well, think again."
"As you have seen, we have put Trump on trial in four different venues," the Congressman pointed out. "If we can put a former president in jail do you think we'd have any trouble putting any corporate executive we want behind bars? Right now several of my colleagues and I are convinced that contributing to Trump's campaign can be construed as a conspiracy against our democracy. We can persuade the media to vilify you as enemies of the people. You will be put on trial in Washington, DC where a reliably Democrat jury will convict you on all charges. You will be sent to prison where you will be shanked by a deep state operative."
"If I have been misinformed about your intentions please don't hesitate to contact me and set me straight," Raskin concluded. "A generous donation to the Democratic Party right now could save you a lot of pain later."
