Irony and Humor in the News

From Human Events:

Just Kidding


by Susan Dale



05/25/2010





In this alternate universe in which we seem to be now living, I find that I am all too often saying to myself, “This has got to be a joke,” and looking to see if I’m inadvertently reading something in ‘The Onion,’ or some other satirical publication. It really has gotten to the point with the Obama Administration that’s it’s difficult to discern whether what you are seeing and hearing is a joke or the (always) awful truth. Witness below just a fraction of recent observations



*In the United Nations, Iran was just elected to the UN Commission on the Status of Women. This prestigious appointment “hands a four-year seat on the influential human rights body to a theocratic state in which stoning of women is enshrined in law and lashings are required for women judged ‘immodest.’”



This Commission is “dedicated exclusively to gender equality and advancement of women."



Burkini sales are expected to soar.



*Laura Bush’s memoir, entitled. “Spoken From the Heart,” has just been released. An individual wanted to check the former First Lady's book tour schedule, and when she typed in www.laurabush.com, she was automatically redirected to an Organizing for America website – barackobama.com. When last checked, the same redirection is still occurring.



No comment from that most gracious of ladies.



*The man who attacked the Weekly Standard reporter who was in the process of asking a question of Martha Coakley while she was in Washington attending a fund raiser during the Massachusetts Senate race earlier this year was named Michael Meehan, and his extraordinary actions were caught on camera for all the world to see. Mr. Meehan was a known union thug and Democratic operative, but now he can add Presidential appointee to his list of bona fides! Mr. Meehan is in the processing of becoming the newest appointment to the Broadcasting Board of Governors, having been chosen to receive this great honor by Barack Hussein Obama. The Broadcasting Board of Governors oversees federal news operations like Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, and its mission, ironically, is described as providing “an example of a free and professional press” to the world.



It is not known whether Mr. Meehan or President Obama appreciate the irony.



*Banner headline displayed on MSNBC: "Arizona has now made it a crime to be an illegal in the state of Arizona".



MSNBC rarely fails to amuse.



*In a recent article on the two-year old man-made California “Dust Bowl,” IBD reporter Monica Showalter brings to light what the Democratically-controlled Congress, in league with federal bureaucrats, have done to the former fertile fields of the Central Valley in California.



According to Ms. Showalter, “…it's hard not to notice how federal and state governments are hell-bent on destroying the state's top export -- almonds -- and everything else in the nation's (previously) most productive farmland.”



As she reports from this formerly verdant area, “vast spans from Bakersfield to Fresno sit bone-dry. Brown grass, dead orchards and lifeless grapevine skeletons stretch for miles for lack of water. For every fallow field, there's a sign that farmers have placed alongside the highway: "No Water = No Food," "No Water = No Jobs," "Congress Created Dust Bowl."



In their active destruction of the farming industry that used to thrive in this part of California, Congress and bureaucrats have for the two years of the drought, cited the protection of the snail darter, and other “endangered species’,” and global warming as their reasons to deny water to this $37 billion breadbasket through arbitrary "environmental" quotas.



Showalter reports, almost unbelievably: "Whatever the excuse, 75% of the fresh water that has historically irrigated California is now being washed to the open sea. For farmers in the southwest part of the valley, last year's cutoff amounted to 90%." Ms. Showalter states: “In short, there's something funny about California's dust bowl. It is man-made and has been brought to California farmers courtesy of the government.”



Where the left has been able to exercise power, incomprehensible destruction is always – always - left in its wake.



*President Obama has selected Dr. Donald Berwick to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the massive bureaucratic organization, made even more so by Obamacare, that will have a budget greater than that of the Department of Defense.

Berwick is a Harvard professor, a pediatrician, and the CEO of a nonprofit group that has a staff of approximately 100 people; the organization he would head would employ over 100,000. Despite the stunning differences in these.numbers and thus correlating expertise, it is thought that that Dr. Berwick is indeed a perfect pick for President Obama, as like Obama, Berwick believes that our health-care system should be run through Washington, and that the bureaucracy should exercise a strong degree of control over questions of life and death.



Berwick is completely up-front about this, unlike our current national leader. His view of the rationing of health care is that "the decision is not whether or not we will ration care; the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open." Berwick uses as his model the British method of rationing, as implemented through Great Britain's National Health Services (NHS) and its National Institute for Clinical Health and Excellence (NICE). NICE currently holds that, except in unusual cases, Britain “cannot afford to spend more than about $22,000 to extend a life by six months." Berwick believes that the British system is "not just a national treasure; it is a global treasure."



No death panels?



* The Obama administration has tapped Nawar Shora, legal director of the Arab-American Anti-Defamation Committee (ADC), to serve as a senior adviser for the TSA's office of civil rights and civil liberties.



The ADC is a very well funded organization that is not a friend to Israel. During the 2006 war in Lebanon, for example, the group filed a lawsuit to compel U.S. officials to request a cease fire and to stop all U.S. military support to Israel during the evacuation of US citizens from Lebanon.



Though not a civil rights organization, the TSA, the new nominee feels, should be “fighting for the civil rights of Muslims and Arabs,” and in his new capacity he would “do so as a federal government official."



Silly me. I thought the TSA existed for one reason, and that was to promote safety and thwart terrorism in protecting the American traveling public. I seem to have been mistaken, and its mission is much more nuanced. It isn’t about our safety at all; it’s about protecting the sensitivities of our Muslim and Arab brethren, and hiring (at great cost to the American taxpayer, I am sure) one of their chief shysters to make sure that no one named Abu or Mohammed has his feelings hurt. Shrewd policy, Mr. President.



*The stunningly buffoonish Janet Napolitano, in her capacity as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, announced recently that our Southern border “is secure.” I am certain that all Arizonians will be comforted to learn this; well, actually, maybe not, Richard Krentz, the rancher who at 58 was recently murdered at his home near the ‘secure’ border by an illegal immigrant who was also a suspected drug smuggler.



*In Quincy, Illinois, recently, a sizable paramilitary force was called in to quell a particularly ferocious Tea Party gathering. Faced down by an admittedly terrifying trio of grandmothers, dressed in American flag clothing, and singing “God Bless America,” the force almost broke, but they were able to steel themselves and remain in formation. Armed and ready to break whatever heads necessary, the black garbed and visored officers of the law managed to maintain order, thus providing adequate protection for any Muslims in the area.



Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could all just wake up tomorrow and realize that this nightmare our government is turning our nation into was just one great big joke? Not a funny one, of course, but I’d take anything at this point, as long as it’s not the reality of the Obama Presidency.







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Susan Dale is an author available for speaking and writing assignments in US & Europe. Reach her by email at susandalewrites@yahoo.com.