By Laurie Baron
January
SAN DIEGO — San Diego University President’s ecumenical statement expressing sympathy for the loss of life on 10/7 and the ensuing war in Gaza was condemned as “hateful and divisive” by the school’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, I composed an innocuous template for such presidential statements in the future.
“We condemn bad things occurring in (fill in name of place in generic terms—in this case, the lands on the Southeastern shore of the Mediterranean above Egypt and below Lebanon). The university sympathizes with everyone residing there who feels victimized. It will provide noise cancelling earphones and blindfolds to members of diverse campus communities, so they won’t hear or watch news they find hurtful. A generic flag with the image of a peace dove carrying an olive branch will be lowered to half-staff for a month. In all campus public buildings, a musical loop consisting of songs like “Smile,” “Be Happy,” and “Don’t Worry ‘bout a Thing” will be piped in between classes. Be assured students on this campus will never be confronted by anything that challenges their group identities or political perspectives.”
February
After the Alabama Supreme Court decision ruling that frozen embryos are children, a pro-choice group should lodge an appeal to cross examine an embryo speaking through Elon Musk’s Neuralink technology. It might go something like this:
Lawyer: Since you are now considered a person, can you state your name and date of birth?
Embryo: I have a test tube number, but no name, and, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m a long way from being born.
Lawyer: You are speaking to me so that must mean you have a brain.
Embryo: No, Musk asked an AI program “how would an embryo speak if it had a brain and was alive.” My answers are computer generated. Don’t you realize that I’m frozen and inert?
Lawyer: Do you excrete waste like a baby?
Embryo: I don’t because I don’t have circulatory and digestive systems, kidneys, urethra, and anus. If it did, it would be a problem because there’s no diaper or toilet small enough to fit in a test tube.
March
Donald Trump is now selling The God Bless the USA Bible for a price of $60. This proves he is a man of faith who wants America to pray all his trials will be delayed until after the election when he will win and abolish the judiciary system. What is special about this Bible is that he wrote the preface and annotations to its various stories. Here’s a sampling:
From the Preface: This Bible contains both the Old and New Testaments. As is true of presidential candidates, the newer one is better than the much older one.
About King David: King David had the foresight to have a hotel in Jerusalem named after him. Doesn’t this sound like a familiar pattern for great leaders? He also wanted to pay Bathsheba hush money to hide their affair which resulted in a pregnancy. When that failed, he dutifully married her to prevent her from having an abortion. King David had many wives too.
About The Book of Esther: The Jews exacted retribution against the people of Shushan by killing many of them. The lesson here is that God encourages retribution against enemies.
April
Donald Trump claims New York communists (i.e. Democrats) will be seated on his jury and convict him despite the overwhelming evidence of his innocence. The prosecution worries that pro-Trump fanatics will lie about their political views to be seated on his jury and cause a hung jury despite overwhelming evidence of his guilt. For a juror to be totally unbiased in this case, he or she or they must be:
— Someone who sustained a head injury and has suffered from amnesia since 2015.
— A Jew who thinks MAGA is the name of an Israeli martial art.
__A citizen who has never voted or expressed a political opinion during their lifetime.
__An embryo that has been frozen for 18 years whose personhood entitles it to vote.
__A player in a word association game saying weather when the hint is Stormy, animal when the hint is Fox, coffee when the hint is Joe, and bridge when the hint is Trump.
May
Now that Donald Trump has been found guilty of falsifying business records to affect the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, Judge Merchan must find alternatives to sentencing him to prison since that would cause a political uproar. Here’s some suggestions:
Trump should be sentenced to serve as a waiter at a feminist fundraising banquet for victims of sexual assault, harassment, and misogynist slander. The featured speakers will be Stormy Daniels and E. Jean Carroll.
Trump should be sentenced to community service at a shelter for immigrants awaiting their asylum hearings. There he will have to listen to them explain why they left their countries to escape persecution, poverty, and threats to their safety. None were released from prisons or psychiatric hospitals by the governments that they fled.
Trump should be sentenced to caring for Biden’s dog Commander. He will be forbidden from hiring Kristi Noem to assist him if Commander bites him.
June
Old Man Biden (To the tune of Old Man River)
Old man Biden
That old man Biden.
He’s not a hater,
Would be dictator.
That old man Biden,
Why’s he polling behind?
Joe sometimes stutters
With words he utters,
But he’s not insane.
And he don’t inflame.
That old man Biden,
Why’s he polling behind?
Liberty takes vigilance.
Sound policies and not vengeance.
Sound policies
Build a bridge; protect health care.
The rule of law and not despair.
July
A Secret Concurrence to Supreme Court Decision: No. 23–939, Trump vs. the United States.
When in the course of a presidential election, it becomes necessary for one candidate to dissolve the political bonds which our citizens have forged with one another, and to be vested with immunity over a potentially contentious congress, electorate, and rogue judiciary.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that presidents are above the law, that they are endowed by Jesus with certain inalienable rights, that among these are killing domestic and foreign enemies and unfettered liberty for economic enterprises and the pursuit of wealth.
That to secure these rights, the government should institute Project 2025, deriving its powers from the consent of the Heritage Foundation. That whenever dissident politicians, the press, non-Christians, and people of color become destructive of these ends, it is the right of the president to deport, intern, or, if necessary to shield the president’s ego from slander, to murder them with Seal Team Six.
August
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suspended his presidential campaign and endorsed Donald Trump. It is rumored that Trump, who previously referred to Kennedy as a “radical left liberal,” has promised Kennedy a post in his administration. Here’s some positions he would be qualified to hold:
Director of NASA’s study of wormholes.
Chair of a commission to investigate the assassination of John F. Kennedy to ascertain if the CIA was hired by the Bush and Clinton families to eliminate a competing political dynasty.
Head of a renamed CDC, Center for Disease Contagion, charged with banning all vaccines and prosecuting Anthony Fauci for injecticide. In this position he will also be empowered to investigate if anti-Depressants rather than guns are responsible for mass shootings.
Special Prosecutor of the Chinese and Ashkenazi Jewish creators of Covid who engineered it to spare them and kill African Americans.
September
Journalists recently uncovered a trove of past fascistic, misogynist, and racist posts that Mark Robinson, the Republican gubernatorial candidate in North Carolina, made on social media. Nevertheless, Donald Trump has endorsed him and called him “Martin Luther King on steroids.” If Robinson follows in King’s footsteps and gives his version of the “I Have a Dream Speech,” it might be retitled, “I Have an Extreme” and sound like this:
I have an extreme that one day in North Carolina the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will return to their antebellum status as slaves and owners with the slaves eating in shacks and the owners dining in plantations. Slave descendants should pay reparations to reimburse their owners for the room and board their ancestors received for free. If elected governor, I’d issue an executive order allowing me to buy a few slaves.
I have an extreme that little children will one day live in a nation where there are no homosexual and trans people to groom them to be pedophiles. I hope adults will be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their porn sites.
October
Reacting to the ferocity of Hurricane Helene, Marjorie Taylor Greene posted on X: “Yes, they can control the weather. It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.” Although Greene doesn’t say who “they” are, they probably are the same Jews she blamed for igniting California’s wildfires in 2021 with giant space lasers.
Of course, Donald Trump would never resort to blaming the Jews for the devastation left in Helene’s wake. After all, they are too busy conspiring with the Democrats to engineer his defeat in November. Nevertheless, he did accuse the Biden/Harris administration of sabotaging FEMA’s relief efforts by diverting FEMA funds to illegal immigrants to get them to vote for Harris. Rather than credit FEMA for anything, a viral photograph shows Trump heroically wading through the floodwaters caused by Helene’s torrential rains on a mission to rescue the storm’s victims. This picture may disappoint his MAGA minions who believe he can walk on water.
Indeed, Trump knows how to redirect hurricanes by redrawing their paths with a sharpie. If he hadn’t been campaigning, he could have shifted Helene’s trajectory into the Atlantic like he switched Hurricane Dorian’s to extend into Alabama in 2021. Marjorie Taylor Greene needs to concede that “the sharpie is mightier than the laser.”
November
(To the tune of I’m Proud to be an American)
I woke up from my sleep today
To learn Trump had his win.
And I feared for our democracy
And the purges he’ll begin.
I thank my lucky stars
To be living in this state.
Where the voters rejected him.
His divisiveness and hate.
And I’m proud I’m in California,
Where abortion is a right,
Where we respect all genders,
And ease the migrant’s plight.
And I’ll remain here, far from Trump
In the land of Kamala.
If I get labeled his enemy,
I’ll flee to Canada.
December
‘Twas the week before Christmas, the Reps in the House
Had struck a deal with nary a grouse.
The budget was set with no debt increase.
In hopes that ‘til March, there’d be fiscal peace.
The Reps were ready to go on recess
When a Musk post on X caused much distress.
He demanded the deal be suddenly scuttled.
Leaving the Speaker severely befuddled.
Musk found the budget much too excessive
And called for big cuts in things deemed progressive.
Trump followed suit as was expected.
Even though Musk had not been elected.
The Republicans failed to pass new legislation.
They needed Dem votes to fund the nation.
Thus, for this Christmas, there can still be enjoyment
Since federal workers will still have employment.
Yet a good future hasn’t been cinched
Since after 1/20 we’ll be ruled by a grinch.
Happy New Year: This greeting expires on January 20th.
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Laurie Baron is professor emeritus of history at San Diego State University.
Thank God there’s only 12 months in a year….