Collected Poetry
VOLUME FIVE 
Copyright © 2011 by Gary Bachlund All international rights reserved
Wouldn't you like to have some cash?
"African leaders gave former French president Jacques Chirac and his prime minister Dominique de Villepin briefcases full of cash, notably to finance election campaigns, a former aide alleged on Sunday. Villepin, a potential candidate in next year's presidential election, denied the allegations, which claim to shed new light on the French political establishment's often shady relationship with former colonies in Africa. Robert Bourgi, a lawyer with a network of African contacts who advised Chirac and Villepin before changing camps in 2005 to aid now President Nicolas Sarkozy, made the allegations in France's Journal du Dimanche newspaper. Bourgi said he 'took part in handing over several briefcases to Jacques Chirac in person, at Paris city hall' when the future president was mayor in the 1980s and 1990s. 'There was never less than five million francs (more than 750,000 euros). It could go up to 15 million,' Bourgi said, giving a detailed account of how Chirac would offer him beer while allegedly putting away the bundles of cash. 'I remember the first handing over of funds in Villepin's presence. The money came from Marshal Mobutu (Sese Seko), president of Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo)." In "African leaders gave Chirac 'briefcases of cash' ," France 24, 11 September 2011
Wouldn't you like to have some cash?'
Briefcases full could fill your stash?
Handle it all with the usual panache --
Add a little élan, and political dash.
That's how you'd get your bit of cash.
Shouldn't funds be flowing your way?
Some satchels full could have their say,
Through public halls into pay-to-play
Not often seen nor on display.
That's how funds could flow your way.
At highest levels, in loftiest spheres,
That is where funding frankly appears.
Gallic, European or African peers?
Asian or American seers?
The same behavior oft adheres.
If you'd gather up a lot of dough,
The public trust's the place to go,
As long as no one will ever know
The channels through which your funds did flow.
That's how one lifts a pile of dough.
"Getting inside the White House was easy for billionaire investor George Kaiser, who made multiple visits to the White House and appeared at White House events next to administration officials. One of the prime investors in the green energy company Solyndra, Kaiser put quite a few tokens in the White House turnstile. As the Daily Caller reports, Kaiser himself donated $53,000 to Barack Obama's 2008 election campaign, divided between Obama for America and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. A world-class bundler, Kaiser also raised $50,000 to $100,000 from others for the senator's campaign. Despite a warning from Solyndra's own accountants at PricewaterhouseCoopers that the company's business model was suspect and raised "substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern," President Obama visited the company and gave it a glowing endorsement as a government-picked winner alongside electric cars and high-speed rail." In "SolarGate," Investors Business Daily, 6 September 2011
The classic scheme,
The kick back scheme,
Kicks cash back,
And always upstream.
The classic dream
In such a regime
Funnels cash out,
To flow back cream.
They skim that cream,
And repeat the theme,
As this defines
Their Jurassic scheme.
One side plays it;
The other does too.
If you pony up the cash,
They'll play with you.
"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart." Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, in his Commencement address delivered at Stanford University and published in the Stanford Report, 12 June 12, 2005.
I'll be dead soon enough;
There's time to time away.
Until that time, time is
To keep life underway.
There are no reasons
To follow not one's heart,
For it was there, is there,
Will be, where all dreams start.
We are dead soon enough;
Ours are lives to live away.
Until those days, times are
To toil, to love and play.
Dumb cluck chickens
come home to roost,
while all sorts of pigs
learn to fly.
The horses of varying
differing colors
make asses of themselves,
eye to eye.
It's raining cats
as it's raining dogs,
and both tigers and zebras
change stripes.
Birds of a hawking
flock together,
as cows jump the moon
hunting snipes.
Lions lay down
with their legs of lamb
while something
has gotten your goat.
The whole shebang
seems a green-eyed croc,
yet minks are vermin,
and ermine are stoat.
Horsing around
while dumb as an ox
in lumberingwoodlands ablaze,
One finds one's self
fallen off of one's shelf,
wandering out
in a wondering daze.
What does it all mean,
all this and all that,
when all in between
plays rat-a-tat tat?
Why should each critter
be bitter and skitter
as skitters away
the pitter-pat rat?
Poor as a church mouse
while rich as a king,
building glass houses
as hurled stones sing,
You're up, then you're down,
yet you bitterly cling.
What does it all mean,
your ring-a-ding ding?
It means that you're mean
as often as you're nice.
It means that you're nice
at double the price.
It means that most things
are best flavored with spice,
and means imprecisely
that all must suffice.
Cash flow - a parody on Cole Porter's classic song, "True Love"
"A solar energy company that intends to file bankruptcy received $535 million in backing from the federal government and has a cozy history with Democrats and the Obama administration, campaign finance records show. Shareholders and executives of Solyndra, a green energy company producing solar panels, fundraised for and donated to the Obama administration to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Tulsa billionaire George Kaiser, a key Obama backer who raised between $50,000 and $100,000 for the president’s election campaign, is one of Solyndra’s primary investors." In "Bankrupt solar company with fed backing has cozy ties to Obama admin," by C. J. Ciaramella, The Daily Caller, 1 September 2011
Cozy, private,
Moneyed fellows swapping funding --
Living far above par...
Oh, how clever we are.
You take from me as I take from you,
Cash flow, cash flow.
The cash, it comes from the treasury,
That funds us with its dough.
For you and I have a game idyllic,
A game quite simple, not imbecilic,
As you to give to me as I give to you
Cash from others. Who?
Yes, you and I play a game sagacious,
With rules quite canny, yet audacious,
That you give to me as I give to you,
Cash. Don't misconstrue.
I give to you as you give to me
Cash flow, cash flow.
And on and on it should always be,
Cash as quid pro quo.
"'The terrorism of the Red Army Faction (or Baader-Meinhof gang, which bombed political targets in the 1970s) started with quote-unquote 'just' arson,' he told broadcaster N24. 'For this reason there is a danger that the violence could one day target people.'" In "Car Burnings are a 'Precursor to Terrorism'", by Florian Gathmann, Der Speigel, 18 August 2011
Just arson is just desserts;
Just crime justice perverts.
Just is such a mealy word;
Just is so often just absurd.
Just burn bright, just delight;
Justice comes to burn. Ignite!
Just is justice when it's not;
Justice just had just forgot.
Just mine, just yours,
Just his, just wars.
Just ours, not theirs,
Just wordy snares.
Pigs don't fly.
Flies don't grunt.
Words oft lie,
Back to front.
Words can fly
Back and forth,
Spreading lies,
South, as north.
Something's lost
In that mist,
Meaning crossed,
Milled as grist.
If pigs flew,
Worlds would change.
All things could
Rearrange.
Until then
Pigs just rut.
Such is life,
Snout to butt.
"Let me order my thoughts to make this as brief as I can.... And so language, the ability not only to master the ability to put your ideas into words succinctly on a platform to communicate ideas to your own people, it is even more impressive when you have the capacity to do that and communicate your ideas, especially as future business and political and moral leaders of the world in the language of the people to whom you are speaking." Vice-President Joe Biden (D), at Sichuan University, China, as reported by CNS News, August 24, 2011 at 5:08 pm.
Suck sinked long;
He belly upped,
Brief blabbed on,
Thoughts corrupt.
Ordered language
Lost its way;
Words piled high
Had their say.
Bee-eff-dee
Vee-pee's spoke;
Grammar knots
Make the joke.
Impressive is
Not quite so.
Succint short?
Just ain't Joe.
Left is Right, as Right is Left
"Horst Mahler was a leader of the German radical left in the 1960s and '70s. Now he's a member of the radical right, sitting in jail for denying the Holocaust. But he's reportedly verified reports that he informed for Communist spies in the '60s." In "Leftist Terrorist Turned Neo-Nazi Says Was Stasi Informant Too," in Der Spiegel, August 2, 2011
Left is Right, as Right is Left;
The whole then is of sense bereft
As Right is Left and Left is Right,
When both allege one truth quite bright.
Left is Right, as Right is Left;
Vocabulary seems oh so deft
When Right is Left and Left is Right,
But I prefer a different fight.
Left is Right; vice versa too;
The whole is just a wordy stew
To make the vicious radical
Seem not so very typical.
And yet it is, and Left is Right
Flows into Right is Left -- a sleight
Of hand and word, rhetorical craft
To make one half seem oh so daft.
Which is your game? Your choice? Your pick?
Be you among the Left so thick?
Be you among the Right so wrong?
Which is your favorite Right-Left song?
Left is Right, as Right is Left;
The whole was ever of sense bereft,
But dear to the hearts the many folk
Who think such words are not a joke.
Radical Left and radical Right
Join their hands in one fine fight
To clutter faux images of opposites
And camouflage their fist-high blitz.
Choose the one? The other? Which?
Either choice is bait-and-switch
For both are brothers, sisters too.
Each one demands, "Which one are you?"
Neither? Such offends their scheme;
Left and Right require you dream
In polar opposites that never were,
In words intended just to blur.
Left is Right, as Right is Left;
The whole then is of sense bereft
As Right is Left and Left is Right,
And both strike out in rage and spite.
Whose gonna pull the welfare wagon - a Western poem
Whose gonna pull the welfare wagon
when everybody wants to ride?
Whose gonna heft the weight and tug
when so many sit inside?
Whose gonna labor when labor won't?
Whose gonna toil when others don't?
Whose gonna pull the welfare wagon?
It's time now. You decide.
Whose gonna pay for welfare funding
when everybody wants their check?
Whose gonna fills the coffers with money
when half the folks shrug? Oh, heck.
Whose gonna stoke the gravy train's boilers
When everybody waits for other toilers?
Whose gonna shovel the coal from the tenderwhen the gravy train is a wreck?
Whose gonna swim in raging waters
when whirlpools pull them down?
Whose gonna save someone from drowning
when insolvency floods the town?
Whose gonna show the way to repair things?
Whose gonna cheer when the fat lady sings?
Whose gonna float the ark in the flooding?
Where is a Noah when so many are a clown?
Whose gonna pull the welfare wagon
when everybody wants to ride?
Whose gonna wear the bridle and harness
and feel the whip on his hide?
Whose gonna lead when leaders can't?
Whose gonna huff and puff and pant?
Whose gonna pull the welfare wagon?
It's time now. You decide.
"Pretty darn fucked. I've been hanging around Tim Geithner too long." A response to Bill Maher, asking in a television show segment, "How fucked are we?" in "Former Obama Economic Adviser on Downgrade," Christina Romer, former Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Obama administration, August 2011.
Pretty darn fucked,
Chunk chicken clucked
As a cocky rooster preened.
Such clever words
Are much like turds
In a barnyard never cleaned.
Pretty darn fucked,
This hen's product
Which she'd laid, and then weaned.
Her clever chat
Weighed what she'd shat,
And yet then rude demeaned.
Pretty darn fucked
Was always bucked
Up as cackles careened.
Her clever stance
Was proven askance,
And plain sense was contravened.
"We have learnt from the financial crisis that one should not place too much faith in financial vehicles with three-letter acronyms. But that is what we are doing with this European equivalent of a late-period subprime mortgage CDO. We are not just 'kicking' any old 'can down the road' any more. This is a can of explosives.'" Wolfgang Münchau, Associate Editor of the Financial Times. July 2011
Let's kick the can down the road;
It's always seemed to work before.
Procrastinate, prevaricate;
That's what such tidy words are for.
If that kicked can takes another hit,
It can roll along some further bit.
You'll have bought yourself another day;
Before it blows up, walk away.
Or kick that can, as you've before,
And take a chance; the risks ignore.
Explosives are as explosives go;
As things stand now, something's sure to blow.
All those bright little boys and girls
Are spinning round in tightening swirls.
Government numbers - just words
"The numbers the government is using have nothing to do with reality," insisted Amal Albaghdadi, a Rabat native and organiser with the February 20th movement. "I have come out to say enough with poverty, discrimination, and lack of freedoms. We want real democracy." In "Morocco: 'We want real democracy'," by Sarah Lazare, Al Jazeera, 04 Jul 2011
Government numbers are cheerily good,
Massaged and peddled in your neighborhood.
Government numbers tell their tall tale,
But now tall telling is getting stale.
Government numbers are oft unreal
Because they're intended to seal a deal.
Government numbers smile at you,
Their hands picking pockets' for revenue.
Government numbers are sometimes bad,
Which, to tell the truth, is rather sad.
Government numbers cherry pick,
Which is that same old political trick.
Government numbers are much like words,
To move a people as one moves herds.
All is good in government,
As proven by each pilfered cent.
"Operation Board Games has exposed what I've been calling the bipartisan Illinois Combine, in which powerful Democrats work with powerful Republicans to gorge from the public trough and call it legal." In "Imagine the thoughts in Blagojevich's veins," by John Kass, Chicago Tribune, June 28, 2011
Politicians, let's us all gorge?
Rod said the game was legal.
Perhaps we clever all can forge
Ways to soar like an eagle
Over the debt racked up by us
Which someone else should pay.
What a finessed stratagem
To pocket more cash away;
Combine the parties' power balls
In a reeling, rolling game
And watch the suckers, what befalls
As you say they bear the blame.Politicians, let's us all gorge?
George thought the game was legal.
Gorgeous was each legal scam
As long as each did last,
Then? Sacrifice one goat and scram
With stealth to vanish fast.
Politicians, let's us all gorge?
Governors played the game as legal.
Now prisoners, their own chains forge
A cell not high nor regal.
The biggest crime was getting caught,
For so have politicians often thought.Ill in noise, sick and shocked,
As verdicts are read aloud,
Once-soaring politicians squawked
To join the convicts' crowd.
Their saddest crime was getting caught,
Which is what their game has wrought.
"Hegelian dialectic, usually presented in a threefold manner, was stated by Heinrich Moritz Chalybäus as comprising three dialectical stages of development: a thesis, giving rise to its reaction, an antithesis, which contradicts or negates the thesis, and the tension between the two being resolved by means of a synthesis. Although this model is often named after Hegel, he himself never used that specific formulation. Hegel ascribed that terminology to Kant. Carrying on Kant's work, Fichte greatly elaborated on the synthesis model, and popularized it." from Wikipedia on Hegelian dialectic.
Oh yes, oh no, and synthesize.
Something lives between truths and lies.
Thesis rubs against antithesis
As the path to every synthesis?
Oh yes! Oh no! Or maybe so?
Between north and south, come on, let's go.
Between right and wrong lies maybe's kiss,
Between evil and good lies logic's hiss.
Forging thesis and its antithesis
Into some middle way is oft amiss.
Hegel, Kant and Fichte fished
In faulty thinking they published.
Synthesize whatever you like,
You'll never synthesize a look-alike
To simple truths without opposite,
For dialectic is its own hypocrite.
"But these so-called flash mobs have taken a more aggressive and raucous turn here as hundreds of teenagers have been converging downtown for a ritual that is part bullying, part running of the bulls: sprinting down the block, the teenagers sometimes pause to brawl with one another, assault pedestrians or vandalize property. " In "Mobs Are Born as Word Grows by Text Message" by Ian Urbina, New York Times, March 24, 2010
"Running of the bulls" is bullshit rare
And trivializes violence in the public square.
Gosh, "running of the bulls" is ritual now?
Like assault and vandalism are the cat's meow?
Downtown rituals, it must be understood,
Are cultural expressions of some neighborhood?
"Running of the bulls" is zoologically dumb,
For these are all jackasses, as a rule of thumb.
Ah, journalism paints such pictures as this
Which proves such words are snakes that hiss.
"Running of the bulls" is with bullshit replete
As a metaphor for violence on a public street.
"The most visible leader of the world’s green movement cannot live a life of conspicuous consumption, spewing far more carbon into the atmosphere than almost all of those he castigates for their wasteful ways. Mr. Top Green can’t also be a carbon pig." In "The Failure of Al Gore," by Walter Russell Mead, 24 June 2011
Mister Big Top Green is a carbon belching pig,
Another princely chuck in a everyman wig.
Conspicuous consumption in life lived large
As this sinner blasts sinners for sin as his charge.
Castigate, rebuke, and read the riot act;
Then rake in honoraria per each green contract.
Red remains a bloody, worldwide stain;
Now green comes along to sing the same refrain.
Mister Big Top Green brings his circus to your town,
If you do not sing his tune, he'll say you are a clown.
The past is prologue but the future is bleak
When green is the only approved color of the week.
"Shovel-ready was not as... uh... shovel-ready as we expected." Barak Hussein Obama, Jr., 14 June 2011
Shoveling coal or shoveling shit,
The miner and farmer work hard with it.
The others who shovel shit your way
Are most politicians in any day.
Coal burns bright; and the harvest grows.
This the miner, like the farmer, knows.
Political shit burns to no good end,
And is not the farmers' nor the miners' friend.
Shovel-ready not shovel-ready?
There's a logic not quite steady.
Three years after shoveling out the door,
The cries go up, "Let's shovel more!"
Let's shovel coal mines closed, full stop.
Let's shovel regulations onto the farmer's crop.
Let's shovel and dig and dig some more,
Until the hole's a reservoir
For shoveling more onto piles of shit
Makes the whole just a cesspooled pit.
Collect the miners and farmer folk,
And tell them it was all just a little joke.
"Through this sleight-of-hand accounting, the White House can conveniently ignore Bush’s loan, but even the Treasury Department admits that U.S. taxpayers will not recoup about $1.3 billion of the entire $12.5 billion investment when all is said and done. The White House justifies not counting the Bush money because, it says, that money was completely spent when Obama was making a tough political decision on whether to extend another loan. In other words, a decision to do nothing at the time would have resulted in the immediate loss of the $4 billion that Bush had extended. This is chicanery. Under the president’s math, Chrysler paid back 100 percent of Obama’s loan and less than 70 percent of Bush’s loan." In "President Obama’s phony accounting on the auto industry bailout," by Glen Kessler, Washington Post, 7 June 2011.
This is chicanery, posts Washington now,
Saying phony accounting is now somehow
A truth that is lying by fits as by starts,
Because the factual truth is quite off the charts.
This is chicanery, through and through,
Because political truth is not very true;
When all is all said and all is all done,
A president will say, 'twas all jest in fun.
Chicanery doesn't quite square with the facts,
Yet media matters to launch their attacks.
Washington Post's chicanery smacks
Those truth-tellers, truth-sellers and amnesiacs.
Phony accounting accounts for phonies,
Who celebrate in party ceremonies
Which trot out the tricks like circus ponies
All ridden by the parties' political cronies.
When the post out of Washington notes this aloud,
The cries rise up from the political crowd,
In hopes that such cries will confuse and becloud
That chicanery's chicanery, and chicanery's allowed.
This is chicanery, posts Washington chat,
Because the truth is other than what has been shat.
Sleight-of-hand tricks are to fool those who drool
For something quite like the cess in their pool.
Thick as thieves - an ode to goad
"What was Timothy Geithner thinking back in 2008 when, as president of the New York Fed, he decided to give Goldman Sachs a $30 billion interest-free loan as part of an $80 billion secret float to favored banks? The sordid details of that program were finally made public this week in response to a court order for a Freedom of Information Act release, thanks to a Bloomberg News lawsuit. Sorry, my bad: It wasn’t an interest-free loan; make that .01 percent that Goldman paid to borrow taxpayer money when ordinary folks who missed a few credit card payments in order to finance their mortgages were being slapped with interest rates of more than 25 percent." In "Geithner and Goldman, Thick as Thieves," by Robert Scheer, The Nation, 1 June 2011
Thick as thieves, the saying goes,
Through thick and thin, the record shows,
Flimmed a Peter and then flammed a Paul,
As records suppressed now recall.
Little us folks in little us towns
Pay high rates with little frowns,
While fat cats slice the pie themselves,
As into hidden records a court now delves.
Think yourself special, Mister Average Joe?
Think yourself loyal, Missus Bedfellow?
It seems the special folks are just not you,
Because enormous privileges to them accrue.
Your mortgage rates, your credit card rate?
Are they higher that one-hundredth percent? Wait!
There must be some reason, one should grasp,
Why the upper crust rates so, if we'd but grasp
That thieves are thick in the highest ranks,
And so the little folks must give them thanks
That the golden elite play their little golden pranks
And pass the bucks to the golden men's banks.
Envoi:
The Open Left raged, "an unholy alliance,"
Big business plus big government reliance
On each other to feather their nest,
Which is nothing more than financial incest.
What the hell - depletion concretion
"The Obama administration said Wednesday that the government will lose about $14 billion in taxpayer funds from the bailout of the U.S. auto industry." In "Govt to lose $14B of auto bailout funds," Associated Press, 1 June 2011
They only lost billions so, what the hell?
It's only your money, as time will tell.
The they who lost it have lost your cash,
But, what the hell, it's just a crash.
Losing can be a profitable game,
But not for the public, which gets the blame.
Up shit creek? Well at least it's dry.
So, what the hell, it's just stimuli
That's losing billions, as the losers admit,
Which proves they've been shoveling shit.
You, a double-you, triple-you plans
Are seeing that shit's now hitting their fans.
Envoi:
“If you aren’t getting something for nothing,"
Huey quipped, "you’re not getting your fair share.”
So stick to rhetorical frothing
Because numbers are so very unfair.
Mulligan Stew - a recipe inverse
"Now, 50 years after taking over Cuba and thrashing all the golf courses in an excess of anti-capitalistic, communist/Marxist doctrinaire purity, Fidel Castro is bringing them back. The New York Times, must reading back then for all Red-blooded revolutionaries, reported the other day that the Castro government has given preliminary approval for the $1.5 billion construction of four large luxury golf resorts on the island to entice free-spending capitalists to tee off in a country hungry for money." In "Castro takes a mulligan on Cuba's view of golf," by Peter Lucas, Sentinel & Enterprise, 31 May 2011
Take unequal parts,
someone proposed one day,
Of a decaying Fidel
and a long decayed Che.
Let simmer a while --
like fifty plus years --
Then invert the whole thing,
as it now appears.
Stir frequently the mess,
add rhetorical sauce,
And when it's well cooked,
serve only the dross.
In The Joy of Cooking,
this recipe's not found
Because it's marinated
on revolutionary ground.
Sprinkle liberally with failure,
revolve it but once,
And when it's well done,
serve with befuddlements.
The back burner's charred,
as the recipe was soiled.
The kitchen's a mess,
and the service is spoiled.
No Michelin stars
nor Zagat reviews
Will ever repair
this Cuban cuisine news.
Mulligan shots,
with a swing and a miss,
Reduce themselves
to a curdled stew like this.
A Government of Shame - a composer's view
"On Sunday, similar protests were due to be held in other European countries, including Spain, France and Italy. Famed Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis gave his public backing to the protesters and called for 'the government of shame' to go along with 'the politicians for destroying, plundering and subjugating Greece.'" In "Record turnout for 'Indignant' protesters in Athens," in Ekathimerini.com News, Monday May 30, 2011
Socialism fails mathematically,
A composer said about his reality.
It has two options: force "do as I say"
Or simply implode and slink away.
Its history has sometimes been weaponized
With arms to enforce, for this has been prized.
When markets refused to play in its game,
It's marched in and then taken its aim.
Socialism has won politically,
By lying about fiscal reality.
It's used two options: one) "do as I say"
While two) hoping folks might look away.
For destroying, plundering and subjugating men,
Socialism has shown itself yet again.
When markets refuse to play in its game,
It lurches, besmirches -- a government of shame.
Socialism fails in its nomenclature,
For failing to heed frail human nature.
It has few options: force "do as I say"
Or simply implode and then fade away.
For this its history is again capsized
With lies to enforce, for this is still prized.
When markets refuse to play at its game,
It grumbles about, seeking someone to blame.
"If you set up a system where someone gets rewarded for doing the wrong things, you can bet your bottom dollar that they will." Cenk Uygur, in "We Must Fix Geithner's Gaffes," Daily Kos, 10 February 2009.
One plus one is two.
Oh no! That cannot be!
Add them up again!
Perhaps this time it's three!One plus one is two.
Oh no! It is not true!
Do the math again,
Perhaps more will accrue!Two plus two is four.
Figure things again!
Say what? It must be more!
Perhaps it's more than ten?Two plus two is four.
Calculate! Reiterate!
This game becomes a bore!
The hour's getting late!Four plus four is eight.
Such error is a waste!
What's that you dare to state?
Redo it with all haste!Four plus four is eight.
Something's gone awry!
My gosh, now cogitate!
I'm carving up the fiscal pie!Eight plus eight you owe.
I've the way to solve it all!
Perhaps I'll print more dough!
Change the rules, and spike the ball.All plus more defaults.
Who promised I'd lock the box?
There nothing in the vaults!
Aren't chickens guarded by the fox?All defaults lose trust.
I'm the one who suffers here!
What? You've a lot of crust!
Do not smirk and do not sneer!Arithmetic's no joke.
Economics is my field!
I'm a nuanced sort of folk!
Arithmetic should be repealed!Numbers are what's real.
Arrest him! Make him kneel!
What I say must be the law!
What he says sticks in my craw!One plus one is two.
Oh stop! That cannot be!
Add them up again!
Perhaps this time it's three!
"Greece has missed all fiscal targets agreed under its bailout plan, a mission from an international inspection team found, putting further funding for Athens at risk, according to a German magazine." In "Inspectors say Greece missed all fiscal targets: magazine," Reuters, Berlin, 28 May 2011
Circling the ceramic,
The latest titanic
Is spinning its way down the drain.
Round around faster,
The latest disaster
Is spiraling out of control.
Too big to fail,
Then too big to bail?
Round she goes, and then? Who knows?
Calamities roar
As talking heads bore,
Concocting a tale that's already stale.
The vortex is a spiral
As ills become viral
And analysts limp back to their lairs.
The newest, each fad,
The schemes with the bad
Are spinning their way down the drain.
"A thug who carried out horrific acts of torture for Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe has been allowed to live in Britain – to protect his human rights. An immigration tribunal found Phillip Machemedze inflicted terrible injuries on political opponents of the vile Mugabe regime.But despite ruling he was involved in ‘savage acts of extreme violence’ – including smashing a man’s jaw with a pair of pliers – immigration judges said he could not be deported. They said the 46-year-old, who is HIV positive, could himself face torture if he was returned home, having turned his back on Mugabe’s Zanu PF regime. Both he and his wife – who was granted asylum – can stay in Britain indefinitely." In "Mugabe torturer is given asylum in Britain... and yes it's in case he's tortured back in Zimbabwe," by Jack Doyle and Christian Gysin, Daily Mail, UK, 27 May 2011
The press tells war crimes are done, and done, and done,
With genocide as the Zimbabwe Marxists' little fun;
But when a judge so nice and rightfully naive
Does something like this, why, it's hard then to believe.
When a torturer's asylum is based on fear of what he's done,
The humanity seems twisted, to defend this sort of scum;
Forgive this torturer his torture for the sake of a human right?
The argument trumps his many victims, their misery, their plight.
A civilization so civil as to defend a thug like this
Is a civilization so uncivil as such evil to dismiss;
Britain once was great, yet now defends the torturer,
Which makes one wonder what they'd of done to Der Führer.
Probably try to understand, to sympathize, to feel
That such a twisted mind is a psychological big deal.
Let's all forgive the brutal, the vicious and the thug
And let's all line up to give them a loving liberal hug.
This is where such justice leads, down a cul-de-sac's dark end,
As the judge respects the human rights of a torturer to defend
The torturer his torture, the murderer his crime;
The vicious irony in all of this is simply so sublime.
Human thug rights is the end game of this thought,
As one wonders if this was the goal they'd dreamed, then bought,
The day would come when defending the genocidal folk
Becomes in the hands of some justice, a huge and bitter joke.
How is it - questions not in the news
"Dominique Strauss-Kahn will earn a tax-free salary of $420,930 and expense allowances of $75,350 per year. This is more than the earnings of the World Bank president ($493,940 tax-free), the US president ($450,000 taxed) and the UN secretary general ($403,958 tax-free). Only the general manager of the BIS makes more (about $750,000 plus unspecified allowances). Strauss-Kahn will also participate in the staff retirement plan, a defined-benefit pension scheme, which are strictly taboo for developing countries according to IMF advice. Strauss-Kahn will get an extra top-up to the pension for being the managing director, with the size variable by the length of his employment. For example if he stays for his full term, he will draw 180 per cent of the pension of a regular Fund staffer in any year he does not work. The Fund does not publish details of its pension plan." In "Strauss-Kahn to make $500,000 as IMF head," Bretton Woods Project, Update 58, 4 December 2007
How is it a socialist who heads his party's slate
Is so well fed and stuffed, gorging at capital's plate?
Perhaps like Rumpelstiltskin I slept through something here.
Are socialists so rich that the meaning's now unclear?
Socialism, I've been told, advocates collective stuff,
Where there're no more fat cats, especially ones so rough.
Socialism's about share-and-share-alike, or maybe not?
Where is the common man in this? A harder life's his lot.
How is it a socialist who heads his party's slate
Is so well paid and fluffed, as such numbers indicate?
Perhaps like Rumpelstiltskin I slept through something here.
Are socialists so wealthy? It just seems rather queer.
Like all the other socialists who've held their parties' rule,
It seems one can extrapolate the game is rather cruel.
The little people well below scrape, and may get by,
While all the better socialists gobble up the largest pie.
Socialism, I've been told, advocates equality,
Where there are no more fat cats. Est-ce que c'est vrai? Oui?
Socialism's about share-and-share-alike, but mostly not.
Where is the socialists' hero now? And what is it he's got?
He's got money raining down on him, from sources ill-defined,
Who pretend that they are socialists, but the numbers that I find
Tell a story which is not pretense, but about the fat cats cashing in
On the hopes of many little men, whose little lives are thin.
How is it a socialist who heads his party's slate
Has chosen for him such a perverse and twisted fate?
Perhaps like Rumpelstiltskin I slept through something here.
Are socialist bosses capitalists? The whole thing is most queer.
Ice Cream - a modern litany ad hominem
"I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream. " Short story title by John L. Farris, after a song lyric by Billy Moll, Howard Johnson, and Robert King.
Ice cream "racist" in no time flat,
Ice cream "racist" for this and that,
Ice cream "racist" when it's not race,
Ice cream "racist" in every place.
Ice cream "sexist" here and there,
Ice cream "sexist" with a flair,
Ice cream "sexist" for some, not all,
Ice cream "sexist" as my knuckleball.
Ice cream "phobe" for the queerest things,
Ice cream "phobe" about Muslim kings,
Ice cream "phobe" as a gambit sharp,
Ice cream "phobe" as my regular carp.
Ice cream "hate" to disagree,
Ice cream "hate" at you, not me,
Ice cream "hate" when real or not,
Ice cream "hate" as my hangman's knot.
Ice cream "justice" when it's not done,
Ice cream "justice" like I shoot a gun,
Ice cream "justice" as a clever ploy,
Ice cream "justice" as a corrupting toy.
Ice cream "fair" when things aren't right,
Ice cream "fair" to pick a fight.
Ice cream "fair" to get more cash,
Ice cream "fair" but I hide my stash.
Ice cream "civil" when I'm not,
Ice cream "civil" to stir the pot,
Ice cream "civil" when I mean war,
Ice cream "civil" while I grab for more.
Ice cream "green" to save the world,
Ice cream "green" like a bomb that's hurled,
Ice cream "green" that comes out red,
Ice cream "green" like a knucklehead.
Ice cream "share" meaning you, not me,
Ice cream "share" for bankruptcy,
Ice cream "share" all over the place,
Ice cream "share" while I palm the ace.
Ice cream "unity" to hammer some folks,
Ice cream "unity" ignoring the jokes,
Ice cream "unity" while I divide,
Ice cream "unity" meaning "on my side."
Ice cream "ice cream" tastes quite raw,
Ice cream "ice cream" is a man of straw,
Ice cream "ice cream" is my rule of thumb,
Ice cream "ice cream" 'cause I think you're dumb.
Pleasant words for ugly things
"After a year of stubborn denial, European governments are going to have to admit that the Greek nightmare can end only if some of Athens’ debt, which amounts to 150 percent of its GDP, is forgiven” – and that by the summer of 2013, notes Die Presse. A simple expropriation of investors being virtually impossible, Europe is likely to adopt the model used to handle the South American crisis of the 1990s: exchanging Greek securities for European Financial Stability Facility securities." In "Get ready to wipe Athens’ slate clean," Presseurop, 10 May 2011
"Forgiven" is among the pleasant words,
Like "wiping the slate clean."
Pleasant words for ugly things
Is what euphemisms mean.
Default on debt means someone pays,
The remaining question is, "who?"
It could be the lenders, the tax payers too,
Who'll end up in that stew.
Would you forgive a loan so fast?
Would you accept new debt at last?
Passing around such truths as these
Is done with pleasant words, please.
"Hair cut" is such a pleasant phrase,
Which clips, and styles and cuts,
But when applied to your savings,
It's a pleasant phrase that guts.
Wipe one slate clean, yet dirtying another,
Is a trade-off so pleasantly sold,
But in truth it's just screws someone else
With an ugly fraud so cold.
"Forgiven" is among the pleasant words,
Like "wiping the slate clean."
Pleasant words for ugly things
Is what empty words mean.
"These are not isolated incidents of idiocy. All were reported on a single day in yesterday’s newspapers. This is a result of the pernicious cult of political correctness which now infects every sinew of our body politic, especially the police. It has institutionalised knee-jerk stupidity in the name of ‘diversity’." In "The death of common sense and how our police are losing the plot," by Richard Littlejohn, Daily Mail, 28 April 2011
Incidents of idiocy
Are liberally wise,
Akin to what we see
That's hidden by disguise.
Knee-jerk stupidity
Is an institution diverse
With visionless lucidity
In both chapter and verse.
Incidents of idiocy
Spread wide with a zeal,
And a raging immediacy,
Until its repeal.
Isolated or pernicious?
You be the judge.
Be not injudicious;
Dig down in the sludge.
Incidents of idiocy
Come circling full round,
Proving rooted, won't you see,
In stupidity profound?
More come to see
The errors in such ways,
Incidents of idiocy
Being idiotic displays.
"Environmentalism is the religion of the comfortable, and the theology of the convenient. It injects a false spirituality into the materialism of the faithless. There is nothing to it but greed. From the false prophets spinning tales of the end, to scientists doing a more elevated version of the same for grant money to scribes envisioning the end for a lucrative book or movie deal. It's not the end of the world they're waiting for, but a commercial break. "In "End of the World," by Daniel Greenfield, sultanknish.blogspot
The apocalypse preacher is Camping out
With many folks' very last buck,
While an apocalypse preacher will Gore the world,
In the manner of a prince called Chuck.
The world is literally ending soon,
A message which precedes, "send cash."
How comfortable and convenient
Is this said, and with what panache.
The apocalypse preachers are out in force
From sea to poisoned sea,
And indulgences must be bought from them
To save one's self, you see.
The apocalypse preacher is Camping out
With many folks' very last buck,
While an apocalypse preacher will Gore the world,
In the manner of a prince called Chuck.
How well above average do they live,
How large are their footprints stamped
With carbon spewing forth like smoke
With their preaching revealingly vamped.
The world is literally ending soon,
A message which precedes, "pay up."
How comfortable and convenient
As they paint this woe and pass their cup.
Alms for some rich, alms for some fat,
Alms for the comfortable. What's up with that?
"'It is surely the most dramatic of the possible carbon dioxide-induced effects and its initiation cannot be ruled out as a possibility before the end of this century,' Schneider said in a report to a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.... A 25-foot rise in sea level would submerge Savannah, Ga., Charleston, S.C., four of eight Virginia cities with populations over 100,000, one-fourth of Delaware and portions of Washington, D.C." In "Picture Grim if Polar Ice Melts," United Press International, Houston, 8 January 1979
The Gores are Camping out these days, the message as before,
The world is coming to an end, for end days are in store.
Climate research models all fume and fuss out loud
To those who'd listen to the "fund my work now" crowd.
Possibilities of all sorts lie out there, proven not,
For possibilities are always what everyone has got.
Attach a date to such a thing makes rapture for some time,
And after the expiration date has passed, we're into overtime.
The game continues, dates are changed, and possibilities all bloom,
As more and more and louder still, the image is of doom.
Doomsday nigh and doomsday high in the minds of doom-filled men
Is a litany that they all pray, over and over and over again.
Orwell's Nineteen-eighty-four and Clarke's Two-Thousand-and-One
Are stories with expirations expired, for the dates are past and done.
The Gores are Camping out these days, the message as before,
The world is coming to an end, as they fiddle with dates some more.
A Commencement Address Without a Bill Attached
“'In the currency world, money goes to where it is treated the best,' Thomas Goggins, a manager of the $3 billion John Hancock Strategic Income Fund, said in a telephone interview from Toronto." In "Key Bond Managers: Future Looks 'Terrible' for US Dollar," moneynews.com, Wednesday, 25 May 2011
You've some money. Where'll you put it?
Where it's sunny? Where'll you root it?
You've some money. Want to make it grow?
Risk's a funny, sinking undertow.
Will you treat it like it's money?
Non-receipt it? That's not funny.
Want to keep it? Treat it the best.
Don't dust-heap it. That's your quest.
"Ever since then we’ve been teaching our young people that your primarily obligation is only to the shareholder. The problem is that if you do that you ignore the other stakeholders. That could be why wages have been virtually stagnant for the past 30 years, because the workers are stakeholders. It could be why communities have been unable to undertake economic transformations in many places, because communities are stakeholders. It could be why customers don’t care so much what the source of their purchases are, they’re stakeholders." William Jefferson Clinton , New York University's 179th Commencement, May 18, 2011
Without profits to be taxed,
There're no taxes to be paid.
Without taxes to be paid,
There're no revenues, I'm afraid.
Whine about shareholders
And the stake holders might cheer,
But nibble away their profits?
The prognosis becomes quite clear.
Those who have some savings
Look to profit by some return.
Who, having such sum savings,
Would their profits easily spurn?
Folks invest in many things
Because profit is promised there,
But nibble away at the profit
And investment concludes, beware!
Rich Billy's profited plenty
While he chatted the populist line,
Yet stashed away his millions
To earn more profits, I opine.
Hefty speaking fees are pocketed
As he commences each affair,
As he natters on about profit
While gathering it everywhere.
The lesson here for graduates
Is as ironic as is it sad.
How many of these mortarboards
Will grow rich as Chelsea's dad?
Economic transformation?
Empty lingo from the boy from Hope,
As he's pocketed profits with both hands
While peddling his soft soap.
Life is so much simpler
When simple arithmetic's employed;
Tax everyone at equal rates,
And more will be employed.
But natter on about profit
While profiting wildly, fully, well,
And hope that all your words
Will conjure sum-blinding spell.
Without profits to be taxed,
There're no taxes to be paid.
Without taxes to be paid,
There're no revenues, I'm afraid.
If Bill disagrees with this,
Then he'd share his profit with me;
I expect he won't, in confidence,
Because that's his profits' irony.
Just two political parties there are
Which come in many flavors;
But it all boils down, this repertoire,
To obligations versus waivers.
The one vows I will pay my way,
Asking, might you do the same?
The other says you'll pay me today
As their opposing counterclaim.
One says leave me, let me be,
I'll live my life quite free;
The other laughs uproariously,
And acts aggressively.
One says all this party stuff
Is not the important thing;
The other says, we've heard enough,
You'll learn the song we sing.
Just two separate a divide quite great,
With too little to thereby unite;
But one will fume and agitate
And call for one great fight.
One sees its obligations,
And works to fill its needs;
The other builds waiver nations,
Each bruising as it bleeds.
In the end, the first when forced to pay
Will wither under the fists;
But the second which demands much this day
Will suffer when the first desists.
Just two political parties there are
And have always been the same;
Obligations against waivers ever spar
As continuing millennia proclaim.
"We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive. And if that is so, we must go back, going back is the quickest way on." In "The Abolition of Man" (1943) by C. S. Lewis (1898-1963)
We are absolutely opposed to absolutes,
As they tend to bind too much.
Absolutely everything must be relative
For one to truly be in touch
With the subtleties of life's variety,
Perversities in myriad and such.
When one walks upright and with a jaunt,
It's best to hobble one with some crutch.
When speaking open and honestly,
It's best to silence one insomuch
As anyone dare utter an absolute,
For chains and weapons we'll clutch
To absolutely oppose someone's absolutes
For they tend to bind too much.
"On the tape, Mr. Juncker says he has 'had to lie' and, speaking about touchy economic topics, 'When it becomes serious, you have to lie.'" In "Luxembourg Lies on Secret Meeting," by Charles Forelle, Wall Street Journal blogs, 9 May 2011.
If it's serious, you lie,
So said some top dog guy.
That's how it goes
When when folks disclose
That some know-it-all
Could be a blow-it-all
In gambling with funds not his.
If it's serious, you lie,
As you aim to certify
The truth you tell
Is the fib you sell,
As the top dogs' whiz
Might fail his quiz
While gambling with funds not his.
If it's serious, you lie,
Alleging some pie-in-the-sky;
That's how one fails
To give honest details,
As a high-and-mighty chap
Hides all the little crap,
Yet gambles with funds not his.
Gee whiz, gee golly, gosh,
Elites can be so posh.
A cat may look at a king,
But this is second-string,
That some bright-and-best
Has almost confessed
To gambling with funds not his.
A Steady Diet - it's news to me
I want to eat more lies;
The truth is just too sour.
Such savoring is the prize
I seek in every hour.
Lies are tasty, sweet or tart,
Covering eyes that will not see.
I would learn them all by heart,
And hear no truth, but flee.
Facts are nimble; facts are quick,
But I think lies be greater.
With lies, one can take one's pick
Served by any waiter.
A la carte, or many-coursed,
Lies' nourishment feeds me.
When truth erupts, as sometimes forced,
Through lies I flee reality.
I'll serve up some lies;
For truth is such a boor.
Such savoring is the prize
For any lie's connoisseur.
"A boy Tuesday stood accused in the fatal shooting of his neo-Nazi father in their Riverside home early Sunday morning. The father, Jeff Hall, was a neo-Nazi leader, who headed the California chapter of the National Socialist Movement." In "Boy Accused Of Killing His Neo-Nazi Father In Riverside," Greg Mills, CBS News, 3 May 2011.
Reading the words correctly,
One reads right as Left,
Because Nazis all were socialists,
Which also translates "theft."
That a reporter writes such words
Is cheering, clear and bright;
The National Socialist Movement
Is socialist, not assuredly right.
The Nazis grabbed for power,
For money, mayhem, loss,
And each of them aspired
To be a bigger boss.
For one who loves his freedom
Which is freedom to walk away,
The only threat to liberty
Is the strong-arm Left's foray
Into do as we say this moment,
And do not question us,
For if you do, understand
Stuff comes to those who fuss.
That a reporter writes the words he does
Is cheering, clear and bright;
The National Socialist Movement
Is socialist, not assuredly right.
The wheels come off the argument
That socialists all make,
When one sees clearly this plain truth,
That their right-wing is a fake.
There's only greater government
To limit freedom's reach,
And limiting great government
Is what freedoms always preach.
"Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter arrived in Seoul on Thursday accompanied by the former leaders of Ireland, Finland and Norway after a trip to Pyongyang. The group, who call themselves the 'Elders,' signally failed to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. It was Carter's third trip to the North and the second during which Kim could not be bothered to meet him. Nonetheless, after telling reporters prior to the trip that South Korea is responsible for the North’s food shortage and saying he wanted to meet the reclusive leader, he came back with the message that Kim is 'always ready' to hold a summit with President Lee Myung-bak, as if that was a great revelation." In "Jimmy Carter's Role on the Korean Peninsula Has Ended," The Chosunilbo, Korea, 29 April 2011
The south's responsible for the north,
When the north won't lift a finger.
It's always someone else's fault
When poverty and famine linger.
Here's a novel approach to the tale
Which will jimmy the window a bit --
The north's responsible for its own travail,
And the ex-president's words are just shit.
"Satellite imagery has revealed new details of the extraordinary size of North Korea's secret gulags, which are now believed to contain more than 200,000 political prisoners. 'North Korea can no longer deny the undeniable,' Amnesty International's Asia-Pacific director Sam Zarifi said yesterday. 'For decades the authorities have refused to admit to the existence of mass political prison camps. These are places out of sight of the rest of the world' whose inmates were treated essentially as slaves, he added." In "N Korean secret gulags thought to hold 200,000 political prisoners," by Rowan Callick, Asia-Pacific Editor, The Australian, 4 May 2011
Can one keep a secret?
Apparently not so well.
At least not so easily
When one operates a hell.
A hell on earth
Is a hell indeed,
If only half the stories
Are pedigreed.
North Korea's government
Is Communist quite red;
In socialism's grounding
It was nourished, it was bred.
Its people starve in secret
For red is not transparent,
And yet such news is learned
For truth is heir apparent.
Can one keep a secret?
Apparently not so well.
At least not so easily
When one operates a hell.
"We start to see people starving to death when food output falls below 3.5 million tons," said Nam Sung-wook of the Institute for National Security Strategy. The late Hwang Jang-yop, the highest-ranking North Korean ever to defect to South Korea, said food output totaled just 2.5 million tons in 1997, when over 1 million North Koreans starved to death.
Starvation, so it is often said,
Is Mother Nature fed.
When looking closely at the news,
It's usually manmade instead.
"A 13-year-old lesbian girl in South Africa has become the latest victim of 'corrective rape' - so called, when men rape a woman to try to 'fix' her homosexual orientation." By ANI, in "13-yr-old girl is latest victim of 'corrective rape' in South Africa," Yahoo News India, 9 May 2011
Whoopi said, "not a rape-rape."
Harvey mouthed, "so-called crime."
Celebrities blab on videotape,
Which records such stupid slime.
"Corrective rape" is the newest phrase
In the Idiots' Book of Prayer,
And it never ceases to amaze --
Their viciously stupid flair.
Coining words and phrases
To throw dust into prying eyes,
They fix their blinded gazes
On their game of jargonize.
Whoopi! Now I've got it!
It's nuanced, subtle, keen.
Such phrases are not shit;
Just justification's shitty sheen.
Rape isn't rape, not exactly,
When standards are thus applied
To victims' traumas abstractly
Like a tourniquet deadly tied.
Stop the bleeding and the fuss
With a turn of phrase to bind
And silence would-be critics
By such notions redefined.
The latest fashion corrects with rape,
As a therapeutic poke,
As words stretch and then reshape
Into man's evil little joke.
"Fifty million climate refugees by 2010. Today we find a world of asymmetric development, unsustainable natural resource use, and continued rural and urban poverty. There is general agreement about the current global environmental and development crisis. It is also known that the consequences of these global changes have the most devastating impacts on the poorest, who historically have had limited entitlements and opportunities for growth." United Nations Environment Programme, 2005.
Do not look at what we said;
We've just goofed about the date.
So say preachers, spokesmen too,
So faux Cassandras say of late.
Apocalypse Now, shrieked a noisy film,
Apocalypse soon, saw a little church.
Apocalypse is immediate,
Said the UN in their big research.
Some Cassandras search for funds,
While others search for power.
So many preachers searching now
Have homes in some ivory tower.
Apocalypse sometime -- that's for sure --
Predicts gathering gloom and doom,
As they all unite in a common thread:
Gain control, but over whom?
"So, do I hate God, when I don't even believe in him? Yes, absolutely - I despise the idea of God as described by religion. " An atheist, unnamed herein, complains in a news opinion, 27 August 2010.
What a clever pile of molecules;
It'd ascended without aid
From little bits into human fools
Without great accolade.
It learned to think itself a part
Of all that it surveyed,
But folded into its angry heart
Whenever it was afraid.
It raged against some other piles
Of the quite similarly moleculed,
For hatred is among the wiles
Of the stupidity it fueled.
What a ego'd pile of molecules
To think it wiser atop
The larger pile it ridicules,
Whose views it seeks to stop.
Despising an idea held by molecules
Needs some chemical catalyst,
For being merely flesh nodules
It seems so easily pissed.
What's the point, dear molecules,
In holding forth in your rage?
You despise with glee I Am that rules,
And rattle in your cage.
If there be no God, okay then, pal,
Why rage and hate and fuss?
Can it be, mere molecules shall
Evolve more resentfulness?
"Study the past if you would define the future." Confucius
Lessons are, as lessons were,
And lessons will someday be;
As lessons are and lessons were.
No if, and, but or maybe.
The fads, the trends, each vogue,
And such as these all pass;
It is they which play the rogue,
Yet the old lessons ne'er surpass.
Lessons are, as lessons were,
And lessons will tomorrow be;
Old truths simply do not err,
And await for who would be free.
Smoke and mirrors have cooked the books.
How it seems is how it looks?
Read some news to say all's well?
Not if your own life's a shell
Of payments rising like the tides,
Of prices climbing on all sides,
Of worries for your pension woes,
But understand -- that how it goes.
Smoke and mirrors have cooked the books.
This is a legal version of the crooks
Who'd pick a pocket here and there,
Then pick a pocket everywhere.
Not to see the way things are
Is to believe the repertoire
Of rationalizations of all sorts
By which the upper crust cavorts
To lift their loot from average Joes,
But understand -- that how it goes.
Smoke and mirrors have cooked the books,
And offered bread and circuses as hooks
To lure the many into schemes
Which all amount to emptied dreams.
Listen to the voices loud
From the upper crusted crowd
Who set up folks like dominos,
But understand -- that how it goes.
"We can't ignore future deficits, but just as ignoring deficits would mortgage our future, failing to invest in our kids and our infrastructure and our basic research and clean energy, that would be mortgaging our future, as well." In "Obama: Deficit reduction must keep alive the American dream," by CNN Wire Staff, 21 April 2011
We can and can't ignore,
Because both are heretofore,
To whit and futhermore,
Not to mention theretofore
That can and can't are more
Or less perhaps than nevermore
As oratorical tricks all explore
That can and can't can soar,
And both and none implore
All that we so deplore;
We can't and can ignore
When words hereinbefore
Rain down in a wordy roar,
As can-and-can't is a surly boor.
"Let me finish my answers the next time we do an interview, all right?"
"You don’t end up in the predicament we find ourselves in today due to a couple minor mistakes over a short time frame. It took thousands of horrible choices, colossal doses of delusion, a heaping of stupidity, and a mountain of denial over decades to put us on the brink of economic collapse. An unholy amalgamation of demographics, fiat currency, debt, taxes, power and greed have led us to this point. Next we experience collapse, revolution and ultimately, retribution." In "U.S. National Debt, For A Few Dollars More," by James Quinn, Market Oracle, UK, 26 April 2011
Delusion comes in doses, don't you see,
And is sold at your political pharmacy.
"It can be ideal if only we believe"
Are slick, needled words which prick to deceive.
Man will be bettered, beyond every dream,
If only his delusions were all as they seem.
But numbers partake of no dosage, no swill,
And numbers become the bitterest pill.
Delusions come in doses, don't you know,
And after each dose comes an unexpected low.
Taking one's medicine does not always cure,
But doses of delusion are ever the lure.
Injections of funds borrowed, bought and had,
At first seem to make things jubilant, glad.
But then the delirium tremens sets in,
And one sees the narcotic and its dim grin.
Delusion comes in doses to take,
And once they are swallowed, one learns they were fake.
"There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit [or monetary] expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of voluntary abandonment of the further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved." In "Human Action," by Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973),Yale University Press, Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1949, 1998.
Stretchy film for their stretching skin;
Hot air to fill all that's within.
Bubbles grow and bubbles fly,
And always comes their time to die.
Children smile at bubbles' flight
To watch them drifting out of sight.
Adults who would blow a bubble full
Yet expect no end are spreading bull.
“I shouldn’t have done that. I’m kinda embarrassed I did. It was a political maneuver by we Democrats. The Republicans were in power – there were more of them,” Reid said. “The president voted when he was in the Senate the same way. I heard him apologize for it. We all should take a look at how we handle these issues, but that doesn’t take into consideration the numerous times, the numerous times I voted to raise the debt ceiling. The one time I tried to make a political issue of it, I wish I hadn’t." In "Harry Reid 'Embarrassed' About 2006 Opposition to Raising Debt Limit," Matthew Jaffe, ABC News, April 14, 2011
I am for and then against, against and then for,
It's all just a matter of who's keeping score.
I'm against, then I'm for, for and then against,
Think not this shows me a political whore.
I'm embarrassed you remembered; I'd hoped you'd forget.
Every word that I utter is a calculated bet.
The way the winds blow, whether for or against,
I flow with these tides, in my political roulette.
I am for and then against, against and then for,
But either way, says every oath that I swore
I'll be against, and then for, for and then against,
Which proves me to be just a political whore.
“History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.” Karl Marx (1818-1883)
Road kill coats the winding road;
Makeshift memorials incommode.
So many accidents collided there;
So many traveled it unaware.
Carcasses litter and rot and stink,
Hairpin turns ahead. Wise not to blink.
Pot holes, barriers and detours loom
As history lessons all presume
To show the map of all ahead
That is not shown by a past misread.
The highway to the future calls?
Its twists are ever the same pitfalls
It has always consistently had.
Shall men learn? Or men go mad?
"No one wants to be associated with a failure, and leaders are no exception. When something goes awry, it can be tempting to point the finger—especially if you feel certain of the cause and justified in making someone accountable. Yet blame never results in a solution. Instead, it tends to snowball, wasting much time and energy that is better suited for problem-solving." In "Instead of Assigning Blame, Fix What Went Wrong," Business Week, 3 July 2009
My faults are your fault,
If you'd believe my spiel;
And if I say this loud enough
Your guilt should spin and reel.
My faults devolve to you,
Because I want them to.
Should you refuse them,
Whatever should I do?
My faults are your fault,
My assertion must be true;
And if I say this long enough
My guilt should stick to you.
"The gross debt of the United States as you know is going to reach 100 percent of the gross domestic product of the United States this year. And the best economic analysis that's been done by two professors who looked at 200 years of economic crisis studied 44 countries found that when you get to a gross debt of more than 90 percent of your gross domestic product you're in the danger zone and you compromise future economic growth in a substantial way. So that's what this is all about: future opportunity, future jobs for the American people. Too much debt acts as a lodestone around the American economy. It's critically important we deal with this." Senator Kent Conrad (Democrat-North Dakota, 2011)
In a moment of candor
The truth slipped out,
But was quickly, routinely caged.
Something much blander
Politicians must shout,
That our dozing might be assuaged.
Budgets should be in balance?
And a treasury refilled?
Public debt should be reduced?
Who believes such romance?
It's arrogance distilled.
Debt gives the nation a boost!
A senator cited sources,
And the history is clear;
The lodestone is grinding away.
And what reinforces
This history's veneer
Is as Cicero tried to convey.
Now in today's moment
As in Rome of ancient days,
The council remains quite the same.
This is not foment;
Public debt's ablaze
For ignoring old wisdom's claim.
In a moment of candor
The truth slipped out,
But was quickly, routinely caged.
Something much blander
Politicians must shout,
That our dozing might be assuaged.
"Refusing to pay your debts has an impeccable pedigree: Edward III sowed chaos in Florence in the mid 14th century by defaulting on a series of loans. Every country in Latin America, apart from Brazil, followed suit in the early 19th century. Most recently, Russia shocked world markets by defaulting in 1998, as did Argentina in 2001." In "Furious Greeks press for country to default on debt," by Helena Smith in Athens, The Observer, 17 April 2011
Let's all borrow what we will not repay,
And then just expect it to all go away.
Sounds dishonest? Tricky? Hey,
If nations so do, why shan't we play?
All the complaints by some ruling elite
Argue the opposite until their defeat.
There comes that thunderous drumming beat
Which says such such history will again repeat.
Why then start down the ruinous road
When people will not carry this load?
Such borrowing only serves to corrode
Until the whole scheme will simply explode.
Debt is not public, but faithless with guile;
Countries so often swallow the bile,
And then they teeter with sallow denial
Until they collapse in their national pile.
Collateral? Don't even think it is true.
There's nothing behind all the debt they accrue.
Politics talks, and talks itself blue,
Then walks away with a shrug left for you.
Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander,
Yet politicians continue to pander.
Speaking plainly and in all candor,
Each tries to play the innocent bystander.
They all borrow with intention to pay,
But they often default it all away.
Sounds dishonest? Tricky? Hey,
If default is the game, let's everyone play.
"To break even, the U.S. Treasury would need to sell its remaining stake—about 500 million shares—at $53 apiece. GM closed off 27 cents a share at $29.97 in 4 p.m. trading Monday on the New York Stock Exchange, hitting a new low since its $33-a-share November initial public offering. 'Planning for the sale of our remaining GM stock is still at an early stage, and the IPO lock-up does not expire until late May,' a Treasury spokesperson said. 'At that point, we will consider all of our options, based on our twin goals of protecting taxpayers' interests and exiting as soon as practicable.'" In "U.S. Hurries to Sell GM Stake," Wall Street Journal, 19 April 2011
Give me a twenty, I'll return you a ten;
If you don't object, we can play this again.
Give me a twenty, I'll give you a ten;
This silly game runs, but -- ah -- until when?
Let's buy high and then sell low;
And as we sink in the undertow,
I'll stand on your shoulders with you below.
Because that is how my schemes all go.
Give me a hundred, I'll return you less;
If you don't object to this playful mess,
Then give me more, and I'll return... guess?
It's all about fairness -- and your redress.
Give me a thousand, I'll return you a ten;
If you don't object, we can play this again.
Give me a million, I'll give you a ten;
This silly game runs, but -- ah -- until when?
It's just not right that you should see
Me stand beneath my Dumb-Dumb Tree.
It's shed its leaves for shallow roots;
The planters? Vainglorious tenderfoots
Who sold these arbors, all too many
Yielding fruit not worth a penny.
I bought into my field of dreams
Unaware of their investment schemes,
And now I've my own Dumb-Dumb Tree
Where once I thought with naive glee
That I'd reap rewards bushels wide,
But like the Tree my dreams have died.
The Dumb-Dumb Tree is barren wood;
Would that I had the pitch withstood.
"Only the mediocre are always at their best." Hippolyte Jean Giraudoux (1882-1944), a French novelist, essayist, diplomat and playwright.
Failure sneers at every success.
What else can it do?
After it has made its fumbling mess,
It shoves the blame on you.
Failure is someone's dumbest game.
It never stood a chance.
It looks for anyone else to blame,
In every circumstance.
"In the telephone poll of 815 registered voters nationwide, conducted June 4 to 8, Mr. Perot was supported by 39 percent, Mr. Bush by 31 percent, and Mr. Clinton by 25 percent. The poll had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus four percentage points." In "The 1992 Campaign: On the Trail; Poll Givers Perot a Clear Lead," New York Times, 11 June 1992
Conduct your poll to center stage, then have it take a bow.
Trot it out all gussied up, putting lipstick on your sow.
The next day it will line the cage or maybe wrap the trash,
For what is news of polling but prophetic balderdash.
Sampling errors, so they say, have some margin of error;
In hindsight prophetic fibs need only their pallbearer.
"I rise today to talk about America's debt problem. The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can't pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government's reckless fiscal policies." Senator Barak Obama, Congressional Transcript, March 16, 2006:
Really I didn't mean the things I once said,
You should trust me now, not my other words long dead.
I am other than I was, for now I see the light,
And the truth I spoke was formerly not quite right.
The truth I say is for today, believe me now, not then,
For I see I was wrong, but that was sometime when
I told you to believe in me, and in the things I said.
But, hey, that's the game of politics which is my daily bread.
If I am wrong now by some future view, I beg you not to look
Because then as is true today, I think you're just a schnook
To believe that I meant my words, so wise, so spoken large,
When the real truth is all I wanted was to ever be in charge.
Missus What's-Her-Name in History at ten
Would lecture her class with her party-bred yen
To teach of polarities in political thought,
And we were to learn whatever we ought.
Nazis were right and Commies were left,
A model which showed a logic bereft
Of sense, as of truth, as of clear-spoken word
Which reduces down to a stew that's absurd.
Duck and cover was the strategy then
To teach us of horror, as we dropped down when
Duck and cover was What's-Her-Name's drill
To have us a-feared to her words shrewish shrill.
Missus What's-Her-Name in History at ten
Was a part of my youth, like my drafting board pen.
The models she conjured I spit back on her test
Because to argue against them would not have been best.
Her right and left models linger today
As if there was ever something to say
About right and left, and left and right,
Meaning references back to a world war's fight.
But Nazis were socialists, Commies were too,
Just different flavors in that political stew
Which showed enemies were allied once in the past,
And allies became enemies ever so fast.
So right and left are enemies, and one must choose,
Though I come to see --- whichever, you lose.
Such a right and a left are like twins in a crib,
To tell them apart one colors each bib.
Missus What's-Her-Name was ever so good
At righteous indignation, we all understood,
But looking back at that ten o'clock class
I think, silly lady, today's test I shan't pass.
Today I use history's proper writ name
Which tells me these opposites were rather the same;
Now the model's decrepit, a fraud layered with dust
Which ought be abandoned, for really it must
Be shown to have been what it ever once was,
Just another way of politicking with good old "because."
My history class at ten in those high school years
Was nothing but politics dressed up as fears.
Choose one from the list, in a list made of two,
For really, you see, it's all up to you!
Such clever models were deception quite fine
Until one connects the dots with a simple line.
Socialism National and socialism Soviet
And socialism Sino and others albeit
Remain all of a same frayed fabric in time,
Stained mightily with blood as with crime.
Left and right, the boots tramped down
Step by step o'er each terrified town.
No duck and cover, the history tells,
Would save the victims from shells,
From canisters, clubs, bullets and bombs,
From bayonets, pistols and such maelstroms.
For right and for left in the history at ten
Are proven to have been the same, yet again.
Teach differences as best designed to obscure
And pray that such models will long, long endure
To muddy the waters and foul all the nests,
To rationalize a model that simple logic arrests.
Left, or is it right? Right, or is it left?
Well, someone's at fault with a model so deft
As to play that one thing opposes itself,
And fill up the textbooks to line every shelf.
Missus What's-Her-Name in History at ten
Would hector her class with real bogeymen,
To teach fake polarities in political thought,
And we were to learn whatever we ought.
Left-and-right served as a model back then
When left and right politics shrieked its amen.
Against left, against right simple freedom towers tall,
And against it Missus What's-Her-Name's model's AWOL.
Missus What's-Her-Name spawned many, I know,
And her model creaks on in Missus What's-Her-Name's glow.
But now that the words are crystal and clear,
Missus What's-Her-Name's model is no longer dear.
Say Left and say Right, and say whatever you will,
My answer is freedom, and freedom is still
Neither Left nor is it Right, no party games there,
For freedom flies above politics' voice so shrill.
Missus What's-Her-Name in History at ten
Would lecture her class with her party-bred yen
To teach of polarities in political thought;
I've refused to accept that model she taught.
"Cuba says it will allow people to buy and sell their homes for the first time since the communist revolution in 1959. For the past 50 years, Cubans have only been allowed to pass on their homes to their children, or to swap them through a complicated and often corrupt system." In "Cuba's party congress agrees to allow private property," BBC, 19 April 2011
The BBC called it a hard-edged thing
When Thatcher played the same;
After fifty years quite moribund,
Socialism opts for a privatization game.
How odd that it was horrid once,
But now is balm and salve
To counter corruption's fifty years,
That have-nots might actually have.
The Cuban revolution
Was promised, hoped for change,
But after fifty dour, dozing years
It creaks old and puzzling strange.
When communism comes to see
Its goals were the stuff of dreams
That woke to nightmares on the streets,
Then socialism itself blasphemes.
The first old tenet of this faith
Was private property was not allowed.
But there is, the heresy spoke
By the poor old Cuban crowd.
Following a story such as this
Across five decades' swath,
One comes to see that socialism's been
A losing, rhetorical froth.
Fifty years of corruption is
A history lesson to heed,
That fancy talk cannot walk the walk
As such words are empty screed.
"A new generation of leaders must act decisively and without hesitation to correct the errors of the past and lead the island once those who fought in the 1959 revolution are gone, Fidel Castro said in a column published Monday." In "Fidel Castro: New leaders must fix Cuban economy," by Peter Orsi, Associated Press Havana , Apr 18 2011.
Errors of the past for fifty years
Can be laid to just one man.
Each now-past error now appears
Because of his socialist plan.
Fifty years of fancy talk
Are fifty years running red;
At fifty years one stands to gawk
At his poverty's daily bread.
His revolution was once proposed
To answer great social woes,
But it seems he ignorantly posed
In false revolutionary clothes.
Was fifty years not time enough
To decisively act for good?
Was fifty years all just a bluff,
And not the fix for which he stood?
New leaders must fix what this fool broke?
Well, isn't that socialism's tragic joke?
"The parade and Congress come exactly half a century after Fidel Castro proclaimed that his was a socialist revolution, rather than a democratic one. His speech on 16 April 1961 paved the way for a centralised Soviet-style economy and one-party rule." in "A last hurrah for Cuba's communist rulers," by Michael Voss, BBC News, Havana, 16 April 2011.
And there we have it, written down;
Socialism's not democracy in any town.
Revolution means turning around and around,
While fifty years of stasis is what poor Cuba found.
Centralized, and oh so very soviet they are;
One party rules, and one man is the tsar.
Revolution once was clearly defined
As throwing off government's yoke and grind.
Having less government claws at one's throat;
Suffering less of the bureaucrats' bloat.
And so it is, says a venerable BBC:
Socialism is just not a democracy.
The last hurrah will come one day,
When this plain truth comes more into play.
For here we have it, plainly spoke;
Socialism is not democracy; but a bitter joke.
"They have said, 'Give us your money in Social Security and Medicare taxes, and we promise to give you a specified set of retirement benefits and medical care for the remainder of your lives.' The money they took in for Social Security and Medicare was supposed to have been put in a trust fund - remember Al Gore’s famous 'lock box' - but the money in the trust fund was spent way back in the Johnson administration. All the money that has come in since for the 'trust fund' has been spent by succeeding generations of politicians on their pet projects." In "World’s biggest financial fraudsters," by Richard Rahn, The Washington Times, 9 May 2011
Al Gore's famous lock box
Was a box without a lock;
What's more there was no box
To lock, that one might mock.
Indeed the phrase was empty,
Devoid of basic facts,
For this is what government does
Whenever it stirs and acts.
We will surely take care of you,
As soon as you give in,
And fork over what you've got
Without complaint; begin.
Trust us, for full faith in us
Is the more that you can give;
Trust us, though the past has shown
Such trust leaks like a sieve.
"Americans will need to pay much heavier taxes and accept less from public healthcare to put state finances on a sustainable track, according to an IMF study published Monday. 'The United States is facing an untenable fiscal situation due to the combination of high fiscal deficits, an aging population and rapid growth in government-provided healthcare benefits,' three International Monetary Fund economists said in a report." in "IMF economists see dire future for US taxpayers," Agence France-Presse, 4 April 2011
Government is waddling, wiggling fat;
Perhaps it's even worse than that.
My political chums love to chatter on.
I say, "it's numbers;" the rest is a con.
Government has gorged on what it can take,
And now comes payback, as not enough make
Enough that all might have the spoils of war
For the gambit ends, which was known as "more."
Now "more" comes against limits which it never sees,
These limits are hard, hardened to most miseries.
"More" shrieks aloud, "more is what I believe."
When reality hits, "more" will just wail and grieve.
To all Party Members who cry aloud, "more,"
I look to their future, to austerity in store
For all true believers, the nice, kind and sweet
Who never dreamt their cupboards might hold little to eat.
My political chums hoped that I might join
One party or another, to thereby purloin
Something from the government's fat,
But I didn't believe their political chat.
To Party Members, so avid, so proud,
I see mostly a dumfounded crowd,
For all the true believers, the nice, sweet and kind
Will have shown their parties deaf, dumb and blind.
Bad Little Boys, who stamp their feet
When things don't go their way,
When adult, campaign down Stupidity Street
Where it's Stupid Folks they'll sway.
Cast a vote for the Bad Little Boys
And watch the screw-ups mount.
It seems that tantrums' piggy squeals
Simply cannot even count.
One and one was two, at best,
And never were they three
Until Bad Little Boys made all their noise
And then made bankruptcy.
Bad Little Boys, like Corrupt Girls too,
Throw tantrums when they lose,
And if you dare to cross them, then,
They send Bully Boys to bruise.
Bad Little Boys, in the end,
Teeter like a house of cards,
And that's the history of Bad Little Boys;
History dashes them into broken shards.
“We are entering the Reichstag, the arsenal of democracy, to arm ourselves with their own weapons. We are becoming Reichstag representatives in order to paralyze their basic convictions, and with their own support. If democracy is so stupid as to give us traveling passes and per diem allowances to do them this disservice, that is their affair.” Joseph Goebbels, in the late 1920s.
Democracy is stupid,
and very often blind,
In forgetting that among us
there're those who're most unkind,
Who'd trample others easily
without a thought or care
To seize such power over them
when they are least aware.
Democracy is stupid,
and often deaf and dumb,
When democrats stand idly by
to watch themselves overcome
By those who'd use the weapons
of democratic means
To rape and pillage others in
post-democratic dreams.
Nightmares are the stuff of this
as nice folks never learn
That evils comes dressed up as good
in stealth, before they turn
Devouring as they will
as democracy awakes
To find it's suffocating,
before tyranny it shakes.
Democracy is stupid,
and sells itself quite short
To see the blessings of liberty
tyranny would abort,
As tyranny creeps in to sit
where democrats once led,
And see that democracy will pay
till paralyzed and dead.
Democracy is stupid,
for that's what Goebbels said,
And for a time now passed and gone,
it seems the lesson's led
To some awareness of the fault
which democracy can't learn,
That liberty is the dearest price
and freedom is what men yearn.
It is the few among us
who hold to Joseph's view,
But they keeping coming at us
by every turn of screw
To wither from within, decay
the freedoms of each day
As tyrants in each age still gnaw
man's liberty away.
The goal is never democracy,
when free men throw off chains,
But rather sweet dear liberty
which tyranny disdains.
Democracy is imperfect,
and often blind and dumb,
But other systems fail first,
so says the rule of thumb.
Thumbscrews are small torture
at first when pressure's light,
But comes a time of agony
when screws are turned so tight,
When democracy fails to see
the tyrants' closing fist
And then it's late concluding
it cannot coexist
With tyrants whose pretense is great
to be democrats themselves,
Where hidden behind the curtain
is planned evil on their shelves,
Ready as they implement
their plan upon a land,And liberty's watchful eye
Must always understand
Democracy is stupid,
and very often blind,
In forgetting that among us
there're those who're most unkind,
Who'd trample others easily
without a thought or care
To seize such power over them
when they are least aware.
"The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation." Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Just who is the taxed and inflated bourgeoisie?
These days it is probably both you and me.
If you're quite average, and just middle class,
To crush you there'll come some total jackass.
Millstones of taxes and inflation's crunch
Sounds exactly like Lenin, and it isn't a hunch.
So who calls for taxes and more taxes galore?
And who borrows heavily, inflating the score?
Why it's one party and then it's another as well,
Which is just maybe why Lenin's words foretell
The way to crush the middle class bourgeoisie?
Taxation and inflation come for you as for me.Why quote Lenin, and say this the way I do?
A lot of the middle class find themselves in this stew.
Never would they connect the dots to see the sketch,
And figure out each one is just a bourgeois wretch.
"In the series attack upon the Hindu Temples in Bangladesh in recent months, aiming to frighten the minority Hindus there and to grab the Hindu temple properties within a so called secular regime of Awami League Govt. headed by Sheikh Hasina, latest feed back came to us about a total resentment of the retaliating Hindus in the nefarious design of burning of “Srimad Bhagabad Gita” in the temple complex of Sribas Angan in the vicinity of Beyani Bazar of Sylhet district. Before this culpable act the Islamist perpetrators destroyed the ancestral deities of this “Sree Sree Lakshmi Narayan”, “Lord Shiva” and “Radha Madhav Jiu” of Achray Sribas Swami, a great Sanskrit scholar ever and the champion companion of Sree Sree Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (1486–1534), a great spiritual leader in India for his Bhakti Movement. The ancestral complex Sribas Acharya is considered as a heritage monument and famous Tirtha Khestra (pilgrimage resort) for Hindus comprising with very old “Sree Sree Lakshmi Narayan Mandir”, “Pancha Tattva Mandir”, and “Siva Mandir” was destroyed by the local Mohammedan land grabbers and perpetrators." In "Mohammedan fanatics burned sacred Hindu scripture “Srimad Bhagabad Gita” after destroying 555 yrs old Hindu temple complex in Islamic Republic of Bangladesh.," The Struggle for Hindu Existence, 13 April 2011
Muslims whined about Florida
Because Afghan mullahs stoked
The fires of indignation
And one burnt Koran invoked.
Islam shines in other ways,
As seen in the burning shrines
Of Bangladesh, not Florida,
And arson is among its crimes.
Seen in news across the world
Are Islam's wringing hands
About unfair disrespect for it,
While it wars in many lands.
The victim game is failing,
Which Muslims try to play,
As they even burn some mosques
When their fires of indignation stray.
"Burn, baby, burn" burns
Five hundred year old shrines,
And blows up Bamiyan Buddhas;
Islam's fiery madness shines.
But in the world's travails
Such burning turns to shame,
As it invites retaliation,
While diminishing Islam's name.
If might makes right
Is of the arena's rules,
Then this is merely war
By some other tools.
War defines the winner,
For this is that story's end;
But it also defines the loser,
When the final chapter's penned.
"Burn, baby, burn" burns,
Pretending a protest's game;
But if it's war, not protest,
Then one side's winning is the aim.
The old adage comes to mind,
The gander gets the goose's sauce;
In the long march of history,
I wager this all is Islam's loss.
"Angry and desperate asylum-seekers have torched an immigration detention centre in Sydney, burning nine buildings to the ground after Australian authorities denied some of their requests for refugee status." In "Asylum seekers torch Australian detention centre in night of riots," by Bonnie Malkin in Sydney, Telegraph, UK, 21 Apr 2011
Sydney's Detention Centre
Was torched into a blaze;
Asylum seekers lit the fires,
Displeased with their delays.
Lampedusa's charity
Was scorched by asylum's flames
As asylum's brutish little men
Enhanced asylum's claims.
Such acts of warming charity
Show gratitude in short supply,
As arsonist asylum seekers
Demand goodies as their cry.
Seekers seeking a better life
Free from want and fear?
Today's asylum seekers
Seek freebies, far and near.
This is migration economic
In asylum's sweet disguise;
When "no" might answer asylum's claims,
Asylum fires rise to the skies.
"More Qurans were inadvertently burned during recent Afghan protests than by the US pastor Terry Jones. Spiritual leaders in Kandahar called a meeting to teach Afghans how to channel their passions peacefully." In "Afghan mullahs push peaceful protest in wake of Quran-burning violence," Christian Science Monitor, Tom A. Peter, Correspondent / April 14, 2011
Who burns Korans and kills most Muslim folks?
Finally we're in on some gruesome sorts of jokes.
For all the talk, the blather and the spin,
Reality comes along, and the dust may settle in.
Take offence? That's easy. We see it every day.
Measure real truth? So many look away.
Some drive passions into violence and rage,
To gin up the biggest, bloodiest stage.
It's not a question of the truth, for that is not in doubt.
Smoke and mirrors and death; that's what it's all about.
Some mullahs enflamed Muslims viciously to kill;
Other mullahs see the truth, and it's a bitter pill.
More Korans are burned, albeit just by chance,
As Muslims kill their brethren. Unhappy happenstance.
Who slits throats, and who does not?
Just asking places radicals in a ticklish spot.
Who beheads and who says no?
Just asking is argued no place to go.
Plain questions find the ticklish spot,
When answers make them overwrought.
Behead those who insult Islam?
Should one take this with aplomb?
Stirring violent folks to hate
Seems quite the game, once as of late.
A ticklish spot which makes one weep
Shows a angry soul with wounds quite deep.
A ticklish spot which makes one rage
Shows an violent thug in any age.
Questions pry open cans of worms,
Responses rage? Well this affirms
That ticklish spots are well rubbed raw
Which does explain the knife and claw
Erupting from wee tickled spots
Which helps us all connect the dots.
Who slits throats and who does not?
Just asking places radicals in a ticklish spot.
"Bangladesh is considered a democratic and moderate Muslim country, and national law forbids the practice of sharia. But activist and journalist Shoaib Choudhury, who documents such cases, said sharia is still very much in use in villages and towns aided by the lack of education and strong judicial systems.," in "Only 14, Bangladeshi girl charged with adultery was lashed to death," by Farid Ahmed and Moni Basu, CNN, March 29, 2011
She was raped, she was beaten,
She was lashed to death.
That's sharia's toll
Spoken in one single breath.
She was raped, she was beaten,
She was lashed to death.
"During his 77-day trial, Duch admitted to overseeing the deaths of up to 16,000 people who passed through the gates of Toul Sleng prison - also known as S-21 - in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh. Prisoners were accused of being enemies of the regime, and many were tortured into making false confessions. Torture methods included pulling out prisoners' toenails, administering electric shocks and waterboarding." In "Khmer Rouge S-21 prison chief appeals against jail sentence, Man known as Duch admits to overseeing torture and death of 16,000 people but says UN-backed tribunal wrong to try him," 28 March 2011, Guardian, UK.
Everyone should clearly see
The red of flowing blood,
The white of drying bone,
When death became a flood.
But everyone will just not see
The red of the damned Khmer,
For communism's apologists
Remain loyal, firm and pure.
Everyone will never see
The red of justice done,
The white dove of hoped for peace
Was a lie in that red, red sun.
Red was the flag they flew,
They called themselves democrats.
Red ran the killing fields
Of those bloody bureaucrats.
"Stirred up by three angry mullahs who urged them to avenge the burning of a Koran at a Florida church, thousands of protesters on Friday overran the compound of the United Nations in this northern Afghan city, killing at least 12 people, Afghan and United Nations officials said." in "Afghans Avenge Florida Koran Burning, Killing 12," NYTimes, April 1, 2011
Burning a Koran is bad,
But killing folks is good;
That's how it stacks up
In that Muslim neighborhood.
Blowing up a mosque
Is what some Muslims do;
It's happened again and again,
In the historical Muslim stew.
In a mosque one finds Korans,
So Muslims burn them too;
Now there's a snag in their brutal whine;
They've burned Korans. Who knew?
Burning a Koran is bad,
But killing folks is good;
That's the theology that ignites
A certain Muslim brotherhood.
Burn a book; be put to death.
Don't burn one? Just the same.
Folks who don't burn anything
Get to shoulder all the blame.
See the logic? See the sense?
Avenge yourselves with this.
Three mullahs stirred up dullards
For murder is their radical kiss.
"It’s ironic that something marketed as an environmental savior actually contains mercury." In "The Chemistry Of Light Bulbs—And Why CFL’s Are Overrated," Scientific Blogging, 26 March 2011
Fluoridated water?
Keep it near at reach.
Use up all that chlorine
In a brand name bleach.
Light up homes with toxins
For Earth Hour's earthy sake?
It all comes back to profits
Someone else, not you, will make.
Plastic bags? No! Paper?
No! Cloth should do the trick!
Then come all the studies
Cloth-borne germs make you sick.
Gasoline in engines?
Diesel particulates?
Battery bulging vehicles
Are toxic, one forgets.
This is green! No, that is!
The arguments all rage.
To save the planet anyway
Is as clever as it's sage.
In saving this dear world,
An odd thing comes about
As someone sends the bill to you;
Let's call it a bail-out.
Save the planet this way;
Save it that way too!
All it takes is all you've got
And a little bankruptcy too.Profits gained by passing laws
Is no market; it's base politics.
For this I prefer the word I coin,
As so many practice profitics.
You shall buy what they say you will,
And you shall be glad therein.
That's the way their schemes all turn,
As you take it on the chin.
Won't you give a little more
To see the world progress?
If you really would rather not,
They answer for you: yes!
Profitics is making legal
The extraction of consumers' spleen,
By painting it a lovely shade,
Currently known as green.
Chapter and verse.
Better or worse.
Blessing and curse.
Cradle, then hearse.
“The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.” Barak Obama, quoted in "Obama hypocritical on war with Libya," Chicago Sun-Times, 23 march 2011
"From dynamite to Tomahawk missiles,"
That's the tune his Peace Prize whistles.
Boom and bang! the "Oh, bomb away;"
That's the latest prize winner's sobriquet.
No bells have rung so loudly long,
But still munitions sing his song:
"From dynamite to hundreds of missiles,"
That's the truth today's Peace Prize whistles.
People like to freeload;
People like to scam.
People like it easy,
And take it on the lam.
People like fake it;
People like to cheat.
People like to swindle
Enough that they repeat.
People like a gimme;
People palm the ace.
People like to freeload
And do so in every place.
Sitting back that others
Might carry the whole load
Is quite a nifty game
Until things all implode.
People like to freeload;
People love to scam.
Comes the story's end
One learns it's all a sham.
"In what is being billed as a unique opportunity to snap up a piece of modern Russian history, Yeltsin's dacha or country estate in northwest Russia is to go on the block next month with a recommended starting price of £6.25 million." Found in "Boris Yeltsin's favourite holiday retreat up for sale for £6 million." The Telegraph, 3/22/2011 | Andrew Osborn, Moscow
Socialists love money,
When it's theirs to have and hold.
After such a history,
Might one not dare be bold
And venture this opinion
That counts the costs to men?
Socialism's leaders are
Plump piggies in their pen.
Socialists love a gravy train
That goes they way they do,
And never count the real costs,
For that would prove it true.
Soviet socialists' dachas'
Sea-side parks tell why
Socialism's leaders are
The fattest porkers in their sty.
Socialists holiday in retreat
Away from the people's eyes,
Because they know their party
Shows socialism's prize.
Socialists throughout history
Have had leaders grubbing cash
Because their politics simply is
The same old balderdash.
Yet those who believe the claptrap
Clamp down their vision's sight,
For looking at just the numbers
Class warfare staged the fight.
Socialists leaders feed right well
On society's folk at large,
But tell this truth in numbers plain,
And comes their countercharge.
"Socialists love money"
Is evil, spite-filled, mean,
When someone not a socialist
Dares to intervene.
Numbers tell the awful truth
Which socialists all dread,
And that is that they seek to feed
On another's daily bread.
Fusspots and nannypants
And worrywarts galore,
Troublebunnies all worked up
Stir up their upping roar.
Fusspants and nannypots
Ringing loft wringing hands,
As warts of worry worry lots,
Changing spots like shifting sands.
It's this! It's that! It's them! It's those!
It's everything awash, asea!
The end is near! It's as we fear!
Oh, no! This cannot be!
Bunny troubles boil and burst
As seers predict the very worst.
All of life seems damned, accursed!
And yet it proves so well rehearsed.
Fusspots and nannypants
And worrywarts galore
Prostitute their global fears
Like some tawdry, gaudy whore.
Fusspants and nannypots
Ring so loud their wails,
As warts of worry worry lots --
Then plain reality prevails.
I love being right, left alone a lot;
I feel quite cool when the music's really hot.
I look to get high when I'm feeling low;
I love to hate all the status-quo.
I love to be up when getting down;
I like being out when I'm in town.
I so look forward to just laying back;
I choose to be passive when I attack.
I love to be here, but I dream of there;
I like to go specifically anywhere.
I work being busy at idle pursuits;
I seek such contrasting attributes.
I often lie, quite honestly;
I puff with pride, in all modesty.
I rush with all haste just to relax;
I am the sanest of the maniacs.
“I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as ABC, hold up truth to your eyes.” Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776
Talk is cheap, so 'tis said,
Campaigning for each vote with bread.
Buy the fealty of little folk,
By passing out goodies at every stroke.
Finance the whole on a promise to come,
And every recipient will think you chum.
Talk is cheap, as so one sees,
When goodies end up raising fees.
One must pay for promises made,
Yet comes the time when promises fade
Into busted budgets and fiscal stress
As promises becomes their foreseeable mess.
Talk is cheap, then worthless, yet
Talk campaigns: double down the bet.
Try the fealty of the loyal folk,
To see if they'll pay for talk's little joke.
Finances bust the bank in time,
And looking back, cheap talk was crime.
Reason comes, as consequences rain
Upon all schemes which cause such pain.
One will pay for promises failed,
As history shows cheap talk unveiled.
Let's bring reason to our ears,
And see, cheap talk was just lies' veneers.
You'll build your house on shifting sand,
And lose it, saying this was not planned.
After it tumbles as it likely will,
You'll come to me to pay your bill.
Insurance terms it an act of God,
But all in all that's rather odd
For when the house was built on sand,
One might well think collapse was planned.
Well, one can argue forth and back,
But risks are risks, and planning's lack.
Call collapses acts of God,
Erected as a trick facade
To hide your hands in the failing game
As you look for someone else to blame.
The house you built on shifting sand
Was sure to fall when it was planned.
One's head is in the freezer;
Scalding water burns one's feet.
Averaging both statistically
Might seem to some quite neat.
Last year one was flush with cash,
But this year one's flat broke;
Averaging these statistically
Says averages are a sometime joke.
Rush to show the charts and graphs
With their oily, deep massage;
Numbers can be made to lie
In statistics-dyed camouflage.
Prognostication's blunders
Have a history quite long;
Throughout the generations,
Generations have been wrong.
We're sure it's this, or maybe that,
Says could, and might, perhaps;
And all the fancy lingo'd stuff
Has hidden its hidden traps.
Reality plays with numbers too,
Immutable, not spun;
Trot out the ripe statistics' stuff?
Averages are always fun.
One's head is frozen in the ice;
Burnt feet are blistered raw.
The average, somewhere in between,
Takes pains to shrug, "Oh pshaw."
“It’s unbelievable. Goldman … no one has any criminal convictions—the whole new regulatory reform is a joke. The whole government is a Ponzi scheme.” Quote of Bernie Madoff, in "The Madoff Tapes," by Steve Fishman, New York Magazine, 27 February 2011
I can hardly wait for a world of numbers
To awaken a world which deeply slumbers.
When "too big to fail" becomes "too big to bail,"
Talking heads will watch their policies fail.
Run up a tab? That's all very nice,
But time will come to pay this price.
Imagine it won't? Watch prices rise,
Because everyone's in for a numbered surprise.
It's the same old surprise as ever before,
And being old it is very much more
Than just a mean old kick in the pants,
It's a boil getting ready for the number lance.
It's a bubble of gossamer soapy skin,
Which weakens as it gets more politically thin.
Paint this picture upon your easel;
Tomorrow we'll sing: Pop goes this weasel.
The weasels? They ran up a hefty bill
Up in the grand chambers of the grandiose Hill.
But as always "it's someone else's fault,"
As they do their weasel-like somersault.
We won't wait long for the world of numbers
To upend the world of debt it encumbers.
When it all becomes "too big to be bailed,"
Talking heads must learn such foolishness failed.
Santa in a Speedo;
The Easter Bunny's balls.
Truth in government;
Gaps in border walls.
A pervert as a priest;
Arid waterfalls.
Tooth fairies' dentures;
Empty market stalls.
Argument by fallacy;
Debate built up on lies.
Regulating speech;
Continuing failures' tries.
Jack boot toughs in pink;
Clowns with sharpened knives.
Opposites chained together;
Everything survives.
Politicians' promises;
The social justice dance.
Multicultural strictures;
A butchered pony's prance.
Saving this and saving that;
Saviors everywhere.
Gaia as something real;
Lions and lambs beware.
Gay pride's public buttocks;
Feminists trashing gals.
Someone to hold your wallet,
Saying, "Buddy, aren't we pals?"
Death taking holidays;
Famine, sassy, fat;
War called by other names;
Pollsters who call to chat.
Shouting down dissent;
Threats, not bluffs, we see.
Revolutions frozen;
Normal as aberrancy.
Separation of church and state
But on a sliding scale;
Reverends politicking.
The devils' in such detail.
Rating the colors of man's skin;
Thinking skin is not so thin.
Believing the latest in all the spin;
Forgetting some things are truly sin.
Higher 'n a kite?
Sicker 'n a dog?
Not quite right 'n
Lost 'n a fog?
Runnin' outta dough?
Stumblin' to 'n fro?
Caught 'n the undertow?
'At's no way to go.
Survival's for the fit.
Don't believe a word of it?
Belly up fer another hit
'Cuz that's the gist of it.
"Nothing is so well calculated to produce a death-like torpor in the country as an extended system of taxation and a great national debt." William Cobbett (1762–1835), English journalist, reformer. Letter, 10 Feb. 1804.
Economics one-oh-one,
That's all there is, and then you're done.
Human nature doesn't change,
Such rules we do not rearrange.
Suck the life from work and toil,
Then watch the peasants rage and roil.
Tax to death and pile up debt,
And count the failure that you get.
Economics one-oh-one
Predicts this spectrum, all to none.
Calculate risks for working folks,
Debt and taxes become their yokes.
The lesson's old though oft ignored,
And still unlearned as debt has soared.
The laws were known so long ago,
One wonders why man can't say no.
Hear the wails and bawling;
Governments are falling.
Economics one-oh-one,
That's how it is, when said and done.
"The West's universalist pretensions are increasingly bringing it into conflict with the other civilizations, most seriously with Islam and China. Thus the survival of the West depends on Americans, Europeans and other Westerners reaffirming their shared civilization as unique—and uniting to defend it against challenges from non-Western civilizations." Ayaan Hirsi Ali, in "How to Win the Clash of Civilizations," in the Wall Street Journal, August 18, 2010.
There is one world: that is true.
But pigs and apes don't share the view
That in one world, One World can
Create a universal One World plan.
Men make plans with lots of noise,
As if all girls agree with boys
That everyone holds to the same One view
Which says that there's no room for who?
For those who'd hold some other thought,
That for their views, hard won, hard fought,
Will say that their free world can
Never include your One World Plan.
Folks are as different as rocks and trees,
And if that metaphor doesn't please,
Then think that when two folks would chat,
Three opinions bubble up from that....
Some One World is the world one sees,
While from that World some other flees.
Pretensions are what One World shows,
For others fight against such foes.
One World of gays left to play their games
Will never be the One which aims
To hang those queers from poles and trees
To let them sway in a One World breeze.
One World of rules from authorities great
Will cut and chafe and aggravate
Those who would question authority's right
To dictate their One great oversight.
One world of folks who would speak against rules
Will rile up differing One World fools.
One World of men who would batter wives
Must fight one world that defends their lives.
One World ruled by a One World sway
Is One World in which your views shan't say
That my One World of One World dreams
Cannot be what your One World seems.
I feel free where I feel free,
Where I'll not bow on bended knee
To beg and plead for liberty
When some One Worlder batters me.
There is one world, a world of fools
Where fools allege they make the rules
Which evidence the One World lie
That in one world One World is nigh.
'The fundamental problem we face is that we can only distribute and consume what is actually produced." Leonid Breznev, Communist Party Congress, 1972.
When the cash cow cashes out,
When the players leave the game,
When geese stop their golden laying,
The spiel will be assigning blame.
When producers stop their work,
When makers cease their toil,
When the spigots are turned off,
Things will quickly come to boil.
When the shelves are all but bare,
When deliveries no longer come,
What does it profit a man? No profit?
The question's a rule of thumb.
All the high-toned social justice,
Appeals to the common good,
Are pretty, sparkly little jewels,
So easily misunderstood.
Intentions, well, intentions, good,
Cannot repay a debt.
The sweat and labor of one's brow
Is what folks should not forget.
When the cash cow cashes out,
When the markets' stalls are bare,
It's sure all good intentions
Will cry out, "It's not fair."
So let the good intentions,
Social justice, common cause,
Work their fingers to the bone
To earn some earned applause.
Peddling all those social thoughts
Fills not the belly's ache.
It takes a farmer picking fields
A real meal to make.
It takes a builder building things,
A hunter and village smith,
It takes the making of all things
For society therewith
To have and hold and honor
And count with numbers dear,
All else is talk, just word-filled air
Resenting each profiteer.
"South Sudanese civil authorities estimate that up to 200,000 of blacks, mostly women and children, were enslaved during Khartoum’s jihad." By Francis Bok, in South Sudan: Emancipated Nation, January 2011
Slavery was and slavery is
And slave traders still live,
While most news folks look the other way,
Lenses like a sieve.
Condemnations flow and flood
When seen as yesterday,
But condemnation today just means,
"Let's look the other way."
It cannot stand, such reality
Which says Muslims take slaves;
The template says that cannot be,
It not what tolerance craves.
Such tolerance demands sin confess
When 'tis of centuries past,
But when it's sin that lives today.
Such sin should be bypassed.
Slavery was and slavery is
And slave traders still live,
While news media are nicely mum,
And progress regressive.
The Austerity Game, American Style
Republicans. Democrats.
Idiots. Thieves.
It's supposedly a matter of
What one believes.
Deficits. Debt.
Two fools wrapped in one.
When the bills come due
There'll be little fun.
Democrats. Republicans.
Peddlers of scams.
Here's a novel thought:
These lions eat lambs.
Debt and Deficits.
Like lambs to their slaughter.
After yesterday's feast,
Tomorrow's bread and water.
Republicans. Democrats.
Socialists. Scum.
They've taken what they wanted,
As a general rule of thumb.
Deficits and Debt.
Such powers that be.
The weight alone
Comes to crush you and me.
Democrats. Republicans.
My share in this?
They're deeply at fault,
And my ass they can kiss.Debt and Deficits.
Perhaps someone pays.
But don't come to me
And my 'share' appraise.Republicans. Democrats.
Schemes all collapse.
I see no obligationTo share in their traps.
Deficits and Debt.
Austerity comes.
I'll sit idly by
And live simply on crumbs.
[ Several blogs were commenting on some wholly arbitrary "top ten" lists of composers, one from the New York Times, all of which seemed -- well -- silly. I prefer rhyme to prose in general, and scribbled this nonsense to add to one "list." Then I thought little more about the whole exercise without purpose. ]
One to three, that's 2:59,
For five sicks, who drank the wine:
Seven ate the large Clementine,
Nein! Ten, shows then no decline.
-- So scrawled a nonny mouse
Thoughts for the New Year
Drink yourself sober
By the hair of the dog;
Admire with vision
Your own visionary fog.
Rid yourself of your debt
By indebtedness grand;
It's you, not life itself,
Meant to hold the upper hand.
Cure someone with dying,
Or their never being born;
Those that disagree with you
Are deserving of your scorn.
Counter the intuitive
With rhetorical flair;
Commonsense alone
Is as dull as it is square.
Drink yourself sober
Because you will to drink;
See what then becomes of you
If that's what you think.
The cure is ever worse
Than the cause of your disease;
It hardened asks for truth,
Which so often doth displease.
Rob for social justice.
Kill for social right.
Drink and spend and tussle
With all of your might.
Then your game is o'er and done,
When lost and gone astray
In a blind-fool drunkard's folly
Which came to rue its day.Think yourself sober
By the hair of the dog;
Comes a dull, worn eulogy
As your last days' epilogue.
