Verse-afire

It has been revealed that Diageo, a London distillery, is the beneficiary of 2.7 billion dollars of TARP money to build a rum distillery in St. Croix, Virgin Islands. All without anyone knowing it was happening. The reality is this sort of thing happens all the time, and one wonders what is hidden in the massive and unread stimulus and energy bills about to hit us. What nice little favors did nice little congresspersons add when no one was looking? We don’t know, and won’t know until it’s too late. But it isn’t as if the average congressperson thinks it’s our money. No, it’s their money, to with as they please.

It’s nice to have good friends in real high places

Like congresspersons looking out for you

Who write you in without the slightest traces

Of what it’s for or why it’s for or who

They add their little schemers in the darkness

When all believe the gaveled day is through

They understand their colleagues will thus hark less

To what it is that they’re about to do

But what is two point seven billion dollars

When calculated ‘gainst the greater good

No point in getting hot under the collars

It’s just the way things are, that’s understood

It isn’t if it really were your money

It isn’t if you had it in your hand

But if you think this kind of stuff ain’t funny

Come ‘lection day just tell them go pound sand

In his few short months in office, President Obama has nationalized the automobile industry, the banking industry, distributed hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to his union constituencies, overridden the Constitutional provision of Congressional approval of Cabinet appointments by appointing more than a dozen non-confirmed czars to oversee the Executive department, and the Democrat dominated Congress has passed a thousand page carbon tax bill that will cripple American industry, plus trillion dollar stimulus bills and bailouts causing trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see, and is busy preparing to nationalize the best health care system the world has ever seen. In March the House passed President Obama’s national security force youth bill, heeding candidate Obama’s call for a youth group of millions of volunteers, to be equipped, in the president’s words, as well as the military. I don’t believe he has yet decided on the color green or brown for the Obama Jugend uniforms. In any other country, and at any other time, this would be called fascism, a charismatic autocrat with a rubberstamp parliament. Will we see, in a few months, a hastily called press conference with Robert Gibbs emotionally reading an address to the people of the United States from President For Life Barack Hussein Obama? Will we see Mr. Gibbs cry with unbound joy as the Washington press corps rises as one in thunderous adulation? Will we hear the following words from Mr. Gibbs?  

My fellow Americans, I bring you tidings of greatest joy. Our beloved president, Barack Hussein Obama, has proclaimed the following words shall be read and memorized throughout the land:

With whose eyes shall we see the world

There are those who will see the world hollow

With whose mind do we see fellow man

There are those who will tempt us to follow

They will smile and attempt to arrange

Your thoughts and your life and your time

By promising comfortable change

And it won’t cost you one single dime

Oh they know how to work it so well

They know every button to push

But know that the road leads to hell

I speak of that road built by Bush

We’re now in a crisis, they’ll shout

Obama is moving too fast

Only we know what it’s all about

The One’s promises surely won’t last

Yes, that’s how they speak ill of us

But we’ll save you in spite of your fears

Just know that we’re driving the bus

And we’ll be at the wheel many years

We’re creating a new nation here

A nation we’re all proud to serve

A nation we all hold so dear

That we tingle the end of each nerve

Which is why we’ve decided on this

That elections are truly passé

Now the robe of your Caesar you’ll kiss

Though we’ll still have an election day

While you won’t vote you won’t really care

It’s the symbol that really does count

With these purple hemmed togas I wear

I’ll look swell sitting here on the mount

A month or so ago the Sri Lankan army cornered the remnants of the rebel Tamil Tigers and killed them all. Various and sundry Western voices expressed dismay, exclaiming that by killing them they left no one to negotiate with. A spokeswoman for Chatham House, a British NGO, was particularly upset that the Sri Lankan army brutally ended the forty year war with the even more brutal Tamil Tigers by doing it the old fashioned way, by killing them, and expressed their outrage in no uncertain terms. I have thought about this strange way of thinking, and have come to a reluctant conclusion. It seems wars are no longer to be won, but negotiated into a kind of perpetual conflict, in which neither side is defeated, and the casualty count keeps climbing, despite the valiant efforts by such as Chatham House to ameliorate the suffering.

Thank God there were no NGOs

Around in Patton’s day

For they’d have tried him, goodness knows

For getting in the way

Of all good Germans whom they felt

Would likely stop the war

And all good Nazis would be dealt

With kindly, as before

But no, George Patton told his men

The enemy must die

So his Third Army figured then

That Generals do not lie

They cranked up all their Shermans

And in weather bleak and fine

They killed their share of Germans

And they cracked the Siegfried line

So Hodges, Simpson, George and Ike

Killed Germans by the score

They did what NGOs don’t like

They went and won the war

But not today, for goodness sake

The New York Times would frown

If someone on our side would take

The chance to mow them down

And turn his guns on men who try

To kill us every day

It’s not for us to reason why

It’s just for us to pay

The price in blood the left insists

Is penance for our sins

And they would have us slash our wrists

And cheer when bad guy wins

A few days ago a US drone strike in northern Pakistan killed a number of Pakistani Taliban. As the mourners gathered for the funeral some days later, another drone struck the funeral, killing three top Taliban commanders and between fifty and seventy rank and file Taliban, the number dependent on which source you believe. The already dead Taliban were not further harmed. The head Taliban guy, the top commander of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud, attended the funeral, but according to some sources survived the attack. We shall see. You may recall that a few months ago the very same Baitullah Mehsud called the AP from an undisclosed location and boasted of the ruin he was about to rain on the United States and all its minions. The question is, since he called the AP from an undisclosed location, is he now also in an undisclosed location, dispersed by the drone strike over a square kilometer or two of Pakistani scrub.

Baitullah Mehsud was an angry man

Who called up the AP

To claim that he and his mates can

And will claim victory

He said he would amaze the world

With blows to the great satan

And claimed that death about him swirled

And terror lay a’waitin’

He sneered our fear hangs like a pall

And terror’s his vocation

But notice that he made the call

From an undisclosed location

But just because you’re undisclosed

Won’t mean you’re unlocated

Not if the US is disposed

To make your life truncated

The silent death from out the sky

Sought out the funeral party

The missiles flew and bye and bye

The men who once were hearty

Were just as dead as were their friends

Whose passing they were mourning

Struck down by those who sought their ends

Attacking without warning

A job well done we all would say

Good job from top to bottom

But did Mehsud escape that day?

I think we finally got him

Powerline has some devastating stuff on the coming vote in the House on the Cap and Trade bill. President Obama and the Democrats in Congress are pressing furiously for a carbon tax to fund their outrageous giveaways of trillions of dollars to the unions and other faithful. Of course they don’t call it a tax on every single American who lives and breathes and exhales carbon dioxide, they call it carbon cap and trade, and are prepared to convince the unwashed rest of us that the tax won’t fall on us but on polluters like the people who supply our electricity. The idea, so they claim, is that the government will set the minimum amount of carbon allowed to enter our pristine atmosphere, and that people who do not reach that minimum may sell their unused carbon credits to people who do exceed the minimum. Also, carbon emitters may buy carbon credits from companies who will plant trees or bloom the oceans, the trees and plankton blooms eating the carbon and thereby canceling out the overproduction of carbon dioxide by the industry now deemed a polluter. Bear in mind that former Vice President Albert Gore owns a carbon credit company, and so stands to make a whole lot of money out of this global warming scam he has done so much to promote.

The environmentalists behind the scam see a bright future in a carbonless world, President Obama and the Democrats see a way to tax their way out of the trillions in debt they have foisted on the country, and Mr. Gore sees immense personal profit. No matter that carbon is the essential building block of all life on earth, and that without carbon life as we know it would not be possible. No matter to the environmentalists, the Democrats and Mr. Gore. Carbon is bad. Oliver Cromwell was once cautioned by a close friend, “For the love of God, Oliver, consider you may be wrong!” William Rutherford, in a paper to the Royal Society, once calculated how much longer the sun would continue to burn by assuming the sun was composed of the finest Welsh coal. Rutherford had the grace to add that the calculation depended on further information about the nature of the sun. Chesterton famously remarked that a man who does not believe in God does not believe in nothing, he believes in anything.  And that is where we now are. People who have nothing to believe in now believe in anything. The global warming alarmists have no inclination to consider they may be wrong, for they have an agenda, and are convinced, despite the history of cooling and warming cycles, despite the science, that Western man and Western civilization are destroying the planet, and so therefore Western man and Western civilization must be destroyed. The global warming fanatics who are driving this travesty of science and common sense at least believe the nonsense they are spewing. I’m not sure President Obama and the Democrats believe any of the global warming nonsense, but they sure are trying like hell to take advantage of it by passing carbon cap and trade, and if they succeed, it will be the largest single tax increase on every single American in the history of the country. How did we come to this?

Alarmists say the USA is harming

Earth and little people everywhere

Adding to that awful global warming

Far more than our natural global share

Carbon is the real time big time villain

Carbon’s got to go the creatures say

Anybody caught by Feds while spillin’

The stuff into the air will surely pay

But there’s a way to keep that old pollution

From making all your profits fall and fade

All you need is formal absolution

By buying into that neat cap and trade

Here is how it works, it’s really easy

You just buy credits from the comp’ny store

Don’t worry if you feel a little queasy

To learn the company’s owned by one Al Gore

We’ve got to clean the atmosphere in some way

We’ve got to have clean air and all that stuff

So what if little people lose their payday

You know some people always have it rough

The upside to it is the ones we do please

Envirowhackos and their loopy crowd

Are happy to collect and spend the new fees

What’s more our sacrifice sure makes them proud

To think the USA now takes the world lead

In shutting down our fact’ries and our work

To stop the Warming’s awful frightful warp speed

They’re proud to see that none of us will shirk

In the big fight ‘gainst cigarettes and whalers

We’re all on board to save good planet earth

From all us fascist CO2 exhalers

Who started breathing shortly after birth

I am becoming uneasy about our Commander-In-Chief. On January 20, 2007, Iranian trained terrorists, dressed in American uniforms, ambushed and killed five American soldiers and captured four. When rescuers closed in the American captives were murdered before the terrorists were captured. Among the captured Muslim terrorists were Ali Mussa Daqduq, Quais Qazali and his brother Laith Qazali, the leaders, the planners and the murderers of American soldiers. President Barack Hussein Obama has just released them, ostensibly for the return of some British hostages, even though the British government refused to submit to hostage blackmail. Have we come to the point where we must question the wisdom, or even unthinkably, the patriotism, of our president? He has sided with the mullahs against the protesters for democracy in Iran. He has slashed defense spending while giving billions to the United Auto Workers union. He has nationalized the automobile industry and much of the banking industry, and is trying mightily to destroy the best health care system the world has ever seen. But it is the freeing of Iranian trained terrorists, ambush killers of American soldiers, murderers of captured American soldiers, that causes me to wonder. What is he up to? Why did he do such a thing? Whose side is he on? Or shouldn’t we wonder?

This sort of thing’s right up his alley

Freeing killers like Qazali

Siding with the killers of our guys

Selling out the brave protesters

Smiling while the murder festers

Acting like a Muslim in disguise

I’m not sure, I have no reason

Thinking that it’s surely treason

Possibly there’s something up his sleeve

Something grand beyond imagine

Some grand prize he’ll soon be cadgin’

Fooling those poor mullahs who believe

That he’s with them and against us

That he’s shackled and he’s fenced us

Into places where we can’t get out

And then when they try something bigger

Obama smiles and pulls the trigger

And all comes down with one enormous shout

The nukes are gone and so are Quds

The bad guys out and in the goods

The rotten Middle East in smithereens

Oh wouldn’t it be nice to think

That when it comes it’s they who blink

Excuse me while I wake up from my dreams

For I am bound to say out loud

That O and all his lefty crowd

Have taken our fair country round the bend

They’ve taken up the Muslim course

Who call our death without remorse

And who can tell just where it all will end

North Korea has announced it will weaponize its plutonium, is preparing for another nuke test, fires off rockets designed to reach the US, and warned that it would consider it an act of war if any of its ships were stopped for inspection, all while the United States looks on impassively. In January 1968, an unarmed US Navy ship, the USS Pueblo, was seized in international waters off North Korea by the North Korean navy. In the attack, one US sailor was killed, and the remaining 82 crewmembers taken hostage. In North Korean jails the crew was beaten and tortured until they confessed to espionage. Eleven months later the United States government apologized to North Korea and the crew was released. One day there will be another Pueblo, only this time it won’t be a ship that’s held hostage, it will be us. North Korea has hundreds of high caliber artillery tubes within striking distance of Seoul, with hundreds more short and medium range missiles capable of reaching every part of South Korea, including our bases in the south. What’s more, this artillery can deliver chemical weapons. Should the mercurial Kim decide to move, some two hundred thousand Koreans will be killed in the first twenty-four hours, most of them in Seoul, and many hundreds of our soldiers. What will we do if he says pay up or Seoul goes up in flames? And if you think that’s bad, just wait till he marries his nukes with missiles capable of reaching the West Coast.

Some say all right, just nuke them now

While others say let’s wait

They’ll change if we just scrape and bow

And things will be just great

Others say you’re both wrong, still

It really doesn’t matter

For what we know of Kim Jong Il

We’ll soon be all the sadder

For one fine day he’ll smile and say

You think we’ve all been playing?

It’s time to ante up and pay

There is no more delaying

I’ve got the nukes and missiles too

I’m not afraid to use them

LA, Spokane to name a few

Can you afford to lose them?

You could’ve stopped me long ago

But dithered and played my game

You had the guns but did not show

The guts and much to your shame

And so I offer you a way

To stop the nukes from flying

And save Spokane and then LA

From instant death from frying

And on that day you’ll cringe in fright

And cry out for your momma

As missile trails streak through the night

From Nome to Yokahama

Barney Frank is always an easy target. See my earlier post He Went Thataway. So whenever nothing significant happens on a given day I trot out old Barney. He serves us lampooners well. Just the other day Barney Frank told a CNBC interviewer, “This interview is over,” and stormed away. Or maybe he pranced away. I don’t know, I wasn’t there. The interviewer was asking him about the Obama administration’s plans to determine the proper pay scale for private company executives, which Barney is in favor of. Timothy Geithner, Secretary of the Treasury, says while he is not in favor of the government setting private company pay scales, he believes the shareholders should have a say in what company execs earn. The problem is how to ask the shareholders what that pay should be, since most shares of large publicly held companies are held by major investment institutions. No, if this goes through, the shareholders will not determine executive pay in private companies, the government will, which means guys like Barney Frank and Tim Geithner will decide what the CEO of Microsoft should be paid. I talked this over with a five year old I know and she said, “I love Barney.”

She said if I were a designer kid

I’d want Barney for a daddy

I’d love him for the things he did

Though some say he’s a baddy

So what he’s played the Congress game

‘Cause so do many others

What e’re he’s done it’s just the same

As his Congressional brothers

I love him for his winning smile

I love him for his color

You can see purple for a mile

It never gets no duller

When I pointed out we weren’t talking about Barney the purple dinosaur but Barney the congressperson, a man who wants to help President Obama turn the country into a socialist paradise, a replica of France, a man who somehow forgot to declare all his income come tax time, a man who never saw a socialist program he didn’t like, she thought a moment before replying.

She said they’re just like robbers who

Just want to steal our freedom

There is no difference ‘tween the two

Just tweedledee and deedum

I like my country like it is

Why do they have to change it

They want to take away the fizz

And really re-arrange it

You say that Barney’s not a star?

He’s not what I’ve been thinkin’?

He’s not a purple dinosaur

He’s more like something pinkin’?

Well just for that I take it back

We’ll fit him for some nooses

If I’da known he’s just a hack

From lib’ral Massachoosses

Moral: You can fool some of the people all of the time, you can fool all of the people some of the time, but you can only fool a five year old once.

Journalists and TV talking heads bemoan the seemingly bleak future of newspapers and the MSM in general, and increasingly worry that they might not live even in a shrunken state. Much thought is given to the idea that journalists should return to prior times, when journalism was a part time occupation. I don’t see this happening, but I do think newspapers and news magazines will return to a prior time when they were an unabashed mouthpiece of a political organization. Everyone knew where they stood, and their readers agreed with them or they didn’t read it. People who don’t agree with Fox News don’t watch it, and people who don’t agree with Keith Olbermann don’t watch him. Newspapers were not named the Whosis Democrat and the Whatsis Republican for nothing. In this transitional period most of the MSM has already achieved this prior status, and is the mouthpiece of the Democratic party and the liberal point of view. We have not yet seen the rise of an alternate and competitive MSM, but we will.    

Ed Murrow sat in smoke filled booth

While Cronkite filled his pipe

They gave us what we thought was truth

Which we now know was tripe

We had forgotten that these guys

Were not the chosen few

But closet liberals in disguise

But then, what else is new

The New York Times was proud to claim

Their news was bias free

The DC Post’s one claim to fame

Is that they’re from DC

Between them both we got the word

They wanted us to hear

And once we heard we were a herd

And went where they would steer

But we’re a whole lot smarter now

We’ve seen through the charade

We’ve seen them work and we know how

They manage the parade

They’re going now, they’re leaving town

Good riddance to the lot

I only hope that while they’re down

We kick out all their snot

They’ve led us now to where we are

At liberal’s heaven’s door

The constitution no more bar

To things they hunger for

Like socialism for us all

And state run enterprise

But shortly we’ll hear freedom’s call

And much to their surprise

The people of the USA

Will say enough’s enough

You’ve had your run, you’ve made us pay

And now we call your bluff

We’re taking back our country now

The people we have spoken

We’ll put the pieces back somehow

And restore the land you’ve broken   

Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu has just announced he will accept a Palestinian state so long as that state accepts the existence of Israel as the Jewish homeland. I believe this to be the last act of the drama. Bibi is playing the last peace card. If the Palestinians reject the offer, then Bibi has tried. And we all know the Palestinians have consistently chosen to do the wrong thing. The Middle East is about to go up. Newly re-elected Iranian President Ahmadinejad has repeatedly stated nothing could stop Iran from acquiring the bomb, and has scornfully rejected direct talks with the United States, challenging President Obama to debate him in the United Nations. Bibi Netanyahu has told President Obama he will defend his country by direct and unilateral action, despite the firm request by the President that he do nothing of the sort. The nuclear test just recently conducted by North Korea is suspected to be an Iranian bomb. Israel cannot wait much longer. Israeli military power is to the Middle East as American power is to the world at large. President Roosevelt once said the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. The only thing the Iranians, the Palestinians and the Middle East in general have to fear is Bibi.

Bibi is a Philly guy and so, my friends, am I

So I know how us Philly guys react to threats and such

When mullahs promise death to Jews will come from out the sky

A guy like Bibi smiles but man can only take so much

We know cannon fire grapeshot but they seldom fire BBs

Bibi fires cannon though, ‘cause that’s what Bibi does

If smoothbore 18 pounders give the mullahs heebie jeebies

Then you just wait till Bibi’s F-15s give them a buzz

Bibi isn’t waiting for the US or the UN

To give him full permission to defend his home and hearth

He’ll hit the mullahs first before they put his land in ruin

He’ll show them what it means to have your land become scorched earth

The calendar is winding down relentlessly toward summer

And while the Phils and Cards and Yanks are playing out the game

The Mossad guys and IAF are planning on a bummer

That after which downtown Teheran will never be the same

The guys in beards and turbans think they’ve got us by the shorties

They don’t see Armageddon though you’d really think they should

The IAF is coming and they’re not in old P-40s

The mullahs better get out while the Arma gettin’s good