Verse-afire

Once out of the closed door sessions in the House, once out of committee and into public view, Tea Parties and other demonstrations have indicated to the Obama administration that nationalized single payer Obamacare is dead. There are simply not enough Democrat votes in the Congress to pass it in its contemplated form. The Blue Dogs are running scared and the far left has vowed not to vote for anything if the Public Option is taken out. For this reason Obama has scaled back and is now pushing for insurance reform. It is not yet clear what this will entail, but if he signs a bill that removes pre-conditions and allows the market to set the fees, it will be a good first step toward realistic health care reform. And if he also miraculously defies the trial lawyers and gets tort reform, the country will be much the better for it. Tort reform looks like a non-starter for the Democrats, but even minimal insurance reform will be welcome, and Obama can trumpet it as a victory. But Obamacare is dead, possibly for all time, though that’s what Harry Truman thought when he buried the Henry Wallace Stalinist wing in 1948 only to see it rise from the ashes 20 years later in the person of George McGovern and take over the party.

I’m so relieved, the patient said

I thought they’d given me for dead

But now I see I’m kicking once again

I’m on my feet and feeling fine

I’m pleased to say that me and mine

Are once more in the land of laws not men

We raised ourselves in righteous wrath

We showed our congressmen the math

And said we would not take this lying down

At Tea Parties we let them know

That they no longer run the show

That we won’t sell free lives to DC town

And now Obamacare is done

And he no longer is the One

Who whistles and the pack does what he says

We knocked him down a peg or two

And let him know that you know who

Says take that stuff and stuff it in your fez

John Boot in Pajamas Media asks why women love a TV drama called Mad Men, set in the 60s before radical feminism and political correctness changed what the culture thought of “he-men”. The answer might be that women love the bad-boy lead character because they have always loved the bad-boy, always loved the guy with the hairy chest, always loved the guy who slapped them around. Political correctness may play in the lefty media and culture, but real women have always loved real men, and always will.

Pocketa pocketa pocketa

The mighty airship sang

Sailing free and fearsome in the sky

Below him Walter Mitty saw

The fleeing pirate gang

Led across the bay by Captain Bligh

The bomb bay doors flung open then

The airship lurched and breached

The bomb fell clean upon the men

As seagulls flapped and screeched

Where have they gone these mighty men

Have airships disappeared?

Do pirates now use GPS

Are Zulu foes still speared?

We haven’t gone, we’re here to stay

Though they may curse our likes

We still work hard, and women play

Behind us on our bikes

Mark Steyn clarifies the debate over health care saying Sarah Palin’s remarks about death panels resonated in a way that rationing never did. The health care bill approved by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee provides federal grants to state and local governments as well as to a national network of community organizers (read ACORN) to promote healthy living, reduce disparities, and to monitor people’s weight, eating and exercise habits. (Pages 382-387 of the bill posted on the committee’s website.) And why should it end there? If allowed to come to pass, Obama and his radical left-wing agenda will result in the destruction of the United States as we have known it for the last two hundred plus years. The only question is, where will they put the camps for the obese and the dissidents? Who will manufacture the Zyklon B?  

For non-WWII buffs, Zyklon B is a cyanide based insecticide used by the Nazis in WWII to kill Jews and other people they considered undesirable. The insecticide came in pellets impregnated with a warming substance, so that when exposed to the air it released hydrogen cyanide, a deadly gas. The Nazis herded a couple of thousand naked people, the old, the women and children, into the gas chambers where the doors where locked and a guard on the roof emptied a bucket of Zyklon B pellets into a shaft. The people inside took 20 to 30 agonizing minutes to die, after which the bodies were carted to the crematoria. Will the Obama left go that far? The history of Nazi Germany, Communist Russia, Communist China, the Khmer Rouge and others shows that the Left always goes that far.

Little Johnny’s overweight

It coulda been something he ate

It coulda been he got his momma’s genes

It doesn’t matter to the One

What’s good for father’s good for son

He’s got to know what health care really means

His daddy now admits he smokes

That second hand endangers folks

And since this is the second time he’s sinned

His punishment is durance vile

Where he can contemplate the style

In which our organizers sniff the wind

Now mommy she is neither fat

Nor smokes and we are thankful that

She stays within herself and keeps the rules

Our Acorn people say that she

Is quite delightful company

And spies upon the kiddies in the schools

We’re getting there, we’re on our way

To having all the folks obey

Each rule and regulation and decree

We have the plans and specs to build

The camps upon the land we’ve filled

Now all we need is cans of Zyklon B

President Obama has has invited a group of pastors, rabbis and other religious leaders to support his healthcare proposals by claiming it is a religious duty and a moral obligation to do so. “I know there’s been a lot of misinformation in this debate, and there are some folks out there who are frankly bearing false witness.” But who is doing the lying here? Who is bearing false witness? The people who claim that socialized medicine will not kill grandma with death panels, will not result in piling on more massive debt, will not lead to rationing of health care? The ones who claim the insurance companies are evil? We know who is lying here, we know who is bearing false witness. Were the religious leaders swayed by the theatrics, by the smile, by the smooth teleprompter delivery? We hope not, but suspect they might be.       

Across the Galilee they rowed

Arriving tired and sleepy

Above them teleprompters glowed

The stone stage dark and creepy

They stirred with fascination as

The waters rose around them

Celestial angels singing jazz

As Acorn bands surround them

And then as trumpets fiercely blared

And lightning filled the sky

There came the One, the One who cared

Arriving on the sly

By walking on the watered stones

A grin from ear to ear

And from the crowd the roaring tones

Of vast celestial cheer

Then Obie raised his hand in peace

And said to quiet crowd

“My Father’s wonders never cease

He does what I’ve allowed”

Ted Kennedy, the liberal lion of the Senate, is dead of brain cancer at age 77. The eulogies from liberals and Democrats are eloquent, as is expected. Teddy Kennedy after all promoted and helped advance the march of leftism in this country. It was Ted Kennedy who turned a won battle for civil rights and an even playing field into the uneven playing field of affirmative action and the welfare state. It was Ted Kennedy who turned the country’s centuries long immigration policy from one of favoring skilled workers from the first world to favoring unskilled workers from the third world, including the right to bring in entire extended families once here. And of course there was Mary Jo Kopechne, who lost her life on Chappaquiddick bridge as brave Teddy Kennedy swam away without making the least effort to save her.  Rest in peace, Senator, if you can.

De mortuis nil nisi bonum

No matter what the crime

But if indeed you own ‘em

They’re not released by time

A crime done while drunk driving

Is crime still after all

Compounded by conniving

To cover up the fall

Into the cold dark water

With passenger inside

A mother’s loving daughter

On Teddy’s drunken ride

Oh yes he claimed his sorrow

He sobbed with feigned remorse

But that was on the morrow

The fix would run its course

The Senate’s elder lion

Was Camelot’s last fling

The last surviving scion

Of Joe the bootleg king

Who gets him now’s a mystery

Whose afterlife will own him

We’ll leave it up to history

De mortuis nil nisi bonum

President Obama has appointed almost three dozen czars, making an end run around the Congress and neutering the Cabinet Secretaries (just ask Sec of State Hillary Clinton). These people have enormous power without any accountability to anyone except Obama. This comes very close to Diktat governance. No one knows what they are doing, and apparently that’s just the way Obama likes it.

Here they are: Afghanistan Czar – Richard Holbrooke; Aids Czar – Jeffrey Crowley; Auto Recovery Czar – Ed Montgomery; Border Czar – Alan Bersin; California Water Czar – David J. Hayes; Car Czar – Ron Blum; Central Region Czar – Dennis Ross; Climate Czar – Todd Stern; Domestic Violence Czar – Lynn Rosenthal; Drug Czar – Gil Kerlikowske; Economic Czar – Paul Volcker; Energy and Environment Czar – Carol Browner; Faith Based Czar – Joshua DuBois; Government Performance Czar – Jeffrey Zients; Great Lakes – Cameron Davis; Green Jobs Czar – Van Jones; Guantanamo Closure Czar – Daniel Fried; Health Czar – Nancy-Ann DeParle; Information Czar – Vivek Kundra; Intelligence Czar – Dennis Blair; Mideast Peace Czar – George Mitchell; Pay Czar – Kenneth Feinberg; Regulatory Czar – Cass Sunstein; Science Czar – John Holdren; Stimulus Accountability Czar – Earl Devaney; Sudan Czar – Scott Gration; TARP Czar – Herb Allison; Technology Czar – Aneesh Chopra; Terrorism Czar – John Brennan; Urban Affairs Czar – Adolfo Carrion Jr; Weapons Czar – Ashton Carter; WMD Policy Czar – Gary Samore.

Do we really need a Sudan Czar? How about a Czar for Switzerland? An Urban Affairs Czar? Didn’t we used to call them Mayors? A Czar for the Great Lakes? What’s he gonna do, make sure they don’t freeze over in the winter? Isn’t that the job of the Climate Czar? This is obviously designed to place Obama’s radical lefties between the people and the Congress, the better to rule by Diktat.

Cheer the marchers! Wave the flags!

See the Czarmen marching strong

Dozens of them, no one lags

Marching to a Sousa song

‘Bamanation on display

Clad in their Brooks Brothers

Proud they are this proudest day

Prouder than all others

Swinging past the grandstands soon

Grinning oh so clever

As the band blares out the tune

Czars and Tripes Forever

A war-time English music hall favorite by Noel Coward was a little ditty called Don’t Let’s Be Beastly To The Germans. The United States now has a president and his hand-picked attorney general who like to sing Don’t Let’s Be Beastly To The Vermins. Eric Holder, the radical leftist Attorney General of the United States, was instrumental in the pardoning and freeing of 16 convicted killers belonging to the Puerto Rican Marxist terrorist group FALN in 1999 by the outgoing Clinton administration, a political move designed to gain Puerto Rican votes for Hillary Clinton’s Senate race. No matter that the FALN carried out over 120 bombing attacks on US soil between 1974 and 1983, murdering dozens of innocent people. Politics is politics, especially as practiced by Democrats. And now Eric Holder, Attorney General of the United States, is up to his old tricks, helping his friends the terrorists again by releasing terrorists from Guantanamo and appointing a Special Prosecutor to harass and put in jail if at all possible the CIA guys who dared to question captured Al Qaeda big-wigs, who dared to protect Eric Holder’s real enemy, the United States.

Don’t let’s be beastly to the Germans

The cheery words rang through the music hall

As now don’t let’s be beastly to the vermins

Now seems to be the new Obama call

O says we’re not the nation we believe in

He says we cannot be the ones we seek

He says we can’t be lyin’ and deceivin’

He says we’ve got to turn the other cheek

He says that Allah preaches peace and virtue

And peace and virtue’s all we ever need

He says us Muslims clearly will not hurt you

Unless you dare oppose our word and deed

We’re letting people go out of compassion

We’re clamping down on CIA misdeeds

We won last year and we’re the ones in fashion

So throw the Constitution in the weeds

We promised hope and change and you guys bought it

We didn’t tell we hoped to change it all

I hoped to get it done before you caught it

I hoped by robbing Peter to pay Paul

That I could move the folks in my direction

A movement built completely around me

So we could do away with the election

And I could reign till 2053

Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Bart Stupak (D-MI), sent a letter to 52 health insurers requesting financial records for a House committee’s investigation. The letter warned the health insurers that the House Energy and Commerce committee was examining executive compensation and other business practices of the health insurance industry. This is clearly political intimidation, and if a Republican controlled House committee tried such a thing the MSM would never let us hear the end of it. But the display of Democrat brass knuckles barely merited a mention in the lap-dog press. But there may be more to it than simply trying to get the health insurance providers to stop opposing socialized health care. It is always possible the congresspersons are looking out for themselves. 

Now let me see, the Chairman mused

Faint smile upon his lips

It seems to me that you’ve abused

Our taking little trips

On corporate jets to places where

There’s girls and money too

And while that’s neither here nor there

I’ll tell you what I’ll do

I’ll overlook a little bit

Your opposition now

And tell you how I think you’ll fit

Into our plans somehow

We may be forced to have a look

Into your books you know

To see if you, by hook or crook

Are playing with the dough

But with your help we can avoid

Unpleasantness and strife

You know the President’s annoyed

And you may say that’s life

But come on board with all his men

Support his plans right now

And we can take your jet and then

Have fun in Curacao

Joe Buzz, a commenter at Belmont Club, thinks there might be some money to be made by selling people on the idea that the Earth’s magnetic poles are shifting, just as they’ve been sold on the nonsense of man-made global warming to the vast financial profit of Al Gore and other conmen. Joe’s idea is to sell refrigerator magnets to the gullible, with printed instructions on how to keep them properly oriented for maximum effect upon the poles, and to offer pole shifting offsets just like carbon offsets. Making up stories about Canada geese no longer migrating because of the shifting poles will get the enviros and other whackos rushing to buy magnets. The possibilities are endless. If Al Gore can get a Nobel Prize for nonsense, why can’t Joe Buzz?  

Hey Joe, you’re on to something here

You name the place I’ll bring the beer

A TV blitz with crying baby geese

We’ll cut Al Gore in for a slice

Although on TV ‘twould be nice

If Al would show up not quite so obese

Refrigerator magnets scream

A con man’s everlasting dream

Instructions printed all with large size type

We’ll get some academics too

Who for a price will work with you

And generate some full time good time hype

I see it now, the dough is real

We’re millionaires, a tingly feel

It’s gonna be just great I know becuz

Ideas like this come so rare

They just electrify the air

And all because of one guy named Joe Buzz

The United States has shifted its emphasis in Afghanistan from closing down the opium trade to controlling who runs it. Attacking the poppy fields led to too much local opposition. Killing the guys who control the drug trade and replacing them with more amenable drug dons not only does not annoy the poppy farmers, but puts us in charge of the operation. By declaring we have no problem with drug lords so long as they don’t belong to Al-Qaeda or the Taliban, we have enlisted on our side a group of people whose self interest it is to see us win. And that is all to the good.

So now we get to pick and choose

Just who’s to win and who’s to lose

I like it

The poppy fields will now be ours

Those gorgeous fields of bright red flowers

I like it

Of course with all that dough at stake

We know who’ll be in on the take

And though their thirst it will not slake

I like it

The Taliban without the cash

Will have to dig into their stash

I like it

And Afghan rulers on the sly

Will see their source of income dry

I like it

Our man Petraeus is a fox

He thinks of things outside the box

He’ll fake these guys out of their jocks

I like it

If this works, why can’t we decide that the United Auto Workers union is now in charge of the Mexican drug cartels. Based on what the UAW has done for General Motors, with the UAW in charge the drug problem in the US would disappear, since no one would want to buy their product.