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

 

 

Bloomberg News reports that the Obama administration will proceed with its plan to engage Iran and deal with re-elected President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The problem is, the mullahs and Ahmadinejad want to be engaged with the United States only so far as it serves their purpose of delaying as long as possible any action on the part of the US regarding their nuclear program. Once Iran has the bomb, of course, there will be no further need to pretend they welcome engagement with us or anyone else, except to formulate the terms of our surrender. If we’re going to get engaged to the lady, make sure it’s not a one way street, with us going the wrong way. My advice to President Obama is this:

 

 

To be engaged you need a ring

To put upon her finger

But just be sure she’s had her fling

And now she wants to linger

With you and only you my lad

And not with Mr. Putin

Or what is worse or just as bad

With someone high-falutin’

Like China’s big-time rulers now

Who seem to be so deft

And think it’s time we took a bow

And exited stage left

And just be sure she’s not a flirt

Just stringing you along

Before she throws you in the dirt

And sings a goodbye song

I see no good from this affair

No matter that she’s charming

I say to you just have a care

Some belles are quite alarming

 

 

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been re-elected in a landslide, apparently pleasing President Obama, who claimed the vibrancy of the Iranian election battle was due to his speech in Cairo some days ago, and who now, no doubt, sees Ahmadinejad’s re-election as affirmation of his Middle East policy, a policy that seems strangely Muslim oriented. Ahmadinejad is determined that Israel cease to exist, and President Obama, in spite of Iranian threats to annihilate Israel, pressures Israel to surrender to the Iranian puppets Hamas and Hizbollah in the form of abandoning defensive settlements. The policies of the Obama administration and the re-election of Ahmadinejad leaves the Israelis no choice but to look out for themselves. The clock is ticking. Will Israel wait for Iran to get its nukes? Will Obama try to stop Iran from getting nukes and destroying Israel? Will Obama throw Israel under the bus? We shall have the answer before the summer is out.

 

 

Israelis live in daily fear

Of Gaza driven rockets

While Hamas sees the time is near

To put into their pockets

The Jewish State that stands between

The Muslims and their dream state

A world in which no Jew is seen

A world in which the Jew fate

Is death to every Jew on Earth

Regardless of resistance

By Muslims driven mad from birth

By Jewish mere existence

The Muslims see the end game come

They see its firm construction

And make the ME wires hum

With threats for the destruction

Of people who are not afraid

Of forces ‘rayed against them

They know the price that must be paid

They know how to defense them

But now they see their mentor friend

US give them a screwing

Obama sees that Israel’s end

Is something he wants doing

It’s all ‘bout oil as some would say

And surely some things puzzle him

But I think this is Obie’s way

Of being a good muzzle im

 

 

An elderly Italian woman missed Air France flight 447 when she arrived too late to board the plane. She escaped death when the plane went down into the Atlantic, killing 228 people, only to die a week later in a head-on collision with a truck on a road in Austria. Events like this raise the question, is it fate, coincidence, or the hand of God, however God is defined. I confess I have not the answer, though I don’t believe our fate is written, chiseled in everlasting stone. Nonetheless, there are times I think the ancients had it right, that there are gods living among us, gods who know our fates, gods who shape our lives. In Germanic legend the mistresses of human destiny were the Norns, three spinners; Urd, who knew the past; Verthandi, who knew the present; and Skuld, who knew the future. It is they, the Norns, who shape the destiny of men. And who shall say they do not?

 

 

Here is the babe, the women said

In silence as they crept

Into the house and to the bed

Where little Barack slept

But hours old, Verthandi sighed

What know of him, dear Urd?

The past is blank, though I have tried

Of him there is no word

No past? said Skuld, how can that be?

Perhaps, dear Urd, you’ve missed

The lad’s now hidden history

For surely there’s a list

There is no list, no proof of birth

His presence unremarked

The lad has simply come to earth

We know not where embarked

But ‘tis the future of the lad

With which we must engage

His future now, if good or bad

Dear Skuld, please fill the page

I shall, dear Urd, and you will hear

Him promising much change

I see him bringing hope and fear

And what is passing strange

I see a country bending low

Accepting every whim

I see a people crying so

And all because of him

I see that freedom’s lost its way

And men do quake in fright

In hearing what this lad doth say

So say the fates tonight

Is there no hope, can naught be done?

It’s written now in stone?

Ah no, said Skuld, they’re saved from One

By Ronald Reagan’s clone

 

 

We have all been assured that the older we get the wiser we get, but I’m not so sure. The only thing of which I am completely certain is that the days go slow but the years go fast. And not just fast, but a whirlwind of flashing scenes and faces when looking back down the dark rimmed corridor of time. Wasn’t it only yesterday I asked that pretty little girl to the prom? Why do I remember my first pair of roller skates? My first bike? How is it I remember the names and faces of everyone in my eighth grade class? I think I know the answers. It’s because memory works in fast years, so they didn’t happen all that long ago. When counted in slow days they happened sometime around the Permian, but that’s in slow days. In memory it all happened yesterday.

 

 

The days go slow, the years go fast

And soon before you know it

We’ve watched our time on earth go past

And hope we didn’t blow it

We got things right from time to time

That hunting dog, that scope sight

We got things wrong, but that’s no crime

We always tried to do right

We try our best, but we’re just men

And when we fail we’re shattered

We pick ourselves right up again

Though bloody, bruised and battered

We’ve made decisions that we know

Were not the best we could have

We’ve done some things that go to show

How wrong we were, or should have

That’s not to say that we’re alone

In looking back in sorrow

At things for which we can’t atone

At least not ‘til tomorrow

 

 

We’re all getting a little bloody minded, and with reason. Muslim terrorists continue to kill people every day, whether a young US soldier at a recruiting station in the United States or staging a slaughter in Mumbai, India, and have just blown up a hotel in Peshawar, Pakistan, killing many innocent civilians. We hear now that the Obama administration has decided to read captured terrorist killers their Miranda rights, telling them they have a right to remain silent and that we will provide them a lawyer if they cannot afford one. Of course, Mr. Holder’s Justice Department is deeply concerned with the rights of terrorist killers. You may recall it was not so many years ago that Mr. Holder released many Puerto Rican terrorists in order to gain votes for Hillary Clinton’s run for the Senate from New York, so Mr. Holder’s views on terrorism are well known. Still, there is a way to get the job done properly while still reading the killers their Miranda rights. These terrorists are not afraid of death, they willingly and happily blow themselves up, believing they will be instantly in Paradise with 72 beautiful virgins, but there is one thing that terrifies them, and that is to be buried wrapped in a pig skin, for that would send them straight to hell. I propose, therefore, that we read them not their Miranda rights, but their Oscar Mayer rights. Wrap them in bacon, shoot them, and then read them their Miranda rights.

 

 

The Justice Department is quakin’

In fear that our soldiers be takin’

It into their head

To fill them with lead

Before their Mirandas be makin’

 

I like the idea of bacon

The thought has the jihadists shakin’

Let’s not wait till they’re dead

Grab the bastards instead

Shove the stuff up their ass while they’re wakin’

 

While a plea for his life he is makin’

Just grin with a little head shakin’

Then a shot to his head

Put the bastard to bed

And another in case he is fakin’

 

Mr. Holder says steps will be takin’

To prevent such a vile undertakin’

But our guys know that they

Are the ones who will pay

For the folly that Justice is makin’

 

 

 

It was announced Tuesday that Chrysler is out of bankruptcy. The deal, as dictated by the Obama administration, calls for the Italian carmaker Fiat to own 35% of Chrysler, the United Auto Workers union 55%, and the US and Canadian governments 10%. Is the forced deal constitutional? No. Does it matter? No. I have never seen, nor did I ever expect to see, a president of the United States so openly and brazenly throw aside the law in order to reward his UAW friends, both with Chrysler and General Motors. Bankruptcy law is settled law, the law of the land, but that did not deter the Obama administration from telling the first creditors, the Chrysler bond holders, that contrary to law the UAW union would get first dibs and the bond holders would take what the president said they would take, which was 29 cents on the dollar. When the bond holders complained they were threatened, so they took it, figuring if they didn’t they would get nothing. Can you imagine the screams of outrage and calls for impeachment had George W. Bush done that? Yet the media is silent, complicit in the unlawful actions of the one they adore.

 

The UAW put up no money but got 55% of the new Chrysler/Fiat corporation by agreeing to pick up the legacy benefits and health care costs of the workers. Fiat got 45% of the new Chrysler/Fiat corporation by agreeing to give Chrysler its technology in small cars and small engines, a combination the American buying public has consistently said it does not want and will not buy. Fiat has an even lower score in customer satisfaction than Chrysler. Has anyone on this side of the Atlantic ever bought a Fiat? So after the forced Obama Chrysler bankruptcy, the two principal owners of the new Chrysler put up not one red cent for 90% of the company, and the American taxpayer, who put up billions in loans and outright gifts, gets to share the remaining 10% with Canada. Now we know why President Obama is always smiling; it’s two down and Ford to go. All of which raises the question: Is what Obama has done to General Motors and Chrysler, and what he has done to the economy by putting the country in debt to the tune of trillions of dollars a year into the foreseeable future, incompetence or design?  

 

 

Walter Chrysler built his cars

With care and keen attention

To see that style and detail mars

Got hardly any mention

Until that is the union halls

Took over car production

With worker rights and work rule calls

And quality reduction

But times were fat so no one cared

That wages were a-soaring

And no one in his right mind dared

To think of underscoring

The risks of competition from

The Japanese and Germans

Get beat? they smiled, they’re just too dumb

Those Takeos and Hermans

Now Walter Chrysler is no more

No more is General Motors

The president chalked up the score

And charged it to the voters

Then put in charge one of his czars

A man who said he doesn’t

Know a thing ‘bout building cars

But criticize we mustn’t

We have to ask, what does this mean

Why all this rearranging

The socialists are on the scene

Our country they are changing

It’s ave atque vale tears

It’s hello and goodbye

To all we knew, now still your fears

We have in charge a guy

Who takes us down that frightful path

To ruin and decay

Just look at it, just do the math

We’re soon at judgment day

Hail and farewell to all we knew

They work while we all dally

Ring out the old, ring in the new

It’s ave atque vale

 

 

President Obama has outlined his strategy for gracefully ending the black mood of depression his presidency has plunged the country into without admitting he had anything to do with it. “It’s like we do in Chicago,” Rahm Emanuel said. “Money cures everything, and it will cure this. When things look darkest, that is when we in Chicago shine, for in the dark is when we are most graceful. The President has informed the Treasury that the printing presses will melt if need be, for he is determined to see everyone in this country has an organically grown chicken in every pot and a plug-in hybrid car in every garage.” Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, at an informal press conference with several radical Muslim groups, laughed at the suggestion that the United States was abandoning its principles. “This Administration,” Mr. Gibbs quipped, “will never abandon its principals. Get it?  Principals. With an “a”. Or its teachers, either. What’s with you guys? I know you’re laughing, I can see your beards move.”

 

But it isn’t funny. The money spent so far is so mind bogglingly staggering, that I wonder if there was ever any real money involved at all. A thousand years ago the Chinese invented paper money. The notes were actually printed on silk, but the effect was the same. Money was no longer something valuable in itself, like a gold or silver coin, but a promissory note that said when presented to the proper authority it would be redeemed for the value stated on its face. The Chinese had invented the illusion of money, and nothing’s been the same since.

 

 

It isn’t paranoid to say

That what we see’s disturbing

When markets start to act this way

It means something’s perturbing

The way free markets operate

When all is hokey dokey

But when the pols don’t play it straight

They should be in the pokey

They’re not, of course, and I should state

The tycoon money lenders

And others who facilitate

The Congress’s big spenders

Should join the crooks in durance vile

Their names be changed to numbers

But that will only happen while

We’re dreaming in our slumbers

The Congress votes a pork fed bill

Without a thought or worry

Most people didn’t care, but still

Some wondered what’s the hurry

I think the Congress knew full well

That what they did was harmful

They gave to friends, but what the hell

Who took it by the armful

But here’s the problem, if we look

It really wasn’t euros

But just some numbers in a book

A-sitting in some bureaus

Until somewhere someplace some time

Someone needs some Jacksons

And writes a check or drops a dime

And initiates some actions

And somewhere a computer coughs

And numbers change direction

And offs are ons and ons are offs

In infinite collection

The point is no one ever sees

The actual pound or dollar

They might as well be wind in trees

A-blowing down a holler

There never was no dough to keep

It’s all a sham and mirrors

For some of us are just the sheep

While others are the shearers