The people of Greece continue to torch cars and shops, stone police and demand an end to the IMF bailout that requires them to give up some of the bloated pensions and holidays a benevolent socialist government has bestowed on them using borrowed money they had no intention of paying back. It has all come to a head, the debt crisis is upon Greece and all of Europe, and by extension the United States, and if Greece collapses economically it will drag down Germany and France and then the rest of Europe. None of this matters to the rioters. They want their pensions and vacations and don’t care that those are not flowers on the wall, but darkening shadows and grim writing.

 

 

Yes there’s shadows on the wall

It don’t bother me at all

I will sing and dance till dawn

For tomorrow I’ll be gone

Sipping wine and cutting roses for the table feast

Yes the sun will rise tomorrow though not in the East

Yes there’s writing on the wall

It don’t bother me at all

If it crashes let it burn

It’s all right, I’ve had my turn

Let the people who come after clean the stinking mess

I will dance and sing and sip my wine for I confess

I know there’s shadows on the wall

And it don’t bother me at all

I see the writing on the wall

And it don’t bother me at all

 

 

 

Much is made of the failure of America’s public schools, the failure of the schools to teach, the failure of the kids to learn. There is much that is wrong with some of the schools, but not all of them. My grandchildren are prime examples of what good schools and good teachers can do for good kids.

 

Mrs. Mandes’s 9^th grade class entered a contest sponsored by a local newspaper, the contestants to write a poem about a painting, in this case Orpheus #1 by Paul Keene. The contest was won by Matt Erickson, my grandson. I have tried repeatedly to paste the art into the post, without success, and so must give a brief word picture of the painting in question. It is not exactly The Scream, but close. So now you know where you are. The ‘She’ in the poem is Eurydice.

 

 

Inspirational Painting

Orpheus #1 by Paul Keene

Poem below was printed in the Wed. May 12, 2010 Issue of The Intelligencer

First Place Winner

 

Where She Belongs

By Matt Erickson, Holicong Middle School, Mrs. Mandes Grade 9

 

It was a mission

That I had to complete

Don’t look back, and I pass

Three stages she went through

From being a belonging of the underworld,

Blank, and soul-less

A crowd of underworld dwellers behind her

Urging her on to leave

The second stage, near completion

A face forming as she crosses the Styx

Bright colors show the world above,

A Parthenon, sun, blue skies

And then I failed, as I did look back,

Anticipating her to follow

Her face rages in the third stage

Eyes glaring at me, her one true love

She is no longer an earth dweller

Flames engulf her, bring her back down

It was fate that let her go

Fate decided, not me, not Orpheus, son of Apollo

She wasn’t meant to be here

Now I must walk alone

While she is in ownership to the underworld

It is forever and meant to be

It is,

Where she belongs.

 

 

 

 

Ernest Hemingway was a Chicago guy, and one wonders what he would think of the Chicago of Barack Obama and The Reverend Wright. He would fully understand the Illinois of Governor Blagojevich, for corruption was not new to Chicago or Hemingway. But the Chicago of Obama and his cronies is something different from run-of-the-mill political corruption. It is a deep seated hatred of everything American, something Hemingway would never have understood. Let us remember the Chicago of Ernest Hemingway, where the dead voted early and often, where every politician was on the take, and everyone knew it and didn’t much care. Chicago was not part of Hemingway’s novels, but Hemingway’s novels were part of Chicago.  

 

 

Did Nick Adams say

In his curt South Side way

That Ernest did Chi-town a wrong?

I think that’s not right

The list is not slight

Just listen I’ll sing you a song

The first bars will bring

The Torrents Of Spring

A wonderful, melodic tune

Then in Chicago’s quaint way

Near the ending of day

Comes sweet Death In The Afternoon

The pols wheel and deal

They grin and they steal

By now we all know the whole plot

In Chicago it’s worse

It is all in the verse

The Garden Of Eden it’s not

Elections are rigged

Dead votes up are digged

They stuff ballot boxes in polls

But the winds they will bend

And they’ll find in the end

That it’s they now For Whom The Bell Tolls

 

 

While we look beyond our borders for the threat, unnoticed and unseen, the threat has bored from within. The Fort Hood muslim killer of unarmed soldiers was an American citizen, an officer in the United States Army, who went not unnoticed for his anti-American political views, but untouched and untroubled by the authorities because he was muslim. Political correctness cost over a dozen innocent people their lives. The Times Square bomber was an naturalized Ameican citizen, a muslim from Pakistan. Today the FBI raided houses on Long Island and in New Jersey. They are here, the jihadis, here among us, waiting for the call.   

 

 

They slink and they slither

They creep and they crawl

They live in the sewers

Awaiting the call

They answer to allah

The wise and the pure

To infidel evil

They have now the cure

The pipe bomb, the fire

The car bomb, the gun

Muhammad commands it

And so must be done

A grade school in Russia

Schoolgirls in Afghan

They kill and they slaughter

Wherever they can

And now they are here

In our midst, smiling nice

They know with PC

That we’ll soon pay the price

The question is when

Will the muslim threat cease

The answer: When rid

The religion of peace

 

 

In an effort to save the socialist dream of the European Union, the EU has pledged one trillion dollars of German money to prop up a Greece whose people are rioting in protest at the effort to take away some of the socialist goodies they’ve been given, even though everyone knows that without some sacrifice on the part of the people of Greece the whole European edifice will come crashing down.  No matter.  The Greeks want their handouts to continue no matter the Acropolis comes crashing down on their heads. There was a time Greece produced heroes, like Jason and Hercules. Now all they want to do is fleece the Germans out of a trillion dollars. 

 

 

Jason and the Argonauts

Set sail from ancient Greece

With Orpheus and Hercules

To find the Golden Fleece

Guarded by a dragon fierce

Inside the Sacred Grove

The Heroes thought success was theirs

When into sight they hove

The dragon though had other thoughts

And Jason’s guys were stumped

Till sorcery by Medea

Had mighty dragon trumped

Now you might think this ancient tale

Holds nothing for us now

But you’d be wrong to think this way

And I will tell you how

You see the dragon’s Germany

And Jason, well he’s Greece

He’s borrowed much and repaid none

And that’s the Golden Fleece

 

 

The Belmont Club has an interesting discussion on how left wing activists help the poor, the illiterate, the disabled, fill out absentee ballots. The help consists of filling out the ballot in favor of the activist’s candidate, regardless of what the person being helped might have wished. This is only one of many ways leftist organizations like Acorn see to it that when the votes are counted, the Democrat wins. We have seen massive voter fraud in the governor’s race in Washington State, we have seen massive voter fraud send Al Franken to the Senate and will no doubt see more voter fraud in the future, for the Democrats are not about to give up their silver bullet. Motor voter, absentee ballots, mail-in voting, electronic voting without a paper trail and election day registration will ultimately lead to an electorate that does not trust the results of elections. In 1960 Richard Nixon knew that John Kennedy was elected president with stolen votes in Chicago, Cook county, Illinois, and was urged to contest the results. Nixon said, “No, we are not a banana republic.” In 2000 George W. Bush won Florida by a slim margin and Al Gore demanded a recount, obviously believing that the United States was indeed a banana republic. We are well on our way to achieving the goal of the left wingers, the quangos, the non-governmental organizations. Voter fraud is turning us into a banana republic, with the Democrats in power in perpetuity. 

 

 

The Left, the Left, it never sleeps

When power gets, the power keeps

It matters not, the coming deeps

It’s all in keeping score

The quangos running all our lives

With winning smiles and hidden knives

As honey drips from lefty hives

And still they lust for more

No one is safe, we have no chance

To beat the Leftists at their dance

They know their foe with just a glance

Their hearts bleed for the poor

They help the poor fill out the forms

They know the poor know not the norms

By doing so election storms

Are driven from the door

Election fraud is what they do

Mail-in votes, the Acorn crew

They care not all for me and you

For now they own the store

 

 

Barney Frank declares the housing bubble was not the same as the tulip bubble of centuries ago, because houses have value and tulips do not. If anyone knows how to tiptoe through the tulips, it’s Bahney Fwank.

 

 

When Bahney Fwank sees tulips bloom

His tiny tippy toes

Just glide along with awesome grace

I know, he’s one of those

He does the same with Freddie Mac

As well as Fannie Mae

With subprime deals for favored folks

The rest of us must pay

He’s generous as to a fault

He dances through this life

The question though is Fannie Mae

Or Freddie Mac his wife

 

 

I am often asked how I manage to write such beautiful, scintillating and perceptive verse every day. The answer is genius. Yes, I admit it, I am a genuine, card carrying genius. Always have been. That’s just the way it is, and you’ll just have to live with it.

 

 

Those who’ve read my brilliant verse

Knows genius is an awful curse

We’re prone to love ourselves and hug each line

Yes genius is a curse we bear

Yet we press on because we care

For lesser mortals who are not so fine

Yes, genius answers when it’s called

Though showing it leaves others galled

Be happy that this genius writes this stuff

I know I’m preaching to the choir

The genius that is verse-afire

Just don’t find my real IQ or call my bluff

 

 

The Mommy State is with us, as evidenced by the overwhelming number of women who voted for Barack Obama, as well as for the general state of the culture that is becoming more and more like France every day.  Women are different from men, in that their first thought is the protection and maintenance of their children.  Where once a woman depended on a man for these services, she now depends on the State, and so will continue to vote for those who agree to provide for them.  Men are no longer needed.  The State is now husband and master.  But can it last?

 

 

We find us poised with quite a daunting thesis

An argument with which I must agree

When Mommy State implodes who gets the pieces

Is something I at present cannot see

Some claim in eighteen one a Brit named Tyler

Proclaimed democracies not long to run

He didn’t say it just to be a riler

He said that in the best case, number one

Democracies last only ‘til the voters

Find out their votes breed governmental doles

He didn’t know that once invented motors

That women could be driven to the polls

They voted in the guys who’d give them power

They’re voting for them to this very day

They disengaged the cradle from the bower

And now we find we’ll soon have hell to pay

The Mommy State has fastened on our culture

But surely it has finally run its course

That shadow overhead is from a vulture

Just waiting for some unforgiving force

To put a noisy end to all this posing

To see such nonsense put at last to bed

I see this lefty chapter quickly closing

If lucky we shall not have many dead

The Mommy State will last until some tragic

Event now clearly seen as tipping point

Will clean the slate again as if by magic

And once again the men will run the joint

 

 

 

As of 2008 the salaries of federal employees averaged $119,982 per year, while the average private sector salary was $59,909. But that doesn’t tell the whole story. Health care and pension benefits adds $40,785 per year to the average salary of federal employees but only $9,881 to the average salary of private sector employees. Do the math. Average salary and benefits for federal employees = $160, 767, while average salary and benefits for private sector workers = $69,790. The average federal employee thus makes $69,790 a year more than the average private sector worker. And it’s worse than that. As of 20 January 2008, when President Obama took office, there were fewer than one hundred federal employees making more than $170,000 a year, and six months later the number had climbed above three thousand. Used to be a person went to work for the government at a lower salary than could be earned in the private sector, but offset that with a guaranteed lifetime job. Today, if you want to get rich, get a job with the government. Of course, if you want to get really rich, become a part of the government.

 

 

I work for the Feds and I’m quite pleased to say

I’m here to assist you get through your bleak day

I know you need help in the very worst way

And helping is my middle name

I make lots of money, much more than I need

With many promotions at breath-taking speed

I play by the rules both by word and by deed

And government work is my game

I’ll just need your name and your Social as well

Your bank account number I swear I won’t tell

I know that your life has been one living hell

And we know George Bush is to blame

We’ve taken your health care right out of your hands

It’s free with your payments in gold Krugerrands

With treatment provided by wild gypsy bands

No changes, your health care’s the same

No need now to worry ‘bout allies and such

The people once foes we now love very much

If trouble arises we’ll call on the Dutch

To carry on freedom’s bright flame

Yes I’m from DC and I’m quite pleased to note

That you and I sail in the very same boat

But things I have said you are never to quote

Yes government work is my game