Political Correctness has reshaped our culture in ways that will ultimately lead to our demise as a coherent, cohesive, law abiding society.  Political correctness sets color against color, class against class, gender against gender. Diversity has resulted in discrimination against White males and Asians in favor of Blacks. Universities routinely admit and advance Blacks with lower scores than Whites and Asians. Hate speech is any word or group of words that any single member of a favored ethnic group finds personally objectionable. Can a comedian tell a Polish joke? Yes. A Jewish joke? Yes. A Catholic joke? Yes. A Black joke? No. A Muslim joke? No. Well, he can tell a Muslim joke but then he’ll have to go into hiding and take his family with him. Where will it end? It will end where all such evils end, with the slaughter (worst case) or the banishment (best case) of the favored minority by the disfavored majority.     

When days are old, the knights not bold

But manners are quite particular

We dare not shout, or e’en speak out
Lest we be perpendicular

Against a wall, a waiting pall

For daring to express a view

That some might see as blasphemy

And brand us as a parvenu

Ill bred, a boor, and what is more

Ill mannered, a vulgarian

For daring to vile words to spew

Like some grotesque Bulgarian

How could it be my fair country

Is peopled now by madder men

Where knights once bold are now just old

And wise too late but sadder men

Immigration is not what it used to be. There was a time you booked passage on a ship, crossed the Atlantic, spent a few hours in Ellis Island and were sent on your way. No visits to consulates, no background checks, no tests, no interviews, no waiting for years to be let in. Now it’s all hassle for anyone to gain legal immigrant status, to the extent it’s surprising anyone even tries. It’s no hassle, of course, for illegal immigrants from certain countries. They just walk across the border, get free health care, free schools for their kids, and sooner or later amnesty makes them citizens, while those who try the legal way wait in limbo while favored others cut in line. Thank goodness my grandmother came when she did.

A woman from Norway with tow-headed kids

Boarded ship for the US one day

And settled in steerage so young and afraid

Their passage was only one way

The northern Atlantic in winter was fierce

And in steerage the air grew most foul

As the ship heeled to seas that came crashing aboard

And the wind made the most fearsome howl

At Ellis they waited in rooms densely packed

Where clerks at long tables all day

Asked for places of birth and the spelling of names

And in short time were sent on their way

No consular visits, no bulletproof glass

No scanners, no waiting for years

She got on a ship with her husband and kids

After kissing her family with tears

They settled in Philly and raised fine strong sons

And beautiful daughters as well

And that’s how my grandmom came to the New World

And I have a story to tell

Today is the first anniversary of Verse-afire.  When I started I wondered if I could write a new verse every day, wondered if there would be something to write about every day. Well, that has been answered. And so, on this glorious anniversary of the birth of the blog, not to be confused with the birth of the blues, I reprint my initial offering, a little something called SALMON CHANTED EVENING.

I have stood on a lonely beach, listening to the gentle shushing of the waves, fishing the Atlantic Ocean in the deepness of the night, a translucent moon lighting the water, turning the sand to glittering bits of tiny diamonds. At such moments I care naught about catching fish, for I am waiting for the moon to set, waiting for the night to surround me, waiting for the fish to sing. For they do sing, but only to those who choose to hear them. Old standards, mostly, standards like

SALMON CHANTED EVENING

Something’s fishy, people say

A slur to briny cousins

You don’t hear fish say that ‘bout us

Though reasons they have dozens

We treat them all about the same

With hook and net and trawler

We bait them with some eel or squid

And sometimes a night crawler

And all because they’re good to eat

Their taste is quite delicious

Salmon, trout or small mouth bass

Just show me where the fish is

They’re not as dumb as some do think

They talk and sing till late

Nearer My Cod To Thee is one

And another Kiss Me Skate

Come Joe Sardine In My Flying Machine

And the popular Am l Blue

I love to hear those good old songs

But I sure wish they’d sing something new

The countries of southern Europe are teetering on the brink of financial disaster, default of overwhelming debt a near certainty for such as Portugal, Greece and Spain. And all because of the socialist Ponzi scheme the countries of Europe ran, borrowing from foreigners to pay the interest on previously borrowed money, all to pay the fat salaries and pensions of their government workers. Gone are the days of the silver fleets anchoring in Cadiz to offload the treasure of the Americas. Now the money flows the other way, and the ships are but ghosts in the night.

Down the Gualalquivir, the old river of war

From Seville to the sea and then west

To the sun spattered lands of the Aztecs they bore

Men of steel, men at arms, Europe’s best

That was then, this is now, golden days are long gone

When the ships and the men put to sea

And returned with the gold to Cadiz with the dawn

A fair harbor and safety to lee

The Platte fleet now sails in the night in the dreams

Of a nation now somehow laid low

By the socialist nostrums and socialist schemes

Of the leftists who could not say no

To the unions and others who held out their hands

For the good things the leftists could give

Now the rivers of war water sparse and dry lands

And the dream of the past does not live

Russia is now selling a containerized missile system to anyone with the money to buy. The idea is you load the container on a ship, anchor it in an unsuspecting harbor, raise the container lid, and the missile rises to the vertical and is ready to fire. Now all anyone needs is an atomic warhead. What’s that? Oh yes. I forgot. The muslims already have Pakistani warheads, so now all they need is a ship. What’s that? Oh, right. We’re okay. The Department of Homeland Security is on the job and they’ve just issued a decree that everyone has to take his shoes off before boarding the ship. 

For many years

‘Mid cheers and jeers

We practiced full containment

Of every threat

The Soviet

Advanced for its attainment

And now I see

That for a fee

Come missiles and a trainer

So now we must

Instead of trust

Examine each container

I am sometimes asked why I write verse. The answer is because I can’t sing, or play the piano. A three chord country song on the ukulele stretches my talent. And so I am left with words.

Let me tell you, I say, let me tell you, you hear

How it all died aborning, my music career

I played Die Walkure, but was rudely thrown out

I played it in English, without the umlaut

Figaro I sang with sore throat and much heart

But they said not to put the hoarse before Mozart

I sang Massenet standing next to piano

And was yanked off the stage, I was not a soprano

Sick unto death, disappointed, I curse

The notes are the problem, I’ll stick to the verse

So that’s why you see me alone in the night

Writing rhymes till all hours, praying only for light

My tombstone is written, my full epitaph

My life in a nutshell, I’ll cry if not laugh

For chiseled in stone, to be seen for all time

Are the words Only fault was he just liked to rhyme

One year ago Arlen Specter, United States Senator from Pennsylvania, left the Republican Party and joined the Democrats, because, he said, it was increasingly clear he would not win the Republican primary in 2010, and he so much wanted to remain a United States Senator.  Specter faces a tough primary fight as challenger Joe Sestak has climbed to within 2 points in the latest Rasmussen poll, and even if he wins the primary he has little chance of beating Republican Toomey in the general election in November. Instead of contesting the Republican primary, giving it a good fight, and if he lost bowing out gracefully, he chose the coward’s way out, and now he will leave public office known to all as Benedict Arlen, a man of no principle or honor, who sold his state, his party and his constituents for a Senate seat he is not going to get anyway. His apostasy was all for nothing.

He is a man of principle

His word his every bond

He thought he was invincible

He had a magic wand

That caused his warm adherents

To pull the lever down

With no Dem interference

He owned his Philly town

Of course there were some questions

‘Bout loyalty and such

And even some suggestions

That he displayed too much

Affection for the party

Of lefties, gays and greens

And every one whose hearty

Grin betrayed behind the scenes

A hunger for the power

To make us unto them

To make us all to cower

In fear of every Dem

And so he joined the other

Who cheered at his left face

But did not call him brother

Nor gave him honored place

I leave you with this thesis

That coupled with his name

The thirty silver pieces

Forever share his shame

Peter Orszag, Obama’s Director of Management and Budget, swore up and down and crossed his heart during the debate on the so-called health care reform bill that there was no such thing as death panels in the bill, and now, after the bill is law, says that on second look, why sonofagun, imagine that, death panels. Who’d a thunk it? There will be committees of bureaucratic government employee “experts” (read government employee union members) who will sit in judgment, and who will decide whether you live or die, who will decide whether you get that operation or no. See how it works? No agonizing decisions on your part, just a cut and dried economic decision by the death panel: are you too old or too young or too sick? Must use the money wisely, you know, on people who will be productive after the operation. And we all know who those productive people will be. Government workers have friends and families too, you know. Telling us lies, what a surprise.  

Death panels live

So sayeth Orszag

But with that we give

A cheery toe tag

A nice little note

From Obie and Nance

With this little quote

“You haven’t a chance.”

Iran has just completed war games dubbed The Great Prophet, in which swarms of armed speedboats darted out from the marshes and bulrushes of the shore and battered and sank a helpless, unarmed and unmoving derelict in the Gulf, causing the mullahs great glee, believing the games demonstrate the power of the Iranian Navy to sink any US ship foolish enough to challenge them in the restricted waters of the Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. But the US Navy has an answer for that. It is called the Littoral Combat Ship, designed to operate in just such restricted waters. Will it come to that? You betcha, as soon as Israel strikes and the Iranians close the Strait to tanker traffic. What doth it Prophet the Iranians if they take not the world litorally?

You’ve got to take your hat and doff it

To the guys who ran Great Prophet

Showing itty bitty speedboats sinking ships

Smiling how they would just hide ‘em

And at proper time just ride ‘em

Out from bulrushes that mask the radar blips

Sink a tanker, that’s just gravy

But of course the US Navy

Has an answer that the mullahs sure will hate

Little speedboats in the water

Will have need for Pharaoh’s daughter

For the bulrushes won’t save them from their fate

Certain Chicago neighborhoods have a higher body count than Afghanistan and Iraq combined, and has gotten so bad that Illinois politicos have called for the National Guard to patrol the streets to protect the few law-abiding citizens from the drug dealers and the gangbangers. Others decry the notion of using force, claiming that turning the front yards and vacant lots into gardens will cause a wondrous change in the criminal mind. Of course the Green Power people who want gardens to bloom also want a bundle of money to come their way so they can implement their nebulous theory. But then, it’s all about money, and always was. But can gardens work? I don’t see why not. Aren’t those gangbangers always talking about their hoes?

Gee, Officer Krupke, I want you to know

I’ve given up killings for flowers to grow

I love these new green jobs, I find that they’re so

Rewarding for me and my hoe

My brothers all snicker and grin as they please

But wait till they see all my limas and peas

They’ve never seen pumpkins and squash such as these

The ladies they flirt and they tease

No need for to call out the National Guard

Just give us the tools and we’ll flower each yard

Giving up smack and the killing is hard

But it’s good times for me and my pard

We’ve given up wearing caps backward on head

For sensible headgear that’s groovy instead

My homeys are jealous, I’m making some bread

And maybe I’ll wind up not dead

I thank all the people who look after me

They give me so much, virtually all I can see

Without them I say I don’t know where I’d be

And it’s nice to know all of it’s free

Yes, Officer Krupke, I’ve learned how to sow

And tie pretty flowers up in a neat bow

These green jobs just give me a feeling of glow

So rewarding for me and my hoe