The scam that was and is Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac was the root cause of the financial meltdown of 2008, and the root cause of the Fannie and Freddie scam was liberal congressmen like Bahney Fwank, who routinely assured everyone that everything was going swimmingly. While the Democrats in charge of the program were voting themselves tens of millions of dollars in bonuses based on phony claims of profits, and banks were selling packages of worthless mortgages to all and sundry, Barney and friends assuredly knew what was up. How could they not? Fannie and Freddie were giving mortgages to people who could not afford them, and so the crisis was built in. Not that it mattered. The important thing was that it wasn’t fair that some people could afford a house and others couldn’t. And now the Obama administration is preparing to restructure the financial industry, and the problem is, how do you do that without getting involved? The answer is, you don’t. Any restructuring the government does will necessarily involve the politicians, and that means guys like Barney Frank will again be in charge, and will no doubt do with the banks as they did with the mortgage industry. 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 ever 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 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 people think?

He’s not a purple dinosaur

He looks so cute in pink?

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.

We live in an age of information overload, when the sensors outnumber and outthink (after their fashion) their human operators. At some point there will be no human operators or interpreters at all, for the information will be arriving in the engagement queue so fast and so chaotically that only super computers will be able to assemble, interpret and act on the information. There was a simpler time, when the Mark 1 eyeball was the only engagement queue that could be relied upon. Such a time occurred at the Battle of Manila, 1898, when Admiral Dewey ordered Captain Gridley of the cruiser Olympia to fire when ready. There was a human tempo then, but now I’m not so sure the information overload might not lead to calamity, as the chaotic state of information arrival could lead to deadly miscalculation. (In the following, it must be observed that Captain Gridley never served on the USS Maine. His placement there is purely poetic license on my part.)  

You may fire when ready, Gridley

Said the skipper of the Maine

Though why he gave the order

He deigned not to explain

For he sat in Havana harbor

Not an enemy in sight

It was just an errant bumboat

Not one looking for a fight

Today of course it’s different

Info out the old kazoo

That stumps the hierarchy

And swamps the info queue

To where instead of making

The situation clear

Confusion reigns as sensors

Tell us all the end is near

In that simpler time when Gridley

Left the sinking BB Maine

He joined the old Olympia

And was ordered so again

For the task at hand was simple

Spanish ships were up ahead

In a time before engagement queues

Get the most of us real dead

The world is changing, and with it the United States. Where once was stability and shared values, there now is bitter divide. Where once was rule of law, there now is judicial fiat. Where once we knew who we were, we now question who we are. Where once we were proud, we now are told we must be ashamed. The world has changed, and so have we. We are no longer who we were. It is an open question as to whether we will ever again be proud and confident. Or is this a passing phase, a moment of inattention, to be remedied by a future generation more sure of themselves and their place in the world?

Here there be tygers

The olde mappes once said

Then came the British

Who painted them red

All that is gone now

That world is no more

We’ve come to the place

Where there’s no welcome shore

The currents won’t take us

Where we want to go

The winds that once shapened

The world that we know

No longer blow fairly

But fitful and wild

We recognize barely

The world that we’ve styled

Can we recapture

That time and that way

I guess that’s the question

Before us today

We live today in a world of progressive liberalism, where nothing is ever good or evil in itself, but only in the eye of the beholder, where actions have no consequences that cannot be explained away, and where the truth is whatever the liberals say it is. What would an honorable 19^th century man say of today’s world? What would Holmes think of a world where a man’s word was always accompanied by a wink and a nod?  

Dear Watson, said Sherlock, with eyes closed in pain

I’ve had the most damnedable dream

I hope with my heart I not have it again

For the future’s not what it may seem

‘Twas merely your dinner that caused you to fret

Said Watson, the Times on his lap

I’m certain the dream was from something you et

That preceded your uncertain nap

Nay Watson, ‘twas real, just as real as today

I met with a future most dire

A man who threw virtue and honor away

And let out his good name for hire

He called himself liberal, progressive and such

He said there’s no right and no wrong

And those disagreeing were just out of touch

And they’d banished who did not belong

An ugly dream, Holmes, but the question is how

Did the future become so absurd

If true my dear fellow, I’m glad we live now

Where men live by honor and word

The volcanic ash cloud that drifted over northern Europe this past week and grounded all airlines for days was quite possibly not as severe a threat to jet engines as feared. It seems the British Met office put the data into their computers and got an answer they didn’t like. Nothing definitive, mind you, just an unknown level of risk. But the very thought of risk is anathema to governments and people today, and so, to avoid even the possibility of there being any risk of their being any risk, they shut down the entire industry and inconvenienced many thousands of passengers. One wonders where the world would now be had such a heightened degree of risk aversion been a constant in our history. 

The Rubicon, sir, cross or not

Perhaps some risk entails

The omens, sir, look not so hot

So say the scanned entrails

The weather in the Channel, Ike

Is making up to blow

The weather boffins say don’t strike

They say we shouldn’t go

The Delaware is filled with ice

It’s snowing, Christmas Eve

Who knows if we shall pay the price

Too risky I believe

Now Orville thinks that he can fly

Like robins, jays and shrikes

I told him not to even try

Should stick to making bikes

Just look at Og, that’s not his trade

He’s crazy, I do feel

It’s such a risky bet he’s made

No one will buy a wheel

And so it goes, and so it went

For history doth show

For every crackpot there’s a gent

Who says he shouldn’t go

The Tea Party has come under intense fire from the administration, the press and liberals in general, and with good reason. The Left knows the tea partiers are dangerous to their continued mastery of the culture and politics of the country. The tea partiers are dangerous because they are ordinary Americans, middle class people who never before thought of protesting the government or anything else, who believed that as long as things went along fairly well the country could correct any deviations, any mistakes. And for most of our history they were right; the country was self-correcting. But now ordinary Americans are afraid the Obama administration is taking the country down a path of debt and socialism that the country may not be able to recover from. And so they gather in greater and greater numbers, shrugging off the lying attacks by the Democrats and the lapdog media, gathering strength. The Left knows the Tea Parties are the tip of the tsunami. Ordinary Americans are slow to anger, slow to get seriously involved, as slow, almost, as the tectonic plates moving the continents about, but once they are engaged, once their anger reaches the tipping point, the country changes course to common sense and first principles, to the rule of law and the Constitution. And the Left cannot abide the thought.   

Thin as eggshell mantle slides

Creating tectonic divides

As continents on magma creep

Subducted in the ocean deep

And so it proves in man’s affairs

When times are good that no one cares

Who gets to sit on Caesar’s throne

Or who decides the culture’s tone

But when the movement starts to speed

When things grow dark and start to bleed

It’s then America grows tense

And some will say with common sense

We’ll stop the madness in its tracks

If act before the mirror cracks

If not then just as plates collide

We’ll be subducted in the slide

And pass from history with a sigh

Without so much as a goodbye

The British are about to have a general election.  Unfortunately, from this side of the drink it appears to be a contest between Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee. As George Wallace used to say of Democrats and Republicans, there ain’t a dimes worth of difference between Labour and Tories. Whoever wins, the problems of unassimilated Muslims, unsustainable debt and accelerating decline will not be addressed. What England needs is a Tea Party. Where is the England of Kipling and Chinese Gordon? The England that bestrode the world? Is it still there, still quietly beating beneath the dross and shambles of Labour socialism? England doesn’t need a man on a White Horse, England needs a few good men and women with a cup of tea in their hands, ready to go to work to take their country back. 

Sir Thomas Lipton sailed his sloop

Won an America’s Cup

He packaged tea and later soup

The people ate it up

For tea comes easy to the Brits

They like it hot and sweet

At five it’s tea time at the Ritz

With cuke sandwiches neat

But now it’s time for British men

And British women too

To look about and say Amen

It’s bad, what can we do?

Just take it back, tea party style

Demand the madness end

With luck and pluck and maybe guile

You’ll get what you intend

A country free from social ills

Old Blighty as of yore

With socialism’s obscene frills

Shown out the bloody door

Yes drink your tea and sail your sloops

Throw out each party hack

Just march behind tea party troops

And take your country back

Dana Milbank, at the Washington Post, writes of President Obama’s utter disdain for the press at the recently concluded nuclear summit in Washington, DC, a summit attended by some of the world’s foremost dictators, but not the two principal culprits, Iran and North Korea. Milbank seems to feel that the press was treated shabbily by the president, not allowing them access to the meetings or the summiteers. But what does the press expect? Slavish devotion and boot-licking by the press was bound to create a sense of profound and well deserved contempt on the part of the president.

The press thinks it’s entitled to

Speak with any bigwig who

Happens to be visiting these shores

They feel as any dog would feel

When master tells them all to heel

And acts in ways the press surely deplores

The press cares not Obama seeks

To raise the debt to untold peaks

They care not all if Iran nukes the Jews

They get upset and only when

Obama treats them not like men

But like a lapdog he can well abuse

Of course the press will surely find

That loving Obie Wan is kind

Of like them loving someone’s chilly stare

Obama treats them all like dirt

They grovel more the more they’re hurt

And why should we, or Obie, really care

The First Nuclear Age has been defined as the bi-polar world between the two nuclear superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, with minor nuclear powers Great Britain and France. This first age, the age of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), lasted some forty or fifty years. The Second Nuclear Age has been defined as the age of proliferation, when countries such as Israel, Pakistan, China and North Korea developed the bomb, with Iran on the threshold of having nuclear capability. The Third Nuclear Age is defined as the time, now fast approaching, when Iran and/or North Korea will give or sell nuclear weapons to non-state actors like al-Qaeda and the Taliban. When that happens we will long for the good old days of Mutual Assured Destruction.

How much we yearn at every turn

For good old days of yore

When all that’s good was all that stood

Before the locked nuke door

Today we see the NPT

In tattered disarray

It served us well but what the hell

The thing has seen its day

Now everyone under the sun

Has nukes or plans in place

To build or try to steal or buy

A bomb to join the race

And soon the wise al Qaeda guys

Will get their hands on one

And New York town will be one down

Though not be one and done

For soon the sky will see them fly

As missiles targets seek

And the world’s heirs as if one cares

The roaches and the meek

Iran will very soon have nuclear weapons, and the question is, who will be the first to get one, the Taliban or al Qaeda? My guess is the Taliban. Many years ago Harry Belafonte had a hit song called Day-o, the lyric of which went, “Come Mr. Tallyman, tally me banana.” The tallyman will now be counting out nukes, and not bananas.   

Come Mr. Tallyman, tally me banana

Is now Come Mr. Taliban let me show you this

Nice little thing we’ve got here’n Teherananana

For the right price we are sure you cannot miss

Think of the joy you will bring to Muslim masses

Think of the laughter the Arab street will find

Think of the tears as you kick those Yankee asses

Think of the fears you will raise in Kaffir’s mind

Don’t think of price for we know you can afford it

We know you’ve got resources out the old kazoo

Just sign your name here and then we can record it

Then after that you’ll just have to holler boo

Everyone knows that you never show no mercy

Everyone knows that you mean just what you say

One little bomb could take out all of New Jercy

Two little bombs and you own the USA

Come Mr. Taliban to Teherananana

Come Mr. Taliban cross my palm with gold

Come Mr. Taliban tally me banana

Soon everyone will be doing as he’s told