President Obama has concluded a Strategic Arms Limitation Agreement (START) with Russia that will cut the legal limits on warheads by 30% and launchers by 50%. This at a time when everyone else is gearing up for a run for the nuclear roses. START made sense in a bi-polar world, where the nuclear powers were the US, Britain and France on one side and the USSR on the other. But how much sense does it make today when Pakistan, India, Israel, China and North Korea are nuclear powers, with Iran soon to be included. And once Iran has nuked up, then everyone in the Middle East will nuke up. START seems to be a good name for it. The race is on. Start your engines.   

The world had much a safer stance

When there were only four

‘Twas us and Russkies, Brits and France

But now, who’s keeping score?

There’s India and Pakistan

And China and the Norks

And Israel and soon Teheran

The road has many forks

And soon the Saudis and Iraq

Will nuke up just in case

The mullahs run it off the track

And then, without a trace

The Middle East just disappears

In flame and smoke and sand

And fighting’s back to bows and spears

Between each camel band

A nuke exchange, if come to pass

Within the Middle East

Would see those countries turned to glass

That we would miss the least

This is the first year Social Security has paid out more than it has taken in, a development the experts said would be delayed many years. But it is here. The soft underbelly of Europe, Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland, are beset with debt crises that threaten the very existence of the Eurozone. Rapidly mounting and unsustainable debt in the United States is about to bring the entire world economy crashing down in smoking ruins. And the answer? Borrow more money. And so it goes, and so we go, merrily over the cliff, unless we do something about it, starting in November 2010. 

At dawn, the night sky painted pink

With rose and amber hue

The Founding Fathers had to think

The morning loved us too

The rising sun climbed in the sky

Too bright for us to view

We strode the world and we knew why

The noontime loved us too

Now sunset draws the curtain low

And sky turns dusk from blue

And sadly full well do I know

The evening saddens too

The risen sun is setting now

Some say our course is run

But patriots refuse to bow

To Diktats from the One

We’ll fly our banner high again

The lefty cretins gone

We’ll take our country back and then

A glorious new dawn

The Israelis are restoring an ancient synagogue deliberately destroyed by the Jordanians during the 1948 war of Independence. The synagogue is in the Jewish part of Jerusalem, part of the State of Israel, where the government of Israel has every legal right to build or restore a synagogue or anything else. Naturally, the Palestinians called for a Day of Rage to protest this insult to Islam. Ho hum. Another day of rage, another day of killing Jews, another day of setting fire to cars and buildings. Why do the Palestinians act this way? Because they know the Israelis are a civilized people and will not kill them. The Romans would have taken only so much and then would have killed all the men and sold the women and children into slavery. But the Palestinians are safe. They know the Jews will never do to them what they will do to the Jews if they ever get the chance.

Another day, another rage

It’s what the Palis do

You’d think that they would turn the page

And get a job or two

Instead they hang around all day

And mutter, gripe and whine

They think if Jews just go away

Then everything’d be fine

You say to them if Israel

Just left they’d not get fed

There’d be no work and this way will

Not work, but in their head

They think when someone kills the Jews

Then money will flow in

And everyone will get to choose

Whose house he will go in

Which Jewish business he will own

Whose car he’d like to drive

With Jewish riches they’ll have shown

The world that those who strive

To make the good life for themselves

To earn an honest wage

By grabbing stuff from off the shelves

All got by days of rage

Today, Christians throughout the world celebrate the resurrection of the crucified Christ. Repeating Good Friday’s post, verse-afire brings those long ago yet everlasting events to a close by reprising those

THREE DAYS IN JERUSALEM

Down the stone laid street, past the jeering crowd

Whipped and scourged, thorn crowned and bloody browed

Prodded by soldiers, laughed at by some

Carrying his cross, His Father’s time come

On Calvary hill he laid the cross down

In the distance lay shining Jerusalem town

They nailed him by hands, a spike through his feet

Then raised the cross high in the afternoon heat

A legend was posted for all to peruse

Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews

The soldiers all laughed as the man hung his head

Casting lots for his clothes before he was dead

He asked for a drink and received a sharp spear

The blood and the water signaled death was quite near

His eyes raised to heaven, He cried out in pain

Oh Father, dear Father, I shall see you again

His ordeal was over, in tomb did He lay

While soldiers stood guard by night and by day

He lay there all day and the following night

But on Sunday morn, with the coming of light

He rose from the dead, His Father’s work done

And stepped from the tomb to greet the new sun

Announcing His presence to those he held dear

He told them His Father’s salvation was near

He ascended  to Heaven, his earthly life through

Having died for our sins, and for me and for you

HAPPY EASTER

The Afghan government has complained that United States Special Forces are killing too many Afghan civilians, and must be reined in. Lefty human rights organizations throughout the world have taken up the cry and are demanding the SOF gangsters be restrained or removed altogether. Of course, the principal complaint by both camps is that the Special Forces are too effective in taking out Taliban big shots, and the left cannot have that.

The SOF are gangsters

Say we at Human Rights

They leap about like pranksters

Just because they own the nights

They sneak about and kick down doors

And shoot the bad guys too

Not caring that the Left abhors

The bad things that they do

We lefties bridle at the thought

That these men, left unchecked

Will kill all Taliban uncaught

And our plans will be wrecked

Our plan to make the world a place

Where men can live in peace

Where right wing thugs can’t show their face

And democracy will cease

And on that note I’ll close for now

It’s night and what is more

The SOF are on the prowl

And kicking in my door

The city of Davenport, Iowa a few days ago declared they would no longer recognize Good Friday as a holiday. Not content with removing Good Friday from the holiday calendar, the city of Davenport instructed all to change the name of Good Friday to Spring Holiday, all at the urging of the Davenport Civil Rights Commission, who were obviously acting under the politically correct belief that any reference to Christianity would offend someone, somewhere, sometime. The city of Davenport may remove Good Friday from the calendar, but they can never remove Good Friday from the minds and hearts of those who accept the teachings of He who died that day.   

Update: The city of Davenport, Iowa, on Tuesday, 30 March, rescinded its order and reinstated Good Friday. Very big of them. But we have not heard the last of such attacks on Christianity. They will only increase, for the Left never sleeps; they want you to forget those days ever happened. But they did, and this is how: 

Down the stone laid street, past the jeering crowd

Whipped and scourged, thorn crowned and bloody browed

Prodded by soldiers, laughed at by some

Carrying his cross, His Father’s time come

On Calvary hill he laid the cross down

In the distance lay shining Jerusalem town

They nailed him by hands, a spike through his feet

Then raised the cross high in the afternoon heat

A legend was posted for all to peruse

Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews

The soldiers all laughed as the man hung his head

Casting lots for his clothes before he was dead

He asked for a drink and received a sharp spear

The blood and the water signaled death was quite near

His eyes raised to heaven, He cried out in pain

Oh Father, dear Father, I shall see you again

His ordeal was over, in tomb did He lay

While soldiers stood guard by night and by day

He lay there all day and the following night

But on Sunday morn, with the coming of light

He rose from the dead, His Father’s work done

And stepped from the tomb to greet the new sun

Announcing His presence to those he held dear

He told them His Father’s salvation was near

He ascended  to Heaven, his earthly life through

Having died for our sins, and for me and for you

Lockheed Martin is working on something they call Quantum Radar. The basic principle is that quantum physics implies that every particle has a twin, a doppelganger, and that if you can interact with a particle’s twin you can observe an object without ever looking at the original. Arthur C. Clarke famously observed that “A sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” So I guess it’s possible. But it seems a long way from Professor Schrodinger’s now famous thought experiment of the cat in the box.

Mr. Schrodinger! Where’s my cat?

I want to know just where he’s at

I saw him just a while ago

And you have got him, this I know

I hear him sir, he’s in that box

Be kind enough to loose those locks

How can this be, it’s empty now

And yet I clearly hear him meow

Ah there he is, he’s in your yard

I can just see him, looking hard

I’m not quite sure that I should mention

My cat has only one dimension

And there he goes, again he’s gone

He’s now on Mrs. Cratchit’s lawn

I’m leaving, sir, where is my hat

Good lord above, sir, what is that?

Oh no, I’m going in the box

Please sir, I beg you, not the locks

A doppelgang, that’s what you said?

Good lord what’s wrong now with my head?

I’ve paws and tail, dear lord, but how?

Please let me out, dear God……meow

The United States government of Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have thrown the Israelis under the bus for daring to contemplate building housing in their own country. Barack and Hillary seem to feel the Israelis have no right to consider the land of Israel as belonging to the people living there, not when it serves the Obama purpose of sucking up to Arabs. The Israelis live in a political and military minefield and Obama seems intent on forcing them to walk over it.

This land is mined land

This land inured land

Not California

Or the New York island

But they’re our friend, so

Don’t let it end, so

Barack we beg you

Don’t let them die

They won’t go quiet

They will not buy it

That they must heed to

Your slightest whim

If Iran acts now

Here are the facts now

The mid-east blazes

And then grows dim

Penn State Professor Philip Jenkins, writing in The American Conservative, describes the Third World War as a war between Christians and Muslims. He doesn’t say who wins.

Along the line drawn in the sand

At the tenth degree of latitude

The old and new faiths take their stand

With quite a reversed attitude

For Islam, land that once was theirs

Is changing faiths today

A state of perilous affairs

For the Islamic way

Professor Jenkins seems to think

We’re on the Christians’ side

And posits that there is a link

With Western Christian pride

Professor Jenkins, I’ve got news

No Western pride exists

The West has no one in the pews

And Marxism persists

When Africans give up the gods

Their fathers loved and feared

For someone else’s faith, the odds

Are that that faith has seared

A fire in their souls that must

Have seemed to burn so bright

A faith of love and for the just

A faith of warmth and light

There is a war between the faiths

Says Mr. Jenkins here

Indeed there is, that’s why the wraiths

Whisper in professor’s ear

Robert Kaplan, writing in the Atlantic Monthly, seems to think success in Afghanistan will only lead to failure, and also seems to be uncomfortable with the American military being left unsupervised by their political betters. Someone once described the British Empire as being assembled in a fit of absent-mindedness. It looks like the American Empire is being assembled in much the same way, further disturbing Kaplan, who seems to think, or so it would appear, that we are children playing at empire.

Where did I put my tinkertoy

Who took my ball and glove

Children don’t build they just destroy

Raining death from above

People like Kaplan love to fret

Success just leads to ill

It seems good news he’s never met

I doubt he ever will

Who is the Kipling of today

That mildish, childish man

Who wrote of dawn and Mandalay

And the lure of far Afghan

Historians of far off years

Will look at us with awe

And say we wrestled with our fears

And gave the lawless law