The wheel of History turns, sometimes as poetry, sometimes as farce, but always as irony. We once defended Greece from the Germans, and now, in light of the imminent Greek government debt crisis in which Greece is about to default on its massive loans to European banks, we are begging the Germans to come to the rescue. In 1941 Churchill sent sorely needed divisions from North Africa to Greece to keep the Germans out, and was sharply rebuffed for his pains when the Fallschirmjaegeren gave the New Zealanders a bloody nose in Crete. And here we are, seventy years later, begging the Germans to take it once more.

Failing countries cheek by jowl

Crying for the savior now

In Valhalla Hitler smirks

See, he smiles, my way it works

Stalin puffs his meerschaum pipe

Smiles and says that Greece is ripe

For a taste of Stalin rule

And Churchill says don’t be a fool

It’s socialism that’s at fault

Where once was money in the vault

There’s nothing now but IOUs

In moments now they’ll light the fuse

And Europe will then be no more

And God the Maestro fold his score

And bravely said, FDR cried

For Greece is now the German bride

How odd it is that we once fought

To free what once the Germans thought

Was theirs to own, do what they will

And here they are, they have it still

 See my mystery SUSAN DARLING at Amazon

The Greeks are again standing before Germany with a tin cup, with the Germans and everyone else knowing that if Greece defaults on its debt obligations, German and French banks will fail, American banks will be sorely stressed and the world economy will be laid waste. Greece has laid down the ultimatum: pay us or we’ll default and the banks will tumble like little children tumbling down a hill. Will the Germans cave in and give the Greeks the money? I say let them fail, for paying them off again will only make things worse when they ultimately do default on their debt, as they must when the Germans run out of money. Let them fail, let them stew in their own socialist dreams of retiring on the wealth of others. Let them fail, and pick up the pieces and move on. The world has had enough of wooden horses.

They wheeled the horse up to the gates

Then sailed their ships away

Astonishing the Trojans when

They sun rose the next day

The horse was carried into Troy

As celebration ruled

But what the people did not know

Was they would soon be fooled

Brave Hector though divined the trick

And grabbed his trusty sword

He’d slay the foe this day or death

Would be his last reward

Alas brave Hector does not live

Achilles too is dead

And Greece no more by honor lives

But panhandling instead

Pay us now, the masses scream

Or we will bring you down

And so is wheeled the wooden horse

Up to the gates of town

Filled not with Agamemnon’s troops

But Euros head to tail

There’s no brave Hector here to say

Goddammit let them fail

See my sci fi novel CHRYSALIS at Amazon, paperback and Kindle. A city at the bottom of a lake, a lovesick medusa. What could go wrong?

Fourth of July. Fireworks, cookouts, baseball, holding hands with your best girl. That’s what it’s about now, but it wasn’t always what it was about.

In a seafaring town not a few years ago

It happened one hot summer day

A document fair to the townsfolk was read

That put all the bells into play

They rang out the news that the freedom they sought

Was theirs by God’s writ and His grace

And from that day forward the people held fast

To the freedoms those men put in place

The Fathers, the Founders, they sweated and swore

Until they had got the words down

And created the world’s finest country by far

And it happened in old Philly town

See my sci fi novel RADIANCE, paperback or Kindle. A fifteen year old boy and his Irish setter find themselves on a strange planet and they don’t know why. They soon find out.

Will be back Tuesday, 5 July.

In recent testimony, Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, admitted he had not a clue as to what to do in the current financial crisis, and the only option left was to do what he was doing and hope for the best. What he is doing is printing money, driving down the value of the dollar worldwide, and paving the way for giant inflation when the zero percent Fed rate bubble breaks. If Bernanke doesn’t know what to do, maybe we should get someone who does.

Call me old and cranky

But I do not like Bernanke

And I really do not like his QE2

Printing money like it’s tissue

Means inflation will not miss you

And life savings will go down the china loo

Why one man has all the power

To make men and women cower

At the thought of what it is he doesn’t know

He sits in that big Fed building

Picking lilies fit for gilding

The producer, star and writer of the Ben Bernanke Show

The United Nations has declared that Khaddafi must go. Of course, the UN, like the Pope, has a limited number of Divisions, and thus the orders to remove Khaddafi must be carried out by others, most of whom are entirely incapable of carrying out any order, let alone an order to commit war, even against a foe as weak as Khaddafi. And so, as always, it looks like if the order is to be carried out it will be carried out by the United States. But Obama has claimed repeatedly that we are not in a war in Libya, despite almost daily bombing by our airplanes, and one would think Obama would be loathe to anger his lefty base further by putting some boots on the ground. So what is the UN, that mighty force, to do?

The UN is a mighty force

Their word obeyed toot sweet of course

For all the world knows it has a mailed fist

The diplomats quick on the draw

The bad guys know their word is law

Just looking cross will put you on their list

Of course the members all are armed

And keen to see the bad guys harmed

They’ve got the stuff that flies and then goes BAM!

Or have I only dreamt that’s so

I fear that if the bad guys go

That once again it’s up to Uncle Sam

The TSA has announced a plan to have its airport operatives screen the mass of travelers by looking for specific body language signs, thereby deterring would be terrorists from climbing about our airplanes and blowing them up. Body language is fine, but has it ever worked? I don’t think so.

Us harried men just have to guess

The body language that means yes

Or maybe means quite something else instead

It could mean no, it could mean may

It could mean she don’t wanna play

It could mean Buster you should go drop dead

A woman’s body was not meant

To indicate her true intent

So body language is a wasted art

You’ll never know just what she means

By how she blinks or how she leans

At least not ‘til you say death do us part

Germs are getting more and more difficult to kill these days, what with their ability to adapt quickly. It seems built into every little germ and animalcule is a genius-like ability to change almost instantly into something else; still a germ, but a super germ, one that laughs at our feeble attempts to subjugate nature.

Yes the bugs they are commencing

To defy our best sequencing

As they dance and sing down deep inside our gut

They don’t know what they are doing

And they can’t see what they’re viewing

But is nature just the greatest thing or what

So when Leeuwenhoek discovered

That his teeth were fairly covered

With some little crawly things he barely saw

He said it’s not my intention

That my microscope invention

Would find living creatures swimming ‘round my jaw

Little Beasties he first called ‘em

Then discovered if we scald ‘em

They would die and then they’d bother us no more

But the Beasties deep inside us

Would just laughingly deride us

As they planned the darker stuff they had in store

Should the United States now withdraw from Nato? Has not Nato served its purpose? Has not the Red Army been disbanded? Are Red Army divisions still poised to strike west through the Fulda Gap? Why should the United States continue to supply the money, men and equipment to defend Europeans who do not have the will to defend themselves? They have relied on the United States to defend them for so long they now believe it is their right to be defended by us, and they have let their defense establishments go to the point of invisibility. Without us they are defenseless against the wolves of the world. And one night the wolves will come. They always do.

Uneasily the sled dogs slept

How quiet was the night

As red eyed wolves in silence crept

The collared dogs in sight

The sled dogs whimpered in the snow

Awake, they waited fate

They knew that one of them would go

But which? They could but wait

The red eyes ran with frosty breath

How silently they came

The lead dog closed her eyes in death

In moments just her name

On empty collar told the tale

As dawn erased the night

And only now a quiet wail

From those who could not fight

They knew the wolves would soon be back

For NATO is a lie

And weakness just invites attack

And one by one they’d die

The muslims continue to play with fire. Iran has announced it was ready to test a nuclear device. Turkey says it will ship arms to the Palestinians in Gaza and defies Israel to stop them. Assad sends armed civilians to storm the fences at the Israeli border, causing the Israeli to open fire, all to inflame the likes of the New York Times, which is anti-Israel to begin with. And so the Arabs and Iranians continue to poke sticks in the eyes of the West and Israel, knowing that for the moment at least it is quite safe to do. But it will not always be quite so safe. There always comes a time when a stick in the eye is finally responded to, and when the response comes it will be more than a stick in a muslim eye. It will be a stake in the muslim heart. And they do not seem to understand that playing with fire is dangerous.

The child is told that fire burns

The lesson stressed until he learns

But some kids never get it right

They’re drawn to flame, the burning light

They play with fire, it’s a game

And if they lose it’s all the same

There are kids living on our block

Who play the game around the clock

Assad for one, the mullahs too

Who poke their sticks, annoy the Jew

They strut and shout they’ll kill us all

And turn life to a darkened pall

We tell them we want only peace

We tell them that their games must cease

But they do not, and so they’ll learn

That games with fire means they’ll burn