Hillary Clinton, our greatest Secretary of State ever, has gathered a group of diplomats in Tunis, calling themselves Friends Of Syria, to convince the Syrian government of Bashir al Assad that they are not friends at all, but determined to drive him out of office. Of course, they don’t intend to use force, that would be too scary. Soft power, leading from behind, that’s the ticket. The Middle East is in turmoil, soon to be nuked up from Saudi Arabia to the Atlantic ocean, all because the Obama administration has not a clue as to how to resolve the mess it has created. And so we wait, as the proverbial flightless fowl return to the coop.

How they cowered in the bushes

Hidden deep inside the shade

Of the overhanging branches

Both bedeviled and afraid

We must all hang tough together

Said the nation’s foremost mind

We shall lead you all to safety

From positions far behind

Then a small voice from the benches

With a quiver said, “I think

That if we send him a letter

Of displeasure then he’ll blink.”

Then the sky began to darken

As they flew in, newly loosed

From the bushes cries of horror

“It’s the chickens, home to roost!”

Athens was once a shining city on a hill, home to Pericles, Aeschylus, and Socrates. The Parthenon was the marvel of the age.  But Athens is no more. The Greek tragedy continues. The socialist dream, a united Europe, a common currency, is in its death throes, and Athens is ablaze, as austerity strikes deep into the heart of a society that retired at fifty on extravagant pensions, on vastly overpaid and over benefitted government workers, and on all who relied on the socialist welfare state to sustain them. Athens is no longer a shining city on the Acropolis, but a burning city on a garbage pile.

Prosperity to poverty

Is but a tiny jump

The city on a hill is now

The city on a dump

Gas is now above five dollars in many parts of the country, and slated to rise higher. And as the economy sinks lower and lower, states and cities find themselves in a bind, unable to pay the exorbitant salaries and pensions they gave to the public employee unions in the happy times, the times of ever expanding economies and taxes.  And now, these states and cities, facing large deficits, look to gasoline taxes to bail them out. Lotsa luck.

The politicians surely know

That taxing us to death’ll

Result in very angry guys

Who are used to pumping ethyl

To get to work and pay the bills

And put food on the table

And now they’re faced with rising costs

And asked more than they’re able

To pay for such as gasoline

And food and shoes and health care

While lefty pols smirk and demand

You hand them you fair wealth share

The most prosperous, the freest, the most technologically and scientifically advanced society the world has ever seen is committing suicide, by choice. The advent of feminism, the sexual revolution, and most importantly, the invention of the birth control pill, has given women of the first world, for the first time in the life of humankind on earth, the ability to decline to have babies. And they have so declined.

The playground stands there, hushed and stilled

The child not there was coldly killed

His mother killed him, killed her child

It’s legal, charges won’t be filed

The swings sit idle, seesaws rust

And chairs and benches gather dust

The state has issued its decrees

No child will feel the cooling breeze

The state proclaims a woman’s choice

And thus the playground has no voice