Rudyard Kipling characterized Russia as The Bear That Walks Like A Man. And of course he was right. Russia has never changed. From Ivan the Terrible through Catherine the Great through Stalin to the present day, Russia has played the game of Mediterranean politics in hopes of getting a warm water port, and today that elusive and illusory port is Cyprus. With the bank crisis looming, Russia has offered to bail out the Cyprus banks in return for access to Cyprus as a base for the Russian Mediterranean fleet, presently based in Syria, but possibly not for long. The bear is always on the alert for any advantage against its historical enemy, the West.

In silence walks the Russian bear

A smile upon his lips

A friendly wave, but he is there

Whenever your guard slips

A student at Florida Atlantic University was suspended for refusing to stomp on a piece of paper on which was written the word Jesus. Why was he instructed to stomp on a piece of paper containing the word Jesus? Because it was all part of a class called Cultural Competence, a course described as teaching students to be aware that others may be different from you, and you must respect this difference. In other words, Diversity rules, and if someone wants to stomp on Jesus that is his right, and you have no right to object. What has stomping on a piece of paper on which is written the word Jesus to do with a college education? Beats me, but that’s why kids go in hock for the rest of their lives – to get an education as valuable as this.

My competence was nearly wrecked

When some politically correct

And absurd notion knocked me to the ground

It seems the prof would have me stand

Barefoot on pictures of Ayn Rand

And later tell the class what I had found

I told them as professor smiled

That all the prejudices filed

Within the file drawers of my brain were gone

Discarded thrown out in the rain

Along with all the other sane

And antique notions men had held since dawn

Had broken on an empty world

Where wind and fine grained dust had swirled

And proto-humans not a one to see

Confess I did that I had been

Insensitive to those my kin

Who looked not like my parents nor like me

I groveled, cried and kicked my heels

And cried I know now how it feels

To be left out because my skin is white

Oppressed by every PC prof

Who never miss a chance to doff

A cap to those whose racism is right

I put my shoes back on and stood

Erect and proud as free men should

Picked up the picture of the sainted Rand

And told the prof and all his class

That they could kiss my bloomin’ ass

It’s time that sane and free men take a stand

In his recent visit to Israel, President Obama told a skeptical audience that, contrary to everything he has said and done since taking office, the United States is Israel’s best friend.  Actually, he’s right about that. The United States is Israel’s best friend, it’s just that Obama is not. His message to Israel has been characterized by some as inscrutable.  I maintain it was not at all inscrutable.

Who is more inscrutable

Charlie Chan or Fu Manchu?

It’s neither and I here maintain

It’s Mister you know who

He holds his cards close to the vest

Eye contact he won’t make

He plays his chips one at a time

Afraid that one mistake

Will lose his place in history

As loser of the West

And that is why he plays the game

The way that he knows best

To enemies he deals the cards

Our friends he bottom decks

He folds a hand of aces full

And smiles as he sees wrecks

Of policy surrounding him

And says, “Inscrutable?

Ah no, my friends in Israel

Are very screwed-able”

The Cyprus bank bailout has finally come down, taking sixty percent of savings from some depositors, and placing stiff restrictions on the rest. And Cypriots know it isn’t over. They know that in the end they will lose their money, for when a State wants to take your money it will take your money.  Unfortunately for the citizens of Cyprus, Cyprus has no Second Amendment, and it’s just amazing what a government can do to an unarmed populace. Ogden Nash famously said he thought he would never see a billboard lovely as a tree. What about bailouts?

I think that I shall never see

A bailout lovely as a tree

A cypress tree like Cyprus banks

When standing firm receives no thanks

But Cyprus banks and cypress trees

Lay cold and dormant in a freeze

Bureaucrats speak and write in a language the average person can’t understand, and the reason is simple; they don’t want us to understand. Bureaucrats write regulations so obscure they can be interpreted any way the Government wishes to interpret them. Some believe this is a new development, but it is not. Bureaucrats have been with us forever. Clay tablets dug up at Incirlik in Turkey reveal a transcription of a meeting between a Hittite bureaucrat and King Muwatalli.

I speak most plainly, noble sir

On that I think you will concur

The proposition as you see

Entails a bit of levity

In that the levy be rewound

To keep the banking system sound

And therefore one must face the facts

The bank deposit system lacks

A mechanism for the state

To keep the nexus up to date

With regulations uniform

On tablets writ in cuneiform

And so it is that we contend

The written documents portend

That wealth and progressivity

Must track the net passivity

People are wont to blame all their ills on a faceless “They”, without considering that the “They” are not faceless at all, they are the politicians they stupidly vote into office, and the beholden bureaucrats the politicians put in place to bedevil us with useless, harmful and costly regulations. So don’t blame a faceless “They”. They can be identified.

They tax and spend, they spend and tax

They tell us all to just relax

They know what’s right, they know what’s fair

They say that they’re the ones who care

They take our savings without cause

They milk the cash cow without pause

They do believe in what they do

They take much joy and money too

They build their fiefs and live like kings

They live the life our money brings

They think that it will never end

They think that we will always bend

They do not see the darkling cloud

They do not see the dark faced crowd

They smile and say all will be fine

They say just stay there safe in line

They say bad times will surely end

They think the taxpayer their friend

They don’t believe we have the will

They think we’ll all remain quite still

They do not know that mobs are fierce

They think the arrows will not pierce

They walk a ledge that’s coming loose

They do not see the coming noose