President Obama was asked if he thought that he was just unlucky in the way things were going horribly wrong for him and the country. He smiled and said he didn’t mind when things went a little wrong, it was only when things went horribly wrong that he felt a little down.

My life has been just full of luck
A horseshoe, clover leafs
All good luck charms along with pluck
Have anchored my beliefs
I know before I leave the scene
The circle will be closed
For I possess a lucky gene
And every crisis posed
Is answered right because I’m smart
It’s intellect not luck

It’s only when things fall apart
I just say WTF

It may have been Lord Palmerstone who said the country has no friends, only interests, though it is highly likely it was said, and not for the first time, by someone in Mesopotamia and it got written down in cuneiform. Whatever, the NSA eavesdropping program serves our country’s interests to provide real time intelligence to other nations, whether by helping a friend like Columbia or an enemy like Pakistan. The same with deadly efficient GPS guided drone attacks on al Qaeda leaders pinpointed by NSA intercepts. And so it is that many of the countries we help have internal political forces to contend with, and so affect outrage at our actions. But we know better than to even be annoyed at this. There are still some grownups in this country, though you have to look hard to find them.

Pay no attention to my cries
Of outrage at your acts
Of savagery and spying eyes
We all know that the facts
Are that we need you to provide
Intelligence and drones
And since we’ve not a thing to hide
You’re free to tap our phones
We love your GPS and yes
To make the perfect loop
We also know that GPS
Means Government Phone Snoop
Without the snoops the bad guys win
We sleep beneath the sod
But nonetheless we have to spin
That you are playing God
So understand we must cry out
And blame you every time
But we’re so glad that you’re about
When someone drops a dime

No one likes a flatterer, someone who constantly tells someone how great he is, how funny he is, and so forth. Even kids get tired of being told how beautiful they are or how bright they are, for they know very well they’re not all that beautiful or that bright. I believe that after five years of unrelenting flattery and adulation even Obama may be getting a bit tired of it.

A constant use of flattery
Becomes shopworn and tattery
And flatterers rate scarcely half a glance
Their words become mere pattery
Inviting salt and battery
And no one ever asks you now to dance

In less than eight months we will witness the 100^th anniversary of the beginning of the Great War, a war that began with almost complete incompetence on the part of almost every general of every army, who through sheer incompetence threw away the lives of hundreds of thousands of soldiers. The first six months of the war saw the French army dressed in bright red pants and blue blouses attack machine guns with massed infantry, flags and bands. The Germans did the same, though without the bright red pants and blue blouses. The Russians were even more profligate with the lives of their mostly untrained conscripts, but the lesson of the machine gun was finally learned, and by 1915 incompetence had been succeeded by stupidity. And so it goes, even to the present day, as it has gone from time immemorial, and not just in military affairs. Except for the celebrated brief and rare spates of competence, history is replete with incompetence followed by sheer stupidity followed by vacuous inanity. Take your pick. Has the Obama White House moved on from sheer incompetence to sheer stupidity? Are we seeing the beginnings of inanity? In my view the Obama administration admits of all three, and usually on the same day.

The competent are with us
Though they rarely get elected
For voters like the stupid and inane
Together they both drive the bus
Genetically selected
To screw the rest of us and inflict pain

If Edward Snowden was a mole, sending National Security Agency secrets to the Russians and the Chinese, why did he come out into the open? Is there a deeper game going on? Remember the old saying, the Russians play chess the Americans play checkers. I believe Snowden did not act alone, and that the Russians have an end game in mind that requires him to come into the open. But what is that end game?

Hide and seek and tag you’re It
Are games all children play
But not all games are childish
When night comes on from day
To hide in deepest shadow
To live the life of moles
To be one thing in daylight
In shadows changing roles
What drives a man like Snowden
Does he a master serve
Why has he left the shadows
To throw us all a curve?
Human moles are predators
They play for higher stakes
But in their burrows, creeping close
Are hungry, silent snakes

Obamacare is like a storm tossed, dismasted ship in a hurricane, the helmsman blind and the captain drunk.

The frothing sea, the howling gale
The shore alee, the blown out sail
The ship is rent, no mercy gives
Nor winds relent, and yet she lives
She crests the wave, and then she rolls
No chance to save, so say the polls
The how we know, and why she’s sunk
‘Twas Captain O, just power drunk

What can we make of this New Year that has not been made for every New Year from time immemorial? Every culture that ever lived had a turning of the page, a turning that promised a better year than the last, despite all evidence to the contrary. Still, we celebrate the turning of the page at the beginning of each new year, convinced that this new year will be different.

The New Year comes upon us one more time
And revelers with alcoholic cheer
Reduced to wishing all in pantomime
A glorious outcome to the new year
Forgetting for the moment twelve months past
They wished the same and saw dreams unfulfilled
Believing though misfortune cannot last
They offer up the lilies they will gild
The baby in the top hat smiled and waved
And promised them a mountain full of gold
In coming year for every road they paved
But knowing that in twelve months he’d be old
And turn into the old man with the scythe
The hour glass declaring it is done
The revelers so casually blithe
Cried cheer up guys it’s January one