Governments never see the end, no matter how obvious. Especially the Obama administration. Obama has spent the last five years demolishing the US military, something the Dems always do when in power. The Middle East is in turmoil and about to go nuclear, China is rattling sabers and nukes in the Pacific, and Obama’s navy is now down to two aircraft carriers on duty at any one time, instead of the four that are needed. The Air Force is losing squadrons and the Army is at its lowest level since the days of Jimmy Carter. And yet Obama and his mindless acolytes see no danger. They never do, until it’s too late. It is something that ultimately happens to everyone, every country, every state. I just didn’t think it would happen to us so soon.

The night so silently descends
Ignored until too late
The Bishop smiles as he pretends
That all is going great
The King sits idly on his throne
The unwashed sit and wait
And listen to the cold wind moan
Announcing that the date
Is fast approaching as the night
Envelopes man and State
And still as yet there is no fright
There’s nothing at the gate
They will not see the night so near
The night they did create
Too late they see with sudden fear
That Rome will be their fate

I’m usually a pretty optimistic guy, and I’ve cheered at the apparent imminent collapse of Obamacare . But the revelation that risk corridors have been written into the Affordable Care Act changes the picture. Obama is at this very moment talking to the insurance companies in the oval office, and there can be only one ending. The insurance companies will have their profits guaranteed by the taxpayers, with the result that the federal government will de facto own the insurance companies. Obamacare is not dead, and when the insurance companies come on board Obama will have what he has always wanted – a single payer system, and the federal government in complete control of the health care system and complete control of the health care of every citizen. My optimism extends only to 2014. If the GOP wins control of the Senate, then there is still a chance. If not, then it doesn’t matter what happens in 2016, it’s a done deal the goose is cooked, and socialized medicine is with us for generations, if not forever.

Oh yes he said that you could keep
Your doctor and your plan
He needed you to stay asleep
Till he could kick the can
Just far enough down that slick road
Where there’s no turning back
And everyone’s computer code
Is just a simple hack
The single payer plan is here
We just don’t know it yet
Obama smiles, says have no fear
This is the best you’ll get
You’ll get the plan that we decide
Is best for you and yours
You’ll pay for those with the free ride
To settle some old scores

The separation of church and state is no more. The state is the Democratic Party of eternal power and the church is the assembled prelates of the lapdog Democrat media, who consider themselves the purveyors of the Word. I remember first grade religion class, Sister Catherine, and the slim book she said was a catechism. She read the words to us, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” That was then, this is now, and the Word is no longer with God, but against everything of value we have held dear since the Enlightenment.

Sister Catherine, slight and frail
But fierce with inner strength
Taught her charges without fail
That life had breadth and length
Believe in God, was what she said
And love your parents well
And pray your country bravely led
And truth you’ll always tell
Alas that was so long ago
And journalists today
Would scorn those words and do not know
That facts have much to say
They’ve leased their souls for satan’s gold
Their fifteen minutes fame
But Sister Catherine could have told
Them some things end in flame

Nobody learns a damn thing from history. At the turn of the twentieth century Great Britain was top country in the world and first up on the free market tracks In time they found out the bridge was out and those free market tracks led into the river. Britain’s trade policy was to open her markets to all, free of tariffs, believing that in that way the rest of the world would earn enough selling their goods to Britain to be able to buy British made goods in return. An everybody wins policy. Like NAFTA. We climbed up on those same tracks and we too have plunged into the river. Why is there continuing unemployment in the United States? Cold weather? Wall Street villains? How about because there are no more jobs for them. In 1950 Philadelphia was the #1 manufacturing city in the US, making everything from Stetson hats to locomotives, with good paying jobs in chemical plants and oil refineries, publishing plants and shipyards. There were thousands of small manufacturing businesses scattered throughout the city where the working poor could find work at a decent wage. No longer. It’s all gone, gone to China and Viet Nam and South Korea and Mexico and every other low wage country in the world. And those good paying jobs are never coming back.

We thought that it would never end
That we could simply tax and spend
Our way to riches and to greater wealth
Than ever seen on this fair Earth
Or from the country’s founding birth
For all was rosy, all was blooming health
Then laws were passed that meant the jobs
Would lead to many heartfelt sobs
As husbands told their wives there was no chance
For work because the lefty claque
Had gotten us up on that track
Where corporations found they could enhance
Their profits if they’d simply move
To low wage countries sure to prove
That profits could be make hand over fist
And so the jobs left one by one
In few short years the job was done
Despite sworn statements jobs would not be missed
So here we are as Britain went
Into the river plain hell bent
And now the plants and jobs are nowhere found
They’re overseas where pay is low
Don’t blame the ones who chose to go
‘Twas politicians drove us in the ground

Richard Fernandez at the Belmont Club writes that he believes the institutional Republican leadership in Washington is content to play the Washington Generals to the Democrat’s Harlem Globetrotters, as long as they continue to get the losers share of the pie. I think he might be on to something. We need a new national party, call it the Tea Party or something else, but we need to get back in the game with a party that has a reason for existing beyond taking handouts from the Democrats. Fernandez says Republicans walk past the graveyard every two years expecting to lose, and not even fighting very hard. If he’s right, they’re walking past that graveyard whistling the Globetrotters’ theme song and entrance music, Sweet Georgia Brown.

See them tombstones see them headstones
Sweet Georgia Brown
See the names there’s Washington
Who toppled the Crown
Over there, there’s Jefferson
And old John Paul Jones
No body to mourn
So sad and forlorn
See them tombstones and them headstones
Sweet Georgia Brown
Look at them they’re all neglected
Toppled and down
Don’t nobody care
Our country lies there?
See them headstones see them tombstones
Sweet Georgia Brown

Hillary Clinton has thrown her pantsuit into the 2016 race for president, and already is hailed as the unstoppable juggernaut. The question will be, will the Republican candidate actually call her on Benghazi or will he refrain out of deference to a woman to attack her as she will undoubtedly attack him. Ads showing her screaming “What difference at this time does it make!” to questions why she refused to add security to the Benghazi consulate and why no military aid was sent to help the brave men who fought to the death to protect the sovereign territory of the United States, or why she and Obama maintained for weeks that the attack was a spontaneous demonstration brought on by an amateur video when they knew full well the night of the attack that it was a fully planned al Qaeda attack. If I were running the Republican campaign I’d be screaming:

What difference does it make?
I’ll tell you what difference it makes
Brave men were killed defending sovereign United States territory
That’ what difference it makes
Why did Hillary and Barack insist it was all about a video?
I’ll tell you why Hillary and Barack insist it was all about a video
They didn’t want to get their lefty friends all upset by defending the country
That’s why Hillary and Barack insist it was all about a video
Who’s running the country?
I’ll tell you who’s running the country
The left and the haters and the incompetent and the traitors are running the country
That’s who’s running the country
What are we going to do about it?
I’ll tell you what we’re going to do about it
We’re going to throw them out on their ass and put them all in jail
That’s what we’re going to do about it

Back in the Fifties, when I was a mere lad, an after work bull session developed the proposition that in the twenty-first century robots would be doing all the work, while a man would earn a year’s pay for a week’s make-work, flying off to somewhere in the world to sit in a room and watch a display board full of dazzling lights, ready to push a button he didn’t know was not connected to anything. Little did we know that Mauchly and Eckert’s 20,000 vacuum tube computer they called ENIAC humming away in the basement of the University of Pennsylvania just a few blocks away was going to change the world.

Oh Eniac, thou of the tubes
What thinkest thou of we the rubes
Did baby steps come into mind
Did you dream thoughts that your own kind
Would replace man in Heaven’s eyes
Or was it all a big surprise
Sitting there in that big room
Vacuum tubes dispelling gloom
Did you perceive that you would be
The parent of my Dell PC

Stories are now emerging of people who thought they were covered under Obamacare being turned away by the hospital because there was no record of them being insured, and other stories of people discovering that they not only have to pay a higher premium than their previous health care insurance, but they now have a deductible so high they might as well not have any insurance at all. One of the problems is you sign up online and never sign on the dotted line, simply speaking your name. I spoke to a young man who had recently signed up for Obamacare, and who thought he was insured until he got to the clinic and found out he wasn’t. He sobbed as he told me his sad tale.

If only I had listened when my momma said to me
The world is cruel and honesty’s a lie
I would have been much better off than I appear to be
For I believed I’d get my share of pie
I signed up for Obamacare and thought that I was fine
I  picked a plan that seemed to fit my case
I spoke my name real clear just like it was a dotted line
And never spoke to someone face to face
Well come the time I felt so poorly something needed done
And to the clinic quickly did I go
The lady sighed and told me I was not the only one
That there were things I simply did not know
First off she said insurance wise Obamacare’s a lie
You think you’re covered but of course you’re not
And even if you were you’d have deductibles so high
That come right down to it son you got squat
My momma shook her head and said you voted for him son
And now you find the price was much too high
You trusted that snake charmer and you warnt the only one
The world is cruel and honesty’s a lie