Europe, and particularly Italy, is being inundated by waves of Muslim refugees fleeing the Sunni/Shia civil war, so many that European countries are abandoning the policy of compassion and are now denying the refugees entrance by destroying the boats and ships before they can be loaded. Mercy and compassion are private things, not to be entered into lightly by nations, for whom the well-being of their own people is the first consideration, particularly when the refugees are of a different culture and worldview from your own. Otherworld refugees from violent and bloody war carry their otherworld culture with them as well as all the trauma of that violent and bloody dislocation, and often carry the plagues of war with them as well. Thus, after accepting the first wave of otherworld refugees into the country out of compassion, straining the hosts’ resources and patience, allowing boatloads of successive waves of otherworld, other culture refugees to wander the seas in futile search for succor is not a criminal act, but one of self-preservation. Self-preservation works both ways, and once it becomes clear that no one will take in any more, they will no longer board the boats, but will stay in place and wait it out, as most have done throughout history, for people do not willingly leave the land of their fathers, do not willingly abandon the bones of their ancestors. No war has ever lasted forever, and no people has ever been permanently homeless.

The quality of mercy is not strained
At least this many years sayeth the Bard
But mercy once dissolved is not regained
Though consciences may take the loss quite hard
What can you do when millions clamor out
For succor and for just the chance to live
When one’s compassion then begins to doubt
And giving all is more than one can give
The history of mankind is quite clear
That murder and destruction will not cease
The dispossessed forced from their land held dear
To wander and to wonder if there’s peace
A place where kindly strangers take them in
And see their wives and children taken care
Knowing that their one and only sin
Was being in a place when war was there
But when the first small stream becomes a flood
And refugees pile up before the gate
It’s when the stream turns red with flowing blood
That doors are closed and then it is too late
For mercy is at most at private thing
A nation cannot risk its peoples’ lives
Allowing in the plagues the migrants bring
The plagues that follow all when war arrives

The only difference between Zimbabwe and the current United States is the name of the dominant political party. Both claim to be small d democrats, but the reality is that both rule by destroying the democratic process, Robert Mugabe by allowing one vote, one time, then declaring himself president for life. The Democratic Party took a longer, but no less effective route in the destruction of American democracy. Seventy years of progressive salami slicing has done the trick, beginning with racial politics that put once freed African Americans back on the Democrat plantation, and ending with seducing low IQ voters with promises of other peoples’ money. By definition one half the populace has an IQ below 100 and once seduced they stayed seduced. The opposition party occasionally wins an election, but the power remains with the far left radical Progressive Democrats, who seem to survive, and even thrive, despite the enormous damage they have done to the country. The Democrats have given African Americans and low IQ voters what is essentially one vote, one time.

The Democrats, I will admit
Have much that’s recommended
And in return they will permit
A freedom that’s pretended
The people put in office
Democrats who then will harden
Their grasp on power and who when
Arrested get a pardon
It matters not that thieves and crooks
Adorn the halls of power
They smile and slyly cook the books
And watch the money shower
It’s all Mugabe, all the time
Tyrannical precision
Eternal rule because of a
One vote, one time, decision

The pundits at the New York Times and elsewhere have now voiced the considered opinion that the Assad regime is finished, and they are concerned about the uncertain future of Syria, believing the county itself might not survive the current civil war. Assad may not survive, and probably won’t, but the country will. Syria is an ancient land, and her present troubles are just that – present troubles – for Syria has seen many such troubles since the dawn of recorded history and has survived. Syria was old when kings first built palaces of hand formed sun dried mud bricks, and wore the royal purple from Tyre. Syria was old when the Pharaohs came, and watched Egyptian war chariots travel the Damascus Road. Present troubles will fade, to be succeeded by future troubles, for there will always be troubles in the Middle East.

It surely is Assad, sad sight
And I don’t want to weary ya
But it’s not right the Alawite
Should rule so long in Syria
A land old when the Pharaohs came
And ruled the mountains and the coast
A land where Hittites played the game
And then at Kadesh made their boast
Phoenician ships sailed the Great Sea
With cedar for the world’s great kings
And with great skill remained men free
Till forced to kiss Assyrian rings
The land our alphabet was born
Where ocean going ships first sailed
And now in war and chaos torn
So long it’s lived, and now has failed
But only man will feel the pain
The land survives, the mountains, fields
The warming sun, the life gift rain
Will over watch, life never yields

A very old Irish Gaelic fable tells the story of a Prince turned into a black crow who convinces a beautiful princess to marry him. Fast forward to the present, and consider that Barack Obama is the crow, and the United States the beautiful princess. Did not the black crow convince the beautiful princess to marry him? Has the old Gaelic folktale not come true? Does the United States, that beautiful princess, survive the encounter with the shapeshifter Barack Hussein?

The crow pecked softly on her window pane
And called her from her peaceful sleep
Entranced, she watched the crow her bedroom gain
In darkness deeper than the deep
She rose and followed to the tower stair
Above the battlement below
She saw from window slits her country fair
And felt the shadow of the crow
The fall seemed dreamlike to her sleeping mind
The battlement so soft to fall upon
And thought not badly of the crow so kind
As in the dark smiled an preachan

A fistfight over whose imaginary god was least imaginary broke out between Sunni and Shia Muslims during a march in London organized by Imam Anjem Choudary. It is not known if there were any casualties, but it has been reported several of the rioters had their feelings hurt.

When tempers boil on foreign soil
Like London in Old Blighty
A few get stabbed and then get scabbed
Though issues are quite flighty
One group has wells where Imam dwells
The other thinks that’s crazy
Both wonder why how hard they try
The future seems so hazy
They always lose when fighting Jews
Though Allah still commands it
On VJ-Day the Jews will pay
Their honor still demands it
And so they fight with great delight
Though blows are weak and powdery
They march along, and sing a song
Urged on by Imam Choudary

At age 10 my grandfather was a mule boy on the old Pennsylvania canal. At age 14 my father graduated from the eighth grade and went to work on a construction project, doing a man’s work. My son has spent his adult life in front of a computer screen designing new methods of doing things I don’t quite understand. My grandsons are just entering the workforce after university, and will face challenges and opportunities not yet visible. And so it goes. Did my grandfather enjoy walking a towpath leading a mule pulling a coal barge? Probably never gave it a thought. His world was what it was, and the mule was just part of it, like the rain and the snow. One generation’s present is always someone else’s good old days.

The towpath ran for many miles
The pace was walking slow
The barges, boys and loaded coal
Arrived in rain or snow
The railroad came and the canals
Had seen their better days
The engineering marvels now
Just peaceful waterways
And so it goes in the first world
The all inventive West
Where new succeeds the newly old
And good gives way to best
Lament you for what you have known
But know that what succeeds
Will startle and confuse you
And you’ll know not where it leads
But rest assured the journey from
The first made cast iron bars
To mules and towpaths and canals
Will take us to the stars

Oh what tangoed webs we weave, when first we practice to…well, you know. Barack Hussein Obama has tippy-toed through the tulips for six years, leaving behind him a sobbing gaggle of would-be strawberry blonds, every one of whom believed him to be the Waltz King, the bringer of light to a dimming world, only to find he meant a dhimming world. To the old tune Casey Would Waltz With A Strawberry Blond (And The Band Played On). The strawberry blonds, of course, are our former allies, all of whom Obama has destroyed in his fiery dance of destruction across the Middle East.

Barack would waltz with the strawberry blonds
And the band played on
He’d glide ‘cross the floor with the ‘Ranian whore
While the band played on
His dance card was loaded and when it exploded
Josh Earnest cried there’s no alarm
O buried the girls with the strawberry curls
And the band played on

There are those who believe the gods died thousands of years ago, but they are wrong. The gods have not died, they have bided their time, immortal, knowing they would be called upon again. And so they have been. The end of socialism is not communism, is not anarchy, nor is it necessarily death and destruction, unless, of course, the gods desire such things. Is it not Poseidon, the god of all water life, who has ordained that a handful of smelt be saved at the cost of the destruction of the State of California? Is it not Prometheus, the god of fire, who has convinced outraged rioters to burn down their own neighborhoods in revenge for perceived ill treatment? Is it not Hermes, the god of heralds and messengers who has clouded the minds of American statesmen that causes them to hear what they want to hear instead of what is being said? Is it not Mammon and Baal Hammon together who have destroyed the monetary system and consigned millions of unborn children to the Tophet of unsustainable debt? No, my friends, the gods of my youth are alive and well, though they have moved from Olympus to Capitol Hill, where Spites deceive all in residence, and Atalanta, the huntress of Artemis, stalks her quarry in the nighttime streets.

From the sands of Pascua Florida
To the far Pacific shore
In the sacred groves the temples and the shrines
Boom with laughter and with dancing
As the wine flows evermore
And the gods grow fat on sacrificial kines
Oh to be a god or goddess
Is to live the life divine
Even though the Left remain a noxious pain
But the gods they have the answer
God shown justice is condign
Atalanta hunts till none of them remain

In the fourth millennium BC, somewhere around 3600 BC, there occurred a catastrophe that destroyed a significant part of European life, causing death and dislocation on a massive scale. The glaciers had been melting for thousands of years, and in the middle of the North American continent, ice blocked passages through the mountains caused a massive lake of cold, fresh water to form. When the blocking ice finally gave way, the lake poured south, forming the Great Lakes and Niagara, rushing into the Atlantic ocean, where the cold surface water flowed eastward, lowering the temperature of the prevailing winds, which then dropped the temperatures across a wide belt of Europe and beyond, leading to massive crop failure. This is where we are, only at an accelerated pace. The Socialist Blue Model glacier has been melting for some time, and will soon crash through the passes and inundate all but the highest ground. And on that high ground we will find our new masters, in their fairy-tale castles, distributing crumbs to the starving masses of the displaced and the unemployable.

Castles on the highest hills
Credentialed serfs below
Some crouched around the shuttered mills
Now rusting in the snow
Blue Model life had run its course
Like models gone before
First gatherer and then the horse
The free range life no more
The chieftains gathered up the clans
And bound them to the soil
And took away their hopes and plans
And set them at their toil
For one brief moment mankind swept
Away the oligarchs
The castles they had lately kept
Turned to museum parks
But in the end the glaciers win
As life in cycles goes
In rhythm with endless spin
That ice and time may pose

Greece again has reached the bottom of the empty money barrel, and again it looks like the end. The death of Greece, and perhaps of the European Union, has been a long time coming. Will the Germans again pump life blood into failing Greek banks, delaying the burial of the corpse for a few more months? Or do the Germans, weary of propping up the putrefying relict, say the hell with it, and let the poor man die? Where are the once powerful gods of Greece? Where is Hera, the Earth Mother, when her people need her? Oh yes, she was deposed by Zeus, her son, who has obviously made a hash of things. Would you rather have Medea or the media? Tell the truth. Ruling men is better left to goddesses than to other men, who only think they are gods.

What happened to the goddesses
Blue eyes and raven hair
With overflowing bodices
And no one now to care
Artemis, Diana, sweet
Athena spring to mind
They strode the world most indiscreet
Bewitching humankind
The Maiden Huntress with her bow
The Underworld’s Hecate
It’s sad to say no one I know
Has heard of them of late
The world is poorer for their loss
Men tossed them all aside
When guys like Zeus became their boss
Forbidding them to ride
Consigning them to household tasks
Olympus was a mess
With sodden gods and dry wine casks
Sprawled out in drunk distress
It all began when Jason sailed
The Argo to Colchis
And as Aeetes’ dragon wailed
He stole the Golden Fleece
Mount Pelion, the story goes
Received the Fleece with thanks
For Zeus’s shrine was in the throes
Of closing all its banks
And thus did Zeus his mother wed
And goddess rule to cease
And so was ended, so ‘twas said
The Golden Age of Greece