Some say that God is a clockmaker, who set the universe in motion and then gave it no further attention, while others say God is an architect, who drew his plans and built his dream to Divine Specifications, specifications we cannot readily comprehend though fragments have come to our attention. And when the architect finished his work he peopled his building with creatures in His own image, and who, despite His kindness and generosity, seem bent on destroying the building, leaving the architect grumbling and threatening to evict us all.

The God who is maker of clocks
Beheld a void filled with loose rocks
Just sitting in place
And taking up space
So sighing He pulled up His socks
And with a small mischievous grin
He put them in motion to spin
Where first they were lumps
That formed into clumps
And thus did the cosmos begin
The architect in the meanwhile
Said spinning stuff just ain’t His style
He fashioned a sky
All blue and quite high
So lovely it brought forth a smile
Next planets and comets and stars
He said were named Venus and Mars
Then people he made
To join the parade
And then before long there were cars
The fistfights began right away
Then sticks and stones carried the day
Quite soon all the rooms
Were filled with loud booms
All blamed on those darn feet of clay
The architect sighed and he wept
As into the dumpster he swept
His tenants and swore
That never no more
That tenants like these would be kept
The clockmaker laughed and then said
That doing it His way instead
Kept heartaches at bay
Each day a good day
And laughing went straight up to bed

According to a well-known book, the seven lean years should be followed by seven fat years. We shall see. It all depends on who is elected in November of 2016. The Democrats, whoever the nominee, will be formidable, with their built-in plantation and government employee union vote, plus their unrivaled ability to steal elections, while the Republicans lately seem not to nominate someone who gets people excited.

These seven years were one of change
The man in charge is passing strange
He thinks the world he can arrange
His mirror does not lie
We need no men to use blunt force
No planes or ships or tanks of course
He’s cut the pipeline at its source
And now he smiles goodbye
And leaves us with a bloated debt
Our future on his Muslim bet
Bleak times for us we see, and yet
We’ll see if the right guy
Can calm the storms and still the waves
Can call the ghosts from out their graves
To walk the road that freedom paves
And know the reason why
An obligation we don’t shirk
We long for peace but we will work
To seek the enemy who lurk
And make the basta*ds fry

Barack Obama is driving us and the world at breakneck speed for the yawning chasm of a washed out bridge. The question is, is there time to avoid the calamity, or must we plunge into the abyss. In either case it will take the same kind of man to avoid the catastrophe as we will need to dig us out of one. And that man, in my considered opinion, is Donald Trump. We are aware that prior acts, positions and statements mean little as a determinate of future actions under entirely different and likely extreme conditions and events, but they are all we have. No one knew Churchill was Churchill until he was called. And so I will set out my reasons for thinking that of the available candidates, Donald Trump comes closest to what is required of the next president.

AN ABILITY TO FACE THE FACTS, HOWEVER UNPLEASANT THEY MAY BE. A man does not get to be a multi-billionaire entrepreneur without facing the facts on the ground. Granted, Trump has not faced facts as dangerous to himself or to the country as he will face as president, but he has, at least, faced the facts attendant upon making business decisions that could break him if he ignored the facts. He has surrounded himself with smart people and he listens to them. He knows how the economy works, unlike a senator, and he sees what needs to be done. In foreign policy he will find his Kissinger and listen to him.

AN UNSWERVING PATRIOTISM. There is no known test for this. We must take it on faith that every one of the Republican candidates has an unswerving patriotism for this country. One cannot say that for the current president, nor for many members of the current Democratic Party. This one is a wash.

NERVE. Again, this is a quality that cannot be measured beforehand. We won’t know if any of the candidates has it until he is faced with it. None of the candidates has ever been faced, so far as we know, with a life or death decision requiring instant and correct action. The closest would be Trump, who at least bet his money and reputation on real estate gambles that could have cost him everything. Putting your money and reputation at risk takes nerve of a sort, but again, we don’t know how Trump or any of the others will react to a gun put to his head with a madman about to pull the trigger. This too is basically a wash because we simply cannot know.

INTELLIGENCE. All the candidates are intelligent. Dr. Ben Carson is a brilliant man, and if intelligence could be accurately measured, which it cannot, Dr. Carson would likely score highest. The others are intelligent in their own way, but Donald Trump is intelligent in a way that benefits the country. He is a graduate of the most prestigious school of business in the country, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. The American economy is broken and we need a man who knows how economies work to fix it.

Of these four requirements, and others may have more, in my view Donald Trump has the edge in two of them, ability to face the facts and a superior working knowledge of market economics, with two being a wash because untestable. I will add a fifth attribute that has been ascribed to Donald Trump in the past. His kids were born to wealth and privilege, yet they all had to work at an early age, and they were taken to Walmart for their school supplies. There are published police reports of his stopping his limousine to intervene in a mugging, tales of his quiet generosity to strangers and friends alike and his major contributions to charity. I believe a man who goes out of his way to raise his children right despite the temptations of wealth and privilege that could have set them on the wrong path will have the same concerns for the country. This is why I am voting for Donald Trump, and if he is not the eventual candidate I will happily vote for whoever the candidate is. We cannot allow the country to be just another failed democracy, living still, yet not alive, like some modern day Rome under the barbarian emperors.

The world and country face a time
Of crisis where a leader’s word
Must rise above the dirty grime
Of politics and truth be heard
The truth will hurt but must be told
The danger lies on every side
To counter it we must be bold
And if it’s force we must decide
That if it comes we fight to win
Survival of the nation takes
A president who goes all in
A man who understand the stakes
We know not who that man might be
A Lincoln, Churchill’s what we need
We choose and hope that we will see
A man who’s wise in word and deed

The gods speak to us in mysterious ways. What purpose could there be, you might ask, of pretty girls dancing barefoot in the moonlight?

Golden sunlight, golden girls
Golden smiles and golden curls
Dancing in the meadow green
Flowers slowly swaying
To the rhythm of the dance
Joining in the sweet romance
Of the gently flowing scene
Heads bowed in silence praying
The sun sets low on golden curls
Yet still they dance, the golden girls
As moonrise glistens through the trees
The flowers nod in sudden breeze
The day is done, the moon will rise
A golden disk to dazzle eyes
No more the golden girls are seen
No more the meaning weighing
The meadow, quiet in the dark
No more the sound of meadowlark
And still we know not what they mean
The songs the gods were playing

The dreams do not come as often now, it has been far too many years, but I find myself, occasionally, on the bus, coming down the familiar road, past the familiar houses, to the street where I lived with my parents and sisters. I walk to the house that has not changed with time, and go in, to find it empty, and a dark sorrow overcomes me as I realize no one is there and I am alone. The dream always ends there, but of course I am not alone, for memories are alive, as alive as dreams, and I know that one day I will walk into that house and be greeted by loving arms.

No matter where you’ve been
No matter where you are
Or when you might begin
Just pick the nearest star
That burns as if to speak
And guides you through the maze
Of memories so bleak
That terror fills your days
The distance matters not
Nor difficulties great
Be home a tiny plot
Or green-grassed great estate
Your loved ones are still there
Though empty be each room
Your foot upon the stair
Dispels the musty gloom
No sound but footsteps yours
Shut up the house for years
You try the bedroom doors
Despite the salt-warm tears
The past has cast its spell
A warm, sweet, wistful zone
For they are here as well
Love means you’re not alone

The oldest documented living creature on Earth is a Seychelles tortoise named Jonathan, who is reported to be about 183 years old. I spoke to a Mayfly recently, and remarked upon the unfairness of a tortoise living for 183 years and a Mayfly living only one day. He thought for a moment and then said he and the tortoise both lived a lifetime, and so there was no unfairness, either to Jonathan or to him. He went on to say

The tortoise lives for many years
While I a single day
And yet both live so it appears
A lifetime in a way
Now you will live your measured time
And when compared to me
You have a life of treasured time
While I one sun will see
And yet I live a rich full life
To me it seems just right
I’m born and live a life that’s rife
With joy until it’s night
At seventy you up and die
A dog at fifteen’s gone
For  years some birds enjoy the sky
While I am born at dawn
And sunset sees my life at end
And yet I’ll not complain
For all is relative, my friend
For God has, in the main
Seen that our lives are in His care
And whether short or long
It seems to me He’s very fair
And never does us wrong
Yes Jonathan lives many years
And I a single day
But count the joys and count the tears
It’s not how long you stay

A man does not truly know why he has been placed on this Earth until he holds his baby girl in his arms and looks deeply into her beautiful, angelic, sleeping face. And then he knows why.

A loving daughter is indeed
The greatest gift God can bestow
The years go by at breakneck speed
Try as you might they will not slow
And then before your very eyes
They change from girls just having fun
To lovely, gorgeous butterflies
And glow like diamonds in the sun

Valentine’s Day is Sunday, and so we are posting our valentines today be make sure they are received in time.

HILLARY

A grateful nation sings your praise
In showers likened to the dew
That gently on your bosom lays
Until the sun may shine on you
And see you glow in rainbow hues
To dry your misted golden hair
Or will the FBI refuse
To let you walk without a care

BERNIE

The elderly will have the chance
To see if they can make the dance
Old bones still sprightly on the trail
The press still gives his past a veil
For Communism he still yearns
For college kids he brightly burns

BARACK

We’ll miss your girlish elfin smile
We’ll miss that gay-straight swishy style
We’ll miss the snarky hissy-fits
We’ll miss the silver throne where sits
The most incompetent to date
Who ever ruled a nation-state

DONALD

We love you Donald, boy and how
We love your mean and dirty scowl
We know you’ll never take no sass
Ride into town and kick some ass
Fire hose, flush out the joint
Make sure the bastards get the point
We know you’ll shake the DC up
We’ll marry you, sign the pre-nup

TED, MARCO AND JEB

Yes Ted, we like the way you talk
We like the way you walk the walk
And Mario, we can’t forget
On Schumer’s smile you placed your bet
And Jeb we know you have been blest
But still we like your brother best

And so for valentines this day
We’ve listened as you’ve had your say
The trail goes on, play to us hicks
But guys, we’ve mostly made our picks

A Skag, or sometimes Scag, is slang for an odious or unattractive woman, and Hillary Clinton is an extreme version of a leftist progressive odious and unattractive feminist Skag of a woman, who knows the FBI will refer an indictment sometime this summer, and also knows Attorney General Loretta Lynch will sit on it until after the election, and if Hillary wins the election that will be the end of it. She cares not that her behavior in having Top Secret information on her unsecured server has damaged the country, but that is the price she was willing to pay in order to get the information to the Chinese, who were only too happy to pay for it in massive donations to the Clinton Foundation. What better, what easier way, to hand over classified documents than to put them on an unsecured server? Treason? Of course not. Negligence. That’s it. That’s the ticket. Negligence. A temporary distraction caused by the overwhelming demands of her exalted position as Secretary of State. Nothing more. Let’s move along.

She has her emails
Her server’s all right
It’s in her kitchen
To hackers’ delight
She doesn’t care if
At nine every night
Her emails sit in Putin’s bag
Off in Benghazi
With shrill Muslim cries
Mobs fire mortars
At four of our guys
She doesn’t care if
Anyone dies
She blames an anti-Muslim gag
On the campaign trail
She lies with a smile
Knowing indictments
Appear in a while
Knowing as well
Friends will keep her in style
She knows there always is a lag
Between indictment
And friend AG Lynch
Under advisement
Not giving an inch
Win the election
And then it’s a cinch
That’s why the lady is a Skag

Barack Obama attended a mosque in Baltimore that is under surveillance by the FBI and has been declared a major part of the worldwide Islamic terrorist organization by the State Department, where he again told the attending terrorists in training that Islam is a religion of peace, that Islam was part of the United States from the beginning of the Republic, and that he is outraged that Republicans are saying such awful and hurtful things about Islam and terror and terrorists, saying there was no place in America for objections to beheadings and demolition of ancient architectural treasures. Or words to that effect. Barack Obama has made it clear, by his words and actions over the past seven years, that he is not the Commander in Chief but the Imam in Chief.

Barack is not of us, he is the Other
Remember when Kaddafi called him brother
He bowed to Muslim kings including Saudi
A real American would just say howdy
He gladly gave Iraq to friendly Mullahs
Praised Hillary as his John Foster Dulles
Knowing that she’d turn into disaster
And dumb as the grey horse of Mrs. Astor
He needed her to cloud each major issue
And smiling speak tart words of lying tissue
The Caliphate is part of what he’s shaping
He draws a noose from which there’s no escaping
The Middle East entirely his doing
A fire storm while he is kissing, cooing
Behind the scenes with Mullahs he admires
Intent he is on setting more than fires
Oh yes he is a very fine Commander
His late night thoughts are sweet but do meander
Along the pathways of his heart-felt loathing
For western ways that dictate that his clothing
May not be a white thobe, which was bad, or
A far more pleasant thought, a bright red chador
He knew the penalty for a cross-dresser
At least he wouldn’t die a white oppressor
With Allah he’d be joined after the service
Though thoughts of Biden’s grin still made him nervous