In the last Republican debate, the candidates were asked if Obama was incompetent or malicious. The answer is Barack Obama is malice incarnate. The slide to tyranny started innocently enough. The Great Depression. FDR, the slightly left of center president, alphabet agencies, government programs, all operating at a very low level of intensity, with minimal additions to the federal bureaucracy. FDR himself warned of the dangers of unionizing government workers and service providers like teachers and police and firemen. Early days. Nothing much changed while the country recovered from WW2, until a bullet put Lyndon Johnson in the White House, under whom the government exploded in size with the advent of the Great Society. I saw, in Philadelphia, buildings of thirty floors taken over to house workers to administer the largesse bestowed on the urban poor. But the real explosion came with the capture of the Democratic Party by the radical left and the capture of the ultimate prize, the White House, and a radical left inhabitant named Barack Obama. We now have speech codes, but not free speech. We no longer have freedom of religion when bakers can be fined so heavily as to be put out of business for refusing to bake a cake for a gay wedding. We no longer have a free market when government agents can raid a guitar manufacturing company, confiscate its goods and punitively fine them because the CEO contributed to the Republican Party. We no longer have three equal branches of government, or the Constitution or the rule of law, because Barack Obama has laid them all aside in pursuance of his radical, malicious, America-changing agenda. The 2016 election will determine if the country has a chance to return to being a Constitutional Republic or is doomed to continue the leftward slide to tyranny, anarchy and revolution. What began as a slow drift to the left under FDR is now a raging conflagration, whose flames are about to consume us all.

Some thought he was the angel
Who would cure our every ill
Some saw him as Messiah
Hungry bellies he would fill
Some saw him as the healer
Who would bridge the great divide
Between the haves and have nots
Bring together every side
None of this was his intention
He had other things in mind
The destruction of the country
To applause from his own kind
He set the house on fire
Fanned the searing white hot flames
And he laughed as conflagrations
Spread so quickly through the frames
Of the cameras that recorded
The destruction he had set
Of the people who have lived it
Only half of us regret
The election of a monster
Who knew that his task would be
Set to flames the greatest country
That the world would ever see

I have been accused of being a poet, but I am not. I am a simple five and dime rhymer. I have been asked how I can write rhyming sentences at such breakneck speed, and my answer is, I always could. My mother told me years ago that on the day I was born my first word was ‘momma’ and my second word was ‘comma’, and when she asked what it meant I said:

Momma (comma) can’t you see
This little baby here is me
You laid me on this soft, smooth silk
But right now babe I need some milk
I well remember my first day
I came alive as DNA
Began to form me into me
As Time went by I came to be
I lay there quiet in the womb
As dark and silent as a tomb
When suddenly I screamed and cried
As headfirst down a chute I slide
Into the very brightest light
I tell you boys ‘twas quite a fright
Hands pulled me out and cried with joy
Congratulations, it’s a boy!
And so the years went flashing by
My first grade teacher said to try
To write a sentence without rhyme
I said I do this all the time
In high school things seemed to get worse
Algebra I did in verse
And so it went and so it goes
I found myself deep in the throes
Of rhymes that came unbidden born
That flowed both new and flowed shop-worn
And that’s the story to this day
When asked I say ‘tis mere child’s play
As it was then as it is now
And will continue till it’s ciao

The Super Bowl is upon us, and this year the NFL will be using the Arabic number 50 in place of the traditional Roman numeral. But why use Arabic numerals? Is this another example of political correctness? Aren’t we having enough problems with those people? For one thing they are not Arabic numbers. The numbers we use every day, including zero, were invented by the Hindoos of Northern India a thousand years before Rome stole the idea of using letters of the alphabet for numbers from the Greeks. The Hindoo numbers and notation system we use today was brought back to Baghdad by Muslim invaders and which over time infiltrated Europe, and ultimately led to my being told by my third grade teacher, quite erroneously, that they were Arabic numbers. I feel strongly that the Super Bowl should retain its Roman numeral marking, and refuse to refer to it as Super Bowl 50, for to me it is and will always be, Super Bowl L. Nonetheless, I will watch the game, along with Cs of Ms of other people.

A Roman number sure goes well
With Super Bowls, that’s why an L
Should go with Xs and those Vs
A simple L is read with ease
But then upon the other hand
It’s strung out letters I can’t stand
What’s with a scheme that you can write
A number many ways despite
The fact that there is only one
True number when all’s said and done
XVII is 17
But you will see just what I mean
Three Vs two Is, I mean what gives?
And still today great Rome still lives
So long her numbers raise on high
When V and X and L and I
Can be lined up in numbers whole
And used to mark the Super Bowl

The actuary can tell you, statistically, when you will be called upon to release your hold on life. But then, the precise date is known only to the mirrors lining the hallways of our lives.

They say a man has measured time
Upon this blue-green Earth
A measured time that will begin
At squalling time of birth
But on reflection there is much
That each of us recalls
We see ourselves through shrouded eyes
In mirrors on the walls
That line the corridors of Time
Through which we wend our way
While knowing that the Time will come
But know not on which day
The mirrors in the corridors
Reflect what others see
Reflections that when once revealed
Remain the truth of thee
Until the measurement has run
Full course and at the last
We yield the scepter we once held
And present becomes past