A recent article in Popular Mechanics states that “Scientists Catch Virtual Particles Hopping In and Out of Existence. The quantum effect known as vacuum birefringence was predicted in the 1930s, but this is the first observational evidence of the phenomenon in action. Quantum electrodynamics (QED) describes the relationships between particles of light, or photons, and electrically charged particles such as electrons and protons. The theories of QED suggest that the universe is full of ‘virtual particles’, which are not really particles at all. They are fluctuations in quantum fields that have most of the same properties as particles, except they appear and vanish all the time. Scientists predicted the existence of virtual particles some 80 years ago, but we have never had experimental evidence of this process until now.” All of which raises the question, is quantum physics actually magic, or physics? ISIS is now executing people for witchcraft, so maybe they know something. Or maybe we just don’t understand what it is we are seeing.

So now we have some particles
Appearing in some articles
That seem to vanish then to reappear
Those chopped off heads are tragic
But to ISIS guys real magic
Is the quantum world we really have to fear
If existence is uncertain
We’ll be bringing down the curtain
On the rational and scientific world
Take us back to Zeus, Apollo
And the world will gladly follow
Fearing Thor and ducking thunderbolts he’s hurled

A study by the Comparative Ethology Research Group in Budapest, Hungary, reveals that dogs remember what you do. Luckily, they cannot tell anybody. I spoke about this to Roger, my faithful Lab, and he said,

I never would reveal a thing that happened here last night
My lips are sealed about the weekend too
Although I must admit, my friend, it really was a sight
And as your buddy I say good for you
Yes she was hot and while I stayed outside in bitter cold
And shivered wishing I was warm inside
You know my love for you will mean the tale remains untold
Although it tore my heart out when you cried
I understand she left quite late despite your desperate pleas
I saw her leave the house and drive away
But dogs have senses that astonish, sure as we have fleas
And I could see that nothing you could say
Would make her stay another sec when once she stood to leave
Despite the crackling fire and the wine
And I won’t tell about the flower vase I saw you heave
And overturn the table set to dine
I told him he was wrong about what he had seen and heard
I said she simply stopped to say goodbye
She’d been promoted and was flying like a gorgeous bird
To Malibu where limits reach the sky
I said I envied her and wished her luck and wished her well
At which he cocked his head and smiled a smile
He wagged his tail and sadly said, I swear I’ll never tell
But I was by the door for quite a while
And overheard some things that made my short hair stand on end
And when she left you screamed and howled all night
You staggered to the door so drunk you could not even bend
And let me in so I could set things right
A crying drunk you were my friend, whom I shall never blame
The bottle going down and not by sips
With tear red eyes you held me close and called me by her name
Sobbed I love you and kissed me on the lips

If allowed by the culture, women will happily share an alpha male with other females rather than have a monogamous relationship with a beta male, all in the rational, evolutionary proven belief that an alpha male father gives her children the best chance for survival. Alpha males led the hunter gatherer families and led the cultural reorganization into clans and tribes. Alpha male explorers, rulers and entrepreneurs built the nation states and the global companies that created the scientific and technological civilization that permits such as feminists, who never built a thing, the luxury of holding alpha males in contempt. The rise of feminism in the West in general and the United States in particular, has produced a society in which the alpha male is condemned as an aggressive monster deserving of cultural destruction. Feminists would rather see the United States descend into fascism and anarchy than elect an alpha male president. Well, despite their best efforts to prevent it, they got one. His name is Donald Trump.

Friedan and Abzug were the names
That quickly come to mind, sir
Two uglier and horrid dames
You could not easy find, sir
Not every feminist was gay
But all were hateful shrews, sir
And so we find yet still today
Such women are bad news, sir
They hate real men and claim to love
The males who bow and scrape, sir
Before the charming turtle dove
They wrongly think they ape, sir
So sinister the feminist
Determined to destroy, sir
In secret, though, they will insist
They wish they were a boy, sir

Christmas is a golden glow
Of evergreens and soft white snow
Of presents and a tree-well trimmed
And Christmas morning church well-hymned
Of Christmas dinner after grace
With family seated at its place
A Christmas ham with bread and wine
So crisp you taste the very vine
Yes Christmas is a wondrous day
Of feasts and laughter, fun and play
But few recall and fewer know
A child was born so long ago

Barack Obama issued a threat to Russia and Vladimir Putin on the front pages of the New York Times and Washington Post, crying that he will attack Russia in some unspecified fashion for interfering, as he put it, in the recent American presidential election in order to elect Donald Trump. Without producing a shred of evidence that Russia and Putin did any such thing, the Obama Intelligence Agencies flatly refusing to tell the Congress just what evidence they have, and telling through the Congress the American people, as is their constitutional duty, Obama struts in the newspapers that he has had enough and is willing to start a war with Russia, no doubt out of pique that Donald Trump is about to unravel the unconstitutional actions of his predecessor. It is not the strong we must fear, but the weak, like Obama, who by thumping his chest may get a lot of people killed. Fortunately, Obama has never backed up his threats, and so we are probably safe. But are Obama’s threats to trigger a violent reaction from the Russians due to weakness, incompetence, or malice?

As the Red Queen said to Alice
There is such a thing as malice
That is often seen as stark stupidity
But in truth it may be cunning
Competence not in the running
And it all comes down to rank cupidity
Now to some it may seem funny
To ascribe it all to money
But cupidity can mean a craving for
The respect the weak desires
So he scowls and kicks the tires
And he makes believe he’s totting up the score
Making threats that grace the pages
Of the papers causing rages
To erupt where he believed his act would lead
To the backing down of stronger
Men who will refrain no longer
In allowing little Barack to proceed
In charades of angry power
That grow silly by the hour
As Barack clenches his fist and stamps his feet
While the Red Queen says to Alice
I don’t want to be too callous
But this little man can’t see when he is beat

There is much talk of reducing the Federal government to Constitutional size by returning to the States the duties and obligations ceded to the States by the Constitution and since usurped by the an ever expanding Federal government assumption of powers not specifically accorded the Federal government by the Constitution. This is all very well, but the country the Framers envisaged as a collection of sovereign States, each with its own laws and customs, died on a hot July day in 1863 at a place called Gettysburg. The idea of a singular and sovereign United States did not exist until Pickett’s Virginians failed to cross the gentle slope in front of the stone wall behind which lay veteran Union infantry and artillery. Certainly Vermont is entitled to have its own health care system if it chooses to pay for it, but do we really want people to again feel they are Vermonters or Texans rather than Americans? In my unwritten dystopian novel the United States is Balkanized by the Left, not by the Right. The States have a right to determine a full range of things they are now prevented from determining, like same sex marriage and abortion, but there must be natural limits to their ability to defy the Federal government. A State or City should not have the right to decide to declare itself a sanctuary and defy Federal law. A State should not have the ability to withhold its militia if called upon by the Federal government to produce it. It is all very well to allow the States more freedom than they current possess, but the verdict of history is that the greater the distance from the seat of power the greater the impetus to completely divorce oneself from what will inevitably be considered a foreign and oppressive power. Be moderate in the use and dispersal of power, and be careful what you wish for.

Marse Robert paced the floor all night
At dawn came his decision
Virginia was his holy light
His country and his vision
And so they came, the future dead
The young to die in battle
Who wished for life but got instead
A minie ball’s death rattle
But in the end a nation grew
Leviathan in power
No longer were we gray and blue
But freedom’s holy tower
What once were States were now a State
United and unyielding
Determined to direct its fate
With honorable wielding
Of power for the good of all
Its citizens wherever
Small place that they might choose to call
Their home be it so never
So rude as sod huts on the plain
The wagon borne expansion
No longer men from Georgia, Maine
The country our great mansion

The radical leftist Democrats, led by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, George Soros and Black Lives Matter, are determined to rule, and if they cannot rule they will burn the country down by delegitimize the national election, by destroying the Electoral College, and hoping to pin the tag of unelected president on Donald Trump. Today, in fifty State Capitals, 538 electors will cast the final ballots for president of the United States. It is believed 305 will vote for Donald Trump, 232 for Hillary Clinton, and one faithless Trump elector for John Kasich or Justin Bieber. And so, by end of day, despite the frenetic efforts of the Democrats to prevent the duly elected president of the United States from taking office, Donald Trump will be duly certified as the winner of the election, and will take the oath of office on 20 January 2017. But it will not end there. The left will not give up power easily, and there will be violence and flaming hatred of all things Trump over the next four years. We will survive the violence and the hatred, for we will be happily witnessing the death rattle of the current version of the Democratic  Party.

I had the oddest dream about all of this the other night, a dream in which a whispered voice told of one last throw of the dice, one last chance to keep Donald Trump from moving into the White House. In my dream I saw thousands of armed Democrats surround all fifty State Houses, preventing the electors from voting, and in the fashion of dreams, I knew the armed Democrats were members of government agencies that Obama had weaponized for just such an emergency.

They called themselves the Minute Men, these well-armed bureaucrats
Who sat at desks and made up laws declaring that transfats
Have every right to shower with the little girls at school
And scowl that guns they have and with them you’re wise not to fool
And so at Barack’s call they leaped from desks and then enplaned
And flew to far State Houses where if anyone complained
Arrests were made and entrance doors were blocked by scowling men
Who at the end of day became mere bureaucrats again
But in my dream they did the job Obama set them to
Deny electors entrance all excepting for the few
Obeying under threat of force to vote Obama’s way
And thus denying Putin put America in play
To be a Russian province like Crimea, Greece and France
And in KGB prisons loyal Democrats to dance
To tuneless balalaikas as the hangman drew the noose
And in my dream Barack used fear of Russia his excuse
But Trump lit up his Twitter, raising millions to their feet
And calmly raised his hand and sank the whole darn Russian fleet
I came awake, looked at the clock, a little after two
And shivered in the darkened room, we’d just survived a coup
But dreams are dreams and for the Left real power is not shared
And in State Houses on this day the country will be spared
Progressivism is now dead, the Left has been laid low
I settled back, in dreamless sleep, my breathing shallow, slow

President-elect Trump has nominated Rex Tillerson, President and CEO of the one of the largest companies in the world, to be his Secretary of State, to the expected howls from those who believe that such an exalted post should go to someone who has consistently failed at some other government task and thus is in line for the top cabinet job. We do not yet know if Tillerson will be as brilliant at the job as Henry Kissinger, but we know damn well he won’t be as clueless, incompetent and venal as Hillary Clinton. I believe we can have every confidence that Rex Tillerson will not turn the State Department into a pay for play criminal enterprise. And for those who sneer and claim that naming generals and highly visible and highly competent and successful executives to the cabinet is merely Trump trying to enhance his brand, I say being President of the United States is enhancement enough.

The branding iron for Donald Trump
Is what he says and does
A Tillerson means that the Sec
Of State’s not what it was
With Hillary and pay to play
Where State was bought and sold
And so we need a Tillerson
To break the Clinton mold
We need a tough guy, a T-Rex
Who plays the game to win
And who believes in talking straight
And not the lying spin
Now Mr. Tillerson is charged
With swabbing down the decks
I wonder though if mom and dad
Did really name him Rex

Barack Obama is soon to be an ex-president, spending his days playing golf, just as he did while president. Walking the lush green fairway the other day, a gentle rain brushing my face, I saw, in the distance, a lone figure standing in a bunker, sand wedge in his hands, a small white ball lying quietly at his feet. Approaching the green, I watched him for several minutes, waiting for the swing that would blast the ball out of the sand, to fall gently onto the green and roll sweetly into the cup. Yet he never swung the club, beyond a few indecisive movements of his hands. Wondering who the immobile figure was, I moved closer, and found myself on the lip of the trap, looking down at Barack Obama, a look of puzzlement on his face. I asked him what he was doing in the bunker, and he said he was always there, no matter what he did, a condition he thought was brought about by his being drunk the day his momma got out of jail, and he was being punished for it, likely for all eternity. I comforted him by saying he had a lot more things against him than that. He shook his head and said, “The only thing I did wrong, the only thing I would change, is the appointment of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State.” He began to cry at that, and dropped the sand wedge and collapsed onto the wet sand. “I will never get out of this sand,” he moaned. “Never.”

The sand, he sobbed, beneath my feet, hides wealth beyond all measure
Great pools of oil are deep and wide, a long time Saudi treasure
And used to fund a princely life, now done in by the frackers
Who do not care for Saudi kings, they being poor white crackers
My plans to bring the region peace, by buying off the mullahs
Would work if Hillary was good as old John Foster Dulles
But she destroyed the work I did, by using her Foundation
To undermine my policy to elevate her station
The world is on the brink of war, and I stand in this bunker
Trapped in the sand beneath my feet, with naught to do but hunker
I saw a figure on the green dressed as a wealthy Arab
Kufiyah, robe, a haughty air, bejeweled with ring and scarab
Obama sniffed and said he’s mad, in tones of great abhorrence
An English chap, Obama sneered, believe his name is Lawrence
He thinks that blowing up some trains and causing inconvenience
Is better than my policy of great and greater lenience
Ah well, he sighed, this too shall end, these unsought tribulations
For fairly soon, as I have planned, we’ll all be Muslim nations

Two Greek architects named Iktinos and Callicrates designed the Parthenon, but by the time of the European Middle Ages there were no architects trained as such and thought of as such. What they had was Master Builders. It was the Master Builder who oversaw the construction of the Gothic cathedrals, the wonder of the world. For some time now we have placed our foreign policy in the hands of foreign policy architects like Henry Kissinger, who have, by and large, done well. The election of 2016 seems now to be a return to the Master Builder. We shall see if President Trump builds cathedrals.

Stone by stone the structures rose
Until they pierced the sky
Sidewalls of colored glass that those
Who saw them wondered why
They did not fall of their own weight
So elegant and pure
Cathedrals built to educate
The princes and the poor
As so cathedrals of the mind
Can rise to bidden heights
So too a Master Builder find
The place to set his sights
The Master Builder sets his gaze
Upon the tested land
And stone by stone over the days
It’s there he makes his stand