France is poised on the edge of the chasm – in two weeks the country will elect Marine Le Pen, who wants to leave the European Union, end Muslim immigration, restore French sovereignty and the franc, or Emmanuel Macron, who wants closer ties to the EU and continued Muslim immigration. The choice for the French people is clear – the chance of life with Le Pen or the certainty of death with Macron.

The barricades, the red and black
Le Pen won’t take the country back
To when the Bourbons used to reign
She will, though, lead the way for Spain
And others of the southern Med
To leave the Euro, leave it dead
To send the Muslims home in tears
To sweet Morocco, hot Algiers
The revolution then complete
Marine will then smile oh so sweet
They’ll raise a statue in the park
To France’s brand new Joan of Arc

Everything changes, but nothing ever changes in quite the same way. The current world order, put in place by the events of the 20^th century, is coming to its entirely predictable end. The world will go forward, but as always, it will go forward by going backward, back to what it knows. It will not return to the 20^th century, but to the 19^th, at least geopolitically, but with all the science and technology of the 21^st. The world of thirty to fifty years from now will look different, feel different, and be different from the world of today. It will be more tribal; people like the Kurds will no longer be subsumed into a larger and hostile culture. Nation states will again be the organizing principle, with the leading nation states setting the rules, loose as they may be, for the rest of the world, settling disputes and quashing the inevitable wars between the lesser states and tribes. It will be the 19^th century, but with a permanent American moon base. And yes, utopia will still be a long way off.

Dystopia will not occur, and zombies will not rise
The Russians won’t elect a Tsar, and much to their surprise
The people of the future will not think there’s been much change
For everything’s familiar and there’s nothing that seems strange
And that’s because time stretches out the changes one by one
In incremental baby steps and has since time’s begun
In peoples’ minds the USA has always been the lead
From days of Rome and before that, to Persian and the Mede
And gathered ‘round the big time States the little States grow fat
Colonial? Of course not, we would never call them that
The Punjab will see tourists, and through passes will be led
From time to time the tourists will be armed, in coats of red
No, not much will be changed, it’s how the world has always been
There will always be a Colonel, always be a Gunga Din

When we speak of the Underground, we think of the catacombs of ancient Rome and the Christian resistance, the World War 2 European resistance to the Nazi occupation, to the American Weather Underground of the 1970’s, all of them characterized by the desire to remain undetected. The Underground in the United States today is different; it is ostentatiously visible and flagrantly violent, vocal and hostile to our democratic form of government. The radical Progressive Left has captured all of academia, not just Yale, and turned the millennial students into Red Guard snowflakes who burn buildings, demand the end of supposed white privilege and shut down free speech, confident that they will bear no consequences for their actions. But the American Progressive Snowflake Underground has not learned the lesson that for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction, and when the reaction against the Progressive Underground comes it will not be pretty. The Progressive snowflakes will find that donning black masks to burn and harass and intimidate is not much fun when finally confronted by guys wielding chains and baseball bats.

No two snowflakes are alike
Bright crystals coldly sitting
Upon the flowing, gusty wind
While doing master’s bidding
It’s so much fun the snowflakes laugh
Because at first it’s nutty
But soon the Red Guard snowflakes find
The melting will be bloody

Donald Trump has built hotels and casinos all over the world, but he has never had workmen like Republican congressmen. Especially when the Foreman, Paul Ryan, didn’t want him to be president in the first place. Trump has put the health-care debacle aside to concentrate on tax revision, and he will be working with the same bunch of guys, with the same Foreman, on an even stickier project. The problem is the Democrats will retain a united front of obstruction at every turn, forcing  the Republicans to design and build a high-rise knowing they have to follow a building code written by people who don’t want the high-rise built. The solution, of course, to all of it, healthcare, taxes, military, is to scrap the building code by eliminating the filibuster, and becoming a more parliamentary style legislative branch. Yes, you might not like what the Dems force down your throats when they have the majority, but as the man said, elections have consequences. I learned all about checks and balances in the fifth grade, and have never seen the wisdom of allowing the minority to dictate to the majority, which is what the Dems are determined to do, to the extent they can do so. The parties are not the same as when the Southern Democrat conservatives ran the Congress, and compromise was possible because there wasn’t, in the immortal words of George Wallace, in speaking of the national parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, that there wasn’t a dime’s worth of difference between them. And in 1968 there wasn’t. But not today. Radical leftists do not compromise, and they do not play by the same rules they make you play by.

If sixty votes you cannot muster
Eliminate the filibuster
If leftist workers can’t be fired
Make sure that they are never hired
If building big is what you’re tryin’

Don’t run it with a guy like Ryan
Get out the whip, get them in line
Pay no attention when they whine
Build it tall and build it straight
Don’t listen to the fourth estate
Full speed ahead, let’s get ‘er done
Remember Austerlitz, the sun
That shines upon the bold, the strong
And carries all the rest along

John Steinbeck wrote the great novel Grapes Of Wrath, the story of the Joad family who left Oklahoma for California during the dustbowl and the Great Depression. But now the exodus is going the other way. White middle class and working class families are leaving California in droves.The Joad family is going back home. Loading up the old truck and leaving California and the socialist dustbowl, getting out before it becomes Venezuela.

Goodbye, goodbye, says family Joad
We’re at the bending in the road
This socialism craziness
This social welfare laziness
The regulations and the rules
The failing union public schools
Where thirty languages are heard
And no one understands a word
Where taxes pay for lefty bribes
To voters from the foreign tribes
Where sanctuary cities reign
For criminals to cause more pain
Where college students know no math
And homeless drifters take no bath
Where politicians all tell lies
Although that last one’s no surprise
The State is wobbling on the cliff
And most just shrug, say what’s the diff
We’re getting out, retrace our path
It’s curtains, their own drapes of wrath

In 1453, with cannon built for them by a hired Christian European gunsmith, the Ottoman Turks beat down the walls of Constantinople and slaughtered the inhabitants. Ottoman galleys then turned the eastern Mediterranean into an Ottoman lake, and for the next century raided Christian coastal towns and villages, killing the men and enslaving the women and children, until put an end to by the Spanish and Venetian navies, commanded by Don Juan of Austria, half-brother of the king of Spain. Muslim predations died down but did not end until another century had passed at the gates of Vienna. Today we are not threatened by Muslim galleys but by Muslim SUVs, cars and trucks, driven into crowds of innocent people, all in the name of Allah. It took a century for Europe to come together to put down the galleys, and it will likely take another century to put down the SUVs.

Survivors always mark the place
Where they first saw the smiling face
‘Twas just before the SUV
Careened into the crowd
The screams, the bodies flown in air
The children dead, he did not care
The wild, careening SUV
Horn blowing, screeching loud
The driver laughing as he killed
The paving, gutters, red blood filled
With tires red the SUV
Was doing Allah proud
What do we do now that they’re back
The galleys gliding to attack
No different now, the SUV
Don Juan would not be bowed
What can we do, the answer’s clear
Get all the Muslims out of here
And we will use their SUV
To get their grave sites plowed

There is much to be said for the barbarian virtues of defending the family, the clan, the tribe, the city state, the nation state against all who would do harm. Of course, these virtues are barbarian only to the Left, who are pleased, in the current political atmosphere, to assign to Vladimir Putin power he does not have, the better to convince themselves that the Narrative is true and that Donald Trump is a puppet with strings of silken steel who dances at Putin’s command.

But Putin is no Stalin even if he wants to be
For Russia totters on the very brink
Of stepping off the cliff and falling deep into the sea
Where many plunge and ultimately sink
The Russians produce weapons which they sell to client states
And milk the sturgeon for the caviar
But with Obama gone the frackers get to set the rates
And Russians always tend to blame the Tsar
So Putin wrestles toothless bears to cheers of country rubes
Who cannot see that all is thinning ice
While Putin makes stern faces while he’s going down the tubes
He knows that Russian oil can’t beat the price
The Yanks are just barbarians in commerce and in war
In culture and in manners so they claim
And yes we have those virtues and they’ve served us well before
So cross us and you’ve just  yourself to blame

Tomahawk missiles strike the Syrian airfield from which the Syrian bombers took off to kill babies and children with nerve gas. The first shoe has dropped, and I believe that if a second shoe needs to be dropped it will be dropped by us.  I do not expect any reaction from the Soviets, nor do I expect a reaction from Assad. I do, however, expect reactions from other players. From the Chinese, they will pay attention when the president says if they do not rein in North Korea he will, something they would not have believed, with reason, from the previous president. And the mullahs have been put on notice, and they will notice that they have been put on notice. This is all to the good. I also expect a reaction from the Democrats, who will no doubt call for Trump’s impeachment and removal from office for exceeding his authority and starting a war without Congressional approval. The MSM will describe, in lurid headlines, the action as a cynical attempt to deflect attention from the treasonous collusion of the Trump campaign with Russia to steal the election from the rightful president. This is a signal to the world that the United States has a new president, and that victory is no longer not an option.

I do not believe President Trump has any intention of getting involved in the Syrian civil war. I do not want, nor do I expect, that the Ist Marine Division and the 4^th ID will be packing their bags anytime soon. We should not get militarily involved again in the Middle East. Syria is an open grave and not worth the bones of a single American soldier.

The grave is wide, and long and deep
Where tens of thousands lay in sleep
To join the thousands gone before
Why should we wish to add some more?
In Normandy white crosses sweep
To the horizon, where they keep
The memory of what is war
And what it is worth fighting for
A graveyard is the Middle East
Where rats and worms and ravens feast
On what were once young grenadiers
Who lie in watered graves of tears

In a few days we will know if the Democrats intend to employ the filibuster against the Supreme Court nominee. Doing so in the face of Republican determination to remove the filibuster permanently from Senate rules is counter-intuitive, given that the next nominee will be even less to their liking. I believe the filibuster threat is posturing, hoping that the Republicans will choose not to fight, as they have so often done in the past. I believe the Democrats hoped to peel off three Republicans to vote against changing the rules, and if they could do that the filibuster would remain in place and they will have won again. I believe the Democrats also believe McConnell is posturing, that he will not kill the filibuster because he doesn’t have the votes to do so, but McCain saying he will vote to remove the filibuster may have convinced the Dems that the Republicans will fight this time. If the Dems are convinced the Republicans will kill the filibuster they will, unless they have gone absolutely crazy, not call for a filibuster on Friday, and Gorsuch will be seated, leaving the Democrats to fight again another day on another nominee. The more rational leaders of the Democratic Party know that the Party, having been captured by the radical Left after the election of 1968, holds all the political cards, knows that the Trump interregnum will have no lasting political effect, and that when he is gone they will return to ultimate power. The Republican Party, as currently constituted, will not engage in a to the death knife fight with the Democrats. A true Conservative Party would fight, but until then the radical Left rules.

McConnell knows he cannot muster
The 60 votes, and so the bluster
Of changing that old Senate rule
In hopes the Democrats he’ll fool
But then, what if the threat is real?
His face and words do not reveal
Intentions, so the Dems must wait
And ponder, scheme and yes, debate
Among themselves, McConnell hold?
Or will he, as in past times, fold?
The game is fierce, the stakes are high
Which will it be, a nay or aye?
A knife fight now or play it cool
Who would have thought? A Senate rule!

A spokesman for the Chinese government warned the United States that arming the South Koreans and he Japanese with nukes would mean war. I had lunch today with my friend the Chinese Attaché, and he ordered cabbage soup for both of us. “Cabbage soup,” he said with some enthusiasm. “Shrimp, pork, ginger, cellophane noodles. One of my favorites.” I said, “No cabbage?” and he said, “Of course there’s cabbage. That’s why we Chinese call it cabbage soup. The trouble with you Americans is you expect everything to be on the label, but we Chinese prefer subtlety. For instance,” he said, ”you get upset when we say arming South Korea and Japan with nukes is unacceptable, but you don’t understand that the word unacceptable is quite subtle, as subtle as cabbage soup. Unacceptable can mean anything between complete acceptance and war. Now which do you think we prefer?” I finished my cabbage soup, looked at my smiling friend, and said, “Good soup.”

Inscrutable it has been said
A nation of sly foxes
Where diplomatic words are stored
In boxes within boxes
And finding in which box is held
True meaning of the matter
Means that the NSA has files
Of only idle chatter
If Tillerson can find which box
The Chinese now are using
He’ll know if China’s on our side
Or Pyongyang’s nukes excusing
In any case we’ll know in time
To China time is endless
Like ginger flavored cabbage soup
They will not end up friendless