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

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