There is every indication that there is no one in the Obama administration who has ever told the truth. Ever. Fast and Furious. Eric Holder’s signature is on the authorization to declare a Fox reporter a criminal so they could secretly get his phone records; President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton telling the world for over a week after the killing of Americans in Benghazi that they were killed because of a YouTube video, a lie they knew to be a lie because they made it up themselves in a phone conversation the night of the attack; the head of the IRS claiming she knew nothing of the IRS harassment of the Tea Party, when her fingerprints were all over it, and other examples too numerous to mention. I don’t say they have lied about everything their entire lives, but I do say everything they have said since they joined the Obama administration has been a lie

If truth be told, we often say
Observing not the doubt in play
If truth be told, the truth is rare
For fragile truth be held with care

I spoke to a liberal friend the other day and asked her if she still thought of Barack Obama as the most gorgeous of the gorgeous, the most saintly of the saintly, and she said she was of two minds about him.

Yes to me he was as gorgeous
As Cesare and the Borgias
While to others he was hellish
Not a little Machiavellish
But he won, that’s all that mattered
I care not for those he battered
For the law is not for winners
And the truth subject to spinners
I still cling to the illusion
Though admitting to confusion
Seeing now, with some contrition
He’s a scurvy politician
I am just so disappointed
That the One I thought anointed
Has turned out to be so ruthless
Ganging up on folks who’re toothless
I was filled with turtle doving
But I find he’s not for loving

A hundred and fifty years ago and more, a man wise in the ways of the world wrote that a democracy lasts only until the public discovers that their vote holds the key to the public treasury. They will vote for the candyman, he said, the man who will give them things for nothing, the man who will swing open the doors to the Treasury in return for their votes. But it can never last, he said sorrowfully.  The Treasury soon runs out of money, and the people who have become dependent upon the candyman for their very existence turn against him, and there are riots in the streets and the democracy inevitably becomes a dictatorship.

The Republic’s near death
Very near her last breath
Gut shot in the candyman’s lairs
He put on a disguise
And with candyman’s eyes
He smiled as he offered his wares
His smile promised the moon
And so then very soon
The people were dancing outside
The slick candy man’s store
Sick and begging for more
As our country went on her last ride
Yes the music still plays
As the Left counts the days
Till they bury the country once great
Now done in by the wiles
And the candyman’s smiles
Who now glories in our dying state

The Transit of Venus is the term we use to describe the motion of the planet Venus as it passes in front of the Sun as observed from Earth. The transit is a mini eclipse of the sun, much like the moon passing in front of the sun as observed from Earth, the difference being the moon is so much closer to us that it blocks out the entire sun, while Venus is so far away from us it only blocks out a tiny dot, the tiny dot being Venus. The first recorded observation of the Transit of Venus took place in 1639, by a couple of Englishmen, and has been the subject of scientific study ever since. Different cultures had different names for the heavenly bodies. The ancient Greeks, for instance, called Venus Hesperus, the Evening Star, and Phosphorus, the Morning Star, not realizing the two were the same planet. The sun also had various names, like Sol and Helios.  Helios had a son named Phaeton, and a couple of thousand years later the word Phaeton was applied to a four wheeled horse drawn carriage, no doubt named after Phaeton, the son of Helios, who convinced his father to let him drive the sun chariot, with disastrous results. In describing all this to a friend, he sighed, remembering his own personal transit of Venus, with its own disastrous results, and said

So beautiful my Venus was
Friends warned she was jail bait
They warned me not to transit her
Into another State
I scoffed and cried that he who Mars
Her good name with his lips
Will find his Solar plexus turned
Into a full eclipse
Alas my friends were heeded not
She claimed she’s twenty-four
But exiting my Phaeton I
Was shown the cell block door

Every policy espoused by the Obama administration has failed. The Arab Spring has turned once stable dictatorships into unstable terrorist states. The policy of speaking gently to Iran has allowed Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. The policy of giving oil and food to North Korea in return for unkept promises has resulted in threats from the unstable North Korea regime to nuke the United States. And so it goes, a daily litany of failure. I spoke to a high ranking White House official who was not authorized to speak publicly on the subject, but he spoke anyway. Between the sobs and moans I gathered this is what he said.

“I never thought we’d fail,” he sobbed
“The future looked so bright
The spin and lies and worse we fobbed
Off on the folks each night
Just made us feel that we were gold”
And here he gave a sigh
“Our prez,” he said, “was wise and bold
And we were riding high
And then through no fault of our own
Just everything we hailed
As right and good was over thrown
By cries that we had failed
In Syria and Egypt and
Benghazi and the rest
And all the good that we had planned
Had failed the final test”
He cried at that and turned to leave
I said, “It’s just as well”
He sobbed, “Just leave me here to grieve
It’s all just gone to hell”

The Obama administration is beset with calamity, a calamity it brought on itself with lies and arrogance. Lies about the terrorist attack on the Benghazi consulate and arrogance to think they could sic the IRS on political opponents and not be called on it. The worst however, by their lights, was the subpoenaing of the telephone logs of the Associated Press, for that turned the heretofore lapdog sycophants in the White House Press Corps against them, at least temporarily, allowing the vast majority of Americans, who get their news from the lapdog media, to hear for the first time what the verminous Obama administration has been up to. It is said that the United States was once governed by the best and the brightest. If it were ever true, it is no longer

The days of the best and the brightest
Are gone and may never return
We’re ruled by the worst and the lightest
Who seem quite unable to learn
The old best and brightest are sleeping
Disturbed in their eternal rest
Their graves undermined by the seeping
Of lies now beginning to crest

The Stockholm rioters who are setting cars and schools on fire are identified as immigrants from North Africa and the Middle East, but their religious affiliation is unmentioned. The law abiding Swedish citizens who attempt to defend their city and their homes and their families are identified by the authorities as right-wing extremists and neo-Nazis. This cowardice by Western authorities will continue until someone puts a stop to it, violently if necessary. The alternative is a slow and increasingly violent death of Western civilization at the hands of the barbarians. The brilliant, briefly lit fire of Western thought, science and art will die, as other civilizations have died before us, and life will continue, though not as before.

The western sky, a setting sun
Snow topped mountains gleaming gold
Shadows turn the desert dun
Science, music, art untold
Once discarded aren’t returned
Once great cities, soul and heart
Of the West, destroyed and burned
Pilgrims harried and depart
Like Detroit, a hollow shell
New York, London meet their fate
Say goodbye and wish them well
Time is gone, the hour late
But the world will soon forget
There was once a better place
Where free people freely met
Challenges with smiling grace
Night is nigh, and come the dawn
Others follow in their way
They won’t miss us when we’re gone
And the sun sets day by day

The Ship of State, once a brand spanking new two masted sweet sailing brig, is now captained by a man who knows nothing of brigs or sailing, but knows everything about siccing the IRS on people he perceives as enemies. We are driven before the wind by a man who knows nothing about governance but everything about blaming an unknown film maker for terrorist attacks. The captain of the good ship USS United States has lashed himself to the wheel and is about to run off the edge of the Earth. The day is growing dark, Vespers is upon us, and we can but say our evening prayers

As evening prayer got under way
And bade the brig Obama stay
The chaplain said in opening prayers
That thanks to folks like good Bill Ayers
The ship of state on which they sailed
Was by the people proudly hailed
As bringing hope and change to all
And for his text he turned to Paul
Obama, though, lashed to the wheel
While steering from behind did feel
The rising wind quite blowing hard
And as he watched the topsail yard
Came crashing down upon the deck
As White House staff cried, “What the heck!”
The forestays went, the jib as well
Now bobbing in the ocean swell
The brig Obama hung in stays
While all recalled the glory days
When sailing proudly ‘fore the wind
Topgallants bent and pennants pinned
Yet in an instant, all aghast
There fell the stately, stout main mast
Into the sea went rigging, sails
The Cabinet reduced to wails
Obama though, remained serene
Lashed to the wheel, at severe lean
“‘Tis but a temporary lull!
Behold the soundness of the hull!”
There came there then a wrenching sound
As planking flew and knees gave ground
And as she sank the band played on
Some took to boats but O stayed on
And as the ship sank ‘neath the waves
There passed one of the greatest knaves
To ever sail the ship of state
Onto the rocks most saw too late
To be the end he had in mind
Lashed to the wheel, led from behind
The sea now calm, the wreckage gone
The vespers sung, awaiting dawn

The Arab Spring was set off by Obama applauding the overthrow by an Islamist mob of an American ally, President Mubarak of Egypt, and continued with the ouster of Khadaffi from Libya by the US Navy, to the benefit of al Qaeda, and which has now spread to Syria, where al Qaeda is on the verge of grabbing another country. Watching this disaster unfold, President Obama has either delighted in the outcome or refused to get involved, regardless of the interests of the United States in not allowing al Qaeda to rule the Middle East, preferring to kick the can down the road, letting events take their course. Obama is the most adept Chief Executive we’ve ever had at kicking a can down the road. But what happens to the can when the road ends at an eight lane highway full of speeding eighteen wheelers?

How sternly he speaks, his words dark as the thunder

His visage a scowl and a threat

His actions though cause the observer to wonder

Is this all that we’re gonna get

The trouble with roads and the can that he’s kicking

A highway soon looms at the end

And all of the options he could have been picking

Are gone and he now must depend

On getting across those eight lanes that a bolder

Executive could have shut down

The can now at rest on the gravelly shoulder

And O looking on with a frown

We know what he’ll do, he will send the can spinning

Into traffic that’s blurry with speed

He’ll smile to himself this is just the beginning

And stand there and watch us all bleed

The Obama administration has so trashed the reputation and integrity of the United States that some have taken to calling them vandals. Now we all know that the word ‘vandal’ comes from the name of a Germanic tribe called the Vandals, who undertook the largest migration in European history, when they moved south from their Baltic home to Gaul and then through Spain to North Africa, leaving, so it has been said by their enemies, a trail of destruction in their path, hence the verb to vandalize. They sacked Rome about fifteen hundred years ago, but that was because Rome double crossed them, something Rome was wont to do with barbarian allies. So I think they probably got a bad rap. Not so the current administration. Obama and his hard left socialist cronies have vandalized the United States, and it will take some time to repair the damage.

Well we can’t just call Dems Vandals

Just because they have some scandals

And besides the Vandals took a lot of blame

For untidiness and so forth

When they left their Baltic homes north

And set out to find a land that then became

Such a tidy, peaceful nation

That defies all explanation

Of why people thought them rude and just uncouth

They were pirates, sure, and sacked Rome

But were neat as pins when at home

And I tell you this because it is the truth

So do not compare Obama

And young Chelsea’s lovely mama

To the Vandals who broke only odds and ends

You may call me Doubting Thomas

But they never broke a promise

As Barack does as he taxes and he spends