In his recent visit to Israel, President Obama told a skeptical audience that, contrary to everything he has said and done since taking office, the United States is Israel’s best friend.  Actually, he’s right about that. The United States is Israel’s best friend, it’s just that Obama is not. His message to Israel has been characterized by some as inscrutable.  I maintain it was not at all inscrutable.

Who is more inscrutable

Charlie Chan or Fu Manchu?

It’s neither and I here maintain

It’s Mister you know who

He holds his cards close to the vest

Eye contact he won’t make

He plays his chips one at a time

Afraid that one mistake

Will lose his place in history

As loser of the West

And that is why he plays the game

The way that he knows best

To enemies he deals the cards

Our friends he bottom decks

He folds a hand of aces full

And smiles as he sees wrecks

Of policy surrounding him

And says, “Inscrutable?

Ah no, my friends in Israel

Are very screwed-able”

The Cyprus bank bailout has finally come down, taking sixty percent of savings from some depositors, and placing stiff restrictions on the rest. And Cypriots know it isn’t over. They know that in the end they will lose their money, for when a State wants to take your money it will take your money.  Unfortunately for the citizens of Cyprus, Cyprus has no Second Amendment, and it’s just amazing what a government can do to an unarmed populace. Ogden Nash famously said he thought he would never see a billboard lovely as a tree. What about bailouts?

I think that I shall never see

A bailout lovely as a tree

A cypress tree like Cyprus banks

When standing firm receives no thanks

But Cyprus banks and cypress trees

Lay cold and dormant in a freeze

Bureaucrats speak and write in a language the average person can’t understand, and the reason is simple; they don’t want us to understand. Bureaucrats write regulations so obscure they can be interpreted any way the Government wishes to interpret them. Some believe this is a new development, but it is not. Bureaucrats have been with us forever. Clay tablets dug up at Incirlik in Turkey reveal a transcription of a meeting between a Hittite bureaucrat and King Muwatalli.

I speak most plainly, noble sir

On that I think you will concur

The proposition as you see

Entails a bit of levity

In that the levy be rewound

To keep the banking system sound

And therefore one must face the facts

The bank deposit system lacks

A mechanism for the state

To keep the nexus up to date

With regulations uniform

On tablets writ in cuneiform

And so it is that we contend

The written documents portend

That wealth and progressivity

Must track the net passivity

People are wont to blame all their ills on a faceless “They”, without considering that the “They” are not faceless at all, they are the politicians they stupidly vote into office, and the beholden bureaucrats the politicians put in place to bedevil us with useless, harmful and costly regulations. So don’t blame a faceless “They”. They can be identified.

They tax and spend, they spend and tax

They tell us all to just relax

They know what’s right, they know what’s fair

They say that they’re the ones who care

They take our savings without cause

They milk the cash cow without pause

They do believe in what they do

They take much joy and money too

They build their fiefs and live like kings

They live the life our money brings

They think that it will never end

They think that we will always bend

They do not see the darkling cloud

They do not see the dark faced crowd

They smile and say all will be fine

They say just stay there safe in line

They say bad times will surely end

They think the taxpayer their friend

They don’t believe we have the will

They think we’ll all remain quite still

They do not know that mobs are fierce

They think the arrows will not pierce

They walk a ledge that’s coming loose

They do not see the coming noose

EASTER 2013

The telescope doth wonders show

Of galaxies of billion stars

Backlit by hydrogen aglow

All racing up the red shift bars

Some say the universe was not

That nothing was, had always been

Then nothing suddenly got hot

And into something it did spin

And in that something there arose

Some hydrogen, such tiny things

And that in time the story goes

Gave birth to cabbages and kings

And yet that story gives one pause

Just how did nothing come to be

A something, was it just because

Of accident, or destiny?

One cannot look through telescopes

And think it came about by chance

A higher power gave us hopes

And dreams, and invites to the dance

The Soviets, excuse me, the Russians, in the name of gas giant Gazprom, have offered Cyprus a bailout if the Cypriots agree to give Gazprom leases in its off shore natural gas fields. Cyprus has rejected the offer and Putin is outraged. As for me, I stand foursquare with the cypress trees.

I think that I shall never see

A Gazprom lovely as a tree

A cypress tree with leafy boughs

That soothe the worried, furrowed brows

Of Cypriots whose money seems

To be a part of EU dreams

While Russians look to score real big

And promise to use just one rig

If only they be put in charge

Of Cyprus finance by and large

Rejected, Putin storms and scowls

As Greeks razz Putin with wild howls

The trees meanwhile just sit and wait

Uncertain of the island’s fate

We live, unfortunately, in an era in which the news we are fed is not news, it is Obama hagiography and Democratic Party talking points. We are not told the truth of Syria, of Benghazi, or any of the Obama administration’s malfeasances. The United States has devolved into two kinds of voters; low information voters who get all their information about the world around them from ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and National Public Radio, all of which are hand puppets of the Democratic Party, and high information voters who get their information from the Internet and reading books. Low information voters know nothing of what goes on in the country because the television anchors they watch and believe don’t tell them. Low information voters, these anchors believe, are best kept in the dark, in order to ensure they vote Democrat.

The anchor reads his lines on-screen

And truth is what we then have seen

And ever after what is known

Is what the anchor deigned be shown

Cyprus is in a tight spot. The EU has demanded a cut of all bank account savings before it will commit to the latest bailout, and citizens are upset that their savings will be taken from them. I spoke to a Cypriot friend just today and he was outraged, demanding the United States do something.  “I love Obama,” he sobbed, “and I go to the airport every day looking for Air Force One.” I asked him what the United States could do, and he said

You have money stuffed in closets

Trillions more in safe deposits

You could easy save dear Cyprus from this fuss

Write a check or just a promise

See I’m not a Doubting Thomas

I believe Obama cares for folks like us

Phones are free and so is healthcare

And your banks are all on wealthfare

They could spare a dime or two to help our cause

Have Obama make us voters

And we’ll be Obama doters

And we’ll pull that lever often without pause

See we follow your elections

And we see you make selections

Based upon how much is promised to the proles

Please don’t think that we’ve intruded

We just want to be included

Have Obama put us on your voter rolls

Whispers surround the presidency of Barack Obama, whispers that say his supreme incompetence and monumental indifference can be traced to his status as a puppet to internal forces that themselves are fractured and divided. President Obama therefore dances to competing puppet strings, the dances orchestrated by the radical leftists now installed in the White House. President Obama likens himself to Lincoln, when in fact he is likened to Pinocchio. There was nothing more telling than when the Benghazi consulate was attacked and four Americans killed, an incurious Obama went to bed.

I vowed no further words from me

About Obama and his kind

Of human scum who work to see

The Constitution undermined

The military hollowed out

The Bill of Rights an empty joke

The confiscation without doubt

Of legal guns of honest folk

We’re told Obama cannot lie

And yet his many mirrors show

When leaving braver men to die

He danced like stringed Pinocchio

The Obama administration from the first knew it had a problem with its anti-war leftist base, and so it declared there was no War OnTerror, it was all a simple matter of law enforcement. They outlawed the word ‘war’ and replaced it with the words ‘kinetic activity’, thus turning the bombing of Libya by the US Navy as something other than war. The Obama administration never engaged in overt action that might disturb the Left, it ‘led from behind’. Obama knew that if he only changed the words his leftist base would remain quiet, even as they saw through the deceit. The Obama administration always obeys the Constitution, except when it is inconvenient. Do they lie to us? Do bears play tag in the woods?

You say we lie and it is true

But only when it’s good for you

There’s evil in the world today

And somehow someone has to pay

The Constitution is obeyed

It never says that no drone raid

May strike a citizen of ours

But we contend that of our powers

The right to kill is in our hands

Which right to do so quite expands

As lawyers ply their sacred text

To tell us what we may do next

And others queue up one by one

To justify what we’ve just done

And so my friends go back to sleep

And pray the Lord our souls to keep