Gas is now above five dollars in many parts of the country, and slated to rise higher. And as the economy sinks lower and lower, states and cities find themselves in a bind, unable to pay the exorbitant salaries and pensions they gave to the public employee unions in the happy times, the times of ever expanding economies and taxes.  And now, these states and cities, facing large deficits, look to gasoline taxes to bail them out. Lotsa luck.

The politicians surely know

That taxing us to death’ll

Result in very angry guys

Who are used to pumping ethyl

To get to work and pay the bills

And put food on the table

And now they’re faced with rising costs

And asked more than they’re able

To pay for such as gasoline

And food and shoes and health care

While lefty pols smirk and demand

You hand them you fair wealth share

The most prosperous, the freest, the most technologically and scientifically advanced society the world has ever seen is committing suicide, by choice. The advent of feminism, the sexual revolution, and most importantly, the invention of the birth control pill, has given women of the first world, for the first time in the life of humankind on earth, the ability to decline to have babies. And they have so declined.

The playground stands there, hushed and stilled

The child not there was coldly killed

His mother killed him, killed her child

It’s legal, charges won’t be filed

The swings sit idle, seesaws rust

And chairs and benches gather dust

The state has issued its decrees

No child will feel the cooling breeze

The state proclaims a woman’s choice

And thus the playground has no voice

Truth, to a government or politician, is whatever best serves the purpose of the government or politician.  Objective fact has nothing to do with it. Governments and politicians know that if a lie is repeated often enough it becomes accepted truth. Is the American government telling us the truth? About anything?

The Roman Governor washed his hands, exclaiming ‘What is truth?’

Full knowing that the truth was but a game

For truth can be an evanescent veil that covers both

Illusion and reality the same

The child who claims he sees a monster hiding ‘neath his bed

Has told the truth for monsters he has seen

The politician who proclaims that he alone knows best

Lies not though truth lies somewhere in between

The problem comes when politics claims what is false is true

And then proceeds to say that black is white

And then the media repeats the lie as given fact

Until too many nod and say that’s right

In 2008 the country was flooded with optimism. Obama promised the moon would be of the finest cheddar, the stars would glitter on every Obamagirl’s finger, the Earth would rise and the seas would fall.  He promised clean, cheap energy for all, and two cars in every garage. What he neglected to say was that the moon has a dark side, the stars were in the wrong epicycle, that the tide paid no heed to either him or Canute, that gas would be five dollars a gallon and that at that price the cars would have to stay in the garage. And so we have a new optimism, the optimism of deferred gratification.  I spoke to an Obama optimist recently, and here is what he said.

I thought if we got rid of Bush

That we could quit the Hindu Kush

I thought green windmills would provide

All energy so we could hide

Those ugly coal plants that just spew

Pollutants in the pristine blue

I thought he’d bring us wealth and jobs

Instead we have a world by Hobbes

Where trouble lurks at every turn

And those in charge can’t seem to learn

That bowing to the Saudi king

Won’t change the world, won’t change a thing

I still have faith though out of work

It’s not O’s fault it’s just a quirk

He needs to have another term

Although the thought just makes me squirm

I never thought the moon was cheddar

But I still think things will get better

In Europe, poverty is defined as “social exclusion”, by which is meant people who have not yet experienced the joys of a socialist system that aims to provide everything needed for everyone, from cradle to grave.  Right now, in Europe, that socialist system is about to implode, with the result that the entire continent will be socially excluded.  I know how they feel.  I’ve been socially excluded all my life.

I’ve been socially excluded all my life

And so have both my children and my wife

We think we know why we must play this part

We fart

When Lefties tell us socialism’s great

The model for each high progressive state

We nod and say we take these words to heart

And fart

The single currency is not at fault

As Germans load the money in the vault

And when they say it’s all because of Sartre

We fart

We watch the EU countries in collapse

They say they’re fine it’s just a slight relapse

Until they put the horse before the cart

We’ll fart

The most wonderful journey of all is the journey of life. In that journey there will come many joys and there will come some sorrows. The joys will fill the soul and the sorrows will make you strong. Above all, always be optimistic. Do not think of the dusk as the setting of the sun, but as the beginning of the dawn.

The pessimist knows only pain

Imagined darts are hurled

Hit daily by a fancied train

Struck down by this cruel world

He walks his life from bad to worse

And never sees the sun

And ends in a slow moving hearse

His dreary life thus done

The optimist knows life is joy

With challenges ahead

He knows the world is but a toy

And not a thing to dread

The optimist knows life is filled

With obstacles in reams

But walks the road how high it’s hilled

With love and hope and dreams