It turns out that people whose health care is covered under Medicaid, the program for the poorest of us, are required, by the fine print in the contract, to pay back after death whatever healthcare costs they had which were covered by Medicaid. It is possible when Medicaid was enacted that not many poor people would have estates worth seizing, but times have changed, and the poor now have more money and property than they used to. And so people are now dying thinking they’ve left a little bit for their children only to discover, much too late, that they’ve left it to the government.

I hope that on the day I croak
I’m penniless, in fact dead broke
When they insist that I be billed
I’ll rest content, a life fulfilled

In North Korea, Kim Jong Un has had his uncle killed for not clapping at one of his speeches, while in England a Mr. Trenton Oldfield was arrested for disrupting the boat race between Oxford and Cambridge on grounds it was elitist. Western civilization has reached the point where there is no room for proportionality. In the minds of most the disruption of the life style of the snail darter is a tragedy, while the killing of millions of pre-born babies is viewed as a constitutional right. There is no one and no thing that is not worthy of our compassionate concern.

We mourn for Kim’s dead uncle
We care for Oldfield too
We sneer at Oxbridge and the boys
Who make up each boat’s crew
We’re filled with much compassion
For thugs without reserve
Who can’t be blamed for what they do
Or get what they deserve
We justify the trespass
Forgive the ones who kill
We pay for those who will not work
And scorn the ones who will

Artists, actors and suchlike New Yorkers have long banded together to obtain low cost group health insurance, and now find out that Obamacare has forced them to obtain single coverage using the Obamacare Exchanges, where they find their health insurance premiums will triple. Verse-afire is compelled to not feel sorry for these liberal Manhattan elites who now find themselves treated with as much contempt by Barack their lover as they have for the rest of us. And now it is time to pay.

And as you have sown
Then so shall you reap
You cry had you known
And now you must weep
But you surely knew
That someone would pay
You thought it not you
And now rue the day

CHRISTMAS 2013

If there were a beginning to the Universe, then before that there had to be nothing, and if there was nothing then how could there be a beginning? One can imagine the universe we live in as being conceived in the Big Bang, as I believe it was, and growing, step by step, like ascending a stair, into its current form. But for there to be a Big Bang, there had to be something there to go Bang, so it could not have been the beginning. So the question is, what or who was on the first step of the stair? 

In the beginning there was nothing
Though the nothing wasn’t there
So there could be no beginning
Without someone on the stair
A someone who stepped lightly
As he rose with weary tread
With his fingers brushed the handrail
As he went upstairs to bed
Where he dreamed of streaming starlight
As the galaxies were formed
And his hand set them in motion
As the cold of space was warmed
As he dreamed a thought came to him
Many worlds would come to life
Though he knew that his new creatures
Would be born to war and strife
It was there the dream had ended
In the morning he awoke
And his house was filled with starlight
As the dawn upon him broke
Through his window he saw blossoms
Moving gently with the breeze
In a bright and verdant pasture
Stretching to the distant trees
Then he turned at top of landing
And he thought of all the cares
That his dream had set in motion
Then he started down the stairs

Do we live in a world where babies smile and birds sing? Where the sun rises on pristine beaches and distant mountain tops are covered with snow? Where children play while grandparents look on lovingly? Yes we do, though there are those who believe a beneficent and bountiful God had nothing to do with it.

A Christmas greeting, though you doubt
I know your point of view
You say that it is all about
Enrichment for the few
Explain then why the birds can sing
And children play all day
And why do Fall days have that zing
That takes your breath away
Explain you cynics, how the bee
Can find his way back home
And fashion geometrically
A perfect hexacomb
And while you’re at it, tell me please
Why starlight flows in streams
And why is it one always sees
Himself as young in dreams
I’ll tell you why, you cynic you
The truth you will not hear
The Christmas story is all true
And happens every year

A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL

Around 5 or 6 BC some wise men saw a strange sight in the northern sky, and followed it. What did they see? Was it a supernova? A comet? No one knows. But it must have been very, very unusual, for these wise men were astronomers, used to charting the heavens. I submit what they saw was a curious, wheeless conveyance, pulled by animals that bore little resemblance to horses. And in that wheeless conveyance they beheld a fat man in curious red garb. When they calculated the trajectory they determined it had come from the North Pole, and its parabola indicated a landing near the little town of Bethlehem. But what was the strange looking man carrying in that strange conveyance?

They found the sleigh empty
By a manger it stood
In front of a window
And a door made of wood
And peering inside
The wise men then saw
A sight that caused trembling
And quaking with awe
For there by a baby
Sat a fat man in red
And a saintly young woman
Kissing her baby’s head
Surrounding the tableau
Shone light soft and low
That lighted the window
With a soft golden glow
As the Magi stood awestruck
They heard voices sing
From inside the manger
They heard the word “King”
The baby then smiled
And the fat man did grin
And legions of angels
Filled the spaces within
The door of the manger
Then swung open wide
And the fat man in red
Stepped quickly outside
“Good night, little fella
A night this has been”
He hopped to the sleigh
And when he was in
He turned to the Magi
And bade them to stay
Saying, “Know who that is?
Do you know what’s today?”
With that he was off
His night rounds to make
While inside the manger
The infant did wake
The Magi then entered
With incense and gold
And knelt by the babe and said
“Hail the foretold
For thine is the kingdom
Thy Father says so”
And from off in the distance
Came a clear “Ho Ho Ho”

Those who wield power have responsibilities, and those who wield great power have great responsibilities. Responsibilities to preserve and defend the country they were elected to lead. Low information voters, people who spend no time at all thinking about politics or history or much of anything else, vote not for what is best for the country, for they have no idea what might be best for the country, but vote for what they believe might be best for them. And that might mean best for them personally in terms of promised government handouts, or best for their souls, in which case they will vote for a completely unqualified candidate simply to right a previous historical wrong. Maybe it was always that way, but at least in the past it didn’t lead to an avowed Marxist enemy of the country being elected president.

Great power in the hands of little men
Invite disaster on a mega scale
For little men aren’t little now and then
They’re little all the time, that’s why they fail
And when the little man controls a State
As Barry does thanks to white women’s guilt
That led them thinking wouldn’t it be great
To add a black man to the nation’s quilt
Unqualified except for hue of skin
Obama has no inkling and no clue
He thinks events susceptible to spin
And sees the world through Marx’s point of view
Will we survive, it’s truly hard to say
A people gets the leaders they deserve
It once was said God loves the USA
But if He does He sure threw us a curve

J. B. S. Haldane said the universe was stranger than we could ever imagine. I’m not so sure about that. I believe the universe is perfectly understandable, once you realize that today’s science is defined as things we know for certain that replaced earlier science, where earlier science is defined as things the people at that time knew for certain and which we now know to be untrue. But was that earlier science untrue, or do we just believe it was untrue because our version of science says it was? And what happens when a future science says our version of science was not true, that things we knew for certain to be true were not true at all..Count on our science being superseded. The universe seems strange because what we know we know for certain is not certain at all. What has Obama to do with the strangeness of the universe? We are about to find out.

The universe is not so strange
To those who know not of it
They think that it will never change
That always will they love it
Just as it is, a whirling disk
Of stars that can’t be numbered
All hurtling space at more than brisk
With planets, moons encumbered
This is, of course, no so at all
The universe is tiny
An atom wide, an atom tall
All polished nice and shiny
Inside this atom we all live
Curved space described by Einstein
Where we’re expected to forgive
Barack and Diane Feinstein
For messing up our nice clean world
With leftist scams and nostrums
Where lies and calumnies are hurled
From telepromtered rostrums
It was so nice once, warm and snug
Inside our little atom
We knew the stars could give a tug
To actions here, a datum
Like all the other things we knew
Like gods lived up on mountains
And manna flowed like morning dew
From sugar candy fountains
But now it’s leftists all year round
Bad stuff without cessation
Not long ago we all were bound
For stars, our destination
That seems so very long ago
Before Barack the Master
Did bid his childlike voters grow
And ushered in disaster