Tag Archives: illogic in politics

Fitting In

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pierrick-van-troost-5UnLTVKQVlc-unsplash

Image by Pierrick Van Troost on Unsplash. Used by permission

Fitting In

He held his campaign kick-off in a colossal yurt,
clad in plaid Bermuda shorts and a rubber shirt.
His children were unruly, but his wife was slim and perky.
She dispensed campaign buttons that were colorful and quirky.
On them he wore colossal shoes, big pants and a red nose,
but she explained the reason for his eccentric clothes.
Why he wore the clownish clothes and the painted face
was to even out the odds for the senate race.
He wanted to fit in, he said, with others in the Senate
and look like all the other clowns who were sadly in it.
He won out by a landslide—an open and shut case—
proving once again that any fool can win a race.

Prompt words for today are shut, rubber, campaign, quirk and shirt.

Relax. The World is Rosy.

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Relax. The World is Rosy. 

A passenger on Air Force One has issued a decree.
In flights over the ocean, he’s noticed no debris.
Thus, reports of scientists concerning plastic trash
are, POTUS assures us, probably too rash.
Do not accept the evidence of scientists verbatim.
Comments by reality stars furnish better datum.
Wind turbines cause cancer. Global warming is a farce.
Proof that GMO’s are really harmful is too sparse.
Of course we are ecstatic to discover science is faulty.
Next they’ll make daft declarations that the ocean’s salty!!!

 

https://shop.donaldjtrump.com/products/trump-straws

Truth is stranger than fiction? Yes, it is true the the Trump campaign has made $460,000 selling plastic soda straws with Trump’s name stamped on them.

https://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/08/politics/trump-global-warming/index.html

https://www.cnbc.com/video/2019/07/19/president-trump-we-have-bigger-problems-than-plastic-straws.html

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-claims-wind-turbines-cause-cancer-reigniting-long-feud-2019-4

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-gmo/trump-simplifies-reviews-of-genetically-modified-farm-products-idUSKCN1TC2Q8

The prompt words today are evidence, trash, daft, ecstatic and flights. 

Trilling

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Click on any photo to enlarge all.  jdbphotos

Trilling 

Don’t you hear the mockingbird
trilling out the whole absurd
story of the passing year,
giving voice to shock and fear?

Listen to the mourning dove,
warning us from far above,
the starlings, wrens and birds of prey.
Our debts all nature has to pay.

How can it be that those in power
sit and ponder and yet cower,
too intent on their own needs
to enact necessary deeds

to bring a tyrant fool to task—
to do what all the sane men ask?
Shame on these godly well-heeled men
who fold their hands and say amen,

but let sick children go untreated,
tenements to go unheated,
our waterways to be polluted,
laws and edicts instituted

that benefit the filthy rich
to raise themselves another niche
while milling masses unenlightened
vote heedless as their belts are tightened,

favoring the autocrats
in fear of what the democrats
“might” do, when all around them all
democracy proceeds to fall.

Hear  her there, up on the limb,
surveying all who follow him?
Simple nature mocking us?
Laughing at our furious fuss?

Perhaps more knowing than we know
when raging fires and piles of snow
assault us, it is nature’s way
to lead us and to have its say.

We cannot think of only our
needs and exercise our power
for special interests without paying.
This is what all of nature’s saying.

Mudslides, hurricanes and drought
may show us what it’s all about.
Balance, sanity and sharing
fairness, ecology and caring

will bring about a world that’s lasting
beyond our legislature’s casting.
God-fearing men, do you care
about how your children fare?

And as those whom we’ve elected,
oh so naïvely selected
pad their pockets and close their eyes,
our world around us swiftly dies.

Those are the truths clearly absurd
told to us by the mockingbird.
He sits above on swaying limb.
Why are the masses deaf to him?

The prompt today is trill.

Peculiar Little Habits

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Peek at the keys spread out on the floor.

Peculiar Little Habits

Peculiar little habits and peculiar little ways
help us pass away the hours and wile away the days.
When you enter in the door, close it exactly twice
to be sure the catch secures as solid as a vice.
Always check the doorknobs before you go to bed
to be sure the deadbolt  is completely dead.
Security is something that can’t be left to chance.
You must man the battlements and take a vigilant stance.
Do not invite strangers to wander through your home.
Give foreign folks and foreign thoughts no further place to roam. 

Seal your borders. Block people who
may be a different color from you.
Be sure that you have set a ban
on each thing unAmerican.
Burn our silks. Wipe out baklava.
While you’re at it, ban our Java.
Set up a refreshment jury
to vote on food like Indian curry.
Wienerschnitzel’s got to go.
Ban sushi. Nix gado gado.

Chocolate should be exorcised.
Ban music that’s unauthorized.
Raga, salsa and jungle beat
are rhythms we should not repeat.
America for Americans
is how we have arranged our plans.
Blood tests mandatory for sure
to make sure our blood is pure.
Send all the dark skins we have banned
to places not so tightly planned:

Prince Edward Island or Mexico
are places they’ll be forced to go—
places less pristine and picky
content to take folks slightly icky,
not perfect folks like you and me,
immaculate in our ancestry.
With endearing little habits, peculiar little ways,
we’ll wile away our hours and wile away our days
waiting for those foreign folks on whom we need to pounce,
doling out our safety by the pound, not by the ounce.

Picking fights with neighbors, casting insults at Korea,
twittering and ranting in a verbal diarrhea.
As it is above, so has it become below—
Trying to regress from what was once the status quo.
Truth becoming what we make it, in spite of evidence—
reinventing science by divine providence
Though we cannot lock out hurricanes or fires caused  by our blindness,
we have power to lock out sanity, ecology and kindness.
We’ll check our country’s doorknobs before we go to bed
and insure that all the deadbolts are completely dead.

 

The prompt word today is peculiar.

The Divine Right of Kings

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The Divine Right of Kings
(How Politics Makes for Strange Bedfellows)

I need to know this, Mr. Trump. What world is it that you inhabit
where if you want it, it’s okay for you to reach out and to grab it
and never share with others the wealth that you’ve purloined?
Except, of course, with other rich boys in the clubs you’ve joined?

I need to know this, Mr. Thune. What God gave you the right
to draft a secret health bill that overlooks the plight
of those littlest sparrows God witnessed as they fell?
What soothes your conscience as you now consign them all to Hell?

Mister Ku Klux Klanner, once you remove your hood
and navigate in daylight your well-lit neighborhood,
how do you salve your conscience? The crosses that you’ve burned there
must surely also burn you, once they’re exposed to air.

What happened to those finer parts your mothers saw in you
that might have loved their playmates, be they black, Arab or Jew?
All that innocence and love, surely you must mourn
as you join that beast that crawls toward Bethlehem to be born.

Mr. Jung has taught us that we all have everything within us: light and shadow, male and female, good and evil, cruelty and kindness.  Those parts are not exorcised within us just because we choose not to exercise them. I wonder at the dreams of the seemingly pious souls mentioned in the poem above. Are they as completely sure they are right as they seem to be?  Are their dreams untortured, their consciences squeaky clean?

If you are unsure who John Thune is, he is a senior U.S. senator from South Dakota who grew up the son of a born-again Christian family who happened to live across the street from me.  They broke away from the Methodist Church to form the Community Bible Church, preaching solid Christian values, eschewing the evils of movies and dance and even television.  They unsuccessfully mounted a big campaign to forbid dancing at our school prom and produced a son who now aligns himself with Mr. Trump.  What would Jesus say, Mr. Thune? Would he reaffirm that politics makes for strange bedfellows?

 

Sen. John Thune (R-SD)

What he’s saying: A common complaint about the Affordable Care Act is that the law has caused premiums to spike, and Thune told Fox News this month that South Dakota has seen premiums rise 124% since 2013. The fact that roughly 85% of Obamacare consumers receive premium subsidies to defray these increases has received less attention from critics. The House version of the American Health Care Act would switch Obamacare’s premium assistance to a flat, age-based subsidy, a change that would lower prices for younger, healthier consumers but hit some older, lower income ones with premium increases of more than 800% by 2026, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Biggest donors: At number three and $40,246, Sanford Health is the only healthcare name among the top five donors to Thune’s campaign committee; Nextera Energy comes in first with $52,000 and Blackstone Group is next with $50,097.

 Isn’t it the main idea behind health insurance that those who can pay and who are less likely to become ill cushion the load for those who are the most ill and need it most?

The prompt today was inhabit.