Month: January 2017

 

The Muslim ban, that’s what it really is,
Is causing harm to our security,
Its rationale purported by the Pres.,
It raises doubts of constitutionality

Our soldiers in Iraq, Afghanistan
Require good translators, local men
Who want to emigrate, to be American
Now that’s in doubt because of Trump’s new ban

Confusion reigned at airports ‘cross the land
Returning Muslims were detained on site
But people rallied lending helping hands
Judge Donnelly ruled against the ban that night

‘Twas just announced, Trump fired Sally Yates
Attorney General (Acting) from her post
The EO’s strength was open to debate
It went against what she believed in most

Historically policing’s apolitical
The Justice Dep. acts independently
All based on Constitution articles
Protecting rights of citizens judiciously

The Acting AG did what she was sworn to do
Defending Trump’s EO was too untenable
The ban discriminates on faith; it’s stupid, too
But Trump just blunders on and seems, unstoppable

1/30/17

 

Don Trump has promulgated many things
And promised others well beyond his reach
Directives he’s decreed, some out of synch
With laws sufficiently, him to impeach

But this is not about his stupid claims
That are achievable, like building walls
It’s things where there’s no way to gain his aims
His promises where he’ll most likely fail

One goal, a GDP of four percent
It’s been at two percent or less for years
Its largest factor’s what consumers spend
That spending is decreasing, it appears

Because the Boomers are retiring now
And spending less, conserving more their dough
Millennials can’t fill the gap no how
Until they reach peak spending, years to go

And cutting corporate taxes won’t grow jobs
Most growth of jobs is spurred by more demand
Demand requires more spending which has topped
Tax cuts just grow corp profits out of hand

Improving infrastructure, good the goal
But many years it takes from project start
To reach the day of digging the first hole
And will require those having special smarts

Some companies that make things may return
To relocate their plants back in the States
But then to be competitive, we’ll learn
With robots, will most workers be replaced

Entitlement repair, though doable
Politically for now is out of sight
Since demographics aren’t political
But that’s a poem for another night

1/29/17

Michael J Cohen, my grandson, is my guest poet for today’s poelitic.
***********************************************************************************************
Dear Reader
I know that we need action more than we need words right now, but I felt myself moved to write something on the latest executive order banning refugee entry into the US. It is the moral callousness and human cost of this that disturb me most. The Torah commands the Jewish people, “You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 22:20). Our world today is different in many ways, but refugees abound with dimming hopes of redemption. I understand the politics of this situation are not without subtlety nor are there easy answers. This poem is not a legal treatise, but I believe we can fulfill the moral imperative to help the stranger without seriously compromising our security – it is not a ruthless, zero-sum equation. Please feel free to share this poem:

Seated with the phosphorescent glow, I read the news
Absorbing every day another blow, and I must choose:
To linger idly hoping that “this won’t be all that bad”
While desperately groping for some news to make me glad

It’s true the new administration set off with a lurch
And with a swift defenestration, Welcome lost it’s perch
What happened to our decency? The openhearted way…
A hardened heart, a fist held clenched, have seemed to rule the day

The old ideals we cherish so demand we take a stand
In apathy they perish, so let’s rise with open hands
And dedicate ourselves unto that sacred, noblest cause:
The orphan’s plight, the widow’s grief
The stranger dwelling in our midst
The human gleanings tossed aside
Those whom Wealth and Power dismissed

The dross of this, our gilded age, whose currency is minted fear
Where someone’s loss, another’s gain, but through it all, one thing is clear:

The golden door, though shut right now, can never, ever rust
So lift the lamp and let her glow to those who tread in dust
Re-forge the ancient fortitude that struggled for the Just
And give your hand to those in need – in this we place our trust.

Michael J Cohen
1/28/17

 

The holocaust was not so many years ago
Our sentencing those refugees to death
By turning back those ships back to their fate
A memory of national disgrace

Let’s not forget

Now Trump has issued orders odious
He’s banning refugees from war-torn states
And cities where the living is untenable
This is another national disgrace

For shame, for shame

Is this the greatness to which Trump aspires
Disguising it as keeping terror out?
Of all the Middle Eastern states he banned
No citizen has terrorized us yet

Our greatness dimmed

Trump’s paranoia threatens us in many ways
The self-deluded world in which he lives
Where he decides what’s real and what is not
Has sealed the fate of desperate refugees

And damaged us

1/27/17

Typ0s

This ditty’s deadicated to my typ0s
My texts dyslexic sprinlked through my postos
Her name i blaim its spelling on my pado
It changed appellate Maddow into Meadow

1/27/17

 

The dots have been connected, Rachel did it
The Rachel Maddow, MSNBC
It’s pay-back time for Prexy Trump who won it
With all the help from Putin, we can see

Don Trump has stripped the State Department bare
Of all its seasoned world-wide expertise
There’s no one left with status who would dare
To criticize decisions he decrees

Now Trump intends that sanctions be withdrawn
On Russia based on annexing Crimea
The half-a-trillion oil deal’s back on
With Tillerson at State, that’s Trump’s idea

And Rachel cited Russia’s new arrest
The cyber chief of FSB (the KGB)
Mikhailov, with coercion, will confess
To treason: kompromat to Steele he leaked

No proof! The evidence is circumstantial
Now add in Trump’s behavior so bizarre
Preferring Russia over allies more substantial
This worries me like little else – so far

1/26/17

 

Each day important issues come up new
So many that it’s hard to keep abreast
They’re all results of Trump’s ineptitude
It makes it hard, the subject to select

‘Twas yesterday Trump ordered EPA
To cease revealing data in the news
A sweeping order gagging what they say
Until it’s passed political review

Indicative this is of Trump’s outlook
Where truth is what he wants us to believe
Three million votes illegal falsely booked
Now he can act on nonsense he conceives

And therein lies the danger for us all
As President, with power’s instruments
Can warp good science to his beck and call
And launch our nukes toward foreign continents

1/25/17

Mark Lilla, back in November, wrote an article in the NYT Sunday Review titled, “The End of Identity Liberalism”. The Women’s March brought this to mind.

Identity Politics

Identity, the politics thereof
Is what propelled progressives in their fights
To win minorities their equal rights
Our fight was righteousness, our fight was love

The Women’s March that spanned the planet Earth
Had banners bright proclaiming the right stuff
Like women’s right to choose control of birth
Identity itself is not enough

The Democratic loss was brought about
By not addressing problems fundamental
To workers on subsistence elemental
Whose family’s future fill their lives with doubt

Our party must reach out at every level
We are our brother’s keeper we must heed
Our vision must include all at the table
Our soaring rhetoric must lead to deeds

1/24/17

 

Pres. Trump screwed up addressing CIA
And disrespected those who gave their all
By frivolous Trump chatter at their Wall
But one remark put thousands in harms way

Where US troops are fighting on the soil
Of Libya and of Iraq as well
Where oil reserves resource that nation’s wealth
Trump said we might go back and take their oil

Of soldiers there in Libya or Iraq
As GIs tasked for local troop support
Full trust is undercut by Trump’s retort
They’ll think our goal’s to take their oil back

Trump’s careless spontaneity of speech
His lack of discipline in what he tweets
His lies and falsehoods that he oft repeats
Pose danger to the world within his reach

1/23/17

 

Alt-facts are what Trump wants us to believe
Alt-lies are facts reported by the Press
Alt-news is what Trump tweets, what’s up his sleeve
Alt-fair is raising Trump above the rest

Alt-strong is imitating Putin’s ways
Alt-dumb are non-supporters of himself
Alt-wrong are those who don’t buy what he says
Alt-smart are Trump and gainers of much wealth

Alt-wise are those denying climate change
Alt-smart are those who obfuscate the rules
Alt-right, home of conspiracies so strange
Alt-world, the world of Trump and all his fools

1/22/17