Poetry Corner, 2011

The flight of the curiales from Wisconsin and Indiana to the welcoming arms of Illinois is such transparent, temporizing, time-wasting nonsense that a large hole should be dug for all the legislators - ALL- from both states, plus the governors. Then they should all -ALL- do the decent thing. If they can persuade the same officials in Illinois to join them, I'm sure the hole can be enlarged to fit.

To do what has to be done, these cowards, of every political persuasion, are terrified of appearing the bad guy and risking their pathetic careers. So the Donks flee the state, ostensibly to block legislation, while attempting to make the Trunks look bad and do a Pontius Pilate for their constituencies. The Trunks threaten draconian executive action to terminate thousands of state employees, while attempting to make the Donks look bad and do a Pontius Pilate for their constituencies.

As I have the habit of doing, I'll let others speak for me:

"There are three principles in this Constitution, and they are very precious. They are compromise, compromise, and compromise."

-James Madison, Father of the U.S. Constitution

On a more global level, we resort to the poets:

"The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity."

- William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming

"And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night."

- Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach

"There are four types of homicide: felonious, accidental, justifiable, and praiseworthy."

- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary