Poems by Rick Burnley
Earlier today we came across a man reading poems that he had written. His name is Rick Burnley and he wasn't able to get them out to the world to read. He was able to provide me a copy and I told him that I would post it here for everyone to enjoy.
Simply click on comments and share the great poems that Rick has created.
19 Comments:
AMERICA, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?
America, what are you doing?
You’d better take a good look in the mirror,
Because it’s plain to the rest of the world,
That we’re driven by greed and fear.
And the noble vision that we started out with?
Well, to most of the world, it seems like a myth.
America, what are you doing?
You’d better stop and think,
Our trigger-happy government
Is taking us right to the brink.
The chicken hawks all tell us, that war is the only way
Though many die, as death rains from the sky,
The innocent having no say.
In the city of Baghdad,
Family’s trembled in fear
They knew cause of us,
And our war lust,
That their end might be near.
And not for anything that they had done,
But just because the cowboy’s got a big gun.
They say he’s a wimp,
And big oil’s pimp,
But he’s going to show them all,
As the emperor with his war machine,
He’s standing ten feet tall,
And he’ll save the Iraqis from Saddam,
If he has to kill them all.
The toll was many thousands dead,
And many thousands displaced.
All of this to get one man,
America was disgraced.
The American Constitution
Has also been attacked,
Another of the many victims
That our government has Bush-Whacked.
And all over the planet, people will see
The decay and decline of democracy,
And as they watch our war machine strike,
They’ll witness the birth of the new world’s Reich.
We claim that God is with us,
We’ve all heard that before,
It was written on Nazi belt buckles,
And carved over Hitler’s door.
So America, you’d better wake up,
Because the hour is getting late,
If we keep beating the drums of war,
We’ll be sealing America’s fate.
If world peace is important to you,
It’s time to speak your mind,
Don’t follow the New World Order,
Show your loyalty to Mankind.
Rick Burnley
February 2003
2:39 PM
GEORGIE BOY
Georgie Boy thinks your kid’s his toy,
And he’s gone and shipped him off to war.
You can hear him squawk,
He’s a chicken hawk.
He won’t put up with it no more.
He doesn’t have to,
Like Nero, he runs the show.
If he snaps his fingers,
The kids gotta go.
But when he had his chance,
He opted to stay back.
He didn’t want to be there,
Ducking bullets and flack.
He claims he was flying fighters
In the Alabama Air National Guard,
You’d think to find one person,
Who remembered him there,
Wouldn’t be all that hard.
And especially now that they’ve got
The sixty thousand dollar reward.
I guess he was flying
One of those Phantom jets,
A phantom pilot, in a phantom plane.
Chicken hawks all except for Powell,
Who finally surrendered to insanity,
Killing thousands of people,
To get one man.
That’s a crime against humanity.
Rumsfeld and Wolfewitz,
Cheney and Bush,
Chicken hawks all everyone,
They’re hot to send your kids to war,
But they’ve never been under the gun.
Most of our generals
Were pretty upset,
They thought this rush to war
Was a real bad bet.
But there was no one around
To hear their beef,
And they had to obey the Commander in Chief.
Because one thing no one could foil,
Was Georgie’s plan to get the oil.
He was itchin’ to run amok,
Filled with the lust to bomb Iraq.
Well we went in and did the dirty deed,
Fueled by the warmonger’s boundless greed.
But it wasn’t the cake-walk
That Cheney said
And thousands of people
Are crippled and dead.
Things haven’t worked out like they wanted,
And the whole thing’s a giant mess.
But the last thing we can ever expect,
Is for Georgie to confess
That there were no weapons of mass destruction
And that Saddam didn’t knock down the towers,
And that thousands of people died needlessly
And many of the deaths were ours.
So Georgie, don’t tell us we went to war
Because we were being humane.
We’ve just killed thousands of innocent people,
And that’s just clearly insane.
Rick Burnley
August 2004
2:42 PM
GEORGIE PORGIE
Georgie Porgie, puddin’ and pie
Shipped our kids to war
Where many of them die.
They were sent over there because of lie,
The weapons of mass destruction.
Georgie, you’re so proud of yourself,
You think you’ve done quite well.
You’re dropping bombs on cities
And you’ve opened the gates of hell.
You’ve used our kids as cannon fodder
To quell your insatiable greed
And you have the nerve to cry
Support our troops; Support our troops indeed.
To really support them
Would be to not send them
Off to foreign lands,
Where most of their victims are innocent
And our soldiers get blood stained hands,
And tortured souls from what they’ve done.
They’ve broken God’s laws, and man’s.
And now it seems we’re in eternal war
With no clear end in sight.
And the rest of the world trembles
At our unholy might.
And George just keeps rattling his saber,
He reminds me of Elmer Fudd,
And the crew he’s assembled
To catch the rabbit, really is a dud,
‘Cause the rabbit he’s chasin’
Is way, way brighter.
George, You’re a cheerleader for the rich,
You’re not a freedom fighter.
And in the future history books,
What will be your handle?
George the Puppet,
George the Merciless,
Or maybe George the Vandal?
‘Cause you’ve started lots of fires
That you can’t put out,
And cause and effects not your bag.
You like to prance around dressed up like a pilot,
Waving your little flag.
It would be quite amusing
If it weren’t so very sad.
The world’s at the mercy of a half-wit,
And the other half is mad.
Rick Burnley
August 30, 2004
2:43 PM
IT’S NOT THE WAY OF JESUS
The President has told us,
That Jesus changed his heart,
But if he’s really read the Bible,
It seems he’s missed one part.
I know he’ll hate to hear it,
Because it’s a bitter pill,
But the Bible’s fifth commandment is,
“THOU SHALT NOT KILL!”
That’s not too hard to understand,
It seems to be quite clear,
It’s not the fifth suggestion,
What part don’t you hear?
You call yourself a Christian,
I guess that might be true,
But I’ve got a couple of comments,
That I’d like to share with you.
If Jesus is your master,
And really is your Lord,
It seems that you should listen up,
And hear his peaceful words:
“Whatever you do to whatever has life,
You do unto Me,” said the Lord.
It’s right to live in love and peace,
And it’s time to sheath the sword.
But our main business is peddling arms,
Their only purpose to kill,
Many of us are filled with disgust,
As more blood we’re planning to spill.
“Whatever you sow, so shall you reap”
If that’s really true, we’re in trouble, and deep.
The interplay of cause and effect,
Is just a theory that gets no respect.
And whatever happened to the Golden Rule?
Now it’s “Do unto others, before they do it to you.”
Page 2
So don’t talk to us of Jesus, He “The Prince of Peace”,
Don’t talk to us of Jesus, as our bomb bay doors release
Their terror in the night sky, and little children scream,
“The Americans are killing us!”
Their nightmare’s not a dream.
And my guess is Jesus is crying new tears,
His bleeding heart breaking, as the warmongers cheer,
“To War, To War, We’re spoiling to fight,
We’ll send your sons and daughters,
Let them feel our might!”
The chicken hawks will stay home, and they’ll run the show,
Their friends and their families won’t have to go,
We’re so good at killing, it’s what we do best,
“War times are good times”, say the merchants of death.”
Loving Jesus means loving life,
He wouldn’t be dropping bombs,
Slaughtering innocent people,
Old folks, kids and moms.
As we get ready to bomb other nations,
In the name of the red, white and blue,
Just ask yourself the question.
“What would Jesus do?”
Rick Burnley
February 2003
2:44 PM
LET US PREY
“Let us prey” say the hypocrites
Perched at the top.
And prey is what they do,
They prey on the weak and the poor of the world,
And the rest they merely screw.
Compassionate conservatives
Is how they want to be seen,
An oxymoron if ever there was,
They’re selfish, cold, and mean.
Their only compassion
Is for those of their ilk,
The rich and elite who rule,
And the rest of us are here to milk,
‘Cause we’re so easy to fool.
They pluck us like chickens
‘Cause we’re such easy pickins’
To them, we’re just a tool.
America’s like a movie set
What you see’s not what you get.
And behind it’s democratic façade,
The fat cats rule with a wink and a nod.
Here’s the way it really works,
I’ll get you up to speed
Robber Barons are ruling us,
And they’re driven by their greed.
Like bottomless pits,
They can’t get enough.
Hungry ghosts, they’re called in Tibet.
They pack it in as fast as they can
And they want everything they can get.
Lobbyists write our laws for us
They get access with barrels of loot.
They bribe our elected officials,
And it’s justice that gets the boot.
Democracy means one man, one vote
And that vote shouldn’t be for sale.
Our leaders are as crooked as a dog’s back leg,
And most should be rotting in jail.
Now we’ve got prisons for profit
All over the US of A.
The owners get slave labor,
And the taxpayer gets to pay,
To keep people in jail as long as they can
And most for a victimless crime.
They hand out years like m&ms,
Your life isn’t worth a dime.
And business is booming,
Our prisons are full,
Over two million at last count.
And they keep adding new laws
To lock more of us up,
And the numbers continue to mount.
Five percent of the world’s people
Live in the United States.
But a quarter of the world’s prisoners
Are behind our prison gates.
That’s right, one out of four of the world’s prisoners
Are here in the land of the free,
Locked up in the gulags of the ruling class,
And it doesn’t seem right to me.
Let us prey, and they do.
They’re gettin’ worse all the time.
And if we don’t try to stop them,
We’ll be complicit in their crimes.
When injustice becomes the law of the land,
It’s time for us to make a stand.
If you care about the future of our nation,
Resistance becomes your obligation.
Rick Burnley
Aug. 2004
2:45 PM
PATRIOT’S SONG
I’m a patriot, as you can see,
Got the ‘Merican flag on my SUV,
And everything I need to know,
I get from the Limbaugh and O’Reilly show.
I don’t waste time readin’ the papers,
That’s what liberals do.
I get my news predigested,
I don’t even have to chew.
I’m a patriot, as you can see
I got two flags on my SUV.
My country, right or wrong
This is the chorus of the patriot’s song.
We’re God’s chosen people,
The best in the world,
And I get goosebumps
When our flag’s unfurled.
And why should we care
What others think or say?
The important thing’s
That we get our own way.
It’s plain to see that we’re special,
And God’s always on our side.
And when ever I see our bombs bursting in air,
It fills my heart with pride.
And this is an ode
To the commander in chief
Although some say he got there
By bein’ a thief.
But I support him,
No matter what he does,
Because, well, well, just because.
I heard one liberal whinin’
That we use up more than our share.
I don’t think we should worry about that,
I sure as hell don’t care.
He said we got five percent
Of the world’s people,
But we use forty percent of the oil.
He said when other countries
See how greedy we are,
It just makes their blood boil.
Well they better get used to it,
‘Cause that’s the way it is.
What America does
Is America’s biz.
We’re the top dog
And we got a big gun.
We do what we like,
‘Cause we’re number one.
This is America, love it or leave it.
If our government tells us somethin’,
We oughtta believe it.
That’s the least that you can do,
If your flag is the red, the white, and the blue.
Rick Burnley
Aug. 2004
2:45 PM
ROGUE ELEPHANT
There’s a giant rogue elephant
Afoot on the Earth,
And the damage he’s done, is immense.
He’s tearing our precious planet apart,
And it doesn’t make any sense.
This rogue’s power is awesome,
And the Earth must tremble in fear
When his terrible feet smash the forests,
And the fires he sets poison the air.
He just keeps on crushing and smashing,
In his insatiable lust for power.
And all of us must bring him down,
This is our most dangerous hour.
He thinks that all of the gifts of the Earth
Are his alone to consume.
And if you happen to be weak and small,
To be in his way spells doom.
There’s a giant rogue elephant on a rampage,
And the world’s never seen it’s like.
It charges around in a frenzy,
And many die at each strike.
It’s easy to see what this elephant wants,
He wants to be king of the hill,
And he’s bound and determined to do this,
No matter how many he kills.
So brothers and sisters, and lovers of the Earth
It’s time for us to make a stand,
Before too long, it’ll be too late,
And the rogue will rule all of the land.
Rick Burnley, Aug. 2004
2:46 PM
THE BALLAD OF THE CHICKEN HAWK
This is the ballad of the chicken hawk.
Ruffle his feathers,
You can hear him squawk.
Tough as nails
He don’t take no guff.
Mess with him,
You’ll see a dude play rough.
He puffs up his chest
And there’s a gleam in his eye.
You can see that you’re dealin’
With a real bad guy.
He’ll track ‘em down,
Smoke ‘em out.
Get ‘em alive or dead.
Yeh, he’s the marshal of the whole wide world.
That’s what he thinks in his head.
With his Texas drawl,
And his homey y’all,
He’s the Duke all over again,
Who, by the way, never served a day.
He was making movies back then.
Where was the chicken hawk
When he had his chance?
Back home, clinging to his daddy’s pants.
He didn’t want to go to Vietnam.
Today he’s a lion,
But then he was a lamb.
Yeah, when he was called to duty,
He had other fish to fry,
Than to be lying in some rice paddy
Wondering if he’d die.
Funny thing about this chicken hawk,
He’s never been under the gun.
But he sure as hell is gung ho
To send your daughter or son.
Now that he’s in the saddle,
He can show us that he’s tough.
And it’ll be clear for all the world to see,
That he’s made of the ‘Right Stuff’.
He thinks he’s Alexander,
But he’s not quite so great.
If someone else will do the fighting,
He won’t hesitate,
To massacre the innocent,
With no respect for borders,
He’s the self appointed sheriff of the
New World Order.
This Hawk is a real menace,
To the people of all of the nations.
Most of them think he’s a maniac,
And most have lost their patience.
They’re really getting fed up,
And it’s rising in their gorge,
It seems that the whole world is
Out of step with George.
So this is the end of the ballad,
And I hope that it’s a hit,
About the chicken hawk,
Who’s still a chicken bleep.
And before he goes much further,
And becomes a worse pain in the tush,
Support the people’s efforts,
To impeach the sun of a Bush!
And in November,
Remember, we’ve got the handle
Let’s pull on it together,
And flush George the Vandal.
Rick Burnley
February 2003
2:47 PM
THE LAND OF THE FREE
The land of the free and the home of the brave,
Or the land of the fleece, and the home of the knave?
Sadly I think it’s becoming the latter,
Our fearless leader is as mad as a hatter.
We need to have a regime change,
And get rid of this draft dodger.
They shouldn’t fly the Stars and Stripes,
They should hoist the Jolly Roger.
‘Cause that should be the flag that they fly,
That’s what they’re all about,
Sacking our nation’s treasury,
And sharing with those with a snout.
Our rulers point to the people
For the troubles that we have,
And that’s what they always have said.
But there’s an old Chinese pearl of wisdom,
“The fish rots from the head”.
A lot of us are angry,
And it’s not just sour grapes.
We’re getting tired of living
On the planet of the apes.
With knuckledraggers leading us,
In their unholy undertakings.
Obscene power without wisdom,
And the whole earth is shaking.
Smaller nations tremble
When they see our flag unfurled,
Because they know they’re at the mercy
Of the bully of the world.
And mercy’s not our specialty,
We care less if they scream and holler.
Our national anthem’s Ka-ching, Ka-ching,
And our God is the almighty dollar.
Rick Burnley
August 2004
2:48 PM
THE NEW DARK AGES
In the recent Presidential election,
Which one man clearly won.
The high court crowned the loser,
Now he roams the world with his gun.
To the world it’s a frightening spectre,
An atomic Attila the Hun.
We could have had Gore or Nader,
But instead it’s Darth Vader,
It looks like Star Wars has begun.
Thousands of missiles hit Baghdad,
Each with a 500-pound load.
And many missed their targets,
Causing much of the city to explode.
We wiped out their water supply,
And blew up their electrical grids,
We claimed we just wanted to get Saddam,
But we killed a whole lot of kids.
Six million terrified residents
Struggled to stay alive,
While death’s lottery dealt out its prizes,
They were lucky to just survive.
Americans didn’t see the carnage,
After the missile hits,
But Arab TV showed it 24/7,
As civilians were blown to bits.
We can’t call these deaths accidental,
If we’re lobbing bombs into a crowd,
Terrorism’s the right name for it,
And it needs to be said out loud!
All over the Moslem world,
The people were filled with hate,
They saw what we’ve done to the innocents,
And America will have a new fate.
The Arab World’s against us now,
And it’s going to get much worse,
Many innocent people,
Will be riding home in a hearse.
They say that their job’s to protect us,
And to keep us safe from attack,
Instead we’re becoming targets,
With bulls eyes on our backs.
As we go goose stepping off to war,
From Mandela to the Pope,
The world’s peace-minded,
And those of common sense,
Are trying to not lose hope.
And now that we’ve invaded Iraq,
And indeed we started a war.
The peace of the world is under attack,
And Karma will even the score.
And now that America has started a war,
The worst of all war crimes,
History will condemn us,
And all will share hard times.
Half the population of Iraq,
Is under the age of eighteen.
America’s mass murder of children
Can only be called obscene!
And how many people will have to have died,
Before we see it as genocide.
Power without Wisdom is at the controls.
And no one can predict, “For whom the bell tolls.”
If the seeds that we plant are death and pain,
The dark ages will be upon us again.
Rick Burnley
February 2003
2:48 PM
THE VAMPIRES OF WAR
The vampires of war
Need the blood of their youth
To fulfill their unholy dreams.
They launch their wars
At the drop of a hat
And they never hear the screams.
War’s a game
That weak men play,
With the lives
Of the young and the poor.
They lie about their motives,
And we never learn the score.
If you believe the fabrications
That our government likes to weave,
I’ve got a bridge
I’ll sell you in Brooklyn.
Can you spell naive.
Most of the time
The reasons they give
Are really just a charade.
But that doesn’t matter
They lie and they flatter,
And then they have a parade.
And the vampires of war,
These pimps of cheap death
Who’d sell bombs to the devil himself,
Cry crocodile tears, belied by their leers
As their ammo flies off of the shelf.
Wild risks are taken,
And your kids are the chips that they use,
And they keep on uppin’ the ante.
They’re drunk on power, not booze.
These kids that we send,
They’re so easy to bend
They believe whatever they’re told
That God’s on our side,
We should fight for our pride,
And to do so is patriotic and bold.
The vampires of war sell fear as a product,
And if we buy it, it doesn’t come cheap.
War’s harvest is one of great suffering and pain,
And the winds of karma don’t sleep.
They squander the wealth of the nation,
And spill the blood of our young.
The losers of wars
Who have done the same crimes,
Were tried, convicted, and hung.
Hey America, where ya goin’?
The whole world wants to know.
We’re leaving our values behind in the dust,
While the bloodsuckers run the show.
As we go goose stepping
Toward the abyss,
We can give democracy a goodbye kiss.
‘Cause if we’re driven by greed and fear,
Our best times will be in the rearview mirror.
And here’s a question
For you vampires of war,
We’d like to know who you’re working for.
Don’t tell us you’re doing the work of God,
You took us to war when the devil gave the nod.
Rick Burnley
July 2004
2:49 PM
WHY DO THEY HATE US?
On September 11, 2001,
The day that the twin towers fell,
We lost our trust and our innocence,
And got a good taste of Hell.
The death of all those people
Filled us with grief and pain,
Who would do this to ones like us?
What would they have to gain?
We thought about those lives unlived,
The loved ones left behind,
Whoever would do such a thing to us,
Must be out of their minds.
Why do they hate us, and want us to die?
What have we done to them?
Well, pull up a chair, cause we’re on the air,
American History 101 will begin.
But not the version that we learned in school,
Where we’re always in the right,
Because much of the world has seen us be cruel,
When we’ve unfairly used our might.
Three thousand died when the towers came down,
A number large and surprising,
America’s tally since World War II,
Is ten million, and it’s rising.
His ‘story’ is what it’s called,
And that’s just what it is,
But their ‘story’ is never told,
Because it conflicts with his.
And the texts that we’ve been given,
Leave out an awful lot,
The wake of Old Glory is bloody and gory.
And we’ve killed many more than Pol Pot.
We’ve overthrown many governments,
And installed the leaders we choose,
It’s good for America’s profits,
And only the poor people lose.
We did this in Chile, Guatemala and Iran,
In each case getting rid of a real good man;
In Chile we put in Pinochet,
Who murdered dozens of students on a typical day.
In Guatemala we did the same,
We backed murderous generals,
And we share the blame
For the 100,000 Indians who lay dead in the ground,
After our coup, no justice was found.
In Iran they elected a President,
But he wasn’t America’s choice,
We installed the Shah and his Peacock Throne,
Which made the rich rejoice,
But after a while, he became so corrupt,
That the people had to rebel,
They put in the Ayatollah, and told America, “Go To Hell!”
We mined Nicaragua’s harbors,
And were condemned by the world’s court.
“We don’t accept your findings,”
The evidence doesn’t support,
That we could ever do anything wrong,
We’re the leaders of the Free World,
We define justice as it suits us,
Wherever our flag is unfurled.
We’re willing to kill many,
To get at just a few,
And to get our way
We’ll maim and we’ll slay,
There’s nothing that we won’t do.
We went after Noriega,
And called it a surgical strike,
Before we’d left town,
Two thousand were down,
Women and children alike.
And just like the playground bully,
We carefully pick our shots,
The small and the weak are our specialty,
The strong and well armed are not.
Nicaragua, Grenada, and Panama,
Vietnam was a little too tough,
We shouldn’t have been there in the first place,
We got out when the going got rough.
A half a million children in Iraq have been lost,
But our leaders assure us that it’s worth the cost.
I guess that depends on your point of view,
It’s what compassionate conservatives are willing to do.
We’ve got a dog in every fight,
There’s nowhere that’s not our concern,
To solve our problems we like to use might,
We don’t care if innocents burn.
Collateral damage is what it’s called,
It’s not our aim or intention,
We try to be as precise as we can,
But smart bombs are a recent invention.
In Cambodia, Nixon and his henchmen,
Started a secret war,
We murdered thousands of peasants,
And their land is still a scar.
Farmers in their fields were tending their crops,
When suddenly they were burned alive,
High tech death from America,
As they saw the warplanes dive.
Napalm is so efficient,
Scorched earth is what we like,
“Kill ‘m all and let God sort’m out,”
It’s our strategy when we strike.
Once again collateral damage,
We really meant them no harm.
They just happened to be in the wrong place,
They shouldn’t have been home on their farm.
Another thing we always do
Is leave behind toxic residue.
Tons of dioxin in Vietnam,
We poisoned the water and poisoned the land.
Now we’ve got a new menace,
A substance twice as heavy as lead,
Depleted uranium is what it’s called
And it leaves a wake of the dead,
And children riddled with cancer,
Their mother’s eyes filled with tears.
The gift that keeps on giving,
It’s half life is four billion years.
In Basra, where we dropped these shells,
Doctors shake their heads,
Forty percent will get cancer
Our legacy, the walking dead.
Why do they hate us and wish us ill?
What have we ever done?
Well, keep your dial tuned to American History 101.
The School of the Americas,
One of our nations jewels,
Has changed its name, but not its game,
And it seems not many are fooled.
There, foreign soldiers are taught to kill,
And the arts of interrogation,
When they’ve returned home
The evil they’ve done,
Has brought much shame to our nation.
The Maryknoll Nuns, who were raped and killed,
As well as the Jesuit priests,
Whose bodies were found.
Where they’d been mowed down,
Their list of crimes never cease.
They murdered thousands of peasants,
With their weapons relentless chatter,
And many of these atrocities,
Were carried out by the schools Alma Mater.
These terrorists in uniform,
Called the Army’s elite,
We supply them with the arms that they use,
Right to the boots on their feet.
And when they’re found responsible for some murderous attack,
We simply say that it’s not our fault,
And then we turn our backs.
In El Salvador’s civil war,
Where much of the land was scorched,
America showed its sympathies,
When we backed Captain Blowtorch.
The Whole world signed the No Genocide Bill,
But not the US of A.
The whole world signed the Anti-Land Mine Treaty,
But America said, “No Way!”
The whole world signed the Clean Air Act,
Known as The Kyoto Accord.
But we said “Nyet, it’s not a good bet,
It’d cost more than we can afford.
“Let’s prosecute war criminals,”
Say the rest of the civilized nations.
But America couldn’t go along,
We had serious reservations.
And why, you might ask, could we object,
To something so just and right?
Because some of our leaders, for things that they’ve done,
Could end up being arrested on sight.
To Hell with you, the rest of the world,
We get goose bumps when our flag’s unfurled.
Why should we care what you think or say,
The important thing’s that we get our own way!
“Why do they hate us?” Is the question we ask.
But we don’t want to hear their reply.
It’s not cause they envy the way that we live,
They’re tired of seeing friends die.
They’re tired of being exploited,
Forced to work for a few bucks a day,
While in America the rich gorge on excess,
And the world’s poor have to pay.
We proselytize about democracy,
To the rest of the world we preach,
What it stinks of is hypocrisy,
As we keep success from their reach.
Our economic policies,
Clearly expose our ideals,
It’s not what we say but what we do,
That shows others how we feel.
We like to tell the world,
That they should let freedom ring,
When it’s plain that our national anthem’s becoming,
Ka Ching, Ka Ching, Ka Ching.
If you’d like this senseless killing to stop,
You have to raise your voice,
And quit following mad men into their wars.
The whole world will rejoice.
Thank you for listening,
We’re glad we could share,
American History 101, is going off the air.
Rick Burnley
February 2003
2:51 PM
We were in Crawford yesterday having driven from Houston. The highlight of the day was meeting Rick Burnley. What a delightful man and so talented. I
was just mesmerized listening to his poems. I hope Rick will get a chance to speak a few of his poems at the potium at Camp II.
2:20 PM
Sunday, August 21, 2005
August 21, 2005
Krugman's Big Lie
By Richard Baehr
Paul Krugman, the former Enron advisor, New York Times op ed columnist, and presumably in his spare time, “educator” at Princeton, has made a habit of distortion, and half truths in his twice-weekly columns in the “paper of record.” Several website have sprung up to deconstruct each Krugman column,and others respond to specific errors, which are routine. But Krugman's column on Friday, August 19 marks a remarkable descent into outright dishonesty, a new low. What is most astounding is that the dishonesty involves Krugman's deliberately mistaken interpretration of a study in which his own paper, the New York Times, was a participant, and from which the Times ' reporters drew entirely different conclusions from those which Krugman trumpeted in his article.
Krugman's dishonesty involves the results of the Florida vote in the Presidential election in 2000. In his column titled: ”What They Did Last Fall”, Krugman says the following about the 2000 race:
“Two different news media consortiums reviewed Florida's ballots; both found that a full manual recount would have given the election to Mr. Gore”.
Quite simply, his statement is false. It is a lie.
Both major consortiums undertook to count all the disputed votes (the so-called “undercount”) in a variety of ways. This was because different counties had used different methods for counting or not counting hanging chads, or partially punched ballots during the Florida recount. The consortium wanted to see if using one methodology as opposed to another would have produced a different result. So they tested a liberal counting of all partially punched ballots statewide. They considered a tougher standard requiring ballots to be completely punched through to be counted. They considered standards in between these two. The heterogeneity in the post election counting methodologies used by different county officials, was the major reason the Supreme Court by a 7 to 2 majority vote (including votes by liberal justices Souter and Breyer) concluded that the process as established by the Florida Supreme Court (which provided no systematic methodology to be used in the statewide recount of the undervote) was badly flawed and broken, and would result in a denial of the equal protection of the law to voters in different counties in Florida.
When the two newspaper consortia concluded their surveys, their conclusions were identical: by almost every method selected to count the undervote, had all the ballots been counted statewide, Bush would have won, and not Gore. There were a few methodologies that would have produced a very narrow Gore victory, but the great majority of the different approaches produced a Bush win.
If the methodology that Gore advocates had pushed on the Florida Supreme Court been adopted, it would have resulted in a Bush victory. In no case, can one make the assertion that Krugman does, that the consortia simply concluded Gore would have won, absent a deliberate attempt to distort the results of the studies undertaken by the newspaper consortia.
If one goes back to the headlines in the newspapers that participated in the consortium studies, they all indicated that Bush would have won under almost all the counting methodologies. In light of this, the statement by Krugman
“that a full manual recount would have given the election to Gore”
is false. It is in fact a deliberate lie by a propagandist for the left, an individual not remotely concerned with truth, regardless of what his newspaper employer or university employer might hold out as a standard of behavior.
To read the Krugman column, one might think that there is a pattern in close elections, namely that Republicans steal them. Not surprisingly, Krugman does not mention the results in the New Mexico Presidential race in 2000,when Bush led the recount, until one county suddenly reversed their count to change the outcome. He also makes no mention of Wisconsin, where in two consecutive elections, Democratic campaign workers have been fingered for criminal behavior, including slashing the tires of GOP buses and vans intended to get voters to the polls on Election Day. Krugman likes to calls this sort of thing voter suppression - if aimed at African American voters.
As a result of same day voter registration in Wisconsin without the need for picture IDs, the state's Electoral College votes might have been stolen from Bush in two consecutive elections, given the very narrow margins in the official count in the state (Gore won by 5,000, and then Kerry by 10,000, out of well over 2 million votes cast in each cycle). And of course, Krugman does not mention Washington State, where Democratic Governor Christine Gregoire owes her election victory by 129 votes to a process by which King County officials (Democrats of course) continued to find more and more previously disqualified or uncounted (and unsecured) ballots until finally on the third statewide count, she took the lead, at which point the King County officials rested.
Nor does Krugman recall South Dakota, where Democratic lawyers in 2002 filled in absentee ballots for Native Americans on reservations and for nursing home residents enabling Senator Tim Johnson to win re-election by 500 votes. In fact, 2000 in Florida is the exception to the rule- that most close election results the last few years have been decided for the Democrats.
Krugman implies that Ohio was stolen in 2004, giving Bush his victory under the same clouded circumstances that enabled him to win in 2000. No analysis of the Ohio vote has concluded that Ohio was stolen, or that any oddities in the results that day denied victory to Kerry in the state. John Kerry, to his credit, conceded the morning after the election. Far left Michigan Congressman John Conyers has pursued a campaign charging theft in Ohio ever since, but has produced no evidence that Bush's 119,000 vote margin in the state would not have withstood any challenges. Lines were longer in some Democratic precincts than in some Republican precincts. in the state. And it rained hard that day (presumably after some strategically located cloud seeding by Karl Rove's agents), and not all voters could find room indoors at polling stations to stay dry while they waited to vote.
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These factors, to Krugman, are evidence of suppression of the vote. The fact that each Ohio polling place had equal numbers of GOP and Democratic poll watchers in 2004 and that the alleged problems with long waits to vote occurred in counties or cities in which Democratic officials controlled the pre-vote process (perhaps they screwed things up for their preferred candidate by requesting fewer voting machines than they needed), escapes Krugman. For the Princeton professor, this is all part of an illegal attempt to maintain power by a group that sprang a coup d'etat in 2000 to first get elected.
When one is consumed by an irrational hatred, one's critical faculties and discipline can be lost. How else to explain churning out column after column full of half truths, and outright distortions. When New York Times Public Editor Daniel Okrent left his position at the paper, he lashed out at Krugman's basic dishonesty. At least for Okrent, opinion pieces need to be grounded in fact.
Over a year ago, as the 2004 Presidential race was heating up, I wrote a lengthy article on the 2000 Florida election controversy . My conclusion was that if everybody who showed up to vote had filled out their ballots as they intended, it is certainly possible that Gore would have won. But when you vote for Pat Buchanan, and not Al Gore in Palm Beach County, perhaps as a result of a ballot that might have been confusing (but was designed by a Democratic county official to make it easier for older residents to navigate), your vote will not and should not be counted for Al Gore. When you fill out a ballot and punch out two candidates for President and not one, your intention no longer matters. You will not and should not have your vote counted for Al Gore (or anybody else).
There are plenty of suspicions from both sides to go around about the 2000 race in Florida. This includes suspicions that some Democratic Party officials helped Al Gore in Palm Beach County and perhaps elsewhere, by conspiring to nullify votes that had been cast for Bush. The accusation is that before some of the ballots were delivered to county officials for the official recount, Democratic partisans quickly punched through Gore's box on some of the ballots. If a ballot had been cast for Bush, this would disqualify that ballot vote with its two punches. If the vote had been for Gore , this would just have insured that the ballot was fully punched through for Gore. The number of double votes in Palm Beach county that contained both Gore and Bush is quite high by comparison to other counties. That mistake, if accidental, would not have occurred because of confusion about distinguishing the Gore box from the Buchanan box on the famous butterfly ballot.
Krugman, in his latest screed, recommends a book by a reporter for a British paper that concludes that Al Gore won in 2000. Krugman doesn't mention John Fund's recent book on stolen elections that more broadly considers our election problems, with less presumptuousness about the results of any specific closely contested race. Undoubtedly, there is evidence of vote fraud in some locales, and possibly vote suppression in others. Someone who wanted to clean up the system would look for ways of ensuring that qualified voters got to vote, and voters who had no right to vote, did not. But that is not what interests Krugman. His goal is simply to win, and to delegitimize Republicans when they win, which has been happening more often of late, much to his dismay.
Krugman charges that in Florida in 2000, the state's Republican Party apparatus denied the right to vote to some citizens by falsely accusing them of being felons (in Florida, felons are not allowed to vote). Careful studies of the Florida vote have suggested that the bigger problem that year was that all felons were not properly identified, and some wound up voting, rather than legitimate potential voters having their franchise denied by being falsely labeled as felons.
For Krugman and the left, expanding access is the goal, so that they want the votes of illegal aliens and non-citizens, dead people, and unregistered voters, or voters casting multiple votes, as well as absentee votes of nursing home residents or American Indians cast by campaign workers. These are are all perfectly OK. A problem here or there should be nobody's concern, if ballot access is expanded. These “votes” after all, tend to be heavily Democratic, which makes them sacred.
It is to be expected that when the presidency is decided by 537 votes, that the losing side is bitter, and will contend that the election was stolen from them. The Gore people took to the courts in every way imaginable to overturn the Florida result. Despite consistent defeats in the courts at the county or lower court level, they found a friend in the Florida Supreme Court, a highly partisan group, containing all but one member appointed by former Democrat governors. The Florida Supreme Court overruled lower courts twice - each time pushing more recounts, with a goal, presumably of keeping the race alive until Gore finally pulled ahead. The sad fact for Gore partisans, like Krugman, is that Gore never led in Florida. Not on election night, not after the first machine recount, not after any County recounts of the undervote, not after military votes were added, and not even at the time the full haphazard statewide recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court was suspended.
The leftist clique that still cries about the stolen election of 2000 thinks that America had to move on quickly after the Clinton sex scandals (censure, not impeach). But they have not followed their own advice on how to deal with that controversy when it comes to the the Florida vote in 2000.
The best evidence we have is that Bush won Florida narrowly in 2000, very narrowly of course. But this is simply unacceptable to Bush haters. They can not let go. Much of the poisonous nature of the subsequent anti Bush rhetoric the last five years stems from the left's belief in the illegitimacy of his Presidency due to the 2000 race. Krugman is exhibit one for this failure to move on.
You win some and you lose some in politics. But when your leading pundits and voices are losers like Krugman, your party is not likely to make it to the promised land anytime soon.
Addendum:
Mickey Kaus has argued that if one includes the overvote (double votes or a vote with additional marking that reviewers for the newspaper consortia believed indicated a preference for one candidate or the other), that Gore would have won in some scenarios. Hence, he says Krugman is technically correct, to have argued that with “a full manual recount” Gore would have won according to the two consortium surveys.
I beg to differ. The consortia believed they were carrying out a full manual recount under every scenario they tested. Full to the Florida Supreme Court meant all the counties, not just the four counties Gore requested for manual recounts: Volusia, Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach. The Florida Supreme Court had ordered a full manual recount of the undervote only. If Judge Lewis, the Court's agent, had considered and then accepted overvotes as well as undervotes, as Kaus suggests was possible, this would undoubtedly have led to another challenge taken to the Florida Supreme Court if the statewide result were different with undervotes only (what had been ordered), than with undervotes and overvotes both counted. The Florida Supreme Court decision to order a statewide recount of all undervotes had been a 4 to 3 decision. If that recount had shown Bush won, but Gore winning with overvotes included (which they had not ordered), it is not certain they would have ruled for Gore this time around.
In any case, since a full statewide manual recount was done in every scenario undertaken by the two consortia, the only thing that differed among the scenarios were the rules for counting disputed ballots. In some scenarios, a loose standard was used for the undervote. In others, a tough standard was used. In those scenarios considering only the undervote, the standard was to reject all the overvotes. The loosest standards of all were those that considered the overvote and also applied a loose standard in counting the undervote. In a few of these scenarios Gore won. But in most of the scenarios tested (with and without the overvote) Bush won . So Krugman is wrong, and worse, being deliberately misleading to simply say Gore won with a full recount.
Kaus is too decent, I think, trying to salvage Krugman's conclusion on semantic grounds. As pointed out above, I think even by gaming the meaning of full recount, Krugman fails.
It is also not at all clear that even had Gore won a recount including overvotes, that he would have then been elected president. As mentioned above, if the final state vote had included the overvote, and the result were different than with just the undervote considered (as might have happened), there would have been one more appeal to the Florida Supreme Court. By the time that process was concluded, Florida might not have been able to select electors by the last date for doing so. The Florida legislature, Republican dominated, was ready to step in and select the Bush electors, disgusted as they were with the shenanigans of the Florida Supreme Court (continually changing the state's rules to keep the count going, presumably until Gore took the lead). Assuming the legislature and or the Florida Supreme Court failed to pick a slate of Electors in time, then no candidate would have had a majority of Electoral College votes at the time the Congress convened to count the Electoral College votes. By the rules established by the 12th Amendment to the US Constitution, the US House would have then elected Bush President, voting by state delegation, one vote per state, since Republicans held a majority of state delegations. Oddly enough, the US Senate would have likely elected Joe Lieberman Vice President, since the Senate gets to select the Vice President if no candidate for Vice President has achieved a majority of the Electoral College votes. After the 2000 elections, the Senate was split 50-50, and Al Gore, as sitting Vice President could have cast the deciding vote for Lieberman!
But things could have gotten even more heated (and ugly), had the Florida Supreme Court in the end selected the Gore electors. The US House might have rejected this slate, instead counting the alternate Bush electors selected by the Florida legislature. Imagine if al Qaeda had struck the US during this interregnum, just 8 or 9 months earlier than they did? Would President Clinton have declared martial law, suspended the Constitution and continued as President?
In restrospect, the US Supreme Court did the country a big favor by making the decision they did, when they did. Their 7 to 2 vote throwing out the Florida Supreme Court recount scheme was a good and necessary decision. The Florida Supreme Court had never laid out any consistent standard by which to determine which undervotes should be accepted. Different standards had been used in different counties, effectively denying the equal protection of the law to all residents of the state. The Court's appointed administrator was already going far afield from the Court's instructions, and was considering a count of overvotes. Even liberal Justices Breyer and Souter could spot this turkey.
7:06 PM
Cindy Sheehan's son Casey died in Sadr City last year, and that fact is supposed to put her beyond reproach. For as the New York Times' Maureen Dowd informed us: ''The moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute."
Really? Well, what about those other parents who've buried children killed in Iraq? There are, sadly, hundreds of them: They honor their loved ones' service to the nation, and so they don't make the news. There's one Cindy Sheehan, and she's on TV 'round the clock. Because, if you're as heavily invested as Dowd in the notion that those "killed in Iraq" are "children," then Sheehan's status as grieving matriarch is a bonanza.
They're not children in Iraq; they're grown-ups who made their own decision to join the military. That seems to be difficult for the left to grasp. Ever since America's all-adult, all-volunteer army went into Iraq, the anti-war crowd have made a sustained effort to characterize them as "children." If a 13-year-old wants to have an abortion, that's her decision and her parents shouldn't get a look-in. If a 21-year-old wants to drop to the broadloom in Bill Clinton's Oval Office, she's a grown woman and free to do what she wants. But, if a 22- or 25- or 37-year-old is serving his country overseas, he's a wee "child" who isn't really old enough to know what he's doing.
I get many e-mails from soldiers in Iraq, and they sound a lot more grown-up than most Ivy League professors and certainly than Maureen Dowd, who writes like she's auditioning for a minor supporting role in ''Sex And The City.''
The infantilization of the military promoted by the left is deeply insulting to America's warriors but it suits the anti-war crowd's purposes. It enables them to drone ceaselessly that "of course" they "support our troops," because they want to stop these poor confused moppets from being exploited by the Bush war machine.
I resisted writing about "Mother Sheehan" (as one leftie has proposed designating her), as it seemed obvious that she was at best a little unhinged by grief and at worst mentally ill. It's one thing to mourn a son's death and even to question the cause for which he died, but quite another to roar that he was "murdered by the Bush crime family."
Also: "You tell me the truth. You tell me that my son died for oil. You tell me that my son died to make your friends rich. You tell me my son died to spread the cancer of Pax Americana . . . You get America out of Iraq, you get Israel out of Palestine."
And how about this? "America has been killing people on this continent since it was started. This country is not worth dying for." That was part of her warm-up act for a speech by Lynne Stewart, the "activist" lawyer convicted of conspiracy for aiding the terrorists convicted of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
You can see why Lynne's grateful to Sheehan. But why is Elizabeth Edwards sending out imploring letters headlined "Support Cindy Sheehan's Right To Be Heard"? The politics of this isn't difficult: The more Cindy Sheehan is heard the more obvious it is she's thrown her lot in with kooks most Americans would give a wide berth to.
Don't take my word for it, ask her family. Casey Sheehan's grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins put out the following statement:
"The Sheehan Family lost our beloved Casey in the Iraq War and we have been silently, respectfully grieving. We do not agree with the political motivations and publicity tactics of Cindy Sheehan. She now appears to be promoting her own personal agenda and notoriety at the expense of her son's good name and reputation. The rest of the Sheehan Family supports the troops, our country, and our President, silently, with prayer and respect."
Ah, well, they're not immediate family, so they lack Cindy's "moral authority." But how about Casey's father, Pat Sheehan? Last Friday, in Solano County Court, Casey's father Pat Sheehan filed for divorce. As the New York Times explained Cindy's "separation," "Although she and her estranged husband are both Democrats, she said she is more liberal than he is, and now, more radicalized."
Toppling Saddam and the Taliban (Mrs. Sheehan opposes U.S. intervention in Afghanistan, too), destroying al-Qaida's training camps and helping 50 million Muslims on the first steps to free societies aren't worth the death of a single soldier. But Cindy Sheehan's hatred of Bush is worth the death of her marriage. Watching her and her advanced case of Bush Derangement Syndrome on TV, I feel the way I felt about that mentally impaired Aussie concert pianist they got to play at the Oscars a few years.
Yet in the wreckage of Pat and Cindy Sheehan's marriage there is surely a lesson for the Democratic Party. As Cindy says, they're both Democrats, but she's "more liberal" and "more radicalized." There are a lot of less liberal and less radicalized Dems out there: They're soft-left-ish on health care and the environment and education and so forth; many have doubts about the war, but they love their country, they have family in the military, and they don't believe in dishonoring American soldiers to make a political point. The problem for the Democratic Party is that the Cindys are now the loudest voice: Michael Moore, Howard Dean, Moveon.org, and Air America, the flailing liberal radio network distracting attention from its own financial scandals by flying down its afternoon host Randi Rhodes to do her show live from Camp Casey. The last time I heard Miss Rhodes she was urging soldiers called up for Iraq to refuse to go -- i.e., to desert.
On unwatched Sunday talk shows, you can still stumble across the occasional sane, responsible Dem. But, in the absence of any serious intellectual attempt to confront their long-term decline, all the energy on the left is with the fringe. The Democratic Party is a coalition of Pat Sheehans and Cindy Sheehans, and the noisier the Cindys get the more estranged the Pats are likely to feel.
Sorry about that, but, if Mrs. Sheehan can insist her son's corpse be the determining factor in American policy on Iraq, I don't see why her marriage can't be a metaphor for the state of the Democratic Party.
Casey Sheehan was a 21-year old man when he enlisted in 2000. He re-enlisted for a second tour, and he died after volunteering for a rescue mission in Sadr City. Mrs. Sheehan says she wishes she'd driven him to Canada, though that's not what he would have wished, and it was his decision.
His mother has now left Crawford, officially because her mother has had a stroke, but promising to return. I doubt she will. Perhaps deep down she understands she's a woman whose grief curdled into a narcissistic rage, and most Americans will not follow where she's gone -- to the wilder shores of anti-Bush, anti-war, anti-Iraq, anti-Afghanistan, anti-Israel, anti-American paranoia. Casey Sheehan's service was not the act of a child. A shame you can't say the same about his mom's new friends.
7:27 PM
I met Rick Burnley yesterday at Camp Casey II. I offered him my flamenco guitar, which had attracted his attention. He played talking blues as he recited "It's not the way of Jesus". Then he recited the rest of these poems. What a talented guy!
Then I played and sang "Simple Song of Freedom" by Bobby Darin with new lyrics I wrote. We had quite a good time entertaining the good folks there in the 100 degree heat.
3:46 PM
About these freepers (Anonymous)---
Can't you purge these liars' material from this blog?
3:47 PM
Hi, I just heard Rick Burnley sing his song Vampires of War,
These thoughts have been floating around in my head as well as others who contemplate the present stse of affairs in our world.
Hail, Hail, the bard and his truth that gives hope to our hearts of men and women !
By the way where are the others we knew and loved in the 60s, I guesss its some one elses turn like, Rick Burnley. To carry the torch. Thank you for printing his work, we need it!
6:33 AM
Burnley spotting:
I bumped into Mr. Burnley at union square in Manhattan last night. He gave an impromptu reading of GEORGIE PORGIE as a few people gathered; concerned at the loss of 2000 soldiers.
Then he was off to see Al Franken who was reading at the Barnes & Noble. Rick is a passionate man and I wish we had more like him.
11:07 AM
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