SEPTEMBER 2001
Sept 2: Kerry promises to filibuster Alaska drilling
At long last the Democrats muster
The courage to say, "filibuster;"
It may not succeed
But the Democrats need
To show they can fight, not just bluster.
Sept 2: Term limit pledge will haunt Wellstone
Paul Wellstone's the latest to rue
A self-imposed limit to two
Terms in the Senate;
He seemed to have meant it
But now sees that there's still much to do.
Sept 2: Boy killed in Virginia shark attack
For some reason, sharks have been forming
A habit of suddenly swarming
In unusual niches
Like Atlantic beaches:
A pre-symptom of global warming?
Sept 4: Hewlett-Packard to buy Compaq
H-P's acquisition of Compaq
May herald their imminent comeback,
Or else their death knell;
It's too early to tell,
Although Wall Street thinks they're on the wrong track.
Sept 4: Reno to run for Florida governor
The GOP drools prematurely;
They should batten down hatches securely --
They'll shout, "Waco!" "Elian!"
For the Rush Limbaugh hellions
While Dems' vengeance rolls cleanly and purely.
Sept 4: Gramm, R-Texas, announces retirement in 2002
Gramm said, as he said he'll retire,
"There's naught left to which to aspire;
My constituents sent
Me to wreck guv'ment;
The tax cut achieved that desire."
Sept 4: Bush stops just short of endorsing capital-gains tax cut
The Gops want to cut capital-gains
To give their friends what little remains
Of the Federal budget;
But, you know that they'll fudge it
When time comes to pass out the blame.
Sept 5: Presidente Fox demanding immigration deal by end of year
Bush's tax cut put him in a box
Where he's bruised by political shocks;
His need for good news
Makes it hard to refuse
The terms of Senor "Crazy-Like-A" Fox!
Sept 6: U.S. decides not to demand Microsoft breakup
Bill Gates might think that he's free
To act anticompetitively,
But I think, Bill, we'll see you
In court in the E.U.
Where they take the law seriously.
Sept 7: Serena, Venus matched for U.S. Open title
Said Venus to sister Serena,
"You'll be sad when we hit the Arena;
You'll be wishin' and hopin'
By the end of the Open
That you'd grown up to be ballerina."
Serena responded to Venus:
"I hate to make bad blood between us,
But the papers all say
I'll get eight-fifty-K
If your next meal drips intravenous."
Sept 9: "60 Minutes" implicates Kissinger in 1970 Chilean coup plot
Apparently Henry the K
In his real-politikal way
Tried to hasten the end
Of Salvador Allende
On behalf of the thug Pinochet.
Sept 9: Jeffords: Senate GOP still immoderate
Like Bourbon oligarchs there in France
The Gop keeps its immoderate stance;
Naught learned, naught forgotten
With devotion besotten
To its States-Rights revolution'ry plans.
Sept 9: Gramm getting the bum's rush from GOP
The Gop brass is apparently frantic
To switch Gramm with a Gopper Hispanic;
Desp'rate times, desp'rate medicine;
Gramm will be jettisoned --
Not all the sharks plague the Atlantic.
Sept 10: Starbucks denies spiking Tazo Chai with ephedrine
Starbucks's rep for superior excellence
As purveyor of caffeine-based stimulants
Makes one doubt that they'd try
To enhance Tazo Chai
Except as mind-bending experience.
Sept 10: NYT: Lott warming toward FICA tax cut
If you surfed through the "liberal" Times,
You may have paused at the headline:
"Lott weighs payroll tax cut,"
It's true enough, yes, but . . .
Only if with cap-gains cut combined.
The headline is not strictly false,
But the spin's what the reader recalls:
As if Mr. Lott
Had suddenly got
A soft spot for underpaid proles.
The article's text, though, makes clear
That no matter how nice it appears
Lott's newfound compassion
Is a holding action
'Til a shift to pro-biz atmosphere.
So the lesson, dear readers of mine,
Is you must read between all the lines
You can't trust the news
To tell the whole truth --
Not even the "liberal" Times.
In Memoriam
September Eleventh Massacre Victims
Sept 14: Falwell blames gays, ACLU, liberals for abetting WTC attack
When it seemed, some day, things would be all well
There entered, stage Right, Jerry Falwell;
He seeks to divide us
With slander invid'ious
'Cause when united, his screed just won't sell well.
Sept 15: Bush vows to "smoke [terrorists] out of their holes"
Bush vowed, with an eye on the polls
To smoke terrorists out of their holes --
That's all well and good
And I wish that he would;
But I hope he has more precise goals.
The "holes" call to mind Vietnam
Where we dropped tons and tons of big bombs
But 'cause we never knew
What we wanted to do
At the end, it was we who succumbed.
As we march in Afghanistan's plains
One hopes that in D.C., the brains
Can appoint a commission
To draft statement of mission
Beyond, "Git bin Laden's remains!"
Sept 16: Bush vows to "rid the world of evil-doers"
To his Yale days Bush couldn't be truer
As he vows to kill off "evil-doers;"
He read Superman comics
But not economics
And gave lots of his money to brewers.
Sept 17: Bush: bin Laden is "Wanted: Dead or Alive"
What we need is a Lincoln or Churchill
Speaking poetry sans cues or rehearsal;
Instead we get prose
From old T.V. shows
As we numbly wait for the commercial.
Sept 18: Bush: War on terrorism is a "crusade"
As Bush calls for his broadsword and mail
For "crusade" on which he'll set sail
He should pause and reflect
On historical fact --
In the past, Crusades usually failed.
Sept 18: Hybrid Internet worm released precisely one week after WTC massacre
A new worm on the Web's being spread;
It hybrids SirCam and Code Red.
And to compound the crime
Is the way it was timed
To mock all our terrorist dead.
Sept 19: Giuliani hailed worldwide as the Man of the Moment
For the past week, Hizzonor the Mayor
Has been Gotham's Most Valuable Player;
'Though some thought he was through
He may be starting anew;
To the White House as if by conveyor.
Sept 20: In crisis, "God Bless America" is the anthem of choice
Whether alto, soprano or tenor
They can't sing "The Star-Spangled Banner;"
So to calm fears hysterical
It's "God Bless America,"
Being sung from Juneau to Atlanta.
Sept 20: Jane's: Israelis think it was Saddam, not bin-Laden
The Israelis doubt it was bin-Laden
Of this plot who's the man at the bottom
Israel's Aman*
Sees the prints of Saddam
An bad guy we'd somehow forgotten.
* military intelligence
Sept 21: Sen. Inhofe (R-Okla) attaches ANWR drilling measure to defense bill
As predicted here not long ago,
The GOP's rarin' to go --
Under cover of crisis
They devise devices
To pay off some old quid pro quos.
Sept 23: Michael Jordan's return announcement due Monday
So, MJ returns to the court
In a desp'rate attempt to support
The whole NBA
Which declined on the day
He tried to abandon the sport.
Sept 23: Post: Pat Robertson in bed with Liberian despot in "Freedom Gold" venture
"The ACLU and the gays
Have brought down God's wrath on our ways;
But in His ways mysterious
He thinks the Liberians'
Privations by gold-lust outweighed."
Sept 23: bin-Laden may be fall guy for Saddam
As we shoot high-tech stuff at the Afghans
Wasting strength on one wasteland and one man
We hope against hope
It's not "rope-a-dope"
Where we naively follow Saddam's plan.
Or maybe that's all just a feint;
That all of our Afghan war-paint
Conceals our plan
Of removing Saddam
Then applying diplomatic restraint.
Sept 24: Senator Thompson (R-Tenn) to seek reelection
Fred Thompson, R of Tennessee,
Says, "It's all become quite plain to me,
With bombs, bio-terror
It would be an error
Not to bunker down with VIPs."
Sept 24: Giuliani: Mayor for life? Prez in '04?
Giuliani just still isn't saying
If he's bowing out, or if he's staying;
He says "Run, run, Rudolph"
Is more than he'd chew off
But a deeper game he might be playing.
Sept 24: Bush freezing terrorist assets
At last Georgie's freezing the assets
Of terrorist leaders and brass hats;
But I think it's a given
By noon, 9/11
Their cash was all safe from our dragnets.
Sept 25: Not even Congressional GOP likes Ashcroft's wish list
To the Right and the Left it appears
Ashcroft's trying to use our new fears
To deny the Great Writ*
Whene'er he sees fit
And tap phone lines for up to a year.
*habeas corpus -- Under the bill, immigrants could be "detained"
indefinitely without being charged with anything and without
the right to go before a judge.
Sept 25: Wall Street listless after free fall, drop in consumer confidence
The Dow Jones's rapid deflation
Was good for the health of the nation
By providing a crucial
Block against Social
Security privatization.
Sept 26: Bush approval polls breaking records
George the Lesser is high on a roll
Basking in stratospherical polls;
But the follow-up data
Attributes these strata
To advisers in supporting roles.
The polls say the public is for
A long, drawn out Afghan ground war
But 'though casualties
Are okay, overseas
Polls don't ask about deaths on our shores.
Sept 26: Armey: Business bailouts, "Yesss!;" Unemployment benefits, "Noooo!"
The Congress saluted and fell out
And voted the airliners' bailout
But when asked if they'd favor
A bone thrown to labor
They said, "Be patriotic and chill out."
Sept 26: In his oil-baron days, Bush was backed by bin-Laden's brother
It seems Dubya's venture, "Arbusto"
Drew in foreign cash with great gusto;
Salim bin-Laden
Was one such, besotten
With dry holes and stirring up dust-o.
On first glance, this isn't exciting:
A rich guy found venture inviting;
But what does it mean
That Bush didn't come clean
And tell us -- Just what is he hiding?
Sept 26: MSNBC.com self-censors article on GOP censorship of Ashcroft hearings
When John Ashcroft spoke up for his big plan
The whole thing was carried on C-SPAN;
But the Demos' rebuttal
Was consciously scuttled
When the Goppers evicted TV cams.
So, if you watched the thing on the TV
All you were permitted to see
Was the governing party
Speaking ex parte
As if there'd been unanimity.
MSNBC told the whole story
But for reasons conspiratory
Later took out the reference
To the Gop's interference
And pretended that all's hunky-dory.
The Framers had thought that the press
Would protect us from gov'ment excess;
But they didn't foresee
That the industry
Would assist when the news was suppressed.
Sept 26: Fleischer reprimands Bill Maher for "cowardly" remark*
When we bombed Kosovo in '9-9
Right-wingers thought it was just fine
To call it, in writing**
"Cowardly" fighting
But to Bush, it's a traitorous sign.
* "We have been the cowards, lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000
miles away. That's cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits
the building, say what you want about it, it's not cowardly."
Sept 27: Taliban tells bin-Laden to leave Afghanistan
Of a sudden, Osama bin-Laden
Is told he's persona non grata;
He'll find it's no fun
To spend life on the run
As the huntee in worldwide fatwa.
Sept 27: Bush administration plans to stiff farmers
George Bush has a memory short
If this is the farmers' reward;
The Bush states, all rural
And agricul-tural
Are now being shorn of support.
Sept 27: Unnamed White House staffers try to dissuade NBC from Clinton interview
As Clinton sat down with Tom Brokaw
To discuss events global and local
The telephone rang --
One of the Bush Gang
Said the interview would be a faux pas.
We know LBJ, JFK
Tried to manage the news in this way;
But to heed such constraints
Now strikes us as quaint
No one tells our news anchors what to say.
Sept 27: White House admits Fleischer lied about danger to Air Force 1 on 9-11
Folks were asking on September 12th
"Was Bush hiding away for his health?"
Fleischer said they'd been told
By source who knew secret codes,
Air Force One was a target of stealth.
Now the White House admits it's not true;
Bush just did what he thought he should do --
'Cause a leaderless nation
Is beyond contemplation,
He was hidden without further ado.
Why did Ari embellish his tale
With the talk of security failed?
I think he was settin'
A trap for Bill Clinton
By implying ol' Bill'd been blackmailed.
Sept 28: New Microsoft judge orders 24/7 settlement negotiations
The judge thinks this long, drawn-out battle
Is well overdue to be settled;
Judge Kollar-Kotelly
Is no Nervous Nellie
But she'll soon have a test of her mettle.
Sept 30: Ann Coulter: Deport all A-rabs
From the mastadon Right comes Ann Coulter
With righteousness straight from the shoulder;
"Avoiding the bombs
Of zealots Islam-
ic starts with round-ups by native-born soldiers."
Sept 30: Post: Hijack pilots were conspiracy's core, others were latecomers
The Post says of the terrorist's plot
Conspiracy vast it was not;
A relative few
Figured out what to do,
Enlisting the rest on the spot.
This makes for scenario scary
And ten times as hard to be wary;
While conspiracy vast
Is not often held fast
A small one is much the contrary.
Sept 30: Judicial Watch calls on Bush Sr. to leave Carlyle Group
The shadowy Carlyle Group
Works connections to score business coups
Bush, Baker, Carlucci
Play the hootchy-kootchy
With bin-Ladens and other such troupes.
Moreover, through shrewd acquisitions
The Carlyles are well-positioned
To reap windfalls inhering
In war-profiteering
As the U.S. restocks with munitions.
Bush, Senior, will get his fair share
Of which Junior can't be unaware;
In due course he and siblings
Will be quietly nibbling
On profits of which they're the heirs.
This means that the men that we entrust
To lead, have a conflict of interest;
Bushes, father and son
Want the war to go on
So their net worth continues its upthrust.
Sept 30: Wired: Does Osama have a "suitcase nuke?"
The Russkies, to augment our nightmares
Tell us that 'though they've looked everywhere
They're missing a few
Small suitcase nukes;
Just right for the new kind of warfare.