In The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, it is expressed thusly:

Now the New Year reviving old Desires.
The thoughtful Soul to Solitude retires,
Where the White Hand Of Moses on the Bough
Puts out, and Jesus from the Ground suspires.

Omar Khayyam could not even imagine the prosaic challenges confronting his 21st century Persian descendants, in a controversial agreement with a powerful nation in a part of the world unknown until four centuries after his death, along with nations of his world, but quite remote from his era. Iran has suspended its nuclear program, pending finalization of the agreement.

President Obama's plodding efforts of cooperative allied air support and U.S. ground assistance is eliciting success with the Iraqi army, to the point where...

Al Baghdadi has surfaced to ensure his prospective and actual minions that, despite it all, the nihilistic bloodletting of savagery and butchery will prevail.

Paul Ryan the new, young Republican Leader of the House of Representatives, has begun a practice that will continue to draw fire from his own party: The seeking of bipartisan cooperation to pass legislation that is beneficial to the nation at large.

Donald Trump continues his unimagined success in utilizing the underside of the U.S. psyche to feed his insatiable ego, thereby contributing to the deserved destruction of the Republican Party.

Hillary Clinton, after a tour-de-force, defensive appearance before a congressional committee intending to destroy her, skillfully is being guided through the dark alleys of manipulation toward the Democratic nomination for the presidency by Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the single-minded Chair of the Democratic National Committee.

Meanwhile Bernie Sanders continues his dark horse campaign.

ISIS, stuck in the sands of the Middle East, sans air force, navy or proper army, has convinced the vulnerable ("politically" or otherwise) amongst us that ISIS is as powerful as Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, combined!

Local civilian policing organizations, concomitant with their correspondent judiciaries, in many parts of the country, have been exposed as practitioners of carryover sentiments from our sordid past of disequilibrium.

Europe is learning that the superfice of erasing borders and comingling coin do not resolve the centuries of exploitation of lesser-evolved cultures throughout the world.

China apparently is not noticing that, while it is attempting to manufacture yet more territory in mid-ocean, on the huge, dry chunk of the planet it already controls, unoccupied skyscrapers are all socked in by a contaminated air environment.

Vladimir Putin, after overplaying his hand and strong arm in Ukraine, is attempting to salvage Russia's holdings in Syria by further confusing the impossible complexity of that besieged country.

The whole world is learning that all of the intricate safeguards developed over the centuries to protect national secrets have all been undone in this cyber age. Since we are now learning everything about each other, might this presage a new era of international peace? Nah! For one brief moment of transition, we can at least pretend to have a,

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

***** ***** *****

As hooded Old Year shuts the door,

The new, diapered babe takes the floor.

"I'll see ya, old man,

"Catch me, if you can!"

"Yeah, right; just don't slip on the gore!"

The U.S. has always been wishy-washy when it comes to war. There was a time when newspapers unduly influenced foreign policy. *"Remember the Maine," they ballyhooed when a U.S. warship mysteriously blew up in Cuba's San Juan Harbor. In heeding that cry for revenge, we drove the Spanish out of the Caribbean and took possession of Puerto Rico. That was a major triumph for, "Yellow Journalism."

Now, the digital descendants of those lithographic warmongers are again screaming, "The Barbarians are at the gates!" "No- Drama Obama" calmly attempts to explain to them:

"You are quite right; they are at the gates. Haven't you noticed that I have been restraining them these so many...? Actually, they are on the inside of the gates! The fact that they have lobbed a few fireballs over the wall is inconsequential. They are still behind the gates."

We Americans are not used to this type of low-key response to great tragedy. If, at the slightest tilt to our national sense of well-being, the commander-in-chief immediately does not threaten to bring down the full might of the U.S. upon the heads of the perceived offenders, we are not comforted. It matters not if, in the process, without thoughtful calculation of the potential risks, he offers up to the gods of war no limit of sacrifices from our national treasury and blood banks.

In this particular case, we also fail to recognize the fact that the recent violence in France is merely a sub-set of the Islamic State's (ISIS/ISIL/Daish) projection. Daish is merely utilizing France and Belgium's already, self-radicalized force of pissed-off citizenry. They are the long-abused and disdained Arabic Muslims who have the "will" – and were only waiting for the "means" – now supplied by an all-too-willing Daish!

Even Papa Bush now publicly deplores the unsavory elements that his son allowed to drag us into the now very sticky maelstrom that the Middle East has become. Was that not lesson enough? Are we that daft? Does that reminder not suffice -- dashing headlong, willy-nilly, into an inscrutable fray, fraught with all sorts of the unseen and unknown? Apparently not; according to the digital "Yellow Journalism" -- and a few political pop-offs from the Right and Left – unless we see, feel and hear fire and brimstone emanating from the halls of the Executive Mansion, then, we are being under-served.

Thanks be to "No-drama Obama," the new cry is: "Remember the 'Pain'!"

***** ***** *****

The church bells all rang with alarm.

We rushed out and asked, "What's the harm?"

"The wolf's here again."

"No, he's in the pen,"

Said Farmer Brown, with sneaky charm.

Video of Full speech:

Is it proper to choose a president of the United States based upon the equal-opportunity concept? You bet it is!

What brought about the creation of equal-opportunity statutes? That's easy – a lack of sincerity and commitment with regard to our centuries-old, flag-waving with regard to America's being a land of liberty, equality and justice. Despite the beautiful poetry of the Declaration of Independence, after the British Colonies became states, nothing changed on the human-equality scale, to wit:

• White men without property were kept out of the franchise for various periods of time.

• Women would have to wait 230 years.

• It took a bloody, internecine brawl to bring about the 15th amendment, which granted the franchise to former male chattel.

• Although Native Americans were granted citizenship in 1924, it was not until 1961 that they were able to vote in all states.

Of course, refusal of the right to vote was only one of the affronts the Founders perpetrated against their lessers. American history is replete with social, sexual and racial outrages.

When we finally got our heads on straight, we attempted to balance the scales. After pulling most of Jim Crow's teeth, we finally made it possible for a man of mixed blood to be elected to the presidency. If someone voted for him just for his blood, so what? That had been the practice since George Washington. At least, this one was not embarrassed by buying and selling human beings, and imprisoning them for a lifetime of unpaid, personal servitude!

Now comes Hillary Clinton, one of the most accomplished women in the world. For the second time, she is vying to be president of the United States. The shame of it all is that her candidacy still is considered a novelty. Of course, there are many men and women eligible to be president. So, if there are those who, still considering her excellent qualifications, want to vote for Hillary simply because of the fact that she is a woman, then, by God, let it be so. We certainly have had the unique history, up to this point, of electing presidents specifically because of the fact that they are NOT women!

Tuesday night, Hillary proved her mettle within a muddle of men reaching for the same mighty ring. If she finally does make it to the Oval Office – although some may have voted for her simply because she is a woman – none will be able to say that she achieved something she did not deserve. She will have gotten there because the uneven scales of opportunity finally were balanced in her favor.

***** ***** *****

There once was an ol' gal named, "Hiil;"
She had a pursuit to fulfill.
To those who said, "No,"
She said, "So's your bro' " --
And, "How d'ya like my strut, Bill?"

Dylann Storm Roof was no lone wolf.

He has millions of co-conspirators and accomplices. They fall in to three types: those active before, during and after the fact. This is not a discussion of legal culpability, but of moral shame.

Of course those with knowledge "before" the fact are the most guilty. These include every single neo-Nazi, skinhead, Klansman and avowed racist who proudly display their hate at every opportunity.

Those "during" include the State of South Carolina itself and every other state, county, city, town, village and hamlet that celebrates the nation's original sin of slavery and ongoing hatred of non WASP people. Every Battle flag on public property encourages and legitimizes the act. Every monument to Confederate "heroes" bathes him in adulation. Every street, highway and park named for slavers and rebels guided him toward his goal. Every license plate, bumper sticker and Confederate Pride day celebration directly and unequivocally told him that his actions were the correct ones.

And "after" the fact includes every single person that tries to say he was mentally deranged, crazy, an aberration, and yes, a lone wolf. It includes those who want to claim that he does not represent "Southern Pride". Those that think they can distance his actions as not part of a pattern and worse, an integral part of American history. Those who want to try and turn this into a "war on Christianity". Those who claim racism is over. Those who work for the non-think tanks that pump out misinformation and pre-packaged rationales that claim the Civil War was not about slavery. Those in the media that obfuscate, refuse to name him as a white supremacist. That will not call his action domestic terrorism and that will point at other issues, even important ones like the absolutle need for gun control. Yes, we need to address that too, but this case is NOT the poster child for it. That was Sandy Hook. This case is about one thing ONLY: racism.

ALL are Guilty as charged!

There are no extenuating circumstances other than stupidity. Ignorance will not get them out of this. The shame is not a new one, a unique one, or an obsolete one. The hate and nostalgic longing for a time when white men ruled supreme, is everywhere. We can't even say that it is only a Southern problem, as this cancer has metastasized into every corner of our country.

There is only ONE remedy that will accomplish anything constructive at this point and it is something that should have been done the day the Rebellion was put down. We must as a nation, once and for all, repudiate it ALL. We must never again allow anyone to claim the Civil War was about anything other than slavery. We must insist and enforce a ban on displaying any emblem of the Confederacy on public property. The Battle Flag must come down not only from South Carolina's State Capitol but anywhere and everywhere that is in ANY way supported by tax dollars. We must not allow one more license plate to be made with that symbol of treason on it. We must re-call every single one in circulation. We must put markers by every monument to Confederate "heroes" that include descriptions of their motivation for taking up arms against their own country, what their involvement in slavery was, and what they did after the war. We must re-name every boulevard, avenue, street and alley that bears the name of a traitor. We must ensure that every school book from kindergarten to a doctorate course make clear the only substantive cause for the war was slavery.

The time for half measures is done. The time for tolerance of intolerance is over and our allowing it after reconstruction to this very day have been repaid with a long litany of heinous crimes. When we think back to those infamous photos of lynchings in the early part of the last century, it is not the hung or burned bodies that shock as much as the fact that hundreds of people used it as an occasion to picnic. That they pose proudly with smiles on their faces and laughingly point to their work, regardless of whether they had actively been part of the murder or were accomplices after the fact. These same people or at least their progeny whether literally of figuratively, still slap each other on the back when the latest "nigger" is strung up, shot or run down. The cry of "you raped our women" still rings in the air. The apologist and faux-historians on this very day shit their propaganda on every available set of eyes and ears. ENOUGH!

The shots that rang out in Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church MUST be the LAST SHOTS of the Civil War and this time the surrender will not involve handing back swords, but must be total and unconditional.

And if anyone, ANYONE thinks that we should do any less than ALL of this, they too will be complicit the next time.