And now another gem from TMV’s favorite artist of verse, Michael Silverstein, aka Wall Street Poet:
Am I the only one who understands that a country whose economy is debt sodden and sputtering can’t afford a bloated military engaged in foolish and monstrously expensive foreign adventures?
Guns, Butter, Penury
By Michael Silverstein
A country can enjoy its perks
By turning soldiers into mercs
Who seize all of the wealth it needs
To meet all of its quirks and greeds.
And there will be the dough to spare
The mercs’ own costs to pay, no fear
Long wars need not make you bereft
When wars are played as simple theft.
But the game turns real sour
And your prospects become dour
When war begets an empty purse
Atop a home-based debtor curse
You’ll have no friends, just lenders then
Who’ll hug you hard, but wait, ’cause when
With debts obscene and calls for more
They call it quits, slam shut loans’ door
What kind of blindness can not see
We’re on the road to penury
Faulty blends of guns and butter
Lands a land in his’try’s gutter.
©2007 Michael Silverstein
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.