From the Washington Post

Toy store chain Toys R Us is planning to sell or close
all 800 of its U.S. stores, affecting as many as 33,000
jobs as the company winds down its operations after six
decades, according to a source familiar with the matter.

There isn’t a doubt in my mind

Of who’s the one mainly behind

This story so weird --

The man with the beard.

Twas Santa their death warrant signed!

The Senate on Wednesday passed the most significant
loosening of financial regulations since the economic crisis
a decade ago, delivering wide bipartisan support for
weakening banking rules despite bitter divisions
among Democrats.

A banker who lived in Des Moines

Was careful to count ev’ry coin

That went in his vault

Because of default

By senators needing pork loin.

When the Arctic is warm, the study finds,
cold weather and heavy snowfalls in the eastern United States
are two to four times more likely than when it is cold.

Blizzards on the East Coast are caused by arctic warming,

Making all New Yorkers sick of storms a-swarming.

Washington is also much afflicted by this floe mob --

But they are more familiar with the many types of snow job.

From the New York Times. Wednesday March 14 2018

“They have treated the use of a military-grade nerve agent
in Europe with sarcasm, contempt and defiance,” Mrs. May
said of Russia. “Their response has demonstrated complete
disdain for the gravity of these events. They have provided no
credible explanation.”

The Russians like using nerve gas

To keep down the rogue spying class.

They really don’t care

How much or just where --

As long as they get ‘em en masse.

Senior Myanmar officials denied on Wednesday that the country’s
military had committed any crimes against Rohingya Muslims,
one day after a United Nations expert suggested that the government
was implicated in “the crime of genocide” against the persecuted
Muslim minority.

In Myanmar they take great pride

In stamping out all genocide.

Each minority

Is really quite free --

To shut up or flee or to hide.

Those are the main conclusions of the World Happiness Report 2018,
released Wednesday. Finland is the happiest country in the world,
it found, followed by Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland, the
Netherlands, Canada, New Zealand, Sweden and Australia. Though
in a different order, this is the same top 10 as last year, when Norway
was No. 1 and Finland was fifth.

There was an old man from Helsinki

Who gazed at the world through his pinky.

“It keeps in perspective

Whatever’s defective”

He said while he played with a Slinky.

From the Wall Street Journal. Wednesday March 14 2018

Ms. Stein, 31, is a devotee of Beer Fit Club, a group that hosts
monthly yoga classes in New York City-area breweries.
Students hold and sip a pint throughout each session.

There was a young woman whose lotus

Position acquired much notice

When she sipped a brew,

And then made it two,

While chanting away like a poetess.

The one-time army sergeant and former Socialist Party loyalist
says he will win the May 20 election by offering what no one in
government or the opposition has proposed: adopting the U.S. dollar
to halt hyperinflation. He says the proposal could prove popular with
Venezuela’s poor, who have been buffeted by the collapsing currency.

Countries now living in squalor

Will find the American dollar

A much better wad

For all the unshod --

So they can afford a blue collar.

The settlement follows a more than two-year investigation
by the SEC prompted by revelations in The Wall Street Journal.
In October 2015, the Journal published an article revealing
that Theranos used its proprietary blood-testing technology for
only a fraction of the blood tests it offered in Walgreens stores.
The article also reported that former employees were leery of the
technology’s accuracy.

You cannot mix blood and deceit,

No matter what bromides you bleat.

And though you get rich,

Somebody will snitch --

And you’ll be shot down like clay skeet.

Children coming home again

“And when we had returned to the tent of my father,
behold their joy was full, and my mother was comforted.”

First Nephi. Chapter Five. Verse 7.

Children coming home again,

No matter how, no matter when,

Give to parents comfort sweet

And a joy that can’t be beat.

Little ones who fly away

Looking for a place to stay,

Then come for a visit mean

Life is full and rich and green.

Someday each of us returns

To that Parent that so yearns

For our joy to be complete

At our Elder Brother’s feet.

From the New York Times. Tuesday March 13 2018

Dovetale, a four-person software company Mr. Schmidt
co-founded in 2016, has devised a range of tactics to
identify large numbers of fake accounts that follow
popular Instagram personalities. It then packages
that information for marketers, who are increasingly
skeptical of the audience numbers that often determine
how much money social media stars can command from
advertisers.

An idol on instagram boasts

that ev'ryone follows his posts.

But research has shown

It’s all done by drone --

His numbers are nothing but ghosts

The Metropolitan Opera’s new production of Mozart’s
“Così Fan Tutte,” set in 1950s Coney Island, uses sideshow
and burlesque performers.

A singer who worked at the Met

Started to get quite upset

When during her solo

The pinheads played polo

And the wild man was caught in a net.

With a fellow reporter’s fawning question to a
Chinese official pushing past the 30-second mark,
Liang Xiangyi, of the financial news site Yicai, began
scoffing to herself. Then she turned to scrutinize the
questioner in disbelief.

Looking her up and down, Ms. Liang rolled her
eyes with such concentrated disgust, it seemed
only natural that her entire head followed her eyes
backward as she looked away in revulsion.

Captured by China’s national news broadcaster,
CCTV, the moment spread quickly across Chinese
social media.

Reporters who wear on their sleeve

What they do think or believe

Will find their careers

Thrown out on its ears

Because they won’t learn to deceive.

muffled explosions

muffled explosions

of yellow rising upward

escape the cold ground

browning in the bud

browning in the bud

last season's seed offering

needs a cuff from spring

From the Wall Street Journal. Tuesday March 13 2018

Designers of the new $19 million George

W. Bush Elementary School had more in

mind than education. The blueprint for this

school in an upper-class Dallas suburban

neighborhood was intended to stop a school

shooter. Sparse landscaping and numerous

windows in front provide a clear view of

approaching visitors. Entry is a multistep

process. Visitors enter a vestibule and must

be buzzed inside the main office. From there,
a government-issued ID must be scanned

through a system called the “Raptor,” which

alerts for child molesters and anyone flagged

to keepWide hallways devoid of nooks make

it harder to hide or avoid video surveillance

that is viewable by school administrators as

well as police officers in patrol cars.

Our schools, I am sad to report,

All must become a stout fort.

No playgrounds, no games,

Indexing of names --

A prison has got more fun sport.

General Electric Co. didn’t pay a cash

bonus last year to its top executives

at corporate headquarters, which it said was

the first time in the company’s

125-year history.

Those poor top execs at GE

No bonuses get constantly.

How can they survive

If they’re forced to drive

Without someone in livery?

Technology companies are racing to get

ahead of regulators to shape the future

of artificial intelligence as it moves

deeper into our daily lives.

Geppetto made Pinocchio but didn’t give him brains;

He much prefered to keep him in humiliating chains.

But when the wooden puppet got some algorithms fast

His AI did not fret about the insults of the past.

But now I wonder if machines will take it lying down

When we give them AI but refuse their work to crown

With any kind of praise or comment that is meant to please --

This may make ‘em mad, and then they’ll get up off their knees

And like in all the movies they’ll come after us with plans

To digitize us into insignificant filed scans.

I’d rather we gave AI to a fam’ly pet, cuz they

Are already housebroken and our orders will obey.

Qualcomm has now effectively been

designated a national champion in the

battle with Beijing. However, the company’s

loyalties are divided—it needs China as much

as it competes with it.

The battle for technology revolves around the chip;

Without the latest issue ev’ry bottom line is zip.

The greatest chipper of them all is Qualcomm, without peer;

So Uncle Sam won’t let them be a foreign souvenir.

But China’d like to get their hands upon the company;

They use more chips than anyone for their technology.

They’ve gotten heavy metals for their smartphones through a ruse;

Who’s to say that Qualcomm can their blandishments refuse?

In the nearby future Xi Jinping will strike with speed,

And gobble up all Qualcomm chips with ill-considered greed.

Our government retaliates with tariffs made so steep

That foreigners who want one will call out “Hey, what the bleep!”

So China digs a tunnel from Beijing to our West Coast

To smuggle back the latest chip with secrecy utmost.

The tunnel is discovered and filled in with sticky rice.

And now the U.S. and Beijing are through with being nice.

The CIA has Qualcomm make a chip that is defective,

Which is sold to China as a permanent corrective.

But China then retaliates with Huawei smartphones

That drain their users of each drop of vital growth hormones.

Our children become midgets and there’s no more sticky rice.

In China 5G research cannot make the right device.

These tit for tat maneuvers are as useless as warm beer.

Besides, Qualcomm to Mexico is moving in a year . . .  

We're going to the wilderness

And I spake unto him, even with an oath,
that he need not fear; that he should be a free man
like unto us if he would go down in the wilderness with us.

First Nephi. Chapter Four. Verse 33.

Life is full of twists and turns; it’s fluid as a stream.

It washes round our mundane plans like a vivid dream.

One day indentured years on end, the next completely free;

It happens to the best and worst -- to strangers and to me.

We’re going to the wilderness, to lands uncharted yet,

We’ll get there using many paths, in joy or in regret.

And promises along the way will come from God our King;

He can make the roadside green, from nettles take the sting.

So go down all ye sinners, and go down all ye saints;

No use to hesitate in fear, or think up thin complaints.

To crave the freedom that our God has promised one and all

Is what makes men and women stand up straight and true and tall.