Verses from stories in today's New York Times. ** Trump Signs Hong Kong Democracy Legislation That Has Angered China. ** 5 Things to Avoid on Black Friday. ** Activists Build a Grass-Roots Alliance Against Amazon.

@ESCochrane

China sits at Hong Kong's door,

wanting to do more than roar.

But new sanctions will give pause,

manicuring down their claws.

There are times when we attune

ourselves to laws that are a boon.

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

@elissasanci

Black Friday buys turn out to be

lessons in futility.

Those bargains that seemed outta sight,

 taken home turn into blight.

Superfluous and overstocked

(with basement stairs completely blocked),

we now take up that ancient plaint:

"Where was all our darn restraint?"

Next year will be better, nu?

We'll melt our plastic into roux!

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

@DavidStreitfeld

Amazon, untrammeled, lay

all across the USA;

penetrating crannied nook,

master of our pocketbook.

Grassroots then began to stir;

were they righteous, or a slur?

Either way, their little pricks

gave to Amazon some licks.

David and Goliath seem

caught up in a timeless dream.

Verses from the Washington Post. ** House Oversight Committee sues William Barr, Wilbur Ross for documents in census probe. ** A 17-year-old posted to TikTok about China’s detention camps. She was locked out of her account. ** Americans like Green New Deal’s goals, but they reject paying trillions to reach them.

@TaraBahrampour  @D_Hawk

Eeny, meeny, miney, moe --

The Census is all set to go.

If you holler, you will pay

and be deported right away.

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

@drewharwell  @TonyRomm

TikTok's run by the Chinese,

and if they you do not please

your account is shut right quick

with a single Beijing click.

So if you still want to shine,

you'd better tow the party line.

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

@dino_grandoni  @sfcpoll

A New Deal that's green is atrocious,

cuz what it will cost is ferocious.

American folk

don't need such a yoke

(unless voters turn way precocious.)

More than we are

When we covenant all we are, we can become more than we are.

Gerrit W. Gong.

There is more to you and me 

than we ever thought to be.

By the covenants we keep

we reap blessings that are deep.

There's no limit to our reach

when we practice what we preach.

So the world is left behind

when with God we are aligned.

The caterpillar who didn't want to become a Butterfly.

Upon a time once not-so-long ago there was a chubby caterpillar who loved to loll in the sunshine, eating leaves. He didn't care what kind of leaves he ate -- big leaves, prickly leaves, red leaves, wilted leaves, speckled leaves, or even pieces of bark shaped like leaves. It was all deliciously the same to him. He munched on them from sun up to sun down, without a care in the world. He was well protected against predators, like most interim lepidoptera. His alternating black and green and blue bands told birds he tasted nasty. And the bristles on his rear formed an actual swastika, so parasitic wasps and bloodsucking squirrels were brought up short and scampered away, saying to themselves "Holy cow, that was a close call!"
As the easy summer days came to a close and the leaves dropped away while the sky became surly, all the other caterpillars spun themselves tightly into cocoons for the sullen winter months ahead  - and then, when spring washed over the land, they would pop out as gorgeous butterflies, to the delight and applause of all. But our particular caterpillar, the one this story is about, did not choose to muck about with a cocoon. He just kept eating the last few remaining leaves, and didn't seem to care about the autumn rain that fell on him. He was so insulated with fat that the cold breezes of approaching winter didn't faze him one bit.
A leaf hopper, burrowing into a knothole on an oak tree, saw him marching happily along one blustery day and began scolding him.
"You need to spin your cocoon, youngster" it told him. "Mother Nature ain't gonna provide you with anything to eat over the winter, you can bet your bottom dollar on that!"
"Oh pooh" replied the caterpillar. "I can eat pine needles, when it comes to that, and I'm fat enough to stand the coldest blast of the North Wind. So a fig for your cocoon!" 
The leaf hopper just shook its head and continued to wedge itself tighter and tighter into a crack in the knothole, until a chickadee swooped down and plucked it out with its bill.   
A little boy, collecting fallen acorns to throw at his sister, saw our brightly colored caterpillar inching along high above, and asked his grandfather, who was watching cars go by in the street and wondering where everyone was rushing to, why the caterpillar was not dead yet.
"Oh, I reckon that old caterpillar is one of them caterpillars that don't cotton to turning into a butterfly" he told his little grandson. "So he's gonna spend the winter crawling around to visit the frost fairies and ice maidens."
The little boy looked up at his grandfather, and wondered what the old goon was talking about. Acorns made more sense, so he went back to collecting a formidable arsenal for when his sister came home from school.
But winter hesitated that year, and there came several weeks of warm sunshine that caused midges to swarm and house flies to seek out stale banana pudding. A snail, tucked away for the winter in an old bird's nest, put out its slimy neck one morning to gaze lethargically at our caterpillar friend munching on some lichen.
"Where's your cocoon?" it asked him dully.
"Don't have one; don't need one" the caterpillar replied. 
"Gotta have a cocoon, dontcha?" asked the snail.
"Nope" said the caterpillar cheerfully. "A cocoon means painful change, the turmoil of mating, and a very limited lifespan, when you eventually come out of it. I intend to stay a caterpillar and avoid all that melodrama."
This was too much for the snail to take in, so he pulled his head back into his shell and fell into a happy thoughtless stupor. Snails like to while away the long winter hours dreaming they are Arnold Schwarzenegger beating up French people for eating escargot. 
Strange to say, winter never really came that year. Instead, a withering simoom blew through the land, laying waste to the apple orchards and drying up every single cocoon -- so that when spring came dragging in with its muted charms there was not a single butterfly to come fluttering to life. There was just our friend, the stubborn, selfish, caterpillar -- who discovered that he was no longer a herbivore, but an omnivore. He grew so large he was even comfortable eating small dogs and kittens. 
When it finally did snow, in July, our caterpillar friend decided he'd lived a full life and might as well spin his cocoon and turn into a butterfly -- he wondered grimly what people would say when they saw his tank-sized body flapping through the air. But it was impossible for him to find a branch strong enough to support him while he hung upside down to spin his cocoon. 
So one night he broke into a tanning salon, crawled into a tanning bed, and somehow managed to turn it on. In the morning they found a muscular mothman lounging about. But no sign of a giant crispy caterpillar.
"Hello, ladies" he said in a low fuzzy voice. "Can I interest you in a pastille?"  
"Look!" screamed one of the ladies. "He has a swastika on his butt!" They beat him senseless with rolled up People magazines and then the police escorted him to Warner Brothers Studio for the next Batman franchise movie. 
And that's why you should always look both ways before you cross your eyes . . . 

Verses from today's Washington Post. ** For the first time, most U.S. consumers will do the bulk of their holiday shopping online, data shows. ** Giuliani the Fixer. ** In bleak report, U.N. says drastic action is only way to avoid worst effects of climate change.

@abhabhattarai

Searching for a parking space;

escalator frantic race.

Santa's looking real unfit;

buy a sweater that don't fit.

Never can a clerk be found;

all of them have gone to ground.

Want it gift wrapped? Don't be rash!

It will cost a ton of cash.

Or stay home to surf the Net,

and all retail woes forget.

Christmas Eve finds me benign,

after going broke online.

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

@PostRoz  @DevlinBarrett  @mattzap  @thamburger

The fixer has a noble brow;

to the truth he don't kowtow.

He schmoozes with the best of men,

and to the rest says 'where and when?'

He'll make your problems go away;

just cross his palm with golden pay.

In shadows he performs his tasks;

and never tells, and never asks.

Giuliani is the guy

who can peace of mind supply

to the crooked and the bent --

until to prison he is sent.

He thinks it will not happen soon,

but it is time for his blue moon . . . 

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

@brady_dennis

The weatherman is not our friend;

he's forecasting the total end

of mankind due to climate change --

with flood and droughts and even mange.

The UN sez we can't escape

and better hang some mournful crepe.

But protesters are up in arms

and think their amateur alarms

will force a change in industry

and make our leaders all agree

to cut emissions to the bone

and restore our good ozone.

Let us hope that is the case

(still, I'm booked for outer space . . . )

Postcards to my President.

How Jell-O Molds Claimed Their Spot on the American Table. (Headline in today's NYT.)

Bland, perhaps, but never old;

Hail the trembling jello mold!

Full of fruit or hard boiled eggs,

it has chutzpah; it has legs.

American as apple strudel;

for holidays tis never too dull.

Give me seconds; give me thirds.

Restraint is something for the birds!

The foolishness of God.

Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
1 Corinthians  1:25

In this world of fun house mirrors,

full of windbags and of sneerers,

many think of God as weak;

that his wisdom none need seek.

Lowly as his sheep may seem,

captives of a peaceful dream,

he does lead them constantly

to amazing victory.

Doubters never can perceive

what believers can achieve;

unprepared, they must subside

when the Lord has turned the tide.

Verses from Today's Washington Post. ** A drunk man broke into her house. This 82-year-old bodybuilder ‘did a number’ on him, she says. ** Mired in trench warfare, Trump makes up poll numbers that show him winning handily. ** Mike Bloomberg just stabbed the journalistic heart of his news organization.

@kemettler

Ber-ger-lers, I warn you fair:

Don't break into my house and glare.

I ain't afeard of any creep

who thinks that he can make me weep.

Step one foot in, my foolish friend,

and you are bound to meet your end.

I'll bat you with my walking aid;

then smother you with some brocade.

My dentures will bite off your nose;

with prune juice I will douse your clothes.

And when you're down and out I'll tip

into you Super Poligrip.

So beat it, punk -- or you may be

subject to colonoscopy.

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

@pbump

No one figures polls are real,

despite apparent mass appeal.

So if the Prez decides to fudge,

who are we to really judge?

My polls show a steady trend

for candidates to all pretend.

A grain of salt will not suffice

to balance statements imprecise.

He who steals a poll steals trash,

not worth an ounce of balderdash.

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

@Sulliview

Bloomberg has more writers than

bed sheets at the Ku Klux Klan.

They've been told to choke their pens

when it comes to Mike and friends.

His reporters who rebel

and the truth attempt to tell

will find pink slips raining down

like confetti on a clown . . .

Postcards to my President.