Obama 2011 & Reagan 1984

I still cannot get over how so many Irish people found President Obama's speech inspiring or moving or just great. Whatever floats your boat, I guess. I mean, it's not like everyone here hasn't heard the same tale a hundred-thousand times from all the Irish-American visitors over the years. {I've actually been relieved to see some letters to the Irish Times expressing the view that the speech wasn't much.}

Anyway, the President's speech was never intended to be taken all that seriously so I don't have any real problem with it. I do wonder why the Irish government was so keen to organize a pep rally for the American President, but whatever.

It's not a great comparison, but just as a point of interest if you read (I'm sure there has to be video somewhere) President Reagan's 1984 address to the Dáil you'll hear a man who engaged in some blarney/banter, but who also addressed serious topics of the day. You'll hear him acknowledge that the people of Ireland disagreed with him on some matters, but he made his points as a respectful democrat in the manner of a man who believed he was addressing freedom-loving adults with whom he could engage in debate.

I'm only saying this because in the run-up to President Obama's College Green event I heard many commentators refer to Reagan's visit as if it was all Ballyporeen fluff. That clearly wasn't true.

I don't believe all I've heard about Osama hit

Maybe I'm just too cynical, but I don't believe the story about following the messenger who led the CIA to bin Laden. What I suspect is that after a good few years the CIA is now well and truly inside al Qaeda and that there was some definite, hot tip from a live body high up in the organization which led to bin Laden.

Funny enough, I'm also more willing to give Pakistan a bit of a pass than are most Americans. Yes, bin Laden was living near a military school and not far from Islamabad. Yes it seems kind of unlikely that he lived there for so long with no one in the Pakistani government or intelligence services knowing he was there. BUT, that same government and intelligence service delivered Khalid Sheikh Mohammed into America hands, although that was 8 years ago. Have things changed that much inside Pakistan? Maybe they have. Besides, I don't believe the story we've been told

The other thing to consider is that we didn't want bin Laden alive, which is what we would probably have had if Pakistan had moved in to capture him. If bin Laden was taken alive it would have meant (a) he would have to have been moved to some secret prison, (b) no formal announcement of his capture and (c) either a military tribunal to convict him or a circus trial where the host city was under constant threat of attack.

No, bin Laden could not be taken alive, which means from September 11 onwards the United States was doomed to lose the good opinion of Mary Robinson and the Archbishop of Canterbury. A tragedy.

Microtechnology revolution was foreseeable

Kevin Myers says no one in 1981 foresaw that "microtechnology was going to transform the world." I understand what he's saying, but my math teacher foresaw exactly that.

Our school had Apple IIe machines. I still remember some kid asking the teacher why we had to 'learn how to use these things' and he responded, "Because these things are going to take over your life. Your children will not understand life without them."

He could hardly have been more right nor was he the only one. Many people could see where this was going, which is obvious given all the investment in the 'new technologies' in the early 1980s.

Note to Fergus Finlay: serious social problems need realistic solutions

Fergus Finlay is asking why are young children and teenagers becoming increasingly violent. He doesn't cite any stats to show that teens and younger children are getting more violent, but I'll go along with him anyway because I suspect this is the case.

So who or what's to blame? Finlay says there's no easy answer; he wishes we could "just blame the parents, or society, or the Gardai."

Finlay then sets out the case that poverty is a big part of the problem and he then mentions the fact that most of the inmates in Moutnjoy Prison come from a few postal districts.

Those postal districts are associated, indelibly, with deeply embedded, multi-generational poverty. Ghettoised poverty. Stigmatised poverty. The kind of poverty that breaks down parenting, and that all too often turns the presumption of innocence into the assumption of guilt.

I can sort of go along with Finlay, but what's his solution? More social workers and playgrounds.

More playgrounds sounds doable. We should defund all programs that funnel money to professional athletes and use that money to build playgrounds. Celebrating an Irish gold medal at the Olympics just ain't all that important and even if we only get one playground for the money it will be worth it.

What about the social workers Finlay wants? They're expensive and there can be no extra spending. In fact, Finlay would have provided some service if he'd identified some aspect of public spending that could be cut to allow for the additional social workers he wants.

It's all well and good identifying the problem, which Finlay does. However, everyone living in Ireland could identify the problem. It's the solution that requires real insight. All Finlay has to offer is spend more money. Great. This is not 2004. Again, we are BROKE, which means this is one problem that will be put on the longest of long fingers as it will be YEARS before we can increase spending as Finlay suggests.

In the toughest of economic climates we have the Presidential candidate who has only pie-in-the-sky suggestions for a serious social problem. Yes the President is not where the action lies economically or politically, but we still need one who is realistic.

Tremendous pressure on Moriarty get it 'right'

I just read this on Twitter (from @CharlieFlanagan):

Why would Judge Moriarty stitch up O'Brien, Lowry and Ben Dunne? This report is so scathing a criminal investigation should be held.

Now I'm not saying that Judge Moriarty took any of this into account, but let's face it he knew what the press and the public wanted. He knew what the mood of the country is given our economic collapse.

The word "stitch" is highly charged, but I could well imagine that Judge Moriarty knew the pressure was on to deliver a fairly damning report. This was not like hearing a case where a jury will deliver a verdict. He was judge and jury here. The pressure to provide a "result" must have been tremendous.

I have great sympathy for him and think the process is flawed, not the man. I believe Moriarty is beyond reproach, but I also will not be surprised when there are no prosecutions and the key findings are watered down following court action.

Wild horses couldn't drag me to Jesse Jackson event

If I wasn't so busy tomorrow night cutting my toenails I might have tried to get to see Ryan Tubridy interviewing Jesse Jackson at UCD.

Actually I can't imagine anything worse. Are students so starved of political ideas these days that they're willing to listen to a discredited ex-"radical" like Jackson? And Ryan Tubridy asking the questions? Have they no self-respect?

At least I could hope that the cringing would keep me awake.

Irish Mirror's stupid front page

I'm still shaking my head at the front page of yesterday's Irish Mirror. I only wish I'd taken a photograph of it so that I could relate it to you verbatim, but my memory will have to do. The front page was an attempt to paraphrase Japan's Prime Minister, Naoto Kan, with this, "The worst day since Hiroshima".

What the Prime Minister actually said was:

I think that the earthquake, tsunami and the situation at our nuclear reactors makes up the worst crisis in the 65 years since the war.

I have tried to figure out what drove the editor to make such a change to what the PM said. More drama? Maybe, but tens of thousands dead, entire towns missing, nuclear plant teetering on the edge of meltdown ain't enough for the Mirror's readers? If that's it then all I can say is that the Mirror's readers must be the kind who love jumping off a bridge with a frayed rope attached to their leg.

I don't know. Then I thought it was probably just an attempt to add to the editor's pacifist chic credentials. I guess that could be it too. I also toyed with the idea that it was a dig at America, you know, those war-mongering Americans who dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

I have no idea what drove the decision to change the tone of the PM's statement, but I do know it was 100% stupid. Yes, stupid because whatever the motivation there is no way the Prime Minister of Japan would have been as ignorant of history as yesterday's front page showed the Irish Mirror's editor to be.

Hiroshima was bombed on August 6, 1945 three days before Nagasaki was hit with an atomic bomb (August 9, 1945). The editor either didn't know about Nagasaki or didn't realize that it was the second city destroyed with an atomic bomb.

Still the dates of the two bombs make yesterday's headline laughably stupid. Of course the Mirror's readers won't have had time to notice this; they're probably too busy playing chicken on train tracks to worry about historical accuracy.

Are women safer drivers or do they drive less?

"Women are safer drivers." That's the mantra in the Irish press these past few days following the ruling by the European Court of Justice that insurance companies cannot use gender to determine insurance rates. That's the mantra, but is it true?

Both David Quinn and Kevin Myers make this assertion in today's Irish Independent, but they're not alone. This is stated as a fact, but I've never seen any real data that backs up this statement. Sure women file fewer claims, but is that because they're safer drivers or because they drive fewer miles?

For a short while in the 1980s I worked at an actuarial firm that provided the statistics on which many car insurers set their rates. I remember how my boss showed me stats accumulated in an academic study of drivers in one or two states (might have been North Carolina & Virginia). Among the statistics collected was miles driven, which turned out to be a better determining factor with regards to claims than was gender.

However as my boss explained, getting accurate information from drivers on the number of miles they drove annually was really impossible. Gender was easier to ascertain and, well, women drove fewer miles than men. On average.

I don't know if it's still that case that annual mileage is not used as a factor in determining car insurance rates in America, but I'd like to know. I also don't know much about how car insurance rates are determined in Ireland, but I'd like to know that too.

What I do know is that I've played with insurance brokers' web sites, changing various factors to see how the rates are affected. What I've noticed is that it doesn't matter if I indicate annual mileage (kilometer-age?) of under 10,000 km/yr or 25-40,000 km/yr. The rates on offer are the same.

However, if I swap genders, I get a lower Comprehensive rate (3rd Party Fire & Theft are the same for male/female of my age/married/etc). Now why would this be? I presume it's because women file fewer claims than men do, which makes them better risks for insurance companies (but not necessarily "safer drivers.")

I find it a more than dubious assertion that a woman who drives 35,000 km/yr is a better risk than a man who drives 7,000 km/yr, all other factors being the same. Yet, that's what the insurance rates tell us, but I'd absolutely love to see the stats that back that up.

Labour cannot go into opposition

Okay, so Labour had their best election ever. I get it, but it would be a huge mistake for them to go into opposition now. They went into the election hoping to catch the mood, build momentum and come out the biggest party with Eamon Gilmore as Taoiseach. It didn't happen.

Half way through the campaign they changed tack, admitted defeat and pleaded for votes on the basis that Fine Gael couldn't be trusted with an overall majority. That was the new pitch: we need to be in coalition with Fine Gael to ensure they don't do all these 'nutty things they're promising.'

That seems to have worked as Fine Gael's upward movement stalled around the same time. So, credit to Labour for adjusting the message and managing to come out of the vote with lots of positives.

However, if they now decide to opt out of coalition with Fine Gael on anything other than the most solid, irrefutable grounds, they will be doing just as they did after the '93 vote when Dick Spring put Fianna Fáil back in power. Those who wanted a left wing opposition grouping have that, but I would bet that most Labour voters thought they were voting for a party they thought was actually going to serve in government, was actually going to do something other than complain and debate.

I can see the attraction, but if being the biggest party in opposition was their goal they should have campaigned against Fianna Fáil, Sinn Féin and the ULA and not Fine Gael. They didn't do that and any move towards that now will open the door for Fianna Fáil to reclaim that space as the populist, center-left movement they've been for most of their existence.

An education in Croke Park nonsense

My son startled me this morning. He declared that he "hates Croke Park." Seeing as he's never been there and has no reason to be anti-GAA I was taken aback.

"Why do you hate Croke Park?"
"Because, thanks to the Croke Park deal we have no more half days."
"Ahh."

I'd forgotten. Until last week my son had a half day on the first Tuesday of every month. The students were dismissed early for teacher meetings. Now, however, thanks to the Croke Park deal, all teacher meetings must take place outside school hours.

Why is this? What benefit accrues to the state by insisting that all these meetings take place after school hours? I can't see how the state saves one penny from this. All I see is that my son, his classmates and children up and down the country can no longer look forward to the little treat of a monthly half day.

I know there are some educationistas out there who want their kids in school 9-5, M-F, January through December, but I'm not one of those. Yes, I want my children to get an education, but that doesn't only come in school.

I want my children to enjoy life too and half days are a part of that enjoyment. I see no benefit to my children from this 'deal' that forces the school to cancel these little treats for kids.

Children are the losers here and maybe the GAA. They may rue the day that they allowed the name of their stadium to be the nickname for extra time in school when kids would rather be out kicking a ball.

Poster vandalism is a denial of democracy

It kills me to say this, but I agree with Dick Roche. Not about everything, but about one thing: those who are defacing his posters don't have a firm grasp of what a democracy means.

The poster was vandalized, a new one attached and that too was vandalized.

This happened during the Lisbon Treaty too. Roche's posters are being targeted by those who have some vendetta against him.

And it really is only Roche. This poster is not isolated, but in an area full of posters, including big ones like this from Labour & Fine Gael. Only Roche's poster has been damaged.

Does Minister Ó Cuív understand the bank guarantee?

Éamon Ó Cuív has a really interesting letter to the editor of the Galway Advertiser. Ó Cuív's letter is in response to one published two weeks ago in which the letter writer describes Ó Cuív as "a high ranking member of the FF/Green government which has made the ordinary taxpayer suffer as a result of a banking crisis caused by individuals with greedy gambling habits."

Ó Cuív 's response to that was to defend the bank guarantee.

I would agree with Mr. Walsh's characterisation of some bankers. However, I cannot agree with his idea that we should have allowed, depositors (including depositors in Credit Unions, etc.), people with pension contributions and insurance policies of all types lose their money. To allow this to happen would have caused untold hardship to people over and above the present difficulties.

Or is Ó Cuív just spoofing or does just he have no idea what he's talking about? Bank deposits (including credit union deposits, I believe) were already guaranteed to €100,000 before the bank guarantee. If that was too low, why didn't the government just up the level to €500K or even €1m?

Ó Cuív's reference to pensions and insurance is even more baffling. Did we need to guarantee all those bank liabilities because some of the pension and insurance funds were invested in bank bonds? Surely pension funds and insurance companies are just as likely to be invested in Ryanair or CRH. Or even Diageo. Are we now going to guarantee every possible investment opportunity?

This is a cabinet minister. This is why we're in such trouble now and why Fianna Fáil needs to spend a long time in opposition weeding out all this dead weight.

Micheál Martin was impressive last night

I don't like Micheál Martin, although today I can't remember exactly what it is that caused me to dislike him. I know I was really fed up with his reaction during the Gaza flotilla, his righteousness, his anti-Israel bias, but I didn't like him long before he became Minister for Foreign Affairs. I didn't like him when he was Minister for Education or when he was Minister for Health either. Just don't like him.

However, I was impressed with him on Vincent Browne's program last night. I thought he gave a commanding performance and even when he gave answers I wasn't all that happy with at no time did I think he showed himself to be out of his depth discussing the budgetary and banking failures, which I've often felt with Brian Lenihan. Compared with what we had with Brian Cowen he was cool under pressure and a more than able communicator. (Although I really wish Browne had asked Martin if it was a mistake to join the euro and how in the euro will we prevent the rapid influx and outflow of capital that gave us the boom/bust we have.}

If I had any quibbles I think Martin should have answered Browne's question as to why should anyone vote Fianna Fáil in this election by telling Browne, 'Fianna Fáil is going into opposition, but the incoming Fine Gael government will need to be watched by a strong, capable opposition and that is what Fianna Fáil will provide.' Would have been an honest answer and one that anyone watching might have accepted a Martin-led Fianna Fáil in opposition would be.

I'm still not going to vote for them.

TV3 & Vincent Browne should not have injected themselves into the campaign

Enda Kenny looks more foolish every day as he trots out a new excuse for skipping tomorrow night's TV3 debate. First he wants all 5 party leaders; next it's that he doesn't like Vincent Browne because Browne said something mean about him last year; next it's that he's just too busy, can't work it into his schedule. Sheesh.

Ridiculous. Still, there's no doubt that Vincent Browne & TV3 entered the political arena when they fixed on their 3-way debate for tomorrow night.

Kenny was onto the right answer when he insisted that all 5 party leaders should be in the debate. If he agrees to a 3-way debate that has a number of positive effects for Labour & Fianna Fáil and negative impact on Fine Gael.

Labour has put up "Gilmore for Taoiseach" posters, trying to implant that radical idea in the minds of the voters. Having Eamonn Gilmore appear along side Micheál Martin and Enda Kenny serves to promote that idea. Why would Kenny go along with that? Makes no sense politically.

Secondly, both Labour and Fianna Fáil have something to fear from Sinn Féin. They definitely gain a lot by sidelining Gerry Adams, regardless of how he might perform. Fine Gael has nothing to fear from Sinn Féin as they're not competing for the same voters. Based on poll numbers, SF has more right to stand along-side Labour & FF in a debate than either of those two have to stand alongside FG.

I don't know exactly why Browne was so determined to have a 3-way debate, but there's no way he innocently stumbled into this. He must have known this was playing politics. Maybe he didn't care and just figured a 3-way debate would be better television, which it probably will be. Still, he shouldn't have joined the anti-Enda campaign (not that Kenny doesn't deserve almost all of what he's getting today).

Phony Euromania has bitten the dust

If there is one big casualty in the financial mess / bailout it's Ireland's love affair with Europe, the EU. That's over. People have had the wool removed from their eyes.

Even the nation's most committed Europhiles no longer refer to 'our partners in Europe'. Partners! That was the word used by everyone in the main parties for the past two decades or more. Partners.

Partners don't do to a partner what's being done to Ireland, unless they're going through an acrimonious split. That's what this feels like only we're not splitting but being forced to eat dirt and say "Please sir may I have some more" after each whack of the stick across our national back.

We have no "partners" in Europe. Quite clearly we're on our own. On our own to pay off the debts incurred in Ireland by private banks across the EU. We're being punished for not regulating what the ECB also spectacularly failed to regulate. This is not how partners behave.

We have no partners. We had competitors, but they're gradually morphing into enemies. Every politician who calls to my door will have the same question put to him/her: Do we have partners in Europe? Anyone who says yes, will NOT get my vote.

Attention candidates - spelling & punctuation count

Despite the fact that I'm skeptical that independents will have anything like the effect that some of my fellow tweeters might hope, I'm still more than open to casting my vote for one. So I would have been open to voting for independent Thomas Clarke.

Note that "would have been." The other night I got a one page (A4) election leaflet. I don't mind the low budget aspect. In fact, in many ways it appealed to me. Unfortunately, as I read the leaflet I realized that either (a) he never bothered to proof-read his page or (b) he did, but didn't notice how badly written it was.

I'm going to discount the latter because I'm sure he never re-read what he'd produced. There are just way too many unreadable sentences. It's just a mess.

I could have lived with a few minor errors - such as his use of thrust for trust and policy's where he intended policies - but there are some gross errors. I'm sure there are some people who might not pay any attention to these errors, but I think these mistakes are telling.

Yes, I'm sure Clarke is pressed for time, but he really should have had someone read his letter before he distributed it to the voters. It gives an impression of someone who hasn't got time for details.

It's a shame too because I think policy-wise Clarke is someone I could have supported. Maybe somehow I'll find a reason to overlook this mess of a leaflet, but I doubt it.

No more teacher TD's

There's all sorts of talk about reforming the political system. The independent candidates seem particularly in favor. Great. I'm in favor too.

Here's a suggestion: ban TD's from holding open other positions in the public service. That is, if you get elected to the Dáil you have to give up your teaching job.

There are too many teachers in the Dáil and this distorts our democracy and our education system. {There are too many lawyers too, but they're more difficult to restrict.) Teachers bring to the Dáil a certain mindset, one forged in the state run and operated schools. They can't conceive of what it means to work in the private sector.

Don't get me wrong, if teachers want to serve in the Dáil that's great. However, they should take the same risks as any other working stiff who stands: the chance that voters will tell them they have to go looking for a job again.

Where is Jihad Jane story on RTE news?

On Friday night I read on CNN's web site that Jihad Jane, Colleen LaRose, was going to change her plea to guilty to all the charges against her arising from a terrorist plot broken up last year by the Gardaí in cooperation with the FBI. The charges are: providing material support to terrorists, conspiracy to kill in a foreign country, making false statements and attempted identity theft.

I'll forgive you if you don't recall the Irish media focusing on this Islamist plot based in Waterford over the weekend. I didn't see/hear/read one mention of it. And, yes, LaRose is American, but some/most of her co-conspirators were based here. Living here. 

Today LaRose formally changed her plea in a Pennsylvania court. It's all over the American media. It's on the BBC's web site, but it got no mention at all on RTE tonight. How can this be? How can a an international conspiracy based in Ireland intending to carry out a murder in Sweden of a cartoonist whose offense was drawing cartoons not be of interest to the people of Ireland? I'm really at a loss.  

Maybe it will make the Irish newspapers in the morning? We'll have to wait and see.

Hollywood never heard of the Gulags

I don't go to the movies and don't read movie reviews as a rule. However a few headlines led me to believe that Colin Farrell's latest - The Way Back - ain't all that great.

Columnist Anne Applebaum acted as an adviser to the director and wonders if some of the reviews are due to the fact that the underlying story about Soviet Gulags is so unfamiliar. Director Peter Weir told Applebaum that people in Hollywood didn't know about the Gulags, "never heard of Soviet concentration camps, only German ones."

If true, that speaks volumes about Hollywood, bastion of stupid lefty views. How could Hollywood accept that the Soviet Union was capable of such institutionalized evil as the Gulags? Of course they couldn't so they ignored all the stories from survivors - Andrei Sakharov was hardly an unknown name in America - and references to the same by leading (mostly Republican) politicians, including and especially Ronald Reagan. To Hollywood if a Republican said it, it had to be untrue/ignored/denied.

Groupthink had a hold on Hollywood during the Cold War and it still does. They unlearn what's inconvenient.

March 11 is important, but so is St. Patrick's Day

We cannot afford for the government AND opposition to blow St. Patrick's Day in America and elsewhere. Many people put no value on these trips abroad for the national day, but those people are wrong. St. Patrick's Day is a vitally important occasion for us to be represented abroad. {More here.}