Change the name on the shirt

Now that the AIG has a majority shareholder maybe the new owners will insist on a change in the initials on Manchester United's shirts. No more AIG, but from now on USA.

"Too big to fail"

I wish I had a dollar for each time I heard the phrase that phrase recently. Well, if a bank (or now an insurance company) is "too big to fail" then it was too big. As one who hates the idea of the government getting involved in the economy I'm forced to admit that if the government is going to underwrite these big companies then it would probably be a better idea if they were forced to remain small by law.

I'm way short of an expert on banking law, but it's clear as day that legislation is a better than simply using $85bn of taxpayers' money to bail out these financial behemoths. So, I don't know how they're going to do it, but Congress has to find a way to insure that in future no company is "too big to fail". And/or at the very least the management team of a company that's "too big to fail" should be criminally negligent if they allow their company to get into such a situation.

It's "unfair"

Fr. Sean Healy, Director of the Conference of Religious in Ireland, says that it's

profoundly unfair that a person on a lower income has to pay substantially more for a treatment compared with a person on twice that income.

Dental treatment worth €1,000 costs a person on a lower income €800 after tax relief, he said, while a person on a higher income pays €590 net. Other schemes involving tax relief such as pensions and medical expenses also benefited the better paid.

Well, is it "fair" that a person earning €1,000 and paying tax at the higher rate pays €410 whereas the person on the lower rate pays only €200? The higher earner pays more for the education his children receive, the health care his family requires, the protection of the police, etc. Is that "fair"? It isn't, but it's the system we have.

Given the unfairness of the tax system it is right (forget "fair") that tax relief on medical bills be at the rate the each taxpayer pays his taxes.

€1bn for meters

Is this really good value for money? The government is going to install new electricity meters in every household in the country. This whole process is going to take "four years at a cost of almost €1 billion".

On the one hand this is all too appropriate because if there's one symbol that I think best sums up the Green Party it's the meter. They're the metermaids of Irish politics. They want to measure every aspect of Irish living so that they can chide us and tax us for not being adherents to their doctrine.

On the other hand, this is a further sign that Fianna Fail is losing control. The economy is heading for tough times. Serious cutbacks will be required and at a cost of €1bn they're allowing the Green Party to enable themselves to preen in front of their Green colleagues across Europe because '"Ireland is leading the world" with the introduction of smart meters'.

What the Green Party doesn't seem to understand is that all these new meters are a significant cost on the Irish economy. The Green Party never worries about spending other people's money and they're none too keen on economic growth, which means the €1bn is actually a lot more expensive than it would be if we could count on a period of strong growth over the next four years. However, growth is going to be difficult to come by and the junior partners in government are not all that unhappy about that.

So, we're leading the world in stupid economics. Who wants to lead that race? Not me.

Dirty politics

There's no doubt that Presidential elections are dirty and that dirty politics can pay dividends. So far the McCain campaign is outplaying Obama's by 4 touchdowns. Obama's been knocked off balance by McCain's VP nominee - when truly he'd have been better off ignoring her as much as possible - and throughout this week Obama has looked unsteady and tetchy coming under assault from the McCain team. None of the shots has been outrageously cheap or ugly, but they're just enough to be getting under Obama's skin.

Obama's being lured into a trap. The strategy, clearly, is to wipe the 'cool' off Obama's image with the voters. They're begging the Obama team to respond in kind. First Obama fumbled with his "lipstick on a pig comment" and now they've rolled out a new attack ad.

The advertisements — among the most pointed attacks to be put out by Mr. Obama — depicted Mr. McCain as he looked when he was first elected to Congress in 1982 and mocked his declaration that he does not use a computer or send his own e-mail messages, attempting to undermine the new argument from Mr. McCain that he is the candidate of change.

Might have been a good idea for Obama's campaign team to find out why McCain doesn't use a computer. This is from Forbes from 2000 (via Instapundit).

In certain ways, McCain was a natural Web candidate. Chairman of the Senate Telecommunications Subcommittee and regarded as the U.S. Senate's savviest technologist, McCain is an inveterate devotee of email. His nightly ritual is to read his email together with his wife, Cindy. The injuries he incurred as a Vietnam POW make it painful for McCain to type. Instead, he dictates responses that his wife types on a laptop. "She's a whiz on the keyboard, and I'm so laborious," McCain admits.

Now Obama's mocking McCain for his war injuries. That might not be a winner.

So now McCain just has to wait a day or two to let that ad settle into the voters' minds and then he can roll out his own ad with this same story about how he can't use a keyboard due to the injuries he suffered in Vietnam, which again hammers home the message about his character that dominated the convention.

Galveston, oh Galveston, I still hear your sea waves crashing

It seems like we'll all hear Galveston's sea waves crashing this weekend. Brendan Loy says that Galveston could be in for a very rough ride starting tonight and that the wind is not the big issue.

High winds are not going to be the primary issue. But, as I wrote below, the storm surge will still be enormous. Coastal residents, do not treat this storm like a typical Category 2! The Gulf of Mexico is about to temporarily reclaim a large chunk of prime Texas real estate.

Palin on ABC

I watched as much of ABC's interview with Sarah Palin as I could find. From the clips I saw I'm not overly impressed nor overly worried. Now, to me, the job of President is mostly about security and foreign policy.

She was definitely shaky at times, not seeming to know what the "Bush Doctrine" is or to have understood why the interviewer was asking about carrying out attacks inside Pakistan. Okay, there are holes in her knowledge right now. I doubt anyone would be too surprised by that. With a little prodding she was able to provide her views on preemption and I was left with the feeling that she's competent and will learn what she needs to learn if she finds herself in the top job.

I wasn't too pleased with view that Georgia & Ukraine should be admitted to NATO. This is right out of the McCain playbook, I know, but really she should ponder this one a bit. I said before that I didn't think the United States should be so keen to poke Putin in the eye. And, he's since proven he's serious about South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Palin does love talking about energy and she was right to press her point that energy is a big part of national security. I think I was going to agree with her, but ABC cut her off too quickly. {I would like to have heard her views on Russian oil exploration at the North Pole. I would bet she knows her stuff on that topic.}

Overall my impression is that ABC edited the interview so badly that it was hard to come to any firm conclusion on Sarah Palin.

Lies. It's all lies, I tell you.

Didn't we go to war over less than this? Today's Daily Telegraph claims that baseball was invented in Surrey, England and not in America.

A diary has been found which describes the game being played by a teenager in Guildford in 1755.

Previously it had been thought that the game developed in America in the 1790s.

But this new proof indicates that the British can claim to have invented yet another of the world's great games, formerly considered as American as apple pie.

The handwritten entry was discovered in the diary of lawyer William Bray. It documents a game with friends on Easter Monday 1755, when he was still a teenager.

Well, it's obviously a forgery. Who could believe such a tale? Where's Paul Revere when you need him?

Today is September 11 and ...

It's an important day. A day Americans remember thanks to the horrific events 7 years ago today. They're unveiling a monument at the Pentagon dedicated to those who died there on September 11. So, how can it be that there's so much discussion about lipstick, pigs, etc.?

It's great that Obama and McCain are jointly marking the anniversary in New York today. I guess it's great. I actually think it would be better if they had spent an hour (or better yet, two hours) discussing/debating September 11: what caused it, in hindsight what was the right response, and what should America be doing to avoid a repeat. A grown-up discussion between the two men who want to lead America hosted by Brian Lambe.

Allianz Stadium

The NY Daily News says that Allianz is the leading contender to win the naming rights of the new football stadium for the NY Giants & NY Jets. This has upset Holocaust survivors, Jewish groups and fans of the two teams.

Frankly, I don't know what to make of this. I don't know enough of the history to assess whether Allianz's role in the Third Reich was greater than other big German companies or would all such German companies - Volkswagen, Siemens, Deutsche Bank, etd. - be equally opposed. I'm also not going to tell people what they can or cannot be offended by.

However, I would like to know if a company can ever overcome being associated with such evil. The News says that Allianz insured Auschwitz and "refused to pay off life insurance stipends to Jews and sent their policies' proceeds to the Nazis instead". The News also says that Allianz "has acknowledged its shameful past and has shelled out millions in restitution".

I know that in law a company is a legal person, but I guess to my mind it's the people who run and work for the company who are really responsible for what the company does. Without people a company is an empty shell, just a name.

Rabbi Jay Rosenbaum, secretary general of the North American Board of Rabbis, agreed that although survivors' sensibilities are understandable, a naming deal is legit.

"I have found Allianz to be receptive, to be sensitive and a friend of the Jewish people today," he said.

"We need not live in the past."

The words of Rabbi Rosenbaum leads me to believe that, yes, a company can live down its past, but for those who survived the Holocaust the name Allianz - regardless of what the company is today - may simply be too stark a reminder.

Fearful

That's Jonathan Freedland's message today. He's afraid that, "The Democrats are about to lose an election they should win". He fears for "blue-state America", for young Americans, and for African-Americans. But, should the Democrats lose the reaction he fears most is the reaction among non-Americans.

If Americans choose McCain, they will be turning their back on the rest of the world, choosing to show us four more years of the Bush-Cheney finger. And I predict a deeply unpleasant shift.

Until now, anti-Americanism has been exaggerated and much misunderstood: outside a leftist hardcore, it has mostly been anti-Bushism, opposition to this specific administration. But if McCain wins in November, that might well change. Suddenly Europeans and others will conclude that their dispute is with not only one ruling clique, but Americans themselves. For it will have been the American people, not the politicians, who will have passed up a once-in-a-generation chance for a fresh start - a fresh start the world is yearning for.

… Of course I know that even to mention Obama's support around the world is to hurt him. Incredibly, that large Berlin crowd damaged Obama at home, branding him the "candidate of Europe" and making him seem less of a patriotic American. But what does that say about today's America, that the world's esteem is now unwanted? If Americans reject Obama, they will be sending the clearest possible message to the rest of us - and, make no mistake, we shall hear it.

What a load of nonsense. Freedland believes that American voters should choose the candidate most desired by non-Americans otherwise America will be spurning "the world's esteem". So the voters should choose to vote not in their best interests, but in the interests of those in Germany or Peru or China?

Olympic coverage

{I know this is dated, but I only found where I'd stashed this one a few weeks ago.}

The Buffalo News's Alan Pergament says that the BBC is worse than American t.v. when it comes to playing the role of cheerleader for their nation's athletes. I know it can be jarring to find yourself watching the Olympics in another country, but sheesh, Alan, I'm not sure I can buy this: "It seems Americans are the only one concerned about objective coverage".

As it happens, all of the Olympics I saw were on NBC and their partner stations. Let me say that being worse than NBC would take some doing. Anyone who watched any of the gymnastics on NBC would have wondered if any other nations other than China & America were taking part. The swimming coverage was only marginally better.

I'll say this: the coverage on the USA Network, MSNBC & CNBC was pretty good. But the prime time coverage on NBC - the primary channel for the Olympics - was horrendous. And, yeah, the BBC annoys me too. Same goes for RTE.

No Tallaght II

Fine Gael has said 'No' to a rerun of the Tallaght Strategy. Well good for them, but this was hardly a tough decision. Back in the 80s there was some justification for adopting their 'no opposition' policy because (a) the straits were more dire and (b) they had played an active role in creating the dire straits.

Fine Gael's been in government for, what, 2½ years out of the past 20? Why should they now roll over "in the national interest" because Fianna Fail has mismanaged us into this mess. I know FF's in a heap of trouble because Joan Burton's starting to sound like a safer pair of hands.

The Last Sister

My aunt has returned to Ireland after 49 years in Prince George, British Columbia. There was a nice write up about her in the Prince George Citizen before she left. She was the last of the Sisters of Mercy in the diocese.

Too often over the past 10 years or so we in Ireland only heard about priests and nuns who left here years ago when some form of scandal erupted. Yet my aunt and the vast majority of the thousands of others who went on the missions from here served the Church wholeheartedly, with passion and grace. At the same time they constituted a tremendous army of ambassadors for Ireland throughout the four corners of the globe. That my aunt and thousands like her are not being replaced by younger Irish missionaries is a loss both for the Church and for Ireland.

Smooth & gaffe prone

Funny how smooth Obama looks when he's delivering one of those big set piece speeches. And, during the primaries I read many times how he set the room alight with one of his speeches. What I don't get is how he's also a verbal klutz who can't seem to get out of his own way (verbally). Now, I know that anyone can make these slip-ups when in the constant glare of the media, but it's my impression that Obama does it more than most. In fact, if he were the Republican nominee there would be (unfavorable) comparisons with President Bush.

This weekend we had "my Muslim faith" - not a biggie, but he also referred to the Penn State football team as the Nittaly Lions, and not the Nittany Lions as they've been known until now. That's the kind of misstep that can cost you - BIG time. If he messes up at Notre Dame he can kiss the election good-bye.

Bad poll for Obama

Newstalk reports today that McCain now leads Obama by 4 percent. Not the end of the world for Obama with 57 days left until election day. However, McCain has a 10 point lead among likely voters. That's gotta be a source of some concern.

{I'm skeptical of telephone polls because those who have only a cell phone are probably younger & more likely to vote Obama. Gallup says that they're polling people who have only a cell phone, but I still doubt that the sample is representative of the nation.}

Carrie follows through

Regular commenter Carrie "threatened" to set up her own blog in a comment below. Well, she's gone and done it. You can find Carrie here, at Coyote Blue-Jay.

I didn't see her speech yet

Last night I was all set to watch Governor Palin's speech from Wednesday night, but my broadband was acting up and I couldn't download it. I have it downloaded now and will watch it later. Might watch McCain's too.

How many goals did the father score?

And as unwed mothers are all the rage in the news, today we learn that France's Justice Minister, Rachida Dati, is both unwed and expecting. The Daily Telegraph says there's a lot of speculation as to who the father might be, but really the more pertinent question is: Has the father achieved anything in sports to rival the accomplishments of Bristol Palin's fiancee? Get the NY Post on the case.

McCain knew

Will she remain on the ticket? I have no idea (and I didn't see her speech last night). Anyway, of all the questions that have arisen about Sarah Palin since last Friday the most important is: Did John McCain vet Palin properly before choosing her as his running mate?

The jury is still out on that one, but one thing that's clear is that McCain certainly knew Bristol Palin was pregnant before he introduced her mother as his running mate. I've read quite a few comments in the press and on blogs that suggested that McCain didn't know. However, pictures of McCain and Palin from last Friday were posted on Meghan McCain's blog and there's one picture that makes it obvious that Bristol is pregnant. There's simply no way that Meghan or Cindy McCain could have missed this. Even 'Nana' McCain could have clued her son in if he was in any doubt.

Well, at least this wasn't kept from McCain. I'm assuming that McCain just figured that nobody would want to have a go at a 17-year-old girl or even her mother for what is, unfortunately, a fairly common family experience. Which only begs the question: Is he really that naive?