Watched the US presidential debate with R. I’m a bit confused. When John McCain says he wants to “avoid defeat in Iraq” it prompts the question; what the hell would victory look like? What exactly do they expect to happen and what was the planned outcome?
Kinda wished someone had asked him that as I don’t believe he has an answer.
Is clearly Sarah Palin. It’s difficult to know where to start. She’s against “pork barrel” spending but signed off on the very funding applications she’s now saying are ridiculous. Perhaps, she’s misunderstood and just doesn’t want to buy barrels full of pork. Maybe that “lipstick on a pig” comment was too close to the bone. When Hilary Clinton was running for the democrat nomination she made the following statement in relation to Mrs. Clinton’s assertion that some of the media were sexist in their attacks.
Fair or unfair—and I do think that it’s a more concentrated criticism that Hillary gets on so many fronts; I think that’s unfortunate. But fair or unfair, I think she does herself a disservice to even mention it, really. You have to plow through that and know what you’re getting into.
Yep, that’s the same Sarah Palin that’s been shying away from the media interviews. What happened to “plow through that”. I suspect she’s worried that her lack of experience will embarrass her party. Well, Bush has been abusing the English language, invading foreign countries and generally running the white house with all the dignity of a college fraternity.
It’s taken him 7 years to shame the republicans so how bad can Palin be?
The answer lies in her comprehensive lack of experience. McCain chided Obama for being too young and green to be president. That didn’t work so he’s found an obviously telegenic governor of a huge if sparsely populated area to be his running mate. Before her 2006 promotion Mrs. Palin had done nothing more significant than the major of a town the size of Tramore. Her rhetoric against what she views as wasteful government spending is hypocritical. Her stated fiscal conservatism is undermined by her raising the debt of the TINY town of Wasilla Alaska from almost nothing to around 4 million dollars in her short term of office.
So what about her politics? Well she believes creationism should be discussed in public schools and advocates the teaching of intelligent design. She supports capital punishment and the right to bear arms. She’s also got a grudge against Polar bears as their listing as an endangered species gets in the way of oil exploration. I’ll be that gives the GOPs a tingle down their spine (at the least) She believes in the Bush Doctrine of preemptive strikes against potential aggressors even if she didn’t know it was called the “Bush Doctrine”. She needs to watch more Fox news obviously. So basically, Palin fits right in with the republican party. She’s the neo-con poster child.
I used to have some respect for McCain. He was obviously more intelligent and measured than Bush. I didn’t realise he was morally bankrupt though. I could be kind and suggest it’s dementia that led him to chose Palin as his running mate but it has the cold calculated feel of moral bankruptcy. The “I’ll do anything to get into power” feeling you only get from giving the horde (aka the republican party) a denominator common and low enough to get excited about.
The unfunny side of this is that the rest of the world has little faith in the American electorate following 2 terms of Dubya.
The title refers to R receiving a speeding ticket from a Garda yesterday. It occured on the recently finished (then refinishined, then refinished…) outer ring road in Waterford. I was with her at the time and I was bloody annoyed at the attitude of the Gardai. The speed limit on the Road is 60km/h. So anyone not from Waterford is thinking it must be in an urban area. Well, actually, it’s not. It’s one of the best road surfaces in Waterford which mostly travels through semi-rural areas with the ocassional shopping centre, business park or housing estate. It also happens to be a dual carriageway with roundabouts every few kilometers, enabling a relatively fast journey around Waterford.
So why give it a speed limit of 60 km/h which after all is after all under 40 miles an hour? This is not much faster than built-up and genuinely dangerous urban areas.
The official reason from the local authority and the NRA seems to be the assertion that it’s used by cyclists and pedestrians. Well there are 80 km/h and 100km/h regional and national roads with cyclists. Many of these have worse surfaces and are not dual carriageways. Equally, the road in question has wide walkways and cycle lanes for much of it. You only have to drive around for a few hours to realise that the driving norm is exceeding this bizarre speed limit.
The RSA like to tell us that SPEED KILLS. I’ve writ it in bold capitals so it’s easier to understand. The standard RSA message involves bludgeoning you into submission rather than careful consideration of facts, causes, effects or anything so educated. When driving from Waterford to Cork/Dublin/Limerick it’s relatively easy to spot what really kills. Unfortunately, the RSA haven’t found a snappy message but here goes
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R was caught doing a MASSIVE 84 km/h. Let’s convert that into a real speed.. so that’s just over 52 mph on a FRIGGIN DUAL CARRIAGEWAY. There were 2 members of the traffic corps. blocking the road with their cute little guns, like a schoolyard game of cowboys and indians. Despite the fact that we were overtaken by 2 other cars our large black SUV was pulled over, for some reason. We shared this distinction with a BMW 3 series coupe. R was given her 2 points and asked to “slow down!”
Yep, we got the message alright. She’s going to drive much slower in future as you never know when some chancer is going to hop out in front of you with a gun and give you a fine for driving 52 mph on a dual carriageway. The message is clear that others in less expensive automobiles will be waved on. Is this a stealth method to reduce the budget deficit?
Yet, it seems like there’s a serious road accident involving multiple deaths every week, mainly caused by the bad habits outlined above.
Like gardai hanging around driving test centres, the doling out of financial penalties for minor offenses to law abiding citizens only emphasises the public perception of a group who’d prefer to shoot fish in a barrel than effectively tackle the incidents of serious crime and violence we see on our streets. This perception may be inaccurate but it lingers (as illustrated by this article in a local paper).
The root of lawlessness is in seemingly arbitrary laws applied in an arbitrary manner.
Or as Calvin Coolidge so eloquently explained to the Massachusetts State Senate…
“Men do not make laws. They do but discover them. Laws must be justified by something more than the will of the majority. They must rest on the eternal foundation of righteousness. That state is most fortunate in its form of government which has the aptest instruments for the discovery of law.”
I’ve heard senior gardai questioned about a penchant for picking on easy traffic offenses on good stretches of road on several radio shows, including the popular Ray Darcy show and also on Newstalk. They always deny the claim, yet the question persists suggesting that the public simply don’t believe them.
For the past few weeks, local newspapers have contained reports of extreme violence involving guns, knives, petrol bombs and other instruments of terror as part of a feud in a particular section of our community. A mostly unarmed police force appears ill-equipped to deal with such reckless attitudes to human life. I sympathise with the gardai in such situations as they’re endangered while trying to uphold peace and justice. They’re largely a mechanism here of an executive which has failed to protect them through legislative reform. A recent survey revealed that more than half of the serving gardai want to carry firearms for personal protection.
However, the view that an unarmed police force will aim for the softest of targets in one that is widely held.
So, Ben Dunne suggested he’d run as an anti-Lisbon candidate in the forthcoming European elections on liveline today. Personally, I think he’s exactly the kind of plain-speaking yet shrewd businessman we could do with to represent our interests in the EU parliament. Throughout his career Mr Dunne has proven that he couldn’t give a fiddlers what anyone thinks of him which diameterically opposes him with many of the ingratiating “politicians” (in the perjorative sense of course) that we have right now. He’d have no allegiance to any party as he’s happily given donations to almost all of them and criticised them all in equal measure. Sure, he’s a maverick but in the best sense. Whether the government foists the treaty upon us again or not, Ben Dunne should strongly consider this as a great way to serve the country he regularly proclaims that he loves.