Thank you, America!

Today I want to thank the people of the USA for what they have done last night.

Yes, I thank you will all my heart. Obviously there are a lot more decent Americans than I thought for the past eight years.

It's early days yet, and we should not expect too much from Barack Obama. He's just a man and not the Messiah. He won't be able to perform miracles.
And the mess the criminal and corrupt Bush administration leaves behind is colossal.

But at least hope is restored today, to the USA and to the rest of the world.

Once again, thank you America! And congratulations to Barack Obama!

May the good luck of last night remain with you, and may you have the strength and wisdom to be a great leader.

John McCain conceeds

Guess who just won the election?

That one!

Barack Hussein Obama

President-elect

History in the making

The Americans elected Barack Obama!!!
*

Today is D-Day in the USA

Yes, the day is finally here. Today is D-Day - Decision Day - in the USA, and by tomorrow we will know who's the next man to spend four years in the White House.

Hard to believe how time flies.

Back in January, when the whole spectacle of primaries and caucuses started and more than 30 politicians from the two large US parties put their hats into the ring, it was all very confusing, and even more so for someone like me, here in Ireland, where we don't have this kind of political circus.

When we elect our President - once every seven years - there is of course a modest campaign with all the candidates, and then the people vote. Our President is directly elected by the people, with no 'electoral college' in between, even though the office has very little political power and is more of a representative position, like it is in most other European countries as well.

But we take a lot of interest also in the US elections. After all, there are about 50 million Americans with Irish ancestry (that's one in six US citizens), and above that the USA are now the only 'super power' eft on the planet. So whatever they - and their President - do has a lot of consequences for everyone else in the world, regardless where they live.

I followed the developments in the USA with great interest, but as I said, my understanding of the process and procedures was limited. So I read a lot about it, in papers and on-line. And I did learn a lot from that.
However, there is only one blog I read that really impressed me. As it happens, it's written by another Irishman and called "Views from the Emerald Isle". (the URL is http://inishtrahoull.blogspot.com/)
This man seems to know his politics and has an amazing power of analysis and vision. He was the only one of all the journalists and bloggers whose articles I read who wrote back in January that the final contest would be between John McCain and Barack Obama.
While most of the Irish media - including RTÉ - were sure that Hillary Clinton would win the nomination of the Democratic Party and almost campaigned for her, this single blogger dismissed her and her chances back in January, and he explained his reasons in detail. I just read these articles again, and with hindsight they are even more impressive. I think this man should be on RTÉ or write for our major papers. They all got it wrong for a long time, but he was right from the very start.

But enough about the past. Today the Americans have to decide, and I hope they will make the right decision. Which - in my humble opinion - is Barack Obama. He's the only one who could bring back some decency and honour to the American nation that has been turned into the true "Empire of Evil" (the phrase used by Ronald Reagan for the Soviet Union many years ago) under the criminal and corrupt administration of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

John McCain was an honourable man eight years ago, when he ran against Bush in the primaries of the Republican Party. Had he won the nomination then, he would probably have won the election as well and - perhaps - been quite a good President. But a lot has happened since. In fact way too much has happened. And since McCain joined the Bush camp four years ago and sold his soul to Bush, Cheney and Karl Rove (the evil spin master behind Bush), he has become a differnt man and part of the evil machine that dragged America down into the gutter.

If one had needed more proof for that, his selection of Sarah Palin as 'running mate' said it all.
This right-wing woman, who could have made Adolf Hitler smile with pride and joy, is the personification of everything that is wrong with the USA today. Even the theoretical thought that she could be "one heartbeat away from the Presidency", which she would if the Americans elect the 72-year-old McCain, makes me shiver.

I have no vote in this election, and I would never want to live in the USA, no matter who is the President. But I can only urge the decent Americans - and yes, there still are some - to vote for the right man today, in their own interest and in the interest of the whole world.

Quite a lot of Americans visit this blog, so I hope they will read this and do the right thing. I will be sitting here and waiting in anticipation. My gut feeling tells me that Barack Obama is going to win the White House, and probably with a good majority. But as long as people like Karl Rove are around to muddle things up (as he did in 2000 and 2004), one can never be completely sure.

Please give yourself and the world another chance for peace and prosperity and vote for Barack Obama!

McCain's five Reasons

My friends, there are five reasons not to vote for me:
The Economy,
the War in Iraq,
my closeness to George W. Bush,
Sarah Palin
and, and... ah ... myself.

It's Make-your-Mind-up Time

"I do wonder... who I shall electionise tomorrow..."

"Maybe it's O'Cain... or should I go for McBama?"

"Or can I stay in bed and have another banana?"

John McCain has a Dream today...

"Oh yeah, I have a dream today..."

(But that's all it is and ever will be)

"Are we there yet, are we there yet..."

The Republican Truth

John, you are eight years too late

and got a real bad running mate!

Creationists love and support Sarah Palin

This group of dedicated American creationist women meets every Tuesday at their local country club for a coffee morning. They all belong to the same evangelical church and are sure that the world was created by God in six days, 6012 years ago, as their preacher keeps telling them every Sunday. They also believe that they were created after God's own image.

All four also belong to the Republican Party and are over the Moon (also created by God 6012 years ago) that Sarah Palin, the creationist governor of Alaska, will soon be Vice-President and - perhaps in a few years - the first female President of the USA. They are sure about that, since no-one will elect a negro as President. That would be as idiotic as the idea of Evolution. But to be sure, they have turned their weekly coffee morning into a fund-raising event for Sarah Palin. The four of them pose - for a donation to the cause - in their bikinis for local photographers. We can well imagine that their efforts are highly successful. And Sarah Palin has said that she is proud to have such dedicated supporters.

The Great Craiglist Heist

In an elaborate robbery scheme that was one part "The Thomas Crowne Affair" and one part "Pineapple Express", a criminal robbed an armoured van outside a Bank of America branch in Monroe, Washington, by hiring decoys through Craigslist, a popular US advertising website.

He then escaped in a creek, headed for the Skykomish River, in an inner tube, and the police are still looking for him.
"A great amount of money" was taken, the Monroe police said, but did not provide the actual sum.

It appears that around 11 a.m. the robber - wearing a yellow day-glow vest, safety goggles, a blue shirt and a respirator mask - went over to a guard who was overseeing the unloading of cash to the bank from the van. He sprayed the guard with pepper spray, grabbed his bag of money, and fled the scene.

But here's the hilarious twist. The robber had previously put out an ad on Craigslist for "road maintenance workers", promising wages of $ 28.50 per hour.
Willing recruits were asked to wait near the Bank of America in Monroe right around the time of the robbery, wearing yellow day-glow vests, safety goggles, a respirator mask, and preferably a blue shirt. At least a dozen of them turned up after responding to the ad.

"I came across this ad that was for a job for $ 28.50 an hour," one of the unwitting decoys told NBC. As it turns out, he and his "colleagues" were simply placed there to confuse the police, who were looking for a man wearing an identical outfit.

They eventually found the getaway inner tube (a getaway inner tube - hilarious!) and suspect that accomplices may have picked up the robber in a boat.
According to NBC, police hope to track him down by finding out who posted the ad in the first place. Good luck with that...

Craigslist founder Craig Newmark was - surprise, surprise - not available for comment.

Sarah's Chick comes home to roost...

Animal killer, creationist "Christian" and "hockey mom"
Sarah Palin, also governor of Alaska, has apparently
been too much concentrated on (ice) hockey, hunting animals
and weird religious doctrines.

In the process she missed the little matter of her eldest daughter
Bristol (what kind of name is that for a girl?) sleeping around with
the boys at school. Now that 17-year-old Bristol is pregnant, it is of
course entirely "a private matter" for the Palins and has nothing to
do with Sarah's ideas of parenthood, sex education and morals . . .

Alaskan Girl still wants to be Beauty Queen

Meanwhile Sarah Palin has been out shopping with John McCain
and his credit cards. To make her look presentable, the campaign
has spent $ 150,000 on Sarah's new wardrobe. That's nearly
four times as much as "Joe the Plumber", McCain's special friend
from Ohio, earns in a year. I hope Joe is watching Sarah and her
attempt to become a beauty queen at last. When she tried back in
1984 to become "Miss Alaska", she was beaten into second place
by - now, wait for it - the first ever black "Miss Alaska".
Some Omen - or what?

While Sarah is focused on her new clothes and her dream of
living in the White House and nuking moose and caribou one
day in the future, an independent investigation in Alaska has
found her guilty of abusing her gubernatorial powers
when she sacked the Public Safety Commissioner (something
like a Minister for the Interior) after he refused to kick Sarah
Palin's former brother-in-law out of the state's police force.
Not because he was a bad cop, no. The only reason was that
Palin wanted to punish him for divorcing her horrible sister.
Bitches, you have to realise, always stick together like glue.
And as Barack Obama pointed out so very well and clearly:
"A pig with lipstick - is still a pig..."

And, as we know since George Orwell's 'Animal Farm', pigs
are more equal than all the other animals. I can see that.

Republicans - the Sick Party

Sarah Palin - just one heartbeat away from
the man who will never be US President...

McCain's fake Plumber

A few days ago a previously unknown man approached Senator Barack Obama while he was out campaigning in Toledo, in the crucial 'swing' state of Ohio.

This man introduced himself as "Joe Wurzelbacher" (now this is some name to remember, coming second probably only to Arnold Schwarzenegger), told Obama that he was a local plumber and not happy with the proposed taxation policies of the Democratic candidate for the US presidency. Like any man who wants to win votes, the Illinois Senator listened for a while and argued with the man who had a shaven head and looked very 'Germanic' in a threatening kind of way.

While the conversation went on, "Joe the Plumber" - as he is apparently known to his friends - told Senator Obama that he was planning to buy the business for which he currently works, but if the Democrats would pass Obama's proposed changes to the tax system, he would not be able to do that.

As Barack Obama proposes to reduce the tax burden for the vast majority of US citizens - except the super-rich - this was a strange line of argument and no-one remembered much of it after a few minutes.

But then a strange succession of events began to make "Joe Wurzelbacher" a famous man in the USA, at least famous for fifteen minutes.
First he appeared in the campaign reports of Fox News, the most odious right-wing propaganda TV channel in the USA, which is owned by the Australian-born US citizen Rupert Murdoch, the billionaire media mogul and sleaze merchant who also owns many UK newspapers (including The Times, the Sun and the News of the World) and has the controlling stake in Sky TV.

And then - surprise, surprise - John McCain brought "Joe the Plumber" up towards the end of his third live TV debate with Barack Obama. How did he know about him? Or did he actually know him? That looked fishy even to the most gullible people, and soon some journalists were on their way to find out more about the Ohio plumber with the strange Austrian name. They soon found a lot about him, but - surprise, surprise - it does not in any way tally with the story he told about himself.

1. His name is not "Joe" but "Sam" - short for Samuel Wurzelbacher.
2. He is not a plumber. At least he does not have a licence, which all qualified plumbers in his area are required to have. So either he is no plumber at all, or not a qualified one.
3. The firm he says he is working for - and which he wanted to buy and take over - does not have a plumbing licence either. So either they are fly-by-night cowboy plumbers, working illegally, or not in that line of business at all.
4. According to his tax returns, Mr. Wurzelbacher earns about $ 40,000 per annum. On that basis he would not be in a financial position to buy his employer's business, which is currently valued at around $ 250,000.
5. And - again according to tax records - Mr. Wurzelbacher still has an unpaid tax bill of $ 1200 outstanding. So he is already in trouble with his taxes now, after nearly eight years under the Republican Bush administration.

So it appears that Mr. Wurzelbacher, whom John McCain publically hailed as "an ordinary Joe" and "the typical middle-class American", is either a fantasist, a liar, or a mix of both. He might also be working illegally, without qualifications, and be employed by an unlicenced company.

But there is another possibility. He could simply be a stooge, a Republican propagandist, who was deliberately planted into the meeting with Obama to stir up trouble. Why else was he - of all the people present - filmed and interviewed by the right-wing Fox News? And why was McCain so quick to use him as an example?
The whole affair looks to me very much like the handwriting of Karl Rove (real name Karl Röver and named after his grandfather, a senior official in Hitler's Nazi party) who was George W. Bush closest adviser and campaign manager. He organised several stunts like this during the 2004 presidential election campaign, especially in the 'swing' state Ohio, which Bush narrowly won eventually.
Officially Rove is now in the background, but he still controls the strings of the Republican party propaganda machine. And one of his closest associates - a man called Steve Schmidt - is John McCain's chief campaign manager. The links are obvious, and "Joe the Plumber" is as bogus as the whole hate and smear campaign Karl Rove, Steve Schmidt, Sarah Palin and John McCain are running against Barack Obama. Let's hope that the Americans as a whole are not as stpuid as the Republicans think they are...

Sarah Palin is a Bitch

Well, we should not really be surprised about Sarah Palin. In her first public speech - at the Republican convention which made her the 'running mate' (a strange word with more than one meaning) of John 'Oldie' McCain - she said it herself, for all the world to hear: she is a bitch, a pit-bull with lipstick.

Now the independent inquiry into her less than two years of gubernatorial experience in Alaska has found that "Sarah Palin abused her authority by pressuring subordinates to fire a state trooper involved in a feud with her family".

Why am I not surprised...?

The story is that her sister had married a 'state trooper' (policeman), the marriage didn't work (as so many others) and broke up (as so many others). After the divorce there was some dispute over access rights to the child (also quite common) and some harsh words were exchanged (happens here all the time).

But then governor Palin demanded from the public safety commissioner (who is in charge of the state troopers), a man named Walt Monegan (sound oirish), that he should fire Trooper Wootten who had been stupid enough to marry Palin's sister. Not because he was a bad policeman. Oh no!
Trooper Wootten's only crime was that he had fallen out with a member of the Palin family.

When Commissioner Monegan refused to break and bend the law in order to please his governor, she sacked him instead of Trooper Wootten. That's the kind of woman Sarah Palin is. A bitch.

She wouldn't know what fairness is, if it came along the road and hugged her... She is just an evil and meanspirited bitch, badly educated, biased, prejudist, creationist, reationary and - most of all - power-hungry.

Sarah the hunter... she needs to find and kill her prey, and the more the better. No other creature has any rights or chances in her world. It's a dog's world. Dog bites dog. And bitch bites everyone else...

Beware Ye, people of the United States...
though hast a beast at the gates of the White House!

Thanks George, you've fucked us all!

In November 2000 George W. Bush (better known as Dubya) was not elected President.

In December 2000 the US Supreme Court, most of whose members were appointed by Dubya's father George Herbert Walker Bush, decided with a 5:4 vote that Dubya should be President.

In January 2001 Dubya was inaugurated as President, and in his speech he said that he had to come to Washington to "demand a refund" for too much taxes he had paid apparently.

Until September 10th, 2001 Dubya was a 'lame duck' President, who could not get one single law he proposed passed in Congress.

On September 11th, 2001 he sat in a primary school in Florida, land of the 'hanging chads', to read simple sentences with real seven-year-olds. All leading members of his administration - except Dick Cheney, who sat in the bunker of the National Defense Center - were doing similar 'important' things outside Washington.
Meanwhile some nutters crashed two airliners into the World Trade Center in New York. Later that day Dubya declared that this was the work of one Osama bin Laden, whose name no-one else had ever heard before. But Dubya knew him well, as his family is doing business with the Laden family for more than 40 years. (It turned out that Osama bin Laden had been a CIA agent, organising radical Muslims in Pakistan, to fight against the Russians in Afghanistan.)

• On September 12th, 2001 Dubya declared war on 'terror'. Suddenly Congress became a flock of lame sheep, just bleating and nodding to everything Dubya wanted. And the US media became quaint as well, becoming the complacent unofficial propaganda instrument of a criminal regime.
• On October 7th, 2001 Dubya began the illegal invasion of Afghanistan, a country that had never done any harm to the USA.
• On March 20th, 2003 Dubya began the illegal invasion of Iraq, another country that had never done any harm to the USA.

Both countries are still occupied, with US and Allied forces waging a dirty war against the civilian population, under the lame excuse to "hunt down terrorists".

Both wars have cost the US taxpayers meanwhile more than $ 600 billion - and counting.

About $ 100 billion - including $ 20 billion in cash - have disappeared in Iraq without trace.

In November 2004 Dubya won the presidential election - yes, this time he actually was elected - with a majority of 50.7% (to 48.3% for John Kerry) after an odious campaign full of lies, scaremongering and religious hype.
Bush's campaign manager was the Nazi sympatiser Karl Rove, grandson of Karl Röver, one of Hitler's Gauleiters (party area governors).

In January 2005, at his second inauguration ceremony, Dubya declared that he had now gained "political credit" and that he was "going to spend it".
And spending he did, especially on his friends in Wall Street and political cronies, who pocketed billions.

During 2008 one by one the big Wall Street banks and finance houses crashed with huge debts, of a size never seen before in history. They all were bailed out - with the sole exception of Lehman Bros. - with hundreds of billions of US taxpayers' money. Their bosses walked away with a smile and large pay-offs or 'golden handshakes', between $ 15 million and $ 300 million per person.

Nevertheless the 'markets' remain in turmoil, share prices are in free-fall and the world is facing a total financial meltdown.

Today Dubya made another of his meaningless speeches. He said that "many of our citizens are worried about their savings and pensions". Oh yes, they are. But not he, of course, and none of his cronies. They have creamed off their millions and even billions already and are sitting pretty, no matter what will happen to the rest of us.

Offering no new remedies, he then said: "We are a prosperous nation with immense resources and a wide range of tools at our disposal. We are using these tools aggressively."

Indeed, aggressively is the only way America is using its 'tools' - and fools - since Dubya came to power. The people of Afghanistan and Iraq can vouch for that. More than a million civilians in Iraq are dead by now - with new killings happening every day.
In Afghanistan the number is now close to 100,000 - and counting.

But not only did Dubya attack and devastate Afghanistan and Iraq, he did the same to his own country, the world's financial system and the economies of all western countries.

In fact, the USA have declared war against the rest of the world!

And what is he offering now to get out of the crisis?
More aggressive tools.

Thank's a lot, George! You've managed to fuck us all!

In three months' time you will walk away from it all, with extra billions in your private pocket, a big smile on your face and another 'Mission accomplished' sign over your door.

Damn you, you spineless criminal! Damn you for all times!
And since you pretend to be a 'Christian', I hope you'll burn in Hell for all eternity!

America is running out of 000000000000

Today someone on the radio said that "America is running out of zeros".

Wait a minute, I thought... they still have Dubya, Cheney, "Condi" Rice, Paulson, Bernanke and McCain, not to mention at least a dozen others whose names no-one even remembers. So there are plenty of zeros... and they found Sarah Palin as well.

Looking around on the internet I think that a country so full of morons as the USA will never be short of zeros.

But after listening a bit closer I realised that the radio reporter was actually talking about real zeros, as in 0, the number without individual value.
The US government's debts have meanwhile ballooned so badly - he said - that the "National Debt Clock" in New York - yes, such a thing exists, no joke - has run out of digits to record the spiralling figure.

The digital counter marks the national debt level of the entire USA and is updated constantly and electronically through a connected computer.
But when the national debt - thanks to robber baron Bush and his gang - passed the $ 10 trillion (10,000,000,000,000) point last month, the sign could no longer display the full amount. It has simply not enough digit fields!

The board was placed on a wall at New York's famous Times Square in 1989, to highlight the then $ 2.7 trillion level of national debt under the rule of another Bush, the current incumbent's father (and former CIA director) George Herbert Walker Bush.

The clock's owners have said that they will now add two more zeros to the display, allowing it to record even a quadrillion Dollars of debt. (Should McCain be the next President, that is quite a realistic figure to expect...)

Douglas Durst, son of the late Seymour Durst who invented the clock, hopes to have a longer replacement ready early next year. For the time being, the counter's electronic Dollar sign has been replaced with the extra digit required.

Economists believe the $ 700 billion bail-out plan for ailing financial institutions will send the national debt level of the USA to $ 11 trillion soon.

Now, isn't that just the right kind of thing to remember Dubya for...?

The Bush Doctrine

Still guiding US politics after 7 1/2 years of blunder.

RTÉ has lost the Plot

Some people in RTÉ are completely nuts. We've known this for a long time. But so far at least the news desk had kept some degree of sanity.
Well, that last bit of sanity went out the studio window today.

Did you hear the news on Radio 1 at 10 and 11 o'clock this morning? If not, then I'll tell you.
There were items on the Irish cabinet meeting over the financial crisis, the EU meeting over the same crisis, and the GAA discussing a major change to its procedure. But none of these made the top of the news. At least the cabinet meeting should have. After all, what they come up with in there will affect us all very severely for the coming years... But no, it came down the line in the RTÉ list of priorities.

Those arrogant and overpaid raving lunatics opened both news bulletins at 10 and 11 a.m. - when everyone here tunes in to know what happened overnight and what's the agenda for the weekend - with the 'most important' news that "the former American Football player O. J. Simpson (now 61) was found guilty by a US court in Las Vegas of robbing sports memorabilia"!

Who the heck cares? The man's a nobody here, and a has-been for ages now even in the USA.
What relevance or news value has he for Ireland? Absolutely none.

But this grave error of judgement regarding the relevance of news shows how much the fecking gobshites in RTÉ are infected by the American virus, by global cultural neo-colonialism that creeps in everywhere, from Chicken McNuggets to the national news.

I am disgusted. And angry.
We are NOT the 51st state of the damned US of A... !!!
But the fecking dumbos in RTÉ treat us as if we were. And this at a time when real serious news that affect us all are aplenty.

I think it's about time that some real people go into Donnybrook and kick some arse.

With Friends like this, who needs Enemies

Mr. America

role model for the western world