Thursday, October 30, 2014

This Is Not About The Water Charges

The last street protest about water rates may be dwarfed by the planned one for this Saturday, but it is not about the water charges. It is about something deeper and the beginning of that sense of outrage that had been missing in this country since the obese Cowen and the crafty Bertie retired from the public stage while pocketing over €300,000 of a send off along with a €3000 a week pension each as a reward for the biggest failure of economics that was intertwined with corruption in the history of this country as a banana republic. Bananas is maybe all we will have in the end.

Fianna Fail, the party that these two dangerous idiots belonged to and headed, had started the tradition of corruption in this country and it has never abated since for it is now so deeply ingrained that it is institutional. The people, as in the taxpayer and the unemployed, cannot take it anymore for there is nothing to take for that was sold off one way or another in the bank bail out. We truly now are an autocracy whether we believe it or not for it is either the IMF or the EU who calls the shots, whatever way it is dressed up or presented by the weak one that rules today, Enda Kenny.

It is the stealth taxes of a thousand cuts and more that is killing this country; it is also the patronizing way this Government tells us how good we are at taking it all, as if it was some patriotic duty to do so. It is more but it is not about the water charges, never was or will be. The sense of outrage has at last, even if curiously belated, has arrived.

The quangos rule, the charities steal, and all in the name of government. Cronyism is in but it was never out. And still, the risk was how much can the Irish take. As I write, the only conviction for corruption in this country by one county councilor is on appeal which, if it is successful, then it is official  that no corruption exists here, move on, nothing to see.

The Police force is also a law unto itself, accountable to no one and the points system is proof of that, and the courts are such a joke that if you want justice you had better look to the EU because that is exactly where these courts look to as well. It is also politically convenient that it was never the government’s fault in any case but EU interference. No point, after 700 years of being ruled by others, including the EU, in getting a backbone now as it would be as pointless as a full ground troop invasion of England itself.

The banksters still rule, Enda for another while and ‘democracy’ a little longer as the people of this land suffer under a private debt without accountability for the corruption that caused it, which has killed a lot of hope in this country and is eroding what is left. We are good little leprechauns indeed.


Barry Clifford  

Doing the right thing can be........

Jack wakes up with a huge hangover after attending his company's Christmas Party. Jack is not normally a drinker, but the drinks didn't taste like alcohol at all. He didn't even remember how he got home from the party. As bad as he was feeling, he wondered if he did something wrong.

Jack had to force himself to open his eyes and the first thing he sees is a couple of aspirins next to a glass of water on the side table. And, next to them, a single red rose! Jack sits up and sees his clothing in front of him, all clean and pressed. He looks around the room and sees that it is in perfect order, spotlessly clean. So is the rest of the house.

He takes the aspirins, cringes when he sees a huge black eye staring back at him in the bathroom mirror. Then he notices a note hanging on the corner of the mirror written in red with little hearts on it and a kiss mark from his wife in Lipstick: "Honey, breakfast is on the stove, I left early to get groceries to make you your favorite dinner tonight. I love you, darling! Love, Jillian"

He stumbles to the kitchen and sure enough, there is hot breakfast, steaming hot coffee and the morning newspaper. His son is also at the table, eating. Jack asks, "Son... What happened last night?"

"Well, you came home after 3 A.M., drunk and out of your mind. You fell over the coffee table and broke it, and then you puked in the hallway, and got that black eye when you ran into the door.

Confused, he asked his son, "So, why is everything in such perfect order and so clean? I have a rose, and breakfast is on the table waiting for me??"

His son replies, "Oh THAT! Mom dragged you to the bedroom, and when she tried to take your pants off, you screamed, "Leave me alone, I'm married!!"


Broken Coffee Table: $239.99. Hot Breakfast: $4.20. Two Aspirins: $.38. 

Saying the right thing, at the right time. . . PRICELESS!!!

Photo Minute: Heaven meets earth-the lake district ( click on photos)








Monday, October 27, 2014

A Question Of Morals

“Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astound the other.”
Mark Twain

“So far, about morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.”
Ernest Hemingway

“It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere... Science has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.”
Albert Einstein

“Higgins, have you no morals, man?
Doolittle [unabashed]: Can’t afford them, Governor. Neither could you if you was as poor as me.”
George Bernard Shaw-Pygmalion

“Would you have yourself aborted, your brother, your sister, your mother or father. In the end, I suppose, that abortion is a moral choice if you happened to have one.”
Anon



“Work hard, do your best, live the truth, trust yourself, have some fun...and you'll have no regrets.”

Byrd Bagget

Sunday, October 26, 2014

Remembering Lou Gehrig: An inspiration

“I think there is something wrong with him. Physically wrong, I mean. I don't know what it is, but I am satisfied that it goes far beyond his ball-playing. I have seen ballplayers 'go' overnight, as Gehrig seems to have done. But they were simply washed up as ballplayers. It's something deeper than that in this case, though. I have watched him very closely and this is what I have seen: I have seen him time a ball perfectly, swing on it as hard as he can, meet it squarely — and drive a soft, looping fly over the infield. In other words, for some reason that I do not know, his old power isn't there... He is meeting the ball, time after time, and it isn't going anywhere." That is what a news reporter wrote about Lou Gehrig, one of the greatest American baseball players of all time, on watching him playing baseball badly not knowing that he was seriously ill and did not have long to live
When Lou knew that something was wrong too he wrote to his wife Eleanor telling her what it was: “The bad news is lateral sclerosis, in our language chronic infantile paralysis. There isn't any cure... there are very few of these cases. It is probably caused by some germ...Never heard of transmitting it to mates... There is a 50–50 chance of keeping me as I am. I may need a cane in 10 or 15 years. Playing is out of the question.’ He had two years to live.
Playing was indeed out of the question and when he addressed for the last time his beloved fans on June the fourth 1939 at a sold out game at Yankee Stadium he said this:
“Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about the bad break I got. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. I have been in ballparks for seventeen years and have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans.
When you look around, wouldn't you consider it a privilege to associate yourself with such fine looking men as are standing in uniform in this ballpark today? Sure, I'm lucky. Who wouldn't consider it an honor to have known Jacob Ruppert? Also, the builder of baseball's greatest empire, Ed Burrow? To have spent six years with that wonderful little fellow, Miller Huggins? Then to have spent the next nine years with that outstanding leader, that smart student of psychology, the best manager in baseball today, Joe Mc Carthy? Sure, I'm lucky
When the New York Giants, a team you would give your right arm to beat, and vice versa, sends you a gift—that's something. When everybody down to the groundskeepers and those boys in white coats remember you with trophies—that's something. When you have a wonderful mother-in-law who takes sides with you in squabbles with her own daughter—that's something. When you have a father and a mother who work all their lives so that you can have an education and build your body—it's a blessing. When you have a wife who has been a tower of strength and shown more courage than you dreamed existed—that's the finest I know.
So I close in saying that I might have been given a bad break, but I've got an awful lot to live for. Thank you.”

Lou Gehrig 1903-1941
Cobbled together by Barry Clifford