Day 33: Happy Some Saint’s Day

I know, it’s St. Patrick’s Day, not just any saint but the patron saint of Ireland. It’s certainly not St. Trump’s Day, that’s for sure.

Trump’s budget proposal is the furthest thing from saintly — cutting federal funding to the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) is just one disgusting example. CDBG provides grants to the Meals on Wheels (MoW) program, which feeds the home-ridden elderly and disabled as well as kids in after-school programs. Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney says MoW is “not showing any results.” No more fishes and loaves for you, sickly/old/poor people, if Congress goes along with this nonsense. I guess your desiccated, malnourished corpses are the kind of results this administration wants to see.

According to St. Patrick’s ‘Confessio‘ — an autobiography-cum-confession — he overcame kidnapping from Scotland, enslavement by the Irish, and eventually converted Irish to Catholicism. In contrast, Trump was born with a silver spoon and treated his fellow man (and some family) like crap throughout his lifetime. Definitely not saintly. And definitely not up to converting those who aren’t already his hardcore faithful adherents.

Stuff of the Irish:

Irish PM Enda Kenny visits Trump and asks for leniency for illegal Irish aliens — Let’s be frank about this issue: Trump’s probably fine with them (meaning Bannon is fine with them, too) because these aliens are probably white and Christian. Got to give it to PM Kenny, though, for this nice bit of snark:

“They say the Irish have the capacity to change everything…I just saw the president of the United States read from his script, entirely.”

Wonder if Trump was ballsy enough to go for an other conflict of interest and complain about the sea wall he wants for his Doobeg golf course resort.

British Brexit secretary David Davis says border checks between North Ireland and Ireland possible post-Brexit — He did qualify them as “light” customs checks, saying,

“There are already customs checks between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland because there are excise differences, but they are done in a very light way. … There would be customs checks, [but] that does not mean we demur from our position of wanting to have a very light border, no hard border.”

But wait…what do the Irish think of this?

Sinn Féin MEP tells Theresa May Brexit border checks in Ireland can go ‘where the sun don’t shine’ — And there it is. I didn’t even paraphrase that hed, that’s exactly what The Irish Post wrote. Here’s exactly what MEP Martina Anderson said:

“Theresa, your notion of a border, hard and soft, stick it where the sun doesn’t shine ‘cos you’re not putting it in Ireland.”

Ouch. No mincing words there.

Women won largest number of seats ever in North Ireland’s assembly election — Sinn Féin leads in gender parity as women represent 41% of its Member of the Legislative Assembly. Between the surge of women in NI’s National Assembly and the increased weighting of representation by Sinn Féin in both NI and Ireland’s National Parliament, the reaction toward the UK and Brexit will be quite different from expectations nine months ago.

Banks may be moving to Dublin from London because of Brexit — This report says Ireland is surprised; I don’t know why, given the amount of business conducted in English language in Dublin as compared to any other location like Paris, Brussels, or Frankfurt. Ireland has been a tax haven and a center for both insurance and technology for a couple decades, too. Perhaps Ireland ought to be more lenient toward educated illegal aliens from the U.S. if it’s looking to staff up its financial sector quickly.

Op-ed: ‘Another day, another Brexit lie exposed’ — Theresa May has only increased Irish sympathies for Scotland with her rejection of a second independence referendum, as if all the other Brexit fail wasn’t enough. Could this animus be enough to unite Ireland, but against Britain and its “Tory public schoolboys”?

That’s a wrap on this work week and Day 33 in our countdown to Tax Day. Don’t drink green beer. Just don’t.

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12 replies
  1. bloopie2 says:

     
    If a drunken Irishperson (real or just for today) gets into an argument with me, and I see she is carrying a gun (posit an open carry state), do I have the right to preemptively kill her because I fear for my life?
     

  2. harpie says:

    From The Hill, today:
    http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/324322-flynn-worked-for-multiple-russian-firms

    […] [Michael] Flynn received an additional $11,250 payment in October 2015 from the subsidiary of a Russian company specializing in “uncovering Western government spyware,” Kaspersky Lab. Its founder, Eugene Kaspersky, denies that it has stocked the firm with those with close ties to Russian intelligence.
    Flynn, who served as the director of Defense Intelligence Agency from 2012 until he was fired from the job in 2014, still had a top-level national security clearance when he performed the work in 2015. […]

    Marcy has an article at The Atlantic, today, about the Yahoo indictment, Russian hackers and American spies.
    Congratulations, Marcy!

    • Rayne says:

      Link to Marcy’s piece in The Atlantic right here.

      WRT Flynn: what was going on at DoD that nobody noticed he still had high-level security clearance AND he was working for multiple Russian firms? Something’s really sketchy there.

  3. earlofhuntingdon says:

    Stop me if you’ve heard this….

    Ireland is already a major location for offshoring and tax avoidance.  Dublin is likely to become a major center for go-easy, English-speaking banking.  And since the Irish get along so well with the English, it’s likely to be somewhat less dependent on the City than island dependencies, whose economies are driven by tourism and providing addresses (and governments) of convenience for City bankers.  Brexit may be the best thing England has ever done for the Irish.

  4. PeasantParty says:

    What??? Peasants need to have every excuse to party. They’ve been swindled for centuries. Even if you aren’t Irish, or Scot, live a little because we don’t know when it will all be taken from us.

    From a Scots-Irish Peasant. LOL!

    • Rayne says:

      There are 35 million Americans of Irish heritage. More if Scots-Irish included. That’s +10.5% of the population. If all of them voted in concert they could easily swing an election — maybe they need to wrap their heads around that instead of a Guinness or Harp.

      In contrast there are only ~6 million Irish on the island of Ireland.

      • Alan says:

        According to the Economist:

        German-Americans are America’s largest single ethnic group (if you divide Hispanics into Mexican-Americans, Cuban-Americans, etc). In 2013, according to the Census bureau, 46m Americans claimed German ancestry: more than the number who traced their roots to Ireland (33m) or England (25m).

        Maybe someone should have mentioned this to Trump before he met with and insulted Merkel.

  5. John Casper says:

    bloopie2,

    Well played.

    Riffing off your scenario, because U.S. doesn’t require those of us with Irish ancestors–me for example–to wear something like a yellow start to identify my heritage–could someone claim they feared for their life, because they thought the person you described could have been Irish? If the state has concealed carry, could someone claim they feared the person the person you described was armed?

  6. P J Evans says:

    There are 35 million Americans of Irish heritage. More if Scots-Irish included.

    Most of my extended family has Irish ancestry, from the 18th-century Quakers through the people escaping the Famine to the great-uncle who emigrated in 1906 (and was married and divorced before joining my family).

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