Emigrant planes await the young Irish --their futures mortgaged away by corrupt bankers

We now know that the Irish government has agreed to put a total of $90 billion into Irish banks to try and keep them afloat.

In the process they have sunk the future for a young generation of Irish

This is money that the Irish taxpayer must repay, money that will betaken from the next generation.

Brian Lucey, associate professor of finance at Trinity College Dublin told The Guardian he was "stunned",about the amount that will be invested to make the banks solvent adding: "We've already put at least $42bn into them, so that's going to be $90bn, which is 50% of GNP, that's a world record."

And we don't even know if the Irish taxpayer will be finished with them then.

It is a catastrophe.

What has the Irish government done, mortgaging the future of its children in such an incredible manner?

There were two other related stories this weekend.

One was the announcement by Tasmania, an Australian island that they were open for Irish immigration.

In a previous life Tasmania was Van Diemen's Land where Irish political leaders were transported to. It was an isolated god forsaken place then and is still very isolated now.

But another generation will now be banished to Van Diemen's land, involuntary exile from their own country like O'Reilly and Thomas Francis Meagher and William Smith O'Brien before them.

The other was straight talking businessman Denis Brosnan telling Irish young people to get out of the country while they can.

"You're not going to find jobs in this country for the next four or five years," Brosnan told the Sunday Independent

"So you can do two things -- you can go for further education if your parents or somebody else can keep you there. But if you can't, just go and emigrate because there are no jobs here. It's a very sad thing to have to say.

It is a heartbreaking and very sad thing to say Mr. Brosnan and the people who frittered away the hopes and dreams of the next generation should be made pay, the bankers by jail and the politicians by being turfed out of office.

No hope of the former, lots of hope of the latter I'd say.

Irish want to default on bank loans new opinion poll shows

A strong majority of Irish people want the government to default on the billions owed to bondholders of Irish banks according to a new Sunday Independent poll.

The poll shows that 57 per cent approve of such a move while 43 per cent oppose.

It is hardly surprising given the fact that new information shows that most of the bondholders are major European banks and brokerage houses (see list in accompanying article on this site) who made massive money when Anglo- Irish especially was borrowing billions from them, but refuse to accept the losses now that the deals have gone bad.

Instead they want the Irish taxpayer to pay.

The newspaper quotes an Irish government source saying that when the idea of default was put to European bankers, preparing the IMF rescue loan they "went ballistic,'

That is almost certainly because they know if Ireland defaults on its loans other countries will find themselves in a deep hole with their own banks, on the hook for the Irish money.

"The Europeans went completely mad," a senior government source told the newspaper when the idea was floated.

I think there will be a few twists in this story yet. A new Irish government may face incredible pressure to ease the crippling tax burden on their people and force the bondholders to pay up.

They may also decide that leaving the euro, the source of all the cheap credit that banjaxed the country may be the way to go

Very bad news for Fianna Fail in Donegal election result

The Donegal by election result will send a shiver through Fianna Fail as they saw their candidate's share of the vote drop by 60 per cent.

Sinn Fein won the seat, their first time in over 50 years to win a seat in Donegal with Fine Gael beating out Fianna Fail for second. Pearse Doherty will now defend the seat in just a few weeks time.

In the 2007 election Fianna Fail elected two of the three members of the parliament for the area with 50 per cent of the vote in what is their strongest constituency in Ireland.

This time they go to just 20 per cent of the vote. A low turnout revealed that a large percentage of their voters stayed home.

If that 20 per cent were matched in the upcoming general election, they would fall from the 77 seats they secured in 2007 to around 30 seats.

But they are likely to do far less well in other areas of the country rather than Donegal, where they can still count on a strong historical vote.

The election is shaping up as a disaster for them given this result as they will not match the 20 per cent support they reached in Donegal elsewhere in the country.

Sinn Fein will take a lot of solace in their vote but Donegal would be one of their key constituencies where they had an attractive candidate and a good on-the-ground operation.

However, it would be possible to see them reach close to fifteen seats in a general election if the voting transfers fell their way, putting them in a whole new era in Irish Republic politics, especially if party leader Gerry Adams is elected.

The big question mark in Donegal is over the poor Labor Party vote. Earlier trends had shown their candidate around 17 per cent but he ended up at ten per cent, a disappointing performance.

However, Donegal was never going to be proper territory for the Labor Party which is much more at home in an urban environment.

Meanwhile, Fine Gael will be happy enough with their performance, beating out Fianna Fail for second place.

It is a good result for party leader Enda Kenny who has had problems of his own of late.

But it is Fianna Fail candidates all over the country who will ponder this weekend what the future holds for them. Based on Donegal it does not look very pretty.

Pope Benedict's changed position on condoms deserves no praise

I am amazed that the pope gets such a hearty seal of approval for taking a position that was pure common sense.

IE. condoms stop the spread of AIDS.

Who knew?

Yet we are supposed to be over the moon that this brave act has somehow transformed this church and made it far more acceptable to the ordinary man.

I think that is such complete nonsense.

I would not listen to an 85-year-old celibate man tell me about sexual issues no more than I would listen to a plumber telling me about brain surgery.

In both cases they lack the necessary experience.

I find it laughable, frankly, that the pope's words have ben parsed and analyzed and taken so seriously.

If he wants to speak about theology, moral issues, canon law I am all ears. He is clearly an expert and a person who has done the due dilligence

But condoms and sex?

What would he know?

I mean the argument has been over since condoms were invented. If two consenting adults of whatever sex decide they want to use them that is their business.

No one, especially the pope has the right to tell them no.

Itseems as obvious as saying that vegetables are good for you based on all empirical evidence.

Yet when the pope says it we are supposed to utter Hossannahs and speak about the enormous complexity of how he arrived at the decision.

i'm sure he did because he is a smart man and realizes the old position was patently absurd.

Kinda like when previous pope had to admit, yeah the world was round and was not the center of the universe

Massive Irish government cuts could well make things worse

The Irish government has come out swinging --not against the banks and the institutions that caused the IMF intervention but the least well off and poor in society.

Unemployment benefits will be slashed, old age pensions adjusted, social welfare programs cut by $4 billion all to fill the yawning deficit gap that has opened up.

They need to raise $20 billion over the next three years to satisfy the IMF folks.

The state pension age will be raised, the Value Added Tax which hits the poor disproportionately, will rise and a new property tax that will also fall unfairly on the less well off will go into effect.

The weakest in Irish society with the least resistance to offer are in effect being blamed for the excesses of the richest .

The government says its plan is to "incentivize work and eliminate unemployment traps”.

I cannot for the life of me see where this plan incentivizes work. Everyone in the country will be poorer, there is no jobs component to this package, no stimulus spending.

Everything is cut and tax. I don't see where the job growth will come from.

What it in effect has done is deflate the economy to an incredible rate. There will be layoffs in the public sector, which were probably inevitable, social welfare payments cuts and decreases in minimum wage.

There are huge increases in taxes across a number of categories, all of which will function to take money out of the economy, cut spending and create deflation.

There are also huge cuts in cultural programs and tourism spending, two of the key areas that the government has repeatedly
said will be growth engines.

It sure doesn't look like that now.

This will get very ugly over the next few months.

There will be massive changes after this historic Irish election will take place

Read more: Irish General Election called after Greens pull out

The Green Parry decision to pull the plug on the Irish government was the only option the party had.

Recent opinion polls show this government in Ireland to be so unpopular that the Green Party now faces a parliamentary wipeout when they face the electorate.

Their only possible hope of salvation was to pull the plug on a deeply unpopular government and hope for the best that the electorate would be more forgiving as a result.

I doubt it will work but it was certainly the right thing to do.

In all my years I have never seen an Irish government so unpopular.

There is a reasonable chance that the Fianna Fail party, which has dominated Irish politics since the beginning of the state, will be effectively wiped out.

Most believe it will lose up to 40 seats from the 78 seats it held after the last election in 2007.

They have been in power 18 of the last twenty years so cannot point a finger anywhere else for the current disastrous state of the Irish economy.

The IMF loan last week was a catastrophic event for them.

Their communications strategy was to deny the loan was coming right up to the last moment before it actually was delivered.

It left for a lot of head scratching and deep sense that the party had either become far too arrogant and that they thought they could tell the populace anything, or that they did not fully understand they had no other option but to accept the loan.

The anger of the Irish electorate will now be visited on them, but as yet it is not entirely clear who will succeed them.

Fine Gael, the main opposition party is the obvious choice, but there have been many questions about their leader Enda Kenny who is considered by some to lack the political gravitas for the job at this key time.

The Labor Part leader Eamon Gilmore is far more popular but is also untested in the financial maelstrom t that Ireland faces today.

The two parties may finish sufficiently close to institute a revolving Prime Minister situation which would hardly be to Ireland's benefit.

What is clear however, is that Fianna Fail will be nowhere near the levers of power after this election and perhaps for a very long time.

The IMF takeover has seen to that.


Read more: Irish General Election called after Greens pull out

Chris Christie is the one Democrats and Obama fear most in 2012

Is Chris Christie the one we have been waiting for?

You know the chosen one like Obama was in 2008 when the world essentially genuflected before him.

Democrats are running scared that the New Jersey governor is indeed the dark horse who can get to the wire ahead of Obama in 2012.

The idea of a governor only in power one year becoming president might have seemed fanciful in other times.

But these are no ordinary times and Christie has the Democrats distinctly nervous.


At a farewell reception and dinner for Senator Chris Dodd at the Irish Embassy this week I heard his name over and over.

Among the Democratic bigs present were Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Patrick Leahy, Vicki Kennedy and Teddy's sister, Jean Kennedy Smith, as well as congressmen and Maryland governor Martin O'Malley.

I found the mood surprisingly upbeat given the grim results of the midterms.

Perhaps it was the caliber of the Republican field for 2012 that was giving them some relief.

Clearly they would relish a face off against Sarah Palin or Mike Huckabee.

Mitt Romney is taken more seriously, but right now Christie is the name that resonates.

Democrats know they lost the blue collar Catholic ethnic vote in a line stretching from Upstate New York across to Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and the Mid West.

As an Italian/Irish Catholic Christie speaks directly to that constituency.

The next election gets fought over similar terrain.Christie's appeal like Joe Biden's is to that very same ethnic coalition.

If you think Biden was brought onto the ticket for his foreign policy experience and not his deep Scranton Irish roots appeal I have a bridge to sell you.

Christie is also moderate enough that they know he will not be easily consigned to the Tea Party tea chest when the going gets rough if he decided to run.

But most of all he is seen as plain spoken, articulate and prepared to take on special interests. He's now the candidate in the way Obama was for Democrats last time, unencumbered by baggage, liked at all levels of the party so far, but still somewhat of a mystery.

It is an amazing reality that just over a year in office and still a novice, he is the candidate who sets the alarm bells ringing in top Democratic Party circles.

That speaks to either Republican weakness at the top of the ticket, or the new reality in this ADD age that a fresh face come election time trumps the same old visage every time.

How Obama would shape up against a popular East Coast governor would make for a fascinating battle and not one the White House could have forseen when Christie was first elected.

Of course he keeps saying he won't run but Obama, a first time senator,was making the same kind of noises four years ago.

This could get very interesting.

The Irish financial crisis and the little people -- or how silly Irish stereotypes are being trotted out again

Lord save us but the Saturday headline in the Boston Herald "Irish Bostonians raise cash for troubled Eire" made me wonder f I hadn't stepped back into a previous age.

Sure, Ireland is in trouble but intimating that Bostonians are rushing to help the tattered peasants over there reads like a plot from a Dickens novel, not reality.

I find the use of the word Eire, very annoying. Ireland has not been Eire since the declaration of the Irish Republic in 1949.

Why it persists I don't know.

It is like calling New York, New Amsterdam just because it was once called that.

The dinner they are talking about is the American Ireland Fund one, which has raised hundreds of millions over the years and is one of the biggest in the country.

But I'm sure the Fund itself would be deeply reluctant to see itself cast in this light, as raising funds for the poor beggars back in Ireland.

By any standard, IMF not withstanding, Ireland is one of the most prosperous countries in the world. The crisis there is one of excess, not of want.

Yes the country will have to readjust its sky high living standards and yes, they have acted incredibly stupidly, but there are no people starving and dying of malnutrition.

The great feast may have become a beggar's banquet with the IMF paying the bill but it is far from a national holocaust.

It is amazing how quickly the stereotypes revive.

I was on National Public Radio yesterday and the interviewer was all soulful and insisted on quoting Yeats at length and wondering what the great man would make of it all.

It is available here at www.thetakeaway.org/2010/nov/19/many-irish-unhappy-prospect-eu-bailout/?

I'm not sure and I really don't care what Yeats would think.

But it would be nice not to be viewed eternally through some Celtic twilight haze however.

Equally, 'Newsnight' a major BBC current affairs program featured Ireland as some shangri-la land with shebeens and leprechauns abounding and graphics to match.

Can't we get serious here people and report factually rather than this kind of malarkey?

Ireland is facing a deep economic crisis but the country has not suddenly regressed to a Darby O'Gill landscape.

We need to get that message out.

The rich men, poor men, beggar men, thief index for Ireland

Rich Men: The IMF and European Union heavyweights are now in Dublin preparing to bail out the Irish economy.

The Irish taxpayers will be waiting anxiously to see what crumbs fall from the rich men's tables to help get them through the next decade or so.

Poor Men; The Irish taxpayers will be paying for this for the next thirty years or so.

An entire younger generation will be saddled with huge debt repayments that they never did anything to earn.

The splurge of the past decade has become the great bloodletting of this one as the Irish try to bind up the self inflicted wounds.

Beggermen: The Irish government who made such fundamental miscalculations as to the scope and extent of the problem from the start.

Not only that,surely sometime with the past half decade they must have had an inkling that the property boom in particular was going to bust in spectacular fashion.

If so they never acted on it

Now Ireland is the beggar man of Europe, cap in hand to the IMF and the European Union.

Despite protesting (see video above) that they needed a bailout to begin with

Thief; The Irish banks have fleeced the Irish nation in the most vicious manner. They threw a decade-long party then slipped out the door when the bill became due.

Now it appears they were lying to NAMA, the agency set up to calculate their losses. the newspapers are reporting that they deliberately overstated their losses so they could benefit more from taxpayers funds.

Irish Times slams government over bailout decision

I have never seen such a strong editorial in my life from an Irish newspaper as the one in the Irish Times today..

The Irish Times today has castigated the Irish government for it's behavior in the imminent takeover of the Irish economy by the European Union and the IMF. in a manner that is truly extraordinary.

This is the Irish Times remember, a newspaper that has usually sought to balance even its harshest comments.
Not this time.

A sample:

"IT MAY seem strange to some that The Irish Times would ask whether this is what the men of 1916 died for: a bailout from the German chancellor with a few shillings of sympathy from the British chancellor on the side. There is the shame of it all. Having obtained our political independence from Britain to be the masters of our own affairs, we have now surrendered our sovereignty to the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. Their representatives ride into Merrion Street today.

"Fianna Fáil has sometimes served Ireland very well, sometimes very badly. Even in its worst times, however, it retained some respect for its underlying commitment that the Irish should control their own destinies. It lists among its primary aims the commitment “to maintain the status of Ireland as a sovereign State”. Its founder, Eamon de Valera, in his inaugural address to his new party in 1926, spoke of “the inalienability of national sovereignty” as being fundamental to its beliefs. The Republican Party’s ideals are in tatters now."

Strong stuff but there is even harder to follow.

...."Irish history makes the loss of that sense of choice all the more shameful. The desire to be a sovereign people runs like a seam through all the struggles of the last 200 years. “Self-determination” is a phrase that echoes from the United Irishmen to the Belfast Agreement. It continues to have a genuine resonance for most Irish people today.

“The true ignominy of our current situation is not that our sovereignty has been taken away from us, it is that we ourselves have squandered it. ..... It is the incompetence of the governments we ourselves elected that has so deeply compromised our capacity to make our own decisions.

"They did so, let us recall, from a period when Irish sovereignty had never been stronger. Our national debt was negligible. The mass emigration that had mocked our claims to be a people in control of our own destiny was reversed. A genuine act of national self-determination had occurred in 1998 when both parts of the island voted to accept the Belfast Agreement. The sense of failure and inferiority had been banished, we thought, for good."

To drag this State down from those heights and make it again subject to the decisions of others is an achievement that will not soon be forgiven. It must mark, surely, the ignominious end of a failed administration."

....And that ladies and gentlemen is the death knell of this current Irish government.

Royal wedding of William and Kate a fitting circus for a fading empire

The "heir and the spare" is how Princess Diana once referred to her two sons, Prince William and Harry, neatly capturing what all this royal business is about.

Kate Middleton will not be judged on her looks, her accomplishments or even her middle class as against bluebood ancestral lines.

No, like a good stud mare, she will be judged by whether she produces preferably a few young colts to make sure the blood lines continue.

Prince William after all is a product of what Warren Buffet has memorably called the "lucky sperm club," the inheritor of wealth, class and title, none of which he earned for himself.

His main job is to ensure that he passes on the royal bloodlines, created in his case, through his grandmother Elizabeth who became queen only after the male-in-line, Edward, began to show Nazi sympathies then ran off with an American divorcee who shared his Aryan philosophy.

Prince Harry recently paid nice homage to his ancestor by dressing up as a Nazi at a party.

Of such events are great dynasties born.The past is all elided over and the future comes packaged in a box called hype and hyperbole.

We will learn all there is to know about the prince and his bride-to-be. Sadly, he exists mainly to fulfill the fantasies of a nation. she now exists to reproduce.

He has no real power, except to attract tourists in their millions every year to a grown-up version of Disneyland.

I passed by Buckingham Palace on a recent visit to London and was astounded by the waiting thousands there for the changing of the guard.

Like so much in Britain these days, it is all about symbolism and play acting, not the real thing.The days of imperial power are long gone but the fantasy machine will be greatly enhanced by this royal wedding.

As for the average Briton, he and she will continue to struggle in these harsh economic times, but many will be happily distracted by the circus around the royal wedding of the future king.

When the confetti is swept away however, the harsh realities will resume. It will take far more than a royal wedding to halt the decline of the most famous empire.

Senator Chris Dodd says goodbye with an Irish wake for old friends in the spirit of Ted Kennedy

I was very privileged to be part of a small group including Vice President Joe Biden saying farewell to Senator Chris Dodd on Monday night at the Irish Embassy in Washington.

I have known Chris Dodd for many years, spent time with him on many Irish occasions and saw up close his key work at a critical moment on the Irish peace process.

That was when he personally persuaded President Bill Clinton, during a golf outing, to take a chance on Gerry Adams coming to America.

Thus it was with sincere sadness that I went along to say a political goodbye to Dodd, one of the great Irish coterie of leaders on Capitol Hill over the last quarter century.

For Senator Chris Dodd the decision to step away from the U.S. senate came in communion with his old friend Ted Kennedy even though Ted had left this world.

It happened on Christmas Eve last year, in Arlington cemetery where he had gone for the first time to see the grave of his oldest and dearest friend.

It was at his graveside with the Washington he loved so dearly visible in the distance that Chris Dodd finally felt at peace with a decision to forego politics and create a new phase in his life.

It was no easy decision as he told us at a small farewell dinner at the Irish Embassy on Monday night. Between him and his father there was over fifty years of service to the country. There to pay homage was Vice President Joe Biden, a long time colleague in the senate

In the past two years alone Dodd, as Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, had been on the battlements fighting for health care reform, Wall Street reform and the financial stimulus package.

His voice will be sorely missed as Senator Pat Leahy made clear in emotional remarks about his old friend

Dodd spoke to a group that included Ambassador Michael Collins, Biden. Vicki Kennedy. Ted's widow, Senator Leahy and Jean Kennedy Smith and Congressmen Peter King and Richie Neal.

He spoke of the fierce determination that drove he and Kennedy in their final years in office to pass health care reform.

Vicki Kennedy testified eloquently to the bruderbond between the two men.

When Ted got sick, she remembered, he had told her Dodd could deliver the health care reform package then in its final phase in the senate.The day it was passed was the happiest she could remember.

Dodd's wife Jackie read from a note she found in Dodd's archives from Kennedy after they had returned from a trip to Ireland together in the early 1990s.

In it Ted Kennedy spoke about rediscovering Ireland through the eyes of his old friend and how much that meant to him.

He wrote about St.Brendan, who many believe discovered North America before Columbus and how as he penned this note, sailing on a stormy sea off the coast of his beloved Hyannis Port, he wondered what horrors Brendan must have endured on his voyage a thousand years earlier. He resolved that he and his friend Chris Dodd would celebrate St.Brendan's Day every year.

Ambassador Michael Collins remembered Ted Kennedy's 76th birthday party held at the Ambassador's residence, shortly before he became ill and the 22 foot kayak he had delivered for Vicki's upcoming birthday earlier in the day to the consternation of embassy staff.

Like any good Irish party there was lots of singing as well. Vickie Kennedy became emotional as the soprano belted out 'When Irish Eyes are Smiling" and "Danny Boy" two of her husband's favorites.Chris Dodd too, wiped away a tear.

It was an Irish wake in a way but the body present was hale and hearty and still has so much to contribute. Senator Chris Dodd will leave the senate a poorer place for his departure.

How many of its current denizens could the same be said of?

Tough task for Gerry Adams to make Sinn Fein a player in the Irish Republic

The Gerry Adams decision to run in Louth in the next election is an acknowledgement of reality for the party.

When it comes to recognizing cold hard realities there are few better than Adams at that.

The entire peace process came from his and Martin McGuinness's realization that the guerilla war against the British was unwinnable and a new approach was needed.

It would have been much easier to have kept up the unwinnable war but Adams and McGuinness choose the tougher road and were rewarded.

In this case he has realized that Sinn Fein the party, while flourishing in the North, is not having anything like the same impact in the south.

Right after the initial success of the peace process the party did begin to make inroads in the south but in recent elections that progress has stopped.

Leading figures like Mary Lou McDonald in Dublin and Caoimghin o Caolain in Monaghan have never achieved the type of influence that party leaders in Northern Ireland have done.

With a massive election, likely to change the political face of Ireland coming up, Adams clearly felt he had to get involved.

The government's disastrous economic policy will likely result in a wholly changed political landscape and Adams clearly feels Sinn Fein must maximize that moment.

When incumbent Sinn Fein member of parliament for Louth, Arthur Morgan, announced he was quitting it provided the perfect opportunity.

Adams will likely easily hold the seat and will be a force to reckon with in Irish politics after the election. There is a definite chance that Sinn Fein could be part of a new coalition government.

He is bound to face stiff opposition,especially on issues such as "the disappeared," IRA victims whose bodies have never been found, and the role of his brother Liam,a former Louth resident, who is wanted in Northern Ireland on child abuse charge.

But the main obstacle may be how much Adams himself, has left in the tank. At 62 he has spent a lifetime in creating nationalist equality in Northern Ireland and has succeeded beyond all expectations.

Close associates often worry that he has taken on so many commitments that he is utterly overworked.

Now pushing Sinn Fein forward in the Irish Republic, especially in an election period where the Labor Party is proving extremely popular in opinion polls and may well hoover up much of the left wing vote that Sinn Fein is seeking will be a difficult task.

Then no-one ever made money betting on Gerry Adams coming up short when he sets out to achieve something..

His entry into Irish politics has certainly made the next election very interesting.

Gerry Adams to run in Irish election --shock move by Sinn Fein leader

The prospect of Gerry Adams as a government minister in the irish Republic has suddenly been raised.

Gerry Adams has definitely announced he will run for the Irish parliament in the next Irish election, likely early in the New Year.

He will run for the seat vacated by his party colleague Arthur Morgan in County Louth, a border county. If he wins he will move to County Louth and live there.

He will give up his seat in the Northern Ireland Assembly

Making his announcement Adams stated: "In the past, I have asked people to step forward and to show leadership.

"I have asked people to make a stand. I believe that it is my duty at this critical time to step forward and do what I have asked of others."

"As leader of Sinn Fein, I want to be part of the necessary fight-back against bad economic policies in both parts of this island and for a fair, decent and united society for all the people of Ireland."

Adams stated he should have been able to do this as a representative of West Belfast but he cannot speak in the Irish parliament.

"So, as leader of the only all-Ireland party with an all-island mandate I have a choice to make whether to stay in West Belfast, a place that I love, or to seek a mandate in another constituency in the south," Adams said.
It is a surprise move.

Sinn Fein policy has long been to try and build a separate leadership team in the Irish Republic and keep the Northern political leadership in place in Northern Ireland.

However, the Irish Republic project has fared poorly.

After initial victories, the Sinn Fein vote has not increased greatly and they had a bad general election last time.

By Adams running the party will expect a major boost and ensure that they hold onto the Louth seat.

The resurgence of the Labor Party, which is expected to do very well in the next election, has been a cause of concern for Sinn Fein.

Labor and Sinn Fein naturally compete for the same working class vote and Labor gains in recent opinion polls have been spectacular. with some rating them as the largest party in ireland.

Sinn Fein meanwhile have not progressed much and remain in the single digits in support.

This is a change election in the Irish Republic like no other.

The anger over the government mishandling of the economy is so profound that Fianna Fail is likely to suffer deep casualties all over the country.

Sinn Fein clearly sees an opportunity to capitalize and to finally kick start their southern strategy.

There is a possibility that Sinn Fein could be in a position to be in a new coalition government when all the votes are counted after the election.

Gerry Adams, Irish government minister, might not be as farfetched as it might sound.

Prince Charles and Camilla playing the Irish peace card

It was quite a week at the Irish Embassy in London

Prince Charles and his wife Camilla turned up on the doorstep in Belgravia Square and stayed for over an hour and a half meeting and greeting assorted Irish celebrities who are based in Britain.

It was the first time the Prince of Wales had set foot in an Irish embassy and he was greeted by Ambassador Bobby McDonagh and Irish tourism minister Mary Hanafin.

The visit was a signal for the much anticipated state visit to the Irish Republic by Queen Elizabeth in 2011, a visit that would have been unthinkable just a few short years ago. President Mary McAleese is determined to have the visit take place before she leaves office in late 2011

It is quite a turnaorund. During the height of the Northern troubles, royalty were not welcome in Ireland. The death of Lord Mountbatten at the hands of the IRA in 1979 in Sligo, when they blew up his boat, was the nadir. Extraordinary to think that a little over thirty years later the British queen will be formally welcomed to Ireland.

When she does many will look at it as the end of formal hostilities between two nations that have been taking shots at each other since 1169 and the invasion of Ireland by Henry 11 on foot ironically, of a message of support from the pope.

Charles stated at the Irish embassy that "At the end of the day, we should never forget that our acquaintance has been long. We can turn that knowing into something new and creative -- to no longer be victims of our difficult history with each other."

That comment was bound to cause controversy. The "difficult history" was almost all on one side when you consider invasion, repression, a famine many called a holocaust and eventually, an unjust partition that exploded in violence fifty years later.

The fact of Charles showing up was probably more important than what he said. In an era where countries become endless enemies, here are two old foes gradually and somewhat grudgingly moving closer together.

There is a lesson on a broader plane here. The Irish peace process took from 1989 to 2010 to really come to proper fruition. Everyone involved from successive American presidents and British and Irish leaders plus massive input from political parties and community groups stayed with it through thick and thin. There are still some dissident violent groups trying to unravel the fabric but this was a peace agreement hammered together with foresight, belief and planning.

Both Britain and Ireland are facing dire economic challenges, but even those pale beside what the Irish peace process accomplished. Prince Charles at the Irish Embassy, Queen Elizabeth in Dublin? As they say in the Bronx, "Who'd of thunk it?"

50 years ago JFK woke up president---his impact then on small town Ireland

Fifty years ago today on November 9th 1960 the world woke up to John F.Kennedy as the first ever Irish Catholic president. It has never been the same since.

The margin of victory was razor-thin , just 112,000 votes, most of them likely supplied illegally by Mayor Richard Daley in Chicago which swung Illinois to Kennedy.

I was seven years old at the time but have the distinct memory of church bells ringing in my native Tipperary town and a sense of excitement among neighbors that something extraordinary had happened.

I have a complete memory of Mrs Ryan, a neighbor, on her way to the creamery with a little silver can, stopping over at the house to discuss the magnificent news and staying on so late that the creamery had shut by the time she got up to leave.

It wasn't long before a picture of John F.Kennedy was hoisted onto our mantelpiece in our best room beside that of Pope John Paul the VXXIII. There they both would stay as long as my parents were alive.

It was the same all over Ireland, a profound moment of pride for a country just coming out of a long dark night of economic gloom and mass emigration.

My father could hardly wait for the Irish Press newspaper the next morning with its huge banner headline that Kennedy had been elected. He even bought the Irish Times, the Protestant paper, to see what they were saying.

That Sunday a priest called Father Noonan told our little congregation that some good at last had come out of emigration, that the descendant of a poor Catholic from a town in Wexford not too far distant, fleeing the Famine had become the most powerful man in the world.

Suddenly our little backwater didn't seem to dull and boring anymore. I didn't know it at the time, but at the time a grandson of Tipperary, Pat Brown was governor of California and his son Jerry is now elected once again as Chief Executive.

So Erin's exiles had made their mark across the water in the most powerful land of all. Fifty years ago today it all seemed powerful and promising. The awful events of Dallas just three years later alas, would bring it all back to reality again.

But in those three years Ireland took a massive leap forward and would never be the same again.It implanted firmly for me this notion of a great land to the west where Irish thrived.

Most of all John F.Kennedy's election made us proud, as proud as poor neighbors could be of a neighbor's offspring.

Ireland never seemed so poor or so insular again.

A Sarah Palin presidential bid angers Peggy Noonan, Ronald Reagan's protector

The ink is hardly dry on the mid term elections and the Republican Party establishment is seeking to cut down Sarah Palin.

Irish American Peggy Noonan is keeper of the flame of the legacy of Ronald Reagan.

She has slammed Palin for comments she made recently about Reagan and some of the bad movies such as 'Bedtime with Bonzo ' that he appeared in.

The former Reagan speechwriter was writing in the Wall Street Journal.

Palin was reacting to criticism of her own TV reality show by pointing out that Reagan in a different era did the same thing . She called Reagan 'an actor' and said 'Wasn't he in Bedtime with Bonzo, Bozo, something."

Noonan saw red at this slight on her hero.

Noonan knows exactly what she is doing. The Tea Party essentially cost the Republicans the senate as they would surely have won Delaware, Nevada, Colorado if they had picked reasonable candidates.

Now Palin looks like she could cost them the White House given that she would be a very formidable candidate internally among the Republican base but polls show that she lacks any broad following in the general electorate like the Tea Party candidates who failed.

That is why Noonan is already commencing offensive operations.

"Excuse me, but this was ignorant even for Mrs. Palin. Reagan people quietly flipped their lids, but I'll voice their consternation to make a larger point. Ronald Reagan was an artist who willed himself into leadership as president of a major American labor union (Screen Actors Guild, seven terms, 1947-59.) He led that union successfully through major upheavals (the Hollywood communist wars, labor-management struggles); discovered and honed his ability to speak persuasively by talking to workers on the line at General Electric for eight years; was elected to and completed two full terms as governor of California; challenged and almost unseated an incumbent president of his own party; and went on to popularize modern conservative political philosophy without the help of a conservative infrastructure. Then he was elected president."

The point is not 'He was a great man and you are a nincompoop,' though that is true," Noonan continues.(ouch) "The point is that Reagan's career is a guide, not only for the tea party but for all in politics. He brought his fully mature, fully seasoned self into politics with him. He wasn't in search of a life when he ran for office, and he wasn't in search of fame; he'd already lived a life, he was already well known, he'd accomplished things in the world."

Calling Palin a "nincompoop" is a typical Noonan comment, reflecting her haughty disdain for Palin. Make no mistake about it this will get very interesting when the 2012 nomination battle begins in earnest.

Karl Rove Noonan and Co. know the Republicans will be in dire straits if Palin wins the nomination. However, they are already gearing up to top that.

A real donnybrook looks likely.

The Irish are back in London

Even the taxi drivers know the Irish are coming back to London.

Several times during a trip there last week they asked me if I was relocating, saying they have had lots of pick-ups from the airport of Irish people who were.

London remains one of the first stops for potential emigrants, and with the Irish economy on the slide there is no doubt that many are indeed arriving.

I worked in London in the early 1970s for a year and found it a very depressing place to be Irish at that time.
With IRA bombing campaigns going on, it was clear there was an unspoken antipathy to the Irish, understandable in many ways.

That, thankfully, is now gone, hopefully forever.

However, the length of The Troubles meant that the Irish community in London was never able to step out front in the way it did in America.

They were, rather, the equivalents of the Germans in America who kept low profiles after the two World Wars. But that has now changed.

Not for the first time London has become a safety valve for Irish social problems. But the Irish coming now are encountering a much better welcome.

The powers-that-be in Ireland are probably glad to see them leave, despite platitudes to the contrary.
The Irish unemployed might get shirty and start protesting, a la France and Greece, but if they are on a Ryanair flight to London they won’t get that opportunity.

I visited Kilburn High Road, and the new Irish presence is definitely being felt.

This patch of North London has always been the equivalent of the Bronx for Irish first coming to America, a first port of call. And with the Irish sailing again, Kilburn on a Saturday night looks like it is booming.

The faces are all young. The stories are familiar and would be to any generation of Irish.

The brief Irish boom has been followed by a thundering bust, and from Malahide to Mayo the siren call of emigration once more is heard.

The Irish Post newspaper, which has been the bastion of the Irish community since 1970, is reflecting those new changes too.

The Post is a remarkable newspaper.

Its founder, the late great, Brendan Mac Lua, stood up for the Irish during the worst of The Troubles. And his newspaper became a powerful voice in cases such as the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four, miscarriages of justice against innocent Irish that were widely condemned.

Current news editor Siobhan Breathnach says the impact of Mac Lua has lasted. There will be a census in Britain which for the first time will ask the question about Irish ethnicity -- a pet project of the Post.

It will be fascinating, not just for the numbers of Irish-born but also the numbers who are British who relate to their Irish ancestry.

While it will not be as large, percentage wise, as Americans who claim Irish ancestry, it will provide an invaluable insight into how the Irish influence has lasted down the generations of the British.

There are obvious examples – rock star Shane MacGowan and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who credited his Irish grandmother, from Co. Donegal, with much of his empathy for the issue.

But there are millions of others too, who will now have the opportunity to state their claim to a heritage that was long hidden.

It will make for very interesting reading.

Election 2012 : Florida's Marc Rubio will run for president someday

The most impressive winner last night was Marco Rubio the senate winner in Florida.

His acceptance speech reminded me of another minority candidate, Barack Obama when he first stepped on the world stage at the Democratic convention in 2000.

His paean to his father, a penniless Cuban migrant whose own son is elected to the most powerful institution in America was beautifully stated and deeply felt.

He was also surprisingly modest, not over the top because of his victory, clearly understanding that voters were not voting for Republicans out of love but out of frustration with the other party.

I found myself moved by John Boehner, too the next speaker of the House

One of 12 kids who worked 'every job he could' to get through college, he too reaffirmed the American dream in the most amazing way by rising to become the next speaker.

He obviously felt very deeply emotional about that rise and his tears humanized the man in a way that thousands of hours of attack politics never could have.

I would expect Marco Rubio to run for president of the United States some day in the not too distant future, he has a compelling personal story and is clearly very talented.

I would expect Boehner to be a better speaker than perhaps we might have thought he would be if he holds on to that vision of where he came from.

All in all an intriguing election, Big victories for tea party candidates must be measured beside the loss of races where Tea Party candidates were considered too extreme,such as Susan O'Donnell and Sharon Angle.

Three elections in a row now, America have thrown the bums out of whatever party. Politicians beware!

Would Hillary Clinton as prez have avoided Obama defeats in mid-term elections? Yes

Would it have been different if Hillary was president during these mid-term elections?

I believe so, but we will never know.

The critical difference is that the Tea Party types could never have been able to paint her as an alien outsider whose birthplace was even in doubt.

The fact is that Obama came to office as one of the most unknown presidents of all time.

His political carer was remarkably short and the passionate tide that brought him to the White House meant there was little examination of his pre-national politics career.

Tea Party folk cleverly began filling in the gaps when he assumed power.

The notion that he was not born in Hawaii-- which many Americans barely believe is in the union anyway -- began the argument very cleverly that he was not a true American.

Then the onslaught on his 'socialist' policies began.

Rush Limbaugh began referring to him as' Imam Obama' further darkening his image as a socialist Muslim for God's sake.

Such nonsense would never have worked with Hillary.

Whatever else she and her husband are, every single aspect of their past lives have been dragged up and examined in great detail.

There would simply not have been any 'secrets' in her past to drag up.

Sure there would have been attacks. there is a lot of revisionism going on now that Republicans and Hillary actually liked each other.

No they didn't and the aggression on both sides would have been there.

But I don't think the Tea Parties would have been able to demonize Hillary in the same way. She is too well known.

And this mid term election might have turned out very differently.