Manhattan Diary
by Cahir O'DohertyRSS 
Recent Posts
- Violent attacks on gays in New York up 70 percent in 2013
- Will New York Senator Chuck Schumer ditch gay couples for an immigration deal?
- If nobody's happy, it's working – the abortion debate and Irish politics of stalemate
- Conservative news entertainment complex claim Barack Obama leader of Al Qaeda
- Why Irish grudges are passed on - a long tradition of never forgetting
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Here was an old, often incoherent and unmistakably contemptuous white guy slowly lecturing an empty chair about all of its shortcomings.
There was something Shakespearean about it, with Eastwood looking like old King Lear on the heath, because the 82 year old's bizarre speech had hard words for Democrats but only faint praise for Republicans.
If ever there was a time to act on the shocking levels of gun violence in the United States it would be now.
Yesterday two people were shot dead and nine were injured near New York's world famous Empire State Building. Thirty minutes earlier the city's mayor Michael Bloomberg had been on the radio talking about guns. There are too many guns on Americas streets, he claimed. Then he tackled a common bit of sophistry beloved by the far right:
Until he got tapped by the Romney campaign as a running mate, Ryan was a vocal and absolutist right-to-lifer, even in cases of incest and rape. For him there is no room for compromise on this. The only thing that has changed for Ryan this week is that it has become temporarily inopportune for him to say so.
But against all the odds, Todd Akin and his talk of 'legitimate rape' have had a cold water to the face effect on this easily distracted nation. Ryan, and behind him Romney, have found themselves on the defensive. Suddenly the nation has grasped that they're serious about banning it completely. Suddenly the country is grasping just how far to the right they are on social issues.
Here they come, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. Two grinning robots that want to take your money. And some of you are even going to vote for them.
Romney’s plan is to give record tax breaks to the rich, lowering their tax rate down to 28 percent. Ryan is a little different. His plan is to give the rich even bigger tax breaks, lowering their tax rate down to 25 percent. No wonder billionaires are bank rolling them.
The far right doesn't like Mitt Romney, at all. That presents them with a problem, since he's the GOP candidate and despite their misgivings they still want him to win.
How to motivate all those conservative voters to show up at the polls for such an uninspiring candidate?
The rally in honor of disgraced businessman Sean Quinn last weekend horrified many Dublin based commentators.
It was held in the small County Cavan village of Ballyconnell, the site of a Quinn packaging plant that has brought some employment to the otherwise depressed blackspot.
