Manhattan Diary
by Cahir O'DohertyRSS 
Recent Posts
- 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
- Boston man confronts Infowars conspiracy nuts over 'false flag' claim
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Governor Brylcreem is one Anglo Saxon descendent who apparently forgets how to communicate with his own Anglo Saxon forebears.
In fact, diplomats at Whitehall are openly claiming that he makes Sarah Palin look like the political sage of our era. Romney's visit is a 'total car crash,' they scoffed to the right leaning Daily Mail.
It was as though a da Vinci profile had come to life and condescended to walk among us. People gasped when they saw him. A light came on in their eyes when he entered a room.
I have held off from commenting on the horrendous Aurora shootings for three good reasons.
One, it seems appropriate to show some restraint in the face of an unimaginable tragedy. Two, it takes time for a clear picture of what the suspect's motivations were. No one knows yet. Three, it would be appalling to rush to politicize this tragedy whilst the victims are still reeling from its utter senselessness.
On Tuesday, August 23, 2005 a hurricane formed in the Bahamas and pushed its way toward the Gulf of Mexico. Very soon it became the third strongest hurricane ever to make landfall in the U.S.
Gaudy, glorious New Orleans was in its path. The levees there had been designed to withstand a Category 3 storm, but Hurricane Katrina, as it was called, was already being forecast as Category 4. It featured gusts of 140 miles an hour. Just the storm surge was a terrifying 20-feet high.
As the rest of the world develops new technologies, bolsters its space programs and discovers new subatomic particles, here in the United States Mitt Romney's visionary plan for our future involves throwing 30 million people off Obamacare and ballooning the deficit through further unproductive tax cuts to rich people like himself who don't need them.
After that he'll rest presumably.
Yesterday, facing relentless criticism from the Obama camp about his offshore investments, Romney spluttered that they are managed by a blind trust and he has no knowledge of their whereabouts.
Really? If you owned untold millions in investments abroad wouldn't you want to know where they were and how they were performing? Wouldn't you want to have their telephone number at least so you could cal them up if you were feeling anxious?
In particular, I think it's time we learned what's in his tax returns. To date he has released only one year of returns for 2010. What on earth is he trying to hide?
We already know Romney has invested untold millions in multiple tax heavens around the world, a ploy that allows the super-rich to evade US tax laws, but the staggering sums that are piling up - he has $30 million dollars in the Caymen Islands alone - are a bizarre and insulting precedent for a United States presidential candidate.
As a boy I would sometimes see them in the distance. They were older by then but they still stood out.
In my town you were either someone's wife or you were trying to be, so there was no explanation for these persistently single ladies. They weren't nuns, they were never going to be nuns, but somehow we knew they had something to do with the church.
In my memory I always seem to see them with my peripheral vision. They were always on the margins, only just perceptible.
