Letters to the Editor
maureenodonnell
Published Letters: 577 Editor's Choice: 5
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Delores Flower, while you're mulling over the problem of a runaway tongue
[Read the article: Obama advisor Power resigns]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm thinking more along the lines of an Islay malt such as "Laphroag" or one of lesser quality called "The Famous Grouse". Samantha Power left Ireland at the age of nine, too young to appreciate the finest of them all -"Midleton Reserve". That would definitely warm the cockles of your heart and, for drowning your sorrows, it has no equal. Surely, Ms. Power could have a wee tincture of that tonight and nobody should begrudge her that after a tumultuous day. I hope she doesn't dream of any monsters, crones or elves but that the most comforting aspects of the Arthurian legend provide the solace she needs. I've a faint recollection of reading some o.t.t. comparisons between Barack Obama and King Arthur. Where will this wild exaggeration all end! Just to be awfully mundane, I'd remind those defending Samantha Power that her area of expertise is claimed to be foreign policy but yet she went to a foreign country and opened mouth before engaging brain. There is still some respect for decorum in parts of the world and her "Monster" comment would be seen as juvenile name-calling and very inept if she wanted to be taken seriously. This was clumsy and rude. There's no point in pretending otherwise.
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MacK, I never drink latte which is no more than boiled milk with some coffe grains thrown in for good measure.
[Read the article: Obama advisor Power resigns]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]For your information, I can't abide Bertie, Mary H.. Enda or Gerry. Eamon Gilmore might be OK but I'm not a "smoked salmon socialist", which in the USA is converted into "latte liberal". Why don't you just call it milk, if you're so averse to pretentiousness? I'm not a hack - mor of a thoroughbred. I'll have a bet on the Cheltenham Gold Cup, if the mood takes me, and, being a contrary and high-strung creature myself, I hope you'll make allowances when I point out that there is only one "d" in Midleton. The real elixir of life, so they say, is the one called "Black" (because of label) Bush (distilled in Co. Antrim). I don't know what you think of "Paddy" or "Powers Gold Label" but I'm not particularly pushed one way or the other. I never danced at the crossroads or kept a pig in the parlour so I'm not that interesting at all.
Samantha is now up in Belfast, according to our own news. She is changing her tune very fast, I can tell you, informing us poor pig-in-parlour poltroons that Hillary Clinton is a brilliant woman and something about glass ceilings being smashed - the usual oul' guff. Ah yes, isn't life great in our own little space on the planet with Ireland and Wales toughing it out on the rugby field. I'm not impressed by a bunch of bruisers tussling with each other on a rugby field either but I become a captive in my own home when these trials of manly strength and stamina become more important than the Spanish election - I mean the American one, of course. Thank the Lord for laptops.
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Just before I bid most of you (I'll exclude the foul-mouthed who don't have to be identified) a fond goodnight
[Read the article: Obama advisor Power resigns]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I have some very bad news for "latte liberals". The price of coffee is increasing astronomically so, as food prices rise, there won't even be the consolation of a latte unless you can just content yourselves with boiled milk which has an unpleasant smell when it's being boiled. Even water is getting scarce so that could add to the problem. Reality has an awkward habit of intruding on the airy-fairy sphere of politics. My all-time favourite American President has got to be Calvin Coolidge. He wasn't much for talking, I believe, so that when his death was announced, the writer Dorothy Parker asked in her acerbic way "How can they tell?".
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Melthough. "the Scotsman guy" is a gal, Gerri Peev, and I think she might be Australian
[Read the article: Views of the race from across the Atlantic]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I've seen a video (somewhere on Huffpo) where a pompous prat called Tucker Carlson ticks off this journalist from "The Scotsman" (a well-regarded newspaper) on the oh-so-much-loftier standards operating in the American media. Gerri Peev was well able for Carlson, I thought, when she questioned the idea of acquiescwnce of journalists to the demands of politicians or those working for them. The tape was running, Samantha Power was thoroughly unprofessional in "letting her hair down" so comfortably with a journalist she probably had just met. The real issue here is that she was of interest to the European media precisely because she'd been proclaimed as Obama's SENIOR adviser on foreign policy which is of vital importance to every country in the world. Samantha Power came to the British Isles to promote her own book, a very unusual thing to do, I'd suggest, in the middle of the Obama/Clinton quest for the Democratic nomination. You may think that Barack Obama comes well out of this but I think that this fiasco shows that his advisers are a bunch of amateurs. Another professor, Austan Goolsbee, also an Obama adviser, got his wings singed during the week.
The great news is that former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, is to begin a year's lecturing at Yale. His support for Bush's war in Iraq destroyed his reputation in Britain and the opposition to British involvement was loud and clear from the British public right from the beginning, not just when it was discovered that Bushco had bitten off more than they could chew. Robin Cook, the brilliant Foreign Secretary at the time, felt so antagonistic to this war that he resigned his position in the British Cabinet. Your foreign policy is what the world is watching and that is where Senator Obama looks very weak.