Rhode Frog: St. Patrick's Day

Today's holiday theme: recent events.

The more I see of the moneyed classes, the more I understand the guillotine."

~George Bernard Shaw

Condoms: These "Sheaths of Satan," as the religious right called them, were banned [in Ireland] from 1935 to 1979, when Charlie Haughey came up with his famous "Irish solutions to an Irish problem." Under that legislation, a doctor could prescribe condoms to those over eighteen, which was, ironically, two years older then the legal age for marriage! What's more, the condoms had to be for "bona fide" family planning purposes (i.e. couples couldn't get them if they just wanted a quick shag). The law was, of course, unenforceable, as the government couldn't insist on surveillance of love-making couples to keep an eye on their bona fides. It wasn't until 1985 that condoms became available without prescription.

Irish frogs: they're real, and they're hearty!

Irish slang for drunk (being, getting, recovering from)(which most people already are or will be tonight):
Fluthered: Having a high blood-acohol ratio.
Gargle: Drink (alcohol).
Has a great lip for stout: Indulges in alcohol.
Hooley: Raucous celebration involving drinking and singing.
Horse it into ye: Consume alcohol/food rapidly.
Jar: Pint of beer or stout.
Langered: Very drunk.
He'd lick drink off a scabby leg: He's very fond of alcoholic beverages.
Lob it into me, boss: Give me alcohol quickly.
Off me face: Inebriated.
Ossified: Totally inebriated.
Piss-up: Night of revelry and imbibing alcohol.
Rat-arsed: Very drunk.
Rough as a bear's arse: Extremely hungover.

All quotes from The Feckin' Book of Everything Irish.

Bits & Pieces

Senator Al Franken has proposed a "Pay for War" resolution that would require Congress to raise taxes and/or cut spending before authorizing new acts of war, so that American foreign adventures can't contribute to the national debt.

In "The Long Road Home," historian Ben Shephard tells the neglected story of the refugee crisis the Allies faced when, at war's end, millions of displaced persons -- among them prisoners of war, slave laborers and survivors of concentration camps -- had to be repatriated to their homelands or resettled somewhere else.

For most of the last century, talk of secession, nullification and the rest of the extreme states-rights lexicon were relegated to the fringiest parts of the political fringe. But since Barack Obama entered the White House in January 2009, mainstream Republican rhetoric and proposed legislation at the state level have both warmed to the hoary idea that state governments can take their relationship with the federal government on what amounts to an a la carte basis or perhaps abandon it altogether.

Is the tantalizing dream of a universal library dead? Some scholars and librarians across the country fear it may be, now that a federal judge in New York has derailed Google’s bold plan to build the world’s largest digital library and bookstore.

...the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office... finds that a large part of the supposed savings from spending cuts would go, not to reduce the deficit, but to pay for tax cuts. In fact, the budget office finds that over the next decade the plan would lead to bigger deficits and more debt than current law.

...Republicans in Mississippi are divided over a wholly different wedlock issue: interracial marriage.

Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz writes in this month's Vanity Fair about the corrosive, self-reinforcing wealth concentration that has hijacked American politics, in which the America's future is sacrificed to give ever more money to an ever-smaller group of oligarchs.

St. Patrick's Day

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