A close reading of the Irish Breakfast Tea-leaves suggests that the Rev. Dr. Ian Paisley, DUP-North Antrim, may be contemplating the possibility of permitting his ancient arse to be Dragged (blowing smoke all the way :) 11 years forward into the 18th Century — having remained, for lo these past 78, Stuck in 1690 when his glorious King Billy beat the papists by the dark waters of the Boyne. :)

The aging enfant terrible of the Orange Order – and putative First Minister of the devolved Government of Northern Ireland, if only he could see his way clear to Sharing Power with the gentle Gerry Adams :) as required by the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) — has been very busy lately. Meetings, meetings, meetings. (Give ‘im a breather, bhoys, can’t yer see th’ poor man’s exhausted. :)

December 3 (God bless the fine reportage of the BBC, by the way :) —

Mr Paisley…said that if the IRA gave up its weapons and abandoned its criminal activity he would have to “swallow hard” to do business with republicans.

“Once they quit their terrorist path, I will have to do a good deal of swallowing,” he said.

“I’ll have to do a good deal of biting my lip in future days.”

You can do it, Reverend. After all, you’ve Sucked and Bitten for eight decades now. :) Just close your eyes & Think of England. :)

December 4 -

The Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams appealed to republicans not to be provoked by the “unacceptable language” used by Mr Paisley.

Mr Adams said that comments by Mr Paisley, in which he said he would have to “swallow hard” to do business with republicans, were an acknowledgement of the prospect of Sinn Fein in government.

He said: “It is also the first begrudging, mixed-up, convoluted, angry acknowledgment by Ian Paisley of the Sinn Fein mandate. We shouldn’t dismiss that.

“He also said in terms of getting a deal, it was ‘now or never’. As far as we are concerned, it is now.

“He needs to come up to the plate and he needs to say ‘yes’.”

In all fairness, “the Sinn Fein mandate” consists of their 3rd-place finish in last year’s NI Assembly elections. SF won 24 seats, to 30 for DUP (Paisley) and 27 for David Trimble’s more-moderate-loyalist Ulster Unionist Party (UUP). Because Adams’ SF whooped the moderate-republican Social Democratic & Labour Party (SDLP - 18 seats) it became the leading “nationalist community” party, just as the Paisleymen surpassed the Trimbleistas as the Big Dog on the “unionist community” block. “Others” won 9 seats.

Under the GFA, power is to be shared chiefly between the 2 leading Parties from each Community — an awkward & not strictly democratic :) arrangement, but necessary in Norn Iron’s ultra-sectarian circumstances. / The Assembly has not met since the election, because Paisley has refused to share the same room, let alone power, with Adams.

However, for all my Dissing of him, the Reverend Doctor does have a very good Point. About the Guns, ye know. Hand all the rest of ‘em over, boyos. Time to permanently Stand Down. Let ‘em take their Photos of yer beloved Arsenal of Freedom to their hearts’ content. Demand copies. Yez can Look at the Album whilst ye still sing the ould Songs. Memory Lane, t’ be Sure. :>

And remember: we can still outPopulate ‘em. Get the Birthrates back on track, lads & lassies. (See? There’s so much peaceful Work still to be done! :)

In political terms, a mandate is defined as greater than or equal to 55% of the vote. Unless you’re talking about the Mandate from Heaven, which is all about overthrowing the Chinese Emperor after a disaster is taken as a sign from the heavens.

Thank you. That will be all.

I just remembered, I wanted to post about the funny, extremely odd dream I had last night. And, er, this doesn’t really count as a new, time-consuming post, taking time away from my memo, because I already wrote it up in an e-mail to Becky, so I’ll just copy and paste that write-up below. (I’m so good at coming up with technicalities whereby I can violate my own rules. Which, if you think about it, is really its own sort of preparation for my future legal career… :) Anyway, here goes:

I had a dream last night whereby I was somehow involved in the capture of Osama bin Laden… except it turned out Osama bin Laden was a woman!! A blonde, as I recall. This didn’t seem to faze anyone, though. Everybody was just like, yup, this is Osama bin Laden.

I remember riding up an elevator with the female “bin Laden” and the other person who had been involved in catching her. Then bin Laden and the other person got off the elevator, while I stayed on for some reason, and ended up meeting one of the Bush twins, who showed me her new engagement ring while riding toward her elevator stop. The fact that she was engaged was supposed to be a secret, though… and the ring had rubies in it (or some kind of red gem, anyway), not diamonds! Scandal!

Anyway, after meeting Jenna/Barbara (dunno which twin it was), I finally got off the elevator on the same floor where bin Laden and her escort had earlier, and I proceeded to the office where the president and a bunch of other advisers were deliberating what to do with bin Laden, who was in the room with them. The president looked like Martin Sheen, not George Bush… but I remember Donald Rumsfeld was there, and he looked like himself. There were other Cabinet officers there, too, and also some members of Congress. No clue who I was supposed to represent in this scenario.

Anyway, the president was, for some reason, trying to get somebody else’s authorization for what he wanted to do with bin Laden. He said if he couldn’t get the necessary authorization, he’d just kill “him” with his bare hands. Everybody kept referring to bin Laden as a “him,” even though “he” was clearly a blonde female, right there in the room. It was quite odd.

Eventually, bin Laden ended up proposing some sort of a deal whereby “he” would help our intelligence services infiltrate terrorist networks in various Islamic countries, in exchange for sparing “his” life. I think I woke up before the president and his advisers decided whether to accept the deal.

Who knew my subconscious was so creative… and gender-bending!

Okay, now I’m really going away… [Like anyone actually believes that. -ed. Shh!]

All right, barring any truly earth-shattering news, I’m declaring a blogging moratorium (on myself) until the USC-UCLA kickoff tomorrow. Hopefully by then, I’ll be done with my Office Memo for Legal Writing. (Hey, one out of three ain’t bad!) Guestbloggers, have at it! This is your big chance to not have your words of wisdom buried within 15 minutes by five new posts from yours truly… :)

By popular demand - if by popular demand you mean one person - I bring you another post about the joys of working with kids. This time, I’ll give it political flavor.

Where to begin? There’s the girl who said she would move to Poland if Bush lost the election. (Why does the Angry Right hate America, anyway?) There’s the guy who said we should boycott Starbucks because they wouldn’t give free coffee to the Army (do I hear Ayn Rand crying slavery in the distance?), as if they’d left our troops to starve to death.

But I think the cake goes to one particular freshman boy. There’s the outright lies that are part and parcel of being a member of the Angry Right. Kerry said he was going to raise everyone’s taxes and bring back the draft, the US government never gave money to the Taliban, no US President has ever met with any Saudi Arabian, etc. I don’t like to yell, but I find I have to just so he can hear me over his own voice. There’s the arrogant ethnocentrism. He doesn’t want to be in my class because he’ll never need Spanish. “They” should just learn English, overnight he seems to mean, and if he ever goes abroad, “they” can just speak English for him. He’s rather offended that South Americans call themselves Americans. He actually grew beet red at the idea of pressing an extra button at the ATM to choose English, as if he had his own bank account where this became a problem. Oh, yes, and he has a habit of using racial slurs.

When it comes to Iraq, as it always does for the Angry Right, he isn’t much better. He asked me what I thought, so I told him the truth. I don’t think Iraq was a threat. He looked at me like I’d grown an extra head and told me that of course they were a threat because they were killing our troops. I tried to explain the concept of before and after, to no avail. Eventually, the conversation turned to the US’s role in the world, that we “watch” other countries because we’re the most powerful, and, basically, because we can. I told him I thought we should only use the military in self-defense. The rest of the conversation went something like this.

HIM: You don’t think we should use the military?
ME: Only in self-defense.
HIM: You don’t think we should use the military?
ME: In self-defense.
HIM: You don’t think we should use the military?
ANOTHER STUDENT ACROSS THE ROOM: Hey, Viver, I’ve got a question! Questiono!

(BTW, nobody in that class can spell or pronounce my name.)

That’s all for now. I’ll be sure to write more as I get suckered into more political debate during study hall, or when I should be going around the room checking the progress of independent work. Hasta luego.

PS Don’t think this is all we talk about. We talk about everything under the sun: my bike (I ride it to work when weather permits), my car, whether or not my belt matches my shoes, the fact that I have neither cable nor TV at the moment, their complete and utter disbelief that I don’t drink, Red Sox, Yankees, my putative writing career, raptor impressions, Drama Club. I try to get them to say it all in Spanish at least, to limited degrees of success.

I finally get it. The economy, the “privatization” of Social Security… it’s all part of the same master plan! First, Bush advocates economic policies that he knows will run the economy into the ground, then he buys stock low with the Social Security money. Suddenly, he’ll reverse all his decisions and we’ll have a boom in the stock market, and with it a boom in Social Security savings. It’ll be a windfall!

Wow. He really is a stupid evil genius.

Let it not be said I didn’t poke fun at a stupid liberal when I had a chance…

Wednesday, I found myself behind a Toyota Prius on the Turnpike. (That’s a hybrid car for the uninitiated.) Out the window came the driver’s hand… with a cigarette between his fingers. Somebody didn’t get the memo.

Of course, I am just assuming he’s a liberal. Even my uberconservative colleague talks about environment-friendly fuel sources with me at lunch. But I think we can all agree this guy’s an idiot. AND he paid $10,000 more than he had to for a hybrid.

If I wasn’t so busy with law school, it would be awesome to be a top reporter for the The Observer right now, because it would be way fun to write tomorrow’s Urban Meyer story. My first two paragraphs would go something like this:

Notre Dame appeared late Friday to have lost a high-stakes, cross-country bidding war for the services of Utah head coach Urban Meyer, who has reportedly decided to turn down what he once called his “dream job” in favor of the head coaching position at the University of Florida.

The remarkable 48-hour saga — which peaked when private airplanes emblazoned with the Florida and Notre Dame logos made whirlwind trips to Salt Lake City on the same day — was scrutinized on television, radio and the Internet with the sort of intense interest usually reserved for affairs of state. But the drama ended in a grand anticlimax for the Fighting Irish, who are now apparently no closer to finding a new head coach than they were Tuesday afternoon when Athletic Director Kevin White announced the firing of Tyrone Willingham.

And yes, I’m repeating the same title (”Urban flight”) that I used several posts down, because dammit, I think it’s really clever. :)

P.S. The actual Observer has posted an online update (HINT, HINT, DAILY TROJAN!!!) calling the rumors that Meyer would coach at Notre Dame an “Urban legend.” I like “Urban flight” slightly better, but to each his own.

According to Irish Today:

ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit said that he spoke with Urban Meyer this afternoon and Meyer confirmed that he would be accepting the University of Florida head coaching position. Herbstreit said Meyer characterized the difficult choice as a “family decision.”

Meanwhile, the NDNation message boards have shut down for the night due to the BoardOps’ disgust with “wild rantings” and miscellaneous “embarrassing” blubbering by cranky Domers. The official shut-down post seems to be premised on the conclusion that Urban is, in fact, gone: “Losing Meyer is a bad situation, to be sure. But there’s plenty of blame for both sides in this and plenty of searching yet to do for a coach.”

UPDATE: The NDNation boards are back up. Whatever.

UPDATE 2: Meyer’s sister confirms.

The Battle for Urban Meyer is not over yet, according to rumors and speculation now floating around the Domersphere.

According to one report: “The deal with Florida for Urban Meyer is not official as of right now. We are also hearing that Notre Dame may be making a counter offer at this very moment.”

Then there’s this, from CNNSI:

A university [of Florida] spokesman, however, said the coaching search was not finished.

“It looks like we’re not going to know anything until next week,” UF spokesman Steve Orlando said. “The coaching search goes on.”

First ND gets Urban, then UF gets him, then nobody gets him… the whole thing is eerily reminiscent of… Florida! Damn those exit polls! :)

Stay tuned, as they say.

Watch Today tomorrow! Rumor has it, the Newington High School Chamber Choir — including my honorary sister Kim, and Sean’s actual sister Stephanie — may be on the show. According to Kim’s mom:

They will be outside in the street in their costumes and hopefully will be asked to sing
into a commercial. They even had a banner made to hold in front of them.

Tune in to NBC at 7:00 AM EST and watch for a bunch of shivering high schoolers dressed in Victorian garb and making beautiful music!

BoiFromTroy rubs it in.

But then he turns around, takes a different tack, and ends up sounding almost like a Domer:

Let’s face it. Notre Dame is the greatest institution in football. Period. … Any coach should want the job. Notre Dame should rediscover its tradition and find its swagger again. Their list should include Bob Stoops, Bill Belichick, Pete Carroll, Mack Brown. If they pass up the opportunity, go to Mike Shannahan, Nick Saban, Jeff Tedford or Mike Ditka. … Notre Dame should demand nothing less than the best.

This from a Trojan without divided loyalties! :)

Meanwhile, another Trojan, SI.com rising star Arash Markazi, says Willingham’s firing had nothing to do with race. And it looks like he’s been reading BrendanLoy.com:

It didn’t take long before Black Coaches Association executive director Floyd Keith told The Associated Press that Notre Dame’s decision was a setback to the efforts of universities which were increasing their efforts to recruit minority candidates. “This action sends an alarming message to African-Americans who are pursuing coaching at the Division I-A level,” Keith said. “It’s still going to be tough.”

No, it’s an alarming message to all coaches, regardless of color, who are pursuing coaching jobs at the Division I-A level. Just ask Frank Solich and Ron Zook, who were fired from prestigious football programs at Nebraska and Florida, respectively, after posting winning records. Were they fired because they were white? No, they were dumped because their programs needed a change.

Sounds rather familiar, doesn’t it? I’ll sue! :) Just kidding… another great column by Arash. Note also the funny reference to the Anna Benson kerfuffle (background here and here and here; barely SFW photos here; parental discretion advised re: all of the above).

I just stumbled upon this via Google, and it’s simply too good not to post. It’s from blog.democrats.com:

Its time to start planning for 2008.  We democrats need to regain control of our party and country.  The slave-holding south (red-states) and midwest have got to be overtaken with our message of truh and justice.  The days of the evil facist homophobic stupid George Bush need to end ASAP.  We need to impeach Bush/cheney and the rest of the know-nothing GOP.

Wow! I never knew you could impeach a whole party! Nor did I realize that slavery was still legal in the South… you learn something new every day! LOL! But wait… it gets better:

First we impeach Bush and then get ready for 2008.  I’d say we start getting ready for 2008 by uniting behind DEAN.  He will restore order to our party and America.  Dean’s logical and rational policies will be a huge relief to the irrational and racist policies of George “evil” Bush.   Dean could be the best president since FDR.  I know it to be true.   Kerry-Gore-Lieberman-Edwards are all losers, they could not even beat the radical and insane George Bush.  Once Americans hear our message of logic they will vote democrat. Dean will deliever us from evil.  And if we cannot win in 2008, the only solution will be to leave the union and form our own perfect peaceful nation.  Who is with me?

ROFL!!! Can this piece of crap possibly be for real? It appears so. None of the comments indicate otherwise (nor do any of them question any part of the looniness of the post), and the site is most assuredly a liberal/Democratic site (see the Ohio conspiracy-mongering on the homepage).

Seriously, I’d like to paraphrase Barry Goldwater here and say that I think every good Democrat ought to kick people like this right in the ass.

It’s getting prettier and prettier around campus as we get closer to Christmas.

One of the undergrad girls’ dorms, Howard Hall, hosted an event last night called “Howard Hall-idays,” for which each dorm created its own Christmas tree.

My favorite was the host dorm’s own tree, which was decorated with a string of yellow duck lights in honor of the Howard Hall mascot, a duck. Unfortunately, the Howard tree also suffered the greatest indignity of the night when Badin Hall’s tree bumped into it and knocked it over, shutting off the giant duck light at the top of the tree. Heh.

More photos here.

Bulletin! Russian President Vladimir Putin calls U.S. foreign policy “dictatorial.”

In other news, Islamic extremists called red-state voters “fundamentalist theocrats,” the Chicago Cubs called the Houston Astros “perennial losers,” Anna Benson called Paris Hilton a “slut,” and Scott Peterson called O.J. Simpson a “murderer.”