The Corrib Gas Controversy.

Can someone recommend a balanced book or source on Ireland’s natural resources off the west coast? My gut instinct is to regard the Shell to Sea crowd and their allies as nutters opposed to pretty much everything who would be happier if nothing was ever built in Ireland and we all lived in a hole in the ground with a broken bodhran.

Yet I can’t help having a niggling doubt that there is something fishy about the exploitation of our natural resources, especially when you see which Fianna Fail ministers were involved. I’m constantly being told that we have gotten a raw deal on royalties compared to other countries, yet I’m told that by people who regard all oil companies as evil. I also can’t help worrying that, as with the banks, our national ministers may not have been as much corrupt as just plain incompetent and out of their depth in dealing with Big Oil.

Where can I get a balanced analysis? Any suggestions? 

Republicans slam Pres. Obama for vetoing “Death to Poor People” Act.

President Obama has been attacked as an “effete European Socialist who reads books and stuff” by Republican congressman Robert E. Glee (Georgia). The congressman was remarking on the President’s most recent decision to veto a Republican bill designed to allow registered Republicans to hunt unemployed people, executing them with high powered assault rifles. “It is this kind o’ European thinkin’ which is destroyin’ this great country of ours. Let us be cleah’: There is a cleah’ and radical homosexual agenda at play heah’: I have no doubt in my mind that the president would much rather sleep with poor people than hunt them and theah ill-bred spawn down with a laser scoped Armalite with dum-dum bullets. Shoot, we might as well be livin’ in France!”

The GOP also attacked President Obama last week when he vetoed a Republican bill to make the unemployed dance for coins thrown by passing rich people. In other news, in South Carolina, a black man was beaten to death by a group of  “secession enthusiasts” for asking for a white coffee.