political soundoff

My neighbor wants to talk about the Iowa floods, the Detroit Tigers and the fact that the "Obama campaign is running scared from McCain". This was at 7 a.m. this Father's Day morning.

While I find myself fortunate to have a neighbor that even dares to talk about anything political (sans the Tigers), I just didn't have my game face on this morning or I would have been sympathetic to the Iowa talk (they need our help, neighbor. What are you doing to send them relief?) and explained to him that Obama could out-debate McCain at a National Review reunion. Instead, I looked at him somewhat bleary-eyed and asked him "Well, what about Ireland rejecting the EU"? He looked at me like I had antlers on my head, looked down and let me know he had no idea what I was talking about.

It's ok, neighbor. Neither does the rest of the country. It appears just about no one knows that the most important piece of legislature in European history got shot down in flames by a small island less than 72 hours ago. What it's proponents called the document that would finally create something akin to the United States of Europe and it's detractors claimed would create a monopolistic state run by the elites was, effectively, stopped cold by Ireland's rejection of the treaty.

Now, the major players behind the EU consolidation plan are not good losers. This is being pushed hard by France (Sarkozy), Germany (Merkel) and England (Brown). Hmmm.... three staunch allies of the very right wing base of the United States. Three people committed to Friedman's economic model of wide open markets where, history has proved, the rich get richer and the poor and middle class get destroyed.  They are already suggesting other ways to force the treaty through despite the fact that it's language mandates ratification by all 27 EU members. Early polling in England the last few years clearly showed that they would have rejected it also so Tony Blair and Gordon Brown decided not to put it up for vote. That's right. They modified some language and told the commission that England was "in". The Irish decided they weren't going to let that happen.

I'll begin to load the site with articles detailing the history of the EU Ratification process and what the elite are trying to do to force it through anyway. I've created a new Reference class called, appropriately enough, "EU Ratification" which you'll be able to find by clicking on the Articles - Index link on the left.