Tuesday, August 26, 2014

A Good Time Was Had By All (Especially Me!)

The 2014 Milwaukee Irish Fest is now in the books.
And this year's fest was one for the books! The lineup
of entertainers was astounding as usual, especially with
my favorite band The High Kings playing there! All
the way from Ireland, The High Kings are Brian Dunphy,
Darren Holden, Martin Furrey, and Finbarr Clancy.
Finbarr happens to be my cousin!

Fine musicians and singers, The High Kings perform many
great Irish favorites, including "Fields of Athenry",
"Boulevogue", "I'll Tell Me Ma", "The Irish Rover",
and "Step It Out Mary" along with their own songs
which they themselves have written and recorded.
And with great gusto! Some of the songs they play at a
rollicking pace, such as "The Irish Rover" while those that
require a gentler touch certainly get that from the High Kings.

Finbarr, who is the son of Bobby Clancy (of the Clancy
Brothers and Tommy Makem fame), invited me to a grand
party after the fest with many of the performers in attendance
along with the executive director of Irish Fest, many coordi-
nators, a few rank-and-file volunteers like myself, and family
members of same. Held at the Hyatt Regency a few blocks
from the festival, I brought along a friend and fellow member
of the Chuck Ward Celtic Song Circle which I founded in
2010 and have mentioned on this blog some time ago, and
we felt as if we died and ascended to heaven! We met
Dougie MacLean, a grand Scottish folk singer and composer;
Seamus Kennedy, a wonderful singer, songwriter and musician
who writes and sings wonderfully humorous songs that can
cause you to fall on the floor laughing; Gaelic Storm, a world-
renown band that shot to fame when appearing in the movie
The Titanic as the steerage band aboard the ill-fated ship;
and so many other luminaries of Irish and Celtic music.
Finbarr sat down with us at a table in the Hyatt's lobby bar
where we were congregated in joyful revel and we chatted about
many things: Irish music, The Beatles (we all are fans), Finbarr's
and your partially green Peasant's common ancestry, The High
Kings' life on the road, politics (Finbarr is a fellow
conservative! He is worried for our country with Obama
at the helm, and stated that Obamacare is a lousy program!
A kinsman AND a kindred spirit! Heavenly joy!), and we
even sang a song together! Finbarr, my song circle mate
and your musical Peasant sang a chorus of "Fields of
Athenry" there in the lobby bar, to the delight of those
close by. At least one of them took pictures of us with an
iPod! And Finbarr wants to join our humble song circle
for a session when he returns to town! What an event that
will be! Meanwhile, my friend and I were enjoying our
visit with my cousin Finbarr.

A fabulous festival and a fabulous time! Your beloved Peasant's
cup overflows with heaven's blessings! I am grateful for my
illustrious cousin being in my family and clan, for his friendship
and hospitality, for my town's Irish Fest, my song circle, and
for you, my fantastic readers! If ever you are in Milwaukee
in mid-August, come to our Irish Fest for a unique and magical
good time. There's no telling what will happen, but all will be
such great fun!


MEM

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

The Pupil May Not Be Ready, But the Teacher Has Appeared

As our imperial president continues to trash the
Constitution in his quest to push the "change"
part of his "Hope and Change" scheme on us,
there are some constitutional truths that he
could --- and should --- take time to learn
and heed; indeed, these would only benefit him,
not to mention the rest of us.

Here is one:

UTILITARY AIR REGULATORY GROUP V. EPA
-Ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that was decided 7-2
with the majority stating "When an agency claims to
discover in a long-extant statute an unheralded power
to regulate a significant portion of the American economy,
we typically greet its announcement with a measure of
skepticism."

This ruling is an overdue correction to MASSACHUSETTS V.
EPA, a 5-4 decision in 2007 which held greenhouse gases can
be "pollutants" under the clean air laws written decades before
the "carbon footprint" panic of today. It wrongly rewrote the
Clean Air Act from the 1970s. In order to obey the law as written,
the EPA estimated, permit applications under one program would
have zoomed to 6.1 million annually from the present level of
15,000. Congress intended for traditional byproducts like SOx
or ozone to be so regulated; the ceiling limits made no sense
where carbon is concerned. Any CO2 rule would thus reach
far beyond factories and power plants to millions of carbon
sources such as hospitals, grocery stores, farms, schools, and
churches, mandating penalties of $37.5 K per day.

The UAR Group v. EPA ruling from the Supreme Court backs
off the EPA from the temptation of claiming unprecedented
authority to order the states to create "cap-and-tax" programs
or otherwise ration energy usage. A less headstrong and power-
hungry administration would be more likely to heed the Supreme's
ruling, so don't hold your breath waiting for Obama and company
to become contrite on this.

The ruling states "An agency has no power to 'tailor' legislation to
bureaucratic policy goals by rewriting unambiguous statutory
terms. Would that King Barry and his regime, and agencies
comport themselves to these constitutional restrictions.
Our country would not be in quite such dire straits.


MEM



Monday, August 11, 2014

It's Milwaukee Irish Fest Time Again!

August 14 through 17 will be the dates for this year's
Milwaukee Irish Fest, and as always your green-striped
Peasant shall be on hand, working as a volunteer at the
music booth by the Aer Lingus Stage for the sixth
consecutive year! I received my 5-year pin last year,
and I am planning to be at that booth every year for
the rest of my life!

Now, the first day is a Thursday, as is the usual with
the festival. So that week, I shall post a day or two
before the day in question; you won't have to be
without your weekly dose of precise, hard-hitting,
insightful analysis and commentary on the political
and economic news of the day from your favorite
Peasant. And we shall gather together again on the
following Thursday, our regular meeting day.

If any of you, my great and wonderful readers, wish
to attend Milwaukee's Irish Fest, here's a link for the
information you'll need:

www.irishfest.com

And while you're there, stop by the Aer Lingus music
booth and say hello! Ask for Mark Minor at the booth,
I'll be on hand selling CDs and DVDs along with posters
and any other goodies brought by the bands playing on
the Aer Lingus stage, and coordinating the after-concert
autograph sessions with the performers. The Milwaukee
Irish Fest is the largest Irish festival in the United States,
and it is the closest thing to actually travelling to the
Emerald Isle itself! Come on over and see for yourselves!
You'll be so glad you did!


MEM

Thursday, August 7, 2014

A Voyage Round the News

Your watchful Peasant has been paying even closer attention
to the news of late, more than ever before. Here's what I
found:

Jay Carney, heretofore President Obama's spokesdweeb
who swore to every lie that his boss uttered as Press
Secretary, resigned from this position and has joined
the Washington Speakers Bureau to join the D.C. gab
circuit with other former presidential cabinet members,
former congressional members, and other people of
influence in the Washington sphere of influence.
Carney stands to make honoraria upwards of ---
brace yourselves! --- $100,000 per speech. This
simply proves what P.T. Barnum, master showman of
the nineteenth century, once remarked: "There's a
sucker born every minute." And any person or group
willing to pay a hundred grand to hear what a person
who has never said anything worth ten cents quite
aptly proves Barnum's point.

The ever-continuing flow of aliens entering our country
at our southern border has taken a new and tragic turn.
Children --- unaccompanied by parents or other adult
relations --- are being brought into the U.S., either
riding on board ramshackle trains with little or no
food and water, or are being smuggled in by "coyotes",
people that take aliens to our country illegally and for
exorbitant fees (usually every last dollar that aliens
and/or their families have). President Obama has asked
Congress for $3.7 billion to give medical and other care
to these people, some of whom are NOT even children
but are in fact adults, some of whom are in fact gang
members from Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras,
covered in tattoos of their gang logos. And some say
that Obama has been planning to have these ---
and I'm going to call them what they are, you know
how much your beloved Peasant HATES political
correctness and its rotten lingo --- illegal aliens
come to our country to settle here, making these plans
early on in his presidency. We have a debt load in
excess of $17 trillion, courtesy of this very president,
and we cannot be expected, nay, demanded to pay
money that we don't have in order to bring here a
swarm of people, children or adults, undocumented and
outside our immigration laws which have served us
long and well before this regime. Your faithful
Peasant will have more to say on this matter in the
very near future.

There is a movement, I don't know how large it is, but
there is in fact a movement to draft Mitt Romney to
run for the presidency again (Yes, again! The same
Mitt Romney who was an such an ineffective candidate
as the Republican nominee in 2012, and Obama so ripe
for the picking!). This much I do know: those behind this
laughable plan are the RINOS and their beltway allies,
the ones who claim that a true conservative can never,
ever be elected president; that only a "thoughtful, reasoned,
reasonable, high-minded" moderate or liberal can ever
be embraced by the electorate. No Tea Party people need
apply, thank you; just give us someone who is of the
beltway establishment or at least someone who is
acceptable to it. Your exasperated Peasant says to these
lunkheads: Have you forgotten Ronald Reagan? A true
conservative if ever there was one, Reagan said what he
would do if he was elected, and then did almost all of
what he said he would do. He would have done everything
that he put on his agenda if he had both a Republican House
as well as a Republican Senate, but he was able to compromise
on a few ideas and means to implement them without
compromising his core values. Contrast this with how
today's Republicans, including the two Republican presidents
elected since Reagan, have carried on. The beltway set is
a part and parcel of the liberal establishment, with its citadels
of power and its salons in Washington, New York, Chicago,
and L.A./Hollywood. They sneer at the rest of the country
and we, her people. If they had their way, we would have no
real choices in our elections; tweedle-dum and tweedle-dummer
just ain't gonna cut it! We must draft a real conservative to
be our standard bearer in 2016 and work like people possessed
to get him/her elected! Let Mitt Romney and others of his ilk
remain in their country clubs while we genuine conservatives
do the work of reclaiming and rebuilding our great country!

U.S. Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) is leading the charge to uncover
the facts about the Benghazi disaster in which four Americans
died at the hands of radical Islamists. And he is making the Obama
regime and their former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton nervous!
Clinton has resorted to personal attacks on the conservative
congressman, and many of her political supporters, hoping to
elect her to succeed Obama in the White House, are joining her.
Gowdy has been hugely instrumental in creating the committee
in Congress to investigate and to hold hearings on Benghazi,
and Team Obama and Clinton know that he won't rest until he
gets to the truth. Gee, it sure is great to see a Republican on
Capitol Hill stand up to the regime, and on a burning subject
such as this one! May what he has spread to his colleagues in
both chambers.

Billionaire investor and philanthropist Warren Buffet has been
quite the sugar daddy to the abortion industry. In the past 12
years he has given $1.2 billion to it (talk about blood money!).
His charity, The Susan Thompson Buffet Foundation, however,
states with great clarity that they will not respond to any inquiries
regarding their financing except for their Outstanding Teacher
Awards and their scholarships. Gee, it sounds as if Buffet and
his empire are trying to sweep this information under the rug.
But it is widely known that Buffet is a huge abortion rights
supporter, and that it stands to reason that he would every now
and then write a fat check to NARAL, Planned Parenthood,
or some related entity to fund their rotten work. Naturally,
the lame-stream media won't elaborate on any of this. Many
thanks for Freedom Weekly www.freedomweekly.com
for bringing this information to light.

Your favorite Peasant will have more juicy news to share with
you, my grand readers, next week! See you all then!


MEM