On Thursday the citizens of Ireland are set to vote on a stability treaty. It has dominated the news here for the last couple months and just yesterday I noticed the signs saying vote no or vote yes are absolutely everywhere. I did some research on the so called stability treaty and it seems to be misleading the public into thinking that if they don't vote yes the current economic crisis will get worse. Based on what I've read it seems like by voting yes the Irish people and government will be giving up a small part of there sovereignty to the European Union commission. There is one part that is particularly interesting to me where it mentions that the stability treaty will stop countries from spending more than they raise. I thought to myself isn't this how the entire world economy has been run for the last 50 years where countries spend more than they make and are constantly in debt anyway? Small countries like Ireland would be screwed in a truly "stable" EU, because the giant economies of Germany, France, and UK which generate most of the money would be able to dictate and dominate the entire continent. On the reverse side it sounds like voting no will thrust Ireland out on its own in the case of another emergency fund being needed. I am not allowed to vote but with two days left to go if I had a vote I'd be leaning towards no.
In other news I was at work a few nights ago and I was standing by the magazine rack and all I could hear was a guy standing over by the postcards in an American south accent yelling " What the fuck,  you have got to be kidding me." When I looked over he had the postcard of Barack Obama in his hand yelling profanities as loud as he could obviously trying to get attention. The postcard commemorates the visit by Obama to Ireland last year which was a huge deal as about 200,000 people came out to see him speak. The guy came inside holding the postcard and asked the girl behind the register " How could you sell this, what right do you have selling this postcard?" She looked puzzled for a second and then started explaining why we had it there. The guy continued to say "You guys only like him because he's black, he's the worst president America has ever had, he's a socialist." Then she tried to explain that she thought he had brilliant ideas and was trying to do some good things in America but he was clearly ahead of his time cause the people aren't ready for it yet. The guy was so infuriated he decided to tear up the postcard and continued swearing. I didn't say anything, I just observed the situation because had I said anything at all I probably would have ended up in jail for the night. His ignorance was so apparently especially when he had nothing to say to anything a girl who has never even visited America was throwing back at him. All I kept thinking was its people like him who make me so sad that I was born in America, when George Bush was thrusting the country into wars and spending every penny of the surplus that same guy probably wasn't shouting at the top of his lungs about how bad of a president he was.  ¶ 10:22 AM