The Heelers Diaries

the fantasy world of ireland's greatest living poet

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Location: Kilcullen (Phone 087 7790766), County Kildare, Ireland

Saturday, January 24, 2009

miracle of the week



Mar Diaz, who runs the Meki orphanage in Ethiopia sent me these pictures of a little girl called Hannah. The above picture was taken on Thursday last week.


This is Hannah, nine months ago, just after she arrived at the orphanage...
Give thanks to God for the life of the child. He has returned her to us.

Friday, January 23, 2009

the number of the beasts

And lo!
If God hath given me power, I would have called down fire from heaven on the Johnston Press. Their citadels of glass would have been laid low. Their gleaming towers burnt. Their parvenus flung to the four winds.
But God in his wisdom did not give me the authority to lay them low.
Except perhaps for their share price.
This calls for wisdom.
Let him who hath knowledge calculate the share price of the Johnston Press.
For the share price of the Johnston Press is a measure of the worth of a bunch of clypes who fired me from my job at the Leinster Leader around Christmas time 2007.
And the share price of the Johnston Press currently capitalises the company at a value less than the clowns paid for the Leinster Leader whose ownership thereof I never recognised anyway because I don't see why anyone should accept the right of a bunch of foreigners to buy a company where I've worked for ten years and then fire me.
And the share price of the Johnston Press this morning on the London Stock Exchange is 6.66 (pennies).
I kid you not.

free hundred million dollars worth of journalism with every visit to the heelers diaries

Still no sign of the airline captain who produced that miracle landing on the Hudson river in New York last week.
I wonder where he can be.
It's most odd.
Why, it's as if he's not being allowed out in public.
Perhaps he keeps bumping into things.
Or maybe someone is afraid he might say something someone doesn't want him to say.
Perhaps he might inadvertently let slip something indicating his planes two engines simultaneously shut down not because of a bird strike but because Al Qaeda has infiltrated airline maintenance crews and is once more back in the aviation mass murder business.
That sort of news would have put quite a dampner on President Obama's inauguration shindig.
Not to mention casting the decision to close Guantanamo Bay in its true light.
The Captain has not been seen.
But statements attributed to him describing this most improbable bird strike are already being distributed.
What possible motive could there be then for keeping the Captain himself out of the public eye?
Let him speak.
Let's hear what he's got to say.
The time is now.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

appointment of new chief executive officer at the heelers diaries


The future's bright.
The future's orange...
Footnote: I'll bet any reader 2000 quid she does a better job than the new guy at the Johnston Press.

the finest end of reason is to dispute well

Morning email from Alan Massie, an expatriate American musician who lives in Greece.
In between writing thoroughly splendid music such as A Wave Of The Sea, he likes to yank my chain with progressive propaganda.
This morning's communication recalled the days of protest against the Vietnam War, the days of the Civil Rights marches, the days of the great voter registration drives in the Deep South, the days of the anti segregation campaigns, all that jazz.
He finished by telling me President Obama was the fulfilment of the bright promise of those days.
I felt sick.
To take my mind off the general rejoicing around the world, I decided to go for a haircut.
The Dad had told me about a new hairdresser that he's recently discovered in the town.
"She's a bit rough and ready," he'd said, "but she only charges a tenner."
That seemed about right to me.
I can put up with a lot of rough and ready if it's two quid cheaper than my regular rough and ready.
I mean haircut.
So having read Mr Massie's missive, I betook myself to barberville.
The girl who owned the business was there on her own.
She greeted me.
Her voice rang with the classic gentle cadences of a true Kilcullen accent.
Rough as a badger's arse.
You should know about the accent of my home town gentle readers.
The women sound like men.
Men with particularly gutteral accents.
Men who cannot pronounce the letters "t" and "h" if those letters appear together.
Men who've just slaughtered a caribou with their teeth and are now ready to slaughter something else.
I kid you not.
You'd think they were talking German, their voices are so gutteral.
In fact German would be easier to understand than the gibberish most of my compatriots talk.
I gotta tell you bold readers.
I have this accent myself.
Some of you are accustomed to bathing in the mellow tones of my transatlantic Oxbridge meets Beau Gest accent.
I'm faking it.
It takes a supreme act of will.
If I relax for a second I'm talking like: "Howza goin, dis, dat, dese, and dose, kill deh caribou, yarghhhhhh!"
But I digress.
The new hairdresser sat me down with some rough but warm words of welcome, and began her work.
Snip, snip, snip.
Presently she enquired as to what I thought of President Obama.
"It's an awful job," I said. "Terrible pressures for one man. I hope he'll be okay."
The hairdresser agreed.
"As for the other fellow," she said. "I hated him."
The noble Heelers took a deep breath.
Presumably she meant President Bush.
I don't know how I knew.
I just had a feeling.
"Why?" I probed gently.
My question opened a flood gate of rough hewn oratory.
"Did you see the way he behaved when the lads bombed New York? Sitting there with those kids. He just kept reading out of the book. He should have jumped up and started doing something straight away. That's what he's paid for. And then that war in the other place. You know the second war. He said there were things there, the weapons, and there were none. And you know what? I've heard he might have planned that New York thing. You know. Planned it, or he knew about it in advance."
She fell silent.
There was a pulse in the universe.
The last knight of Europe took arms from off the wall.
Ireland's greatest living poet stared at himself in the mirror.
I had visions that this was the last time I might see my hair.
There was a distinct possibility that when I said what I had to say she'd scalp me.
But when I spoke, it was mildly enough.
At least it began mildly enough.
"Ah no," I murmured. "That's a bit hard. The reading the book thing. That's just Michael Moore talk. You know a President isn't going to fly into a panic. He's going to take his time. Not scare the children. To be honest that business about the book is a real red herring from people who were going to oppose anything President Bush did anyway. It's a sneer. Nothing more. As for Iraq and the weapons of mass destruction. I remember being challenged about that by a group of Secondary School teachers in Athy. This was before the Americans went in. They asked did I really think any weapons would be found. I told em I didn't care. All I cared about was that Saddam Hussein's murder regime was about to be ended as it should have been ended by the UN years ago. I gotta tell you as well that there are certain indicators which suggest the Syrians and the Iranians hid the weapons of mass destruction for Saddam. A jounalist called Kenneth Timmerman claims the weapons were moved mainly to Syria with Russian assistance. I don't trust Timmerman but I find the theory has some merit. There are elements within Russia, not the Russian people, but elements in their ruling class, who would do anything to damage America. I think they may indeed have hidden Saddam's weapons for him. But I don't care. Saddam was a mass murderer. America did the world a favour getting rid of him. Oh. And you said you'd heard President Bush planned Nine Eleven. That's just lousy. It's just lousy. Lousy talk. Lousy thinking. It's a typical Arab Muslim insult. They kill three thousand of our people and then say we did it ourselves. Arabs think that sort of thing is terribly clever. But it's just lousy."
The haircut was over.
As was my Mirrorside Panegyric.
And lo!
I still had hair.
Bits.
Here and there.
Result!
I stood up.
"How much do I owe you?" quoth me.
"Fifteen Euro," shot back the President Obama loving hairdresser.
I left her premises a wiser weaker man.
Back at the Chateau, the Dad was in the kitchen having a cup of tea with my sister's husband Farmer Edward.
I told em my defence of President Bush to the hairdresser, and what I'd ended up paying for the haircut.
"That's incredible," said the Dad. "She only ever charges me ten. Maybe the price she gives me is a special charge for ould fellows."
Edward shook his head.
"No," sez he. "That's all she charges me as well. You should have agreed with her and maybe she'd have charged you less."
They both seemed moderately amused at my vicissitudes.
I repaired to the front room to be alone.
All this and President Obama too.
Bloody hell, as my Uncle Peter used to say.
From somewhere not too far away the ghost of the techno musician Mobie began to croon his most poignant song.
He sang:

"Oooh Lordy.
My troubles so difficult,
Oooh Lordy,
My troubles so difficult.
Don't nobody know about my troubles with Liberals.
Don't nobody know about my troubles with Liberals.
Went down the hairdressers.
T'other day.
Went down the hairdressers.
But did I pay.
Stuck up for the Prez who saved the world.
Paid an extra fiver.
Now that's absurd.
Oooh Lordy,
My troubles with Liberals.
Oooh Lordy,
My troubles with Liberals.
Don't nobody know my troubles with Liberals.
Don't nobody know my troubles with Liberals."

I for one knew exactly what he meant.

today they said

"Did the Israelis commit war crimes in Gaza? The question has to be answered."
John Ging, UN Viceroy in Palestine, and lead singer with Viceroy Ging's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

"No Ging, they didn't."
James Healy

"I'm instituting an immediate pay freeze for senior White House officials."
President Barack Obama

"For crying out loud. They're on their first day at work. They're not due a pay rise already are they."
James Healy


"Sunshine, lollypops, and roses. Blue skies coming out all over. It's a beautiful world. This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. Aquarius. Aqua-r-i-ussss."
Sky News, ABC, NBC, CBS, Time Magazine, The Washington Compost, Newsweak, Channel Four, the BBC, et al.

"At some stage people are going to remember that you guys failed to subject the new president to any serious scrutiny either before or after his election. No news group can afford to be too incompetent. Even if you are all singing off the same hymn sheet. People are going to figure it out for themselves eventually. When they do, you are going to crash and burn. Big time."
James Healy

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

party piece

we are all dying more or less
in body in spirit
slaves to a process
not bitter or malign
but limitless
each moment each decade
unrolls in the shadow of the scythe
we laugh cry caress
doomed enough for ones so blithe
blithe enough for ones so doomed
revellers on a runaway train
exultant into the night

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

inaugural

President Barack Obama and President Bush strolled towards the helicopter chatting amiably.
The helicopter was Marine One.
Reserved for the use of Presidents.
And Ex Presidents.
President Bush would depart in it.
This last walk together would be the symbolic farewell from the new President to the old President.
The First Ladies walked with them.
President Obama and President Bush shook hands.
The Bush Whacker gave President Obama a bear hug.
First Lady Michelle Obama kissed President Bush on the cheek.
On impulse she hugged him too.
She looked as beautiful as any First Lady who ever lived.
President Bush and Laura Bush entered Marine One which shortly thereafter rose into the afternoon sunshine and flew away.
President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama waved as the helicopter lifted.
"What do you think" Serafina asked me.
My face was a study.
"I think the Americans are still teaching us," I said softly. "All of us."

on winds of destiny

Evening at the Chateau de Healy.
Ireland's greatest living poet is posited on an armchair quaffing a coffee.
A hamster called MC Jomo Hamyata is on his knee, making valiant forays in the direction of her master's apple slice.
She knows that in accordance with the ancient law, if she manages to put a little hamster hand on it, she's liable to get the whole thing.
Paddy Pup is flumped at the fireside contemplating his paws.
He doesn't like apple slices.
Although a hamster would go down a treat.
Still, as sheepdog in chief, he is content. As are the rest of us.
All is right with the world.
Enter the Mammy.
She hunts her son over to the couch and takes possession of the armchair.
There she reclines flicking absently through the television channels.
"That guy landing the plane on the river was something else," she murmurs by way of conversation.
"He was," sez I.
"You know it might be an omen," sez she.
"An omen for what?" sez I.
"An omen for Barack," sez she.
"What do you mean?" sez I.
The Mammy ceased flicking for a moment.
"Well I don't mean this in a bad way," quoth she. "But if your guy had been in power the plane would have gone down with the loss of all on board."
I stared.
"Ah Lil," sez me.
"I'm just saying it might be an omen," persisted the Mammy. "Maybe it means Barack is going to be lucky."
My handsome preraphaelite features went a bit gothic.
"Et tu Lily," sez I. "Then falls Heelers."

uncle-ing in the key of life


another hundred million dollars worth

The Daily Mail yesterday reported that the Captain who landed a passenger jet plane on the Hudson river after both its engines cut out suddenly, has finally spoken out about what exactly happened during the incident.
The Daily Mail then reproduced a press release from US authorities who are supposedly investigating the case.
I see.
So the Captain hasn't actually been interviewed by Daily Mail reporters.
He hasn't actually been interviewed by any reporters.
He hasn't even been let appear before the television cameras.
He hasn't in fact spoken out at all.
What the Daily Mail had to share with us was a carefully worded press release featuring remarks that some anonymous officials investigating the crash, claim the Captain made to them.
I gotta tell you Daily Mail.
That ain't journalism.
So the Captain is still incognito.
Inexplicable.
He's the man of the hour.
God saved 155 lives through him.
We all want to see him, cheer him, thank him, and ask him did terrorists sabotage his aeroplane's engines.
We should at least be able to hear him speak for himself.
In whose interest exactly is it to keep him from answering questions to reporters?
Here is the news.
The investigating authorities are covering up the true cause of the forced landing.
I believe the authorities are doing so in order to prevent public panic about terrorists sabotaging commercial airliners.
It is incredible that several days after the Captain produced the miracle landing the whole world is talking about, we still haven't seen him interviewed live on television.
I believe he is being debriefed to cope with any questions that might reveal the truth about why he was forced to land his plane on the Hudson River.
He is being programmed to lie.

Monday, January 19, 2009

special guest blogger the dad

Together
By TN Healy
(Lines written for my wife Lilian on our 50th wedding anniversary.)

Come, place your hand in mine
And come with me;
Together let us stroll
Along life's path in time,
With thoughts united
By the love we share,
And faith arising from
Each other's soul;
And, let us taste the vision
Of our eyes,
And savour life and living
To the full;
Give homage to the Maker
Of it all
(The Winter, Spring and Summer
and the Fall)
Reflected in the landscape
All around
- An idyll of existence in our world
With joy o'erlying sadness
Grief and pain -
Until we reach the stile
On heaven's path,
Where we may cross together
And renew
The gift of living
Leading gently on
To blest eternity.


This publication of Together is respectfully dedicated to President George W Bush and Mrs Laura Bush.

why mccain lost

1. The Republican Party of the United States was suffering from Bob Dole syndrome. It did not field its best man. It fielded a time server, somone who had stood in the queue for a long time. Someone who was unfortunately a little bit past it. Someone, who as commentator Anne Coulter remarked, wasn't a genuine conservative in the first place.

2. The Republican Party recurrently comes down with Bob Dole syndrome. In the 1970's it was the nomination of Gerry Ford by the Republicans which led to the abysmal malaise of Democratic President Jimmy Carter. My greatest concern at the moment is that America is about to enter a period of governance under a black Jimmy Carter. My greatest hope lies in the fact that the abysmal performance of Carter, focussed Republicans clearly on the issues, and paved the way for Ronald Reagan.

3. The Republicans probably should have nominated Sam Brown or Mike Huckabee or Condoleeza Rice to stand for the Presidency in this election.

4. McCain's advisers were not true believers. They were spin doctors. They believed in nothing. They prevented McCain from presenting a more trenchant candidacy. Their key piece of advice seems to have been: Try to be a bit more like your opponent.

5. Presumably, on the advice of his hireling spin doctors, McCain failed to defend President Bush's record. This meant McCain effectively wrote off the core Republican voting segment of the American people. He wrote off his base in the quest for some mythical liberal Republican voting holy grail. He didn't find it because it doesn't exist.

6. McCain failed to sufficiently challenge Barack Obama on his lack of experience, his connections to the Chicago Machine (Governor Blagojevich), his connections to a black racist bigot called Reverend Jeremiah Wright who claims the American government designed the Aids virus to kill black people, his connections to a mob landlord, his connections to a terrorist who several decades ago bombed the Pentagon, his connections to the Muslim religion, and his connections to extreme left wing agenda groups generally.

7. The Republican Party legal team failed to ensure probity in voting and probity in voting procedures. My analysis is that massive voter fraud took place under the aegis of corrupt elements within the Democratic Party and allied elements within the Teamsters and other trade unions. The methodology for this fraud had been developed by the aforementioned corrupt elements during the 2000 and 2004 elections.

8. The Republican Party failed to prevent the registration of large numbers of fraudulent, ie fictional, votes through the corrupt registration of non existent voters by the Obama supporting Acorn group.

9. Elements of the Judiciary sympathetic to Obama, attempted to create an illusion of wrong doing around McCain's Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin. They did this be delaying their announcement of Sarah Palin's exoneration over Troopergate, until the eve of the elections. Troopergate... A State Trooper who had been married to Sarah Palin's sister, tasered Sarah Palin's ten year nephew. An official in Alaska claimed Sarah Palin as Governor of Alaska had somehow acted improperly in trying to get the official to dismiss the State Trooper.

10. Elements of the Judiciary sympathetic to Obama, refused to take action against the Obama supporting Acorn voter registration programme even after evidence of widespread fraudulent activity had emerged.

11. McCain's staffers, the insincere hireling non true believer spin doctors, leaked sneering assessments of Sarah Palin to CNN. A house divided against itself cannot stand. Sarah Palin had been McCain's trump card. The spin doctors did for her. And the spin doctors did for McCain.

12. McCain's genius did emerge on several occasions. Once was with his nomination of the above mentioned Sarah Palin as his Vice Presidential running mate. This was a genuinely superb choice. A real opening up of the political process. It was fresh, inventive, inspired and inspiring. So was she. So is she.

13. The nomination of Sarah Palin at a stroke, threatened to derail the Obama campaign. Fortunately for Obama, CNN and the entire liberal media, colluded to destroy her.

14. CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, the Washington Compost, the New York Times, Newsweek and Time Magazine, from the outset of the election campaign had abandoned all standards of balance, and shamelessly sought to win the election for Barack Obama. Their treatment of Sarah Palin was unsubtly vomitous.

15. McCain's genius could also be discerned in his support for the Surge policy in Iraq, and his backing the appointment of General Petraeus to the hilt. But this act of unique discernment and valour took place in 2006. The liberal media gave him no credit for it. And because McCain had been advised by his spin doctors never to even mention President Bush, McCain himself was left tiptoeing around his greatest achievement throughout the election campaign.

16. The Obama campaign team concealed the identity of their campaign finance donors by claiming that the millions of dollars they received came in the form of small five and ten dollar donations from anonymous students using the internet. The part of their statement that I believe is that the millions of dollars came in the form of five and ten dollar donations. I do not believe in Santa Claus. And I do not believe in anonymous students rushing like lemmings to hand over a hundred million dollars in pennies. My analysis is that the small anonymous donations were an ideal way for the Chicago Machine and the mob and the Arabs, to give big money to their man.

17. Immigrants to any country in the Free World, tend a tad slavishly to vote socialist. Muslim immigrants in Spain secured the election of Jose Zapatero after Al Qaeda murdered 200 people on trains in Madrid a few years ago. Zapatero promptly withdrew Spain from the War On Terror and gave citizenship to another three million Muslims. The Spanish for coward is Zapatero. In the 1980's President Mitterand of France secured 14 years in power by giving citizenship to ten million Africans and Arabs. The pseudo conservative opposition in France then questioned itself out of existence under the Arabist Jacques Chirac, winning an election alright but becoming thereby more socialist than the socialists themselves. The present supermodel marrying pseudo conservative galoot in France, President Sacha Distel, isn't much better. Yes. Immigrants will vote socialist. In America, that means they voted for Obama.

18. The Black Panthers ran a voter intimidation operation in certain precincts which had the desired effect.

19. The Perfect Storm. The simultaneous collapse of the worldwide banking industry along with the emergence into plain view of near universal corruption in stock exchange quoted companies, was the perfect storm in favour of Obama. McCain and his party would naturally be expected to be a pro business grouping. The corrupt culture among large companies, the practice of Board members and Chairmen and Chief Executive Officers and their ilk, paying themselves a lifetime's wages for a year's work, (in reality for doing no work, as all these companies are in a state of collapse), that practice has destroyed the integrity of share prices in every country on earth. The integrity of the company share as a unit of value has ceased to exist. The only reason share prices are still being quoted is because governments all over the world have stepped in to give the banks free money, and the banks are using this to continue to prop up the stock exchange. The banks are propping up a house that will not stand. Because it is a house built on lies. If I James Healy, long considered by friends and foes to be the worst sort of Thatcherite and a Reaganite, if I can say this, imagine what the general public is thinking. The emergence of endemic corruption among stock exchange quoted companies, more than any single factor, has delivered us the miracle of President Barack Obama.

20. There is nothing more powerful in the universe than an idea whose time has come.

21. To the winner the world.

a hundred million dollars worth of journalism

The pilot of the plane which crash landed on the Hudson River in New York last week is the man of the hour.
The whole world wants to pat him on the back.
It is a little odd that he has not yet appeared on television.
It is extraordinary that he has not yet appeared to receive the honours every decent human being wishes to bestow on him.
In fact, it's well nigh inexplicable.
You know I can't help thinking it's almost as if the Captain who by the grace of God was able to land an engineless jet liner safely on the Hudson river right in the middle of New York without the loss of a single life among passengers and crew and people on the ground and people using the river, it's almost as if, I say, it's almost as if, he's being... debriefed.
Why would anyone need to debrief the Captain of a plane in these circumstances?
What on earth could he say that he needs to be warned not to say?
What story needs to be gotten straight?
Are Muslim terrorists once more sabotaging commercial aircraft in an attempt to commit mass murder in the free world?
Is a misguided polity prevailing among certain security services and aviation monitoring agencies, to wit, that the public needs to be prevented from finding out the truth about ongoing Arab Islamist Al Qaeda and/or Iranian sabotage operations?
Why on earth did an early official statement allege that both engines had been detached from the plane?
The plane was moored at dockside.
Finding out whether the engines were on the wings or not, should have been a simple task.
How was this incorrect statement about both engines being detached allowed into the public domain?
Were any of the engines detached?
We know one is genuinely missing now.
Was this one engine removed overnight from the dockside by shadowy agency operatives in order to begin their investigation without any public scrutiny?
Why did it take until this evening to retrieve the flight's data recorders?
Surely a diver simply had to follow the homing beacon and retrieve the recorders from the plane which was sitting at dockside?
Surely this was a priority.
My analysis of the current situation is that a concealment operation is underway.
Either as part a foolish misguided attempt to prevent negative publicity for the airline industry.
Or as part of an insane misguided attempt to prevent the public becoming alarmed at the true nature of Al Qaeda's infiltration of our societies.
Or as both.

Sunday, January 18, 2009

not a cartoon by medbh gillard or irina kuksova


Johnny Cochrane, Alan Dershowitz, and Claus Von Bulow in hell.