Bailout legislation protecting domestic deposits in Irish national banks was signed into law by President Mary McAleese at 3:30 PM (Irish time).

President Mary McAleese has this evening signed legislation giving effect to the Government's €420 billion bank guarantee scheme.

A single-line statement from Áras an Uachtaráin just after 3.30pm said Mrs McAleese had signed the Credit Institutions (Financial Support) Bill 2008 into law.

Unlike the US FDIC or the British Financial Services Compensation Scheme, Ireland has had, until today, a deposit insurance scheme to protect only something like the first €20,000 deposited by individuals into banks.

I just got back from listening to Thomas Friedman do a lecture about his new book Hot, Flat, and Crowded. I left the lecture with a sense of disgust, but not for the obvious reasons. I'll give TomTom this, at least he's realized that that there limits to growth that at the very least must be overcome. This is a start.

What bothered me the most was they you had an articulate individual. Who I honestly believes wants to be constructive. Recognizing that there is a problem, but presenting an absolutely shitty solution. I left the lecture thinking about one of my childhood friends.

There's a famous phrase coined by Margaret Thatcher to describe the inexorable march to a brave new world in which social democracy in Britain would be cast into the scrapheap of history.

TINA, there is no alternative:

There is no alternative (shortened as TINA) was a slogan of which Margaret Thatcher, the radical British Prime Minister was fond. In economics, politics, and political economy, it has come to mean that despite capitalism's problems, "there is no alternative" to the status quo of their economic system and neoliberalism. This is the central slogan of neoliberalism, arguing that free markets, free trade, and capitalist globalization are the only way in which modern societies can go, as any deviation from their doctrine is certain to lead to disaster.

In the Middle Ages, one of the chief means by which a man could absolve himself of his indiscretions was the purchase of an indulgence from the Church. The promise of release from eternal damnation brought with it much abuse, and the presumption that money could be called upon to put one in God's good graces was the subject of condemnation by Luther and those who protested against the excesses of the Catholic Church.

Much as medieval indulgences were presumed to absolve the penitent, the practice of charity in modern society has assumed much the same function.

Get caught killing trade unionists in Colombia?

Fund scholarships for kids going to Columbia.

I am a man. I am from "Middletown". "Middletown" is my home.

For four years now, I've always had people ask me where "Middletown" is. But the truth is that more than what "Middletown" is what Muncie, Indiana was. The quintessential American town.

Chevy on 8th Street. Borg Warner out on Kilgore. Westinghouse on the south side. And Ball Brothers, which gave the town's public university its name. The union made us strong, and the working class stood proud and strong.

The deprecation, denigration, and contempt for the working class that the Lynds found when they came to the city 40 years before was gradually disappearing. The children of the working class were able to attend the local state university, and go on to become the college-educated middle class.