I have decided to take the day off (for obvious reasons), so I thought I'd run a holiday favorite today. So here you go, and I hope everyone has a great day out there! (New columns will resume tomorrow...)

Originally published March 15th, 2012

I realize I'm a wee bit early for a Saint Patrick's Day column, but tomorrow is our regularly-scheduled Friday Talking Points, and Saturday I will be hoisting a pint of Sir Arthur Guinness' fine product, so we'll just have to make do with today.

Being pressed for time, I thought I'd just re-run my explanation of what "Saint Patrick banishing the snakes from Ireland" actually means, as it is an entertaining story to tell down at your local pub this weekend, full of rich Irish history that will amaze your sozzled friends. If you can remember the story, at the time, of course.

But that was before I had read the story of Nike putting "its foot in it" (as the Irish Times summed it up) with a mis-branding faux pas for the ages. We'll get to that in a moment.

Before we do, I have a piece of advice for all American tourists who ever find themselves in Ireland. Be it on Paddy's Day, or be it any other day of the year, the advice I have to give will still be sound. Because you'll arrive in Ireland starry-eyed with the magic of the Emerald Isle, and will immediately want to explore the nearest quaint pub and drink deep of the... ahem... flavor of the local life, not to put to fine a point on it.

At this point, you may be tempted to ask the barman for what you believe will be a well-known local drink, and you may thus make the mistake of asking for a "black and tan." The reception of what you consider a harmless drink order for a pint glass half-filled with Harp and half-filled with Guinness Stout will not, however, be a merry twinkle of approval from the barman's eye for ordering a local delicacy. Instead, you will (hopefully) be forgiven for such a gross error of etiquette, and (once they hear some more of your American accent, again, hopefully) they will instruct you in the long and grim history of the Black and Tans -- with a helpful suggestion that if you ever want the same drink again in an Irish pub, that you ask for it as a "half and half" instead.

That's if you're lucky, mind you. If you're not so lucky, you will be met with a much more... shall we say, "colorful" response... from both the barman and any nearby patrons who happen to overhear such an offensive request. Loudly proclaiming "I'm an American! That's what we call it back home! I didn't realize..." may help, just as a humble suggestion.

This may be confusing, which is why I'm offering this advice beforehand. Back home in Peoria (or Wherevertown, U.S.A.) you may be accustomed to enjoying an evening in your local "Irish" pub, and this may be a favorite drink for you to order. But what you don't realize is that this is an American-Irish term. It's like the difference between Tex-Mex and real Mexican food, on a benign level. On a less benign level, however, it would be like walking into a bar in Harlem and asking the bartender for a drink you were used to calling a "K.K.K." This is about the magnitude of how offensive ordering a "black and tan" in an Irish pub truly is.

Which brings us to our marketing snafu (or, really, a marketing fubar, if truth be told). Nike decided that it would be a good week to release two new shoe styles. The first they called the "Guinness," and the second they called the "Black and Tan." Whoops. The company has since issued an apology and insists that the names were nothing more than "unofficial" anyway. "Good luck with that," was my initial response. Other American companies have made the same mistake in the past, after all.

The reason why the name "Black and Tans" is so monumentally wrong for a corporate promotion (and for you to order in a pub in Ireland) is the history behind the term. In 1920, England decided to send an army of thugs into Ireland to deal with the guerrilla war being waged by the Irish Republican Army (which is not exactly the same thing as what Americans call the "I.R.A." in modern times, but that's a whole 'nother story). This paramilitary group became known as the Black and Tans. From a British newspaper on the Nike story comes an excellent rundown of this history. Here's a short excerpt (I highly recommend reading the whole article):

The recruits, many hardened by trench warfare, were given only a few months' training before being despatched to Ireland, supposedly to act as policemen but in fact to provide military steel. In Ireland, they faced a very different type of war. The IRA waged guerrilla warfare, with hit-and-run tactics, attacks on isolated police barracks and deadly ambushes in territory which was unfamiliar to the Tans. All the security forces found this an extremely frustrating type of conflict but the Tans in particular quickly abandoned the normal rules and conduct of war.

They were in any case explicitly instructed to step outside the law, one police divisional commander instructing his men in a speech: "If a police barracks is burnt then the best house in the locality is to be commandeered, the occupants thrown into the gutter. Let them die there; the more the merrier."

He instructed them to shout "Hands up" at civilians, and to shoot anyone who did not immediately obey. He added: "Innocent persons may be shot, but that cannot be helped, and you are bound to get the right parties some time. The more you shoot, the better I will like you, and I assure you no policeman will get into trouble for shooting any man."

This is the number one reason you should not use this phrase to order a drink anywhere in Ireland. To say that "it brings up bad memories" doesn't even begin to describe it. Read that whole article, if you don't believe me.

Of course, there is a far better reason not to order such a drink. To be quite blunt, the Irish will not be impressed at your local savvy -- even if you ask for a "half and half." They will, instead, consider you some species of wimp -- for watering down perfectly good Guinness Stout. Especially since they don't even brew Harp in Ireland any more (it's now made in Canada, check the label).

It's best just to ask for a pint of Guinness, if truth be told. If you want to sound like a grizzled old culchie, you could say something like: "I think me physician would recommend a pint of the customary," or maybe: "A pint of Sir Arthur's finest" -- although I have to further warn that, with your American accent, you'll never pull it off. It's safest just to politely go with: "A pint of Guinness, thanks very much."

Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig!
Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

There's a certain type of young child who gets that phrase written about him on his early school report cards. The type who has to be the center of everything, all the time. Who always has to be the one who picks what games the other children play. Who, when losing one of those games, angrily throws the game board to the floor, scattering all the pieces, while yelling: "You cheated!" Who insults the other children and mocks them mercilessly for any perceived shortcomings. Who has an incredibly thin skin when mocked himself. Who never takes the blame for anything or admits any wrongdoing. Who throws epic tantrums at the drop of a hat. In a word: a bully.

Donald Trump, our toddler-in-chief, is in the midst of one of those incandescent tantrums. His war isn't going anywhere near as well as he thought it would, and the fact that Iran has effectively shut down the Strait of Hormuz is making him apoplectic with rage. He is now demanding that other countries of the world save him from his missteps, by sending their warships into the Strait to escort oil tankers and other ships. But he's finding that the rest of the world is not exactly leaping to help him out, which shouldn't come of much of a surprise to anyone, considering how he has treated all of America's closest allies up to this point.

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After two weeks of war with Iran, gas prices in America have now reached a national average of $3.65 per gallon. That is 71 cents higher than they were before Donald Trump started this war, and 90 cents higher than the average was in mid-January. And prices continue to climb -- oil is now trading worldwide at over $100 per barrel.

Trump has no clue what to do about this. He even tried spinning it as a positive thing this week, posting on social media: "The United States is the largest Oil Producer in the World, by far, so when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money." You'll note that the "we" in that sentence absolutely does not include the American public buying gasoline at the pump. "We" means giant oil companies, and they "make a lot of money" because American consumers have to pay a whole lot more to fill their tanks up.

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What if they held a government shutdown and nobody noticed?

That is admittedly a facetious way to put things, but the phrase has been popping into my mind over the past month. Democrats in Congress have partially shut the federal government down, but the issue has all but disappeared from the news, even though the shutdown is now about to enter its second month. There has been no progress whatsoever on any sort of deal or compromise, but the whole thing isn't being treated as any sort of crisis or emergency at all.

This is partly due to government shutdowns becoming almost a regular thing in Washington. Over the past few decades, shutting the government down has gone from being treated as an existential crisis to something people merely shrug over: "Oh, are they doing that shutdown thing again? Whatever...." After all, the government employees affected always get their back pay restored to them and perhaps the National Parks are closed down for a while, but it doesn't really affect most people's lives all that much. Because it has become such a ho-hum news subject, the media doesn't pay as much attention to it any more, which makes it even less of a relevant subject to the public.

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Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans seem to be finally realizing that they might just be in some trouble, heading into the midterm elections. Their policies are unpopular, most Americans think things have gotten worse over the past year, and they don't have any new ideas (unless you count launching a war with Iran for no apparent reason). So the party has seemingly decided to attempt dressing up the ugliness of their agenda by slapping some lipstick on a pig.

Donald Trump was out campaigning today, with the message: "Prices are going to come down real soon now, trust me!" He made appearances in Ohio and Kentucky, in an effort to tout how wonderful the economy is doing. Since Trump can never admit that anything is going wrong on his watch -- and even if it is, it is obviously someone else's fault -- his message was that all the voters should join him in his reality-denying bubble. Everything's great! The Golden Age has begun! Pay no attention to that gas station sign behind the curtain....

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It has been interesting (to me, at least) to hear how both the media and politicians are speaking about the price of gas these days. The mainstream media seems to be somewhat downplaying the continuing rise in the price at the pump, but (to be fair) this could be because of the editorial process taking so much time that by the time the story runs, the price has risen even further. Politicians, of course, have their own biases -- Republicans want to downplay the rise as much as they can get away with, while Democrats want to make it sound as alarmist as possible. But even Democrats aren't really using the right scale.

I have long been frustrated by the widespread lack of the ability to do basic math in public discourse (it's a personal bugaboo of mine, I fully admit). So this is merely an extension of my own personal bias in this regard. Even so, Democrats really should listen to someone who can do some basic math, if they want to hammer home the political concept that: "This was entirely a war of Donald Trump's choice, and he does not care one bit what price you have to pay at the pump."

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Worldwide oil prices went on a wild ride today. On Friday, the last day the oil markets were open, the price of a barrel of oil rose above $90. Today, the price spiked all the way up to $120 per barrel, before coming back down again. The reversal began when the Group of 7 nations indicated they were considering various interventions to stabilize the market and bring the price back down. They didn't actually make any of these moves, they just publicly discussed their options. That was enough to make the price retreat to around $100 a barrel, though. Then Donald Trump made an offhand comment to a reporter about the war effort in Iran, saying: "I think the war is very complete, pretty much," and that the U.S. is "very far" ahead of his initial timeline of the war lasting four to five weeks. The prospect of the war ending soon sent oil prices even lower, and they closed the day just under $90 a barrel, right back where they had started.

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In 1981, President Ronald Reagan famously expressed his anger at his own budget director by metaphorically "taking him out to the woodshed." This week, you might say that Donald Trump took Kristi Noem "out to the gravel pit."

Sorry, but we just couldn't resist. Trump was finally forced to fire one of the members of his cabinet, and it just couldn't have happened to a nicer person. Which is also pure snark, of course, because Noem was one of the most odious members of Team Trump by far (which is saying a lot). She even got yelled at this week by a fellow Republican for the heartlessness of the story she included in the book she wrote about herself, where she took the family dog out to the gravel pit and shot him dead. For good measure, she also shot a goat. Because of "leadership," or something.

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[Program Note: The news of Kristi Noem's ouster broke after much of this column had already been written, so I decided to just address it all tomorrow.]

I did consider, when contemplating a headline for today, riffing on the Grease song "Beauty School Dropout," but I decided to pay homage to Neil Sedaka instead. Just in case anyone's interested....

I chose this theme because it seems it's been a week of politicians being urged to drop out of their respective races. So far, few have, but the entreaties will likely continue and continue to grow in urgency. But dropping out is indeed hard to do for any politician, since entering into politics as a candidate almost requires you to have an outsized opinion of: yourself, your importance to your party, and your ability to influence the direction of the country. Donald Trump has the biggest ego of any politician I've ever seen, but there are plenty of others whose egos are pretty outsized as well. It's the nature of the business, really.

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Well, the results are in from deep in the heart of Texas, and it was a big night for both parties' political establishment wings. On the Republican side, two candidates will now head to a runoff election in a few more months (May 26th), but the sitting senator surprisingly got more votes than his firebrand challenger. On the Democratic side, the establishment candidate beat out his own firebrand challenger and won the nomination outright. Neither of these outcomes was guaranteed, and the vote was pretty close in both, but both parties' bigwigs are undoubtedly now heaving a big sigh of relief.

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