Eighty-six years after "Bloody Sunday," the GOP finds itself immersed in a similar bloodbath.

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AMERICA'S NIGHT OF THE LONG KNIVES November 21, 1920 will live forever in Irish history as "Bloody Sunday." The Brits opened up with machine guns on a football crowd in Croke Park, as retaliation for Michael Collins' "night of the long knives" the previous evening. Irish Republican Brotherhood leader Collins, convinced that a group of British spies called "the Cairo Gang" were responsible for the escalating murders of Irish revolutionaries, signed off on the political killings of ten British officers that night; all known spies. On Tuesday, November 7th, almost eighty-six years since Bloody Sunday, the American people conducted their own night of the long knives. Thank god there were no deaths, at least not in a physical sense. Disgusted with the incompetence, arrogance, and corruption of an administration and a governing party, Americans decided to eliminate the source of the problem, and gave the other party an opportunity to see what they could do. The victims on Dublin's Bloody Sunday had names like Colonel Aimes, Major Bennett, Captain Baggily, and Major King. Last week, the names were Rove, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Libby... Kristol, Wolfowitz, Perle, Ledeen, Shrum, Bolton... Hastert, DeLay, Santorum, Allen, Foley, Burns, Frist... Abramoff, Reed, Norquist, Ney... Brownie, Chertoff...Robertson, Falwell, Haggard, Dobson...get the drift? Thankfully there were no real deaths, but there were very certain political, ideological, and Christian fundamentalist deaths. Considered by some to be the political guru of the ages, the Machiavellian Rove proved utterly fallible. Once the American people finally got over the constant fear foisted upon them by these creeps, Rove proved disastrously wrong about his philosophy that independents simply don't count. There is little need to comment on the gross incompetence of Rumsfeld. As for Cheney, perhaps the president has finally realized that it was he, and not Cheney, who was elected Commander-in-Chief. Perhaps he'll begin acting like one. The neo-cons who captured the minds and hearts of Cheney and Rumsfeld, who in turn manipulated Mr. Bush's incurious mind with their irrational philosophy of world hegemony, have proved completely and utterly wrong on virtually every position they have taken. If Rupert Murdoch had any compassion, he would instantly close the doors of his Bill Kristol-managed Weekly Standard neo-con rag. Please Rupert, ---save the guy any additional embarrassment! Brownie and Chertoff need neither an introduction nor explanation. Suffice it to say, they were the poster boys of political patronage. It's as simple as that. As for the fall of both Hastert and DeLay, in a just world they'd be getting fitted for prison suits. Hastert might actually appear better, as he currently resembles nothing so much as a stuffed Peking duck in a Wal-Mart suit. Santorum and George Allan finally ran out of cover, and their constituents out of patience. In much of America, religious and racial bigotry is simply unacceptable. The Abramoff, Reed Norquist and Ney crown will be considered unusually lucky if they don't spend some time as guests of the government. Finally, it looks like the vulnerable evangelicals, who've been completely suckered by this administration, perhaps awakened to the fact that they've been shamelessly manipulated. While these religious hucksters will undoubtedly continue to enrich themselves at the cost of the naïve, they'll no longer be able to do it on the backs of the taxpayer. Mick Collins took on the dastardly job of the night of the long knives to give the Irish people a chance at democracy and self-rule. The American people, in the form of Democrats, Independents, and disgusted moderate Republicans, did the same thing with their ballots eighty-six years later. -30-

Authors Bio:
Thomas L. Walsh graduated from the University of Notre Dame with a Communications/Journalism degree in 1962. Following a successful business career, he retired to Idaho's Teton Valley in 1999, where he works as a free-lance writer. Walsh and his wife Wynne Ann both teach Alpine skiing at Wyoming's Grand Targhee Ski Resort in the winter. Tom recently published his first book.

"Damnyankee, a WWII Story of Tragedy and Survival off the West of Ireland," is the compelling story of a World War II U.S. Navy submarine patrol bomber which ditched off the west coast of Ireland in 1944 in a seething North Atlantic storm.

Four decades later an American arrived in Clifton, County Galway, claiming to have been a crew member on that aircraft lost at sea, and striving to reconfirm that this tragedy had occurred. With the help of a sergeant in the Garda, an Irish schoolboy, and an aging Irish maiden lady, the former bow gunner was able to reconstruct the incident. In the process, he found a way to honor those who lost their lives in the storm-lashed sea that tragic night.

The author's familiarity with Ireland and all things Irish adds additional perspective to the book. From a beginning in Norfolk, Virginia to a partial salvation at the tiny village of Ailleabreach along the Galway coast, this book has something for both WWII aviation buffs as well as those hopelessly in love with the West of Ireland.

Damnyankee is available through both Amazon.com and Barnes
& Noble.