When it comes to mavericks, John McCain meets his match in Donald Trump

Video here.

Why capitalism, communism, socialism and fascism etc. turn out to be culs-de-sac

Seen here:

'Mao famously speculated on the nature of contradictions in a 1937 essay: “The law of contradiction in things, that is, the law of the unity of opposites, is the fundamental law of nature and of society.”'

EuroGroup deal forced on Greece "akin to dragging a collapsed marathon runner back to the race"

From Giles Wilkes' review of Yanis Varoufakis' The Global Minotaur, here.

If anyone knows a thing or two about firing up the crazies, it's John McCain

"[Trump] fired up the crazies".

The liberal projectionist, quoted here.

The Grauniad strikes again: 3 week bank closure cost the Greeks . . . just 3 Euros!

Seen here.

Hillary Clinton just loves the Dr. Mengeles and their founder, the racist Margaret Sanger

Accepting the Sanger Award in 2009

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hillary Clinton, quoted here:

As much as Planned Parenthood loves Hillary, Hillary’s an even bigger fan of Margaret Sanger, the racist eugenicist founder of the organization. Clinton specifically honored Sanger at a 2009 Planned Parenthood event in Houston.

“I admire Margaret Sanger enormously,” Clinton told the event’s attendees. “Her courage, her tenacity, her vision.”

Margaret Sanger, quoted here, who wanted to sterilize those "unfit" to reproduce, in the opinion of the State and its experts:

"Like the advocates of Birth Control, the eugenists, for instance, are seeking to assist the race toward the elimination of the unfit. ... We who advocate Birth Control, on the other hand, lay all our emphasis upon stopping not only the reproduction of the unfit but upon stopping all reproduction when there is not economic means of providing proper care for those who are born in health. ... These are gongenital feeble-mindedness; schizophrenia, circular insanity; heredity epilepsy; hereditary chorea (Huntington’s)’ hereditary blindness or deafness; grave hereditary bodily deformity and chronic alcoholism. Surely everyone will agree that the children of parents so afflicted are no contribution to the nation for even if they do not inherit these defects they are children of parents so handicapped that life will give them little, owing to their necessarily bad environment."

The face of one of Planned Parenthood's many Dr. Mengeles

Story and video here at CNN showing that Planned Parenthood has a thriving "business" trafficking in the organs of aborted babies, which they take care to preserve intact by killing the babies in just such a way that the desired organs are not damaged. The CNN stuffed skirt who presents the story seems most concerned about absolving the organization of the doing this for money. Hey, otherwise, killing the babies, well, that's up to a woman to decide if it's wrong.

"Never again" the Jews insist, year upon year.

Donald Trump rises to Number Two spot in RCP average for GOP presidential nomination

Hillary's latest whopper: "I called for cracking down on subprime mortgages"

Yea, the ones who under her husband exploded in number by over 800% between 1993 and 1998.

From the story here:

"I was alarmed by this gathering storm and called for addressing the risks of derivatives, cracking down on subprime mortgages and improving financial oversight," she added.

Someone gets to Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: On the weekend Schauble was a devil, but now he's a misunderstood genius!

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard erupted on Twitter on the weekend when Schauble leaked the Grexit memo in Brussels:

Now Schauble is a misunderstood genius who had it right all along:

'Wolfgang Schauble is one of the very few figures who has behaved honourably in this latest chapter. ... [H]e is entirely right to argue that a velvet divorce and an orderly exit from the euro for five years would be a “better way” for Greece, as he did on Germany radio this morning. ... Mr Schauble has been pushing for Grexit since 2012, and probably earlier. He genuinely thinks it would better for all concerned. When he floated his plan, he meant it. ... Even if [Merkel] was irritated by the Schauble paper – and her skirmishes with the irascible finance minister are legendary – she appears to have latched on to it as a useful negotiating ploy. The trick worked. It terrified Mr Tsipras into submission. ... Mr Schauble’s original and honourable intentions have been entirely misunderstood. The world’s verdict is that Germany's benign and enlightened statecraft in Europe over the past 60 years has given way to Bild Zeitung reflexes, the hegemony of crude populism. One can only feel sympathy for German diplomats who must clean up the mess and explain how this tangle of conflicting agendas spun escaped control.'

Mario Draghi: ECB is Greece's biggest depositor

There's real power, and then there's just power

Seen here this morning:

"We now have a total exposure of €130bn to Greece, that makes us the biggest depositor."

That's actually more than was on deposit at the end of May: 129.9 billion EUR. Deposits are down 108 billion EUR since September 2009, about 45%, squirreled away in other banks outside Greece, and under mattresses at home, which makes it a little risky to leave, say to protest in the streets. Europe has played Greece like a fiddle.

Euro Group creditors made a bundle off Greece's problems in 2014: 13 billion EUR

Moody's on Greece indicated today that the debt/GDP burden was already 177% before Syriza was even elected in 2015, but one man's debt burden is another man's opportunity.

Seen here:

'We assess Greece’s Fiscal Strength as `low’, because of the country’s high debt burden, which stood at around 177% of GDP at the end of 2014, one of the highest debt burdens in the universe of Moody’s-rated countries. Moreover, the potential to meaningfully improve the debt trend over the next 3-5 years is highly uncertain given that the large-scale reforms that could spur growth are currently hampered by ongoing political uncertainty.'

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Eurostat shows Greek GDP in current euros was just shy of 179.1 billion in 2014, down 26% from the 2008 peak. Greece is in a long, severe depression. Central government debt rose to 324 billion EUR at the end of 2014 and actually dropped to 313 billion EUR in the first quarter of 2015. Syriza was elected to power on January 25, 2015.

Those awful conditions developed under years of austerity government, after years of profligacy,  which Syriza promised to end. Now that Syriza has been forced to double down on austerity, expect conditions in Greece to worsen dramatically without debt forgiveness or a generational period of grace from repayment obligations. 

Little discussed in that regard, however, is the fact that in 2014 Greece is said to have paid an interest rate on its debts of 4% nominal and 2.6% effective.  This is happening in a world where the ECB has just decided to keep the headline lending rate at the record low level of 0.05%.

Whatever else may be said, Euro Group creditors by comparison are making a killing off Greece's predicament: almost 13 billion EUR in debt service revenues in 2014 alone.

If Europe is serious about keeping Greece in the Group, maybe it could start by stopping the profiteering.

Greeks accept EuroGroup humiliation in overwhelming vote of degradation

If the Left can't bring itself to revolt against the Fascist hegemony, there is no question that the Right can, either.

Just six had the temerity to vote "Present" while one did not vote.

The Prime Minister, Tsipras? 

IMF signals that it cannot now participate in the third bailout of Greece

Here, which The Guardian considers a "cannonball" shot into the bailout:

Greece’s debt can now only be made sustainable through debt relief measures that go far beyond what Europe has been willing to consider so far. ... Greece cannot return to markets anytime soon at interest rates that it can afford from a medium-term perspective. ... Greece is expected to maintain primary surpluses for the next several decades of 3.5 percent of GDP. Few countries have managed to do so. ... Greece is still assumed to go from the lowest to among the highest productivity growth and labor force participation rates in the euro area, which will require very ambitious and steadfast reforms. ... [G]overnance issues ... are at the root of the problems of the Greek banking system. There are at this stage no concrete plans in this regard. ... The dramatic deterioration in debt sustainability points to the need for debt relief on a scale that would need to go well beyond what has been under consideration to date—and what has been proposed by the ESM. There are several options ... maturity extension ... of, say, 30 years on the entire stock of European debt, including new assistance. ... Other options include explicit annual transfers to the Greek budget or deep upfront haircuts. The choice between the various options is for Greece and its European partners to decide [i.e. not the IMF].

Whatever you may think of Alexis Tsipras, tonight's interview showed him a true leader of Greece and an adept politician

The Grauniad is predictably impressed, here, but for many good reasons:

"Even if you think Alexis Tsipras has misplayed the crisis, it’s hard not to be impressed by his composure in tonight’s interview."

Tsipras, from the summary, pledges to go down with the ship, if necessary, and Tsipras admits Greece may well do so:

“The worst thing a captain could do while he is steering a ship during a storm, as difficult as it is, would be to abandon the helm.”

According to the polling data the people still love him, no doubt not in the least because he is made of the stuff which refuses to blame others, including Varoufakis.

IMF may have to back out of latest Greek bailout deal reached in Brussels early Monday

According to the story here, the International Monetary Fund, which has finally been calling for debt restructuring for Greece, i.e. haircuts, forgiveness, some say too little and too late, now believes the agreement reached this weekend falls far short of making Greece's debt sustainable. 

That fact means the IMF cannot agree to additional bailout sums according to its rules, which means the latest bailout would fall apart as the IMF would have to withdraw the 16+ billion Euros it has pledged in the deal.

In addition London is objecting to the proposed source of summer bridge loans to Greece which it says were previously ring-fenced against use for future bailouts. The Eurogroup doesn't seem to care about this very much, signaling that it intends to break the rules.

What a shock, huh?

Greece left in a permanent debt trap under neo-colonial rule after historic weekend showdown in Brussels

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, here:

The crushed Syriza leader [Alexis Tsipras] must sell a settlement that leaves Greece in a permanent debt trap, under neo-colonial control, and so economically fragile that it is almost guaranteed to crash into a fresh crisis in the next global downturn or European recession.

In 1967 the Greek coup d'etat was by the tanks, in 2015 by the banks

Yanis Varoufakis, audio here, says Tsipras felt defeated by the "No" in the referendum:

"In the [1967] coup d’état the choice of weapon used in order to bring down democracy then was the tanks. Well, this time it was the banks." (at 10:55 into the interview)

Alexis Tsipras sought out the help of Yanis Varoufakis starting in 2010, but never fully agreed with him

Varoufakis' plan, as outlined here in an interview in The New Statesman, was never embraced by Syriza as it needed to be to have even a chance of succeeding:

[Yanis Varoufakis] said he spent the past month warning the Greek cabinet that the ECB would close Greece’s banks to force a deal. When they did, he was prepared to do three things: issue euro-denominated IOUs; apply a “haircut” to the bonds Gree[ce] issued to the ECB in 2012, reducing Greece’s debt; and seize control of the Bank of Greece from the ECB. ... As the crowds were celebrating on Sunday night in Syntagma Square, Syriza’s six-strong inner cabinet held a critical vote. By four votes to two, Varoufakis failed to win support for his plan, and couldn’t convince Tsipras. He had wanted to enact his “triptych” of measures earlier in the week, when the ECB first forced Greek banks to shut. Sunday night was his final attempt. When he lost his departure was inevitable.

The likes of National Review and Glenn Beck are simply lying about Trump's views on amnesty

Everyone who has heard Trump's extended remarks on the subject of illegal immigration on The O'Reilly Factor in 2011 knows there's not a scintilla of evidence to suggest Trump has flip-flopped on the issue which is presently at the center of his campaign for president. Both National Review and Glenn Beck are mendacious for suggesting otherwise.

During that 2011 interview Trump committed to a case by case method of deciding who among the millions who are here illegally gets to stay and who must go, which shows that Trump is not the uncompassionate Neanderthal he is being made out to be on the subject. He acknowledged that the sheer size of the numbers makes it a formidable problem indeed, but not one the size of which was so large that our government wouldn't be able to work through it. But for that his opponents, who are not just critics, slimily accuse him of supporting a pathway to citizenship as if his position is not substantively different from the get-out-of-jail-free card the Democrats, and some Republicans, would hand out to each and every one of them. 

All Trump's other remarks about the subject on that show demonstrate without a doubt that Trump's position about enforcing the border with military if necessary, building a wall and living by the rule of law has been consistent with his clearly stated views over the course of almost two decades.