Trump keeps rising in Real Clear Politics poll average: now has first with 23.2%, 10.4 points ahead of No. 2 Bush as Walker falls back to third

Trump vaults to 22.2% for first in Real Clear Politics poll average, +9.5 ahead of Walker, +10.0 ahead of JEB

Ben Carson: Because of Trump's candidacy fewer people are talking about my lack of political experience

Yeah, well, because Barack Obama is such a terrible president fewer people are talking about how bad Jimmy Carter was.

Ben Carson, quoted here:

"It’s a tremendous aid because fewer people are talking about my lack of political experience now."

Trump: What Hillary Clinton did was absolutely illegal

Quoted here:

"[W]hat she did was absolutely, in my opinion, illegal and I don't think she's going to be allowed to run if they have a prosecutor who's going to be honorable because if you look at Gen. Petraeus, what he did is nothing compared to what she's done. And his life is in ruins."

Newt Gingrich agrees Hillary Clinton should be in jail already

Here:

"She's a disaster because of arrogance and what Trump said was right... If you look at how they treated General Petraeus and you look at what she did with her emails, in any other circumstance she'd be going to jail, not the White House."

EuroGroup president Jeroen Dijsselbloem gets a new name: Lightweight Weaselbloom

Yanis Varoufakis, quoted here:

'In the full transcript published on his blog, Varoufakis also laid into the Eurogroup president, Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem, saying he was key to the Greek deal “not just because he is so intellectually lightweight but, primarily, because he is untrustworthy. For example, he chose to lie to me in my first Eurogroup about procedure. It is one thing to disagree with the Eurogroup president. It is quite another thing to have him lie to you about gravely important procedures.”'

Drudge excludes No. 2 Walker and No. 9 Kasich from headline photo, includes Pataki whose poll numbers don't even register

And Fiorina and Graham don't even poll 1% on average. Where's the love, man?

CO2 is irrelevant to temperature change: Temperature has been in decline since the late Bronze Age 3200 years ago

Atmospheric CO2 remained stable for most of human history before the last 200 years, "hovering between about 275 and 285 ppm". Nevertheless temperatures were much higher in the past than now and have steadily declined over time even as CO2 has just lately risen. 

Trump in first with 20.8% in Real Clear Politics poll average, +7.5 ahead of Walker in second

James Galbraith defends Yanis Varoufakis

“I've never seen anyone work so hard or so selflessly on behalf of his country”.

James K. Galbraith, University of Texas, quoted here on Yanis Varoufakis.

Maureen Dowd: Hillary's private server a metaphor for the paranoid style

The liberal Pot calling the Conservative kettle black.

Maureen Dowd, here:

"Her strategists worry about surveys showing that voters do not trust her. But her private server is a metaphor for her own lack of trust and a guarded, suspicious mind-set that lands her in needless messes."

July 2015 average temperature anomaly for Grand Rapids, MI is 1.7 degrees F below normal

The July 2015 temperature anomaly for Grand Rapids, MI at 1.7 degrees F below normal means the cumulative anomaly for 2015 increases to 21.4 degrees F below normal from 19.7 degrees F below normal through June and 18.0 degrees F below normal through May.

For a warming planet, we're doing nothing in Grand Rapids this summer to erase the negative average temperature anomaly . . . but there's always August if you are a grower, or hope if you're a warmist.

The total temperature anomaly for 2014 in GR was 30.3 degrees F below normal, a little over 2.5 degrees on average per month.

The significance of that may be lost on you, but here in Michigan a couple of degrees makes all the difference between being Michigan and being Wisconsin. On the other side of Lake Michigan at this latitude, average temperature is historically two degrees colder than here on average. There they are exposed to the cold drying winds which come off the plains in winter. Here we have the warming effect of Lake Michigan in winter as it gives off its heat and the attendant snows, unless it's frozen solid like a brick. And that makes all the difference to berry, grape, apple and other growers who proliferate on the warmer side of the lake and depend on the warmth and the snow cover to protect their plants.

It takes a lunatic to know a lunatic: Rand Paul says Trump supporters have lost their minds

Look who's crazy now.

Seen here:

"I think this is a temporary sort of loss of sanity. But we're going to come back our senses and look for somebody serious to lead the country at some point," he said.

------------------------------------

This from the guy who imagined the Republican Party was ready to become a more self-consciously libertarian big tent party. Rand Paul is currently running a distant seventh for the Republican nomination with 5.5% support.

Trump in first by 7.1 points in RCP average ahead of Walker, Jeb Bush a distant third

Greek PM Alexis Tsipras proves once again he's a stand up guy, says he directed Yanis Varoufakis to develop Plan B

The Telegraph reports here:

'This morning, Alexis Tsipras has come out in defence of Yanis Varoufakis. The PM has spoken about the plans the former finance minster was in charge of, to look into developing a parallel payments system, in public for the first time. He has confirmed he had full knowledge of the blueprint, and ordered Mr Varoufakis to take charge. But he denies that they amounted to a full blown "Grexit" plan.'

Yanis Varoufakis, the former Finance Minister, previously in parliament had stood up for Tsipras by reluctantly and surprisingly voting Yes to proceed with the EuroGroup Summit plan Tsipras had agreed to in Brussels.

Perhaps now parliament will abandon, as it should, any effort to prosecute Varoufakis who like every other member enjoys immunity.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is rightly exasperated by the oligarchy's attempt to criminalize Yanis Varoufakis

Here:

'It has come to this. The first finance minister of a eurozone country to draw up contingency plans for a possible euro exit is under investigation for treason.

'Greece's chief prosecutor is examining criminal charges against a five-man "working group" in the country's finance ministry for the sin of designing a "Plan B", a parallel system of euro liquidity and bank payments that could - in extremis - lead to a return of the drachma.

'It is hard to see how a monetary union held together by judicial power, coercion and fear in this way can have a future in any of Europe's ancient nation states.

'The criminalisation of any Grexit debate shuts off the option of an orderly return to the drachma, even though there is a high probability - some say a near certainty - that the latest EMU loan package for Greece will prove unworkable and precipitate the country's exit from the single currency within a year. As a matter of practical statecraft, this is sheer madness.'

Warren Buffett, the king of contraception funding, thinks women waste their brains having children

Two peas in a pod dedicated to deciding against life.

If you want to know why America is dying, look no further than Warren Buffett, a man at war with human nature, who frankly doesn't care that without fertility there will be no one left to consume.

From the story in Bloomberg, here:

“Buffett alone will give more than all of the other foundations combined in reproductive health,” she said. “We already are this year [2008], and that will continue.” [Judith] DeSarno declined to comment for this article, other than to say, “I am incredibly proud of this work and the dramatic decrease in unintended pregnancies.” ...

Quietly, steadily, the Buffett family is funding the biggest shift in birth control in a generation. “For Warren, it’s economic. He thinks that unless women can control their fertility—and that it’s basically their right to control their fertility—that you are sort of wasting more than half of the brainpower in the United States,” DeSarno said about Buffett’s funding of reproductive health in the 2008 interview. “Well, not just the United States. Worldwide.” ...

In the 1960s, the [Buffetts] set up what was then called the Buffett Foundation, which focused on nuclear disarmament and reproductive health, including helping to fund Planned Parenthood as well as the development of RU-486, the so-called abortion pill. In the late ’70s, the duo entered into an unusual arrangement—they remained married, but Susan moved to San Francisco. 

Trump is now +6.2 points ahead of WALKER as Jeb slips to third in Real Clear Politics average

Trump widens lead over Bush to +5.8 in RCP average for GOP nomination

Libertarian calls Bernie Sanders a National Socialist because he's not for open borders

Here:

"[T]he far left really agrees with the far right about keeping out foreigners. ... Bernie wants to scapegoat immigrants for the failures of wage controls and the welfare state so that people won’t see through his lame socialist agenda. But no warmed over nationalist socialism can replace the creative power of free people." 

Ronald Reagan was a moderate and a demagogue

According to moderate Bruce Bartlett, here, who voted for Obama at least once:

"Although the far right’s mythology paints the Reagan years as the triumph of their ideas, the truth is that he governed very much in the moderate tradition of postwar Republican presidents. Reagan raised taxes 11 times, gave amnesty to illegal aliens, pulled American troops out of the Middle East, supported environmental regulations, raised the debt limit and appointed many moderates to key positions, including on the Supreme Court. But he skillfully kept his right flank protected by using thundering conservative rhetoric, even as he violated his own stated principles on a regular basis."

Ivana Trump goes on the record today saying The Donald will make an incredible president

Quoted here in The New York Daily News:

“Incidentally, I think he would make an incredible President,” Ivana Trump, who divorced her husband in 1992, added.

Donald Trump takes Laura Ingraham to school on her support for the Iraq War

This morning in the second half hour on her own show, Donald Trump told Laura Ingraham that she had made a mistake supporting the Iraq War, stating that he was opposed to it from the beginning.

Trump's opposition to the Iraq War will alienate most Republicans, except for the Buchanan Brigades (which can't number many more than 500,000).

The position will, however, be popular with independents who tend to vote Democrat, the much ballyhooed middle.

When it comes to third party candidacies, what party does Bernie Sanders represent, and why doesn't anybody talk about it?

Self-described Socialist polls 17.5% for Democrat nomination.

Seen here:

"[W]hat happens if the USS HRod begins taking on water. What would Democrats do? Is there an emergency "break the glass" option if real questions of Clinton's electability arise? It seems extremely unlikely that any one issue could bring Clinton down, but what if she begins to suffer 'death by a thousand cuts'?

"Would Vice President Joe Biden and/or Sen. Elizabeth Warren jump in? Or would/could someone not being currently mentioned throw a hat into the ring, like say, Sen. Sherrod Brown or former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg? Presumably Bloomberg would need to join the Democratic Party, but then again, has Sanders joined yet?'"

Leonid Bershidsky has it exactly backwards: Syriza's Left Platform turns out to be Greece's true conservative party, they just don't realize it

Here right out of the gate, and the rest of it is also quite as silly, not in the least because it asks the EuroGroup to devise the mechanism by which those already in the Euro will be shown the exit:

'Elect far-left politicians to run a country and they will still plot a revolution. That, apparently, is what ministers from the Syriza bloc were doing while negotiations with creditors were taking place. Though none of the crazy things they planned came to pass, Greece's radicals may someday be tempted to carry out a Syriza-style "Plan B." Euro-zone officials need to prepare for this eventuality and work out an exit procedure -- one that might still be needed.'

Yes, Greece's radicals. They went for the root alright, back to the drachma.

No, the real revolution was enticing Greece with the Euro because the Euro took the decision making about money out of the Greek people's hands. Revolting against that now is technically reactionary, but only in chronology, the new hobgoblin of little Hegelian minds. In reality preparing to go back to the drachma is an attempt to undo the revolution which the Euro wrought in Greece in the first place.

Greek dignity means having its own currency, just as it has its own glorious history, its own cooking, its own weather, language, culture, borders and so on. The drachma they can value and devalue on their terms, not someone else's. When the left in Greece and the rest of Europe wake up to the central importance of this fact, maybe the nightmare of this Euro farce will finally come to an end.

Paying off the $18.1 trillion national debt in 30 years . . .

Financed at 3.5%, it would require annual payments of $977.4 billion to retire the $18.1 trillion national debt in 30 years.

This assumes deficit spending (projected to average $512 billion annually, already factoring in increasing revenues going forward to 2020) would cease in order to balance the books and cap the debt.

Together debt repayments and cessation of deficit spending imply cutting current allocations by a total of $1.5 trillion annually, leaving just $1.7 trillion to fund government outlays in fiscal 2015 projected to soar to $3.8 trillion.

Out of control and misplaced spending therefore amounts to 55% of projected outlays in fiscal 2015, or $2.1 trillion.

In the already low GDP environment, a 55% fiscal contraction is utterly unthinkable to anyone in either political party, the equivalent of an 8.5% hit to the current dollar GDP at $17.69 trillion.

The revenue projection for fiscal 2015 is just $3.2 trillion, but will be the highest ever.

Average annual federal deficit projection 2015-2020

$512 billion, which will add $3.07 trillion to the national debt in six years.

Obama has added $6.3 trillion to the national debt 2009-2014, $1.05 trillion per year, with plenty of help from Republicans since 2010.

The voters think Hillary Clinton is a lying sack of shit by almost 2-1 in Colorado

The Hill reported here:

'This week’s poll by Quinnipiac University showed large majorities of voters in Iowa, Virginia and Colorado — three swing states Democrats hope to win — do not find her honest and trustworthy. The margin in the Colorado poll between those who don't trust her and those who do was almost 2-to-1.' 

Once upon a time in America there was a thing called conservatism which yelled Stop!

It's still up there, here.

Peter Berkowitz stands athwart history murmuring "slow down" while praying his version of The Serenity Prayer

Here, where else?, but in The Wall Street Journal:

'[Conservatives] should forthrightly reaffirm their commitment to the Constitution’s principles of individual freedom, equality under law, and limited government—all of which presuppose and protect religious faith and traditional morality. They should distinguish among what they can alter, what they must accept and what they should embrace. And they should design principled reforms that can win majority support in a country where diversity ensures that any conceivable national majority will include a significant spectrum of opinion.'

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, The courage to change the things I can, And the wisdom to know the difference. -- Reinhold Niebuhr, circa 1943

Insane Hillary Clinton proposes Chinese Communist Party-style interference in free-markets, obliterating short term/long term holding definition

current law says long term holding begins after 365 days

law under Hillary extends that to six years

Story here.

Sounds similar to the Chinese Communist Party recently telling investors they cannot sell. 

Trump bumps it up another notch in Real Clear average to lead with 18.2%, +4.8 over Bush

Trump widens lead in Real Clear Politics average to +4.2

TNR article on John Kasich's religion never tells you he's an Anglican convert from Catholicism

Here.

Liberalism always has something to hide.

Kasich's Anglicanism isn't what you might expect, according to this story:

'"But he does belong to a church — St. Augustine in Westerville, Ohio, part of the conservative splinter group the Anglican Church in North America. The denomination broke away from the Episcopal Church after that denomination consecrated an openly gay bishop. The ACNA does not permit female bishops or ordain LGBT priests. ... Kasich voted for the Defense of Marriage Act years ago and supported Ohio’s ban on gay marriage. But he was pragmatic after the Supreme Court ruling June 26 overturned state bans. Two days later, he was interviewed on “Face the Nation” and said: “I believe in traditional marriage, but the Supreme Court has ruled. It’s the law of the land, and we’ll abide by it. … It’s time to move on.”'

Retired admirals can swallow gays in the military, but not Donald Trump

A couple of retired lawyer-admirals are fit to be tied over Trump's attack on John McCain, according to this story in The Daily Beast, which purports to represent the feelings of the military generally:

"And it wasn’t just them—veterans groups and veterans themselves have taken deep offense to Trump’s remarks, especially given Trump never served in the Vietnam War, as the Arizona senator did. Trump instead received a medical deferment in 1968."

Did anyone, anywhere in the military, retired or otherwise, similarly rise up to denounce the Gay Putsch?

I STILL CAN'T HEAR YOU MAGGOTS!

The fact of the matter is, this country doesn't need a house cleaning of just its political class, but of its officer corps as well. Obama has thought so, too, getting rid of the men we most need, the patriots who believe in moral absolutes, in killing the enemy and winning, and replacing them with women, faggots and attorneys. You know, people like himself.

Sorry Noah Smith: There isn't just one way to boost GDP growth

Smith says we need more immigration to solve our low growth problem. There is an alternative. Have more children of our own.

Noah Smith, here:

"Gross domestic product is simply the product of output per person and the number of people. The more people in your country, the higher the output. That's why China, whose output per person is only about a quarter of the U.S.'s, is now the largest economy on the planet. It just has more bodies."

The open borders libertarians

Noah Smith for Bloomberg, here:

"Exactly this sort of open borders immigration policy has received enthusiastic support from a dedicated core of libertarian economists, notably Bryan Caplan of George Mason University. These economists believe in relaxed immigration rules not because they want higher GDP growth, but because of principle -- they view national borders themselves as an unacceptable form of government intervention in the economy. The open borders crusaders are so zealous that moderate supporters of increased immigration, such as tech entrepreneur Vivek Wadhwa, are often the targets of their ire. University of Chicago economist John Cochrane has also voiced support for the open borders idea." 

Democrat General Wesley Clark wants to put radicalized Muslims in camps: And you thought deportation of illegal aliens was impractical

From the story here:

"It's a sad choice, but if people choose ISIS, they should be treated as spies or enemy combatants – or both. I’m frustrated with the argument that sedition is free speech because there is a role for government to step in to prevent a dissenter from becoming an active shooter, or worse.

"Any implication that I support racial profiling or interning people based on their ethnicity or heritage is dead wrong. I’m for separating people who have made dangerous decisions from the rest of society.

"The US has the obligation to protect our own population from terrorists. And ‎if the domestic terrorist threat grows due to ISIS, we must act responsibly and promptly."

Manhattan Democrat says parks are for everyone, except Donald Trump!

Seen here:

"Our parks are for everyone," the Manhattan Democrat [Mark Levine] said. "Trump's continued ownership of parks concessions runs directly contrary to that spirit."

Obama State Department stonewalls everybody on FOIA requests

Story here. No mention that this is the State Department's long record of behavior under Hillary Clinton, let alone under her successor John F. Kerry, who served in Viet Nam.

At least the judge is as pissed as he can be.

I guess they are too busy over there at State securing Obama's legacy, and covering up Benghazi:

Trump surges to Numero Uno in latest Real Clear Politics polling average

Donald Trump channels Al Franken on John McCain?

Al Franken, quoted here in 2000:

"I doubt I could cross the line and vote Republican. I have tremendous respect for McCain but I don’t buy the war hero thing. Anybody can be captured. I thought the idea was to capture them. As far as I’m concerned he sat out the war."

The Wall Street Journal opines that some demagogues are worse than others

Here:

'But America has rarely lacked for demagogues willing to exploit public discontents. William Jennings Bryan won three Democratic presidential nominations running against eastern elites. In 1948 Henry Wallace ran as a Soviet sympathizer while Strom Thurmond won 39 electoral votes running as a segregationist. Either one would have been a disaster as President.'

"Either one"?

Demagoguery in defense of progressivism is no vice, apparently.

Trump pummels McCain in USA Today op-ed for calling fellow Americans crazies

McCain has a long history of dishing out "crazy" and is finally getting some blowback

Here:

'John McCain has called his own constituents who want a secure border “crazies.”  No one in the news media or the establishment, including the Republican National Committee, criticized the senator for those comments. ... McCain the politician has failed the state of Arizona and the country. ... He would rather protect the Iraqi border than Arizona’s.'

There's much more, at the link.

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.'

-------------------------------------------

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].