The Council has spoken, the votes have been cast and the results are in for this week’s Watcher’s Council match-up.
Before we get started, tonight our thoughts and prayers are with Paula Aydt and her husband, our own Greg Aydt from Rhymes with Right.
Get well soon Paula… we’re all rooting for you.
…and they limp and halt, they’re all wrinkled, drawn, they squint to the side, can’t look you in the eyes, and always bent on duty, trudging after Ruin, maddening, blinding Ruin. – Homer, The Iliad
The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits. – Plutarch
Let’s stop kidding ourselves that Greek debt is the Euro’s key problem. With Greece gone, who’s next ? – Alex Morritt
This week’s winning essay, Joshuapundit’sGreece’s New Trojan Horse, And What It Means To America, are my thoughts on what’s really behind the current financial crisis, the underlying reasons for it and why Americans ought to be paying attention.
Here’s a slice:
The Greeks, faced with what amounted to an ultimatum from the EU rejected further austerity measures and decided yesterday not to accept the EU’s proposal by a whopping 61%. It’s not hard to see why.
Greece’s debt now exceeds 177% of their GDP.They owe massive amounts to their bondholders and other creditors, whom already took a huge haircut for the last bailout. In order to pay the next payment due on what they already owe, they needed yet another bailout and what Greek’s left wing PM Alexis Tsipras called ‘debt relief.’ That essentially means they want EU nations like Germany to pay off part of Greece’s debt.
In response,the EU, led by German Chancellor Angela Merkel offered a take or leave it proposal that would have given Greece enough money to pay off the IMF, which will then give them the money to pay the European Central Bank, and so on and so on. But the EU also demanded severe austerity measures to do it, including spending cuts, reforms to Greece’s expansive pension and social welfare system and ‘labor reform’, which means more cuts in civil service jobs. That’s what the EU wanted in exchange for yet another 240 billion euro ($262.7 billion) bailout.
To add an additional bit of arm twisting,the European Central Bank (ECB)took the step of cutting of all cash to Greece’s banks, which are dependent on it since they were connected to the system. The banks are now closed, with ATM deposits limited to 60 euros (about $66) per day if you can find an ATM that still dispenses cash. Greeks are reverting to barter to purchase food and ordinary household supplies, and Greek banks are forecast to run out of money totally sometime this week.
What’s really going on is sheer politics. Greece’s debt is never going to be paid off, ever. And the EU knows it. What they’re really after is damage control, AKA a modicum of control over Greek fiscal policy to limit the fallout.
The EU is in something of a bind. If they cut Greece some slack, other countries with major debt problems like Portugal, Spain and Italy who received bail outs but are making their payments and coping with austerity are very likely to reconsider making their own payments. After all, if Greece can get away with this, why not them? And there’s also the factor of someone like Merkel having to face angry German taxpayers if Greece slides away from its obligation and they have to pick up the slack once more.
By the same token, if Greece is forced out of the Eurozone, it sets a precedent for others to do the same thing and have the whole over-leveraged structure topple over.
So the result of this Sunday’s referendum means there’s going to be one of two outcomes.
Either the EU will cave in and make a better offer, which is exactly the argument PM Alexis Tsipras used to urge Greeks to vote no. Or the EU will decide it’s had enough of Greece, and Greece exits the euro.
From Greece’s point of view, either way works, really.Again, here’s why, in a nutshell:
Whatever happens, Greece is in for some pain, but I think they’d probably be better off simply dropping the Euro, which is exactly what I wrote in 2012.
Dumping the euro and adopting the Greek drachma, which would of course devalue naturally would have several salutary effects once the initial chaos subsided. Greece would no longer be locked into a fixed exchange rate, which would make its exports more affordable and undoubtedly create a boom in tourism, one of Greece’s chief industries. Plus, let’s face it, no one is going to lend the Greeks money or buy their debt for some time to come at anything like decent rates, so they might be better off just wiping the slate clean with a bankruptcy and starting fresh.
Not only that, but if the Greeks are smart, they will institute their own form of austerity reforms. The costs of government is nearly half of Greece’s GDP right now (49.3%). A great deal of money could be saved simply be revaluing civil service salaries and pensions in drachmas instead of euros at a government set exchange rate that could be far less than the actual market rate.
There’s an interesting lesson to be learned here, with an example from the other side of the Mediterranean.
Much more at the link, including why America ought to be paying close attention.
Yep, I got to break a tie between two great pieces I singled out as Watcher’s picks from some writers I really like, even if I don’t always agree with them 100%.
Robert And Ben’s piece in the Federalist made a cogent point a lot of people need to hear right now… that while the culture war will continue to be waged by the prog Fascists and we need to be prepared for it, tyrants always overreach and that we need to be prepared to take advantage of that too.
La Glick’s essay chronicles the hard facts of the Obama Administration’s caving in to virtually all of Iran’s demands while ‘negotiating’ an agreement that doesn’t actually exist yet after a year and a half of talks and contains little of anything we were told it would contain back in November 2013. Meanwhile, it’s provided the Iranian regime with two things it really needed… time to work on their nuclear weapons project and billions in cash to keep them afloat.
Actually, I recommend you read both pieces carefully, but I went for Caroline Glick’s piece because I think the hard info in it really needs to be out there more, particularly given the way Secretary Kerry and our Dear Leader will try to spin things whether it falls apart with a piece of paper to wave ala’ Munich 1938 or not.
Here are this week’s full results. Only Bookworm Room and Rhymes With Right were unable to vote this week, but neither was subject to the mandatory 2/3 vote penalty for note voting:
Make sure to tune in every Monday for the Watcher’s Forum and every Tuesday morning, when we reveal the week’s nominees for Weasel of the Week!
And remember, every Wednesday, the Council has its weekly contest with the members nominating two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. The votes are cast by the Council and the results are posted on Friday morning.
It’s a weekly magazine of some of the best stuff written in the blogosphere and you won’t want to miss it… or any of the other fantabulous Watcher’s Council content.
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AIM Editor Roger Aronoff appeared on July 7 on the Philadelphia, PA Conservative Commandos radio show with Rick Trader and Anna C. Little to talk about Aronoff’s recent column “Email Dumps Continue to Undermine Clinton Candidacy.”
Hillary Clinton’s excuses regarding her private email server were immediately exposed as lies when Sidney Blumenthal provided additional emails to the Select Committee on Benghazi, ones that she herself had not provided to the State Department.
Blumenthal “was faced with a dilemma when he went to the Committee,” said Aronoff on the show. He added that if Blumenthal had withheld the emails that made clear that Mrs. Clinton hadn’t turned over all of her work-related emails to the Committee, he would have been risking being held in contempt by the Committee.
“So what we know is that she provided edited material, she didn’t provide all the material—and so she’s caught in these lies,” said Aronoff. He also noted that some of her messages are now classified.
“Yet you don’t hear the media talking about it at all,” he continued. “It’s basically, ‘What did [Donald] Trump say?’ and ‘Ask Chris Christie what Trump said,’ and ask everybody what Trump said, and let’s spend three hours talking about that.”
“But none of this with the apparent nominee for the Democrats,” said Aronoff. “There’s no—very little interest [from] the media in digging into this and talking about this.”
This scandal has a twin counterpart in the conflicts of interest posed by the Clinton Foundation, another story the mainstream media have either not pursued or attacked. “So what they ended up doing was through the Clinton Foundation…that when Hillary was Secretary of State they would take millions of dollars from countries who were doing business with the U.S. government,” he said. “And, again, everyone just wants to act like she’s just above all that, that there’s no way she would do anything. But yet she gets caught in lie, after lie, after lie…”
Aronoff argued that since there is no controlling legal authority willing to hold Clinton accountable at this time, the consequences for her may be more political than legal, especially if Vice President Joe Biden were to jump into the Democratic presidential primary. “I think the Clintons believe it’s their time and their entitlement to have that position,” he said, “and if they see the Obama administration all of a sudden line up behind Biden, whether openly and overtly or kind of behind the scenes, I think it’s going to be a real battle in the party.”
While the Select Committee is currently focused on accessing Clinton’s and her staff’s emails, no further information is necessary to expose the ongoing Benghazi cover-up by the Obama administration and Mrs. Clinton. “We put out a report a year ago April, and people can go look at this,” said Aronoff. “It’s at aim.org/Benghazi, and see what the real story is.”
The Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi’s interim report details how the initial intervention in Libya was unnecessary, that Muammar Qaddafi offered truce talks that the U.S. did not pursue, and that the U.S. government was facilitating the provision of arms to al-Qaeda-linked rebels in that nation.
CCB Member and former CIA officer Clare Lopez recently explained to WorldNetDaily that when Ambassador Chris “Stevens was facilitating the delivery of weapons to the al-Qaida-affiliated militia in Libya, he was living in the facility in Benghazi that was later designated the Special Mission Compound.”
The Muslim Brotherhood is an international political, financial and terrorist movement whose goal is to establish a global Islamic State (Caliphate).
They have and continue to exert tremendous influence on the American government’s foreign and domestic policies under President Barack Hussein Obama.
The violence in the Middle East and across North Africa is a direct consequence of the Muslim Brotherhood’s effective control over American foreign policy in the region.
They operate through various “civic” front groups, as well as through American institutions who take their money as operational funding (Georgetown University, Brookings Institution).
Yes, once again, It’s time to present this week’s statuette of shame, The Golden Weasel!!
Every Tuesday, the Council nominates some of the slimiest, most despicable characters in public life for some deed of evil, cowardice or corruption they’ve performed. Then we vote to single out one particular Weasel for special mention, to whom we award the statuette of shame, our special, 100% plastic Golden Weasel. This week’s nominees were all particularly slimy and despicable, but the votes are in and we have our winner… the envelope please…
Former Actor, Dirt Highway Explorer, Professional Victim And Racist George Takai!!
The Noisy Room: My nomination this week goes to raving moonbat, George Takei, who frankly should have stayed in space, his last frontier. Uber Leftist actor and activist George Takei, known for his role as Hikaru Sulu in “Star Trek,” said that he and his husband are “overjoyed” by the Supreme Court’s legalization of same-sex marriage. But his shocking comments about conservative Justice Clarence Thomas were just over the rainbow on this one:
“He is a clown in blackface sitting on the Supreme Court. He gets me that angry,” Takei said, visibly flustered as he railed against the African American justice. ”For him to say slaves had dignity … I mean, doesn’t he know slaves were chained? That they were whipped on the back?”
Takei shows his idiocy in all its glory here. He was railing against Thomas’ dissent on the gay marriage ruling:
“Human dignity has long been understood in this country to be innate. When the Framers proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence that ‘all men are created equal’ and ‘endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,’ they referred to a vision of mankind in which all humans are created in the image of God and therefore of inherent worth. That vision is the foundation upon which this Nation was built.
The corollary of that principle is that human dignity cannot be taken away by the government. Slaves did not lose their dignity (any more than they lost their humanity) because the government allowed them to be enslaved. Those held in internment camps did not lose their dignity because the government confined them. And those denied governmental benefits certainly do not lose their dignity because the government denies them those benefits. The government cannot bestow dignity, and it cannot take it away.”
Thomas, who is unarguably a brilliant litigator and a great man, made a compelling dissent on the ruling. It was epic. Takei’s comments were just profoundly biased and stupid. He called Thomas an “embarrassment” who doesn’t deserve to serve on the Supreme Court, citing in a separate op-ed his own experience living in an internment camp as a child. He would have done better to actually study constitutional law and parse his words more judiciously rather than coming unglued in a Liberal frenzy of incoherence and uninformed lunacy. I agree with one young black conservative woman out there who did a video after the Supreme Court ruling in answer to racist Liberals: “It takes a certain kind of racist to decide that black people can’t have their own opinion.” For being an unconstitutional racist and bigot, Takei has earned a Golden Weasel. Damn it, Jim! He’s earned it!!
Puma By Design: One of actor and member of the gay gestapo, George Takei’s pink jackboots ended up in his mouth after missing the throat of Supreme Court Justice, Clarence Thomas, last week when Takei went on a racist rant against Thomas for his dissenting opinion in the Supreme Court ruling on Obergefell v. Hodges legalizing same sex marriage in all fifty states.
GEORGE TAKEI: “He is a clown in blackface sitting on the Supreme Court. He gets me that angry. He doesn’t belong there. And for him to say, slaves have dignity. I mean, doesn’t he know that slaves were in chains? That they were whipped on the back. If he saw the movie 12 Years a Slave, you know, they were raped. And he says they had dignity as slaves or – My parents lost everything that they worked for, in the middle of their lives, in their 30s. His business, my father’s business, our home, our freedom and we’re supposed to call that dignified? Marched out of our homes at gun point. I mean, this man does not belong on the Supreme Court. He is an embarrassment. He is a disgrace to America.”
In fact, Takei’s rant was so reprehensible that CNN’s Communist race baiter, Marc Lamont Hill, criticized Takei for his “black face” rant on CNN and Twitter (see below) while making it clear that Hill was in no way standing up for Thomas considered by Hill and other Blacks on the left to be a sellout to his race and the Progressive plantation.
I recently was asked by a reporter about Justice Clarence Thomas’s dissent in the marriage equality cases, in which he wrote words that really got under my skin, by suggesting that the government cannot take away human dignity through slavery, or though internment. In my mind that suggested that this meant he felt the government therefore shouldn’t be held accountable, or should do nothing in the face of gross violations of dignity. When asked by a reporter about the opinion, I was still seething, and I referred to him as a “clown in blackface” to suggest that he had abdicated and abandoned his heritage. This was not intended to be racist, but rather to evoke a history of racism in the theatrical arts. While I continue to vehemently disagree with Justice Thomas, the words I chose, said in the heat of anger, were not carefully considered.
Takei’s apology is nothing more than quintessential dribble typical of Marxist antagonists whose jackboot of bigotry and intolerance ends up in their mouths instead of on the neck of their targets.
Takei went on the racist rant Monday during an interview in Phoenix, in response to Thomas’ comments regarding the Supreme Court decision on gay marriage:
“He is a clown in blackface sitting on the Supreme Court. He gets me that angry. He doesn’t belong there,” Takei said, later adding, “This man does not belong on the Supreme Court. He is an embarrassment. He is a disgrace to America. I’ll say it on camera.”
He eventually “apologized” on Facebook in the most weaselly fashion imaginable – by claiming victimhood himself.
I recently was asked by a reporter about Justice Clarence Thomas’s dissent in the marriage equality cases, in which he wrote words that really got under my skin, by suggesting that the government cannot take away human dignity through slavery, or though internment. In my mind that suggested that this meant he felt the government therefore shouldn’t be held accountable, or should do nothing in the face of gross violations of dignity. When asked by a reporter about the opinion, I was still seething, and I referred to him as a “clown in blackface” to suggest that he had abdicated and abandoned his heritage. This was not intended to be racist, but rather to evoke a history of racism in the theatrical arts. While I continue to vehemently disagree with Justice Thomas, the words I chose, said in the heat of anger, were not carefully considered.
Very badly done – and weaselly to boot.
Yes. George Takei’s pinhead rant certainly took the honors this week! Ah, the joys of being a perennial victim, mental health issues aside. Come up and get your statuette, Mr. Sulu, I’m sure this Golden Weasel will really send you into orbit in the future as you explore strange galaxies and boldly go where no man has gone before… or something like that.
Well, there it is.
Check back next Tuesday to see who next week’s nominees for Weasel of the Week are!
Make sure to tune in every Monday for the Watcher’s Forum and remember, every Wednesday, the Council has its weekly contest with the members nominating two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. The votes are cast by the Council and the results are posted on Friday morning.
It’s a weekly magazine of some of the best stuff written in the blogosphere and you won’t want to miss it… or any of the other fantabulous Watcher’s Council content.
VIENNA—Tensions in the nuclear talks between Iran and six powers have boiled over in recent days, producing heated exchanges among foreign ministers as Washington and Tehran struggled to overcome remaining hurdles to a final agreement, according to people involved in the talks.
The German and British foreign ministers returned to the Austrian capital Wednesday evening as Western diplomats insisted a deal was still possible in coming days. However, time was running out for the agreement to be sealed before a deadline this week which would give the U.S. Congress an extra month to review a deadline.
People close to the talks have warned that the longer Congress and opponents of the diplomacy get to pick over an agreement and galvanize opposition, the greater the political risks for supporters of the process, which aims to block Iran’s path to nuclear weapons in exchange for lifting tight international sanctions.
U.S. officials have insisted this week they don’t feel under pressure to get a deal by the congressional deadline, which arrives at midnight Thursday (6 a.m. Friday in Vienna.)
Over the past day, Western officials and Iranian media have outlined tense exchanges between the negotiating teams that took place Monday evening, at a point where the talks appeared close to stalling. At the time, negotiators were working toward a Tuesday deadline for a deal.
Later today, the U.S. Air Force Secretary had this to say:
Russia is the biggest threat to US national security and America must boost its military presence throughout Europe even as NATO allies face budget challenges and scale back spending, US Air Force Secretary Deborah James said on Wednesday.
“I do consider Russia to be the biggest threat,” James told Reuters in an interview after a series of visits and meetings with US allies across Europe, including Poland.
James said Washington was responding to Russia’s recent “worrisome” actions by boosting its presence across Europe, and would continue rotational assignments of F-16 fighter squadrons. Deeper details are here.
Meanwhile, Adm. Paul F. Zukunft, commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, said the United States is practically a bystander in the region.
“We sit here on the sidelines as the only nation that has not ratified the Law of the Sea Convention,” Zukunft told a gathering Tuesday at the Navy League’s annual Sea Air Space exposition and conference at National Harbor, Maryland. “Our nation has two ocean-going icebreakers … We’re the most prosperous nation on Earth. Our GDP is eight times that of Russia. Russia has 27 ocean-going icebreakers.”
The U.S. has only two, he said, practically conceding the Arctic to foreign nations, Zukunft said.
“What happened when Sputnik went up? Did we say ‘good for you but we’re not playing in that game?’” he asked. “Well, we’re not playing in this game at all.”
Beneath the Arctic is about 13 percent of the world’s oil and nearly 30 percent of its natural gas. And on the seabed is about a trillion dollars’ worth of minerals, Zukunft said. Coast Guard mapping indicates that an area about twice the size of California would be considered America’s extended continental under the U.N. sea convention not signed by the U.S.
‘This test marks a major milestone for the B61-12 Life Extension Program, demonstrating end-to-end system performance under representative delivery conditions,’ said NNSA Deputy Administrator for Defense Programs Dr. Don Cook.
‘Achieving the first complete B61-12 flight test provides clear evidence of the nation’s continued commitment to maintain the B61 and provides assurance to our allies.’
The B61, known before 1968 as the TX-61, was designed in 1963 by the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
The B61-12 LEP entered Development Engineering in February 2012 after approval from the Nuclear Weapons Council, a joint Department of Defense and Department of Energy/NNSA organization established to facilitate cooperation and coordination between the two departments as they fulfill their complementary agency responsibilities for U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile management. More details here.
