Doctors Without Borders not only wouldn’t lift a finger to help free American hostage Kayla Mueller who was eventually murdered by ISIS, they also refused to pass on information about her to her family.

Even though she was kidnapped by ISIS from a Doctors Without Borders vehicle, and had helped a friend install equipment at a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Syria, the prestigious humanitarian group refused to help negotiate for the freedom of American hostage Kayla Mueller, her parents tell ABC News.

Marsha and Carl Mueller of Prescott, Arizona, said the group refused to speak with them for months and then withheld critical information provided by freed Doctors Without Borders hostages — information that directly concerned their daughter and was needed in order to begin negotiations for her release.

Two contrasting items today, in the Establishment press.

In Foreign Policy magazine, James Traub says “It’s Time for the Elites to Rise Up Against the Ignorant Masses”. Yes, that is the title of his article.

It’s a trashy piece, packed with elitist cliches and the occasional jaw-dropper (for example, when he refers to Washington’s infamous “K Street” lobbyists with approval). Yet it’s a tortured attempt to begin to face reality:

The issue, at bottom, is globalization. Brexit, Trump, the National Front, and so on show that political elites have misjudged the depth of the anger at global forces…

Actually no, Mr. Traub. Globalization, in itself, is not the problem. -Dictatorial- globalization wherein the political elites wrongly seek to enslave people, is the problem. But kudos to you, for beginning to tell the said elites that maybe there could be some sort of systemic problem.

A good contrast: In The New York Times, Marine Le Pen says “After Brexit, the People’s Spring Is Inevitable”.

British voters understood that… only one question, at once simple and fundamental, was being asked: Do we want an undemocratic authority ruling our lives, or would we rather regain control over our destiny?
[...]
More and more, the destiny of the European Union resembles the destiny of the Soviet Union, which died from its own contradictions.

There’s much more. As the saying goes, “Read the whole thing.”

UPDATE: Over at The Guardian, it’s even worse than the James Traub piece above. David Van Reybrouck’s article is titled “Why Elections Are Bad For Democracy” (yes, for real).

Starting from a blind premise that Brexit is obviously awful, he says “Voting is the problem” and suggests, in all seriousness, that citizen referenda should be replaced by focus groups (called “sortition” to make it sound nice and historical) which will be guided by the elite’s approved experts. (Via ZH.)

…at some point, I predict. For now, they’re simply abandoning English.

The more that countries leave the EU (except Germany), the larger Germany looms in it.

Lone wolf jihadists should target white Americans so no one mistakes their terror attacks for hate crimes unrelated to the cause of radical Islam, Al Qaeda writes in the latest edition of its online magazine.

Sadly, we must consider what this portends for future tragic massacres by ISIS / al Qaeda of the U.S. gay community.

• Will they again target gays? (from their Islamist gay-hatred and/or the tendency of ‘visible’ gays to be white)
• Or grant us a sort of ‘exemption’? (so that the meaning of their next attack can’t be obscured, as the Gay Left obscured the Islamist nature of Omar Mateen’s attack)

Discuss.

Every grownup knows what a temper tantrum looks like. The kid didn’t get his way. It’s time to make the grownups pay – by causing obstacles, by screeching about anything and everything, by hitting, and so forth. The kid might still not win on the immediate issue X. But who knows, the grownups might just try to mollify him on another issue Y. It’s part revenge, part blackmail. We can expect a lot of tantrums now over Brexit.

Brexit doesn’t change much, “in the now”. First, it hasn’t even happened. (It will be weeks or months before Britain invokes Article 50.) Second, if and when it happens, it need not affect the existing terms of European trade, finance or hardly anything other than British border control. All that it will take to keep the existing trade going is a few new pieces of paper with a few new signatures.

No, Brexit is more of a matter for the future. Assuming it happens, it will mean that the UK’s -future course- is to avoid a full-on political merger with the rest of Europe; avoid the destruction of its borders and sovereignty; etc.

And, to the various socialist cronies of Europe, that’s unforgivable. And for years, vast problems (unrelated to Brexit) have been piling up for them. And for years, they’ve tried to not admit the full extent of their problems. Problems which they have caused and/or failed to deal with.

Guess what? Now that they didn’t get their way on Brexit, they’re going to blame everything on Brexit. Even though Brexit is mostly unrelated.

It’s as if termites have eaten away at your home for years. Your home is ready to crash. You have failed to deal with it. Now your partner insists that you stay home on Saturday night and don’t go to that casino. Guess what? Your plan is to light a little fire to help your termite-eaten home crash faster; and when the cops arrive, you’ll blame your partner for everything. Now that’s a tantrum.

It’s already begun. Earlier we had the credit downgrades on the UK. It’s pure payback, of course. Nothing fundamental has changed about the UK’s finances. The ratings companies became political, some years ago. Governments can and will torture the ratings companies; therefore, they do the bidding of governments. The downgrades then add to market turmoil. In other words: Kid throws tantrum.

Another example is, crashing Italian banks that demand massive new bailouts. European banks’ finances have been rotten for years. Their stocks were inevitably going to crash at some point, when the world admitted the reality. But guess what? Brexit! So give us new bailouts!

It’s the new Climate Change, or maybe the new Salted Caramel. Everything this year is going to be Brexit. Decaying art? Brexit! Venezuelan collapse? Brexit! Fukushima radiation levels? Brexit! Solar flares? Brexit! U.S. recession? Personal negativity? Brexit!

Why not? The world – or at least, the media-socialist-crony world – hates UK Independence (and border control) that much. Everyone will agree to join the fun and not be honest about the longstanding, real causes of a great many problems.

UPDATE – it continues: The European Central Bank’s leader, Mario Draghi, predicts low economic growth and currency devaluations from Brexit. Let’s be clear.

• Europe was already going to be stuck in years of low growth.
• Currency devaluation is what Draghi has already been wanting and attempting, for years.

But guess what? The new scapegoat, Brexit!

It seems so.

As Britain voted to leave the European Union last week, the leader of the UK Independence Party, Nigel Farage said, “The election was won in my view in the Midlands and the North and it was the old Labour vote that came to us…” This morning, Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid puts some numbers on it:

In terms of socio-economic groups, 57% of ABs (upper/middle class – professional/managers etc) voted remain, 49% of C1s (lower middle class – supervisory/clerical or junior management/administrative), 36% of C2s (skilled working class) and 36% of DEs (Ds – semi & unskilled manual workers; Es – casual/lowest grade worker or state pensioner).

By implication, the ones who didn’t vote for Remain, voted for Leave. In other words, over 60% of rank-and-file British workers voted for the Leave campaign. (Note: ZH provides no link to the original. If you have a link to the original, please post it in the comments.)

We could take this interesting tidbit, if it’s true, in any number of directions.

• Among workers, is this a rise of protectionism? Or is it a rise of appropriate national pride and common sense?
• Is the recent day or two of market turmoil really just the ruling classes throwing a temper tantrum?
• What should be made of all these leftists saying that Brexit passed because of old people, conservatives and racists? Are left-wingers name-calling their own base? The Party apparatchiks are mad at their base? Is the spat temporary, or something deeper?

UPDATE: Can there be any doubt that the EU hates democratic accountability? (Being accountable to the People it presumes to govern) One of its various Presidents, Martin Schultz, has now said:

“The British have violated the rules. It is not the EU philosophy that the crowd can decide its fate”.

I saw that coming.

Some of us thought the media’s apocalyptic coverage of the BREXIT vote was overblown.

• BREXIT Votes signals “the end of Western political civilization.”
• BREXIT Vote Leaves Scientists Terrified.
• BREXIT Vote “going back into the Dark Ages“
• BREXIT Vote Horrifies Arts & Letters Community.
• Could BREXIT be a sign of the End Times?
• BREXIT to result in Zombie Apocalypse.

I believe the last one may have been tongue-in-cheek.

But did you see *any* media outlet discuss the upside for Britons of leaving political union with Europe. I did not, and apparently there weren’t many covering that angle.

A politician of the UKIP presents an alternative view:

“A Prime Minister resigned. The pound plummeted. The FTSE 100 lost significant ground.

“But then the pound rallied past February levels. And the FTSE closed on a weekly high: 2.4 per cent up on last Friday, it’s best performance in four months.

“President Obama decided we wouldn’t be at the back of the queue after all and that our special relationship was still strong.

“The French President confirmed the Le Touquet agreement would stay in place.

“The President of the European Commission stated Brexit negations would be “orderly” and stressed the UK would continue to be a close partner of the EU.

“A big bank denied reports it would shift staff overseas. The CBI, vehemently anti-Brexit during the referendum campaign, stated British business was resilient and would adapt.

“Several countries outside the EU stated they wished to begin bilateral talks with the UK immediately.

“If this was the predicted apocalypse, well, it was a very British one. It was all over by teatime. Not a bad first day of freedom.”

As I checked the markets on Friday, there seemed to be nothing really happening aside from bankers throwing a temper-tantrum. As if bankers who have no qualms about dealing with the butchers of Beijing and Tehran are suddenly going to have trouble doing business with Englishmen.

The BBC explains why it thinks BREXIT won. Let me save you the trouble: Remain ran an ineffective campaign and too many old farts voted out of nostalgia. And that’s actually a step up (or perhaps a refined version) of the “racism and xenophobia” excuse most of the left has embraced as the reason. And a very few sources have noted that British taxpayers have been paying £13 billion a year for the privilege of belonging to the EU and thinking maybe that money could be better spent to shore up their decrepit system of bureaucratized health care. The one thing that is almost never discussed is how undemocratic and dysfunctional the European Union actually is.

• It is axiomatic that the EU is structured in an undemocratic way. While in theory, voters elect representatives to the European Parliament, in fact the governing organs of the EU are not transparent and have little in the way of checks and balances. Even defenders of the EU concede that it is in serious need of reform and that its Eurocrats are extremely resistant to reform. In 2001, the European Court of Justice even made it illegal to criticize the European Union, its politicians and bureaucrats, and its policies.
• Hand in hand with that lack of transparency is endemic corruption, waste, and fraud by Eurocrats.
• The unelected EU bureaucracy in Brussels micromanages everything, and has regulated, banned, or tried to ban curved bananas, olive oil served from glass bottles in restaurants, and declared as a matter of science that it was illegal to claim that drinking water prevents dehydration. 

And even if the EU were a transparent and well-functioning democratic institution, there would be occasions (probably a lot of them) when the EU… through a transparent democratic process… would simply enact policies that favored the interests of Portuguese or Romanians over Britons. Germans were unhappy to be taxed to bail Greece, and even less happy to accept hundreds of thousands of “refugees,” but the EU demanded it as the cost of unity.

The media are acting as if the British have gone nutzoid and embraced BREXIT because they hate those stinky brown foreign people so much that they will sabotage their own economy just to send a message. The flaws of the EU are never discussed because the EU is pretty much the model for Progressive Transnational Government.

The ultimate goal of the Progressive Left is a borderless world where national identities have been brushed aside. They envision something like a Global version of the EU as the Government of this one-world utopia. There is little difference between an American socialist like Bernie Sanders and a Swedish socialist, a Chinese socialist, a Latin American socialist, a British Labourite, a French socialist… so it’s very easy when these types get together to imagine a borderless world governed by they themselves. And they also don’t see why anyone would ever disagree with their policies because they are so self-evidently right. But as BREXIT showed when the people they want to rule over are actually allowed to vote, they don’t want it.

Congratulations to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Nothern Ireland for voting to leave the European Union. It seems real because it has prompted Cameron to resign.

The EU began in 1957 as the European Economic Community, originally a free-trade zone for western Europe. And that’s a good thing. Unfortunately, over the decades (and especially after it became the European Union in 1993), the EU devolved into an intensively oppressive bureaucracy that imposes endless, krazy regulations on its member states and, for practical purposes, voids democracy in them.

Britain should gain a brighter economic future from the separation. The “Remain” campaign, of course, tried to claim the opposite. Britain does massive trade with the rest of the EU, and the “Remain” campaign tried to scare voters that the trade will be lost. Which is ridiculous; the EU itself needs its British trade, and the example of Switzerland (not to mention China or the U.S.) proves that independent countries can do massive trade with the EU.

But it’s not just the economics: Separating from the EU (if that is now put into practice) should mean that Britain has regained an important part of its sovereignty and its democracy.

On a personal note: This event is a pleasant surprise for me. Despite the “Leave” campaign’s leading in many British polls, I was sure that the British-EU elites would manipulate the election so that “Remain” had to win. (Manipulate the voters and/or the voting, the counting, etc.)

In other words, I was sure that British democracy was already dead. Today’s news reminds me, in a happy way, that I don’t know everything. Just to put sprinkles on the ice cream, it’s also a well-deserved slap in President Obama’s face.

UPDATE:

• This is very much a win for Nigel Farage.
• If you want to learn more, it’s not too late to watch Brexit: The Movie.

UP-UPDATE: Cyril’s comment inspired me to adorn the post thusly:

Looks like the main people in the United States who are cheering on #Brexit are racists, conservatives, and white supremacists.

— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) June 24, 2016

Also upset by Britain’s horrific display of democracy, Michael Moore, Lindsey Lohan, and Howard Dean. Kinda weird to see Michael Moore, Howard Dean and International Capitalist Bankers in total agreement, innit?

Update: The MFM’s Spokeswoman for All Gay People goes Godwin: “I’m not worried, when has a combination of nationalism and economic depression ever resulted in something terrible happening in Europe?”

Britain has voted for independence from Eurotopia. I am stunned, I really thought there was no way the ruling class would allow BREXIT to win. Now, will the bankers and political class really allow Britain to leave? We will wait and see.

Also, is this a harbinger of things to come, not just in Europe, but here as well. It’s obvious the cultural and social fissures in the US run deep and we see the cracks all the time. Britons resented the heavy-handed rule from an unaccountable, unelected bureaucracy in Brussels as much as many Americans in the heartland resent being ruled over by heavy-handed, unaccountable, unelected bureaucrats in Washington DC.  Texas does not want to live under New York’s gun laws, nor does Alabama want to live under California’s environmental laws. Sanctuary cities make a mockery of immigration law even as the USA has clearly taken in more people than can be supported economically. As Washington uses Government power to hammer the values of a small cadre of political elites on an increasingly unwilling nation, the cracks grow deeper and more numerous. BlackLivesMatter is one crack, Donald Trump is another. I would not be surprised to see the USA split up in my lifetime.

So, you know, maybe California should show the way now. We know how much you guys hate being attached to “Flyover Country,” and you are obviously far more “progressive” than the rest of us… so maybe a nice Calexit would be good for everybody. California has embraced full-on progressivism, and shouldn’t let the rest of the USA hold you guys back. And you can take Feinstein, Pelosi, and Moonbeam with you.

In 1999, Venezuela was taken over by a Socialist, Hugo Chavez, who promised that he would punish big corporations and redistribute wealth to “the people” to provide health care, education, infrastructure, and even out income inequality. (Sound familiar?) The American Left cheered. Celebrities like Sean Penn and Danny Glover praised his Democratic Socialist economic measures. Chavez systematically nationalized the oil, banking, agricultural, food distribution, telecommunications, and power industries in Venezuela; because running them as social democratic communes would eliminate “greed” and give the people lower cost goods and services. The American Left praised him for “democratizing” the Venezuelan economy. When Chavez shut down opposition TV, radio, and newspapers the American Left defended it as necessary to protect the Revolution.

The American Left likes to pretend now that Venezuela isn’t a real example of Social Democracy; but up until the economy collapsed (as every sensible person knew it would) they were Chavez’s biggest cheerleaders, as the links above (or any Google search) shows.

When Hugo Chavez died, he left behind a personal fortune of nearly $4 Billion. Just sayin’

Anyway, the real legacy of Hugo Chavez is that the country with the second largest oil reserves in the Western Hemisphere can’t even keep the lights on.  But, Hey, it’s not their fault, you guys.

(Venezuelan President) Maduro blames the collapse on an “economic war” by capitalists.

Actually, it’s the economic war *on* capitalists that caused your problems, comrade.

Last week, his government said it was shifting its time zone forward by 30 minutes to save power by adding half an hour of daylight.

Um, yeah, it doesn’t actually work like that. But it takes a Social Democrat to be delusional enough to believe that they can mandate thirty minutes of sunlight by law.

Comrades forever.

Iran will pursue its development of ballistic missiles despite the U.S. blacklisting of more Iranian companies linked to the program, a senior Revolutionary Guards commander said on Monday.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) test-fired several ballistic missiles this month, drawing condemnation from Western leaders who believe the tests violate a United Nations resolution. (…)

In February, the U.N. nuclear watchdog IAEA confirmed that Iran had “exceeded a limit” of its heavy water it is allowed to keep by a tonne. The heavy water is used in nuclear reactors to produce enriched Uranium needed to build a nuclear bomb.

Iran has embarked on an ambitious military build-up, never before seen in the history of the Middle East, financed by about $150 billion Tehran is set to receive as part of the Obama-Kerry Nuclear Deal. This build-up dwarfs the military budget of Israel, a country Iranian Regime continues to threaten with annihilation.

Obama Administration has instead responded reluctantly to Islamic Republic of Iran’s repeated testing of ballistic missiles capable to carrying nuclear warheads by blacklisting a handful of Iranian companies.

No, not Andrew Sullivan. [Queen Elizabeth II] refuses to come to London to meet President Barack Obama next month.

She probably just wants to avoid Michelle Obama getting all inappropes touchy-feely again, or maybe she doesn’t want to receive another iPod full of Obama speeches.

Found this over in the comments at NRO.

“The West is being outmanoeuvred by a decaying has-been superpower as it forms an axis with a pipsqueak dictator and a clutch of turban-wearing fanatics with delusions of apocalyptic grandeur. With that kind of epic failure as his benchmark, it’s a wonder that Obama can get out of bed in the morning without getting hopelessly trapped in the eiderdown.”

Indeed, this is the mark of a very weak and dimwitted president to let this come to pass. There are those who say, “Who cares? Let’s just get out of the Middle East entirely.”

Somewhere between George W. Bush’s futile and wasteful expenditure of blood and treasure trying to bring the Enlightenment to a region with no interest in it and Barack Obama’s policy of throwing allies to the wolves and arming adversaries with nukes and stimulus money is a sane foreign policy based strictly on American interests. I am not convinced that having a Russian-Iranian axis in control of the world’s oil supply is in the American interest.

Leftists point to Sweden as an example of “socialism that works,” maybe because it was “working” back in the 1960′s when Democrats ossified their belief system that Democratic socialism was the way to go. [Never mind that a few years ago, Sweden dramatically reduced it's corporate tax rate to a level far below the 39.6% highest-in-the-industrialized world American corporate tax rate.]

But the “success” of Swedish socialism was an illusion. What the Swedes were in fact doing was squandering the wealth accumulated under centuries of successful capitalism. But it isn’t just economic forces that are tearing down Sweden, the forces are social and cultural.

Today, it’s as if the inmates are running the asylum. The politicians are participating in a chicken race of “goodness” where everybody tries to one-up each other in caring for the citizens of OTHER countries while Swedish retirees, school children, handicapped and other vulnerable categories of people are thoroughly ignored. Violence is exploding. Jihadist Trojan horses are flowing through the porous border along with the tens of thousands ID-less refugees.

Sweden is experiencing an exploding debt to pay for a bloated welfare system. The cities are growing more violent due to a crush of unassimilatable third-world refugees. Its school system has abandoned facts and critical thinking in favor of feelgood social engineering and “consensus-building activities.” The military has been slashed to a point where, were the Russians to decide to take action, there are simply no resources to check their aggression.

Why does it all sound so… familiar?

The Progressive Left was disappointed with the election results in Great Britain, so they did what spoiled, anti-social socialists usually do when they don’t get their way. They started a riot.

Scuffles broke out when the anti-austerity demonstrators, blaring hooters, banging pots and chanting obscenities, confronted lines of police outside the gate leading to the prime minister’s Downing Street residence. At one point a bicycle was hurled at police.

Police arrested 17 people, and four police officers and one member of police staff were injured during the protest, a Scotland Yard spokesman said.

A Reuters photographer estimated that a couple of hundred people took part in the protest, including a group of about 25 black-clad youths with sunglasses and face masks.

“Social Justice” is just another way of saying ‘Mob rule.’

Greece’s Syriza-led government has basically folded, for now, in its debt negotiations with the rest of Europe.

A “complete political surrender to the world of reality” was how [one European bank analyst] put it. [Other analysts] labeled it a “u-turn” by Tsipras, who won election Jan. 25 promising an end to budget cutting.
[...]
At last week’s meeting, Greece signed up to all the conditions of its current package and to continued international oversight, ditching plans to win back control of its purse strings so it could raise wages and pensions.

You can find GayPatriot’s backgrounder here. And some details on the new agreement, here.

Needless to say, many Syriza supporters are outraged. For example, one Syriza veteran of WW2 said, “…[Syriza's] promises have not turned into practice…On my part, I APOLOGIZE to the Greek people because I have contributed to this illusion.”

My feelings are mixed. Pleasure at seeing a gang of socialists having to learn math, combined with dismay/sympathy for the Greek people – who probably shouldn’t cave in; they probably would be better off, in the long run, if they defaulted on their debt and left the Eurozone.

I don’t think this drama is over. I think it ends with either Greece or Germany leaving the Euro currency (later this year or perhaps in 2016), as the Eurozone simply isn’t big enough for both of them. But, as the saying goes, “we’ll see.”

This will take some explaining.

• Cristina Fernández de Kirchner has been Argentina’s President since the end of 2007. She is Peronist (Argentina’s version of national-socialist). Needless to say, her controversial policies have harmed Argentina’s economy.
• Alberto Nisman was an Argentine federal prosecutor. He was long investigating an infamous 1994 car bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires.
• In 2006, Nisman accused Hezbollah operatives of the 1994 bombing, and Iranian officials of having directed it (possibly over a nuclear deal that Argentina had suspended).
• On 1/19/2015, Nisman was found dead in his home, just hours before he was to explain his allegations to Argentina’s Congress.
• Government officials suggested it was suicide. Needless to say, Nisman hadn’t been suicidal, and had been living under constant death threats.
• The journalist Damian Prachter helped to blow apart the suicide story. Within a few more hours, Prachter found himself tracked by Argentine security services and felt compelled to flee Argentina.
• Wiki: “On Tuesday, 3 February 2015, Viviana Fein, the lead investigator into his death, announced that Nisman had drafted warrants for the arrest of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and Héctor Timerman, Argentina’s foreign minister, before his death. The 26 page document was found in the garbage in Nisman’s apartment.”
• The New York Times says that Nisman’s draft complaint against Mrs. Kirchner was about her efforts to protect Iran (or Iranian officials) from prosecution for the 1994 bombing. One analyst said that, had Nisman done his presentation to Congress, “It would have provoked a crisis without precedent in Argentina.”
• It seems that Mrs. Kirchner and some key supporters will be investigated anyway, now.

All I can say is: WTF? Why does Argentina’s President care so much about protecting Iranian officials? Were they funding her career? Or going to bail out her country?

BONUS: In Venezuela, condoms are now $755 a pack. Unrelated, except to show what happens when socialists run wild.

As AP reports, Greece has just gone (further) to the left by voting in their “Syriza” party. With 60% of the vote counted, Syriza leads with 36%, a blowout by Greece’s fragmented / multi-party standard.

Flounder of Delta House was reached for comment and said, “Oh boy, is this great!” Why would he? Because Syriza is a delightful mixture of the sane and the insane.

First, their key campaign plank has been to provoke a new crisis over Greece’s debt to the rest of Europe, including no small chance that Greece would default and/or leave the Euro currency. And that’s the sane part.

It’s sane, because Greece had entered the Euro under false pretenses and then borrowed far more than Greece can ever repay. Syriza is right that Greece’s debt problem is serious, and right that Greece’s solution may well be to default honestly and return to its former currency (the drachma), so that (after devaluation) Greece can be competitive in world markets. (Correction: Officially, Syriza wants to remain in the Euro. It’s just that no one else believes they can, if they’re serious about getting a haircut on Greece’s debt.)

The insane part is that Syriza calls their plans “an end to austerity”, “leaving austerity behind”, and so forth. The implication would be that, these last few years, Greece has buckled down and made painful, deep cuts to its public-sector spending. Yeah, except they haven’t.

When I last checked in 2013, Greece had still not made significant cuts to government spending after years of crisis and supposed austerity. (Update: tradingeconomics.com figures say that Greece did cut spending in 2010-2012 and has already started to reverse the cuts. In 2014, Greece’s spending was near its all-time high from 2009.)

As I’ve explained before, “austerity” is just the Left’s code word to mean “We aren’t being allowed to spend wildly enough!” If government stays as big as ever – if government has merely a small pause or slowing of its growth – the Left screams about the horrible austerity.

Likewise, “ending austerity” is the Left’s code to mean they get to grow government again and basically have it consume the rest of the economy (whatever it doesn’t own already). That is what the Greeks just voted in. A party that (wisely) wants to provoke a crisis over Greece’s debt; so that it can (stupidly) have even moar of the high-spending, Big Government policies that bankrupted Greece in the first place.

Something tells me the Greeks are about to find out what austerity really is.

Some News Items for your consideration

• Emperor Obama has fulfilled the Democrat-Left’s fifty-year dream of normalizing relations the brutal Communist Government of Cuba. The same people who were upset that three terrorists got waterboarded under GWB are now thrilled that the USA is embracing a Government that has systematically tortured and slaughtered thousands of political dissidents and their families and sent gays to concentration camps.
• A Christmas Miracle: Republican wins election recount. Martha McSally wins Gabby Giffords’ Congressional seat. I guess whatever Democrat was in charge of “finding” votes in the trunks of cars was too busy blocking traffic at an #(Only)BlackLivesMatter protest.
• Because slaughtering 130 children just wasn’t enough, Mohammedans went on to slaughter 150 women and girls for refusing to submit to forced marriage. Hillary thinks we should “empathize” with these… creatures.
• ICYMI, Kim Jong-Un is now the biggest player in Hollywood.
• Why Democrats want Amnesty: Illegal immigrant single mother demands $15-an-hour for making french fries and messing up your Drive-Thru order.