GayPatriot

The Internet home for American gay conservatives.

After Trump, part 2

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I tried to find a unifying angle but I’m in a hurry.

  • First, it looks like Hillary has, just barely, won the official, popular vote. She lost geographically. Only in minority-dominated counties and the biggest cities, did majorities of people like her. States (or the Electoral College) still matter.
  • We’re getting a look at Trump’s possible Cabinet. Sadly, Trump is considering people from Big Banking (Goldman Sachs or in other rumors, JP Morgan) for his Treasury secretary. Trump could turn out to be rather less anti-Establishment than some have hoped.
  • Rudy Giuliani, a candidate for Trump’s Attorney General, has publicly suggested that President Obama not pardon Hillary. That’s good advice.

    In general, Democrats (like Obama) are trying to spread the myth that prosecuting Hillary would only be political. The true issue would be the Clinton Foundation’s corruption and/or Hillary’s major security breaches. And whether or not the Clintons are allowed to lie, destroy evidence, etc. to obstruct justice? Let normal processes of investigation and justice do their work.

  • It looks like Trump and Obama are both playing grownup in the transition. Obama called their conversation “excellent”. But, if Trump is such a racist xenophobic bigoted monster (as the Left tells us), how could that be?
  • Speaking of Obama, I still remember being told in 2008 that the Lightworker’s brown skin would make foreigners love us. Update: In Greece, anti-Obama protestors storm the U.S. consulate.
  • And the big winner of the 2016 election was… Weed.

Greek drama update

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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.”

Get out the popcorn: Greece is bringin’ the drama

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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.

Now it’s Greek bug-chasers

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UPDATE: (thanks Peter in the comments): The WHO has reversed itself on this:

“The [offending] sentence should read, ‘Half of the new HIV cases are self-injecting and out of them few are deliberately inflicting the virus’.”

“This was just a gross editing error for which the WHO apologises,” said its spokesman, Gregory Hartl.

Good for the Greeks! Now, if the other reports about bug chasers in the UK and the US have been retracted or disproved, that would also be interesting and please let us know in the comments.

As if to follow-on to my earlier post, “UK bug chasers: America’s future?”, comes this sad report from the World Health Organization, page 112:

Case study: countries’ experiences of financial crisis – Greece

Suicides rose by 17% between 2007 and 2009 and to 25% in 2010, according to unofficial 2010 data (398). The Minister of Health reported a further 40% rise in the first half of 2011…Homicide and theft rates have doubled. HIV rates and heroin use have risen significantly, with *about half of new HIV infections being self-inflicted to enable people to receive benefits of €700 per month* and faster admission on to drug-substitution programmes. Prostitution has also risen…

Emphasis added. In pursuing the cradle-to-grave Welfare State, Europe has created a society of smothering government regulation, taxes, “benefits” and controls where:

  • People can no longer get ahead, or even survive, in the private economy.
  • People can survive if they qualify for government-paid benefits.

Is it any wonder that economic crisis results? And that, in the midst of the crisis, some people will do anything to qualify for government-paid benefits?

To escape the trap, Europe must do the opposite. It must dismantle the Welfare State, creating a society of freedom where most people can’t get money from government, and can survive, or even get ahead, in the private economy.

Via New Scientist and ZH.