The Glade 4.0

Historically, my Johnson has been in some EU countries. Maybe that means it still is...

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

By "been in", do you mean you planted it? Because that would count.

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My Johnson isn't into travel anymore. I would like to be the first Johnson on Mars though. Niiiice.

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Heh, even though you were kidding, you pretty much nailed the end result. Tsipras just agreed to a deal that, from an economic perspective, is worse than what the Nazis inflicted upon Greece when they looted it. I have no idea what they threatened him with to make him accept it. The deal features:

1. Austerity measures much harsher than the proposal explicitly rejected by Greek voters in a referendum last week. EMU inspectors are also given veto power over Greek legislation. Greece is basically no longer a democracy.
2. Since government employee pay is set by statute in Greece, this means that Germany essentially gets to decide what Greek government workers are paid.
3. Over 50 billion Euro (almost a fourth of their GDP) worth of sovereign assets are transferred to a German holding company to essentially be used as debt collateral.
4. All union contracts, government employment contracts, and closed shop rules are voided.
5. Greece now has a mandatory budget surplus that increases each year, they are not allowed to spend money for any reason if it would put them below the surplus numbers.

It's still probably not enough to warrant the bailout. In the end, it might have been more beneficial to let them rot.

People can't ignore economic reality in the interests of whatever their personal perception of "fair" is. Reality eventually comes back and hits you HARD.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Do you have any filter for hyperbole at all?

1. Austerity measures much harsher than the proposal explicitly rejected by Greek voters in a referendum last week. EMU inspectors are also given veto power over Greek legislation. Greece is basically no longer a democracy.
2. Since government employee pay is set by statute in Greece, this means that Germany essentially gets to decide what Greek government workers are paid.
3. Over 50 billion Euro (almost a fourth of their GDP) worth of sovereign assets are transferred to a German holding company to essentially be used as debt collateral.
4. All union contracts, government employment contracts, and closed shop rules are voided.
5. Greece now has a mandatory budget surplus that increases each year, they are not allowed to spend money for any reason if it would put them below the surplus numbers.[/quote]

Given the situation that the sense of entitlement of the Greek voter that has resulted in this debt situation, it is hardly unreasonable that Germany has demanded these conditions. If you go begging to other ountries for financial assistance, they get a say in your affairs. It's not their job to preserve democracy; it was your job. Greece is what happens when the entire political scene is one endless handout-contest with less and less actual work being done, more and more entitlement to money for doing nothing jobs, shorter and shorter work hours, and a populace that was literally begged by the government a few years ago to pay taxes.

The Greek people are at fault here more than anything. They got it into their head that there was an era of social progress where everyone got free money regardless of work.

Nations survive by making examples of other nations. Germany is making an example of Greece - which they needed to do for their own economic survival. Germany's WWII history is not relevant here; it's not a license for Greece to use them as a money tree.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

He agreed to it because he gets money. He has no intention of actually implenting any austeriry measures - much like no real austerity measures had been implimented from past agreements.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

You are a sovereign nation only so long as you can pay your bills. Once you can't, you become a slave state to the nation that can.

Another way to look at it is that you get to have your socialist programs only so long as the nations with the money to pay for it are willing to put up with your social justice welfare bullshit. The Greeks were one of the first nations in the history of Man to be ruined by social welfare. That was over two thousand years ago. If they still haven't figured it out by now, I've got no sympathy.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

This is what happens when you as the old saying goes "run of out of other people's money"

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"