Politics of Fear – Page 32 – The Wrongologist

Our Summer of Dickitude

(You may have noticed our sporadic blogging. Wrongo is nearing the end of a year-long project that will be operational in Chicago during the week of August 9-15. During these days leading up to the project’s start, it has been all conference calls and negotiations with 3rd parties. Regular blogging will return during the week of 8/16.)

Let’s look at the one part of the American summer that is seeing rapid growth, that of rampant Dickitude. We start with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) saying about the Iran deal:

If this deal goes through, the Obama administration will become the leading financier of terrorism against America in the world…I’ve heard this referred to before as the ‘Jihadist Stimulus Bill’.

Expect full blown, uncensored, nuclear Republican crazy until after the Fox debate.

You probably didn’t know that Ted Cruz is a sci-fi/comic book fan, a fact highlighted in an interview published last week by The New York Times Magazine. Mr. Cruz told Fox News that his top 5 superheroes are: (see below from a tweet by Andreu Aitch)

Rorschach, who you may not know, is one of the main characters of Alan Moore’s Watchmen. Rorschach is a man who gives lip service to living by a morally unassailable, black and white code, but who nevertheless picks and chooses much of what he considers to be right and wrong entirely based on his own prejudices. Rorschach is the kind of person who murders people for the “greater good”.

Rorschach’s epitaph is:

Never compromise, not even in the face of Armageddon.

Doesn’t that seem like Cruz’s philosophy, where he’s willing to publicly fight his party’s leadership and shut down the federal government in order to spare his country from the impact of Obamacare? You might find a guy with a philosophy that prioritizes principle over peace, even though it might bring nuclear war, to be a risky person as your president.

BTW, why do our newsies want us to pick our president based on what cartoon character he likes best?

Speaking of Dickitude, what about Walter Palmer, the lion-killing dentist? The unauthorized killing of Cecil the lion in Zimbabwe, apparently was a poaching. This recalls that Palmer pleaded guilty in 2008 to the poaching of a black bear in Wisconsin, so Palmer is a serial poacher. And, in 2009, Palmer agreed to a settlement with the Minnesota Board of Dentistry over allegations that he sexually harassed a receptionist. Without admitting guilt, Palmer settled and paid $127,500 to the woman, who also was his patient.

Let’s hope he does time in Zimbabwe.

Moving on, The Hill reports that Federal prosecutors charged Rep. Chaka Fattah, (D-Pa), Wednesday in a 29-count indictment with racketeering, conspiracy, bribery and wire fraud. The FBI and IRS launched its probe of the Congressman’s activities in March 2013. The indictment alleges that, in connection with his failed mayoral bid in 2007, Fattah and his associates borrowed $1 million from a wealthy supporter and disguised the funds as a loan to a consulting company. He then created sham contracts and made false accounting records, tax returns and campaign finance disclosure statements.

In another alleged scheme, beginning in 2008, Fattah lobbied individuals in the executive branch in an effort to secure an ambassadorship or an appointment to the US Trade Commission for 69-year-old lobbyist Herbert Vederman, for which Vederman paid Fattah an $18,000 bribe.

Want to bet he is re-elected?

Finally, Rick Perry said in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” that the shooting in Lafayette, Louisiana show that gun-free zones are “a bad idea”. He said he believes people should be able to take their firearms to the movies:

I think that you allow the citizens of this country, who [are] appropriately trained, appropriately backgrounded, know how to handle and use firearms, to carry them. I believe that, with all my heart, that if you have the citizens who are well trained, and particularly in these places that are considered to be gun-free zones, that we can stop that type of activity, or stop it before there’s as many people that are impacted as what we saw in Lafayette.

Imagine adding guns to a dark, loud environment. What could possibly go wrong? Especially if some sort of escalation were to occur, and a group of true heroes packing handguns are there to intervene. Hundreds of people in a dark theater shooting at the same time to “defend” themselves.

OTOH, we have zero interest in actually dealing with the problem:

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – July 26, 2015

Happy Sunday! Americans hate theocracy everywhere but at home. According to the Pew Research Center, 49% of Americans think churches should speak out about political matters, while 48% disagree, reflecting our divided politics. This has changed since 2010, when 52% wanted preachers to stay away from politics, and 43% didn’t.

The new urge to hear their pastors pillory politicians is supported mostly by Republicans. About 63% of Americans still think churches should stop short of endorsing candidates for office (vs. 32% who favor endorsing), but the gap has narrowed since 2010 when it was 70-24%. Moreover, only 29% of Americans see the Democratic Party as friendly to religion, while 47% see the Republicans favoring religion.

So in the most devout parts of the country, Democratic candidates tend to distance themselves from the party’s national stereotype. You will see this again in 2016.

Churches as institutions should be apolitical. And conversely, the political process should not explicitly favor members of certain religions for office. If it is really true that pious people are more honest or ethical, that fact will be clear when individuals are evaluated during the campaigns. On the other hand, nothing is easier to fake than religious faith, precisely because we can’t see into the heart of another person.

While politicians must pander to lobbies or to wealthy individuals that pay for their election campaigns, if they pander to religion, it makes a hole in the fabric of US politics. Having religious organizations directly sponsor political candidates would be so much easier. After all, “God wants you to vote for John Doe” is a pretty irresistible campaign message. Luckily, that isn’t America – yet.

Another week of summer with more Trump, Iran, and killings in Louisiana. Kerry met with the Senate:

Boehner has a strategy for Iran deal:

GOP has to scratch its itch:

Trump also deserves a medal:

Clay Bennett, Chattanooga Times Free Press

Fugelsang nails it about mass shootings, this time in Louisiana:

The Louisiana gunman’s rage dates back decades. CBS News in Louisiana reported:

A local TV host frequently invited him as a guest, knowing he’d be a lightning rod who could light up the phone lines with rants against abortion and working women…

So he was part of what Donald Trump and Ted Cruz affectionately refer to as “The Base.”

The Baddest Bad-ass GOP Hawk

This is Wrongo’s last column on Iran for a bit. There are several million words written every day about the nuclear deal, and events may yet overtake us all on the subject. But, it is difficult to let it disappear in the rear-view mirror without looking at the Republican presidential candidates’ trying to say that they will tear up the deal on the day they take office.

Consider Scott Walker, who, according to the Weekly Standard, wants to make it clear that he is the baddest Republican hawk. Walker spoke to reporters after an appearance at the Family Leadership Summit, saying that the next president must be prepared to take aggressive action against Iran, possibly including military strikes, on the day he or she is inaugurated. Walker said he would not be comfortable with a commander-in-chief who is unwilling to act aggressively on day one of a new presidency.

Makes you want to know what Walker thinks should happen on day two, or does his planning just stop on day one?

Jeb Bush tried to be the responsible baddest hawk. The Weekly Standard reported that Bush said in response to Walker’s statement:

One thing that I won’t do is just say, as a candidate, ‘I’m going to tear up the agreement on the first day.’ That’s great, that sounds great but maybe you ought to check in with your allies first, maybe you ought to appoint a secretary of state, maybe secretary of defense, you might want to have your team in place, before you take an act like that.

These positions aren’t really different, and both are reckless. Vowing to undo the agreement puts pressure on all GOP candidates to articulate an alternative. And why should voters trust the Republican nominee with the presidency when he is eager to boast about his readiness to start a war against a country that just negotiated a nuclear weapons agreement with the US and its allies?

The US would not be defending itself or anyone else, (that means you, Israel) by launching an attack on Iran, but it would be committing a breach of the UN Charter. In the process, it would also be exposing our forces and some of Iran’s neighbors to retaliation. And, it would risk dragging the rest of the region into a larger war.

Politically, Democrats will make the case that the only alternative to the Iran deal would be war, so supporting the agreement should end up being the majority position in the US. Already, a Washington Post/ABC News poll finds that 56% of Americans support the deal, though about 60% are skeptical that it will work, suggesting that, Americans want to give it a try, even if success is far from assured.

Even the American Conservative’s Daniel Larison disproved:

If Iran were building a nuclear weapon, the US would be in the wrong to launch a “preventive” attack on them. To do so after Iran starts scaling back and limiting its nuclear program would be an even greater crime. Walker’s thinking about “very possibly” attacking Iran immediately after taking office would be indefensible warmongering even if there were no deal with Iran.

George W. Bush’s preventive war against Iraq was the stupidest blunder in the history of US foreign policy. That only 12 years later, so many Republican presidential candidates are considering the possibility of repeating that blunder in Iran is appalling.

While no one thought it was possible, Scott Walker is making George W. Bush look thoughtful. Walker is trying to out-hawk the rest of the Republican field, but instead, is coming across as a kook. Next, in an attempt to outdo Walker, some candidate will pledge he’ll launch a nuclear strike on Iran on Election Day.

Most of the Republican candidates basically are in favor of a war with Iran, and there is little doubt that the Republicans will beat that war drum all the way to November, 2016.

And if Walker is a real Republican, he’ll get America’s corporations to build a private nuclear strike capability; and he would pledge to use it after the New Hampshire primary.

His right-wing talking point would be that we can’t have the government picking winners and losers when it comes to manufacturing a nuclear crisis or nuclear weapons.

Hawks Ignore a Key Point in Iran Deal

One of the big objections by Israel and the GOP hawks to the Iran deal is that release of sanctions enables Iran to purchase advanced weapons that the sanctions have prevented for 30 years. And with the release of Iran’s $100 billion in blocked funds, it will have big bucks to spend on them. Robert Farley reports that both Russia and China have been looking forward to this moment. Some say they pushed hard for the nuclear deal, since they had much to gain in the form of weapons sales.

The fact that Russia and China didn’t break the sanctions regime a long time ago should be considered almost a miracle, but Farley thinks that despite their interest in tweaking the US, neither favors a nuclear Iran. In the past, Iran acquired weapons from both Russia and China, as well as from the US. We can expect them to look to Russia and China, since Iran is a tempting buyer in the emerging arms export competition between Moscow and Beijing.

But, Matthew Weybrecht at the Lawfare blog thinks that most arms sales to Iran could still be a few years in the future. He reports that, according to the Implementation Plan (Annex V), sanctions relief will begin upon IAEA-verified implementation of (specified) nuclear-related measures. It is not entirely clear when “IAEA-verified implementation” will begin, but Weybrecht thinks it will probably be sometime in early 2016.

Why? Because a copy of the proposed UN Security Council Resolution (UNSC) has been leaked to the press. The Resolution terminates the previous Iran sanctions, but also immediately imposes a new regime that retains certain arms restrictions, including continuing the arms and ballistic missile embargoes for five and eight years, respectively.

These new (really continuing) restrictions came in a separate “statement” (which the UNSC requires all states to comply with) and actually takes the form of permitting specific purchases, but only with the advance, affirmative permission of the UNSC.

In effect, this amounts to an embargo from which the UNSC can grant exceptions on a case-by-case basis, and the US can use its veto to block transfers it does not like. The Obama administration gets to claim that the arms embargo will stay in effect for years after Implementation, and that it can veto any Iranian purchases it worries could destabilize the region.

It is now possible to see a little into the future: Iran gets its $100 billion back, but they will have trouble getting approval to purchase advanced weapons like cruise missiles, which would be deeply worrying to Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the Gulf States. And the international restrictions probably mean that neither China nor Russia will want to take the risk of exporting them to Iran.

Iran has a relatively impressive air defense network, but it will require an infusion of new technology to provide real protection from Israel or US air attack. Approval from the UN for new air defense weapons may prove impossible to get in the near term.

Farley indicates that Iran has other needs, including modern ground combat vehicles, modern small naval vessels, and a host of support equipment. Those probably would be approved by the UN.

Iran would probably be permitted to purchase low-end aircraft from either China or Russia. Planes from either country would represent an improvement over current Iranian capabilities. In the longer term, depending on how well the nuclear deal holds together, Iran could purchase aircraft on par with Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States.

So, who won the negotiation?

The US and the rest of the P5+1 get to retain the most important military restrictions for at least a few more years.

Iran gets significant economic relief from the sanctions and gets to claim it got all the sanctions immediately eliminated.

Yet, it bears noting that if China and Russia didn’t break the arms embargo before, there is little reason to think they will do that going forward. And if they did, would they continue down that path after the UN Security Council said “no” to a specific arms deal?

But, Iran with access to modern military weapons could pose a greater threat to the region than an Iran with a few crude nuclear devices it could never use. That potential risk, along with the nuclear risk, is now postponed for a few years in the future.

This is the agreement we’ve got. Implementation will be challenging, even if all parties are acting in good faith, not just because its constraints are complicated, but because irreconcilable parties in Iran and the US, including most Republicans, favor its demise.

Monday Wake-Up Call – July 20, 2015

The Wrongologist is like many who tried to read “Gravity’s Rainbow” by Thomas Pynchon back in the day, and could not finish it. However, there is a wonderful thought in the book: “If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers.”

That thought describes the campaign by those who are against the Iran deal. Get people thinking about anything but the deal, and there is a good chance it will not be approved in Congress.

But this isn’t only a US-Iran deal. Our Congress can’t derail the deal, it can only nullify US participation in it. If that happens, we will be the ones left out. For more than a decade, Iran has been near the top of our Middle East agenda. Along the way, the risks inherent in Iran’s nuclear program have been inflated, in part because it helps drive the prevailing Western view of Iran as a rogue state; in part, because it was crucial to the sanctions regime that the Western countries constructed, and ideally, it might have helped to topple the regime.

This view prevails today in Israel and Saudi Arabia as well as among Washington’s neo-cons, all of whom see Iran as the major source of disorder in the region.

Before getting bogged down in the debate about the deal, stop and appreciate the single most important accomplishment here. We live in a world where nuclear weapons are easy to develop or to purchase, which is a huge potential problem. We must have a non-proliferation program that the international community agrees on and will make every effort to enforce.

What’s key in the Iran deal is that the world united to say that it’s very important that we don’t sit back and do nothing while new countries get nuclear weapons. In this sense, the accomplishment isn’t really specific to Iran. The most significant thing is that we can agree that non-proliferation is the goal, and come together to prevent the spread of nuclear weaponry. If Turkey or Saudi Arabia decide tomorrow that they want a nuclear weapons program, there will be a credible system in place to deter them.

And if blocking Iran from making a nuclear bomb was the real goal, this deal offered the best choice. Despite what Netanyahu and American chicken hawks believe, we cannot eliminate their nuclear program by bombing Iran. The West cannot invade Iran and succeed with that goal. either. If you take Netanyahu and the neo-cons at their word, sanctions won’t work.

So, it is not surprising that the deal’s opponents offer NOTHING as an alternative.

Time will tell if the deal delivers on what it’s supposed to do. Iran has been an implacable foe of the US (and vice-versa) for 36 years, and that isn’t going to change overnight. But there is the real potential for a thaw in the hostile relations between our two countries, and this makes Israel and our (Sunni) Arab friends and enemies very uncomfortable. This deal also gives us a chance to take a look at the mess in the ME within a new paradigm. The old paradigm has not worked. It created a hole so deep that the region is at risk of never being able to crawl out of it.

While our traditional allies are understandably anxious, they’ve come by their anxiety honestly. And, if we take Einstein’s definition of insanity being the belief that doing the same thing over and over again will give you a different result, then our allies and their friends in Congress are insane.

The most prominent arguments against the deal aren’t really arguments at all. The people making them don’t like the deal because they don’t like Iran, and because the deal has some upside for Iran. That is, of course, the nature of deal-making. The chicken hawks don’t want to come out and say they oppose diplomacy in all forms and simply want a war with Iran, so we get their reframing and bluster instead.

Peacemaking has risks. War also brings risk.

The one lesson Americans never ever seem to learn is probability assessment. Our politicians always lock into one factor they are sure will predict the future with certainty.

Well, it’s time for them to grow up. If the Iran deal is a curtain, it is a deal that allows us a good amount of time to figure out what’s behind the curtain.

Behind every curtain is another curtain, the future, and nobody knows what’s back there. So, wake up Congress, debate the deal, but approve it.

Here to help wake them up is #3 in our songs of summer series, here is “Summertime” by Janis Joplin from 1969:

If your daddy’s rich and your mama’s good lookin’, you better not cry.

If you read the Wrongologist in email, you can see the video here.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – July 19, 2015

We live in an amazing time. Donald Trump is again running for President, and the Huffington Post has decided it will not cover his run, because they consider him to be a joke.

Yet, the Republican base is happy with Mr. Trump. WaPo reports that 57% of Republicans now have a favorable view of Trump, compared to 40% who have an unfavorable view. That is a complete reversal from a late-May Post-ABC poll, in which 65% of Republicans saw Trump unfavorably. The Donald has pushed some candidates polling numbers down to the point where it could affect their ability to raise money.

Since Trump is currently polling at the top of the big group of Republican presidential candidates, the media shouldn’t assume his candidacy is a joke. They should be taking him seriously. Trump’s approval numbers with Republicans is currently the biggest story in the political campaign, and the reasons why he’s so popular deserves to be front and center.

He is the Cliff’s Notes version of today’s Republican Party.

What he is saying resonates with many in their base, which has been diligently cultivated and grown for the last 40 years. Now, their crop is coming in. Consider that Sen. Ted Cruz is only in his third year of his first term in office and Sen. Rand Paul is only in his fifth year. Except for Scott Walker, not one of them has a political record they can run on. The rest are bottom of the barrel careerist pols.

Once, we thought that no one could be lower in that barrel than Nixon. Then we had Reagan. And then, GWB. Hard to believe that the next Republican presidential candidate could be lower in the barrel than GWB, but if there is someone, the GOP will find him/her, and about 45% of the electorate will vote for him/her.

So, don’t focus simply on the media’s carping about Trump’s comments on Mexicans, because 55+% of American Republicans agree with him.

Trump’s bombast actually helps the others:

Pluto is clearer to us than the 2016 Super PACs:

Obama now has to deal with our domestic Ayatollahs about Iran:

Iran deal will never be good enough for some on the Right:

Harper Lee’s book has startling revelation:

The Greek deal is mythic:

The Story Behind Iran’s Nuclear Story

Reuters reported last night that Iran and major powers extended the deadline to negotiate an agreement on the Iranian nuclear program to at least Friday. The comprehensive deal under discussion is aimed at curbing, and reversing in some cases, Iran’s nuclear work for the last decade or more, in exchange for relief from economic sanctions that have slashed Iran’s oil exports and crippled its economy.

It is unclear whether an agreement will be reached, but it is sure that few in Congress will be happy with the outcome, regardless if there is an agreement or not.

It may be useful to remember that Iran’s Nuclear Program was a child of Washington in the first place. It is possible to date the start of Iran’s nuclear program to December 8, 1953, the date that President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered what was later called his Atoms for Peace speech to the UN.

Eisenhower laid out a program to use atomic energy “to provide abundant electrical energy in the power-starved areas of the world.” Under the program, the US would provide research reactors, fuel, and scientific training to developing countries eager to harness the power of the atom.

Among the first countries to take the United States up on its offer was Iran.

In 1957, Tehran and the US signed a nuclear cooperation agreement, called the Cooperation Concerning Civil Uses of Atoms. Two years later, in 1959, the Shah of Iran created a Nuclear Research Center at the University of Tehran, and in 1967, the US delivered a five-megawatt nuclear research reactor and the enriched uranium needed to fuel it. In addition, the Atoms for Peace program offered Iran a chance to study in the US, since they had no homegrown nuclear experts. This lack of nuclear engineers meant that Iran could not use the US-delivered Tehran research reactor for nearly a decade.

Needing nuclear experts, Iran turned to MIT in 1975 to create a special program to provide Iranian experts with scientific and technological training on nuclear energy. This program gave Iran its first group of professional nuclear engineers. The first nuclear reactor that we provided would later be used by Tehran to carry out some of its more controversial work, including some of the country’s earliest experiments with uranium enrichment.

Iran later admitted to using that same reactor in the early 1990s for the production of small amounts of Polonium-210, a radioactive substance that could be used to start a chain reaction inside a nuclear weapon.

Iran signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) in July 1968, on the first day it was opened for signature. Tehran ratified the treaty in 1970, putting it among the first states to do so and on paper, giving it the right to enrich uranium.

It is useful to remember that Israel, the most vocal critic of a nuclear deal with Iran, remains one of just four nuclear capable states (India, Pakistan and North Korea) that have not signed the NPT.

But despite early cooperation, signs of distrust between Washington and Tehran emerged early. Like today, Washington was concerned with Iranian plans to reprocess used (“spent”) nuclear fuel. The separated plutonium from this process can be used to fuel reactors, but also can be used to make nuclear weapons. To make sure nuclear materials were not diverted to making weapons, Mr. Eisenhower proposed establishing a watchdog within the UN. That watchdog would later become the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that we rely on today for nuclear inspections.

Juan Cole reports that, according to declassified national security documents, from 1975 and 1976, Washington opposed Iranian plans to build a nuclear reprocessing facility, and the issue became a major sticking point in negotiations to sell US nuclear power reactors to Iran:

The US used to have a policy of promoting reprocessing because it was a way of recycling useful atoms…But this policy changed right at the end of the Gerald Ford administration and then reinforced by Jimmy Carter…to no longer support, and, in fact, to oppose reprocessing.

Washington’s nuclear cooperation with Iran came to an abrupt halt in 1979, swept away by the Iranian Revolution that ended the rule of the Shah. With the capture of our embassy in Tehran and the holding of American hostages for 444 days, all formal ties between Washington and Tehran were cut off until the start of the current nuclear negotiations.

Atoms for Peace provided Iran with a foundation for its nuclear program. It offered both key technologies along with education in nuclear engineering and physics. The program clearly helped Iran move up the nuclear learning curve.

Now, the question is, can Secretary of State Kerry put the toothpaste back in the tube?

Symbolism Weakened in South Carolina

On Monday, South Carolina’s governor Nikki Haley announced a plan to remove the Confederate battle flag from the grounds of the SC state house. That got many Republican presidential candidates off the hook after a weekend in which most delivered waffles about the subject.

But, everything you need to know about the conservative Republican position on the Confederate flag in 2015 was summed up by Bill Kristol on the very same day:

OK. Time to talk about history. The South seceded, and then fought a war to preserve slavery. It was not a war of Northern aggression. It was a war of Confederate choice, and the choice was made first by South Carolinians, who were the first to announce their secession.

SC’s Declaration of Causes of Secession was issued on December 20, 1860, after the election, but three months before Abraham Lincoln took the oath of office. If you choose to read at the link, you’ll see the entirety of their complaint had to do with slavery. They were angry:

• That slaves were escaping from their territory and Northern States were refusing to send them back
• That blacks had been granted citizenship in some Northern states
• That the election of Lincoln would lead to slavery’s exclusion from the new territories

Here is a snippet: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the Common Government, because he has declared that that “Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,” and that the public mind must rest in the belief that Slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.

Lincoln was explicit during the early years of the war that he fought back, not for slavery, but to preserve the union. Today, some modern “confederates” use those quotes from Lincoln to argue that the war wasn’t about slavery, but that is revisionist history.

The people who started the war, in every confederate state, were explicitly doing so to preserve slavery. Read the other secession statements. Read the speeches of leading confederate politicians. Read the founding CSA documents, in which the CSA states were free to do anything they wanted except end slavery. In fact it’s clear that the main purpose of even having a confederation was to preserve slavery.

The Confederate flag was basically forgotten after the civil war until the civil rights movement when the battle flag was resurrected by those in the south who were against the federal laws prohibiting lynching, segregation, and vote blocking. In other words, that flag has been used only by those promoting white supremacy. Heritage? Of course, but for a flag that represents something that existed for four years?

The flag is just a start. Why are there Civil War reenactments in the South? Battle field reenactments where they honor their defeat of the north, focused on battles they won in a war that they lost. Imagine if Mexican Americans had an Alamo reenactment where they storm the Alamo and kill Davy Crockett.

Taking down the Confederate flag over the South Carolina Capitol, along with Walmart and EBay stopping sales of the flag, and the number one Confederate flag manufacturer ending production are all important steps, but they are the just a few steps on a long road.

The next big question is will country music follow the lead of Governor Haley and distance itself from the Confederate flag? The rebel flag is deeply interwoven into country and southern rock music, that relationship is both deep and wide.

This stuff is symbolic, and a very important symbol is being phased out.

This is meaningful.

See you on Sunday.

Monday Wake Up Call – June 22, 2015

Wrongologist reader Rene asks: “why doesn’t the Wrongologist say something about the Greek crisis”?

Most people believe that Greece needs debt relief. The creditors should discount some of the amount that Greece owes, since there’s no way they can pay it all back. But, that hasn’t happened and it’s unlikely that it will, since it’s politically impossible. Why? It is very hard to explain in a short post, but Forbes has a great summary of the facts:

The money is owed to the taxpayers of other European Union and Euro Zone countries. And what’s more, [their] taxpayers know this.

So, this is the issue: To solve the Greek debt problem, something like 50% of their debt has to be written off. That would equal 1.5% to 2% of GDP for each country in the Euro Zone. So it’s not happening.

Even though the money has already been lost by lending it to Greece in the first place, the response by the Euro Zone is troubling. From Ambrose Bierce in the Telegraph:

The European Central Bank, the EMU bail-out fund, and the IMF, among others, are lashing out in fury against an elected government that refuses to do what it is told. They entirely duck their own responsibility for five years of policy blunders that have led to this impasse.

Worse, Europe is now provoking a Greek bank run in their effort to force Greece to its knees, issuing a report that warned of an “uncontrollable crisis” if there is no creditor deal, followed by soaring inflation, “an exponential rise in unemployment”, and a “collapse of all that the Greek economy has achieved over the years of its EU, and especially its euro area, membership”.

So Europe’s guardians of financial stability are deliberately accelerating a financial crisis in an EMU member state, saying they are out of the Euro Zone if they don’t comply.

The IMF is forcing a contradictory austerity policy in Greece – with no debt relief, exchange cushion, or offsetting investment. Moreover, they are applying a completely different standard in Ukraine, announcing on Friday, that it will: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Continue to support Ukraine through its Lending-into-Arrears Policy even in the event that a negotiated agreement with creditors in line with the program cannot be reached in a timely manner.

This despite the fact that the IMF, by its rules, does not lend to nations that are likely to default.

In the case of Greece, the creditors are acting in concert. They are doubling down, assuming (possibly rightly) that terror tactics will cow the Greeks at the last hour.

The European governments must approve any bailout extension, but we are now so close to the expiration of the second bailout on June 30th that it is too late to get a deal approved by then. But IMF Chief Christine Lagarde has 30 days before she has to report a Greek non-payment of €1.5 billion on June 30th to her board, the real drop dead date appears to be July 20th, when a €3.5 billion payment is due to the ECB.

Unfortunately, it’s hard to see how the two sides will agree to anything other than a short-term deal before the July 20th date. Any “third bailout” of restructuring Greek debt as suggested in the Forbes article above, may be impossible.

In the words of Woody Allen:

“More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.”

So wake up Euro Zone! To help with a gentle wake-up, here as we start summer, is the last in our series of spring bird visits to the fields of Wrong. Here is the Song Sparrow:

For those who read the Wrongologist in email, you can see the video here.

Monday’s Hot Links:

Dispatches from the Clown Car:

Rick Santorum says Iranians can’t be trusted because they are theocrats. Sure. We all know that Christian theocrats are trustworthy.

Jeb Bush says a tolerant country should allow religious discrimination. Day is night. Black is white. Discrimination is tolerance. Welcome to the fun house that is Conservative politics today.

Rick Santorum Argues Heterosexual Parents Are Every Child’s ‘Birthright. Really? Aren’t caring, loving parents a birthright? Why should we care about parents’ sexuality as long as they’re committed to loving and protecting their children?

Chinese physicists have developed a laser-based deep space propulsion system that harnesses more power than conventional solar sails. China is actually developing/investing in science, technology and innovation. Has anybody alerted our misleaders in Congress? Maybe we can find something else to develop besides military weapons.

Cambodia is training an elite squad of African rats to sniff out landmines. A team of 15 rats were imported from Tanzania with the help of a Belgian NGO, which trains rats to sniff out mines. The rats will try to locate the huge quantities of unexploded mines that have killed nearly 20,000 people since 1979.

Heinz says they’re sorry for a code on a ketchup bottle that links to porn site. A Heinz Ketchup buyer was exposed to porn from a website similar to www.watchmygf.xxx after Heinz allows a domain to lapse, and an adult entertainment firm buys it.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – June 21, 2015

We know that when faced with a tragedy, some people exploit it for narrow ends. But we got to see just how low Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) could go. Appearing on The View, Senator Graham at first said a couple of things that seemed mainstream:

It’s not who we are, it’s not who our country is, it’s about this guy…and this guy’s got tons of problems and to kill people in a church after sitting with them for an hour shows you how whacked out this kid is.

Fine. He’s going with the lone wacko meme instead of the domestic terrorist meme.

Then he goes further. Despite the fact that the Justice Department had labeled the attack a “hate crime,” Graham wouldn’t go there: (emphasis and brackets by the Wrongologist)

There are real people who are organized out there to kill people in religion and based on race, this guy’s just whacked out…But it’s 2015. There are people out there looking for Christians [in order] to kill them.

Excuse us Mr. Graham, there hasn’t been anything so far to indicate that this was a hate crime against Christians for being Christian. And when you suggest that it is about that, two bad things happen:

• It denies the legitimacy of the trauma this caused black people in and outside South Carolina, irrespective of their religious beliefs
• It feeds the paranoia of white Christians, many of whom already have a borderline persecution complex

He ignores that the killer’s roommate said he was “big into segregation” and wanted to start a race war, and that he had Confederate Flag vanity plates. The eyewitness survivors of the attack said that he complained about black people raping white people.

Under the circumstances, it is safe to say that this was a hate crime, and also that it was a hate crime directed against black people for being black. This guy turned his anger on black people. The next guy might target secularists because politicians like Mr. Graham use this tragedy to say that people are out to get Christians.

A primary job of our leaders is to tamp down paranoia when it appears. But, Sen. Graham isn’t interested in calming people’s fears, he is a merchant of the politics of fear. He wants you to be afraid all the time, which is how he builds support for his domestic policies and his foreign adventures.

That he is consistently re-elected speaks volumes about South Carolina. Only 672,941 people of South Carolina’s roughly 3.8 million voters voted for him in 2014. Since he is now a GOP presidential candidate, he wants to win the SC GOP primary. So he is only speaking to those 672,941 SC voters.

That implies that he has no moral compass.

On to cartoons. South Carolina was the dominant story, but we heard from Pope Frank, Obama’s trade deal passed the House, and there is a new $10 bill on the way.

We shouldn’t fool ourselves about root causes: