Why So Incurious?

A Hidden History of Evil by Claire Berlinski, City Journal Spring 2010

Kind of long for the message. The message is that there are all sorts of verified documentation from the USSR sitting on computers around the world, available to any scholar or historian. Nobody cares, very little has been translated, it is a mystery to the authors of the article.

Here is an example:

And what of Zagladin’s description of his dealings with our own current vice president in 1979?

Unofficially, [Senator Joseph] Biden and [Senator Richard] Lugar said that, in the end of the day, they were not so much concerned with having a problem of this or that citizen solved as with showing to the American public that they do care for “human rights.” . . . In other words, the collocutors directly admitted that what is happening is a kind of a show, that they absolutely do not care for the fate of most so-called dissidents.

The authors open incredulous of the difference in treatment of Communism and Nazism, even though Communism killed far more people, and end with a variation of the theme.

Indeed, many still subscribe to the essential tenets of Communist ideology. Politicians, academics, students, even the occasional autodidact taxi driver still stand opposed to private property. Many remain enthralled by schemes for central economic planning. Stalin, according to polls, is one of Russia’s most popular historical figures. No small number of young people in Istanbul, where I live, proudly describe themselves as Communists; I have met such people around the world, from Seattle to Calcutta.

We rightly insisted upon total denazification; we rightly excoriate those who now attempt to revive the Nazis’ ideology. But the world exhibits a perilous failure to acknowledge the monstrous history of Communism. These documents should be translated. They should be housed in a reputable library, properly cataloged, and carefully assessed by scholars. Above all, they should be well-known to a public that seems to have forgotten what the Soviet Union was really about. If they contain what Stroilov and Bukovsky say—and all the evidence I’ve seen suggests that they do—this is the obligation of anyone who gives a damn about history, foreign policy, and the scores of millions dead.

I think the reason is simple. Nazism was falsely identified as a "evil of the right". It was of course not so -- evil on the right would be anarchy, but it has been such a productive fiction for the left, they mostly believe it to be true. But wait, "Nazi" was the National SOCIALIST Party" -- Socialists are basically just Communists that are less sure of their convictions.

I remember Reagan calling the USSR "The Evil Empire" -- the US and foreign media had a cat. How could he? We are talking of an ideology that killed over 100 million and enslaved Billions more -- yet, we must have TWO complete fictions:
1). Communism is the OPPOSITE of Nazism
2). Since Communism is "left", it MUST be "basically good" -- oh sure, it is "too far", but it CERTAINLY can't be as bad as, let alone WORSE than that scourge of the "right", Nazism / Fascism!! It simply will not do!!

So the vast bulk of our population trundles along thinking "there is always a clear and present danger of falling into the RIGHT (fascist, nazi) political ditch, but there is NO risk of falling into the LEFT ditch -- and even if there were, it isn't such an evil ditch at all! Maybe the USSR just didn't really "implement it right", but it is all egalitarian, commrady and basically good.

Nothing to worry about on the left!

Anirban Bandyopadhyay

“Like Neurons in the Brain”: A Molecular Computer That Evolves | h+ Magazine

Just too cool a name to not put in the title. Looks like "termination will come from the North" ... leave way too many young single nerds and geeks, with way too few young women to connect them to the real world up in the really really isolated snow and cold and "wala"; they build a brain. We would really be better served to use "stimulus money" to send them young women or snowmobiles to save us from potential victimization by killing machines from the north. Might actually be the first thing that would be an appropriate usage for the name "stimulus".

There actually are some very seriously smart folks that are worried about evil runaway technology.

I followed this thread in the late '90s and my view is that it is a bigger worry than Global Warming, but probably less of a worry than some sort of natural cataclysm ... asteroid, super volcano like Yellowstone, big solar flare, oddness from magnetic pole shift, plague ... etc, the "list of doom" is unsurprisingly long for thoughtful people, and at least hints at divine intervention being responsible for us existing. Take yourself out of the bounds of human recorded history, into geologic and universal time and it is clear that while it is very true that we live in a "Goldilocks Universe" (not too anything, but JUST right).

Even so, we generally flatter ourselves -- from historically finding ourselves the center of everything, to now being certain we can destroy the planet with nukes and believing that moving existing carbon from one state to another will do the trick. Maybe, but I can guarantee that all the folks of that opinion will die -- the planet? Not so much.

Seriously, it sounds like some pretty amazing research, and if some form of strongish AI capability is going to happen anytime soon, the combination of molecular and evolutionary technologies as seemed the most likely to me for some time.

Take VAT

Of Crony Capitalism And European Austerity - IBD - Investors.com

Our founders were well aware that the limitation of the power of government was a difficult task and did all they could by separation of powers, states rights and the reservation of any rights not enumerated to the people. They did an excellent job, but they really didn't account for the arrogance and power lust of politicians like FDR and BO.

A Treasury press release did say "GM Repays Treasury Loan in Full." The loan is, however, a small part of taxpayer exposure. Under crony capitalism, when government and corporate America merge, both dissemble.

I've heard a number of liberals touting how "well GM is doing" ... since they "repaid their loan". Good PR, useless measure of business results.

Then we move to Greece.

So the U.S. government, which would borrow 42 cents of every dollar it spends under the president's 2011 budget, is borrowing to rescue Greece and others from the consequences of their borrowing.

That nation, whose GDP is below that of the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area, is "too big to fail," meaning too inconveniently connected to too many big banks. Bailing out Greece really rescues European banks that improvidently bought Greek bonds.

 "Too Big to Fail" has more to do with political leanings than it does with any other factor.

At the Parthenon last week, the Greek Communist Party, which got 8% of the vote in the last national election, draped banners emblazoned with the hammer and sickle: "Peoples of Europe Rise Up." Of course. "Arise ye prisoners of starvation," exhorts "The Internationale," the left's ancient anthem. But who is to arise against whom?

Germany? China maybe -- have we reached the point where an old European country and a supposedly communist Asian country are both to the right of the USA?

Wrong Kind of Music

Larry Elder : 'Barack Obama Doesn't Care About White People!' - Townhall.com

I think that Elder does a good job of making an honest comparison here. Yes New Orleans was bigger, but while Nashville isn't "MSM / Coastal Significant", it certainly is very significant in "fly over country". "Where is the outrage"? Well, there isn't any. These are people that believe in individual responsibility and find blaming others to be non-productive. They aren't sitting around waiting for help, they are putting on their boots and getting busy. They find floods, hurricanes, storms and such to be "acts of nature" -- nobody to blame, and well worth thanking anyone that helps in any way.

That is how it is in "Tea Party America" -- the part of the country that BO and the MSM sees "clinging to their bibles and guns" ... and I might add, also to lots of other values like thrift, self-reliance, helping your neighbor and being thankful rather than critical of whatever level of outside support shows up.

Learning From History

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/05/12/depression_2010_105530.html

Very well done article that argues that the Great Depression was caused more by a failure to deal with inevitable and wrenching changes, rather than simply a failure to act quickly enough to deal with relatively minor financial market problems. It is understandable and well worth reading through. The basic theory is that the depression was caused by the need to depart from the gold standard and the need to define a new world economic leader to replace Britain. This depression is caused by the financial impossibility of a sustained Welfare State and the shift of global dominance from the US / Japan / Europe to China and India.

I nabbed a couple teasers, but I'd recommend the whole thing.

There are eerie, if crude, parallels now. The welfare state is today's equivalent of the gold standard. With aging societies, advanced countries have promised more benefits than their tax bases can support. Hence, high government debt. Greece is merely the canary in the coal mine. But politicians resist cutting popular benefits except under extreme pressure. It takes a crisis. Greece, again. Another unsettling parallel is the global economy. The United States' leadership since World War II is eroding before China's ascent. There's a danger now, as then, of a power vacuum. Witness the long delay in coming to Greece's aid. No one country acted decisively, even as markets grew nervous.


The case that we have dodged a second Great Depression rests on a narrower notion: that the Depression was preventable; and that advances in economic knowledge allowed us to do so. If we knew then what we know now, governments could have averted the tragedy. Despite some disagreements, economic scholars subscribe to a broad consensus about what went wrong in the 1930s. Government central banks, like the Fed, were too passive. They didn't halt bank panics. Intervention at decisive moments (perhaps the failure of the Bank of the United States in late 1930 or Austria's Credit Anstalt in spring 1931) could have changed history. Instead, mounting unemployment and falling prices fed on each other. Debtors couldn't repay loans, leading to more bank failures, a contraction of credit and deposit losses. But this time the mistakes were not repeated. Despite criticism, banks were "bailed out." Money was pumped into credit markets to pre-empt a downward spiral.

BO Diversion

AFP: Obama bemoans 'diversions' of IPod, Xbox era

So true -- and has been true since the stick, fire, written word, the printing press and the push up bra. BO loves his Blackberry and I'm sure plenty of liberal media outlets -- things he doesn't know how to work and outlets with views that differ from his? Not so much. "A Diversion". "Unfiltered".

Anything that Bush didn't know how to do showed how stupid he was to the MSM and late night comedey. iPods seem pretty darned easy to operate -- I'm kind of surprised that NOBODY seems to be willing to poke a bit of fun at our "deity in chief" for not knowing how to operate an iPod!

My Degree is Bigger Than Your Degree

Climate Change and the Integrity of Science -- Gleick et al. 328 (5979): 689 -- Science

Degrees, IQ, numbers of scientists, polls, etc are all exceedingly interesting and the longer list you can get of the folks with the most credentials, the more impressive it seems. At least to many. Apparently, we have come to the point where disagreement can be called "McCarthy-like", a fairly odd designation, since given the opening of the USSR post Reagan, a lot of his assertions have been proven to be correct.

I suppose maybe "McCarthy-like" could be better termed to mean "pugnatiously standing up for what you believe to be true in the face of withering criticism, up to and including your name being smeared and becoming an insult decades after your death. The fact that it comes to light that the bulk of what you asserted turned out to be correct, and that is completely ignored is just another factor for standing up against the popular crowd in the modern world. The penalties for iconoclasm have always been high -- in the modern world, those that dare go against liberal dogma pay highest.

So HCGW is now on the same scientific standing as old earth dating and evolution? I'd argue there is at least a couple big differences:
1). The earth being 4.5 Billion or 10K years old doesn't really call for any difference in human activity today except for those that have confused the bible with a technical manual -- and not many of those are going go for the 4.5 Billion
2). Ditto on evolution -- if we and the monkey's share a common ancestor back a few million years, that has little effect on day to day governmental decisions.

Notice the difference with HCGW.

We are deeply disturbed by the recent escalation of political assaults on scientists in general and on climate scientists in particular. All citizens should understand some basic scientific facts. There is always some uncertainty associated with scientific conclusions; science never absolutely proves anything. When someone says that society should wait until scientists are absolutely certain before taking any action, it is the same as saying society should never take action. For a problem as potentially catastrophic as climate change, taking no action poses a dangerous risk for our planet.

Age of the earth and evolution are descriptive, not predictive. Other cases in which science makes predictions need to be TESTED prior to be accepted as truth. Einstein's theory of relativity has been tested by bending of light during eclipses and other natural phenomenon for example. The Bernoulli principles of air motion that allow planes to fly and ships to tack into the wind are "tested" via common experience.

The old earth view would say that our measurements ... even those extrapolated from the oldest fossilized trees and ice cores only deal with the tiniest fraction of the 4.5 Billion years of earth history. We know that "Greenland" is called that because the Vikings inhabited it from like 800-1300 AD, and they could grow crops and pasture cattle. Then the climate cooled and they had to abandon their settlements.

The same scientists that tell us that the the current warming is human caused would also tell us that there have been numerous cold and warm cycles on the planet over it's history -- enough warmth to melt enough ice to cover vastly larger areas with ocean, and enough cooling to expose a land bridge from Siberia to Alaska. Certainly, they would not say that our ancestors -- chimp or proto-human caused those cycles.

We have indeed entered into a "new era", but it is NOT some new era where science faces hard questions when it formerly did not. No, this is an era where there are enough scientists of a certain political bent that they believe they successfully brand any opposition in negative political terms and use the patina of science to gain control of current human activity. It could be that we have started "de-evolution" -- the form of argument used by this list of folks has more in common with the common simian form of adjudication by comparison of testicle size  than it does of scientific inquiry.

I have a long list of impressive folks, and you are "McCarthy-like" ... So there.

The Government is Half Full

RealClearPolitics - Disasters Show That Government Works

I suspect EJ and I agree on nothing politically -- that is why I buck up and read him from time to time. This column is a great lesson on how our perspectives change. During the Bush administration, the situation from EJ's perspective was dark, darker and darkest ... Enron, Halliburton, 9-11, Iraq, Katrina ... you name it. All were absolute perfect proofs of government NOT working. My how things have changed.

Now? Well, BO called for more off-short drilling just a few weeks ago, but somehow there is no government fault in the actual spill having taken place. Had this happened during Bush, the screaming would be deafening about oil men in the WH, Cheney, Halliburton, the rape of the environment, too slow a response, wrong people in charge, etc, etc. My how perfectly this is all being handled now. But wait, there is a huge environmental disaster in the gulf on BO's watch. Can EJ honestly look in the mirror and say that he would have had CLOSE to this attitude had this happened 2 years ago?

We had no terrorist attacks on US soil from '01 to Dec '09. Now we have had two in which we happened to luck out because the equipment failed to operate. Would EJ be as easy on the Secret Service -- or Fox News for that matter if somebody that had ever admitted to watching a minute of anything on Fox tried to shoot BO but the gun jammed? I don't think I ever hear Bush get one second of credit for anything he did in avoiding attacks ( would that have meant "the government works"? ) ... now BO gets zero blame from the MSM for the fact that we have had two attacks where we lucked out ... an of course one at Ft Hood where we didn't. Ho hum, "government works" ... now at least, for EJ. For 8 years it was an abject failure.

The reason that Bush's popularity went so low is because he failed to control the growth of government, so many Republicans abandoned him ... and the party. The penalty for that was being saddled with a Democrat congress in '06 and BO in '08, but I do understand the principle.

Tea Party, Conservative, etc are about SMALLER government, not NO GOVERNMENT. EJ knows that, he is just shilling for his party to try to make the opposition sound loony. To me it backfires and makes him sound loony.

They're Getting Warmer

Not A "One-Off" Event | The Weekly Standard

The NYC fizzled car bomb is yet another "lucky break" -- with lots of similarities in ineptness ... ineptness of perpetrator (thankfully), but also of US intelligence, and certainly in the idiocy of the follow-up. How many "one off events" is it going to take before they are successful? or before the BO administration realizes that stopping the use of "War on Terror" verbiage by our side does less than nothing to actually stop terror.

Unfortunately, this is what I'd expect to see. It is clear that the actions of the Bush Administration very much disrupted the terrorist networks and capabilities -- so much so that prior to BO taking over, the "shoe bomber" in Dec '01 was their "best effort" after 9-11. The momentum has run out.

Now, the BO policy changes, many of which we don't know (nor should we) are being shown to be ineffective. If McCain had been elected and done the same things, the MSM would be writing this Blog -- only MUCH harsher, and with headlines "McCain Anti-Terror Measures Failing" ... "Why the Incompetence on Terror?" ... etc, etc.

The terror networks are clearly getting back on their feet. We are sitting on our butts assuming that they will start to love our "citizen of the world" president soon. The fact that they have had a couple of bomb fizzles is an undeserved blessing that we can only hope that the administration is using as a wake-up call. Unfortunately, their rhetoric would not indicate that, and the lapdog MSM isn't likely to provide any spur to action.

A Little Optimism, Conservative Style

The U.S. Is Not Going The Way Of Europe Page 2 of 2 - Forbes.com

His main thesis is that the apple doesn't fall very far from the tree -- we are a nation of folks whose ancestors got up and left Europe, and he believes our active spirit is has been passed down. I certainly hope he is right!

So while so many of us--presumably a majority--are presently disgusted with the governance from Washington this past decade, history may well show that the failed presidencies of Bush and Obama may be the best thing that ever happened. History will reveal that their failures sparked a great awakening to remind us that big government and prosperity don't mix

Report from PIPs New Shooters

Those of you not interested in shooting -- I wanted to get this to the PIWPSC page and this was the thought that came to my mind. Consider it "Blog Abuse". 

Thanks for a great job by all, even if Marla and I were an hour late -- never believe FB! ;-)

I thought the outdoors experience was much improved from last year. Things I really liked:

1). The "line up" ... just going through the "Make ready; Are you ready; Stand-by; BEEP" a couple of times is INVALUABLE to people getting started.

2). Three stages is just perfect, don't add more for the starters or it will get to be too much.

3). I think the level of complexity on the 3rd stage was "maximum perfect" ... a little less would still be fine, more would be over the top.

Now suggestions -- and they are JUST that, it REALLY thought it was fantastic, so these are just in the interest of "perfection":

-- I'd cut the "super detail and the anecdotes" in the presentation (I just saw the end, which was likely long on that) ... how someone got DQed at some super match is as useless as pointers on a Space Shuttle landing to a guy just ready to take his first turn at the controls of a Cessna. Just focus on the REALLY REALLY basic. Which to me is (but you guys are way more experienced / smarter on this, and will do better at picking):

• Safety is primary and secondary. That is the one issue that your ROs, club helpers, etc will be "incessant" about, but that is OK. In my mind, the "biggies" are:
• Cold range: Go to a safety area to put your gun on. Next time you touch it is "Make Ready". You can load mags anywhere but in the safety area. This is one that is hard for me after shooting elsewhere. "unusual to USPSA"
• remember, you have at least 3 kinds of inexperienced. Folks that have never shot. Folks that have never shot USPSA. Both.
• Finger outside of trigger until actual shot, including moving in stage. I've taken a couple of people to the range in the last year -- this can take awhile.
• The 180, never sweep anyone with the barrel including yourself.
• "Make Ready" -- slam the mag home. Lots of people that don't shoot a lot with experienced people don't get this (I helped the lady next to me at lineup, Marla had trouble in stage). Not really safety ... but it causes flustering, which can lead to unsafe things.
• Talk to "your RO" about YOUR GUN -- I wouldn't even bother going through de-cockers, SAO/DAO, striker fired ... etc. DON'T CONFUSE THE NEW PEOPLE! Folks with Glocks and XDs don't even have to worry about any of this until they get a different gun, and by then they will know enough PIPs people so the biggest problem will be that "what do you think about shooting an XXXX?" will cost a major hunk of their lives, and they will know how to disassemble it, who designed it, who does speed packages on it, what the best grips for it are, where to buy,  ... how many versions of it Harmon owns, etc

Who is "Your RO"? I think it would be really cool to take "groups of 10" and match them up with an RO, RO in waiting, and a "minion or two". Then those groups STAY together for the outside session. The RO team takes their group to Safe Area ... maybe then brings each shooter in (or 2 or 3 each with a minion) ... look over the equipment. Talk about make ready procedure for that gun. Look at mags ... send them off to load if needed. Talk about only touch gun in safe area or "make ready", finger outside trigger, 180 ... whatever we want to stress.




Group goes to first stage -- RO and helpers focus on really new folks, either because they volunteered as new, or the RO/minions picked them out as needy.

RO has minion go to line, does a VERY deliberate run-through of the ENTIRE procedure that is coming up. (Both double taps). Focus on keys ... slam mag home, 180, finger outside trigger, holstering, clear, show empty, pull trigger down range ... cover any gun/holster safe issues, etc. I'd recommend putting up "ten" targets in some form on the "lineup" and shooting a couple of "double taps". Non USPSA shooters will likely have never done a DT. Clear the range. Have the minions go down and tape.

Group goes to 2nd stage -- AGAIN, have a minion go through exactly what will be done VERY deliberately. No attempts at speed. SLOW double taps, etc. Then take folks through based on volunteers or detected comfort level.

3rd stage ditto.

I think there was a big improvement from last year. We are looking like a "pro org" from what I see. My biggest criticisms revolve around too much "knowledge/experience/anecdote overload". We have core folks with bags and bags of knowledge, skill and experience. To a new person that is OBVIOUS -- and if it is overly expressed it becomes PAINFULLY obvious as in "how in the hell am I going to learn all this, and is the "barrier to fun" too high?  "Just the facts and slow" ... KISS.

I wrote on too much, didn't follow my own advice and gave the wrong impression. It was EXTREMELY well done. Looking forward to Wed night. THANKS.

BO on "Enough Money"

Exactly who ‘makes enough money’ in Obama’s eyes? | Kyle Wingfield

BO made $5.5 million last year, with a health plan that is beyond "Cadillac", security that is out of this world, multiple provided residences, free travel including the jet that no others complete with, multiple personal chefs, large staff, gym, personal theatre with any first run movies he desires, etc, etc, etc.

As the article points out, lots of his "close personal friends" and backers make in the $100s of millions.

Supposedly, Bush was "arrogant". Nothing even came close to this!

Doctors On BOcare

Why Physicians Oppose The Health Care Reform Bill - Forbes.com

Worth a read. My view:

I'd say the real reasons that Doctors oppose BOcare are:
1). They are intelligent
2). Their profession forces them to be reality based. Let's face it, they deal with mankind as it really is, not as some might wish it to be.

Life, intellect and all goods and services are scarce resources. Intelligence is very scarce, one wonders if wisdom even exists any more. The task is to allocate scarce resources, and I think deep down we all know that BOcare is not that way. Since Doctors are the ones closest to that reality on a day to day basis, they are faced with the cruel facts the soonest. Healthy people love government care. Sick people -- and doctors, hate it.

We learned in the '80s that there wasn't any "shortage" of gas in the '70's, only government controls on prices that prevented the market from allocating resources efficiently. The story is old -- the USSR was rife with it. The wrong products at the wrong places and "allocation" done by waiting in line (lowering productivity yet further). A cursory study of rent control shows the facts clearly -- it is often said that the only way to destroy housing faster is by bombing. Sadly, the N Vietnamese admitted that rent control in Hanoi was actually MORE effective at destroying housing than bombing, so liberals will take that as "economists wrong again".

Much like Democracy being really bad, but better than any other form of government (Churchill), we are already finding that while the market may be "bad", it has the saving grace of being better than anything else. One of the saddest aspects that we already see is that since everyone really knows in their gut that scarce resources must be allocated somehow, the knives are already being sharpened. We see that not only will they be allocated politically, but they will be allocated ruthlessly, by "51 votes", or whatever underhanded overbearing trick in the book can be used by the power mad left.

Markets are actually not "heartless" -- they are just a function of the hearts and minds of millions of people. While politicians may seem to be very friendly, they are certainly HEAVILY motivated by votes -- not to mention money, favors, power, greed, and all the other problems of being human. Since we have now decided to allocate one of the dearest scarce resources politically, the logical result is to decrease unity and increase political rancor.

As our government has continued to swell since the '30s, so has nastiness and division. The reason why is very simple. While the market is imperfect, at least we are all in that together. Once we move into political competition, the game becomes zero sum and the "rules" become less and less clear as the constitution, practices like the filibuster in the senate, the role of the supreme court, personal property, freedom of speech, and anything else that seems to stand in the way of the left is plowed down. BO indicated today that he supports congress acting to stop corporate freedom of speech. The issue of the court having the right to override congress was established when John Marshall was chief justice, it is called "Marbury vs Madison".

Being static isn't an option for a nation. I'd argue that we were in a "virtuous cycle" since '80, and in '06 we switched to a "death spiral". We've turned on the most productive among us. We've thrown the idea that we are a country of laws not of men away. The 20% that is driven by what they believe "ought to be" is firmly in control and they are blindly driving on the basis of their perceived ends rather on the basis of the known facts of man, the economy, law, morality, government nor anything else. They firmly believe that their ends justify any means -- but they lack understanding of what the known ends of their headlong rush for some ill defined dream of "equality, plenty, bliss" really are.

We may not survive until November.

A Conservative View of Deficits

Europe in Crisis - Walter Russell Mead's Blog - The American Interest

Here is a nice bookend to yesterdays HuffPo post. Just give it a read and then decide if you are a liberal or a conservative thinker.

The Greek meltdown is on the surface just another financial crisis: yet another delusional country pursuing the path of least resistance has made promises it can’t keep to public and private sector workers.  Now the bill must be paid and the IMF called in to reorganize the national finances.

It is as if the rest of the world has failed to read HuffPo. Why would Greece not follow one of their many worthy "myth-busters" of why massive government deficit spending is never a problem? Could it be that it is actually the "economists" quoted by HuffPo that have no clue about reality?

The euro was a glorious fudge.  The Latin countries plus Greece could enjoy the benefits of German discipline and virtue while carrying on with traditionally unsustainable public and private sector policies.  In the old, pre-euro days, the southern economies had to pay high interest rates on their debt; wary investors knew that inflation and devaluation were likely and so demanded interest rates that would compensate them for the risk.  The lira, the drachma: everyone knew they would lose value over time against the Deutsche mark and even the dollar, and interest rates reflected this understanding.  But as the southern countries moved into the euro, calculations changed.  For the last twenty years, countries like Greece and Italy were able to borrow money at essentially the same rate that Germany could.

Think of sub-prime mortgages getting stirred into the credit markets of the world by freddie and fannie and all the crooked lenders of sub-primes in the same role as the PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain) and you get a good picture of how fallacy works. It doesn't take much rat feces to spoil a whole pot of soup -- especially once the clientele sees a video of the rat crapping in the pot.

Lousy leaders gave greedy civil servants fat raises; promises were cheap and the government scattered them far and wide.  In Italy as well, once the national debt was less painful to carry, there was less pressure to reduce the national debt.

Has anything ever sounded like current politics in America more? I actually think it does a disservice to lousy leaders to compare them with BO, but if the Gucci fits ...

Thinking Like a Liberal on Deficit

Lynn Parramore: The Deficit: Nine Myths We Can't Afford

I know this is from the HuffPo, so rational people don't even read it, BUT there are plenty of irrational people in the world, and I'll bet at least most of the 20% of folks that self-identify as liberal will buy SOME of this myth-busting.

I'm not going to bother to waste the time to refute of each of these on their own. If you even have any tendency to buy any of this, just consider that if it is really this rosy, every nation on earth as been a fool forever. Just spend spend spend with no constraint, cut taxes to zero, interest to zero, and the whole country can go on a lifetime bender and buy all they want on the proceeds -- at least if the "busting" hypothesis are true.

OTOH, if there IS such a thing as "fiscal gravity", we are still in grave peril, and even graver when you suspect that some of the idiots at the controls of our ship probably buy into this!