SAR #12235

Denying reality is at best a temporary solution.

Of Hats And Rabbits: The lady (Spanish sovereign debt, for example) does not really get sawn in half. She doesn't even get (or give) a haircut. When the ECB/EU loans Spain money to prop up its banks, the debt doesn't vanish, it gets reassigned - mostly to Germany and a couple of other northern European countries. Unless there is some forgiveness, some restructuring, some hair cutting, the debt just keeps growing. Which was the problem in the first place. And austerity, increased unemployment, decreased consumption, lower tax revenues in the face of higher tax rates and so on will increase the debt . And there's already more of that than anybody, much less Spain, Italy, etc, can ever pay back. They can't even make the vig. Let's sing it as a round, you go first.

Saving, Private Ryan: Even arch conservatives agree that fixing Social Security (assuming it is broken... ) is simple: remove the cap on payroll taxes that now lets income over $110,000 go untaxed. That would cover about 90 percent of the projected shortfall over the next 75 years. They know this is true, they just don't want to do it.

Everybody Panic! So far this year the West Nile Epidemic has resulted in 1,118 cases and 41 deaths. A massive and expensive effort is underway to combat this threat. But just for some scale, on an average day in 2010, 82 Americans were killed by handguns. In an average month about 40 active duty soldiers kill themselves and nearly 1,000 vets try to do so. Panic, quietly, and keep your eye on the kid who take a gun to school and the nuts who mistake massacre for social dialogue.

Tomato/Tomato: Obama's going to cut Medicare by $750 billion. I know because Romney told me. But... like a lot of things Romney's told me of late, it is at best misleading. Most of the Obama cuts come from reducing the money insurance companies are paid (mostly for those relatively useless 'Medicare Advantage' plans the R's demanded), as well as reducing reimbursement rates to hospitals. Will this hurt the profits of the insurance companies and the for-profit hospitals? Sure. You got a problem with that? Why are hospitals for-profit, anyway?

Asked & Answered: What's wrong with needing fewer people in manufacturing due to greatly increased productivity? Let's ask the question this way: When robots make everything, how are the consumers going to get the money to buy the stuff the robots make?

Porn O'Graph: Globalization defined.

The Parting Shot:

Verbascum thapsus  Quaker rouge.