SAR #15174

Growing up involves learning not to notice most of what we encounter.
 

The grain of truth: The Eurozone is doomed whether Greece leaves or stays, although that decision may be punted down the road another six months. Greece... no, that's not right. The current crop of Greek leadership has buckled under to the overlords from the EU/ECB/IMF and offered to lower pension benefits (by raising contributions, even from those already retired) and lower health costs (ditto) and by increasing the VAT (which is very regressive) while pretending to tax the rich (which never has happened in Greece and isn't about to). The targeted 1% GDP budget surplus is not going to be met – it cannot be in the austerity-crippled Greek economy – and soon the lies will start again. Because it is not about the Greek debt, it is about the political future of the Euro.

Mark Your Calendar: June 27th has been designated “National burn the Confederate flag day.” No, don't go out and buy one, just scrape one off your neighbor's pickup. 
 
Pope Pops Off: Not only has the Pope fallen for the global climate change hoax, now he says that a Christian who invests in weapons industries is a hypocrite. He also wants to know why the Allies in WWII did not bomb the railway lines leading to concentration camps. Okay, Francis, maybe it is getting a little warmer and maybe most Christians are more than a little hypocritical, but no one wants to explain that most of the leaders – political and industrial and religious, including his predecessor – behind the war effort were quite happy to let those particular freight cars keep rolling.
 
Them: The 0.01% who have all the riches are the same 0.01% that gave $1.8 billion in reported political contributions in 2014 (and that doesn't include all the money they gave to those non-candidate “issues” PACs). Ah, democracy, where every dollar gets to vote.

Teddy Boy: Ted “Clown Car” defines gun control as “hitting what you aim at.”

Makes Me Proud: Poachers are killing 96 elephants every day. And we're not doing a damned thing to stop it. But then, we're not doing anything to stop the slaughter of innocents in our own country.

Efficiency: The secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court – the one that rubber stamps the government's requests to circumvent the Constitution – says that the court does not need to hear opposing arguments because its not like there will be a trial or anything like that when Homeland Security picks you up and puts you away.. The good news is that the Supreme Court has decided that the government needs a warrant to check hotel registers. Why the government would want to do that when they know where you are thanks to your cell phone and the license plate readers and already know what credit card you used to reserve the room...

No Means No, Not Now, Not Ever: A federal district judge has ruled that an unemployed disabled woman making $10,000 could not cancel her student loan debt, which had grown from $13,250 to $37,000 from compounded interest and fees. He said she would not suffer “undue hardship” if she at least tried to pay the $3.50 a day she owes in interest – 12% of her income.

Cleaning Up: Last month in El Salvador, the smallest and most densely populated Central American nation, there were 635 homicides in a population of 6.2 million. That's the equivalent to the US having 32,000 homicides in a month. 
 
Porn O'Graph: A great thirst came upon them...