Why Would Anyone, Anywhere Think The EU Is Remotely Good Idea?

From the same minds that brought us the Euro, and insist it live, and freedom die:

EU officials concluded that, following a three-year investigation, there was no evidence to prove the previously undisputed fact (that water consumption prevents dehydration).

Producers of bottled water are now forbidden by law from making the claim and will face a two-year jail sentence if they defy the edict, which comes into force in the UK next month.

Last night, critics claimed the EU was at odds with both science and common sense. Conservative MEP Roger Helmer said: “This is stupidity writ large.

“The euro is burning, the EU is falling apart and yet here they are: highly-paid, highly-pensioned officials worrying about the obvious qualities of water and trying to deny us the right to say what is patently true.

“If ever there were an episode which demonstrates the folly of the great European project then this is it.”

OS asks his British cousins: Why do you not absolutely make your MP's life a living perdition until such time as Parliament votes to withdraw from the EU--immediately?

Why did your parents' and grandparents' (and great-grandparents') generation make such frightful sacrifices?

For this? Life under the thumb of Brussels and the banksters?

Really?

Black-Humor Headline Of The Month: Greece Votes To Delay Default Until 2012

Well, cut my legs off and call me shorty! A Czech physicist nails the entire ridiculous soap opera down in one sentence.

Luboz Motl is very bright, with a wonderful dry sense of humor, and a reasonable approach to life. His essay includes an account of events inside the Greek Parliament, and a video of the chaos on the streets. It's an impossible mathematical situation, as he points out, and everyone will have to muddle through.

His conclusion shows the wisdom of someone whose family has endured life in Eastern Europe for generations:

On the other hand, I am no Europe hater. I think that there are obviously many things that are meaningfully organized at the European level - such as the free-trade zone and others. It would be nice if the recent developments helped the people to rationally discuss what kind of activities the EU can and and what kind it cannot do and shouldn't do. However, it doesn't seem to me that this is happening. People either deny that anything is happening that shows lethal flaws in the European unification concepts; or they're already talk about a funeral and the end of time.

There won't be any end of time. There won't even be a Big Crunch because our Universe has a positive cosmological constant: it will approach de Sitter space event more closely. There will be some future and people should rationally evaluate the experience from the past and try to optimize the future. It's damn obvious that the idea that the desire to "unify" everything - while paying no attention to the evidence that it could be a very bad idea in many contexts - is something that we shouldn't repeat again.

Quote Of The Day: Cranmer-'God Cares For the Poor'

Perhaps the best essay His Grace has ever shared with us, well worth the time spent. Very few have his moral clarity and command of English.

His best paragraph:

God cares for the poor, the oppressed, and the underdogs in society. He pours his wrath upon those who corrupt justice or create economic machines designed to provide more wealth for the wealthy and deprive the poor. The story of Naboth’s vineyard in 1 Kings 21 establishes that authorities are not free to pursue any policy they please or to ride roughshod over the rights of the poor. These same concerns are vehemently expressed by the prophets Amos, Hosea, Isaiah and Micah, writing in the 8th century BC. God demands conscience above political conviction, and a government which places narrow economic considerations above liberty and justice is guilty of worshipping Mammon above God.

Greece (and Spain, and Portugal, and the US): The Alternate Hard-Soled Foot-Covering Apparatus Descends Rapidly Toward The Surface Of The Earth

In other words, the other shoe may be in the process of dropping.

OS thinks we may be arriving at one of those interesting points in human events, such as 1914, or 1929, or 1939, or 1945, where very little going forward resembles what once was.

Q. What were The Two Big Ideas to emerge from the smoke and rubble of Western Europe in 1945?

A. A unified Europe, guarded by NATO, and integrated by The Common Market, which became the vast machine created by the Lisbon Treaty.

B. The Welfare State. From cradle to grave, the elimination of want, disease, ignorance, unemployment, even the provision of the high arts, all on the taxpayer dime.

From these two bedrock Big Ideas would emerge a NewEurope, blissfully free of Christendom, sailing ever toward the dawn of GreaterThings. The Best And The Brightest, all the very best minds, carefully chosen and trained to lead the way, devoted their lives to the great cause, The Two Big Ideas.

It didn't work out at all. Idea A failed because there is simply too much history to overcome, and it is foolish to attempt it. The Portugese shopkeeper shares no cultural identity with the Irish truck driver, and both resent like hell being forced into the same cultural straight-jacket.

Idea B failed due to simple math. No one can tax at the levels needed to build and maintain The Welfare State, and have the underlying economy survive. Add to that a plunging birthrate and an unquenchable desire for consumption over production, and everything caves in upon itself. Even a good-ole'-boy like OS knows you can't keep that up too long. It's like downing a fifth of Jack Daniels every day for twenty years, and wondering why you become a drunk with cirrohsis who can't afford to buy his Jack anymore.

Cranmer's post today about the monstrous building going up to house the EU administrative offices is brilliant. Take a look at that ugly piece of ugliness. Why would anyone trust anything to anybody who believes that building is worth the expenditure of even one fake-currency Euro, much less hundreds of millions of them?

The Emperor be buck-nekkid, ya'll. Europe's in for a real tussle, and we're next in line in the US. 'Cuz we not only embraced the TwoBigIdeas, we by-golly championed them, and ponied most of the money to keep NATO running all along.

So, OS has decided not to rant about it much more, or spend any time being angry about it. The mathematics of default are now likely inexorable, with the only question being how ugly things get, and how graciously and skilfully the situation is handled.

He is trying to discern how best to care for his family, friends and community here during these days to come. He has some ideas about what to do in The Meantime.

Moh, latuh'. Hug yoh' loved ones, don't-chew ferget.


HT Mish

Encore In Honor of Dominique Strauss-Kahn: Clarke And Dawes Explain The European Debt Crisis

Since this brilliant bit first appeared ten months ago, a lot of historical water has flowed under the proverbial bridge, in Ireland, Finland, Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, North Africa, and one penthouse in New York City. (And, let's not forget Mr. Berlusconi and his seventeen-year-old love interest...just the kinda guy t'be running a large country, don't-cha-know!)

Remember Kelly's Corollary to Murphy's Law? Murphy was an optimist!

Enjoy, ya'll! This week could get ugly for the markets.

The Fraudulent Warmists Find Themselves Defrauded: WhoWouldaThunkIt?

A true AlGore moment, courtesy of the UK foundation Civitas.

The European carbon market has been temporarily closed after fears that it has been the victim of fraud. Having lost £7 million’s worth of carbon credits, there could be a polluter somewhere in Europe happily belching out their fumes knowing that they won’t be paying for it. This isn’t the first crisis to hit the scheme and the EU should now take a step back and assess if its climate change policies are the optimum way to curb emissions.

The EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) simply does not work. The EU’s own Law Enforcement Agency has estimated that in 2009, €5 billion of revenue was lost through fraudulent activity and in some countries this accounted for 90% of market activity! While the market cost of carbon credits was €12.5, they were being sold for €1.

OldSouth shares this with you, snowed in here in the South, in a year when AlGore predicted that we would have to explain to young children what snow used to be...

OS will drink an extra cup of hot chocolate in his honor this evening.

By the way, where is old Al, our fellow Tennessean? And why isn't he screaming bloody murder about fraud in these markets he such a hand in creating? One would think his fax machine would be blanketing the world! Perhaps this scam was pulled on scammers, and he doesn't care to bring up the subject?

(OS would use the phrase 'Sound of crickets chirping', but they're all frozen just now.)

Let's ask Tipper, and see what she thinks. She might be able to locate him. Or not.

Not Everyone Is Upset About The Crises In Europe.

Not by a long shot...

OS has nothing to add.

A Good Idea For Sunday Morning: The Greenland Solution

Greenland's people saw the writing on the wall in the 1980's:

Mene, mene, tekel, upharsim--or words to that effect...

Being translated: If we hitch our wagon to the clown show in Brussels, they'll screw us.

So, they left. In 1985.

Fast forward twenty-five years. They're solvent and prosperous, and Europe is broke.

They're free, and increasingly, Europe isn't.

Alex Singleton of The Telegraph calmly explains:

If you think that leaving the EU would be catastrophic, take a look at Greenland. By rights its people ought to be poor. Their island is isolated, suffers from freezing weather, has a workforce of only 28,000 and relies on fish for 82 per cent of its exports. But it turns out that since leaving the EU, Greenland has been so freed of EU red tape and of the destruction of the Common Fisheries Policy, that the average income of the islanders today is higher than those living in Britain, Germany and France.

Actually, OS deliberately listed things in the wrong order: They are free, therefore they are solvent and prosperous.

So, why should a grumpy guy from Tennessee be scribbling about this? Well, ya'll, look at the US map. The bluest states of the US, the ones that drank the socialist Kool-Aid the longest and deepest are...insolvent and increasingly impoverished. They are also chaotic and crime-ridden. (New York, Illinois, Kuhlifornia, Michigan top that list.)

The state least affected by the Great Recession is (May I have the envelope, please!) North Dakota, a traditional butt of jokes by our elites. They farm, they allow their oil resources to be developed, they don't tax everything that moves. The government maintains order, maintains the roads, and otherwise leaves people alone.

What a concept.

As the Great Recession deepens (and it will, when the cheap money runs out), and the heavy hand of HopeyChangey is increasingly felt in the land (and it will, cuz that who He is), it may be time for the states of the union to rethink their relationship with Washington. This year's travails in Louisiana, where most of the real damage was done by HopeyChangey, not BP, should be a warning to us all.

They probably can't leave like Greenland did, but they can certainly distance themselves, and set up firewalls.