When The Captors Want The Hostage Dead, Is It Kidnapping?

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

The sheer silliness of even casting a shadow of a glimmer of a sliver of blame on the Democratic Party members in Congress regarding this shutdown thing is laughable enough. There is more than enough evidence that the Tea Party has run with this ball all the way. I won't bother recounting it here.

What I found interesting was a very conservative political person suggesting why default may be the ultimate aim, not a stated consequence. Regarding the debt:

What I don’t think [the Obama administration and those on Wall Street] understand is that there has been a movement under way for some years among right-wing economists and activists not merely to default on the debt, but even to repudiate it.

Those making this argument are largely unknown to professional economists and journalists, but their research permeates the obscure Web sites where Tea Party members get their ideas. And not all are obscure.

As with most weirdnesses in our country, much of this can be traced back ( to the Civil War. )

Death and desperation at the walls of Fortress Europe

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

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Dozens of coffins are lining up the runway at the airport in Lampedusa, the small Italian island south of Sicilly. The airshed is now turned into a morgue. The island just doesn't have enough space for all the bodies of the African immigrants who drowned when their ship, full-packed with 500 men, women and children, mainly from Eritrea and Somalia, capsized and sank near those rocky shores.

The body count amounts to at least 300. They had sailed off from the Libyan coast, looking for a better life in Europe. The fishing and tourist island of Lampedusa has long been a key gate into Europe for those who constantly leave Africa. Tens of thousands of refugees and immigrants have been cramming themselves into small, unstable vessels for years, taking the dangerous route across the sea.

( Welcome to Fortress Europe...NOT! )