Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Don’t expect peaches from an apple tree.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Not all heroes wear capes.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

The words do not have to be perfect.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

In short, I come down firmly on all sides of the issue.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

After roe, women are no longer free.

Bad news for Ron DeSantis is great news for America.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

I really should read my own blog.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Panic in the streets of London

Reader Interactions

112Comments

  1. 1.

    Djur

    The UK is just serving as a demonstration of what we can expect in the new age of austerity. Of course, they have a lot more of a safety net to burn through before complete social collapse. We don’t.

  3. 3.

    replicnt6

    We’re too docile. We’ll be thanking the MOTUs for the sumptuous tent cities we’re living in before we’ll start rioting.

    ETA: “What a great country this is,” they will say, “where every family gets their own tent.”

  4. 4.

    Roger Moore

    Would it be irresponsible to speculate? It would be irresponsible not to!

    No, I don’t think this is the end of the European welfare state. But it’s likely to be either the end of the Euro or the beginning of real Eurofederalism.

  5. 5.

    Gordon Schumway

    DougJ,
    I’m currently at bar in a undisclosed, tropical, non-english-speaking location drinking rum drinks. Exile on Main Street is on the radio.

  10. 10.

    Culture of Truth

    Cameron is rushing back from Italy.

    This is how bad it is: Obama just called Cameron to sympathize for the bad week he’s having.

  13. 13.

    Reality Check

    @JGabriel:

    You want to move to a country dependent on commodity exports at the beginning of a global downturn? Commodity exports to China, mostly? Good luck!

  14. 14.

    jl

    “With riots in London and debt crises on the continent, is the Godless Yurpean welfare state on the verge of collapse?”

    Yes, that is what we will be told, given the performance of our worthless media stars, who are apparently making poopoo in their pants from the one month stock market drop, that they apparently just noticed today, after an important white man in a suite and tie issued incomprehensible nonsense about the US debt on Friday.

    In reality, since the ECB and UK and the US are following basically the same policy, one might guess that it doesn’t say much of anything about social insurance, or capitalism, or anything, since there is no meaningful compare and contrast.

    If you want to bring theory into it, one theory predicted what would happen, econ wise in the UK, and that was very standard Keynesian theory. (NOTE: the operative word is theory, not Kthug himself, Kthug is merely a mouthpiece for calculations ground out from a theory, and you can easily learn to do simple versions of it with a Schaum’s outline book, cheap!, if you want)

    And of course, Europe has added problems of a monetary union that many predicted would produce macroeconomic problems in a situation like this.

    Anyway, what the heck is going on the Balloon Juice? I would think there would be more posts about boozing right now, but the blog has got all serious wonky and public minded and stuff.

  15. 15.

    R-Jud

    Hey, hey– we’ve got riots here in Birmingham, too. Helicopters going overhead for a few hours now.

    ETA: the riots in London are probably more to do with long-standing racial tension and the police shooting a young man on Thursday. See the Grauniad’s liveblog, here.

  16. 16.

    schrodinger's cat

    I wonder what the Balloon Juice favorite and Cameron fan boy has to say about this.

  20. 20.

    jl

    My post of youtube W h * t * R * * t is in moderation.

    Oh well, people can find it themselves for a little mood music.

  24. 24.

    Ol' Dirty DougJ

    @Gordon Schumway:

    I’m currently at bar in a undisclosed, tropical, non-english-speaking location drinking rum drinks. Exile on Main Street is on the radio.

    They’re playing the whole thing on the radio?

  26. 26.

    General Stuck

    It’s the goddam oil cartels and companies and their partners in crime on Wall Street. They got us all by the balls and squeezing every last blood nickel out of the industrial world, and anything like economic growth with it.

  28. 28.

    Violet

    @Ol’ Dirty DougJ:
    What are you testing? I got thrown into mod in the next thread and can’t figure out what word would have done it. None of the usual suspects, anyway. And no links, so it’s not that.

  29. 29.

    Lev

    Funny, isn’t it–Europe goes conservative and this is the result. Cameron sure is lucky that he’s got Nick Clegg around–Clegg takes the heat from the people and the Lib Dem backbenchers. But they won’t bolt because it would be suicide for the party and them personally if they did. Meanwhile, Cameron is safe as can be, with the coalition there’s zero likelihood he’d be dumped, though the odds of that happening with a Tory majority would admittedly be pretty marginal. And they all hope against hope that it will all clear up in four years.

  32. 32.

    Shinobi

    My friend the history major was just speculating that our current conditions are ripe for some kind of civil war.

    Riots, and hacking, that’s how it’s going to play out.

  33. 33.

    scav

    You know, the first decade or so of a century seem to be so very tricky. Now to run the mods gauntlet with that innocuous sentiment.

  35. 35.

    Yurpean

    Thanks for the thread. Entirely predictable Smiths quote, but what else could you use?

    I’ve been sat at home this evening feeling ill at the footage the rolling news channels are vomiting onto my screen. Buildings burning, with no fire service there to contain the fires as roads are blocked by a combination of looters, burning vehicles, and police lines. Mixed in with this is footage from earlier in the day of looters ransacking shops.

    This is a decentralised riot, spontaneously erupting all over the capital. Along with our Galtian masters, the youth of London are the other major users of Blackberrys and are using them to organise à la carte looting expeditions, targeting specific shops for quality goods, and carting them away in wheelie bins, or pulling up in cars and vans and loading them up. Others are more indiscriminate, burning cars & buses, and in the worst case firing shops. This isn’t just property damage – people live above the targeted buildings and are losing their homes and possessions. Thankfully nobody appears to have died. Yet.

    Where are the police? They’re outmatched. On the first night (Saturday) the problem was that they weren’t expecting trouble. Tonight the problem has been that looting and rioting are spread out, stretching the so-called thin blue line thinly. They’re understandably scared to engage with the crowds unless they have the weight of numbers behind them, which results in farcical scenes of shops being ransacked metres from police lines.

    Why is this happening now? The proximate cause is the killing of a suspected local thug by the police when they tried to arrest him in a pre-planned operation. Something obviously went wrong, as the man was left dead, shot by armed police. On Saturday his friend & family gathered outside a police station in Tottenham to protest, and to try to get answers. Tensions rose, and trouble was sparked and it escalated into a riot. On that night it was probably a mixture of political riot and opportunistic anarchy. Since then, the rioting has spread, seemingly divorced from the initial cause, as people saw the ease with which property could be liberated, the police taunted & property attacked seemingly with little consequence. Sunday, various locations in north London were targeted, today it’s escalated, spreading and increasing in severity.

  36. 36.

    Gordon Schumway

    DougJ,
    By radio, I meant PA system at the bar & pool. They’ve moved on to Beggar’s Banquet now.

  38. 38.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Yeah, the moderation filter seems to be suffering from some sort of breakdown.

    Now, admittedly, “Kissinger” would make a terrific brand name for a boner pill, but the likelihood of litigation would scotch that idea early on in the branding process.

  39. 39.

    The Populist

    This is proof positive that you cannot CUT your way to prosperity in a time of deep recession/depression.

    I hear the right all the time…oooh, look at the me-me class rallying for more handouts. I even see some sick racist shit being posted as well.

    The problem for these right wing folks is selfishness. I make over $150K a year and pay more than my fair share. I don’t whine about it…actually it is the cost of being a citizen in my book. Anybody who wants to see people starve and go homeless deserve the worst kharmic payback ever.

  40. 40.

    Davis X. Machina

    @Shinobi: You can’t charge the castle with a pitchfork in one hand, and a remote in the other.

    Looks funny. Ha-ha funny.

  41. 41.

    beltane

    @jl: It worked for me. Why is moderation going crazy? Does John think we’re going to start smashing windows?

  44. 44.

    R-Jud

    @Tlachtga: I know the song, yes.

    And I’m gonna take the car, go to Mum’s, kill Phil, and then head to the Winchester to have a nice cold pint and wait for this whole thing to blow over.

  45. 45.

    Chris

    @The Populist:

    I make over $150K a year and pay more than my fair share. I don’t whine about it…actually it is the cost of being a citizen in my book.

    You’re more mature than most people, apparently.

    Bitching about having to pay taxes is like bitching about having to get a job. I remember my French uncle a couple years back mentioning that the American allergy for taxes was bewildering from the point of view he was raised with: paying taxes in France is considered as much a part of growing up as finding a job or getting your own home. Like it or not, it’s a cost of living in the real world.

  46. 46.

    Hypnos

    You know when people say wealth inequality doesn’t matter?

    Well this is what happens.

    This is what happens when an increasing slice of the population is cut out from all economic activity and has absolutely no recourse to earn any kind of income whatsoever. When you are completely excluded by the system, you can either fall in utter and complete depression, or reject the system in its entirety. This includes rules such as “Do not loot” “Do not burn other’s people property”.

    This is also what happens when, despite your exclusion from the system, you are constantly bombarded with consumerist mantra from every possible direction and through every possible media.

    And this is what happens when the State cuts off whatever little lifeline was holding you together.

    This is sociology 101. This was so bleedingly obvious anyone who knew anything about UK society had predicted it as soon as the austerity budget was approved.

    Crime will skyrocket.

    Not that the overlords will care. They will be behind walls, barbed wire, and armed private guards.

    Welcome back to feudalism.

  53. 53.

    PaulW

    I never finished reading Atlas Shrugged – mostly because I needed to stop yelling at the pages – but didn’t that end with massive global riots and economic chaos?

    I think our Galtian overlords WANT us rioting in the streets.

  54. 54.

    RossInDetroit

    @PaulW:

    I think our Galtian overlords WANT us rioting in the streets.

    Not if they know what’s good for them.

  55. 55.

    James E. Powell

    @RossInDetroit:

    The ruling class loves it when the people riot. It scares the shit out of middle class and justifies ‘harsh measures.’ It usually discredits the activists and calls for reform.

    Without all the riots in 1968, and not just the ones in Chicago, Humphrey would have been president.

  56. 56.

    Chris

    @RossInDetroit:

    Not if they know what’s good for them.

    This.

    It depends on whether they’re intelligent enough to know that their success is largely thanks to the type of society they live in and that they need to keep it more or less afloat in order to survive… or whether, like true Ayn Randians, they actually believe everything in their life is due to them and them alone and they’d be even better off if there wasn’t a society around to drag them down.

  59. 59.

    BalJu Commenter #2401

    @Djur: ON THE NOSE!

    There were very effective social programs in the UK that kept kids engaged – suddenly gone in the name of confidence faeries.

    No one could have predicted this!

  60. 60.

    Elie

    Hmmm – my commment duplicated itself…weird — It wasnt initially or I would have removed it. Sorry

  63. 63.

    jake the snake

    @replicnt6:

    ETA: “What a great country this is,” they will say, “where every family gets their own tent.”

    As long as people they don’t like don’t have a sparrow or a curtain rod.

  64. 64.

    MikeBoyScout

    The ice age is coming, the sun’s zooming in
    Engines stop running, the wheat is growing thin
    A nuclear error, but I have no fear
    ‘Cause London is drowning, and I live by the river

    I never felt so much alike alike alike alike

  65. 65.

    Amir Khalid

    Guardian liveblog confirms that riots have spread to Liverpool. This terrible thing might be going nationwide.

  66. 66.

    Judas Escargot

    @General Stuck:

    It’s the goddam oil cartels and companies and their partners in crime on Wall Street. They got us all by the balls and squeezing every last blood nickel out of the industrial world, and anything like economic growth with it.

    Most parasites avoid killing the host. These fuckers can’t even be proper parasites.

  67. 67.

    beltane

    @Amir Khalid: This appears to have a momentum all its own, a primal scream of rage directed at no specific target. Our TVs are so filled with the viewpoints of rich people who despise the poor that we forget how much the poor often hate the rich. The BBC says the rioters have now moved on to West London with the police unable to do much of anything. Is this a glimpse into the future the Galtians have made for us?

  71. 71.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    Former Mayor of London (damn it if I can remember his name) was just on the Beeb and said “this is what happens when you give kids no hope, they have absolutely nothing to lose”. Unemployment is rampant in these poor neighborhoods, people with college degrees can’t even get menial work. You have a situation where a whole generation of young men have absolutely nothing to lose. What the fuck do you expect them to do?

    Eventually someone is going to die. There are alot of flats above these shops that are being set fire to. This image is truly horrifying.

    http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2011/08/08/london-riots-terrified-woman-jumps-from-burning-building-115875-23330390/

  72. 72.

    MikeBoyScout

    London calling to the faraway towns
    Now war is declared, and battle come down
    London calling to the underworld
    Come out of the cupboard, you boys and girls
    London calling, now don’t look to us
    Phoney Beatlemania has bitten the dust
    London calling, see we ain’t got no swing
    ‘Cept for the ring of that truncheon thing

  73. 73.

    The Populist

    @Hypnos:

    A point I like to make with simpletons who don’t see the inequity? I point out that welfare and food stamps are like insurance. When people go hungry and homeless, they commit crimes to survive. And I also remind them that the poor who may commit crimes aren’t driving to beverly hills or the hamptons, they will be looking for those who they see as better off than they are.

    During the last recession, somebody broke into my car. I found that my new jacket was missing along with some tray change. I saw a homeless guy walking around the street wearing what looked to be my jacket. I stopped near him and he looks away. I get out and ask him if he did that to my window? He declines but says he found the jacket and it’s not a crime. I got him a meal and asked again…did you take the jacket? He finally admitted, rather lamely, that the window was already broken and he was cold.

    I let him keep it. I did not call the cops. Why? What would be the point of having the man arrested? He’d be back on the streets in no time. He didn’t rob me with violence, he didn’t threaten me…he wanted to stay warm. What can I do???

    See the big issue I have is that welfare is NOT a problem in this country. Neither are food stamps. If the right wingers would wake up and realize that some of these people need psychiatric help and many more are homeless looking to survive. People do not consider who they are robbing from to get by. Welfare programs give people a chance to have the stress of living reduced while we can find ways to get them to work whether it’s picking up trash or doing something to allow them to work for their meal and housing.

    The right…they just want to pretend that a few cents of every fricking tax dollar spent is a big deal yet corporate welfare is perfectly okay way of doing things. (sigh).

  74. 74.

    The Populist

    @Chris:

    Thanks…I do not understand all the bitching. I have so many things to do, daily, that it’s hard enough to worry about being “overtaxed” whatever that means. I get friends who yell at me for this stance and I look at them and walk away. Who has time for such stupid and misplaced anger? I could be the homeless guy in my previous post. Thank the FSM I am not.

  75. 75.

    Chris

    Why is this happening now? The proximate cause is the killing of a suspected local thug by the police when they tried to arrest him in a pre-planned operation.

    Sounds exactly like France a few years back.

  76. 76.

    PurpleGirl

    @Alex S.: Not directly related to the Euro but the UK government instituted a wide range of austerity measures. Economic activity has taken a major plunge and people are HURTING. With other existing tensions, the situation has gotten out of control. The trigger seems to have been the shooting of a young man (a known thug) by the police trying to arrest him.

  77. 77.

    PanAmerican

    If the Amero was on the gold standard would it be OK with gold-buggering CT types?

  78. 78.

    Wilson Heath

    Kleptocracy trickles down. It’s like tax morale, the rate of voluntary compliance with tax laws. When people generally perceive that the system is basically fair, fairly enforced, and that people by-in-large are not getting away with things at the expense of everyone else, they comply with the system. When the system looks rigged and unfair, any sense, be it moral or pragmatic, that one should comply goes down the tubes because “everyone does it.”

    Combine a system where the elites break laws with impunity and rob the populace blind together with deified materialism and you don’t expect looting will break out given a fair chance? The symptoms of a broken social order have been around long enough that this isn’t a shock. I’m just surprised that the UK beat the US to the punch this time.

  79. 79.

    Chris

    @Wilson Heath:

    I’m just surprised that the UK beat the US to the punch this time.

    I’m not. We must have the most highly submissive and best trained population in the West when it comes to accepting the existing social/economic order.

  80. 80.

    Elizabelle

    I’m ready to throw a brick.

    At the Republicans and their driving our country into the dirt.

    Just want to make sure the media wouldn’t report it as my rioting against Obama.

    Both sides being equal, and Obama leading from the rear, and all that incisive reporting, you know.

  83. 83.

    Bill Murray

    All the power’s in the hands
    Of people rich enough to buy it
    While we walk the street
    Too chicken to even try it

    Everybody’s doing
    Just what they’re told to
    Nobody wants
    To go to jail!

    White riot – I wanna riot
    White riot – a riot of my own
    White riot – I wanna riot
    White riot – a riot of my own

  84. 84.

    JasonF

    @Yurpean:

    Thanks for the thread. Entirely predictable Smiths quote, but what else could you use?

    I would have gone with some variation of “The ice age is coming, the sun’s zooming in.” And while I haven’t read through this thread beyond your post, I see Bill Murray is also riffing on the Clash.

  85. 85.

    someguy

    @The Populist:

    This is proof positive that you cannot CUT your way to prosperity in a time of deep recession/depression.

    Clearly, we’ve fucked up by subsidizing food and housing; what Keynes would have wanted was free I-Phones and X-Boxes. In fact he said something about that. Or was it Tom Friedman?

  86. 86.

    JasonF

    And now that I’ve read further, I see I’m at least the third person to reference London Calling, so never mind.

  89. 89.

    Ruckus

    @The Populist:
    I’d like to be making enough to pay income tax, like I used to. I’d like to make enough to own property so I could pay property tax, like I used to. Hell I’d like to make enough that I know that I can pay the rent a month in advance. Or run the AC when it’s 85+ outside. And in. It’s been 4 years since I ate in a sit down restaurant. I don’t visit my best friend because it costs $20+ to go the 52 miles with bridge toll. I have no health care. And yes I’ve worked for over 50 years and paid taxes until this recession started, even when I was in the service, I paid taxes.
    This is not a life, it’s barely even an existence. And I feel like I’m better off than a lot of people. This may not in any way be considered an actual third world country but it is heading there at a pretty good pace.

  91. 91.

    Chris

    @Ruckus:

    This may not in any way be considered an actual third world country but it is heading there at a pretty good pace.

    A shrinking middle class, with more and more poor people and richer and richer rich people. A political class controlled by the rich to the increasing exclusion of the majority. A highly militarized government that pays less and less attention to, well, anything that doesn’t involve uniforms. Ethnic-based politics all over the map. Widespread ignorance, superstition and lack of education among the population.

    I’d say a lot of the conditions for third-world status are already here and here to stay.

  93. 93.

    The Raven

    See: http://pennyred.blogspot.com/2011/08/panic-on-streets-of-london.html

    Telling quote:

    In one NBC report, a young man in Tottenham was asked if rioting really achieved anything:

    “Yes,” said the young man. “You wouldn’t be talking to me now if we didn’t riot, would you?”

    “Two months ago we marched to Scotland Yard, more than 2,000 of us, all blacks, and it was peaceful and calm and you know what? Not a word in the press. Last night a bit of rioting and looting and look around you.”

    Eavesdropping from among the onlookers, I looked around. A dozen TV crews and newspaper reporters interviewing the young men everywhere ‘’’

    Emma, if you are reading, I think my world has come to you. Wipe your shoes before you riot on the carpet.

  94. 94.

    Jebediah

    @The Populist:
    RE the jacket and the homeless dude… you’re a good person. I would like to think I would act similarly, but I am unlikely to find myself in the same situation. Not so many windows on a motorcycle.
    You know, of course, that by showing kindness, understanding, and generosity to someone less fortunate than yourself, you make Ayn Rand’s ghost cry ragey tears, right? May she cry herself into dehydration…

  96. 96.

    The Raven

    I also like the discussion at Crooked Timber: http://crookedtimber.org/2011/08/09/london/

    The UK isn’t like the USA: it’s close. There’s one main capital, London, and a lesser one: Edinburgh. People who riot in London can affect the national government. This is a reaction to, at least, a generation of poverty and the government just not listening. The conservatives are talking about privatizing the excellent British health service, but that’s not the trigger. These people have been thrown away: they want their place in society, and who can blame them?

  98. 98.

    William Hurley

    The UK, like the US, enjoys control of its own currency.

    Income inequality in the US is more pronounced than in the UK. That there aren’t riots here is, to my mind, more demonstrative of the Huxlian domesticity our Galtian overlords have inculcated through decades of PR extolling the “virtues” of wealth and wealth-holders and to encourage a brand of individualism that’s more identifiable as a variant of Borges’ solipsism than an inheritance from the Enlightenment, through the Revolutionary generation to us.

    Consider that circumstances here in the good, ole US of A. Our most likely band of “rioteers” is an incoherent, factional and paranoid manifestation of re-born “Know-Nothing-ism” in a Falangist wrapper – who are thought to like tea.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_nothing_party

  99. 99.

    The Raven

    @Litlebritdifrnt:

    Former Mayor of London (damn it if I can remember his name) was just on the Beeb and said “this is what happens when you give kids no hope, they have absolutely nothing to lose”.

    Ken Livingstone. Report. Now why can’t more of our pols sound like him?

  100. 100.

    punkdavid

    I love The Smiths reference in the title, but in this case, I think “Still Ill” is more apt:

    “I decree today that life is simply taking and not giving
    England is mine and it owes me a living
    Ask me why and I’ll spit in your eye
    Ask me why and I’ll spit in your eye

    But we cannot cling to the old dreams anymore
    No, we cannot cling to those dreams…”

  101. 101.

    Bill Murray

    @Xenos: I probably would have gone with Reggae fi Peach as I think it fits the Tottenham situation works well with it.

    Oh ye people of England,
    Great injustices are committed upon this land,
    How long will you permit them, to carry on?
    Is England becoming a fascist state?
    The answer lies at your own gate,
    And in the answer lies your fate.

  102. 102.

    ChrisNYC

    Didn’t read all comments. If someone already said this, I apologize for repetition.

    It’s amazing that no one has died in these riots. Not one person. Amazing. Fingers crossed that that continues.

  103. 103.

    The Populist

    @Jebediah: Thanks…

    I admit I was infuriated at first. Then when I saw the guy, I felt really bad for him.

    This country allowed me to succeed at my area of expertise. If I can help somebody else, I will. I used to be one of those angry kids with no direction. Once I got out of school, I learned that life was a lot more gray than black and white. Many of my friends think I’m a big weirdo but oh well…

    I would hope somebody would do the same for me if I was in the same position that man was. I would hope…

  104. 104.

    The Populist

    @Ruckus: We agree my friend…I really hate what I am seeing.

    If I had billions, I’d pay the damn pols to come up with agendas to put America back to work. I’d throw citizens united on it’s ear.

    Unfortunately, I am just a guy who’s had some good luck and I do what I can. It sounds as if you do what you can and I give you many props for that. Good things come to good people, I do believe that. I may come in here and cuss out the trolls and the idiot pols on the right, but if I saw even a shitbag like Limbaugh choking on a bone, I’d try to give him the heimlich (if I could reach around him to do it!).

  105. 105.

    The Populist

    @Chris: Not for long. Trust me on this, I know MANY kids who are becoming more and more disillusioned with the “America” they are told is the greatest.

  106. 106.

    Texas Dem

    Suggestion for our English cousins: send those rioters over to Texas. We know how to deal with looters. Problem solved.

  108. 108.

    The Raven

    @The Populist:

    I know MANY kids who are becoming more and more disillusioned with the “America” they are told is the greatest.

    That’s been going on for a decade at least: I’ve been listening. But what will they do? I think the answer is “nothing” for at least a decade.

  110. 110.

    Chris

    @The Populist:

    @Chris: Not for long. Trust me on this, I know MANY kids who are becoming more and more disillusioned with the “America” they are told is the greatest.

    Heh. I’m one of them.

  111. 111.

    ThresherK

    Yeah, I’m really late (but it’s a habit of mine).

    Any Foxholer start trying to blame this on Spurs’ fans, or are there enough people of color (with non-Merkin accents, no less!) to not have to go there?

  112. 112.

    PWL

    It MAY happen here,Eurozone or not. Think part of the reason for the riots is the “austerity policy” of the Cameron government.

    I think about what I read an IMF head say about the austerity policies the IMF imposes on countries–that they stayed in place “until the riots got too bad.”

    So since our Trea-tard Congress has essentially imposed an “austerity” fiscal policy on a country with an already moribund economy, it’s possible, once all these cuts they demanded hit home, and people feel the real impact, that there might be rioting in the streets here.

    And nothing would surprise me if in the vanguard of the rioters are the very same Tea-tards who thought all those cuts were a good thing. What’s that old saying? “Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.”

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