DEALING THOUGHTFULLY WITH THE GREEK FINANCIAL CRISIS - AT 9:07 P.M. ET:  Greece is near financial collapse, and, this being May Day, the downtrodden citizenry has engaged in reflective activity to solve their nation's problem.  From The Times of London: 

MAY DAY protests in Greece turned violent yesterday as youths in gas masks and hoods set fire to vehicles, smashed shop fronts and threw molotov cocktails and rocks at police in an explosion of fury over austerity measures they claim will hurt only the poor.

Tourists were cut off from their hotels as thousands of communists, civil servants and private-sector workers converged on a main square in Athens to vent their rage at the European Union and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

“No to the IMF’s junta,” they chanted as a youth in a black hood produced a hammer to try to smash windows of the luxury Grande Bretagne hotel.

Another painted anti-capitalist slogans on the facade, and demonstrators intervened to prevent him from spraying an Australian woman with paint as she tried to get back into the hotel. Japanese tourists stood taking photographs of the mayhem with mobile phones before being forced to retreat, coughing and sneezing, under a cloud of tear gas

COMMENT:  You know, next time the Europeans start lecturing us, please remember scenes like this.  I, for one, am getting damned tired of constantly being patronized by people who can't solve their problems, won't solve their problems, depend on America for their defense, have no respect for their own cultures, and simply sit around, waiting to be taken care of.

And it can happen here.

May 1, 2010