Tom Toles for September 28, 2012

A cuckoo clock without a cuckoo. Unusual.

^ Do all Black-forrest clocks have cuckoos?Hmmm, the clock has 3 adjusting cords; I’ll have to ask a mate how they work. Anyway; so, Americans view Europe as Grandfatherly? Ticking-timebomb. Vacillating. German-run.So many metaphors in one!Ohoh, the northerns Germans are going to be peeved: it’s the Bavarian lederhosen clad, beer-swilling, moustached stereotype again…Well, to be fair, the Bavarians will be peeved, too. Also, Angela doesn’t have a moustache. I checked.

Oh, just federate, already! I’ve been saying this since 1988.

Tom usually uses this caricature to represent all of Europe, but maybe today, in honor of October Fest, it’s Germany. Either way, it doesn’t quite work for me. The clock analogy is good though. But in the end, the problems with the Euro aren’t nearly as dangerous as the broken U.S. political system. Constant popularity contests can’t make good government. Now with unlimited corporate money, U.S. politics is not just broken, but hyper broken.

Deutschland uber alles im der welt

One side of the pendulum is the banks and the other is the people. The media are playing out the Euro crisis as if somehow the PEOPLE are being bailed out when in fact the opposite is true..It was the BANKS that created the Euro Zone. A fiscal disaster of historical and ill-advised proportions. (Ask the “generous” governments of the UK and the Swiss and the Nordics if they feel a little relief at not being involved in that nonsense.) Now that the experiment in greed (or “opportunity” as some bankers and their puppet politicians call it) is imploding, the banks will go all guns on making sure that they get paid even in the face of economic collapse..What’s happening in Europe is the OPPOSITE of opportunity and fairness. It was another horrific, ill-advised, greed-based capitalist experiment by European banks that’s now being paid for on the backs of working people (or people who used to work anyway). Like in America, the banks and heads of state are working overtime to convince voters that this crisis is not about tragically incompetent bankers and heads of state, but about common people who are lazy and corrupt..Maybe they are. Maybe they aren’t. But at the end of the day, the banks will be paid even if it means abuelita needs to eat from dumpsters until she finally dies in a welfare hospital.

I never did see that having a single currency with so many wildly divergent nations and governments was in any sense logical, and I was pretty pessimistic about the chances of it working from the outset. In fact, I wondered what they were drinking……….

Nice analogy from Mr. Toles. The pendulum swings from fixed to still not fixed, to fixed and so on. Enjoy your Oktoberfest my friends. I wish I had some of that nice fresh brew..

After all the trouble that Euope has had, is it any wonder that people are drinking?

But…but…but… the recession is only in the US and it’s all Obama’s fault.

@Justice22Cheers!Coincidently (bizarrely?), a workmate was showing me a photo of his repaired cuckoo clock night before last, and he mentioned the 3 cords; I was sure he had said one of them wound the mechanism for the cuckoo. I was only half-interested & didn’t really pay attention. Since I didn’t see a cuckoo in the ’toon, I was wondering (silly details like this sometimes trouble me. meh)

The problem isn’t the currency as such, but pretty much all the southern countries sucking in regards to economy. Almost noone is keeping the limits in regards to deficit, and then when warned noone makes any real changes (which is the real problem in greece).

Y’all ain’t makin’ fun ov r talkin’ air ya?

A grandfather clock does not have a cuckoo, it has chimes.There are three weights, one to power the clock itself,one to power the hourly chime, and one that powers the tune.