Greek Referendum on IMF/Troika deal

[BundouYMB]

ND+Potami+PASOK+KIDSO+Union of centrists = 40%

So with a floor of literally 40%. The side against another bailout might want to pray that they get people who support them to vote.

No, no they are not. That's what they registered at the last election. Current polls have them lower, and have SYRIZA close to 50%. A Public Issue poll from earlier this month (the most recent poll) had the following results:

SYRIZA -- 47.5% (up 13.2%)
ND -- 19.5% (down 8.3%)
XA -- 6.5% (up 0.2%)
POTAMI -- 6.5%(up 0.4%)
KKE -- 5.5%(no change)
PASOK -- 4.5% (down 0.2%)
ANEL -- 4.0% (down 0.8%)
EK -- 2.0% (up 0.2%)
Others -- 4.0% (down 0.2%)

(KIDSO is more or less dead.)

ND+POTAMI+PASOK+EK = 32.5 (down 10.4%)
SYRIZA+ANEL = 51.5% (up 10.4%)

[BundouYMB]

Those polls were conducted before the referendum was announced and the question had the government supporting a yes vote. AFAIK there have been no polls since the referendum's announcement.

[BundouYMB]

Good job ignoring the three other polls that came out today with No leads. ProRata has No up 54-33, Focus (??) has No up 40-37, and trusty Palmost Analysis has No up 52-37.

[BundouYMB]

lol "austerity hawks". Seriously who's going to give greece money for their spending plans that they should never of increase year by year since joining the euro?

I seriously can't stand people who think austerity is some thing that meanies do and theres an unlimited cache of money waiting for somebody if they just declare "Austerity = Over"

Can you do me favor? Go find a book and pick it up. Not any book in particular -- any one will do. Did you do it? Good, now open the book. As you might see, books are filled with words, and the purpose of words is to communicate with other people. Why are words necessary? Well, other people may have thoughts or knowledge that you don't have, and for various reasons it might be a good idea to share these thoughts.

I explain this because sadly instead of reading, listening, or looking at something someone has actually said, and then responding with your own thoughts, you have pulled your proverbial pants down in public and invented a fake, stupid, easy to attack delusion for you to then valiantly combat. For the purposes of this conversation, lets call this a "straw man."

The "straw man" you have used is a fictional person, or group of persons, who think that "theres [sic] an unlimited cache of money waiting for somebody if they just declare "Austerity = Over." Unfortunately no one actually expressed this belief.

I understand that by responding to real things that other people have actually said, you (you in particular) might be ill suited to disagreeing with them, because that might require you to research the subject and think about it, which you didn't have to do when attacking your "straw man." This is an unfortunate tic, but with hard work I'm sure you can overcome it. A good way to begin is to start using body parts above the waist area. Like, to pluck a random example out of a hat, your brain.

[BundouYMB]

It would be easier to not attack a strawman, if the "anti-austeritists" told us what their alternatives are. It's hard to have a debat with people who have decided their opposition is evil and you don't know what they're thinking as a alternative. What can Greece do instead of austerity, if they also want to stay in the Euro? If the other side doesn't have a coherent alternative, they choose to be strawmen.

The obsessive harping about whether its "realistic" to stay in the Euro while fulfilling various demands of the government is a straw man, because its not an outcome that either Tsipras or the average Greek expects.

Disregarding whether its "practical" or whatever, by saying Greece wants to stay in the Euro Tsipras is making an important distinction. He is making the distinction that he supports the Euro if not for xyz issues where public opinion if overwhelmingly on the Government's side. This may not be different in practice from turning around and marching out of negotiations saying that Greece is better off with the drachma, but he is making the distinction for political purposes, namely so he can very clearly demonstrate the reasons Greece is being forced out/choosing to leave the Euro (again, xyz issues where public opinion is overwhelmingly on the Governments side) which may very well be terms on which the Greek peoples can accept leaving the Euro.

He has his opinions and he is marketing them, something which (for better or worse) is alien to the sociopathic opposition which is also taking an unpopular position in many ways, but which outright refuses to participate in any debate or defend any of their ideas, and whose position more or less boils down to "do what we say or we will make you suffer in ways that we won't exactly sketch out."

The distinction he is making may not matter or make sense to you, but he isn't doing it for you. He is making that distinction because the Greek people by and large want that distinction to be made, and that's why he keeps winning his political battles and why SYRIZA is sky high in the polls. Because Tsipras and SYRIZA are the ones at least paying lip service to what the Greek people want, and its always been my suspicion that that's really all voters anywhere really want. His (relevant) critics on the other hand seemingly take outright pleasure in mooning the public and totally disregarding public opinion.

Note that this is overall not a note about who is "right" and who is "wrong" but a political point, and one that certain Tsipras critics would be well to heed because the tsundere strategy of saying "we don't care if Greece leaves, no, really" is obviously bankrupt.