Opinion of Alexis Tsipras

[Simfan34]

Incompetent. 3 months on and the guy has done exactly what over the first 100 days?

A better question to ask is 'What could he have done given the circumstances?'

Otherwise I'm a bit Zhou Enlai wrt The French Revolution on this question.

Of course, Zhou was actually talking about May 1968 in the case in question, but point taken nevertheless.

[Simfan34]

Mega-HP. He is a weak leader that can't control even his own party.
He has appointed a psychopathic narcissist  as FinMin, a crypto-fascist shrew as President of the Parliament and a bunch of incompetent anti-European neo-Stalinists and far-right loons at his cabinet.

His indecisiveness and procrastination has brought us into a much worse place than we were four months ago, his arrogance and divisive rhetoric has alienated even our closest allies (Cyprus) and his only "accomplishments" so far have been the abolishment of the few structural reforms enacted by the previous governments. 

At least from the polls, it seems that the Greek people support him, which should count for something.

Not anymore. Approval of his government has fallen from 83% in February to 40% now.

What was Samaras's approval this many months in?

Samaras's approval was consistently low. He was always seen as the lesser of two evils.
Tsipras OTOH was elected with great hopes of bringing something new but he quickly showed his true colors of being just another politician hellbent to protect and strengthen the clientelistic state that brought the crisis.

genuine question- with Tsipras's fall in popularity, why is SYRIZA still polling double-digit leads?

Because the main opposition parties are even more loathed than SYRIZA.
Even so, the huge 20 points leads of March and April are long gone. Now most polls show SYRIZA ahead by 8-9 points, more or less the result of January 25.

They are?

[Simfan34]

Don't be dramatic.

...

It would be ideal if there was a feasible way for the Eurozone to depose these lunatics and appoint some kind of technocratic government

Democracy is such a pain in the arse sometimes. It's so much easier to get things done in a dictatorship, isn't it?

I've been saying this since time immemorial and yet whenever I do people act like I've said something terrible...

You know, this whole thing started because a batch of people who shouldn't have had loans asked for them and the banks decided to lend them money anyway.

And if they denied loans to Greece?

If they'd denied them back in the 1980s, we wouldn't be in this mess. In fact, a lot of the mess in the developing world is due to loans being given during the Cold War to military juntas so they could buy weapons... and it became so impossible for them to pay back as well as preventing governments from looking after their people properly, a lot of it (after pressure for campaign groups) was forgiven. Look up the Jubilee 2000 campaign to see what I mean.

At least in the African context, that's usually not what actually did it. That honor usually went to hare brained protectionist import substitution industrialization schemes.

[Simfan34]

And now it looks like they might not get it back at all...

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Which one was it?

Will say the video of people withdrawing money makes the Greeks look rather stoic, pardon the pun. Maybe it's denial or bravado, but the people they interviewed seem to be consciously resisting panic.

[Simfan34]

It is curious that Antonio is now defending the Greek government position more than an actual Greek. And Lyndon is hardly someone who's tolerated the characterization of "lazy profligate Greeks" people make.