What’s the latest from Athens? It’s Greek to Me

By Risë Birnbaum

Haven’t seen so many flip flops since South Beach this winter.  What’s up with Greece?

Here’s the Cliff’s Notes version – Yes, Greece defaulted on a big loan payment because the country and its creditors aren’t on the same page.  This is right up there with Antigone as a Greek tragedy.  The scoop is Greece wants more money, but didn’t want the higher taxes and lower pensions to help cover the loans.  So ATMs around the country are now only dispensing 60 euros to any one bank customer.  Ouch.

And then Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras made a U-turn and decided he could agree with most of the bailout terms if a few changes were made.  But, wait, it’s not over yet.  Now, it seems as if Tsipras is again urging Greeks to vote AGAINST the bailout.  And if there is a “no” vote, Greece will be shipped out of the eurozone.

What to do?  Send John Stamos over as the new Greek “ambassador” to explain what’s going on?  Open up some new Greek yogurt plants around the country?  Send more Royal Caribbean cruise ships to Athens filled with tourists and pray no one gets a stomach bug?

In the meantime Puerto Rico said si, it’s also cash-strapped.  All this 3-card monty has the global markets stuttering.

Greek is in a pickle cause its borrowing power is now zilch and even if the country votes yes, it’ll take weeks to work out terms and who knows what happens to the government during that time?

Meantime bankers’ hours in Greece are as short as they’ve ever been with all banks closed, and the economy wasting away.

This has become a euro-disaster with only one short-term solution.  It’s a four letter word that’s pretty potent.  Nopel, not euro.  OUZO.

DICK CHENEY – BALLSY WITH NO BRAINS

Risë Birnbaum

Maybe Cheney should start counting backwards from 100 by 7 to check his cognitive abilities these days ‘cause the guy is making no sense at all.  There was more gibberish in Cheney’s Wall Street Journal op-ed than on Honey Boo Boo.

I mean, can we really blame Obama for the Iraq war?  No.  If anyone had war paint on it was Cheney himself, who told us all point blank that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and even linked Saddam to the September 11 attacks.  So let’s all vote for war instead of UN inspectors. Yay!

Dick Cheney himself was the head cheerleader for a war that cost us thousands of American men and women and trillions of dollars.  Yes, that’s trillions with a TR.  And what about the Cheney lines that we’d be “treated like liberators” and the war would take “weeks not months?”  Maybe it’s a Mayan calendar.

Is his memory failing?  Does he need some magic Dr. Oz supplements to help maintain his brain?

How can Cheney blame Obama for a nasty war he engineered with the help of fearless leader President George W. Bush?

Why doesn’t Cheney blame Obama for the Holocaust and Vietnam while he’s at it.

I cringed when President Clinton said “I never inhaled,” with a straight face, but the stuff Cheney is saying is way beyond cringe-worthy.  It’s pure bullsh*t.  In short, the guy has zero/nada/zilch/no shame.

Cheney had a successful heart transplant in 2012 and we won’t go into whether he got special treatment, but before that his heart would automatically get “shocked” if there were irregular beats.  Can you imagine Cheney getting shocked every time he told a lie?  Shock-a-rama!

To sum it up, even though Cheney has a new heart, I’m not sure at all it’s in the right place.  And as for a brain?  Let’s just call it small.

Cruise Control

When the Ship Hits the Fan

All rights reserved by ashbuckles

By Risë Birnbaum

Some of my best vacations have been on cruise ships with family and friends.  There’s something nice about hanging up my clothes just once in that small closet, never packing or unpacking again and then waking up to a new port every day (as well as the 27 lounges, piano players, bingo, art auctions, poker tourneys, free ice cream, the casino and dancing under the stars in a sleeveless cocktail dress on New Year’s Eve).

Mrs. Bieber and Mrs.LaBeouf Please Take Your Children Home

Dumb and Dumber.  You look at these rich pishers and you want to shake them and ask, “Are you nuts?”  ‘Cause that’s definitely how they’re behaving…like spoiled, 6-year-olds who need a time out, or better yet, time in some kind of 162-step program.

The Weiner-Mobile

A ballsy move in NYC.  zcomm’s Risë Birnbaum has more in her latest blog

(ZPR) – Anthony Weiner is back where he wants to be – smack in front of the camera.  But this time the guy’s wearing big boy pants.

Think about it.  This dude is barely back from e-mailing pics of his hefty package to women (like marky mark on crack) and now he’s all zipped up and running for mayor.  Life is stranger than fiction.