Anarchy In the U.K. (and in the U.S.A.)

Riots have broken out in Great Britain over the unpopular austerity programs the coalition government led by Prime Minister David Cameron, with several blocks of houses and flats in some of London's poorest neighborhoods being set ablaze - or alight, as the locals would say. Gunfire and the throwing of Molotov cocktails and gunfire have been reported in neighborhoods such as Croydon and Tottenham. Similar unrest has been reported in Birmingham and Liverpool in the worst wave of riots since the late seventies and the early eighties. What usually happens in the United Kingdom usually happens in the United States next.

In America, the unemployed and underemployed middle-class seethe over a debt ceiling deal that rewards the wealthy and a President that proposes modest reforms to the tax code when bolder action is needed - Obama looks less Rooseveltian and more Cartereqsue by the day. The Dow Jones average plunged 634 points yesterday and the Republicans resist doing anything to create jobs that involve "government spending." Meanwhile, Wisconsin progressives are striving to get enough Republican state senators voted out of office in recall elections today to help the Democrats take over the Wisconsin State Senate and block the "reforms" of Governor Scott Walker in advance of an effort to have him recalled in 2012. Americans are getting angrier.

This is the season, stormy weather's on the way . . ..