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Title: Trump quasi-endorses Le Pen: "She’s the strongest on what’s been going on in France"
Source:
HotAir
URL Source: http://hotair.com/archives/2017/04/ ... -strongest-whats-going-france/
Published: Apr 22, 2017
Author: Allahpundit
Post Date: 2017-04-22 00:59:11 by Tooconservative
Keywords: None
Views: 8609
Comments: 31
Coincidentally she’s also the preferred candidate of Vladimir Putin, who correctly sees in her victory not just the end of the European Union but potentially the end of NATO. His bet on Trump during the campaign hasn’t paid off for him (so far). A bet on Le Pen, replete with interference on her behalf, is a surer thing. Trump was careful today to say he’s not formally endorsing her, knowing how that would irritate the French establishment and potentially some undecided French voters, but this is an endorsement in everything but name. “She’s the strongest on borders, and she’s the strongest on what’s been going on in France,” Trump said in the Oval Office interview. “Whoever is the toughest on radical Islamic terrorism, and whoever is the toughest at the borders, will do well in the election.”… U.S. presidents typically avoid weighing in on specific candidates running in overseas election. But Trump suggested his opinion was no different from an average observer, saying, “Everybody is making predictions on who is going to win. I’m no different than you.” I’m pretty sure his opinion counts differently than an AP reporter’s, especially when it’s published two days before the French vote. Anyway, for all of the hype lately about Steve Bannon being marginalized in the White House, this is a solid victory for him. Bannon is a Le Pen admirer and has been candid about wanting to see the nationalist tide in the U.S. and UK sweep across Europe. It’s been rough sledding lately, though, with the poor performance of Geert Wilders’s party in the Dutch elections last month and the decline of the AfD in Germany, which has been tanking in recent polls. By back-patting the National Front, Trump’s giving his nationalist base a boost and clawing back some of the credibility he’s lost with them over the last few weeks as Kushner and Cohn have nudged Bannon aside for influence. At a minimum, nationalists want Le Pen in the top two on Sunday, which will advance her to the national runoff in two weeks. The worst-case scenario for them is that she misses the cut; the best-case is that she faces off with communist Jean-Luc Melenchon, another Putin admirer whose radicalism might push centrists into Le Pen’s camp and make her president. If her opponent is either of the two centrist candidates, Emmanuel Macron or Francois Fillon, she’s expected to lose but stands a chance. So who’s the favorite? Errrrrr, no one knows. The polls have been absurdly even for weeks, with Macron and Le Pen around 22-23 percent apiece and Fillion and Melenchon a few points back in the 19-20 range. Given the margin of error, any two of the four could end up in the runoff. On top of that, data nerds suspect that French pollsters are “herding” their results, i.e. fiddling with their assumptions to make their numbers more closely resemble their competitors’ because they’re worried about publishing data that looks like an outlier. Put all of that together and there’s no telling, really, who’s winning. PredictWise currently has Macron as a 56 percent favorite to become president with Le Pen next at 20 percent, but why they have any faith in the polling under the circumstances, I have no idea. Another question: What effect might Trump’s quasi-endorsement have on Le Pen’s chances? Nationalists there may be cheered by support from nationalists here, just as the reverse is true, but what about the wider French electorate? A poll taken early last October, about a month before the U.S. voted, found that 86 percent of French citizens wanted Clinton to win versus 11 percent who preferred Trump. A few weeks later, a YouGov poll put the split at 62/9, with five percent saying they thought Trump would be a “good” or “great” president and 69 percent saying he’d be “poor” or “terrible.” There’s serious backlash potential to his warm words for Le Pen — if the French get to hear about it. By law, French media is required to black out election news beginning at midnight tonight until the votes are counted on Sunday. Apparently Trump’s words are already being reported on some French news sites, but not everyone may find out before the first round of voting. Then again, hadn’t all interested parties already guessed which way he’s leaning? And if you’re a French voter, would that matter to you more than, say, who’ll best handle terrorism after Thursday’s Paris attack? Here’s a gassy little video fart that Macron, the centrist independent, posted to Twitter yesterday. Looks like we’ve got ourselves an honest-to-goodness proxy war between the current and former U.S. administrations. As of last June, 84 percent of French citizens said they had confidence in Obama to do the right thing in world affairs. — Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) April 20, 2017 Poster Comment: So 0bama isn't endorsing Macron. Additionally, Trump isn't endorsing Le Pen. It just looks like they are. In an interview with The Associated Press, Trump said that while he is not explicitly endorsing Le Pen, the [Paris] attack [yesterday] played to her strengths. Let’s keep defending our progressive values. Thank you for this discussion @BarackObama. pic.twitter.com/8rhNdHkLo8
So it seems no one is trying to interfere in the French election except Russia.
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#1. To: All (#0)
Having destroyed America in only 100 days, Trumpzilla turns his attention to Paris.
Fresh off FNC: Le Pen now projected to win one of two slots for the runoff election. Her likely opponent is Macron. Le Pen vs. Macron = Trump vs. 0bama. I have to give the odds to 0bama but I wouldn't bet against Trump. Not even in France.
Telegraph: Marine Le Pen gets poll boost after Paris attack as Donald Trump says her chances of victory have improved I know, the Telegraph. Even so...
Since it is Saturday, maybe a classic Parisian song. The title in English would likely be rendered as "No, I regret nothing". It's a French thing. : )
Je ne regrette rien doesn't simply mean "I don't regret anything". That's the literal translation. But in French, one say that he "regrets" something to mean that he missed out on doing it. And further down that vein, it ALSO means that one looks back on something and doesn't miss it. Je ne lui regrette pas - in many contexts - means "I don't miss him". So, she's not simply singing that she's not sorry, she is also saying that didn't skip doing anything, she didn't miss anything, she did everything she wanted to do. It's a much bolder statement than just "I'm not sorry." And she's FURTHER saying "I don't miss any of it". So, I did it all, I'm not sorry, and I don't miss it. And given Edith Piaf's life story, it's true - she really did everything, she was never sorry about it...but it destroyed her health and she died at 47, so she didn't miss what she had done either. It's a virtuoso piece, Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien, and it's really a triple idiom.
The lyrics: Non, rien de rien, non, je ne regrette rien Ni le bien qu'on m'a fait, ni le mal Tout ça m'est bien égal Non, rien de rien, non, je ne regrette rien C'est payé, balayé, oublié, je me fous du passé [No, not a thing, no, I don't miss any of it. Neither the good done to me, nor the bad - It's all the same to me. No, not a thing No, I don't miss any of it. It's paid. Swept away. Forgotten. Screw my past.] Avec mes souvenirs j'ai allumé le feu Mes chagrins, mes plaisirs Je n'ai plus besoin d'eux Balayé les amours avec leurs trémolos Balayé pour toujours Je reparts a zéro [I've torched my memories, my pains, my pleasures. They are of no more use to me. I've swept away my tremulous loves, swept them away forever. I'm starting over at zero.] Non, rien de rien, non, je ne regrette rien Ni le bien qu'on m'a fait, ni le mal Tout ça m'est bien égal Non, rien de rien, non, je ne regrette rien Car ma vie, car mes joies Aujourd'hui ça commence avec toi [No, not a thing, no I don't miss any of it - not the good done to me, nor the bad - it's all the same to me. No, not a thing, no, I don't miss any of it. Because my life, because my joy, today - it begins with you.]
Well, I think the song lyrics do explain all of those sentiments pretty well. I didn't want to post a side-by-side translation. It's quite surprising how enduring this song is. It is constantly getting sung at Eurovision contests for instance. You can find dozens of such videos by mid-teen girls from Britain to Germany to Russia to Greece. It surprises me how many teens know this song well, judging by what you see on YouTube. It is a European classic, it seems. And the concerts for the Legion songs always includes it being sung by men with an orchestra. Naturally, I prefer this original. It is the most spirited. Edith Piaf certainly made her mark with it. As did the generals who tried the coup d'etat against De Gaulle. Will people remember the coup longer than the song? Well, we may never know because the song is still very popular. : ) It is a storied song that is a footnote in the history of the Legion.
I think Le Pen will complete the trifecta: Brexit, Trump, Le Pen. The common folk are rebelling, politely, through the ballot box. We, the British and the French are fortunate that we have such a system. It would be very UNfortunate to disregard what the peasants are saying. They've won the elections. Try to take away with legerdemain what they won at the ballot box, and they will come back, with pitchforks.
This line and her style so typify the chanteuses of the Parisien cafes of the era. I try to think of an iconic American singer that might compare in having one or more hits still very popular even with the young. I can only think of Patsy Cline.
The translation was mine. "Regrette" is often a faux-ami that tricks the Anglo-Saxon mind into hearing "regret", as opposed to "miss".
But I don't think Patsy Cline was raised in a whorehouse and then snatched away to follow the circus. I'm thinking Janis Joplin, except that there was nothing elegant about Janis. Dolly Parton has been too smart to sink into her senses - or at any rate get caught at it. Whitney Houston died of her addictions, but she burnt it out beforehand. Edith died of them too, but still glorious. Prince.
There is something different about this current French election. Doing interviews, people say that it is a disaster because no matter who is elected, 80% of the public will hate them. Up to 30% of the voters may cast blank ballots to object to the candidates offer. Perhaps most important, a large number of those interviewed or polled indicate they will stay home in the second round if their preferred candidate does not prevail. And that would mean the center-Left, the center-Right, and the hard Left might not unite to stop LePen. Recall how many Bernie fans felt burned by what the DNC did to tip the nomination to Hitlery over and over. They stayed home or voted for Stein. And enough of them did so for Trump to win the 3 northern industrial states. Could something similar be happening in the French electorate? Anyway, the mood as described in many publications is simply not the mood of a normal French election. Something is happening. Maybe they'll unite to defeat Le Pen again but there is an upheaval among the voters, it seems. Maybe it is Marine's perfect storm. Like Trump's perfect storm was here.
No, it was good. It just seemed to me a good song for a Saturday thread about France. And that song really fits Le Pen in many ways.
I believe that the demographic issue we have spoken of is the deepest root of it all. For we are biological creatures, designed to procreate and raise families and to see our future raised at our own hands. Birth control unmoored pleasure from parentage, and in the heady days of the Sexual Revolution who would even want to look back again. But now the streets are filling up with strangers, dark ones, with dark minds and dark actions. And the platitudes of the center offer nothing - nothing - that will stop the decline, nothing that give any HOPE. Le Pen sounds like a voice from the past, but unlike her father, not the colonial past. The past of common sense, of not wanting to see everything trampled underfoot by a bunch of,,,barbarians. By contrast, Hollande was a feckless wimp - fathered four kids, didn't even marry the mother. Sure, ha ha, it's France. But the mother was a major candidate last time. And Hollande, in his middle age, is still riding off on a moped to have sex with a mistress, while the whole country and civilization slide into the garbage chute. ENOUGH! Marine Le Pen is not Jean-Marie. What she is saying is tough, and true. It's common sense. When she created an international incident by walking out rather than agreeing to wear the headscarf to meet some grand mufti, she was firing a shot across the bow: NO. NO, we will NOT respect your dirty misogynistic culture. And since you're not going to change, stay out of our country! If they're not kept out they're just going to keep killing. They're going to do that anyway, but once you've stopped the flood in, then you can focus on taking out the chiasse among those who have already gotten through. If the streets were not filling with foreigners who shoot people and drive trucks into cars, Le Pen would not have a chance. But they are, and nobody else has a clue. That's why she'll win.
Up to 30% of the voters may cast blank ballots to object to the candidates offer. L'arbre de la liberté ne saurait croître s'il n'était arrosé du sang des rois.
I also see Le Pen as an almost Churchillian figure in French politics. She's spent her years in the wilderness of her father's bad reputation. Perhaps she will emerge from the fringe to power rather suddenly, just as Churchill did. Certainly, it would be an upheaval across the EU. It could lead to the dissolution of the EU even if Le Pen did not push for a Frexit. It reminds me of all the political writers and historians who keep telling us how much the world now resembles the political and cultural climate of a century ago. Just before WW I. I hate to admit but they have a point.
Well, Jefferson obviously agreed. It is a little surprising how much he plagiarized and no one ever mentions it.
How about this famous chestnut, which Georges Clemenceau spoke in 1895 bout his 22 year old son when challenged by a political opponent because the young man was a radical. "My son is 22 years old. If he had not become a Communist at 22, I would have disowned him. If he is still a Communist at 30, I will do it then." Soon, Clemenceau altered the language to this: N'être pas socialiste à vingt ans est preuve d'un manque de cœur ; l'être après trente ans est preuve d'un manque de tête. Clemenceau was merely adopting a line from Francois Guizot, a minister at the court of King Louis Philippe, said in the 1820s: N'être pas républicain à vingt ans est preuve d'un manque de cœur ; l'être après trente ans est preuve d'un manque de tête. Winston Churchill is said to have said the same thing, which is not surprising because the young Winston Churchill was very impressed by President Clemenceau during the First World War. But like many things that are attributed to him, Churchill didn't originate it. The tendency to attribute things to him that he didn't say even has a name "Churchillian Drift". Yogi Berra had an expression for this "I didn't say half the things I said." Generally speaking, if it is witty and you think it came from some famous person you know, he got it from some French person you don't know. Yet another example: "Kill them all - let God sort them out". The Marines claim this as their own. But actually, it was Arnaud Amaury at the siege of Beziers in 1212, who told Simon de Monfort "Tuez-les tous, Dieu reconnaîtra les siens. " "God is on the side of the bigger battalions" was originally written in 1674 by Madame de Sevigne "Dieu est tourjours pour les gros bataillons."
Macron finished #1, Le Pen #2. Now comes the inevitable outcome: DailyCaller: French Politicians Make Desperate Call To Block Le Pen Presidency IOW, exactly as they had done in past elections. Don't bother to read it as they seem to run those same articles in France in each election. Maybe they don't even bother to write new ones and just republish the same ones each time. "Hide under your beds because Le Pen is Hitler!". Very tiresome. Now we'll find out whether all those voters who said "My guy or the highway" and that they would stay home if their guy wasn't in the runoff actually were serious. If they stay home as they said they will, Le Pen has a good chance. If they change their minds and turn out, she'll be easily defeated again. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. Well, we have to be running low on pertinent French clichés by now, non?
Le Pen came in SECOND. She won't win the second tour. France will remain globalist and European. And in 50 years France will be lost. it will be a predominantly Arab, Muslim country. The Germans could be rolled back, because there were other strong nations. The Muslims cannot be. With this election, Le Pen has arrived at Moscow like Napoleon. But the winter is coming, and it's all downhill for France from here. It's terrible and it's sad, but ultimately everything dies. Nations die. Where is Babylon? Where is Sparta? Where is Rome? Gone with the Wind. By the end of this century, France and England and the rest of Europe will be facing the fate of Asia Minor in the 1200s. With Le Pen they have their chance to turn the tide, but they cannot bring themselves to do it, their civil religion is too ossified, and Christianity is dead. So the future of Europe is to become part of Dar es Islam. Maybe the Muslims really ARE the people of God. When God gives victory after victory over the course of centuries, maybe that is a sign. It's too bad.
She still has a chance but I'd bet on the shallow Macron. But I also thought there was no question of Hitlery beating Trump.
She has no chance. It's a completely different system. In the US, there are three parties: Democrat, Republican and Independent. Victory goes to the party that wins the Independents. Independents are neither reliably Left or Right. I'm an Independent, precisely because I think that Republicans are fools when it comes to economics, and Democrats are fools when it comes to national security. In general, national security trumps with me, because I recognize that international relations determine the cost of running our government. In France, though, there are four of five different parties, and the only permanent party apparatuses are the Communists, the Socialists and the National Front. The center, where French politics lie, is really the American Independents, but it is not permanently organized. Rather, it forms political alliances around specific men who are leaders. The Americans just experimented with this with Trump, who would have won on either ticket. DeGaulle was DeGaulle. His party formed around him, and was called the Gaullists. Pompidou inherited that, but he was no DeGaulle, and so Giscard arose, with the party structured around his personality. The UDF didn't really win - Giscard did. And once he lost. the UDF was effectively done. Mitterand was a Socialist, but the Socialists didn't win because they were Socialist. They won because Mitterand was a man of renown, and because the problems of Giscard's presidency made him unacceptable for a second tour. Chirac created a new party to run with, and won. But the French center is fissible, and would only endure Sarkozy for one tour. Then Hollande, another Socialist who won due to party organization not personality. The French Presidency is really an elective Kingship. It was made for a man like DeGaulle. Hollande is the antithesis of DeGaulle, and he failed spectacularly. In truth, the only other French President in the 5th Republic who had the stature of the office was Mitterand. The others were one- termers because they were not convicing Kings. Chirac was also far too weak (and dodgy) to hold the office. The only reason he was re-elected was the same reason that Macron will be elected: the opponent was a Le Pen and the Front National. In America, the Independents are very numerous and favor one side or another based on the issues. In France, the Center is Center Right, and disunited, but they all vote for the more centrist European candidate in every election. Mitterand won because he was Mitterand, running against Giscard - the same reason that anybody running against Hollande would win. Mitterand was re-elected because he was regal. All of that is to say, Le Pen has no chance. The Far Right already voted for her. The Far Left (Communists) and Center Left (Socialists) will unite with the economic right (the old UDF - essentially, Macron's niche) and provide a bloc not big enough to win. And so it will be the Republicans - the Chirac/Sarkozy/Fillon voters who will decide the election. They will break 2:1 for Macron, who shares their values but is too liberal for their tastes (in the sense that Macron will deregulate and reduce the government footprint, heading towards a much freer market than the French center right likes). Compared to Le Pen, who will dismantle the European Union, Macron is much more a fellow traveler. Le Pen cannot win. To have a chance, she had to poll first. She didn't.
Admittedly, it looks impossible. But there were multiple polls with voters saying "I'll stay home if my guy isn't in the second round". Le Pen is hoping that she doesn't have a chance in the same way that Trump didn't have a chance. Never say never. And there is at least always the chance of another Nice-style truck attack.
Back in the American election cycle, I said throughout that Trump WOULD win. I found a couple of my e-mails with my analysis early on in the Republican primary, before any of the 7 dwarves (or was it 13?) dropped out. In it, I said that Trump would have about 1600 delegates at the convention. He actually got 1745. As the election was coming, we had an office pool in which we said who we thought would win, and what the electoral vote would look like. Only three of us said Trump, and I was off by two electoral votes. I had a very good bead on what was going on in America. I'm from the Upper Midwest, the Great Lakes States, and I knew he was going to win Michigan and with it, the election. So, I'm not afraid to predict things with precision, if I believe my analysis. I told a meeting full of people the week before Brexit that the British would vote to secede from the EU, and I was right. I also said that the Scots would secede from the UK - and I was wrong about that. This time, I'm saying that Le Pen will lose. The reason is that she did not poll first. She has already reached very close to her ceiling. People said they will stay home, but the right will not stay home. Macron will get everybody who voted for him, and he will get almost all of the Fillon voters. And that alone puts him close. He will get enough Socialists and Communists who unite to stop the FN to win. Whose vote will Marine Le Pen pick up? A few disgruntled, disaffected Republicans. The vote may be depressed, but among those who DO vote, the combination of Macron's own supporters, plus Fillon's, plus some amount of the Left and Far Left, will add up to 50% plus 1. She can't win. France is going to be asked to choose between a young Napoleon who wants to take France to economic dominance in the European Union, and a rather dowdy woman who promises to pull France out of the EU. It's not going to be a close election.
Well, I guess you've really settled on that whole France-is-doomed position and I just can't talk you out of it. : )
Maybe France isn't doomed. The EU, after all, offers the possibility of a US-sized economy, if they can just get out of their own way. If Macron really makes the reforms he is promising, it will unleash liberalization all over Europe, leading to tremendous economic growth. Now, as it is economics that holds down birth rates, and Europe is not going to unravel its social welfare state, if economic growth is unleashed through deregulation, and the social welfare state is maintained, Europeans in general may feel secure enough to start having babies again. And if they do that, then France will be saved, along with Italy, Holland, Norway, Spain and the rest of them. Le Pen promises to do it through hard right conservatism...which probably won't really work because of the economics (just as Trump isn't going to have a trade war with China, but used the threat of it to get China's material aid in stopping North Korea's nuclear program). Macron is smart enough to know that he cannot reform by taking away French Social Security Retirement, or Universal Medical Care, or free education. Those "droits acquis" are sacrosanct. But the more general matter of excessive business regulation and excessive regulation of the economy CAN be addressed without people going into the streets. Make the economy more supple, and it will be more profitable. There's already enough economic support for middle class parenting that France, along with Denmark, has the highest white fertility rate in the world. If Macron can make the economy work for people by deregulating the economy and shrinking government NOT INCLUDING WEALTH REDISTRIBUTION THROUGH SOCIAL SPENDING, the economic excess may be enough to edge the whites back above replacement level. And if that happens, France will survive.
If Brussels will allow any real regulatory reform. The unaccountable EU bureaucracy is the biggest source of these regulations.
Conservative economics where you work for a living doesn't work. What a wicked brain you have. Quit ignoring what God said you ignorer. You don't have to steal from a hard worker and give their fruits to a lazy ass. You have the ideology of a thief at times. So quit talking like a piece of shit democrat thief. You need to read evaluate your position. Get it to line up with God's economics. Not Satan's you must steal and give to someone else. It is such a simple and we'll documented concept. It's like you keep failing a third grade test.
You talk newspeak. How can you REDISTRIBUTE something that was never distributed? You can't. It is newspeak talk of a thief. Remember the devil is the thief not God. God is the one who said the fruits of your labor are yours.
Brussels can stop it de jure, but they cannot stop anything de facto. They ordered France to accept British mad cow beef for years, even got an ECJ opinion demanding it. But the EU lacks the power to compel, and France ignored the order. The EU can command, but it cannot enforce. And if its commands go unenforced it is a bad precedent for them, so they are careful. Essentially, the EU can order around little countries, and they have to comply because Germany and France can hurt them by acting as the enforcement mechanism. But Germany and France are way too big to be ordered around by the EU, and if they are - as in the case of the mad cow beef - the answer is that sovereign France is more powerful than the EU institutions, that France CAN defy the EU, and nobody else is strong enough to do anything about it. And anyway, what the EU is really about is bringing the norms of the little countries in line with the Franco-German norms. It's not finding an amalgam policy, really, it's about imposing the Franco- German structures on Europe, The small countries accept it because it made it a lot richer than they were. The EU is not a union of equals, it's the French-German Coal and Steal Union opened up to include everybody else, for their mutual benefit. At the heart of it is still a two-headed eagle, and those two heads are France and Germany. There is not much distance between them, and Frau Merkel has really put her foot in it with the immigrant thing and so is attenuated. Brief: the EU isn't going to stop Macron. It will "discover" that Macron was right. He's talking about economic liberalization, and the Benelux and Scandinavian and Eastern European countries like that anyway, so Macton could end up saving Europe by pulling up France.
I speak reality. France HAS BEEN redistributing the wealth of the top to the middle and bottom for a century: universal health care, universal education, universal pensions - these are the fundamental redistributive structures of the modern French (and European, and to a lesser extent, American) republics, and they work to massively raise the standard of living of the whole nation, while only somewhat burdening the rich. American Republicans like you want to be the Marie-Antoinette party and go back. Nobody is going back. And since you can't win the point politically, not ever, you want to sneer and dismiss social welfare structures as being of the Devil. But they're not that either. They're Christian. They're Christian, they're moral, and they are the foundation of the modern middle class state. Republicans and Rightists can cut regulation of business and fiddle around with business taxes, but Social Security, Health Care and Public Education are going to continue to be financed by the state, because they should be, and a vast supermajority knows that. If Ayn Rand Republicans want to retreat into an ivory tower and pour scorn down on everybody else, they can. You can't teach a Sneetch. The monarchy is gone. Slavery is gone. Serfdom is gone. And the modern welfare state, which keeps serfdom from returning, is here to stay. The question of government is how to fund it, how to expand the economy to be able to fund what must be done. Some -like you.- think the discussion should be whether or not we should do those things at all. Put to a vote of the people, the answer is a resounding YES. YES we are going to maintain Social Security, some form of Medicare, and universal public education. Yes, it costs a fortune. Yes, we're going to pay for it through redistributive taxation. The thing that Democrats and Republicans in Congress haggle about is HOW, not WHETHER. You want to still go back and argue about WHETHER, and you want to enlist Christ on your side to do it. But he's not, and neither are the bulk of the people. And they never will be. So, the question for you is: can you move on from your initial position? Reagan did not dismantle the social welfare state. In fact, he didn't even TRY. The Bush's didn't. Trump won't. That will not happen. Republicans recognize that BUSINESS can be deregulated and grow - which produces more taxes, which can BETTER FUND the social welfare state. That's REAL government. On chat boards hard right philosophers dream of returning to a day without a social welfare state and wealth redistribution through it. And you even talk as though your position is normative, and that people who speak in terms of reality, like me, are engaging in newspeak or whatever. There is nothing new about social welfare. Social Security was invented by Bismarck, and it led to the rise of the German nation to be the economic superpower that it is. We are never going back, not ever. We can talk about what it would be like if we did. We SAW a live experiment in this with the collapse of the USSR. Life expectancies retreated by 15 years, general poverty and homelessness and near starvation of poor people was seen everywhere, with surging criminality. It was a bad scene. Want to see states without social welfare and wealth redistribution? Somalia. Mauritania. the Kongo. The most disease infested shitholes with the shortest life expectancies. Government is necessary for the modern middle class world. The Republican/Democrat question is merely how much government is required in the ECONOMY. We ALREADY KNOW that it is necessary to get universal education, pensions and health care for the old and very sick. THAT is reality. To say otherwise is to engage is pure fantasy that will never be seriously entertained by anybody with any power, because it's patently ridiculous. And to FUND THAT requires wealth redistribution. Just truth.
#2. To: All (#0)
#3. To: All, Vicomte13 (#0)
#4. To: All, Vicomte13 (#3)
After all, it's well known Piaf dedicated her 1960 recording of the song to the French Foreign Legion--and that, in 1961, when the Legion's 1st Foreign Parachute Regiment had backed the failed coup attempt by the French military, the Legionnaires left their barracks singing "Non, je ne regrette rien."
#5. To: Tooconservative (#4)
#6. To: Tooconservative (#4)
(Edited)
#7. To: Vicomte13 (#5)
So, she's not simply singing that she's not sorry, she is also saying that didn't skip doing anything, she didn't miss anything, she did everything she wanted to do. It's a much bolder statement than just "I'm not sorry."
#8. To: Tooconservative (#3)
#9. To: Vicomte13 (#6)
(Edited)
I'm starting over at zero.
#10. To: Tooconservative (#7)
#11. To: Tooconservative (#9)
#12. To: Vicomte13 (#8)
The common folk are rebelling, politely, through the ballot box.
#13. To: Vicomte13 (#10)
The translation was mine.
#14. To: Tooconservative (#12)
#15. To: Tooconservative (#12)
Doing interviews, people say that it is a disaster because no matter who is elected, 80% of the public will hate them.
#16. To: Vicomte13 (#14)
Marine Le Pen is not Jean-Marie. What she is saying is tough, and true. It's common sense. When she created an international incident by walking out rather than agreeing to wear the headscarf to meet some grand mufti, she was firing a shot across the bow: NO. NO, we will NOT respect your dirty misogynistic culture. And since you're not going to change, stay out of our country!
#17. To: Vicomte13 (#15)
L'arbre de la liberté ne saurait croître s'il n'était arrosé du sang des rois.
#18. To: Tooconservative (#17)
#19. To: Vicomte13 (#18)
#20. To: Tooconservative (#19)
#21. To: Vicomte13 (#20)
With this election, Le Pen has arrived at Moscow like Napoleon. But the winter is coming, and it's all downhill for France from here.
#22. To: Tooconservative (#21)
(Edited)
She still has a chance but I'd bet on the shallow Macron. But I also thought there was no question of Hitlery beating Trump.
#23. To: Vicomte13 (#22)
All of that is to say, Le Pen has no chance. The Far Right already voted for her. The Far Left (Communists) and Center Left (Socialists) will unite with the economic right (the old UDF - essentially, Macron's niche) and provide a bloc not big enough to win.
#24. To: Tooconservative (#23)
(Edited)
Never say never.
#25. To: Vicomte13 (#24)
#26. To: Tooconservative (#25)
Well, I guess you've really settled on that whole France-is-doomed position and I just can't talk you out of it. : )
#27. To: Vicomte13 (#26)
If Macron really makes the reforms he is promising, it will unleash liberalization all over Europe, leading to tremendous economic growth.
#28. To: Vicomte13 (#26)
#29. To: Vicomte13 (#26)
#30. To: Tooconservative (#27)
#31. To: A K A Stone (#29)
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