…and the Pendulum Slowly Swings to the Right
The Brits have already voted for Brexit and given the Prime Minister’s job to a conservative, Theresa May, who campaigned on that platform. The talks for this change will begin in March this year.
Next autumn, the French will have their own election for a new President. François Fillon is the leading Republican candidate, but has come under scrutiny because his wife Penelope has been getting a fat paycheck since before 2002. The work contracts that she signed have yet to turn up. Fillon insists that her employment is all above board, and these complaints are nothing but attempts to discredit him, part of an “institutional coup d’etat from the left’, per this BBC article. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-38826458
Nepotism is never a pretty thing, is it? Pres. Trump’s (get used to that) son-in-law has been hit with the nepotism label.
Unfortunately for Mr. Fillon, the Froggies do not like to see someone getting what they think is a free ride, any more than we do. French farmers may dump truckloads of tomatoes on a roadside if they can’t get the price they expect to get, but in France, there is no such thing as ‘le fromage gratuit’.
In the discussion in that article the author looks at the possibility of Marine LePen getting the position of President, and holds it as unlikely. However, Mlle. LePen is a Frexiteer. Her father founded the National Front, and she is its leader. She has changed and softened its positions and image, including expelling her father from the party, but it’s still quite conservative.
In the opinion of author Barry Gordon, “if there were a referendum in France on the EU, they would vote to leave. I don’t know if a vote would actually go that way, but it is indicative of popular sentiment. A referendum on the constitution in Italy at the end of last year turned into a referendum on the EU, and the anti-vote won. In Finland, severe curbs are being placed on immigration. Austria has just banned the wearing of the veil in public.” He predicted a year ahead that Trump would win the US elections last fall. LePen is quite protectionist and wants France to leave the Eurozone and the Schengen Area, which allows free movement across national boundaries. She is the only candidate with enough radicalism to bring about such changes.
Brexit begins in earnest in Autumn; through the summer, we’ll see what Gordon has termed a ‘phony Brexit’, more a rehearsal than the real thing. This BBC article defines the Brexit talks as “on a humongous scale”. http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-38825830
Two to three years after the Spring elections in Germany and the Fall elections in France, in addition, we should see a complete change. Antiglobalism is raising its head.
Category: Foreign Policy
And the West wakes up.
As for President Trump’s hiring his son in law, there are two separate legal bases for its being okay. The first is that the White House is not an agency, as the applicable, nepotism-barring law contemplates that term, and so that law doesn’t apply. The second is that a 1978 law gives the president the authority to hire who he wants in the White House, without regard to other laws. If that’s not enough, the salary of his son in law is zero. That’s right. He is doing the job for nothing.
Yes, and that was the point: he got hit with that label, even though it didn’t apply. Jack Kennedy put brother Bobby in the seat of Attorney General, and no one said a word.
No one said a word? All hell broke loose. Actually, the anti-nepotism law was generated precisely b/c of that. LBJ signed the law in 1967. The difference is that Robert was placed in an agency, heading up DOJ and was not working in the White House, or for free.
No, really. Maybe I was just being a teenager or something, but I don’t remember it getting much attention in the local papers or my folks saying much about it. I must have missed something there. My bad.
To use a famous quote, “It’s not the beginning of the end; it’s the end of the beginning.” Time to put the adults back in charge.
Marine le Pen is a blunt and harsh instrument without any finesse, with all the good and bad attendant to that feature, but her philosophy and principle of leadership is probably what a totally rudderless and collapsing France needs right now…
Hold ’em by the nose and kick ’em in the ass.
It seems more and more Frogs are getting sick of the socialist bullshit they’ve been choking themselves with for decades. I wish them luck.
As for Krautland, it seems that those unruly “refugees” that dumb bitch Merkel welcomed are inspiring a new undercurrent in German society, and its motto seems to be “You wouldn’t like us when we’re angry.”
Interesting times indeed.
I’ll believe that when I read/see reports of groups of MEN walking down the streets with bats, clubs, cricket bats, et al, leaving broken muzzies in their wake.
Woodie, you may see that happen with younger men who would be considered ‘thugs’ in polite society. That was what happened when all those fires were started in London in 2011. I’d rather not see London burning, but the other stuff – well, if it’s happened before, it can happen again.
They are still having a sale on French rifles, still only dropped once! That was always my dear father’s favorite joke! God how I miss and love him! What I wouldn’t give to have another of our famous monday night hour long phone calls……..
Eh, Lars has not shown up with his Lars-Facts?
Fuck Lars and fuck his mom for not swallowing.
Are we sure that Lars even has a mom?
The way he talks I’m thinking it was two dads and a ” do it yourself” kit.
I wonder if he wasn’t cultured from a vial of DNA marked “DEFECTIVE, DO NOT USE”?
The guy I quoted, Barry Gordon, has been right about a lot of things. He lives in the UK, so he’s closer to what goes on there than we are. He has good insight on these things. His take on Fillon was that Fillon had been the Prime Minister and thus is well-known and would be less effective than LePen, who is mostly untested so far.
A Gentleman and Mentor I once attended Church with (Retired Army LTC, Korea & Vietnam Vet) told me his theory was that politics is like a pendulum and it swings both ways. I have to say I agree, we’ve had such a hard swing to the left the past eight years we’re now in a strong swing to the right, enough of working, productive American Citizens have had enough of being overtaxed and over regulated with too much of what they work for being taken and handed to those who won’t work.
Thank God for the tweeter in chief (get used to that)! Glad he could take a minute away from his unsecure twitter prone Samsung phone to shit all over the Australian PM, our second most important ally in WESTPAC, in a PHONECON, because, you know, five eyes and all. Yeah.
Ah, right, the media always give us the plain truth, unbiased and unslanted.
Better the smooth-talking bullshitter, that everyone knows is a bullshitter, making bullshit deals that advantage everyone but US.
Riiigggghhhhhttttt!
Keep that up, and Trump cake-walks to a second term. Please! All your base are belong to us!
11B,
You day man. Thanks for keeping me honest. Like I said to 2/17 below, I am disappointed in this situation because of the public thrashing the Aussie PM took. They are great friends and they truly like us. Every time I’ve pulled into a port there I have never had to buy a beer once they find out your a yank and I’m the military. Since this was leaked from inside the administration, I am not going to doubt it too much. Everybody had better get used to leaks in the press. You can’t fire every goobermint employee and enough people don’t like Trump so every time he steps on his crank it’ll get out in open source (and he appears to be good at stepping on it). President Trump is fine with me though, he’s my president. That Bannon dude though, maybe not so much.
W2. Aren’t you in Japan and glad you’re not here. Didn’t you say that recently, or am I mistaken?
2/17, I am in Japan. I guess my point should haven been that Australia has been nothing but a good friend and ally to us, better than our so called “NATO allies”. They don’t ask for much. If the immigrant thing was an issue, handle it back channel. You don’t shit in your friends.
If you pay attention to Australian politics they are swinging back to the Right.
I don’t think their PM is a very popular guy right now for his liberal immigration policies. I might be wrong, but there is a woman MP that seems to be gaining popularity over her Pro-Trump outlook.
Why in the hell is Australia dumping refugees from other countries here? It’s a big place with plenty of land, wide open spaces, and climate that will make many different peoples feel right at home. I’ll tell you why, because Australia has the toughest immigration laws around. Those refugees? A couple of hundred were determined not to be refugees at all. And they are all in off shore camps, locked up because they came to Australia by boat. Huh? That’s right. Australia doesn’t permit people who show up on its turf by boat to become anything there but prisoners. These people were lucky. Others have been turned away, back out to sea at gunpoint. So, that guy who President Trump replaced, the former community organizer, agreed to take Australia’s problem and give it to us. Thus, the Australian PM has been silent about President Trump’s topical executive order and had nothing ill to say about his phone conversation. No shit. And speaking of Japan, that bastion of understanding, kindness to all, and international love, what does its immigration situation look like (rook rike?) Well, as far as refugees go, in 2015 2700 people applied for refugee status and 27 were approved. That’s a vast improvement over 2014 when 11 of 500 were approved. And Muslims? Fahgetaboutit. No matter whether the Muslims are Japanese citizens. The government not only spies on them, watches them, but in a case decided by Japan’s Supreme Court in 2015, brought by Japanese Muslims who learned they were being watched, it’s all quite good with the court.
Is this another episode of ‘The Boat People’?
Japanese muzzies? I can kinda picture them facing Mecca and saying “Awrah Akhball”.
*snerk*
PM Malcom Turnbull got this agreement out of the Obama administration. I question how much of this came about as a suggestion from the Aussies, as it did from our former Administration here in the US.
Every country’s immigration policy is their business. I ain’t going to tell Australia or Japan how to handle any of that since they are both sovereign nations. I will say that publicly shitting on your friends is bad form, and maybe you don’t have so many friends if you do. This ain’t buying a selling real estate, a zero sum game. We need all our friends in theater, like Japan, if there is ever a naval shooting war in the South China Sea.
“I will say that publicly shitting on your friends is bad form, and maybe you don’t have so many friends if you do.” That’s a gross exaggeration of what happened. The Australian PM says their talk was cordial but, just as here, in the USA, the press is having its fun, speculating what a lil butthurt might do to China/Australia and US/Australia relations. Me, I’m sick and tired of this nation’s or that nation’s opinion of OUR nation and OUR government. And Foster’s is shitty beer.
Foster’s is piss and the Aussies don’t drink it. They do brew a little thing called VB (Victoria Bitters) that is the shiznits. I have much love for the Aussie navy, they drive ships like they stole them (might have) and up until recently still had ex-DDG-2 (Charles F Adams) class in their inventory. I care about what other governments say. May not change the calculus of a decision, but when you’re bound by defense treaties, like we have with Japan, ROK, PI and Australia, the least we could do is treat them with a little respect before the shooting starts.
Corection: 11 of 5000!
Correction: Correction. (Tell me that isn’t funny.)
😉
Muhahahahahaa!