What sparked the explosion of "les déplorables" in flyover France was an ever-growing skein of nanny-state regulations

Paris … hunkered down for the latest Yellow Saturday,the fourth in a row that has brought tens of thousands of yellow-jacketed protesters — the gilets jaunes — into the streets.

Thus reports Anne-Elisabeth Moutet from Paris in the New York Post.
(See also How Fake News Has Misrepresented the Yellow Vest Revolt in France and
BLOGGER IN PARIS IN THE MIDST OF TEAR GAS CANISTERS RAINING DOWN ON THE CROWDS (video))

Many come from the provinces, where President Emmanuel Macron’s gas tax would hit hardest. But their ranks also include growing numbers of violent activists from both political extremes — think antifa side-by-side with Charlottesville white supremacists. They [all converged] on the City of Light to scream at our aloof young leader that they’re mad as hell and not going to take it anymore. Call them les déplorables.
Still, Macron says nothing. Instead, he sent out Prime Minister Édouard Philippe to promise technical measures that satisfy no one. The disintegration of Macron, once the president the world supposedly envied, is perhaps the most amazing part of this current flyover-France revolt.

He ticked all the boxes. He wanted more integration in the European Union. He’d fight populists at home and abroad. He’d put France back to work after three decades of 10 percent unemployment. He’d welcome more refugees. He’d save the planet!

Macron lectured President Trump, in good English, before Congress last spring. Save the Iran deal, he enjoined, and the Paris accord on climate. Concrete results? There were none, but the speech was broadcast live on all French news channels.

More recently, Macron pledged to sign an open-borders UN pact on world migration, which the US, Australia, Israel and a handful of European nations reject. He said France’s cherished secularist 1905 laws should be revised, largely to help the country’s newest religion, Islam, integrate within French society. Worst of all: Members of his party have indicated that Macron is willing to give up France’s UN Security Council seat to the European Union.

None of these decisions please anyone in the country, save the clone-like Macronista hipsters in Paris and a few large cities. They are men and women in their 30s and 40s — affluent, well-educated, in competitive jobs, able to afford the crazy rents in places like Paris, Bordeaux or Lyon.

Safe in gentrified neighborhoods, they welcome “diversity” and see themselves as morally superior. They welcomed a president in their own image, especially as he faced the National Front’s Marine Le Pen, the perfect foil, in last year’s election.

A new face, the people mistook Macron for a new broom: After all, he kicked out all the old, tired incumbents, left and right. Voters discounted the fact that he himself is a former top technocrat, bred in the most elite schools in the country. He believes in all the Davos pieties.

It was Macron’s green obsession that eventually sparked the explosion. The gilets jaunes are a grassroots movement, born in hundreds of provincial small towns and villages across the country. They are farmers, small businessmen, truck drivers, waiters, nurses — or jobless. They have no official spokespersons. It was on Facebook that they resolved to adopt as their symbol the yellow, high-visibility jackets that the French are required to keep in their cars in case of accidents.

For years, they have seen their livelihoods threatened — by plant closures, inflation, the disappearance of public services like small train lines, hospitals, schools and local post offices. They need their cars, however old and beat-up, to drive their kids to school, to shop, to find and hold a job.

Their lives are fenced in by an ever-growing skein of nanny-state regulations. Before the fuel tax, there was the unpopular rollback of the speed limit on France’s roads to 80 kilometers (49 miles) per hour from 90 (56). The same week, bureaucrats added dozens of new requirements for vehicles, forcing many cars off the road.

Macron’s government offered drivers a $4,500 bonus to buy electric cars: a Marie-Antoinette moment seen as an insult by les déplorables.

Resisting pressure to cave in, Macron conceded too little, too late … His job is secure; it would take a lot to remove him. But the time for the great reforms he was elected to make now seems past: All that’ll remain, hidden in his Élysée Palace, will be the youngest lame-duck president of the Fifth Republic.

BLOGGER IN PARIS IN THE MIDST OF TEAR GAS CANISTERS RAINING DOWN ON THE CROWDS (video)

 
The webmaster of No Pasarán almost felt he was being deliberately targeted as the tear gas canisters started raining down on the yellow vest protesters around him on the Avenue de Friedland, one of the roads leading up to the Place Charles de Gaulle l'Étoile, already covered not in fog but in tear gas.

Whether it was related or simply a coincidence, the crowds had started chanting "Macron ! Démission| (Macron resign!) when the bombardment started.

As I wrote last week, in How Fake News Has Misrepresented the Yellow Vest Revolt in France:

There is nary a single media report about the Yellow Vest demonstrations in Paris and France that I’ve read or watched that has not been slanted by Fake News.

It has (usually) not been deliberate, I gather, and nobody has said anything factually wrong; what is the problem is the fact that (very) important stuff has been omitted. (Update: merci au Professeur Glenn Reynolds.)

It is not wrong to say that the demonstrations were caused by the government's decision to raise gas prices. What is missing is that this is just one of several draconian measures dating back half a year, i.e., ‘tis the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.

For the past four to five months, the French government has done nothing but double down on bringing more and more gratuitous oppression and more and more unwarranted persecution measures down on the necks the nation's drivers and motorcycle riders.

In fact, the imposition of ever harsher rules has been going on for the past decade and a half or so — whether the government was on the right or on the left …/…

 …/… What has been most irksome for les Français since the turn of the century has been the ubiquitous radars, which, like red-light cameras in the United States, are accused of having (far) more to do with bringing revenue to the state than with road safety.

And just like the arms industry in the Soviet Union, if there was one area of France where the technology was always moving forward, it was the radar business.

Over the years, the radars have become evermore stealthy and insidious. …/… What has happened since shows the Deep State at work in Europe just as much as, if not more than, in North America — and this leftist statism is the kind of news that has been ignored by the mainstream media, in France itself as much as abroad. …/…

WE ARE NOT MILCH COWS!

All of which brings us to 2018. This year, as mentioned, Emmanuel Macron's government has doubled down on the repressive measures.

• On July 1, Prime Minister Édouard Philippe did what no other country in Europe or in the West (or, as far as I  know, on the planet) has done: go against the march of progress and lower the slowness limit (sorry, the speed limit) on secondary (country) roads by 10 km/h, decreasing the limit from 90 km/h (56 mph) to 80 km/h (50 mph).
.
• At about the same time came the contracts that the government decided to write with private corporations, handing the business of the state's (plainclothes) gendarmes over to their company employees, to take over the business of the mobile radars in their shiny new fleets of vehicles. (Meanwhile, other private companies have been getting similar contracts from city governments, meaning wage earners doing mostly nothing but driving up and down the city streets, while a license plate reader decides which cars' owners will be getting automatically-generated fines.)

This is actually the point at which the first protests started. During the summer, the country saw a huge increase in instances of destruction (or incapacitation) of radars on the roadside. Many were defaced with paint, others were set on fire, while still others were simply covered with something like a garbage bag (one man arrested while covering a radar was let free by a judge who decided that since the garbage bag hadn't actually brought any physical harm to the machine in any way, the defendant could not be accused of destroying it).

• More recently, the government added more gratuitous sanctions to the driver’s license point system, which is already far more punitive than that of most European countries, not least neighboring Germany's.

• Finally, with the announcement of the gas prise rise, the French said "Enough is enough." And that was when the entire nation seemed to get together via the internet to mount the Yellow Vest revolt.

Guess What: Don't Democrats such as Beto in Fact Agree — 100%! — with Trump that Central American Countries Are Shitholes?!

As supporters call on Beto O'Rourke to run for president in 2020,

writes Chantal Da Silva in Newsweek (gracias por Instapundit—y tambien por Stephen Green),

the Texas Democrat slammed  Donald Trump administration's handling of the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border.

In a message posted online to Medium on Sunday, O'Rourke called on the U.S. government to handle the situation at the southern border "the right way" after U.S. Border Patrol agents fired teargas at hundreds of Central American migrants who had rushed the U.S.-Mexico border.

"It should tell us something about her home country that a mother is willing to travel 2,000 miles with her 4-month old son to come here," O'Rourke, who lost his Senate bid against Republican incumbent Ted Cruz in the midterm elections, wrote in a message posted online to Medium.

Repeat after me: "It should tell us something about her home country that a mother is willing to travel 2,000 miles with her 4-month old son to come here."

Doesn't Robert Francis O'Rourke, in other words, agree — doesn't he agree 100% — with none other than… Donald Trump?!

When they moan the fate of the migrants and of the refugees, what are all Democrats and all leftists, American or foreign, doing if not essentially agreeing with the sentiment (if not the choice of words) allegedly expressed by Donald Trump — that those countries are (wait for it)… sh*tholes?

In fact, what are the very migrants, legal or otherwise, and refugees from Central America and, in Europe, from the Middle East and Africa, saying — with their feet — if it isn't that the places they were born and have been living in are sh*tholes?!

As I write in What Kind of Startling Groups Might Tend to Agree with Trump About "Shithole Countries"?,

What kind of surprising groups might tend to agree with President Donald Trump on calling places like Haiti, El Salvador, and various nations in Africa "shithole countries", not to mention many others?

No, no, you're wrong: the answer is not those revolting racists who belong to the despicable Republican party.

1) The first jaw-dropping answer is (wait for it) the citizens of Haiti, the citizens of El Salvador, and the citizens of various nations in Africa, not to mention the citizens of many others.

 … you would be surprised to hear how many individuals agree if not with the wording itself, certainly with the sentiment behind it.

Indeed, isn't the very fact that so many of these citizens are emigrating to America, or to the West, in the first place a pretty strong sign of what they think, if not in those exact terms, of the regions they were born in?

Wittingly or otherwise, the Texas congressman from El Paso goes on to confirm as much:

"People are leaving violent countries where they fear for their lives," the Democrat wrote. "Without money, they are subsisting on hope for their kids, for themselves, that they can get to safety. After being denied the ability to lawfully petition for asylum for the last 10 days, they are desperate."

O'Rourke said that in the "longer term," the U.S. government must also "work with the people of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador," where many asylum seekers have traveled from over fears of violence and economic and political instability, "to address underlying conditions that are causing them to flee in the first place." 

Check out Beto's words again: "It should tell us something about [a refugee's] home country" [with its] "underlying conditions that are causing them to flee in the first place"; "People are desperate" to get out of the "violent countries where they fear for their lives"…

Translation: I, Beto O'Rourke; we, members of the Democrat Party; we, leftists all over the world, I/we agree with Donald Trump 100% that countries in Latin America are sh*tholes.

• Related: Even liberals know that Haiti, El Salvador, and Africa are “shitholes”; in fact, it seems to be their recurring argument for why we need to prioritize citizens of those nations in our immigration policy (!)

Furthermore:

"Those applicants ultimately granted asylum will then live in the U.S., make us a better country for being here"

If all these migrants are such outstanding citizens, why — why on Earth — would leftists not want them to go home for that very reason, in order to make their nations — their own nations (rather than the USA, which hardly needs those outstanding citizens) — better countries?!

Speaking of which: and to change the subject to gun violence: If los Estados Unidos is such a violent place, shouldn't Latin Americans be staying put?! Indeed, shouldn't the migratory movements be reversed, i.e., shouldn't masses of U.S. citizens be doing their utmost to escape the U.S. and be trying to immigrate, by any ways possible — legally or otherwise — to Mexico, to Honduras, to El Salvador?!

If Beto O'Rourke was president, here's how he would handle migrant caravan https://t.co/Id1rHslM9K pic.twitter.com/CvUBPbYMcr

— Newsweek (@Newsweek) November 26, 2018

How Fake News Has Misrepresented the Yellow Vest Revolt in France

Demonstrating with the Yellow Jackets on the Champs Élysées against la répression du gouvernement. It was quite festive in the beginning; but cats are not partial to tear gas, so when the tear gas grenades started raining around us, the bicycle cats said Enough and we pedaled home.

There is not a single media report about the Yellow Vest demonstrations in Paris and France that I’ve read or watched that has not been slanted by Fake News.

It has (usually) not been deliberate, I gather, and nobody has said anything factually wrong; what is the problem is the fact that (very) important stuff has been omitted. (Update: merci au Professeur Glenn Reynolds et à Monsieur Francis Turner)

It is not wrong to say that the demonstrations were caused by the government's decision to raise gas prices. What is missing is that this is just one of several draconian measures dating back half a year, i.e., ‘tis the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.

For the past four to five months, the nation's drivers and motorcycle riders have been growing increasingly irate at the "bloodsuckers" in the French government who seem to do little else, road-security-wise, but double down on bringing more and more gratuitous oppression and more and more unwarranted persecution measures down on their necks.

In fact, the imposition of ever harsher rules has been going on for the past decade and a half or so — whether the government was on the right or on the left — and that is why the choice of les gilets jaunes (the yellow jackets) by the demonstrators is particularly ironic.

The 2008 law (under the presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy) requiring the presence of high-visibility vests (gilets de haute visibilité) aka security vests (gilets de sécurité) in every vehicle — hardly an unreasonable rule, for sure, as similar ones exist throughout the continent — was just another example of the myriad of evermore-onerous rules for car and motorcycle owners over the past 15 years, and so the government in effect provided the 2018 rebels with their uniforms.

What has been most irksome for les Français since the turn of the century has been the ubiquitous radars, which, like red-light cameras in the United States, are accused of having (far) more to do with bringing revenue to the state's coffers than with road safety.

And just like the arms industry in the Soviet Union, if there is one area of France where the technology was always moving forward, it is the radar business.

Over the years, the radars have become evermore stealthy and insidious. For instance, radars have gone from contraptions being able to photograph a single car on only one side on the road, in the lane closest to the machine (with a burst of white flash quite jolting to the driver at nighttime), to taking multiple pictures over the entire roadway simultaneously of several cars driving in both directions.

The first radars were installed in 2003 under President Jacques Chirac and his interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, and in the beginning, drivers were always warned beforehand when a radar could be expected ahead (which brought about what allegedly was the desired goal, to get French cars to slow down).

What has happened since shows the Deep State at work in Europe just as much as, if not more than, in North America — and this leftist statism is the kind of news that has been ignored by the mainstream media, in France itself as much as abroad.

Eventually — in spite of the insistent promises of then-interior minister Sarkozy — new radars were installed without the signs announcing their presence.

The attempts to make the rules harsher have been so outrageous that pushback led to their demise. For instance, the attempt to have cyclists breaking the law (running a red light, for instance) lose points on their driver's licenses; or the attempt to require all cars to be equipped with a breathalyzer. (Not surprisingly, it emerged that a breathalyzer manufacturer who, naturally, was a close friend of a number of politicians, was behind the bill.)

Recently came the news of mobile radars, meaning unmarked cars loaded with a radar-installed contraption driven by gendarmes dressed in civilian clothes. (Everywhere, young boys daydream of wearing a shiny uniform and going into action to fight crime; imagine, then, a policeman being asked to put on plainclothes to do nothing but drive up and down the road or highway in order to trick otherwise honest citizens who have done nothing but "violate" a rather arbitrary administrative rule, one that has barely changed, if at all, in almost 50 years).

Meanwhile, crony capitalism has given rise to a side economy, a side economy whose only purpose revolves around the punishment of citizens with cars or motorcycles — not least with blossoming (and very expensive) driving schools for drivers to regain some of the points they have lost on their driver's licenses (again, for violations of a rather arbitrary malum prohibitum rule). If that's impossible, they lose the driver's license itself, for a year or more, which leads in turn to job losses for some 80,000 Frenchmen every year, since they can no longer drive to work.

WE ARE NOT MILCH COWS!

All of which brings us to 2018. This year, as mentioned, Emmanuel Macron's government has doubled down on the repressive measures.

• On July 1, Prime Minister Édouard Philippe did what no other country in Europe or in the West (or, as far as I  know, on the planet) has done: go against the march of progress and lower the slowness limit (sorry, the speed limit) on secondary (country) roads by 10 km/h, decreasing the limit from 90 km/h (56 mph) to 80 km/h (50 mph).
.
• At about the same time came the contracts that the government decided to write with private corporations, handing the business of the state's (plainclothes) gendarmes over to their company employees, to take over the business of the mobile radars in their shiny new fleets of vehicles. (Meanwhile, other private companies have been getting similar contracts from city governments, meaning wage earners doing mostly nothing but driving up and down the city streets, while a license plate reader decides which cars' owners will be getting automatically-generated fines.)

This is actually the point at which the first protests started. During the summer, the country saw a huge increase in instances of destruction (or incapacitation) of radars on the roadside. Many were defaced with paint, others were set on fire, while still others were simply covered with something like a garbage bag (one man arrested while covering a radar was let free by a judge who decided that since the garbage bag hadn't actually brought any physical harm to the machine in any way, the defendant could not be accused of destroying it).

• More recently, the government added more gratuitous sanctions to the driver’s license point system, which is already far more punitive than that of most European countries, not least neighboring Germany's.

• Finally, with the announcement of the gas prise rise, the French said "Enough is enough." And that was when the entire nation seemed to get together via the internet to mount the Yellow Vest revolt.

Lire mes articles sur la répression, la persécution, et le matraquage des conducteurs :
https://www.contrepoints.org/author/erik-svane

Il y du Fake News ici — Les médias (francaises et internationales) rapportent que les manifestations sont contre la hausse des prix de l’essence.

Ce n’est pas faux, mais le Fake News, c’est ce qu’on ne dit pas.

En fait, ces hausses ne sont que la goutte qui fait déborder la vase, le dernier exemple de répression, de persécution, et de matraquage depuis 4-5 mois.

• D’abord Édouard Philippe a fait ce qu’aucun gouvernement d’Europe ou de l'Occident (ou de la planète) a fait — baisser la limite de lenteur (pardon, la limite de vitesse)

• Ensuite, il y a eu la multiplication des radars, des radars de plus en plus sournois

En fait, c’est durant l’été, à la suite de ces mesures, que les protestations ont commencé :
Par une hausse impressionnante des instances de destruction des radars sur le bas-côté de la route dans tout l'Hexagone

• Par la suite, le gouvernement a endurci le permis à points, de façon gratuite, avec des punitions grotesques

• Enfin, la hausse des prix de l’essence

Qu’est la démocratie si ce n’est
le pouvoir de dire aux autorités :
Nous ne sommes pas des vaches à lait !

Midterms Are the Main Topic of French Radio Show on Trump and America

Le 21 novembre 2018, le patron d'émission du Libre journal du Nouveau Monde recevait deux invités à Radio Courtoisie pour aborder “Le point sur l’actualité aux Etats-Unis”. Le blog Instapundit a notamment été évoqué (31:27)…

Cliquez sur le lien pour entendre l'émission d'une heure et demie…

Evelyne Joslain, assistée de Stanislas, reçoit : 

• Paul Reen, membre du groupe des Républicains américains à Paris
• Erik Svane, membre du groupe des Républicains américains à Paris

Thème : “Le point sur l’actualité aux Etats-Unis”

Evelyne Joslain, essayiste pro-Trump, est "très choquée de l'attitude de @EmmanuelMacron", estimant que le président français a "insulté @realDonaldTrump lâchement" #BalanceTonPost #BTP pic.twitter.com/5EKNMNNjto

— Balance Ton Post (@BalanceTonPost) November 17, 2018

Quelques jours plus tôt, l'auteur d'une poignée de livres sur les États-Unis apparaissait sur Balance ton Poste, un talk-show de Cyril Hanouna sur Canal +.

"Donald Trump est trop bien élevé" estime Evelyne Joslain, essayiste pro-Trump

Chaque vendredi en deuxième partie de soirée, Cyril Hanouna anime un nouveau talk-show... Qui ne parlera pas que de médias ! Cyril et sa nouvelle bande l'aborderont d'une manière divertissante autour de grands débats avec des rubriques originales et étonnantes.

Pour notre débat sur l'attitude de @realDonaldTrump, nous recevons :
👉 Jean-Eric Branaa, spécialiste de la politique américaine
👉 Evelyne Joslain, essayiste pro-Trump
👉 Mehammed Amadeus Mack, Américain et professeur de français pic.twitter.com/D2QUlEpa0q

— Balance Ton Post (@BalanceTonPost) November 17, 2018

Bilan de la présidence de @realDonaldTrump :
👉 Plus de deux millions d'emplois créés en 2017
👉 PIB : 3,2% en 2017
👉 Chômage : sous les 5% en 2018
👉 Taux de croissance record au 2ème trimestre 2018#BalanceTonPost #BTP pic.twitter.com/vGWumCaNbO

— Balance Ton Post (@BalanceTonPost) November 17, 2018

The 4 Key Facts About Obama's Birth Certificate Issue that Nobody Tells You

As Michelle Obama vows that she can never forgive President Donald Trump for spreading rumors that her husband was not born in America (deriding in her memoir, Becoming, the so-called "birther" conspiracy as thinly-veiled racism), there is one certain bet about the Barack Obama birth certificate issue over the past ten years (and counting).

It is that you do not know — and that Barack and Michelle (deliberately?) ignore — the four key issues involved, and/or that you do not realize the extent of their importance.

First, a(n unfortunately) necessary disclaimer: Out of over 13,333 posts in the past 14 years, less than 10 on this blog have been about the so-called "Birther" issue (and in a couple of those, it was never even the main subject). That amounts to more than 99.925% of No Pasarán posts that do not treat Obama's birth Certificate in any way. Just so you know that you can hardly accuse (or dismiss) No Pasarán or any one of its webmasters of being associated with alleged nutjobs (at least not with regards to that issue).

Having put that out of the way, let's get started:

1) The "Birther" issue did not rise among Republicans, conservatives, and/or the unruly rubes of flyover country

(aka the bitter clingers to guns and religion; or, if you prefer, aka the basket of deplorable and irredeemable racists, sexists, homophobes, xenophobes, and Islamophobes). It started with the campaign of Hillary Clinton in 2008, involving — you know the tune — the compassionate, intelligent, humanistic, forward-looking fellow members of Obama's (and the Clintons') Democrat Party.


2) Far from being totally racist, twisted, dangerous, and/or simply abnormal, the ideas brought up by the alleged "Birther" issue (whether leveled by a Democrat or a Republican) turn out to be pretty conventional and run-of-the-mill.
And, that, on a ho-hum issue of secondary importance (aka a distraction).

May we be allowed to examine this issue — what MSM outlets like The Economist want us to dismiss instantly and categorically as "the absurd “birther” controversy" — fairly, coolly, and dispassionately?

As I wrote a few years ago, in a lengthy, an in-depth, and a dispassionate examination of the facts, of the nutjobs, and of Obama's youth:

 … Recall that Jesse Jackson tried running for president twice (in 1984 and 1988), and although he did not manage to become the Democratic Party's candidate, noone suggested that he was born abroad, and that for the simple reason that the Greenville, SC, native did not have a foreigner for a father (or for a mother) nor did he spend numerous years abroad. [Neither did Herman Cain or Ben Carson have to deal with such charges in their respective elections about a quarter century later, be it by Democrats or by the supporters of their GOP competitors.]

 … to believe that an American citizen (whatever the color of his skin) born to a foreign father who lived much of his childhood abroad may indeed have been born in a foreign country turns out not to be that far-fetched at all.

Indeed, the difference between the Truthers and the Birthers is that in the first case, we are being asked to believe that 1) hundreds, if not thousands, of government officials were approached with a view to conspire to kill thousands of their fellow citizens, all (or most) of them innocent civilians, that 2) hundreds, if not thousands, of government officials agreed (apparently without a moment of hesitation) to conspire to murder thousands of innocent civilians, and that 3) none of these hundreds (thousands) of government officials has ever had a single, even fleeting feeling of remorse, or let the cat out of the bag, say while having too much to drink (no remorse?) during a Saturday outing to a local bar.

In the second case, we do not even have a conspiracy, but basically one single man hypothetically telling a falsehood — although it might even be termed a lie of omission — a lie about what offhand is a personal matter, but has turned into the only thing (allegedly) keeping him from power (Update: The New York Times' Double Standard on Conspiracy Theories).

Most damning of all, when you pause to think of it, the castigators' proof — if it can be called that — all lies in one fact (beyond the recently released certificate of live birth): and that fact is that Obama is a man, a person, a saint whose word should never be doubted, who is capable of no lying, no evil, no chicanery. If he tells you that, say, he is a Christian, then how dare you deny he is a religious man?! How dare you imply that he is a Muslim?! How dare you state he is a socialist?!

The person who ridicules the "Birther" theory as inane has no more proof than the born-in-Hawaii skeptic of where Obama was actually born [or didn't have any more proof until over two years into Obama's presidency]: his only argument — beyond the contention that the certificate of live birth and the newspaper clipping are incontrovertible proof that are not, can not be, fakes, bureaucratic mistakes, or misinterpretations — is the indisputable "truth" that Obama is someone whose honesty should not — should never — be questioned. (Whether in regards to his private life or to his political plans for America's future.)
[Update: As it happens, we would learn in 2012 (over four years after Obama was first a candidate and over three years after he entered the White House) that a "New Book Raises Questions About Obama's Memoir" (The New York Times' Michael Shear) and that, indeed, it turns out that Obama's memories were a "fantasy (like most of the President's own memoir)" (The Daily Mail). Adds Toby Harnden: "'Barack Obama: The Story' by David Maraniss catalogues dozens of instances in which Obama deviated significantly from the truth in his book 'Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance'. The 641-page book punctures the carefully-crafted narrative of Obama’s life."]

When you think about it, it might be less worrying that some do not believe Obama was born in the United States (because of the circumstances linked to his entire childhood, much of it abroad) than that some are utterly convinced he must be born in the United States (because the Chicago pol is allegedly a sainted figure who can do, who can say no evil, who is incapable of or of lying or of falsifying documents). Again, remember the desires of some of his followers who want(ed) the constitution to be changed, only so Obama could win one election after another and end up, in one way or another and in the best of all possible outcomes, as (de facto if not de jure) president-for-life? Let me ask everybody a simple question: Who is the truly terrifying fanatic, here?

Moreover, in the past two or three election cycles, there have been (entirely valid) questions about the place of birth of… (get this) white male Republican candidates!

Imagine, if in 2008, someone raised questions about John McCain, pointing out that he spent a lot of his youth outside the United States. Indeed, it turns out that the senator from Arizona was born in Panama. What if, in 2016, someone raised questions about Ted Cruz, pointing out that he seems to have spent a lot of his youth north of the border? And, indeed, it turns out that the senator from Texas was born in Canada. (Still, it turns out that both men qualified, or qualify, as natural-born citizens and thus as U.S. presidents — as, presumably would… Barack Obama (!), even if he indeed had been born abroad!)

There have been rumors that Obama may have attended college as a "foreign student" and that his book editor listed him as born in Kenya. Even if they are piddling issues, occasionally proven false, the point has nothing to with Obama per se. (As Breitbart states, "It is evidence — not of the President’s foreign origin, but that Barack Obama’s public persona has perhaps been presented differently at different times.") The point is that the mainstream media never bothered to devote even a minute to investigate the issue (or the strategy behind the different public personas); only new online media (Breitbart and Snopes) did so.
 
3) Here comes the kicker: the so-called "Birther" charge (whether brought by a Democrat or a Republican) was never a charge leveled primarily at a man called Barack Obama or, for that matter, against a member of a minority or a person of a particular race.

It was a charge against the media. 

Indeed, as in 2) above, the "birther" charge was, and is, an entirely justifiable charge against the mainstream media. It was never about birth certificates per se. It was about the double standards that the MSM demonstrate again and again, first, between a Republican and a Democrat, and, second, between the other members of the Donkey Party and the media's preferred (i.e., its "dream") candidate.

(See Instapundit for a myriad of examples of why Glenn Reynolds refers to reporters and journalists as Democrats with bylines; or, as I call them, the fellow travelers in the (self-serving) drama queen view of America and the world.)
 
Recall Hillary Clinton referring to the SNL sketch journalists asking "Barack" if he is comfortable and needs another pillow. Here was a candidate (whatever the color of his skin) with, again, a foreign father and with long years of his childhood spent abroad (oh, and by the way, running a campaign extolling transparency): why not have a reporter or two (briefly) ask this person to (quickly) prove his credentials for the Oval Office (once and for all) — y'know, in the process of challenging politicians on their merits)?

4) The fact that the "Birther" issue was an (entirely justifiable) attack (by a Democrat or a Republican) on the mainstream media offering undeniable proof of its double standards is the very reason that it was—deliberately—turned into a scandal of humongous proportions depicting unspeakable hatred spewed by vicious packs of deranged, loony, and fanatic Neanderthals.

It was not by accident that the title of my "lengthy, in-depth, and dispassionate examination of the facts, of the nutjobs, and of Obama's youth" was The JournoList Issue No One Is Bringing Up. The reason I keep referring to the "alleged" and to the "so-called" "Birther" issue in quotation marks is that it is an entirely fabricated story (or narrative, to use the MSM's preferred expression), by members of the mainstream media itself, with an entirely fabricated cast of nasty and dangerous villains, consisting of mobs of zealous trouble-makers and despicable enemies of the people. 

The ensuing pearl-clutching "omigod-don't-tell-us-that-you-are-one-of-those-racist-clods?!" attitude was, and is, in no way a defense of Obama or the occupant of the White House; it was, and it is, a defense of the mainstream media.

It was and is certainly not a gallant and high-principled attack on hate and bigotry, in defense of a minority member sitting in the White House.  

It was and is a shameful, a disgusting, and an un-American attempt to shut down debate by shaming anyone wishing to take a deeper look into the biggest single piece of evidence exposing the MSM's (bogus) credentials of neutrality and impartiality.

Great minds think alike: Pope Francis Asks to See Michael Moore in Private and Tells Him that "Capitalism is a sin"

"Capitalism is a sin" Pope Francis said to the director of Capitalism during a visit to the Vatican. In the Valeurs Actuelles weekly, Amaury Brelet reported that

The far left American director and the pontiff, who met a few weeks ago at the Vatican, seem to share, without surprise, the same radical opinions.
 
Great minds think alike

Michael Moore spoke with Pope Francis a few weeks ago at the Vatican. The far-right American director even detailed their interview while a guest on the show "Late Night with Seth Meyers". "I went to the general audience and asked to speak to me privately…"

In French:

Le réalisateur américain d’extrême gauche et le souverain pontife, qui se sont rencontrés il y a quelques semaines au Vatican, semblent partager, sans surprise, les mêmes opinions radicales.

Les grands esprits se rencontrent. 

Michael Moore s’est entretenu avec le pape François, il y a quelques semaines au Vatican. Le réalisateur américain d’extrême gauche a même raconté en détails leur entrevue alors qu’il était invité du show “ Late Night avec Seth Meyers ”. « Je me suis rendu à l’audience générale, et il a demandé à me parler en privé... »

Flashback: In an interview with a foreign-language newspaper never disclosed by America's MSM, Michael Moore, the director of Sicko and Capitalism (A Love Story), admits in so many words — "Dude, I am on Marx's Tomb!" — to being nothing less than a Marxist

Update — George Neumayr:

James Grein said what the bishops [of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB)] wouldn’t:

“It is not Francis’s church; it is Jesus Christ’s church.”

Forked-Tongue Reptiles — That's How You Appear to Leftists and Europeans if You Don't Share Their Self-Serving Viewpoints

• Uncle Sam: Darn it! It's contagious!

Last weekend, Le Monde treated us to a typical cartoon from Serguei: as Donald Trump rants and raves about a single solitary harmless illegal immigrant (not 7,000, or 12,000, or 11 million, or 22 million), that he may be trying to squish under his Godzilla-lie foot, in a carte blanche entry titled The Strategy of Hatred, the president, Uncle Sam, and Lady Liberty all appear as reptiles with a snake's forked tongue…

Flashback: In 2010, James Carville called Republicans reptiles.

Second flashback (way back, to… 1860!) —
Abraham Lincoln attempting to speak to members of the Democrat party:

… when you speak of us Republicans, you do so only to denounce us as reptiles, or, at the best, as no better than outlaws. You will grant a hearing to pirates or murderers, but nothing like it to [Republicans]. In all your contentions with one another, each of you deems an unconditional condemnation of [Republicanism] as the first thing to be attended to.

Related: Republicans Denounced as "Lizards" (in 2015), as "Reptiles" (in 2010), and as "Reptiles" (in… 1860!)

More — PJMedia's Stephen Kruiser on a New York Times Election Eve Op-Ed Likening Trump to Hitler:

It is, after all, a given among liberals who never interact with people who don't think like them that everyone who doesn't is a racist Nazi science-denier.

Or some other kind of monster. Or a reptile.

4 Answers: Why did the chicken cross the road?

To the question, Why did the chicken cross the road, Pat Cross provides a cartoon explaining the answers of a conservative, a liberal, a moderate, and a libertarian…

Pat Cross on the Separation of Church and State According to Conservatives and According to Liberals

On his website (Because I enjoy Drawing, America, and a few other things too…), Pat Cross (you can hardly find a better name for a Christian cartoonist) presents a cartoon on the separation of church and state according to conservatives and according to liberals…

• Pat Cross on Socialism IV: European Socialism Works — The Proof…
• Pat Cross on Socialism III: We'll Just Try a Tiny Bit…
• Pat Cross on Socialism II: Where Everything Is Free… Except…
• Pat Cross on Socialism I: Everyone Else Who Tried This Got Hurt…
More:
• Pat Cross on the Left's Double Standards
• Pat Cross on the Outlook of the Democrat Party, i.e.,
America's Alleged Problem with Racist Bigots and Other Would-Be Hitlers…

Pat Cross (IV): European Socialism Works — The Proof

On his website (Because I enjoy Drawing, America, and a few other things too…), Pat Cross has a cartoon on socialism…

• Pat Cross on Socialism III: We'll Just Try a Tiny Bit…
• Pat Cross on Socialism II: Where Everything Is Free… Except…
• Pat Cross on Socialism I: Everyone Else Who Tried This Got Hurt…
More:
• Pat Cross on the Left's Double Standards
• Pat Cross on the Outlook of the Democrat Party, i.e.,
America's Alleged Problem with Racist Bigots and Other Would-Be Hitlers…
• Pat Cross on the Separation of Church and StateAccording to Conservatives and According to Liberals…

Those Ghastly Men! The Bloody Bastards Oppressed Our Sisters and Our Mothers and Our Mothers' Mothers and Our… (with Apologies to Monty Python)

The Oppressive Male Sketch:
In a modern-day classroom, somewhere in North America or Europe, a TEACHER is duly doing her job (as well as her duty) and teaching the younger generation about all the evils, all the abuses, and all the lies of Western civilization in general and of America in particular. Today's subject matter is the horrific treatment and the intolerable oppression of women throughout the ages at the hands of the patriarchy. (Here, the TEACHER is a woman, but, with slight changes to her lines, the character could just as well be a male feminist played by a male.) With apologies to the Monty Python gang

(Related: Monty Python on Colonialism and U.S. Imperialism)

• TEACHER: They bled us white, the bastards! They’ve taken everything we have! They did nothing but oppress us! And not just us! They oppressed our mothers! And our mothers' mothers—
• LITTLE GIRL CHIMES IN: And our mothers' mothers' mothers!
• TEACHER: Yeah—
• LITTLE GIRL KEEPS GOING: And our mothers' mothers' mothers' mothers!
• TEACHER: Alright, Fran. Don't belabor the point. And what have they ever given us in return?!
Silence…

Another little girl timidly raises a finger.
• LITTLE GIRL Nº 2: This classroom…
• TEACHER: Whut?
• LITTLE GIRL Nº 2: This classroom;  Every object in this classroom, they made.
• TEACHER: Oh yeah yeah they did do that for us, uh-huh that’s true…
• LITTLE BOY Nº 1: And every object in my home, and [pointing to the classmate who just spoke] in her home…
• LITTLE GIRL Nº 3: And also in your home, Mrs. Fotzbinkle…
• TEACHER: Yeah, alright, I'll grant you that the objects in this school and in our homes are two things the members of the male species have done—
• LITTLE BOY Nº 2: And also the homes themselves, the very buildings, and the cities that they form…
• TEACHER: Oh well obviously the cities, I mean the cities go without saying, don’t they?! … But apart from the homes, the buildings, and the cities…
Other KIDS, none of whom seem to have understood the purpose of the TEACHER's speech and of her (thoroughly) rhetorical question, start chatting amongst themselves
• VOICES FROM AROUND THE CLASSROOM: The machines… The factories… The motors… The cars… The vehicles… The ships… The locomotives… The airplanes… The rockets…The medicine… The hospitals… In olden days, the sail ships and the horse carriages…

• TEACHER: Yeah, alright, fair enough—
But women were oppressed! They were denied the right to vote!!
• LITTLE GIRL Nº 2: Well, for most of history, most men around the globe didn't have the vote either.
• LITTLE BOY Nº 3: In fact, Mrs. Fotzbinkle, most men — and women — were so dirt-poor, they rarely had anything to do but try to survive and they never got around to leaving the farm beyond — what was it? — a 20-km radius…
• LITTLE GIRL Nº 1: Unless they went to war
• LITTLE BOY Nº 4: That's true
• LITTLE GIRL Nº 2: Yes, Mrs. Fotzbinkle, if we can vote we have the capitalists to thank for that…
• LITTLE BOY Nº 3: Didn't men used to cast their votes for their entire families?
• LITTLE GIRL Nº 3: And far from being the patriarchy and oppressive — aren't most of men, at least in the West, like, in fact loving and… obedient and acting like milquetoasts?
• LITTLE BOY Nº 5: Remember the Grace Bedell story that you read to us, Mrs. Fotzbinkle?
The little girl who informed Abe Lincoln that if he grew a beard women would get their husbands, their sons, and their brothers to vote for him, simply by "teasing" them to do so…

• TEACHER: Alright, fair enough, but don't you dare start diminishing the contributions of women! Don't forget women used to sew all the clothes and all the garments that we —
• LITTLE BOY Nº 3: — and they!
• TEACHER: — and they — used to wear!
• LITTLE GIRL Nº 1: But the tools to make the clothes — the needles and the thread and the scissors and all the other instruments in the sewing kit —
• LITTLE BOY Nº 3: The sewing machine!!
• LITTLE GIRL Nº 1: —those were made by men, who also gathered the wool and manufactured the fabric.
• LITTLE GIRL Nº 4: In fact, men invented the machines that made farming easy, that made poverty retreat, and that prevented a man from destroying his health and dying at an early age
• LITTLE GIRL Nº 5: plus all the gadgets in the modern kitchen and the modern home that prevented a woman from ever leaving the home
• LITTLE BOY Nº 4: In fact, when you think about it, all or most of these inventions were invented, or were improved, by the people who are the most hated today around the globe — males, capitalists, and Americans

• LITTLE GIRL Nº 2: And thanks to men, it's safe to walk in the streets
• TEACHER: What are you saying?! For centuries, women were kept in the kitchen!!
• LITTLE BOY Nº 2: Well, while women were in the kitchen, Mrs. Fotzbinkle, with a roof over their heads, men were not exactly out partying in town
• LITTLE GIRL Nº 5: Nor were they going to the brothel
• LITTLE GIRL Nº 1: The "brothel'? What's that?
• EVERYBODY ELSE (in unison): Never mind!
• LITTLE BOY Nº 1: True enough: They were out in the fields, whatever the weather — boiling sun or freezing rain —
• LITTLE GIRL Nº 6: Or they were off going to war!
• LITTLE BOY Nº 2: No wonder women live longer than men

• TEACHER: No brothels?! Men could go out and be sluts and frolic with loose women! Women were banned from doing the equivalent! How about that?! Huh?! Huh?! How about that?!
• LITTLE BOY Nº 3: Well, in the olden days, it was necessary because there were few methods to prevent a girl from getting pregnant…
• LITTLE GIRL Nº 2: Plus, it wasn't the men per se who kept women per se from going out, it was a given girl's father, her brothers, and her uncles…
• TEACHER: See?! See?!
• LITTLE GIRL Nº 2: …ANNND her mother, ANNND her aunts, ANNND her grand-mother…
• LITTLE BOY Nº 1: And don't forget, Mrs. Fotzbinkle: the pill, and other forms of contraception, were all invented by men
• LITTLE GIRL Nº 6: like all the medicine
• LITTLE BOY Nº 4: like all the medicine that has made everyone — males and females alike — healthier and unlikely to die at an early age…
• LITTLE GIRL Nº 3: The medicine that has rid mothers and babies alike from the common risk of dying in childbirth…

That's it! The TEACHER has had enough!
• TEACHER: Alright!! But apart from the homes! — the buildings! — the cities! — the factories! — the kitchens! — the cars! — the horse carriages! — the ships! — the planes! — the motors! — the machines! — the hospitals! — the medicine! — and the contraceptives! (pause) — what have men ever done for us?!?!
Timidly, a little girl raises her a finger…
• LITTLE GIRL Nº 1: They cherish us, and they shower us with love
• TEACHER: "Love"?!?! Oh, SHUT UP!!

Non, No, Just a Tad: Pat Cross on Socialism (III)

On his website (Because I enjoy Drawing, America, and a few other things too…), Pat Cross has a cartoon on socialism…


• Pat Cross on Socialism IV: European Socialism Works — The Proof…
• Pat Cross on Socialism II: Where Everything Is Free… Except…
• Pat Cross on Socialism I: Everyone Else Who Tried This Got Hurt…
More:
• Pat Cross on the Left's Double Standards
• Pat Cross on the Outlook of the Democrat Party, i.e.,
America's Alleged Problem with Racist Bigots and Other Would-Be Hitlers…
• Pat Cross on the Separation of Church and StateAccording to Conservatives and According to Liberals…