Happy New Year to One and All

Gandhi: “If you can’t retain your principles, take out your sword and fight”

In its 50 Years Ago section, the International Herald Tribune mentions a Gandhi quote that is not often referred to, reverently, by the war-and-violence-is-always-bad peacenik crowd.

1961 India Abandons Gandhi’s Policy

Premier Jawaharlal Nehru said today [Dec. 28, 1961] that his ruling Congress party had abandoned Mahatma Gandhi’s concept of non-violence. Mr. Nehru told a press conference that peace could not be maintained by cowardice, and that Gandhi’s concept of non-violence implied the disbanding of armies and virtual elimination of police. He defended his decision by quoting Gandhi as saying: “If you can’t retain your principles, take out your sword and fight.” He denied that India’s action constituted an encouragement for Indonesia to take over Dutch New Guinea. While India supports Indonesia’s claim to the Dutch-held territory, he said, he was hoping for a peaceful settlement of the problem. Mr. Nehru said that India had “full justification” for using armed force against Portugal, and by doing so India became the agent of “the irrepressive force of history.”

Will Obama Lose Iraq the Same Way that Carter Lost Iran?

In 1979 President Carter "lost Iran"

Gérald Olivier reminds us, as even French commentators (!) start noticing the good tidings that have reached Iraq (well, some of them at least) and start drawing comparisons between Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter.

The whole planet is still paying the price of his blindness. Tomorrow, will we be saying that Obama "lost Iraq"?

For a long time, I have been drawing parallels with Carter (not that there is anything unduly virtuoso in doing so) and, indeed, a number of us made the Jimmy Carter comparison before Barack Obama even won the 2008 election…

What Gingrich's liberal critics have always found insanely maddening about him is a reputation for intellectual depth

While Thomas Sowell again endorses Newt Gingrich, the New York Times Magazine publishes an interesting portrait of Newt.

The money quote of Matt Bai's long piece, followed by the concluding sentence:

What Gingrich provides, and what his liberal critics have always found insanely maddening about him, is a reputation for intellectual depth. Among the candidates, he alone combines contempt with credibility, not just giving voice to conservative fury but also making it sound like a legitimate basis for governing.

… The way Newt sees it, fate doesn’t hinge on his being a perfect man. Only a great one.

Can we just take a month or two to contemplate Obama the way we might a painting by Vermeer or any other astounding, ecstatic human achievement?

And the winner of the Media Research Center's Obamagasm Award is (dramatic pause)…

…Stephen Marche!

“Can we just enjoy Obama for a moment? Before the policy choices have to be weighed and the hard decisions have to be made, can we just take a month or two to contemplate him the way we might contemplate a painting by Vermeer or a guitar lick by the early-seventies Rolling Stones or a Peyton Manning pass or any other astounding, ecstatic human achievement? Because twenty years from now, we’re going to look back on this time as a glorious idyll in American politics, with a confident, intelligent, fascinating president riding the surge of his prodigious talents from triumph to triumph....’I am large, I contain multitudes,’ Walt Whitman wrote, and Obama lives that lyrical prophecy....Barack Obama is developing into what Hegel called a ‘world-historical soul,’ an embodiment of the spirit of the times. He is what we hope we can be.”

— Esquire’s Stephen Marche in a column for the magazine’s August 2011 issue: “How Can We Not Love Obama? Because Like It or Not, He Is All of Us.”

Check out all of the Media Research Center's Notable Quotable awards…

Because of Bush, "Iraq Has Been Deprived of Part of Its History" as Well as of Its "Stability" Under Saddam

Because of George W. Bush, editorializes a Le Monde editorial, Iraq has been deprived of the… "stability" that it apparently enjoyed under Saddam Hussein. And the country "has been deprived of part of its history" — whatever that means…

Specifically, writes Le Monde,

it will be years before Iraq rediscovers the path of stability.

Rediscovers (retrouve); doesn't that mean that Iraq enjoyed stability,i.e., a positive state, before the American invasion (called in Le Monde "Bush's war", as well as "a disaster"), i.e., during the murderous Saddam era?

To be sure, Le Monde goes out of its way to say that nobody will regret "one of the most bloodthirsty tyrants of the Middle East," a man "responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis." Needless to say, it ends all these "to be sures" with a "but" — and what a "but"!

But the Iraqis did not liberate themselves from this tyranny. The United States did not associate them with their [the Americans'] intervention. There are no "Free Iraqi Forces" to accompany the American troops when they enter Baghdad in April 2003.

Yeah? And so (what)? How many legions of Dutchmen, finally, helped in the allies' liberation of the German-occupied Netherlands and how many Filipinos helped in the ouster of the Japanese from the Philippines? Who cares?! As long as the oppression and blood-letting came to an end! This is where Le Monde writes that "Iraq has been deprived of part of its history", as if the family members of the "tens of thousands" who disappeared in the killing fields would not want their oppressor and his henchmen to be overthrown unless it was Iraqis who stood behind the deed and as if they would wait around for months, for years (decades?) more with more thousands of deaths until an Iraqi-led rebellion occurred…

Le Monde goes on with the Bush-lied canard as well as the can't-export-democracy-with-weapons meme, but in the final analysis, it all boils down to everything being the fault of the invasion, aka "Bush's war", from "the destabilization of America's public finances" to "the 2008 crisis" through the current "dead end" in Afghanistan.

In other words, prepare for a shocker — it's all turns out to be… the fault of one George W. Bush.

Update: Will Obama Lose Iraq the Same Way that Carter Lost Iran?

Raúl & Fidel: The Tyranny of the Enemy Brothers

Several books about the Castro brothers have been published in the past year, including one by the Cuban liders' own sister and one by Cuban émigré and specialist Jacobo Machover. We learn in Raúl & Fidel: The Tyranny of the Enemy Brothers that, as the title suggests, the two Castros are basically totally opposites, although they — obviously — work together and it could never have worked out any other way.

According to Martine Jacot's Le Monde book review, "Jacobo Machover points out everything that differentiates the two brothers and that has been doing so since their earliest childhood, even though they form a duo that is as inseparable as it is complementary."

Pour soulager la population, Raul voulait rouvrir les marchés paysans ; Fidel s'y opposait. A l'issue d'une discussion orageuse de plusieurs heures dans le bureau du Lider Maximo, d'où fusaient les éclats de voix, Raul obtint finalement gain de cause.

Pour avoir osé aborder les relations entre les frères Castro - secret d'Etat au même titre que la santé de chacun d'eux - Fernando Ravsberg faillit être expulsé de Cuba. Sermonné par Fidel dans les Réflexions qu'il publiait, le journaliste fit amende honorable sur son blog, où il écrivit : "Il n'y a pas de différences entre Raul et Fidel."

"Cubanologue" méticuleux depuis de nombreuses années - et anticastriste affiché -, Jacobo Machover souligne au contraire dans son livre tout ce qui différencie les deux frères depuis leur plus tendre enfance, bien qu'ils forment à la vie à la mort un duo aussi inséparable que complémentaire. Raul n'a jamais eu ni l'envergure intellectuelle, ni la faconde, ni l'habileté politique de Fidel, de cinq ans son aîné. Mais le cadet, organisateur, pragmatique, impitoyable à l'égard de tous les opposants, a permis au "Commandante" de briller de tous ses feux de chef révolutionnaire charismatique, et à son régime de survivre contre vents et marées depuis 1959.

On en apprend davantage sur Raul, dans cet ouvrage documenté, que sur Fidel. Quoi qu'en ait dit plus tard le Lider Maximo, dont le programme était assez confus lorsqu'il est entré en lutte contre la dictature de Batista, c'est Raul, adhérent du Parti communiste dès 1953 (à 22 ans), qui a fini par structurer la pensée désordonnée de son frère. Celui-ci n'embrassa le marxisme-léninisme qu'en 1961. Ernesto Guevara l'y a aidé, qui vénérait Staline (il a signé certaines lettres à sa famille "Staline II"). Fidel, lui, voulait avant tout le pouvoir, un pouvoir total.

Dans la Sierra Maestra, les "barbudos" définissent leur conception d'une "justice révolutionnaire" qui va confiner à la terreur, tranche l'auteur. Raul organisera l'exécution sommaire de dizaines de prisonniers, sans y assister, laissant ce soin au Che.

… Les temps ont changé, même à Cuba, où un moratoire sur les exécutions des condamnés à mort est en vigueur depuis 2003, réaffirmé par Raul en 2008. Toujours pragmatique, le cadet des Castro a converti ses généraux à la gestion, l'armée ayant fait main basse sur l'économie. Tandis que son frère s'efface peu à peu de la scène publique, le président cubain "décollectivise" l'île depuis trois ans. Avec des limites. Jacobo Machover, de même que la plupart des autres "cubanologues" l'affirment : Raul Castro ne sera pas le Gorbatchev de Cuba.

Save the Date

Act of Valor will be released in U.S. cinemas on 17 FEB 2011

Merry Christmas

After all your obligations are done for Christmas day, and you've done all the reflecting that you can do, might I suggest you settle in and relax with a treasure of a film starring Cary Grant, David Niven, Loretta Young, Monty Woolly, Elsa Lanchester, and one fo the great character actors of his day, James Gleason.

From 1947, this is The Bishop's Wife

Food for Thought On this day in History

There was no room at the inn for Mary. Just as would happen today, the innkeeper didn’t announce, “Folks, we have a woman among us who is about to have a child, let’s a couple of families combine rooms so she can have a bed! Let us keep vigil! Let us fast, then feast!”

Just as would happen today, the other guests didn’t rise up and say, “O blessed night, O holy night that God has sent this woman among us.” They gave her a cursory glance, saw she was poor, said, “Oh – too bad,” and sent her to the barn.

Just as today, the clerk at the chain motel would say, “Sorry, fifty-nine dollars plus tax,” and the rest of us would likely watch Mary trail back to her broken-down van as we go on snacking, texting, and scrolling through our Dish listings.

And yet in our better moments, we carry our little prayer around with us as Mary carried Christ. Like Mary, we’re in solidarity with all the poor, all those in exile, all who are powerless, frightened, weak. Like Jesus in today’s Gospel, we rejoice that the kingdom is revealed to the childlike. And just as back then, that prayer moves the world. Just as back then, that prayer is seen by the stars.

Reflection based on
Luke 10: 21-24 by Heather King

When iPhoto's Faces App Gets It Wrong

To its credit, iPhoto's face recognition technology does get it right, most of the time.
However…

Look who iPhoto confuses with an Arab Islamic extremist:


Look who iPhoto confuses with a Danish cartoonist:

(Jixie Juny is… my cat!)

Look who iPhoto confuses with (someone
wearing a mask depicting) Jacques Chirac:


Merry Christmas to all our readers and, for that matter, to everybody else…

Just Thinking Inside the Box, Here...

I’ve got an idea... let’s deindustrialize and impoverish western civilization on an unproven theory so that we can try to drop the worlds mean temperature by 0.6 degrees!

Little Stickers and Platitudes Insufficient

Dateline Tibet: Just when nobody could possibly need Chinese investment in shabby Eurozone bonds, the Dalai Lama is asking Catherine Ashton to keep asking China for EU diplomats to visit Tibet.

Zhu on Monday accused Western governments of funding the Dalai Lama's India-based movement to weaken China for strategic reasons.

He called the Dalai Lama a "savage" who gets young monks to set themselves on fire to provoke anti-Chinese feeling. He added that Chinese intelligence has evidence the head-in-exile of the Kirti monastery in Tibet, Kirti Rinpoche, organised three of the 12 recent self-immolations.

Regime change in China!, they demanded!

"Should the Chinese side reject the request, the EU could issue a strong statement of deep concern and raise the issue at international fora, such as the United Nations Human Rights Council."

To which the response will surely be “keep asking”, or “keep asking and...”

But China's man in charge of Tibet, vice-minister Zhu Weiqun, at a rare meeting with press in Brussels also on Monday, ruled out the possibility.

"China is an independent country and we have the full capacity to handle problems on our territory. So under no circumstances will we allow foreign fact-finding missions into the Tibetan autonomous region ... I don't believe that the interference of any foreign force could achieve anything constructive. Indeed it could very well lead to an escalation of the crisis and to wars," he told this website.

Why Maximize Employment when you can Maximize Welfare ?

In addition to Krugmann’s suggestion that the tax rate on “the wealthy”, whichever half or third of earners he thinks that is, should be 70%, the figure is derived by the suggestion that this will “maximize welfare” for the lower and middle class.

Obsessiveness about non-existent social castes and class aside, the correct term is Low/ Middle/ High INCOME. Like this bunghole apologist for State-Command-Economics, it’s rather obvious that the identification is one they’re so fluid in, that they forgot that they’re supposed to hide their pointless society impoverishing agitprop.

Thomas Sowell Endorses Newt Gingrich: "How much weight should we give to Newt's 'baggage' when we are talking about the future of a nation?"

If Newt Gingrich were being nominated for sainthood, many of us would vote very differently from the way we would vote if he were being nominated for a political office

writes Thomas Sowell as he endorsed Newt Gingrich over Mitt Romney today.

What the media call Gingrich's "baggage" concerns largely his personal life and the fact that he made a lot of money running a consulting firm after he left Congress.

… But how much weight should we give to this stuff when we are talking about the future of a nation?

This is not just another election and Barack Obama is not just another president whose policies we may not like. With all of President Obama's broken promises, glib demagoguery and cynical political moves, one promise he has kept all too well. That was his boast on the eve of the 2008 election: "We are going to change the United States of America."

Many Americans are already saying that they can hardly recognize the country they grew up in. We have already started down the path that has led Western European nations to the brink of financial disaster.

Internationally, it is worse. A president who has pulled the rug out from under our allies, whether in Eastern Europe or the Middle East, tried to cozy up to our enemies, and has bowed low from the waist to foreign leaders certainly has not represented either the values or the interests of America. If he continues to do nothing that is likely to stop terrorist-sponsoring Iran from getting nuclear weapons, the consequences can be beyond our worst imagining.

Against this background, how much does Newt Gingrich's personal life matter, whether we accept his claim that he has now matured or his critics' claim that he has not?

… Do we wish we had another Ronald Reagan? We could certainly use one. But we have to play the hand we were dealt. And the Reagan card is not in the deck.

… Those who want to concentrate on the baggage in Newt Gingrich's past, rather than on the nation's future, should remember what Winston Churchill said: "If the past sits in judgment on the present, the future will be lost."

All the Newt Gingrich posts on No Pasarán…

Arrogantly Saving the Planet with Bumper Stickers

Selfishly mounted on NON-ELECTRIC VEHICLES for that matter!

For Fans of the Deliciously Grim

No-one told the operators that the USSR ever really went away.



Then somebody took pictures, recorded audio, and mashed up a remix out of the scraps left behind by a paranoid and repressive state.

Another One Bites the Dust

Kim Jong-il, 1941-2011

Writes Julie Anna: It's only fair that after Hitchens and Havel, the dark side also lost a fellow comrade — Kim Jong II

Update: Josh Trevino’s tweet of the year:

I’d like to think God let Havel and Hitchens pick the third.

Berlinski on America

Her message works well with those who have known nothing but irrational criticism for it, and anything and everything about it. You know the type. The ones at home and worldwide who emit a Pavlovian response to any subject eliciting a through on the United States. If you’re lucky, you might get some partially rephrased variation on the canned argument that you will hear used again a block away wherever you happen to find yourself.

Berlinski:

America is like no other place on earth. For all the talk of pessimism, recession, decline and fall, this remains--so clearly!--a country of mad, nutty, innocence and optimism; it is a place where everything works; it is a place where every man feels in the depth of his soul that he is the equal of every other man, and it is a country so free, in so many ways, that I doubt I will ever be able to convince anyone who hasn't seen it with his own eyes that this kind of freedom really exists.

That’s the quality of life thing like no other – the one that relates to life itself. It’s normally accompanied by a tut-tutting retort related to anything the critic thinks their nation does well, such as high-speed trains. Trains being a suitable retort to someone, somewhere being happy about the feeling that they have in the depth of their soul which the critic for no particular reason feels a need to retort. I hear engineering can do that for ya.

She does have words with something in the US that doesn’t work, though:

And this brings me to the First Law of Journalism. For some reason, American journalism's just not working. I figure we'll solve this problem; that's what we do. But as of now, it's broken. Exhibit A: Time Magazine's US Story of the Year. The Occupy Wall Street Protests Spread. Well, here I am on Wall Street, or very close to it, anyway, and if this is someone's idea of the top story--or even a major story--he's crazy as an outhouse rat. The top story? In a year, say, in which the United States, for the first time in 62 years, has become a net energy exporter?

So here's my advice. You know what you hear in the news? If you haven't seen it with your own eyes, don't believe it. And don't worry so much about America, it will probably be fine.

It’s worth noting some of the characteristic features of this non-operative piece of gear: its willfully developed its’ disingenuousness through a political ideology that has specific motives and largely looks to two general areas for affirmation: within its own ideological echo chamber, and to specific societies outside of the US that are conspicuously hostile to any outlook that hints at the curtailment of the power of the state or the crowding out of the individuals’ opinion by socially favored castes and ideologies.

But the most astonishing thing about America is this. I know full well that I can go on television, with millions of people watching, and say anything I please about the American government--anything--and even if for some malignant reason I feel like saying something false, gratuitously insulting, bad for the stock market, ruinous to a politician's happy marriage, or frankly seditious, I can just say it, and when I walk out of the studio, whatever I said will be between me and my conscience. It won't even occur to me that I may have exposed myself to an unpleasant risk of a pre-dawn police raid and a show trial. Possibly I'll get a few indignant e-mails.

The color coded-public-conveniences, the high-speed trains, and the stylized buzz of generic modernity are nice, but that isn’t the least bit meaningful where the dominant theme of the information set and public intellectuals is that of the demonizer or the bully.

The stylized buzz of generic modernity does not actually indicate that you’re in civilization.

1961: "the German public, and many German government officials, have regarded the Eichmann trial primarily as an irritating event"

…observers could see only limited signs that the [Eichmann] proceedings in Jerusalem occasioned a sympathetic reaction [in Germany] toward the Jews

we learn from the International Herald Tribune's In Our Pages 50 Years Ago department (also of interest: Bin Laden and Eichmann).

1961 Few Germans Back Eichmann Verdict

West Germany’s ambiguous reaction today [Dec. 15, 1961] to the death sentence conferred in Israel on Adolf Eichmann reflected the equivocal attitude which the German public has displayed toward his trial from the outset. There was relatively little indication this afternoon of a belief among the German people that justice triumphed in the Israeli courtroom. From the start, observers here have been aware that the German public, and many German government officials, have regarded the trial primarily as an irritating event which could damage West Germany’s present-day interests. Although there has been extensive coverage of the Eichmann story by German newspapers and television stations, observers could see only limited signs that the proceedings in Jerusalem occasioned a sympathetic reaction toward the Jews.

Good-Bye, Friend

Václav Havel, 1936-2011

Děkuji to Instapundit!
If you have a few minutes, you might want to reminisce about the time when Havel criticized Obama (in an affair involving three Nobel Prize winners) and how, when a member of the European élite became involved in Obama criticism, suddenly American liberals like Maureen Dowd found it much harder to accuse the Obama critic of being a clueless racist… Update: just learned that Havel never did receive the Nobel Prize (thanks to Instapundit again); well, as Rand Simberg remarks, he certainly deserved it more than Obama or Arafat, for that matter…

Europeans would Tax Your Wiener

That’s right kids - no link, no frankfurter, no banger, no bockwurst or merguez for that matter... is safe, not to mention homemade bake-sale items too. The Svenska Dagbladet reports that the EU Commission has ordered Sweden to levy a 25% VAT on concessions at amateur sporting events. This includes the table a few parents set up at their kids’ intermural and local sport club games.

We're not talking about professional businesses here but about thousands of people who do unpaid work for their children and others. The people's representatives in the EU - the European Parliament - have realised that and supported the exemption by 521 to 50 votes. The Commission however, with its non-elected bureaucrats, is now demanding that what belongs to Caesar must be rendered unto Caesar. To comply with this demand the small clubs will have to become bureaucratised. It's no overstatement to say that the position of the treasurer - already a thankless task - will be harder to fill than ever.

Ironically, even Swedes get that this is micromanagement.

Death of George Whitman, Paris Bookseller and Cultural Beacon

George Whitman, the American-born owner of Shakespeare & Company, a fabled English-language bookstore on the Left Bank in Paris and a magnet for writers, poets and tourists for close to 60 years, died on Wednesday in his apartment above the store

writes Marlise Simons.

He was 98. …

More than a distributor of books, Mr. Whitman saw himself as patron of a literary haven, above all in the lean years after World War II, and the heir to Sylvia Beach, the founder of the original Shakespeare & Company, the celebrated haunt of Hemingway and James Joyce.

As Mr. Whitman put it, “I wanted a bookstore because the book business is the business of life.”

Overlooking the Seine and facing the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, the store, looking somewhat beat-up behind a Dickensian facade and spread over three floors, has been an offbeat mix of open house and literary commune. For decades Mr. Whitman provided food and makeshift beds to young aspiring novelists or writing nomads, often letting them spend a night, a week, or even months living among the crowded shelves and alcoves.

He welcomed visitors with large-print messages on the walls. “Be not inhospitable to strangers, lest they be angels in disguise,” was one, quoting Yeats. Next to a wishing well at the center of the store, a sign said: “Give what you can, take what you need. George.” By his own estimate, he lodged some 40,000 people.

…Mr. Whitman was famously frugal and expected the bibliophiles residing in his store to work a few hours every day sorting and selling books. Yet he also invited uncounted numbers of people for weekly tea parties to his own apartment, or for late-night readings enriched with dumplings or pots of Irish stew.

Some guests later described him as a kind and magnetic father figure to needy souls but also as a man who could throw tantrums and preside over the store’s residents, sometimes up to 20 people, like a moody and unpredictable dictator.

Mr. Whitman had variously called himself a communist, a utopian and a humanist. But he may have also been a romantic himself, at least concerning his life’s work. “I may disappear leaving behind me no worldly possessions — just a few old socks and love letters, “ he wrote in his last years. Paraphrasing a line from Yeats, he added, “and my little Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart.”

The EU's Future: No War, but No Growth

Just about 15 years ago, Martin Feldstein, the Harvard economist and former adviser to Ronald Reagan, wrote that the coming of a common currency to Europe promised “incompatible expectations about the sharing of power.” There were future conflicts in play, he argued, making an intra-European war “too real a possibility to ignore.”

That is how John Vinocur starts his latest International Herald Tribune article.

Over-the-top, Reaganite musings, some said. Neither the great bang of war nor its whimpers has materialized.

Still, without a shot being fired, Europe and its project to achieve power and greatness is in many ways demoralized, even devastated.

After another in a series of debt and deficit crisis summit meetings last week, the European Union, still uncertain about eliminating the markets’ disbelief in its probity, has locked itself into a survival plan that turns the euro zone’s back on growth to seek stability alone.

The results of the decision: A perspective of stagnation as the culmination of 18 months of fibbing and stalling about Europe’s financial and economic reality that markets saw through and may continue to doubt. And a gap in enthusiasm (in truth there is none) between the E.U.’s common currency and its citizens — a Brussels official describes Europeans regarding the euro as a “convenience” rather than a necessity — at a moment when the euro zone’s leaders have chosen to confront a likely recession with savings and rigor but no parallel plan for a surge in activity.

… Mr. Feldstein’s war, of course, has not occurred, and the achievements of the E.U.’s common currency are real. But he had a sharp sense for trouble.

… So: The E.U.’s situation about a decade after the coming of the euro is, no war, but no hard-wired plan for growth. And now, after the French fade, an absence of any member standing up as expansion’s advocate while the chancellor talks about a marathon of “stabilizing” to last a decade.

Keep Thinking, Butch

Thanks to Libération Propagandastaffel, we discover that movements and theories are invented by the leftists and postmodern freaks that describe those theories to other leftists and postmodern freaks like Libé

We are indebted to Michel Foucault for identifying, in his January 1979 Collège de France lecture (The birth of bio-politics), the originality of this school of liberalism, which makes constitutional regulation and judges the levers and principle guarantors of the construction of a political order founded on a strict respect for economic freedom and free competition.

Bio-politics. Whatever, Spanky. On planet earth, we call this mental masturbation. What they’re calling “Liberalism” was identified long before 1979.

To that end, they desperately try to understand the world around them that they’ve been ignoring for decades, the dead secular Gods of nationalist-socialist mythology are being dredged up in this case to explain Angela Merkel’s views on European economics. It’s as if using big names mean that they know enough to appear to be correcting her. After all, she’s though to have all the money that these finger-wagging marvels ignorant jokers want hidden under her bed or something.

Why would they then not resort to this tortured explanation of the lack of EU level legal empowerment of the ECB in the way the US Federal Reserve can act. Hence, they go hat-in-hand to Berlin, and the illiterates at Libé think this is some sort of dark art for reasons that their dyspeptic leftist frustrations with the lack of dictatorial control in their favor can’t digest.

Her direction has once again confirmed the precarious status of political legitimacy in the European Union: the credibility of the euro cannot be safeguarded by apolitical measures alone.

Further to the sick penchant to claim by identification, other miscellaneous vilified historical characters are used. This is meant to lend some veneer of accuracy and intelligence to the specious practice of thinking that you’ve just named things for the first time because you didn’t think they existed before, at least not in the low-altitude the left orbits in.

This is not a Bismarckian policy, as Arnaud Montebourg has so awkardly asserted, but one that is based on one of the most well-established schools of liberal thought, “ordoliberalism”, which emerged between the wars in Germany and was popularised in the postwar period as “the social market economy” by the influential Christian-Democrat Ludwig Erhard, who was Minister of Economics from 1949 to 1963 and Federal Chancellor from 1963 to 1966.

Otto von Bismark could not be reached for comment.

From the Ongoing Chronicles of Weird European Pederasty

And it’s from one of those enlightened societies again:

A 62-year-old man from Drammen in southern Norway has received a 7-year jail sentence after he was found guilty of sexually abusing his two young daughters.

Kid, if you don’t want to ride in the van, don’t take the candy, I say. Otherwise it’s back to an enlightened solution in that enlightened society: no real punitive consequences.

He denied committing the offences and told the court the older girl’s claims were financially motivated.

The district court, however, found the accounts of both girls to be credible and ordered their father to pay each of them non-pecuniary damages of 200,000 kroner ($33,600).

Elsewhere: real consequences await those commiting the grave crime of trying to introduce Ms Supply to Mr. Demand.

A Russian smuggler is detained for transporting underage butter across state lines.

Last Friday, customs officers stopped a Russian at the Norwegian-Swedish border and seized 90 kilos of butter stashed in his car.

Why is this such a severe social disturbance of the placid nation proud of it’s orderly ways, laws, solidarity, and nicely concealed child molestation?

Norway has a butter monopolist called “Tine” that is deliberately protected from foreign competitors by government-imposed import tariffs.

Narrative Watch

A downgrade of France's AAA credit rating would not be justified and ratings agencies are making decisions based more on politics than economics,European Central Bank policymaker Christian Noyer said on Thursday.

"In the arguments they (ratings agencies) present, there are more political arguments than economic ones," said Noyer, the head of the Bank of France and a member of the ECB's governing council.

Yeah, why can't these ratings agencies be more like our elected and un-elected elites who .... ummmm, well ..... you know, present arguments based upon economic and not political ones.

"Worse Than Bush!": Gingrich and His "Criminal Remarks" Are Driving Frenchmen Up the Wall

Last week, he was a real bad guy (as well as the Big Bad Newt), earlier this week, he was electrifying (in the negative sense), as well as divisive, and today (quoting a Jonah Goldberg article; not surprisingly, MSM reporter Corine Lesnes reads the Los Angeles Times but not Townhall), he is Newtzilla! And all that in Le Monde's… headlines!

Of course, we also get comments from horrified readers complaining of Newt's "criminal" remarks, sputtering that "Gingrich is worse than Bush," not only in terms of fiscal matters, "but also in terms of foreign policy", and regretting, basically, the existence of elections and of democracy…

Add to that the opening sentence which may be one of the most condescending in the history of the mainstream media:

Despite his Playmobil-style haircut and the face of an aging baby, Newt Gingrich and his carnivorous smile are not fooling anyone.

Malgré sa coupe de cheveux façon Playmobil et son visage de poupon vieillissant, le sourire carnassier de Newt Gingrich ne trompe personne.

The Corinne Lesnes article goes on to refer to the "savvy" Newt as "controversial" (we already had him being divisive) and to call his policies "at best unrealistic and at worst demagogic."

…les propositions de Gingrich ne brillent pas par leur originalité. … ce plan paraît au mieux irréaliste, au pire démagogique.

Corinne Lesnes goes on to quote… Mother Jones and the New Yorker, ending her piece — from an allegedly serious daily, aka France's newspaper of record — with John Cassidy's tongue-in-cheek "festive" list of the "40 Nicest Things [You Can Think of to Say] About Newt" (Number 1: “He’s the one to get Obama reelected”).

Et ses adversaires ne vont pas le rater. La chasse est déjà ouverte : sur le mode de la dérision, The New Yorker a organisé un appel à contributions pour établir une liste des "40 choses les plus sympathiques que l'on peut dire sur Newt Gingrich". Numéro un de ce vrai-faux concours de gentillesse : "Gingrich est celui grâce à qui Obama sera réélu."

That's right, the French are echoing liberals' snarkiness and getting voluble about the Republican's embrace of Gingrich ensuring Obama's reelection.

Avec un peu de chance les républicains l’élisent... et le peuple américain effaré renouvelle B Obama !

At which point, all we can say is this: there can't be many better arguments in favor of an American's opinions and policies being the correct ones than the fact that he leaves the French spitting with contempt and hating his guts. And there can hardly be a better argument for the that man to run for president of the United States on the Republican ticket.

Hey, Living isn’t Everything when it Comes to, um, Living...

Economic power is not the only criterion for global power. What matters is how political systems respond to new crises. And from this perspective, the EU is still in with a chance, writes Dutch historian Dirk-Jan van Baar. Excerpts.

Writes Dirk-Jan van Baar in de Volkskrant, ignoring THE LAST TWO YEARS OF EUROPEAN FISCAL CHAOS AND LACK OF LEADERSHIP.

Add to this rthe oft-used argument that political power is not the only criterion for global power and that military power is not the only criterion for global power, and you get the perfect rationalization for 500 million of the world’s richest people free-riding on the backs of the rest of humanity.

Again.

Taking passivity and inaction to a higher, more noble and superior plane, he goes on with a predictable related theme of somehow comparing Europe to the US, for which there is no rational basis to do so in this context:

The American president is behaving accordingly : he thinks America must get its own economic house in order before embarking on further foreign interventions. If even the most powerful man in the world thinks that Washington has taken on too much, then one can tend to agree with historian Paul Kennedy (who wrote on the theme in his 1987 work The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers) that America is suffering from imperial overstretch.

The search for analogues and examples, I suppose, must go on.

Not only is Newt Gingrich divisive, he goes as far as "plunging the party into a deep state of division"

Newt Gingrich is electrifying America's Republicans, writes Corine Lesnes in Le Monde, before pulling out that age-old leftist expression, he is "divisive." Not only is he divisive, nor is he simply divisive, he goes as far as "plunging the party into a deep state of division."

Newt Gingrich s'est installé en tête de la course à l'investiture pour l'élection présidentielle de novembre 2012 aux Etats-Unis, plongeant le parti dans un profond état de division. Aucun des candidats en lice ne semble en mesure de "marier le soutien de la base et de celui de l'establishment", relève Nate Silver, l'auteur du blog électoral du New York Times.

… Un vent d'affolement s'est emparé de la classe politique républicaine, qui a commencé à faire rempart contre la candidature Gingrich. Les caciques ont l'oeil sur les sondages qui montrent que Mitt Romney est le républicain le plus menaçant pour Barack Obama.

"Personne à Washington ne pense que Gingrich peut gagner. Et Washington est l'endroit où on le connaît le mieux", a résumé Kathleen Parker, une éditorialiste républicaine, dans le Washington Post..

Then the woman who called Newt a real bad guy calls on… the New York Times' in-house RINO for testimony!

David Brooks, l'un des éditorialistes conservateurs du New York Times, généralement magnanime, lui a attribué tous les traits excessifs des années 1960 : "Narcissisme, autosatisfaction, intempérance." Comme le savent tous ceux qui ont travaillé avec lui, "il causerait un tort important au conservatisme et au Parti républicain s'il était désigné", écrit-il.

Narcissism, self-satisfaction, intemperance? Doesn't that sound like somebody by the name of… Barack Obama to you?

5 Dead, 123 Wounded During Attack on Belgian Christmas Market: Some Politically Incorrect Points You Will Hardly See Many of in the MSM

Five people killed in a single assassin's attack on a Liège Christmas market, 123 wounded (BBC Videos) besides the killer who committed suicide immediately afterwards.

In such a bloody and tragic context, how many politically incorrect details are we allowed to point out straight away?

• Well, besides the fact that all this occurred — yet again — in famously (and proudly) gun-free Europe, and
• besides the fact that the name of the killer who struck at a Christmas market is Arabic and/or Muslim (Nordine Amrani), how about
• the fact that if this recidivist had not been let out of jail on conditional release, five people would be alive today while 123 of their countrymen would not be in hospital. Indeed, had the jail authorities, like most of Europe's political authorities, not suffered from "tolerance"-itis©, all these scores of people would still be looking forward to a merry Christmas with their families…

Related: For a gun-free zone like Europe (always ready to give lessons to clueless Yanks regarding such things as violence, trusting in the police, and gun control versus the obsolete right to bear arms), France for one has recently seen a plethora of crimes with automatic pistols, Kalashnikovs, and explosives.

• Violence and Gun Control: Facts Which Europeans and American Leftists Conveniently Ignore

Permanent Pre-Pubescence

All of our problems today come from trying to maintain an unsustainable form of social economy, and yet the moaners want more of what they think other people have.

Instead they resort to tortured logic:

In practice, liberalisation and austerity are making matters far worse. In Greece, Ireland and Portugal, adjustment packages imposed from the outside but with the collusion of domestic governments have resulted in sharp falls in economic activity, large rises in unemployment and painful social dislocation. Government deficits have risen.

Work by Research on Money and Finance and others has shown that the build-up of debt in peripheral economies was not the result of government profligacy. The fundamental cause has been diverging competitiveness between the economies of the periphery and those of the core, above all Germany. By heavily repressing the wages of its own workers, Germany ensured that there was no chance for peripheral economies to compete, locked as they were into monetary union and unable to devalue their currencies.

So if you don’t buy the line that it’s all the fault of people trying to take the giveaway monster, then at least blame Germans for “repression,”

AKA harmonizing their wages with the rest of the zone.

This divergence of competitiveness resulted in entrenched structural imbalances between core and periphery, leading to surpluses for Germany and deficits for others. These deficits in peripheral countries were matched by borrowing abroad resulting in accumulation of private and public debt. When the sub-prime crisis struck, public deficits soared as private liabilities were taken onto government books, tax revenues fell and social security payments rose.

Which is another way of trying to say that governments borrowed more because there was no income left to tax. This may be the first time any main-line European brain has thought of this concept. Too bad that the conclusion drawn isn’t the obvious one: that spending is too high. In fact the though is being used to prop up an even stranger and less plausible argument: that wages and prices should be fixed after the fashion of wartime America and corroded Marxist-Leninism, and that German wages should be structurally fixed higher for similarly simplistic social effects.

So if the European states are all hunters, without also mentioning the Dutch, the Germans should (for the sake of equality of outcome) set out unarmed. Nonetheless in the interest of public self-pity, even those they employ should imagine that they are Bambi in this scene.

As always, even the “austerity” of curtailing middle-class welfare by trying to get a grip on public service pensions, staff size, and the like is characterized as a political fascism:

As the eurozone crisis worsens, proposals to resolve it are becoming increasingly authoritarian. Two in particular are now widely advocated by commentators across the political spectrum. First, that technocratic governments should be installed to carry out necessary reforms in stricken economies. Second, that in the short-term the European Central Bank could halt the crisis, if only Germany could be persuaded to drop its opposition.

Hilariously, the Bundesbank’s only real position is to not lend for the sake of public spending, but only debt restructuring.

This, of course, cannot stand. There’s a political cadre to fund, and votes to buy at a tense, critical time. The really funny part is that the same Germany that it is imagined could be compelled to go naked in order to clothe her neighbors is now a straw-man synonymous with “the bosses”, like the purposely misunderstood “1%” of the Occupy Wall Street complex of economic illiteracy, demonization and ignorance.

How far do you get saying “you’re just plain evil because of who you are – now buy me lunch and give me your shoes” ?

Summing up that whole Eurozone problem thingy

Starting at 0:51 and crescendo-ing with Mdme De Farge speaking on behalf all Eurozoneans at 1:16......

Italy's New National Hero Is an Accountant and a Disciple of Hayek to Boot

Italy's latest national hero is a protester of a different sort, writes Philippe Ridet in Le Monde, an accountant and a protester who does not condemn the capitalist system to boot. Au contraire. Giuliano Melani, who has been taking out ads in Italian newspapers to suggest in what places his countrymen should invest their money, is a disciple of Friedrich Hayek and Karl Popper.

Cet "indigné" d'un nouveau genre ne condamne pas l'économie capitaliste, bien au contraire. Cet admirateur des économistes autrichiens Friedrich Hayek et Karl Popper la voudrait plus claire et transparente : "Personne ne sait comment fonctionne le budget de l'Etat. Moi-même, j'ai mis trois jours pour trouver tous les chiffres. L'information financière, dit-il, est présentée comme occulte et ésotérique. Mais l'économie n'est pas si compliquée. Il faut juste qu'on l'explique mieux. Pour cela, il aurait fallu qu'on nous parle moins de Ruby", lâche-t-il dans une allusion au dernier des scandales sexuels de Silvio Berlusconi.

Der Doppelte Kotau

TAKI’S MAGAZINE takes a look into the absurd world of European politics through the lens of German self-regard.

I can tell you that it seems to have always been guilt and shame based, exceedingly simplistic, and reminiscent of chattering and political classes who rarely contact reality.

It ain’t pretty.

Perhaps the most comical argument for bailing out Greece has come from Merkel’s CDU Labor Minister and outspoken feminist Ursula von der Leyen, who has been vocal in her support for “helping the Greeks get back on their feet.” In a recent appearance on a weekend talk show hosted by TV celebrity Günther Jauch, Ms. von der Leyen went after those who criticize Greece’s spending habits and bloated state bureaucracy. According to van der Leyen, such a captious judgment does not take into account the close resemblance between the “Greeks at the present hour and the Germans in 1945, when we were a battered people.” To the Labor Minister, assisting the Greeks seems the proper thing to do. It is “like the CARE-packages that the Americans sent us after the War.”

Remember the asinine prejudice about German policy and motives having something to do with a disappointingly false reputation for kinkiness? Well here’s it’s flip side: the equally asinine need to ameliorate the no-longer-existent harm caused by an imaginary “national personality attribute” by sufferers of the cult of leftist victim theory who so believe in that the notion of class warfare can have a “national personality”, that they see it all within the prism of their own Stockholm Syndrome.

This last comparison borders on the lunatic, except when a German politician is trying to be “nice.” Then it simply reflects the dominant national culture. Perhaps the Germans should insist on a fundamental right which the Americans once exercised: to carpet with bombs an enemy country and then hang its leaders as war criminals. Once having done this, the Germans could get on with the good stuff, such as providing those they’ve mercilessly “battered” with chocolate bars and sewing kits. Like other German politicians, von der Leyen is accustomed to the double kowtow (der doppelte Kotau), which involves simultaneously sucking up to the Yankees and non-German Europeans. Whereas Germans were once feared for lunging at their neighbors’ necks, now they’re delighted to be at everyone’s feet.

After all if the European public, and particularly German society, is good at one thing, it’s licking the boot that kicks you. This comes well after one is conditioned into the old misguided belief that the state is the only vehicle of relief, scholarship, and humanism itself.

Recognized by some is the malleability of governance theory to the convenience of leaders avoiding verbal confrontation within the EU tribe. It’s consequences are themselves frequently absurd and remind one of the forehead-slap-worthy hijinks of the UN. The difference being that states regularly ignore the suggestions and dictates of the “singular world body”:

Presumably the banks, which made loans to the Greeks at the German government’s urging, will have to be saved as a first step to dealing with Greek insolvency. An article in the relatively right-wing Preußische Allgemeine Zeitung explains a ridiculous situation: The Germans have the same representation in the EU Council as Cyprus and Malta combined, yet they contribute 28% of the organization’s available capital as opposed to the 0.3% given by Cyprus and Malta. Germans are watching their earnings decline while paying for other countries’ insolvency, yet they seem determined to make their problem even worse. Although Germans gripe about the bailout, the vast majority support leftist parties that will give away even more of their money to foreign governments. German voters snub and even despise parties such as the Republikaner which oppose the bailouts.

All of whom are wrong in their own way, considering that they are an economic area as dependant on exports as they are consumption, and find themselves competing with Burmese indentured labor and a Chinese workforce laboring under Pinkerton gang-pressers, but have upward labor cost pressure priced in an inflated currency. If growth is your only way out of this pickle, even the fiscal hawks have a few more realities to embrace, and they sure as hell don’t involve reputations for national kinkiness and images of the not-yet-brought-low beating their fellow Europeans into servile callowness.

Order Your New Pet Newt!

Seventh in New York Times article popularity among Gray Lady readers is a Brian McFadden cartoon mocking Newt Gingrich on the Opinion Pages (click on link to see a larger image).

Which is fair. And — indeed — even (more than) a little funny.

But still. How many leftist cartoons have we seen regarding Barack Obama, compared with conservatives like Newt or with a Republican president like Dubya? And how many (of these relatively rare) Obama jokes made it, in terms of popularity, to the New York Times' top 10?

What is it about "focusing humor and satire on the people currently in power" (not their out-of-power opponents, not just them or overwhelmingly them, at least) that leftist writers (and readers!), aka self-declared objective neutrals, do not understand?

(And check the right-hand side of Brian McFadden's Think Tank cartoon: besides the fact that conservatives — unlike liberals — are not supposed to teach citizens "valuable life lessons" (what a ridiculous conceit!), how dare Newt treat reporters of the mainstream media bent with anything but the utmost respect?!)

Germany’s New Morgenthau Plan

Two Norwegian owned gas-fired power plants in northern Germany, critical to complementing the nation’s planned wind power capacity when the winds aren’t blowing, will be shut down. Because they’re operating at 20% capacity, they are not economical. The result of the shutting down of these two massive plants will be that the power will simply go out when the wind isn’t blowing hard enough.

Financial Times Deutschland reported:

"We will possibly need to make more power intervention," [Ed.: subsidies] said a spokeswoman for network operator Tennet. Of the failure of the two gas-fired power plants in the north: "If it were up to southern Germany, the situation would be difficult." Because of high wind power capacity in the North German Plain, the gas-fired power plants are seldom used, found Tzschoppe’s closure plan report. The two plants combined generate nearly 1,000 megawatts of power - almost as much as a nuclear power plant. Best run in operation 1000 to 2000 hours per year, they have been running only a few hundred hours.

Plans on track to deindustrialize? Yes. In more ways than one, we finally get to see the structured enfeeblement of an advanced society in action.

The Federal Network Agency has not scheduled a closing date of the Statkraft plants. After last week’s submitted monitoring report, the Authority expects to terminate in addition to about 3,000 megawatts of nuclear power plants are coal power from the grid in 2013, but no gas-fired power plants. Power shortages threaten the network, especially in southern Germany.

And now for the ugly truth: business defined by political goals fail.

But in the face of high gas costs and relatively low electricity prices were to achieve even with new gas-fired power plants currently barely adequate margins indicated Tzschoppe.

And what it all boils down to is the money that isn’t there, which “to save the planet” will become a cost that they will have to drop on the foot of a public that doesn’t have much of a choice in where their power comes from.

The price of electricity would have to reach reach 85 to 90 euros per megawatt hour in order to justify investments in new gas-fired power plants - about 50 percent more than it costs now.

The exhausted and angry postwar allies couldn’t have done any better.

Sarkozy to DSK Pre-IMF: "In the States, Women Are Different; I'm Warning You, Be Careful with the Women"

Ariane Chemin has a major report in Le Monde about what Nicolas Sarkozy knew and didn't know regarding Dominique Strauss-Kahn's weaknesses (penchant for girls, etc)…

Les deux hommes – ex-députés, avocats d'affaires, venus à la politique sans passer par l'ENA – s'apprécient. Ils se fréquentaient de temps à autre, avec leurs épouses. En 1993, au début de la cohabitation, un premier dîner a eu lieu au Fouquet's : Anne Sinclair présente le ministre du budget à son mari, qui vient de perdre les législatives. Ils se retrouvent sur l'île de la Jatte, chez Cécilia et Nicolas, ou chez le couple Strauss-Kahn-Sinclair, avenue du Général- Maunoury, dans le 16^e arrondissement, ou encore chez Jacques Attali pour une pendaison de crémaillère. Entre eux, une forme d'estime et de connivence sociale.

A son "frère" Brice Hortefeux, Nicolas Sarkozy glisse un jour : "Quand je pense comme on m'a emm… pour mon escalier de Neuilly, je ne sais pas comment lui ferait dans une campagne !" A Alain Minc, quand les préparatifs de la course à l'Elysée du socialiste deviennent patents : "Tu sais bien qu'il ne PEUT pas se présenter…"

Et à l'intéressé, les yeux dans les yeux, un jour que le patron du FMI a fait le voyage de Washington jusqu'à la rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré : "Dominique, toi et moi, on ne nous aime pas, on est pareils, on est des métèques, on aime le fric et les femmes, raconte Michel Taubmann, le biographe de DSK. Mais les femmes, aux Etats-Unis, ce n'est pas pareil. Je te préviens, fais attention avec les femmes."

An Question, if You Will:

Why isn’t “water cannon” considered a form of protected speech?

"Without the Special Forces, the Libyan Operation Would Not Have Succeeded"

Never have France's special forces been so much in demand as in 2011

writes Nathalie Guibert in Le Monde of the forces created in June 1992 after the Golf War and numbering 4,000. "Today, there is no French military engagement unless special forces are included" says Christophe Gomart, the general at the head of the commandement des opérations spéciales (COS). (Related: The French government's unsound choices regarding military drones.)

Le constat est validé par le général Christophe Gomart, à la tête du commandement des opérations spéciales (COS). "2011 aura été une grosse année, car les crises auront été exceptionnelles", a-t-il indiqué au Monde lors d'un entretien. Le général précise qu'"il n'est aujourd'hui pas d'engagement militaire français sans que les forces spéciales y soient associées".

Prises d'otages successives au Sahel, guerre d'Afghanistan, lutte contre la piraterie au large de la Somalie, interventions en Côte d'Ivoire, puis en Libye, et demain, peut-être, en raison de la crise syrienne, opération de protection de ressortissants au Proche-Orient : les missions s'accumulent.

… En juin, quand Paris a décidé de larguer des armes aux rebelles, les forces spéciales ont été actives dans la région de Zintan. Enfin, en août, pour la bataille de Tripoli, le COS a déployé jusqu'à trente conseillers dans le centre des opérations du CNT. Les commandos ont préparé le débarquement de bateaux rebelles dans le port de la capitale libyenne. Ils ont réouvert l'ambassade de France. Mais ils n'ont "jamais été en première ligne" sur le terrain, indique le général Gomart. Qui partage l'analyse faite par le RUSI [un think tank londonien de référence, le Royal United Services Institute] : "Sans les forces spéciales, l'opération libyenne n'aurait pas réussi."

Depuis 1992, les missions traditionnelles n'ont pas changé : dans les opérations militaires, les commandos sont chargés d'arriver les premiers, de désorganiser l'adversaire, puis de "fermer la porte".

The Field of Psychiatry could Preoccupy itself for Decades with these Jokers

The Europeans are a sort of Jonathan Winters wandering the global barnyard: they offer comic relief, but have something tragically disturbing about them.

In this case, the underlying assumptions behind this cartoon by Patrick Chapatte: the hapless, innocent Euro-elves, victims of circumstance and anything else that they had no hand in, being talked down to by a towering white American man vaguely reminiscent of the elder George Bush. Ordered around in their innocent, childlike state, they are of course, victims of bullying or something.



... "Things will get better if Europe learns to speak with one voice."
... "HELP!"

The Best Health Care System in the World, Yes; Well, Except for This One Flaw and, Oui, This Other Flaw and, Oh, That Flaw Over There, and…

France is often praised for its health car system, considered one of the best in the world

writes Le Monde in an editorial while praising the quality of its doctors. Well, yes, it goes on, except… Except for the fact that

there are numerous flaws in the system, from the medical deserts and excess fees to a command over expenses belonging more in the accounting department than in the medical department that results in a drop in reimbursements from the health insurance services, public as well as private.

So, all in all, you understand, the state health system à l'européenne works really really well. Just except for, y'know, "The medical deserts [rural zones devoid of doctors], the excess fees… The barriers to health care are real." Oh wait, there's more!

To those, add the lengthening waiting times to see a specialist. According to an IFOP survey for Le Journal du dimanche, 92% of French people have renounced care at a specialist's office and 63% at a general practitioner's due to distance or cost. The numbers speak for themselves.

Indeed they do. "92% [!] of French people have renounced care at a specialist's office"! And "63% [!] at a general practitioner's"! But c'm'on, apart from those tiny, inconsequential details, it's certain that the clueless Americans (ces gros abrutis) should renounce their unethical, egoistical, evil free market health care fiasco (un désastre, vous dis-je, un désastre!) and, like Barack Obama tells us, copy the generous, tolerant Europeans' noble, humanitarian, benevolent, big-hearted health system whose altruism rings from the mountaintops…

La France est souvent vantée pour son système de santé, qui est considéré comme un des meilleurs au monde. Indéniablement, la qualité de ses médecins est un de ses atouts. Mais il y a de multiples failles dans le système qui ont trait aux déserts médicaux, aux dépassements d'honoraires et à une maîtrise plus comptable que médicale des dépenses qui aboutit à une baisse des remboursements par l'assurance- maladie et les mutuelles. Le résultat est sans appel : l'accès aux soins est de plus en plus inégalitaire et ne cesse de se détériorer.

… Il reste qu'il y a encore en France trop de déserts médicaux. Le gouvernement refuse toute mesure coercitive visant à obliger les médecins à s'installer dans des zones rurales. La loi Bachelot, qui avait institué un "contrat santé solidarité" imposant une amende de 3 000 euros aux médecins exerçant en zone surmédicalisée qui refusaient de venir en aide aux praticiens des zones désertifiées, a été modifiée. Election présidentielle oblige, toute mise en cause de la sacro-sainte liberté d'installation a été abandonnée au profit d'un système de volontariat qui peine à faire ses preuves.

L'autre faille concerne les dépassements d'honoraires. Aujourd'hui, de plus en plus de médecins pratiquent des honoraires libres, et ceux-ci sont en augmentation constante. En 2010, six spécialistes sur dix ont opté pour le secteur 2 (honoraires libres), plutôt que pour le secteur 1 (tarifs conventionnés de la Sécurité sociale). Depuis dix ans, les dépassements d'honoraires, peu pris en charge par les complémentaires de santé, ont augmenté de 50 %.

… Déserts médicaux, dépassements d'honoraires : les obstacles aux soins sont réels. Il s'y ajoute l'allongement des délais d'attente pour consulter un spécialiste. Selon une enquête de l'IFOP pour Le Journal du dimanche, 92 % des Français on [sic] renoncé à des soins chez un spécialiste et 63 % chez un généraliste à cause de l'éloignement ou du coût. Les chiffres parlent d'eux-mêmes.

WWM-SRD ?

Libération Propagandastaffel has it dead wrong when it takes Europe’s idiotic effort to solve an Economic problem with the carcass of European states’ diplomatic structure with one another inder the theme of: “economics doing politics”, and points it’s impotent rage at politicians who live in the Eurozone politcal-straightjacket they went along with being unable to simply dictate that they are solvent and gin up wealth to redistribute.

"Executive, legislative and judiciary - the economic crisis has done away with this old structure. The last three years with all their ups and downs and breakneck tempo show how obsolete this basic order has become. Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel announce with satisfaction and with great pomp their projects for Europe? Several hours later a rating agency ridicules them and sweeps them from the table by placing the Eurozone under negative credit watch. The founding structure of democracy has now been replaced by a new and brutal economic power. With nothing to counterbalance or even regulate it, it now controls the others and dictates its own laws."

Because courts and national leaders are the ones who are supposed to define rates of interests on bonds, you see – this despite the fact that even the ECB had to postpone a bond auction because there wasn’t enough interest, and the underwriters were left holding the bag.

Note that they don’t take issue with anything real and think the whole thing has to do with Sarkozy and Merkel’s re-election prospects. In other words, anything that happens in the world has nothing to do with the bloated, near command economy they persistently plump for, but rather for whatever the thoroughly misnamed Libération editor and Stepford-child head-bobber feels and want the truth to be.

As if the world was their oyster, and it’s size of the kind of oyster you pick up in a month that doesn’t end in an “R”.

Another persistent theme has been the downgrade S&P of numerous banks worldwide. Apparently they believe that economics is driven by political stances, and so would I if I was as consistently economically illiterate and prone to delusion as they are. S&P, they assume is to be demonized for “practicing politics”, as if their ratings analysts care.

Propagandastaffel position is irresponsible and much less informative than even their own blogs that cover business, markets, and the economy. It isn’t just linear, ignorant, insular, and small-minded, but meant to feed their easy-chair fantasies of being able to inflame a mob against the state. Those days are over. There is no bright hammer-and-sickle to the east that they can point to mendaciously as an example of “how things whould be done”.

The sum of all fears when you’re a leftist living in the prewar days of Soviet Marxist-Leninism?

Never were the report of strengths and weaknesses more apparent, but never has political power seemed so helpless. The presidential campaign will hide the main issue of the political turmoil and the impossibility of any effective political action: three years that have passed have shown that firefighters ran after the fires, always late. Commentators will focus on the beauty of movement and skill of diplomatic compromise. While everything will be played today and tomorrow, in managing the social consequences of the crisis.

As if the French left, let alone what they imagine would be the actions of a President Ségolène Royal would have done anything about it the way Zapatero VERY bravely did showing leadership in Spain, even against his own supporters populist bleatings.

What Libé wants is this crisis to not go to any sort of political waste.