Learn the Word, Bro

The Atlanticist reminds your correspondent that CFO jobs don’t grow on trees. So morally repugnant Chic-Fil-A motorist and bullier of the 99% Adam Smith should probably learn the following phrase, now that he’s been fired from medical supplies manufacturer Vante:

“Do you want fries with that?”

The Leftist Way: Making the Useful Unwashed Believe Non-Existent Economics Facts

My clients are diminished by me having a gov contract?! Now you’re making shit up @nopasa @richlowrie @LilMissRightie #p2 #tcot #left #right

I received a curious tweet out of the blue, from someone looking very much like a funded political operator very-much mis-stating his identity. It begins with a name which is supposed to look banal and “non-partisan” in nature, and links a blog that looks too well produced not to have been put together by a paid political operation, obfuscating for a phony argument that President Obama has been good for the economy at large.

But a close look at the web page is a encylopedia example of passive-aggressive politicval demagoguery masking itself as a “mild” news-opinion site, promoted by someone who purports to be involved in business. There is nothing other than a bizzare defense of the Kony donation exploitation sham, Sandra Fluke’s stunt, and an attempt to compare Mitt Romney (who is not the President) to Vadimir Putin.

The type of business this light and authority on the workings of business and the economy is not stated.

When I tried to engage him in a conversation about productive businesses and the effect of aggressive regulation, he then went on to tell be something about having a US government contract in an attempt to silence the question. It assumes that business is business in any regulatory environment, and that all should be well is we all had tons of government contracts. As if.

If anything about his stated identity is true, the Solicitation number and possibly even his SF 330 should be a matter of public record. So far, he’s reinforced the fact that the “outreach” is Democrat political sham by not saying anything that makes any sense.

“Left Slash Right” is a propaganda operation run by a liar.

Le Débat sur France 24: Mitt Romney a-t'il commis des gaffes ou non ?

While a heated debate on Mitt Romney's alleged gaffes was taking place on the English-language set of the France 24 news channel, a similar one was taking place on the French set of Le Débat (partie 1 et partie 2 / partie 1 sur YouTube et partie 2 sur YouTube):

Tournée diplomatique de Mitt Romney : à la recherche d'une stature internationale

Débat consacré à la tournée internationale de Mitt Romney : Royaume-Uni, Israël, Pologne.... Le candidat républicain à la Maison Blanche veut montrer qu'il a l'étoffe d'un homme d'État. A-t-il remporté son pari ou a-t-il perdu des points dans la course à la présidentielle ? Quelle vision du monde pour le républicain ? Quel impact sur l'élection présidentielle de novembre ?

Émission préparée par Pauline Heilmann, Camille Febvrier et Anthony Saint-Léger.

Nos invités :

• Ellen WASYLINA, Membre de "Republicans Abroad"
• Martin MICHELOT, Chercheur au German Marshall Fund Paris, Spécialiste de la politique domestique et étrangère américaine
  
• François DURPAIRE, Historien, spécialiste des États-Unis
• Paul VALLET, Professeur de Relations Internationales, spécialiste de la politique américaine

Regardez la deuxième partie.

See also France24's mocking visual of Mitt Romney:

Update: Joe reacts:

[The] rather 2002-esque looking criticism of [Mitt Romney's] America … involve[s] the usual amplification of whatever leftist vulgarity the newsroom chortles about. It is essencially a masturbatory rant

Good-Bye, Friend: RIP John Keegan; Keegan's Perspective on the Iraq War

John Keegan has died (cheers to Instapundit), the military historian who is best known for The Face of Battle (I still treasure my college course book copy), although my own favorite is Warpaths: Travels of a Military Historian in North America:

Military history and geography explain each other in North America as nowhere else in the world. Award-winning historian John Keegan explores their relationship and examines the battles fought over three centuries between Frenchman and Indian, Royalist and colonist, Union and Confederacy.

Highly recommended. Keegan has been mentioned half a dozen times on No Pasarán. Back in June 2004, we quoted from his Daily Telegraph column:

What monopolises the headlines and prime time television at the moment is news from Iraq on the activity of small, localised minorities struggling to entrench themselves before full peace is imposed and an effective state structure is restored. The news is, in fact, very repetitive: disorder in Najaf and Fallujah, misbehaviour by a tiny handful of US Army reservists — not properly trained regular soldiers — in one prison. There is nothing from Iraq's other 8,000 towns and villages, nothing from Kurdistan, where complete peace prevails, very little from Basra, where British forces are on good terms with the residents.

A day earlier, I wrote a post mentioning his book, The Iraq War, and linking that year's D-Day commemorations to another anniversary from 2004:

… it turns out that there is another 60th birthday this year. That of the Ba'ath party. Yes. It was founded by a Syrian (a Christian, incidentally) in 1944.

I am currently reading a book by an author variously described as "our greatest modern military historian" and "the most readable and most original of living military historians". In The Iraq War, John Keegan does not only describe the military operations from March to April 2003, but gives the context and background of the Iraq conflict, from the history of Mesopotamia to the historic break between Sunnis and Shi'ites, from the fall of the Ottoman empire to the contemporary rivalries. What caught my attention (and what, if truth be told, got a flame of anger burning inside me) was the information on the last page of chapter 3 relating to the origin of the Ba'ath party.

Speaking of Saddam Hussein : "The nature of his régime owed more to twentieth-century ideologies of intolerance and systems of repression than to anything derived from the more distant past."

Speaking of Saddam's Ba'ath party: "Michel Aflaq, the founder of Ba'athism, had modelled the organization of his party on Hitler's Nazi movement, of which he was an admirer."

Let us remember the Iraqi citizens quoted in Steven Vincent's Reason article: "European and Arab journalists talk to us, but they don’t care about our happiness in being liberated. They only want us to make anti-American comments."

Our Sophisticated European Betters

They have such a healthy and open attitude toward life, especially where sex with sheep is involved.

A farm hand is reported to have received a shock when he wandered past the field shortly after 3pm on Monday afternoon and witness the elderly man in the act.

"The employee saw that the whole episode was, how shall I put it, close to completion,"

Maybe He Knows Something We Don't: Kofi Annan to Step Down as Syria Mediator

Unexpectedly, announces Le Monde, Kofi Annan will not renew his mandate as Syria mediator for the United Nations and the Arab League, and will accordingly step down on August 31. The UN is looking for someone to replace the former secretary general, says his successor to that post, U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon (see Reuters news item in English, merci au Drudge report)…

In an interview with Le Monde's Natalie Nougayrède three weeks ago, Kofi Annan said that "on the Syrian case, obviously, we were unsuccesful."

Erik Svane Discusses Romney's Alleged Gaffes During Heated Debate on France 24's English-Language TV Channel

During a heated 40-minute debate with Newsweek's Paris Bureau Chief and others on France 24's English-language channel (part 1 and part 2) (part 1 on Youtube and part 2 on Youtube), Erik Svane discusses Mitt Romney's alleged gaffes during his trip to Europe and Israel.

Romney stirs controversy on bumpy foreign trip
Gaffe-prone, wannabe or savvy statesman, Western media has slammed Mitt Romney's tour of American allies, but US opinion polls tell a different story. Laura Baines and her panel discuss the Republican candidate's choice of destinations and what they mean.

• Christopher DICKEY, Newsweek Paris Bureau Chief / Mideast Editor;
• Erik SVANE, Member Republicans Abroad France, Author of "La Bannière étalée";
• Aaron David MILLER, Distinguished Scholar at The Wilson Centre and advisor to Republican & Democratic Secretaries of State for over 20 years;
• Mordechai KEDAR, Researcher at the Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies Bar Ilan University; Watch the second part
  Programme prepared and produced by Wassim Nasr, Sara Bertilsson and Mary Colombel

Stranger Than Paradise

How weird, you ask?

They invite you to customize your pan-galactic omnivorous transnational super-dooper–state (the EU). As if it actually makes sense to make an online survey substitute for the use of a democratic process as a way of presenting your gripes to the state, or presenting your vision of an entity with half a billion belching welfare moochers in it.

Maybe they’re doing this to look engaged with the public, or trrying to grow more relevant. I suppose that’s possible, but it’s unlikely to be as successful as, say, the fact that it’s National Cheesecake day – and what National Cheesecake day can be truly complete without bakeries giving out samples.

So, let me also wish you a happy post May 9th belated Europe Day as Neelie is warmly extending to you in the video re-published today, if “happy” is indeed the right term. Maybe it’s “anxious,” or “merry,” or “bereft of cogent meaning.” I don’t know what Emily Post would say on such an august occasion.