Le Monde Starting to Join the Obama Reelection Doubters

The World According to Romney, titles the front page of the weekend edition of Le Monde, as France's newspaper of reference starts fearing that Obama will not win reelection and thus starts examining what can be expected from Mitt's diplomacy viewpoints…

Meanwhile, France is still the only European country whose government has officially, and openly, taken the side of Obama…

LA FRANCE est le seul pays d'Europe à avoir officiellement, et ouvertement, exprime sa préférence dans la compétition électorale américaine. Le 24 octobre, le premier ministre Jean-Marc Ayrault contrevenait à bien des usages diplomatiques en déclarant que, s'il était citoyen américain, il voterait Obama, " sans hésiter ". La règle veut que l'on évite toute ingérence dans les débats électoraux d'une démocratie, a fortiori alliée.

… L'ironie est qu'en avril, à dix jours du premier tour de la présidentielle française, Barack Obama s'était livré à un exercice inédit de soutien envers le candidat... Sarkozy.

 
The French Fear a U.S. Administration Comprised of "a Few Boltons" 

… Mais qu'adviendrait-il si Mitt Romney passait ? La question ne met pas particulièrement à l'aise les responsables français, ayant déjà abattu leurs cartes pour M. Obama. L'une des grandes craintes serait de voir l'avènement d'une administration américaine peuplée de " quelques Bolton ", dit-on de source officielle à Paris. Une allusion a John Bolton, l'ancien membre de l'équipe George W. Bush qui aimait tant dire tout le mal qu'il pensait des Nations unies, enceinte clé du multilatéralisme, amplement valorisée par la diplomatie de M. Hollande. 

Update: Why Europeans Support Obama:

He wants to turn the United States into a version of Europe: big, meddlesome government, constantly higher levels of taxation, and intrusive regulation of almost everything

Media Flunky Update

From his childish and degrading propaganda perch, Chris Matthews insists that Rush Limbaugh reminds him of the 'Guy From Deliverance', or more accurately the oaf who forcibly sodomized the character in Ned Beatty’s role in the film, itself a hateful and prejudicial depiction of rural folk considered de rigeur of our cultural betters.

I suppose Matthews thinks of this as thoughtful political rhetoric, despite the fact that he reminds anyone with half a clue of Roger Herren’s character Rusty from Myra Breckenridge getting a pegging from Raquel Welch’s character, Myra:


Matthews, it seems has hit his creative limit, having used the one analogy he can remember fondly, just once too often:

Matthews previously smeared Ann Coulter's audience as straight out of Deliverance.

How he gets there, outside of obviously exhibiting a vivid interest in spelunking, mush as many other leftist seem to, remains unclear.

Perhaps from the position of their phony, self-constructed imaginings of others, they think this is supposed to shock conservatives. It doesn’t. It just makes them more familiar with what appears to be a stunning uniformity of thought on the part of the left. More to the point, the awkward allusions to obscenity, (this revealing of a persistent theme in their conversational culture,) serves only to shove away the few happy, normal, reasonable, and decent people that still support the left.

So my advice to Chris Matthews is simple at this point: don’t skimp on the Crisco back there, Pookie.

A Thought or two on Socialistic Crypto-Command Economics

A French commenter on Ambrose Evans-Pritchard’s article noting how regrettable Hollande’s handling of the French economy describes the mistakes Socialists make over and over to a tee.

Canute thought he commanded the waves; French socialists think they can command the economy as if it were a performing seal. As usual, that theory is proving defective in practice.

True dat, but the crime is how they got there. Once the government spends 55% of GDP, and channels the use of yet more of it, it’s capacity to do the right things, once they learn what they are, are severely constrained. In other words, they overdid the lovin’, to the point where they are walking funny, and end up with a new form of ED which will remain uncurable for generations.

Hollande and his schoolteacher-turned-prime minister Ayrault have simply dusted off the playbook of 19th century economic theory that was such a disaster for Mitterrand and his schoolteacher-turned-prime minister Mauroy.

(It's the tragedy of French socialism that it is dominated by schoolteachers who've never read anyone further to the Right than Marx; also, of course, a tragedy for the nation.)

Why the allusions to personal violation? It’s brought to mind by the thought of one of France’s great Socialist scions taking his liberty with the ideas he and the left were espousing, despite the obvious harm it does to those it’s meant to help.

A Parisian pundit remarked the other day that the Parti socialiste spent 10 years in opposition jeering at conservative governments but hadn't given a moment's thought to what it would do when it regained power, other than look after its own.

This turns out to be true.

So he really is “M. Normale”. Normal for a Socialist in politics, that is, and not unlike Barack Obama’s attempts at a short-hand interventionist economic model as well, exemplified by a the doomed notion of being a Green Venture Capital organ. It eroded into the social failings of his branch of the International Socialist Guild: into cronyism.

Here the American left were hoping for a rock star, they got a featherbedding city councilman trying economic stunts that leftist academia have touted in its’ echo-chamber for decades. In France they sought someone normal to refashion the indulgent image of Socialism, and they got a pedantic and awkward city councilman trying economic stunts that leftist academia have touted in its’ echo-chamber for decades.

I suppose it takes teachers, living largely as they do in a simplified, closed-loop economic system themselves, with its’ “single-payer” simplification of everything, to try to apply this to the rest of society. The problem is that the private sector doesn’t have anyone else’s pocket to pick to make up the difference between income and payroll.

The outcome, surprising no-one, is failure.

Why Europeans Support O: big, meddlesome government, constantly higher levels of taxation, and intrusive regulation

I see from various polls that very nearly all of you support President Obama’s reelection

Michael Ledeen writes in his Letter to My European Friends (thanks to Instapundit's Sarah Hoyt). (See also Election Advice to the American People From France's Top Leaders.)

The numbers are remarkable, indeed incredible.  More than ninety percent of you would vote Obama (94% of Italians, for example, and the numbers for Great Britain, France, Spain, and Germany are even higher).  Other numbers show that nearly half of you think you should somehow be able to vote in our elections, since American policies have such an enormous effect on you.

All of which reinforces my belief—speaking as the grandson of Russian immigrants who arrived in Harlem and western Massachusetts early in the last century–that the American Revolution was a great thing, and that Americans were right to abandon authoritarian Europe for the possibility of creating a free country across the ocean.  Anyone who truly values liberty has to see that Obama is a threat.  He wants to turn the United States into a version of Europe:  big, meddlesome government, constantly higher levels of taxation, and intrusive regulation of almost everything, combined with a deliberate and systematic weakening of military power and a foreign policy that shrinks from decisive action against freedom’s enemies.

That’s you, sadly.  So it’s understandable that you’d favor Obama (although the numbers—reminiscent of plebiscites rather than normal elections—are ridiculous).  It’s yet another sign of the decadence of Europe.

… The Europe I loved, and still love, is increasingly a theme park.  It’s fun to visit, but it’s no longer a source of creative inspiration.  Europeans seem to me to have abdicated their liberties to their governments, provided that the governments provide them with an easy life, replete with free medical care, plenty of vacations, and no international obligations.  Surely you know that very few of your tax euros go towards your defense.  We have been paying that bill for decades, and our soldiers and military power have been protecting you.

So don’t be surprised—but you should be very concerned—that we are increasingly looking across the Pacific.  It’s no accident that the most brilliant and talented Americans are increasingly Asians, not Europeans.

We don’t want to follow your example.  And your landslide support of Obama—who has done terrible damage to America—confirms my pessimism about your future.

Indeed, just as these poll results were published, I noticed another headline, announcing record levels of European unemployment.  The two things go hand in hand.  Only the energies of a free people can sustain the creation of wealth, and the sort of state that you have created, both on a national and continental level, stifles those energies.  We, too, are having a difficult time, due in part to our own blunders, and in part because the Obama administration doesn’t seem to appreciate how exceptional America is.  You turn to your leaders to solve those problems.  Most of us—or so I hope—would prefer that the government get out of our way and let us find the best remedies by ourselves.

We have a chance to do that, especially if we thumb our noses at your bad advice, and send Obama to early retirement on the island of Oahu.

Monsieur Obama or Monsieur Romney? Election Advice to the American People From France's Top Leaders

The American people will be happy to know that they are receiving election advice from the top leaders of France.

First, it was the Minister of European Affairs who brought his support to Barack Obama. Bernard Cazenave said that he "wish[es] unreservedly" for the reelection of the current president of the United States.

The following day, the Prime Minister of France jumped into the fray: "If I were an American citizen, I would vote for Obama without hesitation" stated Jean-Marc Ayrault forthrightly.

Jean-Marc Ayrault choisirait Barack Obama s'il pouvait voter lors de l'élection présidentielle américaine du 6 novembre. "Si j'étais citoyen américain, je voterais sans hésiter Obama même si on attend des Etats-Unis, peut-être, sur un certain nombre de sujets, de l'audace", a déclaré le premier ministre français sur France Inter, en citant notamment la question du conflit israélo-palestinien.

But previously, in September, even the country's president had opined on the matter, although François Hollande had done so in the joking round-about style that is his trademark. "If a socialist were to support either of the two candidates [in an American election], that could cost him votes." Maybe, therefore, he added with a smile, "I ought to support Mitt Romney."

Maybe the facts of the case that Hollande spelled out (the support of a foreign socialist — or perhaps even of anybody — is rarely good in an American election) did not reach Jean-Marc Ayrault and Bernard Cazenave. Indeed, as Le Nouvel Observateur's Vincent Jauvert puts it, such a public positioning is "contrary to the interests of France", which will — obviously — not benefit the country if Romney wins and which will not do so either in the case of an Obama victory. It is nothing but a "a short-term strategy" of "surfing on France's pro-Obama wave.

Update: Why Europeans Support Obama:

He wants to turn the United States into a version of Europe: big, meddlesome government, constantly higher levels of taxation, and intrusive regulation of almost everything

Sorry, we’re no Longer Shocked

Artists whose interests received a boost with the €12 million renovation of a museum and art center are advancing an unintelligible protest against cuts to subsidies of their craft which no-one deems worth paying for of their own volition.



Behold, the vividness of their righteous anger!
The artful solution? Break into a privately owned property and complain about the local government’s policies, as though the house was the government’s to do with as the otherwise subsidized scions of culture wish.

“Now they don’t have enough money to do any interesting exhibitions,” Lag told EUobserver from New York, where he is pursuing a master’s degree in curatorial studies.

That curator’s appeal to state seizure came from the New York that it requires airfare to get to.

Once inside the abandoned building, Lag changed the locks on the door and began work on an art exhibition, he said, “to let the neighbours know what is happening, to make people in the world know what is happening in Spain.”

I’m not sure if the neighbors care, but I am sure that the scene in Alicante, Spain isn’t relevant enough for “the world,” pre-occupied with its’ own affairs to care either.

I’ll say it again: if “culture” is depending entirely on public funding (which a small elite, and not the public has a hand in delegating,) then that form of expression can be fairly assumed to already be dead beyond redemption, and waiting for some form of genuine and unmanaged innovation (which is tangible to someone,) to replace it.

Are uncreative artists creating universal hatred for great art?

Yes. The arts, at least the arts promoted by “arts establishment” are sterile, and the genuinely creative are paying the price for what Camille Paglia accurately calls the art mafia’s “delusional sense of entitlement” fed by the use of governmental powers to choose what’s funded.

Please! Please ! A Toothless, Shoeless America is Begging you to Tell us What to Think!

Where do a great many Europeans get their information about big issues in the US? From pointless shills like these who think Tina Fey is a political mover and shaker. Take comfort in the fact that the ill-informed are doing a bang-up job educating people who don’t vote in the US anyway, but can’t help thinking that they’re authorities on US society, nonetheless.

Outside of the expats whose actual attachment to the US is not very firm, it’s hard to see that the word “partisan” even applies. In fact the outlook detectable from it is only a slight improvement over the average German, who, when thinking about America seems unnaturally obsessed with the Cuban missile crisis, those “fake” moon landings, and that “stolen” Florida election. Either way, it’s a comfortable old-hat full of hate.

Stunningly, these bloggers are no better at seeing outside their bubble as the European public offered even less contextually relevant information from the media. So they shouldn’t expound on what they no longer understand, but they seem to anyway.

What’s odd about their vacuous effort, is that the authors didn’t just waste their money on a domain name and bandwidth, but include two guys who make a living appearing journalistic, and yet another who is a PR flunky for the World Economic Forum. This is how they ‘inform’ readers hungry for information on the US election – as it is this “election information site” is made up of little more than hot-linked info-graphics, jokey, self-pleasuring leftist position rants in German to those not eligible to vote in the US anyway, and graphics like this:

I’m sure the readers of Gutmenschdorf feel witty laughing along.

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Ever wonder what life would be like without capitalism? (Thanks to Carine)

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Credits:

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Le Monde Giddy That Hurricane Sandy Is a Catastrophe That Can Be Used by Obama Against Romney

Claiming with hidden glee that Mitt Romney has a skeleton in his closet, Le Monde's Pierre Bouvier retraces the governor's stance against FEMA and centralized emergency planning, as Le Monde conveniently places the story at the very top of its website.

Echoing Rahm Emanuel's "never let a crisis go to waste", meanwhile, Corine Lesnes effectively writes that the "catastrophe" is an occasion for Barack Obama to look presidential and thus "to rise above the mêlée."

A clip from the In Our Pages 50 Years Ago section of the International Herald Tribune is edifying:

1962 Eisenhower Says Kennedy Plea ‘Crass’

 BOSTON — Former President Dwight D. Eisenhower today [Oct. 15] lambasted Edward M. Kennedy, the President’s brother, for a “crass, almost arrogant” appeal to the voters to elect him to the U.S. Senate. Then Gen. Eisenhower took out after the President himself in his harshest criticism yet of Mr. Kennedy’s handling of foreign policy. He said it was the product of aimless drift. While he did not mention Cuba by name, he said tartly at a televised political rally tonight that “no threatening foreign bases were established” and no Berlin walls were built during his own Administration. 

I was a huge JFK (and RFK) fan during my younger days, due to the "brilliant" way that he (and his brother) — in the wake the boring 1950s — handled one crisis after another. That is, I was so until I started studying history from sources (notably Paul Johnson's History of the American People) other than the mainstream media and the left's politically correct version thereof — notice that none of the latter ever seem to make mention any of his predecessor's instances of uttering "criticism" of Kennedy (of which the 50-year-old article seems to imply there were actually a great deal), "harsh" or otherwise — and I learned that one main reason that the 1950s were (relatively) boring was that the United States had a president nobody dared mess with. And the reason the early 1960s were so "exciting" was that in the young, handsome, and articulate Kennedy, the Soviets and other foreign adversaries found someone whom they considered (rightly or otherwise) as naive, inexperienced, and easy to manipulate.

See also:

• Before Palin, Before Bush, Before Reagan, It Was Eisenhower Being Called a Dunce by the Left

• Evidence of Fraud in 2008 Election? A Surprising Number of Parallels with JFK's 1960 Campaign

As far as Eisenhower's thoughts are concerned, he once had this to say:

There is nothing wrong with America that the faith, love of freedom, intelligence and energy of her citizens cannot cure.