The Hardest Part...

... will be getting over herself once this is all over.

'As his party prepared Champagne and canapés for Sunday night outside his Paris headquarters, Sarkozy swiftly rebuffed Royal's fears of rioting. "She's not in a good mood this morning," he told Europe 1 ratio. "It must be the opinion polls."'

Erik Svane sort la suite des aventures de Leonardo da Vinci

Erik Svane sort la suite des aventures de Leonardo da Vinci

Croisade vers la Terre Sainte

Vedette américano-danoise de la BAF, Erik Svane a fait paraître le deuxième volet de sa série de BD (voir le premier tome ici) avec Dan Greenberg aux Éditions Paquet.

Dans ce Tome II, Croisade vers la Terre Sainte, nous découvrons qu'après avoir "embrigadé" un Leonardo réticent et réquisitionné ses inventions militaires pour une nouvelle Croisade, les forces du Vatican, commandées par le général Scharano, mettent les voiles vers Rhodes, bastion chrétien du Proche Orient assiégé par la redoutable armée ottomane. Mais les soldats du Saint-Siège ne sont pas aussi invincibles qu'ils croient l'être devenus, et... il y a de la trahison dans l'air...

Le commander sur Amazon (ou aller l'acheter dans une Fnac quelconque)…

Plantu's Demonization of Sarkozy Continues Until the Very Last Days

…as did his concurrent beatification (although it is admittedly tongue-in-cheek, as you can see, it is just barely so, with all those brave innocent followers of hers, aka "the people") of Ségolène Royal (and that, on Le Monde's front page, natch)…

Update: Appealing to the Vote for a Woman crowd, Serguei weighs in (click on 2 above left) with a joyful Ségo looked upon tenderly by a motherly Marianne while a spiteful Sarko sweats with hatred… (Plantu's cartoon has to do with Afghanistan's Taliban putting off their ultimatum about the fate of their French hostage until the end of the voting.)

Update: Three months later, Pancho weighs in…

It's always fun watching Leftists lose ...

... but other than that, don't get your hopes up. We're still in Europe, after all.

1,5% of “Growth?”

On Air, but not in print the BBC is continuing the report that “combating” Anthropogenic Global Warming will ONLY cost 1,5% of global growth. Nonsense. The Stern report softened the ground by pricing this salve on the unscientific conscience at 1% of GDP, not “growth. Globally, the GNP grows at a rough average of 2%. A 1,5% burden, itself a figure intended to seem acceptably low to get civilization to sign on the bottom line, is actually 75% of all growth, and as such 75% of all real poverty eradication, development, and definable and certain improvement of the quality of life.

To begin with this 1/1,5/3% business is nonsense. To impose a burden of a 50-150% on growth will cause more contraction that the actual loss of growth itself. Think of it as reverse compound interest. The throw-away line greens have about suggesting an area pursue “eco-tourism instead” falls into the same category of condescension for humanity.

All this to accomplish what? A supposed 2º C “correction” to the neam global temperature in 40 years. So instead of eradicating poverty, this pernicious obsession of the whingerati will instead eradicate the poor.

The BBC’s global reach makes this more than a mere slip. Their world service radio and television programming reaches a good part of the world, and in many underdeveloped parts of it, is considered the only access people have to “real” journalism. Instead, they prefer to lie to the inhabitants in under-developed society about their own fate.

See this (skip to 12 min. for the skinny) to imagine the moral repugnance of what they’re trying to promote: in half a century, what would we tell the descendants of those we’re taking opportunity from today?

Pour le PS, ça part en couilles

The final poll before the actual vote gives Sarkozy 55%, a score which has been rising steadily since the debate earlier this week (which the French preSS saw as a win for the combative and pugnacious Ségolène -- it would seem that the French public, for whom she came across as shrill and hysterical, begs to differ). Ségolène Royal, when not making catastrophic proclamations of impending doom should Sarkozy be elected, is making impassioned calls to the French to ignore all polls before Sunday's vote. Behind the scenes, Socialist top guns are already thinking about how to get rid of head honcho François "Flanby" Hollande who is on the verge of losing a 3rd straight Presidential election for his Party. The défaitisme at the Socialist Party is such that certain talking heads are stating that, at 47% of the vote Ségolène Royal will chalk up a symbolic victory.

Better Than Borat

(…not to speak of, Better than ABC News "reporting"…)

Inside Iraq: The Inside Stories by Mike Shiley (excerpt)

Ségolène the American

The rancor, the anger, the spite, the accusations... the narrative of “Anybody but Bush” among the other Pavlovian drools translated directly. To put it in perspective of accusing people of “being American”, take into account the exchange I had with a lefty American blogger and a completely fake populist:

"Two days until France becomes a police state, which you apparently support. So much for 'freedom'."

Hey, before you know it they’ll be segregating the lunch counters, and the rest of the canned spiel and freshly potted bile. Behold how the "warnings" of the wise look like threats by a typical peace-camper:

"The term police state is a pejorative term for a state in which the government exercises rigid and repressive controls over the social, economic and political life of the population (or a segment), especially by means of a secret police force which operates above the normal constraints found in a liberal democracy. A police state typically exhibits elements of totalitarianism and social control, and there is usually little distinction between the law and the exercise of political power by the executive."

Wait for the riots that will erupt if he is elected. You think those riots last year were bad?

I'd hate to be a Muslim in France come Monday morning.

That the overraught left in the magical land of € sounds so much like America’s own “special” people should come as no surprise. The similarities are striking when it comes to the casualness with which they’d dispose of both pluralism and civil calm when they don’t have their way:

Tony Essono, 32, an unemployed economist whose parents emigrated from Cameroon before he was born, said that despite years of anger and discrimination, people in La Courneuve were willing to put their faith in the ballot box "because they understand they can change something" by voting. But, he added, "if Sarkozy is elected, it means we haven't been heard, and we'll trash everything."

As U*2 said: just wait for that 3e Tour.

Not only is she hysterical

She's a hysterical liar.

1968ers head for the lifeboats

And hopefully, there will not be enough lifeboats to go around. Le Monde Al Jazeera on the Seine is sending out a distress signal with this afternoon's edition headlined with a gasping "Sarkozy-Royal: the gap widens". Seems like everyone saw what the still politically correct straight jacketed French preSS refuses to report: that Royal was a hysterical, scatterbrained, hormone-addled, castrating ballbuster during her debate with Sarkozy. Definitely not figurehead material. Not even for the French.

"The French have been sitting around talking to themselves as if the world didn't exist"

When an interviewer asked Valéry Giscard d'Estaing the other day what he thought of the minimal attention paid to international affairs in France's presidential election campaign, he corrected his questioner

remembers John Vinocur in the International Herald Tribune.

There was no interest at all, the former president said. "It's a France living with the shutters closed," he said. "The French have been sitting around talking to themselves as if the world didn't exist."

… A country confused about how to end the misery of its high unemployment and low growth, France likes the prerogatives that come with United Nations Security Council membership and its hold on big-power status as a nuclear-armed nation. But it doesn't want to hear and think much about its diminished place in the world, or the prospect of new responsibilities and having to take sides.

• Bonus NYT article: After Chirac, a Question Mark on French Foreign Policy


• Bonus AP article: Sarkozy more pro-American than Royal — but may not be the lapdog critics say

"Il faut voter SR pour sauver le PS"

Hemming and hawing in a front page editorial, Le Monde's Jean-Marie Colombani ends up by coming out for Ségolène in order (see last two paragraphs) to …save the Socialist Party! (Since this would allow le PS to reinvent itself…)

Most Le Monde readers have already shown their partisanship, but as one of them says,

Je n'ai jamais rien lu d'aussi révolutionnaire. En appelant à l'élection de Royal pour permettre la réinvention (sic) du PS, JMC prend la France et les français pour le laboratoire de ses délires. Que le PS et ses fossiles se modernisent seuls sans leur présenter la France en offrande. Les jeux de la gente Rive Gauche n'amusent qu'eux même. Organisez vous une garden party à Versailles pour un évènement royal.

Or to quote U2, Folks, you can't make this shit up. It's a French Socialist mindset sputtering away on all cylinders.

After the Hissy Fit, we now have to put up with Crazed Cries of Impending Danger

Never mind that, as a Socialist, Ségolène speaks in the name of the most brutal ideology of what was an already very brutal 20th century -- she is now sounding the alarm that a vote for Sarkozy is a dangerous choice that will plunge France into the throes of a brutal system. Socialists are shameless bastards.

One Webmaster's Prediction

As the debate ended on Wednesday night, I said: Sarkozy wins on Sunday with 53-54%.

(Unless, of course, the socialists are "lucky" enough to get a totally unexpected windfall à la Madrid bombing…)

The socialists are so imbued with their Sarkozy hatred that they failed (or Ségolène failed, at least) to see that one point of the debate (the main point, indeed) was to appear presidential, especially for the undecided voters, centrist or otherwise. Somewhere, they did realize this, as Ségo tried relentlessly to make Sarko lose his temper and appear like the brute we all know he is. But with her eyes full of contempt (they rarely seemed to leave him), she was clearly out for blood while Sarkozy was (or at last appeared) only interested in ideas and having a back-and-forth discussion, addressing the journalists as well as his adversary (and thus the French people).

Question to the French (those decided and undecided alike): Who would make a better representative for France at, say, the G-8?

Good idea. Just one question. Who will be escorting the escorters?

One tragicomic moment during the Sarko-Ségo debate was when Royal attacked Sarkozy on France's high crime rate by shamelessly exploiting the recent rapes of 2 off-duty policewomen in Bobigny. After laying the blame on Sarkozy's stint as Interior Minister she went on to expose her solution to the problem: if she is elected, she promised to have all off-duty policewomen escorted by... the police! Folks, you can't make this shit up. It's a French Socialist mindset sputtering away on all cylinders.

As for the rapists. Well. She had nothing to say about them.

Ségolène's brainstorm can be seen here. Part 2 at 1:46 (8:27 if the timer counts backwards).

Hey Ségolène, why not create special emploi jeune McJobs and have the policewomen escorted by French youths?

“At Peace with Itself”

• “Traditional” May Day riots

• Violence mars global May Day

• “Resistance” against who knows what. I’m not sure it matters to them.

• Hate is only not a family value when you can pin it on a non-revolutionary.

• Tangent! "Battle for Power" in the interest of peace and all thigs good: Ad Melkert got the memo, but while he advised Wolfowitz’ on his ethics issues initially, he found it more interesting to go after him instead of telling his own committee what a ethical basket case he was himself. He hired an official from his political party in the Netherlands in a cozy position, didn’t submit a disclosure statement about his financial interests as Wolfowitz had, and amounts to just another parasite job hopping from one transnational booby-hatch after another. The Klingons can’t seem to remember their own proverbs about vengeance, can they?

• Obviously at peace with itself. Caveat emtor, peeps.

• Speaking of space: American are from Mars, the EU is orbiting your anus. 2005-2007: the message hasn’t changes.

• At peace with itself during naptime.

Battlegroup!:

An important part of the EU’s military ambitions is to have the capability to react fast and forcefully in trouble spots outside EU territory...

• Solana: "The world is not standing still" (08 March 2006)

• EU reluctant to send troops to Congo (24 February 2006)

It’s the siesta after the fiesta: they can’t yet count as their first success the ambush on the Mount Wolfowitz.

• Oh, and strangling. In the name of peace of course.

Still Waiting for the De-Nazification of Discourse?

Don't bother.

This shithole, that shithole. What's the difference?

Bat Ye'or discusses the Palestinianization of Europe.

The Debate

The Economist has coverage of the debate.

Hissy Fit Nation

In France, when a Right Wing Guy gets angry he is considered to be uncontrolable and dangerous (and something akin to a Nazi). When a Left Wing Broad totally loses it, she is simply expressing her righteous indignation. Last night, after a smear campaign of several weeks during which French Socialists painted Sarkozy as unstable and prone to temper tantrums, Ségolène Royal had a hysterical meltdown during her debate with Nicolas Sarkozy. This morning, French Lefties are boasting about the fighting spirit of their candidate. It wasn't anger you understand (as they talk down to you as French Lefties always do) -- it was healthy ire in the face of injustice.
UPDATE: Ségolène's hissy fit can be seen here.
UPDATE: LCI news is announcing that, according to a poll by OpinionWay, Sarkozy was considered to be more convincing by 53% of debate viewers. Royal was judged more convincing by 31%. The Socialist Party has already issued a statement trashing the poll.