ISIS to determine outcome of next presidential election in France

When you think of a typical Frenchman,  do you picture a hale and hardy ninety-year-old white dude pedalling his bicycle through the verdant countryside with a big bagatelle and a jumbo flask of red wine in the carrier, while puffing on an unfiltered cigarette?

Or do you picture an alienated young man with dark skin cooped up in an urban high-rise, wondering why this cradle of modern secularism renders him a second-class citizen even though he was born there?

That guy on the bike is a stereotype, to be sure. He's of that generation who engineered all those goodies that Michael Moore never tires of reminding us of. He landed a good job straight out of school and between the annual mandatory three months of holidays and being on strike six months of the year only did an actual 5.2 years of work before hitting the mandatory retirement age of fifty, and life's been nothing but red wine, cigarettes, and bike rides ever since!

That other guy is a stereotype too, but like it or not, the population of alienated brown people in France is growing rapidly, while that other stereotype is fading away.

It hasn't helped that Hollande the Hapless has, over his mandate, further alienated both of those groups. Which brings us to the next election.

The so-called "centre-right" candidate next April is to be Francois Fillon, it was determined today. Fillon isn't any more centre-right than the socialist president as near as I can tell. Seems to be a bit more hawkish on taking benefits away from that guy on the bike. If Fillon has his way that guy will be renting a room in that urban high-rise from a Muslim family.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. Getting to know other cultures is always a good thing, but forcing old Jean off his bike and off his wine and ciggies is just going to create animosity. Maybe Jean will decide he'd rather die... maybe that's the plan? Getting all those old fuckers off the pension rolls would be a huge money saver, after all.

So, even though the mainstream press already foresee the April election as a show-down between Fillon and Marine Le Pen, I don't see either of our stereotypical Frenchmen having any reason to vote for Fillon.

Much will depend on who represents the French Left. While Hollande wasn't much of a "socialist," France, unlike the US, actually has a genuine left polity. Given the right candidate for the times, and the candidate will not be selected until January, it's possible to see that the greater showdown could be between the Left Front and Le Pen.

Hollande has been a complete disaster. In the first place, he's spent virtually the entirety of his mandate with his head up BHL's ass. It's fine to have presidential advisers, but when their advice is consistently and disastrously wrong, you can't just blame the adviser and walk away.

Given the right Left candidate, I can see both our stereotypical Frenchmen voting Left Front, as well as a goodly portion of the electorate who voted Hollande in 2012. That could keep Le Pen out and bring a genuinely progressive and inclusive party to power.

Which is where ISIS comes in. The Europeans in general, and nobody more enthusiastically than the French, have been co-conspirators with the US in the project to destroy the Muslim nations of the Middle East. Whether we're saving the people from their tyrants or eliminating their weapons of mass destruction or whatever gloss we want to put on it, we've been busy destroying the Middle East. That has created both an unprecedented refugee crisis and ISIS. Not hard to figure out that those two phenomena are mutually reinforcing.

Spare me the bullshit head-scratching about the clash of civilizations and why they hate us; they hate us because we've been stealing their stuff and killing their kids for generations. Ask that alienated young Muslim in that high-rise. He knows, even as the savants and the political elite pretend they can't figure it out.

So France is five months out from a presidential election and awash with refugees from countries the West has been "liberating." A certain unknown percentage of those refugees will be hard-core radicals. A much larger percentage have at least some sympathy for that hard core. Every time one of those hard-core radicals explodes in a French shopping mall between now and April, Le Pens polling numbers will spike.

That's how ISIS will determine who becomes the next president of France.

Burkini brouhaha has France on brink of civil war

The French. What the fuck is wrong with those people?

You go to the beach with your family. Do you really give a shit whether other folks on the the beach are wearing too little, too much, or just the right amount of beach attire?

I know it's never crossed my mind, and I used to take my impressionable toddlers to the beach all the time back when they were impressionable toddlers.

But it's a really really big deal in France these days. Local authorities in Cannes and Nice outlawed the Burkini on local beaches. Top ministers in the government of the hapless Hollande have advocated a national ban on the burkini. So has the opportunistic midget Sarkozy. The political mainstream players are of course merely angling to block the huge political hay the Le Pen crowd would otherwise make out of this non-issue.

France is in many ways a pretty cool place for working-class and middle-class folks. Between the 35 hour work week and the mandatory six week paid summer vacation, what's not to like? Michael Moore never misses a chance to rub our noses in the fact that the French have it way better than we do.

It didn't take long for the world wide web to point out the hypocrisy of those who claim Muslim women are wearing too many clothes to the shore with this fine shot of good Christian women at the beach:



Hey, they got more shit on than those Burkini babes! Maybe these gals get a pass in France because they are the brides of Christ, whereas those Muslim gals obviously couldn't be, but still...

And they're perfectly serious about this stuff over there. Check out this picture of manly French Guardians of Virtue forcing a Muslim woman to remove her excess clothing.



Yup, that's what we've come to in the Nations of Virtue... the relentless desecration and bombardment of Islamic lands... the relentless harassment of the Muslims in our midst...

And if perchance a small minority of those folks end up hating us, we can't figure out why?

Storm clouds over Europe

Round one of the French presidential election went today and the only real surprise is the unexpectedly robust showing of Marine Le Pen, the far right candidate.

In Europe the term "far right" is generally interchangeable with the term "neo-fascist".

So while there are no storm troopers in the streets just yet, give it time.

The Wall Street Journal brushes off Le Pen's showing by claiming "this is a turn democracies often take when politicians have no answers for high unemployment, rising debt, and economic decline."

So it's nothing to worry about then. It's just a turn democracies often take...

You know, like in Italy in the 20's.

Or Germany in the 30's.

Certainly nothing to worry about.

The WSJ makes it clear what they worry about. Those damned socialists! Hollande beat Sarkozy and will need the support of the Left Front to triumph in the second round on May 6. That means full steam ahead for the socialist "fantasy" program of a living minimum wage and a 75% marginal tax rate on the highest income earners.

That would amount to "jumping off the socialist cliff" according to the Wall Street Journal.

They'll take the fascists any day.