Category: France

Number One, He’s French

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That could also be numbers two through five, but James Poulos is more imaginative with “Five Reasons François Hollande Is Destined to Fail,” and includes this astonishing fact:

As Gideon Rachman observes, France “is a country where the state already consumes 56 per cent of gross domestic product, which has not balanced a budget since the mid-1970s, and which has some of the highest taxes in the world.”

Read the whole thing. The French excel at three skills: Surrender, collaborating with the enemy, and sodomy. Not exactly a formula for economic success, no matter who’s president.

France To U.S.: We Will Make The Election Of Obama Seem Smart

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by Smitty

According to Breitbart, Nicolas the Short has been ousted in favor of Francois Holland. Holland seems to favor:

  • raise taxes (including a marginal tax rate for earnings above $1 million to 75%),
  • lower retirement age, and
  • boost spending levels

I suppose that’s one reaction to economic reality: deny it categorically.
Zerohedge plays the Ancien Régime card:One is tempted to call this a common dog, but the pharaohs weren't commoners.
Free-associating, the Egyptian motif recalls Napoleon and the Rosetta Stone, which gets us to Frank Zappa and the perfect goodbye song/employment suggestion for Sarkozy: A Little Green Rosetta at the Utility Muffin Research Kitchen:
On a possibly related note, the Greeks don’t seem to be dealing with reality well, either. This is a great time to get everything you can out of the stock market, according to Sissypuss the Blog Kitty.

Update: echoed at The Daley Gator

Sarkozy Discovers His Open Right Flank

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Because it is my habit to ignore smelly foreigners (and let’s face it, they all stink), I pay little heed to the troubles of French politicians.

Nevertheless, Nicholas Sarkozy is the most pro-American French politician since . . . Well, he’s pro-American, and so his difficulties are kind of relevant. In order to retain power, Sarkozy finds himself forced to reach out to Le Front National, whom the press generally describe as “far right” or even “fringe.”

Can we be brutally honest here? Your typical Republican voter in Iowa or Alabama would probably qualify as “far right” or “fringe” by the descriptive standards the media applies to any European who is anywhere rightward of the most tame British Tory.

Hell’s bells, it would probably be illegal for any French newspaper to publish a Michelle Malkin or Charles Krauthammer column.

The history of European nationalism is such a heavy burden that anyone in Europe who criticizes the EU or complains about immigration or multiculturalism tends to get instantly classified as a dangerous extremist, so that mainstream “conservative” parties in Europe won’t even go near such issues. Thus, we see the persistence of “far right” parties with disreputable associations, parties that might dwindle in significance if “conservative” parties weren’t such scaredy-cats.

We in America are used to the two-party system, which tends to channel any genuinely widespread sentiment into one or the other of the major parties. Some Republicans, alas, have the same scaredy-cat impulses as European “conservatives,” so that if it were up to such pantywaists, the GOP would be as liberal on immigration as the Democrats.

If a pro-American French politician has to make a deal with the “far right” in order to keep the American-hating socialists out of power, this is perhaps in some sense unfortunate, but let’s not pretend that this makes Sarkozy a crypto-Nazi. I’m noticing that the Memeorandum thread doesn’t show any conservative bloggers offering comments, so I guess the liberals are having fits of hysteria.

Good. Liberal hysteria makes me smile. Continue reading Sarkozy Discovers His Open Right Flank →

Urbane, Cosmopolitan President Looked Quite The Mouth-Breather In France

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by Smitty (via Insty)

The Washington Times reports that BHO gave it the Full Archie Bunker while visiting France, emphasis mine:

“I want to make mention that this is our first meeting since the arrival of the newest Sarkozy, and so I want to congratulate Nicolas and Carla on the birth of Giulia,” Mr. Obama told reporters shortly after his arrival at the G-20, with Mr. Sarkozy at his side. “And I informed Nicolas on the way in that I am confident that Giulia inherited her mother’s looks rather than her father’s, which I think is an excellent thing.”
He added, “And so now we share one of the greatest challenges and blessings of life, and that is being fathers to our daughters.”
Mr. Sarkozy, who is said to be very conscious about his looks, did not appear greatly amused by the comment, and some observers who attended the meeting said Mr. Obama’s remark fell flat.
The French president, who has three sons from two previous marriages, later told reporters, “You see the great influence of Barack Obama. It’s been four years now he tells me to be a father of girls is fantastic, he has two. So I listened and followed his example.”

The old “hope the kid don’t look like you” trope? For Heaven’s sake, BHO this is

  • a completely hackneyed line, right out of S^*t My Dad Says, and
  • the first thing they tell you when doing anything internationally is: humor does not translate. You. Are. Not. Funny. Do not try. It will make you look an ass.

I mean, I get that pretty much everything about the guy has a high probability of falsehood, but you’d think that he’d get at least the No Humor rule right. I’m fairly confident that even Bush got that one.

Then again, maybe he knows it perfectly well, and this knobbery is more of a statement concerning BHO’s attitude about being the chief representative of the country.

Not up for Ambassador to Vanatu: Troglopundit. Study this post, LB.

Via Gateway Pundit,

Britain’s Skanky Future: Former Pre-Teen Bikini Model Now Pregnant at Age 15 and Her Welfare Mother Says She’s ‘Excited’

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Say hello to Soya Keaveney, shown in a bikini photo she posed for at age 12, when the British girl was featured in a July 2008 magazine article:

Wearing a skimpy bikini and flaunting herself in an overtly sexual manner, Soya looks every bit the wannabe glamour model. . . .
Soya never goes out without putting on eyeliner and mascara, although once at school she’s often told to remove it by her teachers. Shockingly, she also frequently wears padded bras, short skirts, cropped tops, high heels and fishnet tights.

And now, the sequel:

A SCHOOLGIRL who posed aged 12 for controversial bikini pictures in a magazine is now pregnant at 15 — to the joy of her mum. . . .
Soya got pregnant by a 17-year-old boyfriend who is allowed by Janis to stay overnight at the family home.
Jobless single mum Janis, 48, said she was delighted because the council will now have to give her a bigger house. . . .
She added: “Our three-bedroom place was already overcrowded with her sisters Coco and Ritzy, her brother Tarot, Soya’s boyfriend Jake and one of her sister’s babies.
“Once the new baby comes the council will have to find us a place with four or five bedrooms. . . .
“I’m sure she’ll make a wonderful mum and will teach her children discipline like I have.”

So “mum” Janis, 48, has apparently never had a husband or a job, and lives with her four children, one of them already herself a mother and the other now pregnant by the 17-year-old boyfriend whom Janis permitted to spend the night in their 3-bedroom public housing apartment. All of this social pathology is subsidized by the British taxpayer!

Meanwhile, in other creeptastic news, a French company called Jours Apres Luna is now marketing lingerie for girls as young as 4:

And just in case you’re not sufficiently creeped out yet, here’s an ABC News story about 10-year-old French Vogue model Thylane Blondeu:

Got a problem with that? Blame our “uptight American culture.”

French Plan for Greek Crisis Won’t Work

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The stock market surged last week after France announced a plan for French banks to roll over some maturing Greek bonds, thus helping avert default. But now credit rating agencies have had a chance to read the fine print on that plan and aren’t liking what they see:

Greece risks being judged in default on its debt obligations if banks are forced to bear part of the pain, Standard & Poor’s said Monday, suggesting that current proposals for rescuing the euro zone’s weakest member may have to be reconsidered.
In particular, a plan proposed by the French government and banks “could require private sector debt restructuring in a form that we would view as an effective default,” S.&P. said in a statement.
The effects of a Greek default would be felt around the world. The country’s debt of €330 billion might not be large enough in itself to set off a renewed financial crisis, but once the precedent of a euro-zone default had been set, investors would likely abandon the debts of other struggling members, including Portugal and Spain.
More worryingly, Western banks, including the giants of Wall Street, have built a tower of credit default swaps — essentially insurance — on the debts of those countries, and the cost of paying up in a default would be huge. . . .

Just keep reading, it gets worse. Europe has managed to kick the can a bit further down the road, delaying the day of reckoning for a few months, but the essential problems of the Euro-zone’s PIIGS (debt-laden Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain) stubbornly remain.

UPDATE: From Adjoran’s comments below:

No, they haven’t really kicked the can down the road.  They are at the point that the most they can manage is to kick the can across the room a bit.  The can ain’t a-goin’ nowhere.
S&P and other agencies warned about this early in the Greek crisis, that any restructuring which involves the creditors eating any loss would constitute a default and the credit rating would be affected.  Even if the rating agencies didn’t, the bond market isn’t stupid, everyone except Obama and Greece understands a line has been crossed.
Even if this deal didn’t cost the ratings devaluation, it isn’t some miracle like the equity markets seem to believe (probably classical wishful thinking added to the inflated “value” of debased currencies).  This deal is only being advertised as carrying Greece through until 2014, but that presumes a lot:  that every economy envisioned in the austerity plan will be fully and immediately implemented, that the large segment of taxes which have been uncollected in Greece for decades will suddenly come into the Treasury, and that nothing else will go wrong at all for the next three years.  They should have asked for a pony, too.

“The bond market isn’t stupid.” Indeed.

PREVIOUSLY:

IMF Director: French Socialist Pervert

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But I repeat myself:

Tristane Banon was in her 20s and writing a book when she approached Strauss-Kahn for an interview in 2002. In a TV programme in 2007, in which Strauss-Kahn’s name had been bleeped out, Banon allegedly described him as a “rutting chimpanzee” and described how she was forced to fight him off. “It finished badly … very violently … I kicked him,” Banon said. “When we were fighting, I mentioned the word ‘rape’ to make him afraid, but it didn’t have any effect. I managed to get out.”
Banon consulted a lawyer, but did not press charges. “I didn’t want to be known to the end of my days as the girl who had a problem with the politician.”
Banon’s mother, Anne Mansouret, told journalists on Sunday night she had dissuaded her daughter from legal action because she believed Strauss-Kahn’s behaviour had been out of character and because of close links with his family. “Today I am sorry to have discouraged my daughter from complaining. I bear a heavy responsibility,” she said. . . .

Recalling my high-school French, I believe the word is incroyable.

So the IMF boss Strauss-Kahn attempted to rape a journalist who wanted to interview him, and the journalist’s mother — who is, perhaps not coincidentally, a Socialist Party official — helped keep her own daughter’s attacker out of jail! (Ceci ajoute le nouveau lustre à la réputation française pour la collaboration, oui?) Strauss-Kahn may have gotten so used to that kind of treatment in France that he expected it everywhere, but a New York City hotel maid called the cops, and thus provided us with a scene we’d all like to see more often: Perp-walks for socialists!

UPDATE: ABC News has some lurid new details from the arraignment hearing. BTW, did you know that perp-walks are illegal in France? It’s true. It’s also true that the two things the French do best are surrender and sodomy.

PREVIOUSLY: Frenchman Shocked to Discover It’s Illegal to Sodomize Your Hotel Maid in U.S.