L'Ombre de l'Olivier

So the French election is happening as I write this. Time to turn our attention north of the English Channel. There, Theresa May seems likely to win the sort of landslide election that politicians have wet dreams over. This, it seems to me, is in large part because she has a set of enemies that combine hubris with incompetence. In fact to a significant extent the enemies are busy attacking each other while Mrs May stands around, watches them and then gathers up the pieces. Domestically enemy number one is Jeremy Corbyn who is the such a far left buffoon...

By Francis Turner Vote1 0

In France we're into the last 36 hours or so before we learn who will be the next president. The polls, which were pretty much bang on in the first round, are still predicting a Macron victory. But... Point one. The gap has been narrowing. I'd be surprised if Macron gets 60% of the vote on Sunday. Given that the second round is the point where you vote for your "least worst choice" and Le Pen has been demonized by the MSM and everyone they can interview - both foreign and domestique - this is really not a sign of strength...

By Francis Turner Vote2 0

The French presidential race has come down to a similar situation to the US one last year. There are two choices and both are looking pretty bad. So if you are a French voter how do you decide which one to not vote for? In the red corner we have Emmanuel "Teacher's Pet" Macron. As I've blogged before, he's a fully paid up member of the French establishment, particularly the left-leaning statist segment of it. Macron is young (39) and if elected would be the youngest French President for a very long time if not ever. Being young and only...

By Francis Turner Vote3 0

This weekend was Compost your girlfriend Earth Day and the "Science lovers" took advantage of that day to have a March for Science - I don't understand why it didn't take place during the month of March, but maybe the organizers were worried about their plans being disrupted by a couple of feet of global warming. Anyway, moving on. This was of course a chance for lots of left right-thinking sorts to pontificate about how Trump was waging a "War on Science" and so on. The usual sorts (Bill Nye, Neil de Grasse Tyson) were on hand to bloviate and lots...

By Francis Turner Vote5 0

The first round of voting is this Sunday so we're reaching the final stages of the campaigns to be the next French president, but the politicking will continue until the runoff round of the legislative elections on 18 June. At this point it is probably worth doing a quick recap on what happens next as well as a round up of the state play. Assuming that no single candidate gets over 50% of the votes cast on Sunday there will be a runoff between the top two candidates two weeks later. There are four leading candidates (11 total) and none...

By Francis Turner Vote1 0

The UK will have a general election on June 8, just a couple of weeks short of the first anniversary of the Brexit vote. This is a bit of a surprise given that the Prime Minister had sounded pretty firm about not having one as recently as a few weeks ago, however one assumes she can read the polls as well as anyone else and isn't stupid enough to ignore the fact that they all show her getting a massively increased majority given the disarray of the various opposition parties. What is interesting is that the "Poison Dwarf", Nicola Sturgeon...

By Francis Turner Vote2 0

A friend of mine's parents were victims of the "Grandparent scam". The scam works by a crook calling the victim and claiming that a grandchild is in trouble with the law. They then claim that they are lawyers who can get bail for the grandchild if money is transferred to them. However there's a catch, the scammers don't want the money wired they want some store gift cards. In my friend's case the scammers used Target gift cards, precisely as described in the second link. She is, unsurprisingly, not impressed with Target since the scam has been well known since...

By Francis Turner Vote5 2

Evan Speigel, the CEO of Snap Inc (the company behind Snapchat) has been reported to be rather dismissive towards "poor countries" such as Spain or India. It is unclear to me whether the Spanish have got upset about this, but the Indians (see link above) are definitely miffed and, as a result: They decided to show their indignation by not just giving Spiegel a piece of their mind on Twitter through the hashtag #BoycottSnapchat, but by also uninstalling the app and leaving a one-star rating on the app before doing the same. Considering how India is the top country to...

By Francis Turner Vote1 1

No don't worry Libertarian reader, I'm not expressing sympathy for the Bureau of Land Manglement. I'm expressing (slight) sympathy for the misguided trustafarian morons of Black Lives Matter. I understand even this may be a shock to my reader. Heck it's kind of a shock for me too, but lemme explain. In the ongoing internet/social media frenzy about Untied, the point has been made in a number of places that the passenger who was upgraded to billyclub class had a criminal record. This is presented as being a justification for him being beaten up when he protested his upgrade. [Aside:...

By Francis Turner Vote3 0

Once upon a time, long long ago in what seems like a galaxy far far away I used to fly a lot in the friendly skies with United Airlines. In those halcyon far off days I could show up at the passenger terminal about 20 minutes before boarding time and be sure (in smallish airports at least) of being able to board the flight before it took off. I could check in a bag or two for free. I could expect a meal on longer flights to be included (not always a good one I admit, but food) and so...

By Francis Turner Vote4 4

There's only a couple of weeks to go now so things are heating up in the French presidential elections. One thing I found interesting on a recent visit to the Riviera was the distribution of posters. Le Pen and her FN are absolutely winning the poster wars, her posters were everywhere. I saw a few from just two other candidates: Macron and Melenchon the commie. None at all for Fillon or any of the others. What was noticeable, however, was that the Le Pen posters were often defaced, although in my daily perambulations I saw that these defaced posters got...

By Francis Turner Vote3 0

In the United States there is a certain amount of gnashing of teeth at the upcoming movement of the Oakland Los Angeles Oakland Raiders to Las Vegas. The Raiders are being bribed enticed to move by the LV government promising to build them an enormous white elephant stadium at a cost of about $2 Billion and allegedly the stadium will be ready by 2020. Meanwhile, in the UK, there has also been a recent announcement of a team move. Everton, a premier league club of similar status to the Raiders (i.e. pretty good but not a regular champion contender), has...

By Francis Turner Vote4 0

[Update at end] The elections in the Netherlands yesterday are being portrayed by the BBC and other MSM sources as a defeat for the "racist" PVV party led by Geert Wilders. Dutch people rejected "the wrong kind of populism", Prime Minister Mark Rutte has said, as he celebrated victory in Wednesday's election. "The Netherlands said 'Whoa!'" he declared after his centre-right VVD party's lead positioned him for a third successive term as prime minister. With nearly all votes counted, his party easily beat the anti-immigration Freedom party of Geert Wilders This is only true up to a point. The PVV did not...

By Francis Turner Vote2 0

The air pollution in places like Beijing is notoriously bad and it is caused by the Chinese burning evil coal, however coal is not the only cause of such pollution and big cities are not the only place where it happens. For a large number of Africans, the only way to cook is to use wood or kerosene stoves that smoke and cause respiratory illnesses to the (mostly) women who use them. Thanks to environmentalists freaking out about "climate change" the world bank decided it would like to keep African women suffering that way by not financing power plants. This...

By Francis Turner Vote8 0

Here's one for the books. The New York Times columnist Ross Douthat likes Marine Le Pen, or at least he seems to think she's a lot better than Donald Trump, and he's remarkably immigrant unfriendly too: [Macron's] support for Angela Merkel’s open door to immigration — he recently said that it saved Europe’s “collective dignity” — is the kind of thing that could become a major liability should unrest surge or terrorism strike. It’s also mistaken on the merits, since Merkel’s policy was reckless, Europe’s immigration-and-integration problem is severe and likely to get worse, and Le Pen’s dire warnings on this count...

By Francis Turner Vote1 0

The Wapo - new slogan below - and various other MSM outlets were all shocked and bothered by Steve Bannon's CPAC comments where he said Trump was working on Deconstructing the Administrative State. They weren't alone, on the book of faces various "liberal" people also expressed shock and asked questions like "what will they replace it with?". They also, perhaps due to the poor MSM coverage, seemed a bit unclear what it was that was to be deconstructed, something that the powerline blog commented on. As a libertarian / minarchist type, the confusion about what it meant seemed pretty silly....

By Francis Turner Vote10 10

The traditional parties and ruling elites across Europe are doing their best to adapt to the populist threat by coming up with their own "outsider" candidates. In France, as I've blogged before, it's Emanuel Macron who is trying this by pretending to be an independent when he's remarkably well connected to all sorts of government sorts. In Germany the Socialists aren't even bothering to set up a new organization, they are just parachuting in an MEP as their "outsider" because their previous leader was going down in flames. Martin Schulz, who was President of the European Parliament until he resigned...

By Francis Turner Vote1 0

"If you believe you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere" -- Theresa May, Prime Minster Theresa May was not my preferred Prime Minister and some of her policies and statements (e.g. her industrial policy gubbins and general thuggishness regarding freedom of speech) concern me, but as with Trump, she's growing on me. This week's Spectator has a very good article on her attempts to steer between the Scylla of Globalization and the Charybdis of Populism, you should go and read it and then come back here. If Brexit is a success, and I'm pretty sure it...

By Francis Turner Vote5 0

If evidence were needed that suggestion in an earlier post that Emanuel Macron was an establishment plant, I consider his recent Brexit statements to be revealing. Macron is sticking firmly to the Merkel line (indeed one might make crude and inappropriate jokes about how this isn't a surprise because he clearly likes older women) of "Nein Nein Nein". He also trots out the EU presidency position of requiring the UK to pay to leave and to continue to make payments to the EU budget after leaving: Mr Macron, a former economy minister, suggested that there could be some market access provided...

By Francis Turner Vote0 0

[Update: fun Milo photoshop at the bottom] As anyone who pays attention to the Social Media parts of the Intertubes is aware, Milo Yiannopoulos is in hot water for allegedly being in favor of Man Boy luurve. This is almost certainly a deliberate hit since the video that has caused the controversy has been out in public for a year or so now without anyone getting worked up about it. Milo has a couple of FB posts up that provide, IMHO, a pretty good defense. I'm not going to defend him further. He's a grown up and has a bigger...

By Francis Turner Vote7 6

May is Lucky in her Enemies May 7, 2017

C’est l’Heure de Squeaky Bum May 6, 2017

Le Pen or Macron, which is worse? Apr 27, 2017

An April for Engineering? Apr 24, 2017

French Elections – The Final Countdown Apr 20, 2017

The Poison Dwarf Doth Protest Too Much, Methinks Apr 18, 2017

Target the Scammers Apr 18, 2017

Who is Snapchat for? Apr 17, 2017

Sympathy for BLM Apr 14, 2017

Not Flying the Friendly Skies Apr 11, 2017

French Elections – Poster Wars Apr 6, 2017

A Tale of Two Stadia Apr 3, 2017

Dutch Elections 2017 Mar 16, 2017

Environmentally Friendly Pollution Mar 14, 2017

French Election March Madness Mar 4, 2017

Deconstructing the Administrative State Mar 1, 2017

Schulz Yet Another Inside Outsider Feb 28, 2017

The Darling Trumps of May Feb 27, 2017

Brexit and the Frogs Feb 23, 2017

Milo and the Sacred Band Feb 22, 2017