Hey Offroad, what do you think of LePen
 

Given that you're living in France you're right on top of the next possible wave of insanity to overcome Europe.

BTW, I had no idea that in France, political figures could use foreign money to finance their campaigns. Talk about the possibility of conflicts of interest. It appears as though a Russian bank, the First Czech Russian Bank had been funding her since 2014. It was her claim that no French banks would lend her money. Anyway, the First Czech Russian Bank was shut down last December because it didn't have enough money to continue its operations. LePen was in the Kremlin last week trying to drum up more financing (it appears she's been successful with the Russians again) but had to cut short a meeting with one of the Russian diplomats to run off to meet Putin. During the course of her meeting she expressed admiration for Putin. I guess when they're holding the purse strings you'll say anything for a bit of dosh.

Hi Paul, interesting question. Le Pen is a sycophant, dangerous here but nowhere else. The French are gullible, they are latinos and excitable and are easily led, therein lies the problem. The wave of 'populist' politics is, IMO, pathetic where the stupid and dense seem to have the drop on everyone else including the young who will continue to suffer the consequences when we are all dead.

IMO the European's (EU) are not stupid enough to follow the UK into the (at all costs) abyss, it's a leap of faith in the dark and I honestly believe it is a retrograde step now taken and the UK have lost every vestige of control and respect in the world and it doesn't consider the 48% who voted to stay in the EU.

As for the financing of Le Pen, she must be a puppet, if you cannot get what you want from Peter then try Paul, it's moral blackmail and insidious and she will loose international respect but maybe not here in France as the rank and file see their world in a 'baguette' and 'chit chat' not politics, again, I repeat, easily led by the nose.

Ironically, the more you see into the psyche of the people where you live the more sometimes you see the majority as being weak and despicable which also applies to many in the UK I'm afraid.

I can't believe that the French allow political candidates to raise money using foreign sources. In many ways their election laws are extraordinarily fair but I can't get over the fact that candidated use foreign banks to finance their campaigns. Putin has gone out of his way to say that he has no interest in the politics of France and wouldn't use Russian money to influence the outcome. Puh-lease!!!!

You know, this is part of what the problem is here with Trump. While the Russians may not have directly financed his election, that would be illegal, one of the real issues around his failure to release his taxes (like every other presidential candidate in the last 45 years) is whether he personally owes money to the Russians. His own son said, in an interview about 7 or 8 years ago that an awful lot of the money they see coming in is coming from Russia.

I cannot believe that we are at this point, again. It's like now that everyone who lived through the horrors of the first half of the 20th century are dead and gone we're hell bent on repeating all the same mistakes.

Paul, it's hard to believe the British are stupid enough to 'cut off their nose to spite their face' but it happened with Brexit.

The French don't follow or apply the rules whether domestic or EU, it's a Rambo society, do as you please but don't get caught.

Now take Francois Fillon, (I'd rather not) he and his wife (who ironically is British) have been embezzling public funds for decades and even daily new fiddles surface about them and public funds but he is still revered and running as a presidential candidate. Most politicians at the top in France have a 'shady' skeleton in the cupboard somewhere.

The problem years ago were the dodgy dealings were more covert whereas today with modern communications info is far more overt. The Russians have always been anti western albeit they have many capitalists in their society.

IMO wherever in this world the average politician may appear squeaky clean initially but as life and their career progresses they become more crooked, just think back, do you ever remember a poor retired politician!

I agree that Fillon is a sketchy guy, paying his wife and kids fat salaries from public money. What's your take on Emmanuel Micron. He got a nice boost with the endorsement from Valls the other day.

Hi Paul

None of these guys running for the top job are exactly 'scintillating characters' but given the choice of the current spread I would go for Macron who to date seems the cleanest albeit inexperienced, but maybe that's not a bad thing.

I think the support of Valls has given Macron a good boost (or the kiss of death, whatever) but you have two similar personalities with equal goals and ambitions. Macron having a security chief supporting him will do him some good in the short and long term.

Theoretically Fillon should have been booted out on his neck weeks ago when his penny pinching fiddling antics were first uncovered but somehow he seems to survive (it could only happen in France or Italy)

I read this in the NY Times this morning.

https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/201...kets.html?_r=0

What's your take on Sunday's election. Will Macron win and will the margin be significant. Will a coalition effectively null advancements made by LePen. Or, are we on the verge of another Trumpian surprise? You're my man on the street. Has there been any detectable change in the current of this election?

I was just listening to NPR and a correspondent spoke with someone about the impact of yesterdays attack on Sunday's election. I was so encouraged by the man's comment. Essentially, he threw the question back at the correspondent by asking 'what kind of idiot would change his entire political outlook because of this attack on the police?' It was his feeling that an election is too important an event to have it swayed by the actions of a madman.

This election can have a devastating effect on the future of Europe. The EU was rocked by Brexit but if LePen can garner enough votes to win the election, she's made it clear she wants France out of the EU as well. There's no way Germany, on its own, could provide the ecomomic strength to keep the EU alive. We could be seeing a seismic shift rivalling just about anything we've seen in the last 50 years (and that includes the fall of the USSR).

Oh, and talk about tone deaf, in the midst of all the allegations about Russian meddling in our election, I can't believe that Exxon (our Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson was the CEO until last year) is asking for an exclusion from the sanctions enacted after the mess in the Ukraine.

Hi Paul

Well, thankfully Le Pen didn't make it and Macron transcended her for the job.

We are just hearing about Trump the chump pulling out of the Paris climate change accord, suicide and a quicker route to his impeachment after his many 'faux pas' in recent weeks. As for the Russian election web intervention, not too sure, but it seems to 'smell' a lot.

The whole Exxon/Mobil thingy is becoming too hot to handle both in the US and UK, amazing how they even raise their heads above the parapet following the Valdez fiasco 25 years ago.

We've been in the UK in recent weeks and we are both shocked how expensive it is there, we had noticed the costs rising on the websites but even more shocked when we were there. Brexit seems an excuse to financially 'ream' everyone in the UK but it's their funeral. I just hope the Conservatives with Theresa May doesn't get in at the election on the 8th June as it will inevitably be a disaster. I think the EU will survive ...... just .......... but it will be a testing time for them and they will seriously need to rethink their game plan for the future and shed an awful lot of jobs and EU hangers on.

I'll say this much about Macron, he may be punching above his weight class with little in the way of real political support, but I like what I've seen and heard from him so far.

I am also fascinated by polls that show May's lead shrinking in the lead up to June 8th. I've read a few articles with statements from police in London who say that had there not been the cutbacks, they would have been able to respond better to the most recent attacks. I don't follow UK news that closely so I'm really unable to say whether this is a genuine issue or not. I can't believe that Corbyn is being equated to Bernie Sanders among millennials in the UK.

What do you think about Trump's failure to mention Article 5 in his speech to the rest of the NATO members. I just read this morning that McMasters, Mattis and Tillerson were caught unaware by the speech to NATO. They had worked with Trump to make sure that the message was one of unity. The actual speech that Trump delivered was not the one they had worked on! Trump chose instead to take the other members to task over their contributions even though the majority were either in compliance or moving towards compliance with the agreement reached a couple of years back.

This gets back to my original statement about Macron. At least he and Merkel are showing real international leadership. Trump has barely left the stage when Merkel was entertaining Modi the Prime Minister of the world's largest democracy.

Last week wasn't a good one for anyone who understands the need for the US to be the lead player in the world. I'm watching a shirking/shrinking of power in the last couple of months I would have thought was unimaginable. I could go on for pages about the withdrawal from the Paris Accord and how we're rushing to embrace old, dying technologies like coal (do people even understand that the only real growth for coal right now is in metalurgical coal for steel production thanks to issues with Australia's supply problems and not because power plants in the US are abandoning natural gas????).

I also cannot believe the clumsiness of Trumps tweets in the last couple of days.

Our crotchety 70 year old nut job uncle, the one we only had to deal with at Thanksgiving Dinner, has taken control of the wheels of power and he's driving the country at high speed, straight off a cliff.

I shudder to think what Trump will do the next time a terrorist, homegrown or not, inflicts similar damage in the US.

It's not a good time to be an American.

Hi Paul

Sadly I honestly believe that many these days are far softer and less educated than the older generations were. Politics is a childlike 'game' where the rank and file are the losers and the politicians move onto greater heights whether competent or not and can switch allegiances/parties overnight. The whole world to me (and you it appears) seems childlike, like an amateurs or beginners chess game, from social media remarks (of which I don't participate in any form) to mass public outpourings of grief following disasters but proliferated by the general media as news. Even the polls seem rigged to divert the rank and file from one party to another by saying he or she is 'narrowing' the gap knowing it will animate the losers supporters to vote. As for Trump, his remarks are, eerrr, priceless, I believe the Republicans are now even muttering about impeachment. IMO the US people will be well rid of him and his family and hopefully then import a suitable person as a leader and not a game show host or second rate actor. Irrespective of his politics, colour or creed, I had respect for Obama as a figurehead but I am very disappointed with this current Tweeting idiot and his entourage.

As for terrorism, IMO there is only one reason ISIS is hitting Europe and the US, their increasing failures and losses in the middle east and other western involvement. I believe social freedoms, politics, way of life etc, etc is a convenient blind and poor excuse for the politicians to minimise the complex reasons for the terrorists actions and to gain political status themselves. I have yet to find an honest competent politician without total self interest in mind be it power or financial.


As for Macron and Merkel, IMO these people will become the cornerstone of Europe and as you rightly say, Macron so far has impressed me being it's his newness in politics per se.

Although I have my reservations about the climate change reasons I believe that something needs to be done to restrict the uses and depletion of fossil fuels.

How about this leak.

https://theintercept.com/2017/06/05/...2016-election/

Hi Paul, Unfortunately I can't open the link .............. I've been 'Trumped' ;)

What do you reckon on the James Comey affair and testimony to the SIC, it appears like dynamite so far although none of us will be party to the 'in camera' session.

Just go to The Intercept website https://theintercept.com/ and scroll down to the story with the headline "Top Secret NSA Report Details Russian Hacking Efforts Days Before 2016 Election."

https://theintercept.com/2017/06/05/...2016-election/

It's the story that was leaked by Reality Winner at the beginning of the week. It's safe to say that this particular incident where Russian operatives hacked into VR Systems using spear phishing techniques was a success. The corruption of credentials posed the potential for voter suppression. Really, what it seemed like to me was that the Russians were merely experimenting to see how far they could go within a local voting district. What's particularly scary about this is what it means for future elections. Surely Russian isn't going to stop now. We have national elections in 2018 and 2020. Still, we have a sizeable portion of the US population who thing Russian hacking is nothing more than fake news. It's really sad, where we're at as a country these days. No one believes anything.

The same could be said after yesterday's election in the UK. The division is total. The populace of the UK can't agree on anything anymore than we in the US can agree. The only thing I'm encouraged by is the fact the May didn't improve her majority and she may, in fact, be on the way out. She was never up to the task. But, what then? I know I've seen Boris' name floated but OMG, no. Do you really want that as a nation?

Comey? I couldn't have been more pleased with his testimony. Of course, the press has split as you would have expected it would. On the right, Comey's a leaker, no one to be taken seriously. On the left, he illustrated deliberate obstruction of justice.

What I'm most sad about is that we'll never get to the issue of making our elections safer from hackers and fake news generated on sites like Facebook and Twitter. I shudder to think what 2020 will mean for the US. Do I look at Labor's success in this election and dare to hope? I just don't know anymore.