France's Election

Marine Le Pen, the far right candidate who advocated barring immigrants and leaving the E.U., won 22% of today's vote.  She was the runner-up to Emmanuel Macron who is a centrist reasonable candidate with 24% -- which is a little too close for the upcoming runoff election.

It seems the result of prolonged worldwide terrorism is the emergence of reactionary politicians and the turning inward of developed nations, pulling back international aid, widening the very gap that terrorists decry.  They are inevitably driving the world toward a third world war, this one fought between Western developed nations and jihadist religious fundamentalists across the globe.

Nobody wants to call it a religious war, but that's where we're headed.

Trump called Saudi Arabia our great ally in the Middle East. Either he doesn't understand Sunni Islam or he's one of them.

NoCoPilot wrote:

Trump called Saudi Arabia our great ally in the Middle East.  Either he doesn't understand Sunni Islam or he's one of them.

Trump probably thinks Iraq was responsible for 9/11.

Do you think these idiot politicians will ever discover encryption?

Yesterday NPR ran a fascinating story about Emmanuel Macron's life.
http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/05/05/526937030/emmanuel-macrons-unconventional-candidacy-stems-from-an-unconventional-life

Highlights:

• At fifteen, Macron fell in love with his drama teacher, who was married, had three kids, and 24 years older than him
  
• They married ten years ago
  
• He now has seven step-grandchildren (at age 39)!
  
• This is, by the way, the exact same age difference between Donald & Melania Trump
  

This is a big campaign strategy deal these days.

A Massive, Pro-Le Pen Disinformation Campaign Hits Twitter, 4chan, and the Mainstream Media

Grassroots democracy, except that it's AstroTurf.

Very familiar scenario.

French Presidential Campaign Claims 'Massive Hack'

The hack lost. Macron won by about thirty points.

The Republicans had been campaigning against Hillary for years - the hack of the DNC was just icing on the cake. The Russians didn't have the same groundwork going for them in France.

The bots are still around.

Have you inadvertently joined a Trump-supporting robot army?

There were reports of massive postings of false news and twitter posts - pro-LePen and anti-Macron - just prior to the French election. The posts mostly came from the good old USofA.

Le Pen and Macron are re-running their 2017 election again Sunday the 24th. Polls have them much closer than five years ago.

Rachel did a profile of Le Pen last night. Absolutely horrifying: she's the daughter of a Holocaust-denying anti-Semite. She prides herself on being called "France's Trump." If she wins she's promised to pull France out of NATO and the EU, and to support Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

Jesus Christ, I want to just pull the covers over my head and sleep until I'm dead.

Quote :

Retiree Jean-Pierre Roux voted to keep out Le Pen’s extreme-right father, Jean-Marie, in France’s 2002 presidential runoff and voted against his daughter in 2017. But Roux could not bring himself to vote for Macron again this time, saying he was too arrogant. Roux put an empty envelope in the voting box.

“I am not against his ideas but I cannot stand the person,” he said.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/france-election-runoff-macron-le-pen_n_62654db6e4b0ea625c085d90

This is how democracies are lost. They turn into personality cults, instead of voting on the issues, and some charismatic despot gets in & takes over.

Macron 57%, Le Pen 43%

Dieu merci!!

Still, that's a lot closer than 2017 when it was 66% to 34%.