UPDATE – Sarkozy wins French election. And CTV just cannot help themselves;
The charismatic but divisive 52-year-old reached out to all French citizens in his first speech as president-elect.
If you’re somewhat to the right side of center in the public policy debate, and you’ve just scored a convincing victory in a 86% voter turnout – you’re “divisive”.
If you’re a screeching, finger pointing Marxist inviting violence should you be defeated…. you’re a Socialist “strong on the environment and schools” who would “have become France’s first female president”.
Original May 5 post continues below ………….
Innovations in Newspapers;
Mr. Sarkozy grabbed the opportunity to bore in on his point that she could not lead France in such a temperamental fashion.
“Calm down,” he told her.
“No, I will not calm down,” she replied.
“Do not point at me with this finger, with this——” he said.
“No. Yes,” she said.
“With this index finger pointed, because frankly——”
“No, I will not calm down,” she said.
“No, I will not calm down. I will not calm down.”
“To be president of the republic, you have to be calm,” he said.
She responded: “Not when there are injustices. There are angers that are perfectly healthy because they correspond to people’s suffering. There are angers I will have even when I am president of the republic.”
France risks violence and brutality if right-winger Nicolas Sarkozy wins Sunday’s presidential election, his Socialist opponent Segolene Royal said on Friday.
On the last day of official campaigning, opinion polls showed Sarkozy enjoyed a commanding lead over Royal, who accused the former interior minister of lying and polarizing France.
“Choosing Nicolas Sarkozy would be a dangerous choice,” Royal told RTL radio.
“It is my responsibility today to alert people to the risk of (his) candidature with regards to the violence and brutality that would be unleashed in the country (if he won),” she said.
Pressed on whether there would actually be violence, Royal said: “I think so, I think so,” referring specifically to France’s volatile suburbs hit by widespread rioting in 2005.
Nice.
Paul Wells – “Early on, she refused to reduce the size of the civil service; then she said she wants to “de-bureaucratize the state”; all this while demanding that female police officers have (presumably male) escorts when going home at night for their safety.”
France has three enormous problems that will have to solved within the next ten years or there will be no France. First, the population is entirely too addicted to its nanny-state entitlements (something like Canada, only a more advanced state of the disease). Second, they have forgotten that sex is also about having children, so there soon will be nobody around to pay for all these entitlements. So, third, they are importing people who want to kill them and accomplish what they failed to do in 732 AD.
Sarkozy may not be the man to solve these problems, but he is the closest candidate the French had to such a person and for whom they were willing to vote. If he fails, then he will be able to say, with far more certainty than Louis XV said it: “apres moi, le deluge”.
LGF has several links about the election and France’s “youth” problem.
Calling Royal a marxist is kind of like calling a Mormon a Roman Catholic. Or like my referring to everyone to the right of me as fascists – or liberals or conservatives or libertarians, for that matter, so long as important distinctions are obscured. She’s a Blair-type social democrat.
What’s wrong with europe first Germany and now France electing a less socialist government. Problems in the utopia? On a related not if their are riots because of this election; will the CBC finally cover them?
The rioting is small beer though, multirec, nothing like what was expected or Royal was hoping for.
It’s funny watching how this was covered by the international services of BBC vs CNN – for all its justly being criticized for its leftard biases, the Beeb’s reporting was actually quite even-handed, whereas CNN was more like CTV – worrying about Sarko’s “divisiveness”, looking for interviewees to express concern, detailed speculations on the extent of rioting and expected violence in reaction to his win, etc. Who’d have thunk it?
In other news, Harper and the Connettes still tanking. Woo hoo!
I just read that the Left organized the physical violence in the Paris streets using their internet sites. No surprise, the anarchists on the Left have found fellowship with France’s jihadis, intolerance and violence as driving forces for both.
France, Europeans, all of us, better get a grip. Now. There wouldn’t be an Act II. There are forces out there that are as evil as anything that was fomenting in the 1930’s.
I was disgusted when Clinton won re-election, burning my neighbors car wasn’t an option, the normal civic model of my generation, there is always a remedy next election cycle. Fast forward. Viewing the news clips, there are a lot of skinny little white French boys acting bad. I can only conclude that tonight’s car torching and the anarchy in Paris is the terminal end of indulged narcissism.
An armed society is a polite society. I defy punks like in Paris to pull their stunts here. Europe isn’t getting that.
Car-B-Q
http://fr.news.yahoo.com/06052007/5/presidentielle-violences-urbaines-en-essonne.html
heh- CTV was up to its usual deranged standards of reporting. They had a (what else) York University professor on, who informed us gravely, how bad Sarkozy was.
She told us that he had proposed immigration requirements that would, for example, with reference to family members, well, the applicant would have to show that he/she could provide accomodation for these family members he was sponsoring! And, the immigrants would be expected to learn French. In her words – these are ‘stringent requirements’.
So, rather than any and all coming into France, immediately applying for welfare, the immigrants would be expected to, yuck, get a job and work. And rather than one person coming ahead and then, bringing in the rest of the extended family, who would apply for welfare, this would not be permitted. If you come, you work; and if you want others, you must sponsor them. And, rather than setting up isolate ghettoes, to assimilate with the country they chose to immigrate to, ie, learn French.
By the way, these are the same standards that exist, now, with Canadian immigration.
And, on the CBC, it was doing its part in the Great Canadian MSM Nightly Indoctrination. It was presenting a show explaining how the US was going around the world, forcing democoracy on nations, to serve its own needs. Bad, evil USA. Good, wise, CBC.
I just don’t understand why the left is so hysterical. They’ve been hysterical over Nixon, Reagan, Thatcher, Bush, Bush, Harper and now Sarkozy. (No one can take British Cameron seriously, so no hysteria there).
It’s beyond simple political antagonism. I think it may be due to two things:
1) The unacceptable realisation that socialism is a fraud; it doesn’t bring Utopia, but distopia.
b) Guilt over their success in defeating America in Vietnam and all those re-education camps and boat people that didn’t make it. Also, the Vietnamese government is proving point (1).
Is Sarkozy (the son of a Hungarian immigrant to France ) a descendant of Attila The Hun?
Penny: “An armed society is a polite society.”
What armed society did you have in mind?
American did not lose any war….Vietnam was just one tactical engagement, in a bigger strategic picture….actually, because of the tenacity of the Yanks, and the resources expended by the commies(Ivan and Mao), the Vietnam engagement allowed the west to gain the military domination that lead to winning the cold war…..just my little piece of historical revisionism
I agree with you kingstonLad.
The Tet offensive was a military victory for teh US but the left anti-war movement managed to convince the world it was a pivotal defeat.
The left made the US withdraw and hey, look what happened.
They want to do the same thing now in iraq.
They are shameless cowards.
What armed society did you have in mind?
Mine. Carbeques not an ongoing event here.
See if you can figure out why the regular torching of cars in an American neighborhood not become a regular event? Both counties have 911. What could it be?
I’d say we are more polite.
“not become a regular event?”… let’s try “would not beome a regular event?
andycanuck.
thanks….I couldnt remember and i was just too freakin lazy to google it, thinking I could go by memory….50 50 and I guessed wrong.
thanks for the correction.
And no I dont think he is Napoleon….and one should hope he isnt….
However, the good aspects of Napoleon, as is often the case when an outsider fights his/her way inside is that they brng that appreciation for merit.
France has lots of change to go through…not the least of which is how to deal with car b quers…if he sets immigration limits etc he will be like Napoleon, and start something that will spread across Europe like wildfire.
Bethoven wrote the Eroica in admiration of Napoleon but then, after seeing what he really was, tried to remove his dedication.
Should be an interesting summer and fall.
Luc Malo led the singing: “We Are the Champions”.
No reports yet from Citoyen Dion.
…-
MOST FRENCH IN CANADA VOTED FOR ROYAL
MONTREAL, May 6, 2007 (AFP) – Most French expatriate voters in Canada backed Socialist candidate Segolene Royal, who lost her bid for France’s presidency to Nicolas Sarkozy on Sunday, government figures showed.[…]
Still, parties erupted upon news of Sarkozy’s win. Around 200 Sarkozy supporters gathered in one Montreal restaurant for a victory celebration, singing the Queen hit “We Are the Champions” followed by the Marseillaise. …-
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1829359/posts
It’s amazing how whenever the socialists take power things fall to pieces. I was living in B.C. when Harcourt and the NDP were elected and what a nightmare that turned out to be. They managed to ruin the economy and turn B.C. into a have-not province overnight. Same thing with Ray in Ontario.
The UK had to elect Thatcher to fix their mess, and it looks like France is starting to wake up to the train wreck that is socialism.
“A great nation, like the United States, has a duty not to block the battle against global warming but — on the contrary — to take the lead in this battle, because the fate of the whole of humanity is at stake,” Sarkozy said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/france_election
Do you still like the guy?
Tonight’s CBC reporter first claimed that Sarkozy was like “the Margaret Thatcher of French politics” — but that he admires Tony Blair and, more quietly, Bush.
http://www.cbc.ca/clips/rm-hi/common-france070506.rm
An updated report shown later this evening removed any reference to Blair and simply said Sarkozy “is the Margaret Thatcher of French politics — he admires George W. Bush.”
http://www.cbc.ca/clips/rm-hi/common-2france070506.rm
NY Times:
“Arrogant, brutal, an authoritarian demagogue, a ‘perfect Iago’: the president-elect of France has been called a lot of unpleasant things in recent months and now has five years to prove his critics wrong.”
Translation:
“It’s true, we can’t attend to you here and now as we’d like, but just try to stay out of our way. Just try! We’ll get you, shorty — and your toy poodle, too!”
But he wasn’t called divisive — only polarizing.
Too bad political spectra from different countries don’t really correlate well. What would the Times et al have written if a hard-boiled Brit type of conservative had been elected.
Given the choice between the two, it’s still a very good poker hand.
Baby steps.
Exile,
Fascism is to the left of socialism, always has been. Mussolini coined the word to describe his new type of government when he felt socialism didn’t go far enough.
Churchill was a right wing Conservative driven by a passionate hate for socialism.
penny “See if you can figure out why the regular torching of cars in an American neighborhood not become a regular event”
Well they do murder each other an awful lot more. Suggesting America is a less violent society than France is ridiculous.
Good job. How much Sarkozy can or even wants to achieve is very much up in the air given France’s long history of welfare statism, but his victory is welcome and encouraging nonetheless.
Ramon Daley – Beat me to it on the New York Times coverage. The San Francisco Chronicle links to it on their web page, with the headline “France’s Polarizing Leader”, and the kicker “U.S.-friendly Nicolas Sarkozy, called arrogant and brutal by some, defeats Socialist candidate Royal.”
“Well they do murder each other an awful lot more.”
Proprtionately? I rather doubt it.
This guy has a proper conservative attitude towards guns. Better that a person can point out their attacker in a court than provide foresnic evidence to convict.
Burn,Paris, burn!
lg