Excon influence on the 2016 French elections

[sashi]

Looks like another former prisoner has gone apeshit. As if it wasn't enough that the neoliberals have torn apart the French pink party.

(historical note: in the pink primaries, voters massively rejected the former prime minister (Valls), who has since rejoined powerful French (former) mayors like Delanoë (Paris Pink Party), Collomb (Lyon Pink Party), and of course the mostly unpink Bayrou (Pau "modem" party) promoting a previously unelected banker and tax collector who worked as the Pink secretary of the economy. He (Macaron) is most famous for reforming France's labor law by executive order (because the Pink parliament refused to pass his new über labor law).

Is it the Russians who handed the former prisoner an AK-47? The CIA? Daesh? the BNP? Why are Al Jazeera and France 24 only speaking of Macron, Fillon & Le Pen? (The NYT international edition Friday didn't even bother mentioning Fillon, for them it all boils down to Macron or LePen. Macron being the outsider from Sciences Po (*) and ENA after all, it's not surprising the only quotes they could get were from a professor at Sciences Po and, well, über-insider Jacques Attali).

Pfff... meanwhile, the neoliberals are surely finding JLM (Mélenchon) embarassingly popular (along with his platform of rewriting the constitution), so popular he's had to resort to costly holograms to be in more than one place at once. ^^ Will the last minute "attentat" save the day for the banking interest and propel Fillon to the second round? Or will everyone just vote Poutou? ^^

In any case, Hamon should have withdrawn. He resigned from the pink government in a huff and somehow ended up holding the bag for the Socialists. (If he gets 5%, the pink campaign expenses will be covered by French taxpayers. This is presumably the only reason he hasn't abandoned the race. As it is his presence is simply evidence of the "divide and conquer" strategy that has been quite effectively played out in the last months).

Well, at least we'll have a woman as president, eh?

--
(*) a page chock-full of conflict on en.wiki too. ^^ (edited 99 times to deal with punctuation issues)

[ericbarbour]

Okay, so do YOU think will win? As I said on my blog last month:

The French are starting to imitate American-style shit politics. First there was an attempt to prosecute Marine Le Pen for posting “violent images” on Twitter. And since then, the media has been reporting that she has a good chance of being elected the next president of France. That’s American Style!

[sashi]

No idea, Eric. I would love to see Mélenchon make it to the second round.

At first I assumed the 2nd round would be Macron-LePen and that Macron would win the 2nd round. But lately, I've been a bit less pessimistic seeing Hamon fade and Mélenchon rise. Given that Macron has been caught on camera a few times not understanding a word of his campaign speeches, who knows?

I put on my bookie hat pre-primaries and predicted that Bordeaux mayor Alain Juppé -- "the best among us" as the now-senile Chirac once said (when Juppé took the rap for his misdeeds) -- would be the next president... but he has already been eliminated in favor of Fillon. ^^

So, no idea. People still seem, unfortunately, to think of MLP as an outsider. Based on her group's voting record at European Parliament, I don't think they should. As I recall they voted for "business secrets" after the LuxLeaks affair. It's also interesting that the only woman in the campaign is the only one whose group consistently votes against abortion rights (repeal of that right, in France, at least, is no longer on the table). I guess in that sense the FN are outsiders.

The press made a lot bigger deal about Fillon ripping off the French taxpayers than they did about MLP ripping off the European Parliament to campaign in France (maybe because MLP's bodyguards (paid by the European Parliament) throw budding journalists out of press conferences for asking embarrassing questions.

[sashi]

erm... is it 2017 already? ^^

Mélencron has been a fascinating user.

and the story of Snoog should be circulated widely, no?

Meanwhile, at WPO, it's "take me to the kittens". Should I ask them to shine a light into dark places or just let them be?