Do Americans Understand How Badly They’re Doing?

The 4th of July holiday is just past us and many Americans remain  lost in the myth of American exceptionalism as the much of the nation remains in the grip of a pandemic that other nations appear to have brought under control.  Yes, America is exceptional alright, but not in a good way.  Meanwhile I see some Facebook friends struggle to continue close their eyes to the reality that the occupant of the White House has failed them miserably - as have boot-licking Republican governors.  These individuals seemingly refuse to believe that their leaders are not acting in the interests of citizens, but rather out of narcissism in the case of Trump, and fear in the case of self-prostituting Republicans.  One friend posted recently about how great powers have fallen over the centuries and then wondered if the United States was following this path. My response back would be, yes it is and that Trump, rather than "making America great again" has accelerated the nation's decline.  One has to wonder when the majority of Americans will open their eyes to this unpleasant reality.  A piece in The Atlantic by an American living in France looks at this question.  Here are article excerpts:

I returned to Paris with my family three months after President Emmanuel Macron had ordered one of the world’s most aggressive national quarantines, and one month after France had begun to ease itself out of it. When we exited the Gare Montparnasse into the late-spring glare, after a season tucked away in a rural village with more cows than people as neighbors, it was jarring to be thrust back into the world as we’d previously known it, to see those café terraces overflowing again with smiling faces.

The city had been culled of its tourists, though it was bustling with inhabitants basking in their reclaimed freedom. Half at most wore masks; the other half evinced indifference. We were in the midst of a crisis, I complained to my wife. Why were so many people unable to maintain even minimal discipline?

Glued as I am to the news from the U.S.—where I was born and grew up and travel frequently— I couldn’t shake the feeling that France was also opening up recklessly early. But I was wrong to worry. As Donald Trump’s America continues to shatter records for daily infections, France, like most other developed nations and even some undeveloped ones, seems to have beat back the virus.

The numbers are not ambiguous. From a peak of 7,581 new cases across the country on March 31, and with a death toll now just below 30,000—at one point the world’s fourth highest—there were just 526 new cases on June 13, the day we masked ourselves and took the train back to Paris. The caseload continues to be small and manageable.

America, however, is an utter disaster. Texas, Florida, and Arizona are the newest hubs of contagion, having apparently learned nothing from the other countries and states that previously experienced surges in cases. I stared at my phone in disbelief when the musician Rosanne Cash wrote on Twitter that her daughter had been called a “liberal pussy!” in Nashville for wearing a mask to buy groceries.

That insult succinctly conveys the crux of the problem. American leadership has politicized the pandemic instead of trying to fight it. I see no preparedness, no coordinated top-down leadership of the sort we’ve enjoyed in Europe. I see only empty posturing, the sad spectacle of the president refusing to wear a mask, just to own the libs. What an astonishing self-inflicted wound.

On June 26, a day when the U.S. notched some 45,000 new cases—how’s that for “American carnage”?—the European Union announced that it would loosen some travel restrictions but extend its ban on visitors from the United States and other hot-spot nations. On Tuesday, it confirmed that remarkable and deeply humiliating decision, a clear message that in pandemic management, the EU believes that the United States is no better than Russia and Brazil—autocrat-run public-health disasters—and that American tourists would pose a dire threat to the hard-won stability our lockdown has earned us. So much for the myth that the American political system and way of life are a model for the world.

We didn’t stay long in the city. Although the chance of contagion in Paris is minimal, the thought of unnecessary risk unnerved me, and so we left again for another round of self-imposed confinement. But this was a choice. I think of my mother and father trapped in New Jersey, in their 70s and 80s, respectively, and at the mercy of a society that is failing extravagantly to protect them. And it is failing to protect them not from some omnipotent enemy—as we believed in March and perhaps even as late as April—but from a tough and dangerous foe that many other societies have wrestled into submission.

I am infuriated. I am also reminded once again of the degree to which so many other countries deliver what is, in real terms, a palpably higher quality of life by any number of self-evident measures.

America is my home, and I have not emigrated. I have always found the truest expression of my situation in James Baldwin’s label of “transatlantic commuter.” I have lived in France off and on since the early 2000s, and it has been instructive over the decades to glimpse America’s stature reflected back to me through the eyes of a quasi-foreigner. If the country sparked fear and intense resentment under George W. Bush and mild resentment mixed with vicarious pride under Barack Obama, what it provokes under Trump has been something entirely new: pity and indifference. We are the pariah state now, but do we even see it?

Will the World Wake Up to the Climate Change Threat?

Despite all kinds of scientific evidence that climate change is real, many Republicans and that party's toxic base of support continue to deny climate change is real and that the world is facing an existential threat. With Australia literally in flames, polar ice melting at a rapid rate and record temperatures hitting large parts of the world, the question is whether or not the world and nations like the United States will at last make needed policy changes to lessen the coming climate disaster. A piece in New Yorker looks at evidence that ought to convince anyone sentient that something must be done.  Here are article highlights:

In a Dantean sort of way, Australia’s holiday-season infernos provided a fitting close to 2019, which has been called “the year the world woke up to the climate crisis.” In India this past summer, a heat wave killed more than a hundred people in the northeastern state of Bihar, and in Japan a month later a heat wave sent an estimated eighteen thousand to the hospital. All-time temperature records were set in France, where a high of a hundred and eight degrees was reached in the town of Vérargues on June 28th, and in Germany, where the mercury in the town of Lingen hit a hundred and seven degrees on July 25th.

In Australia, records were broken only to be rebroken. On December 17th, maximum temperatures across the entire country, which is roughly the size of the continental United States, averaged 105.6 degrees. Then, on December 18th, they climbed to 107.4 degrees. The “feeling when you open the oven door” is how one Australian described the heat to the BBC. “It’s like that, but just the whole time.” Globally, it was the second- or third-warmest year since accurate measurements began.

What will the twenty-twenties bring? In geophysical terms, this question is almost too easy to answer. Temperatures will continue to rise. It’s virtually guaranteed that the coming decade will be warmer than the twenty-tens, which were warmer than the two-thousands, which were warmer than the nineteen-nineties, which—you guessed it—were warmer than the nineteen-eighties.

And with still higher temperatures will come still greater damage. Droughts will grow more punishing. (Australia’s horrific wildfires are, in large part, the result of what Australians are calling a “big dry,” which is now in its third year and has forced many towns to truck in water.) Warmer air holds more moisture, so the flip side of drought is deluge. (Last week, as Australia was roasting, flooding in Indonesia killed at least forty people.) Meanwhile, the planet’s ice sheets will continue to melt, leading to ever-higher sea levels, as will the Arctic ice cap. It’s possible that by 2030 the Arctic Ocean will be ice-free at the end of the summer.

Which brings us to the question of what it means to “wake up.” If in the past year (or the past decade) the world began to understand how dangerous climate change is, it certainly didn’t act like it. In the past ten years, more CO₂ was emitted than in all of human history up to the election of J.F.K.

The Trump Administration, which has filed to withdraw the United States from the Paris agreement, and the Morrison government, which wanted to use an accounting trick to fulfill its Paris commitments, were explicitly blamed for the stalemate. Many commentators noted the irony of the situation. A headline in the Guardian put it this way: “AUSTRALIA TOOK A MATCH TO UN CLIMATE TALKS WHILE BACK HOME THE COUNTRY BURNED.”

[T]he twenty-twenties will be consequential in a more or less permanent way. Global CO₂ emissions are now so high—in 2019, they hit a new record of forty-three billion metric tons—that ten more years of the same will be nothing short of cataclysmic. Unless emissions are reduced, and radically, a rise of two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) will be pretty much unavoidable by 2030. This will make the demise of the world’s coral reefs, the inundation of most low-lying island nations, incessant heat waves and fires and misery for millions—perhaps billions—of people equally unavoidable.

Really waking up, and not just dreaming to ourselves that things will be O.K., has become urgent—beyond urgent, in fact. To paraphrase Victoria’s fire authority: The world is in danger, and we need to act immediately to survive. 

After Brexit, Other European Countries Say: No Thanks

Across Europe right wing political factions have played the nationalist and racist, anti-immigrant card that motivated many pro-Brexit voters in the United Kingdom - and, of course, Trump voters in the USA - to build their own followings and to argue against remaining in the European Union.  Now, witnessing the UK's self-inflicted political and economic catastrophe, many of those elements are quickly saying "no thank you" to what they had heretofore clamored for.  Suddenly, the reality of the consequences of savoring and fanning racial hatred and resentment have served as a bucket of ice water on ugly motivations.  Would that Trump supporters would learn form their own idiocy who continue to back a narcissistic megalomaniac who wants to slash the healthcare and social programs many of these toxic individuals rely upon.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at reality crashing down on ultra-nationalists and far right elements across Europe.  Here are excerpts:  

Just three years ago, in country after European country, populist politicians were drawing up plans to follow Britain out the door. The French nationalist party leader spoke of a Frexit. The Dutch far-right leader wanted a vote on Nexit. Some politicians predicted a secessionist contagion. Might there be a Swexit? A Czech-out? An Italeave?
“Now it’s our turn,” the leader of Italy’s ascendant far right, Matteo Salvini, said at the time about exiting the European Union.

But the 2016 Brexit vote has spawned no copycats. Nor did it lead to the crackup of the E.U. Even the most ardent Brussels-bashing politicians have concluded it is better to stick with the bloc than endure a messy, years-long divorce.

On Friday, the day Britain was supposed to leave the E.U. and “take back control,” the British Parliament was still fighting over how and whether to leave. Lawmakers rejected, for the third time, the withdrawal deal negotiated between Prime Minister Theresa May and E.U. leaders. The pound fell on fears that Britain will abruptly crash out of the bloc on April 12, with massive disruptions to trade and travel.

Even if Britain manages an orderly departure, economic forecasters say Brexit could dampen growth for years. And the political and social divisions between “leavers” and “remainers” may persist.

Watching all this, the continent’s influential Euroskeptic parties — from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean — have recast their message. They have dropped calls to leave the E.U. and are instead advocating for the less drastic approach of changing the bloc from within. The European political scene has scarcely a party remaining advocating for a Brexit-style departure.

“The agony of Britain in the last two years has clearly been a subtext for ‘Let’s try to make this thing work’ ” within Europe.

The shift does not mean that the E.U. has averted turmoil or that Europe’s political insurgents are happy with the status quo. . . . Those populists want to decentralize power within the E.U. and are hoping to use European parliamentary elections in May to expand their influence and carry out their ideas.

But even as Europeans find reason to grumble about the bloc, voters do not seem to have the appetite for an irrevocable split. In fact, some have grown fonder of the European Union.

The E.U.’s approval rating increased sharply in 2017 as Britain began to debate the terms of its exit. A new Pew Research Center survey of 10 European nations shows that 62 percent of people hold a favorable view of the E.U.

A separate poll from last year showed that 67 percent of Europeans believed their country benefited from E.U. membership — the highest figure in 35 years.

“You had the Brexit referendum. Also the Trump election,” said Stefan Lehne, a visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe in Brussels. “It created a lot of fear and uncertainty, and the response [from Europeans] was, we want the known over the unknown.”

The reasons to stick with Europe go beyond a distaste for Brexit redux. A significant number of Europeans, even those who support Euroskeptic parties, appreciate the freedom of movement allowed by E.U. rules and the ability to live in other countries. They also like the outsize influence of the unified bloc, which makes it easier for countries to contend with China and the United States.

For now, some parties have simply dropped exit-the-E.U. plans from their platforms.

[I]n Italy where the evolution of the populist message on Europe is perhaps most stark. The country’s government is composed of two Euroskeptic parties that cheered Britain’s Brexit vote when it happened. Now, those parties say it would be inconceivable to follow suit.

As messy as Brexit has been, the exit process could be even more turbulent for a euro-zone nation that would have to contend with not only customs and border headaches but also the introduction of a new currency — or the return to an old one.

Marta Grande, a Five Star member who heads a parliamentary committee on foreign affairs, said that within her party, views on Europe were all over the map several years ago. But those views have gradually converged on the idea that the European Union needs to be criticized constructively and improved. She acknowledged that politicians in Italy continued to cast blame at Brussels but said, “People don’t want to leave the E.U.”

Analysts say that insurgent parties across Europe hope to curtail E.U. power over budget-making and bring their hard-line migration ideas to Brussels.  But the elections are a referendum on the strength of the union — not on whether the union should exist.

France Introduces National LGBT Anti-Bullying Campaign

As in the United States, right wing violence and agitation are on the rise, some of it fueled far right parties aligned with and/or funded by Russia (e.g., Marie Le Pen's National Rally political party (previously named National Front).  In addition to being anti-immigrant, these forces are also stridently anti-LGBT and want to inflict far right religious views on all citizens.  In France, a national effort has been launched to fight the homophobia and bullying that are part and parcel with the far right agenda. A piece in Gay Star News looks at this effort which should be implemented in Virginia and across the USA to counter the hate and untruths disseminated by Christofascists literally daily.  Here are article highlights:

France introduced a national campaign in the fight to eradicate anti-LGBTI incidents in middle and high schools across the country.

Starting today (28 January), France’s Ministry of National Education and Youth launched All Equal, All Allies. It’s a campaign that ensures all state schools put up anti-bullying posters, as well as provide accompanying guides about LGBTI students for teachers.

SOS Homophobia spearheaded the campaign, which aims to make LGBTI youth in France feel more included at school.

They found an increase of reports of anti-LGBTI incidents by 38% in the last year.
Their recent report also said this causes decreased self-esteem, isolation and dropping out of school. The risk of suicide attempts remains four times higher for LGBTI youth than for the rest of the population.

They wrote in a press release: ‘SOS homophobia hopes that all institutions, public and private, will open their doors to this campaign so that it can reach a maximum of students and complete the work of prevention and awareness provided by SOS volunteers.’

Across France, complaints of homophobic attacks increased by 15% since the beginning of 2018.

A number of French LGBTI rights activists also believe that the number of people to experience homophobic attacks or abuse is widely underreported.

‘This is just the tip of the iceberg,’ said the spokesperson for rights group Inter-LGBT, Clémence Zamora-Cruz.

‘On the ground, many attacks go unreported. Often, victims don’t complain for fear of reprisals, or because they’re afraid of speaking to police officers who aren’t aware of issues relating to LGBT identity.

He then added: ‘They’re scared of not being listened to.’

Last month, a handful of French artists got together to release a song to help tackle homophobia.

De l’Amour tells the story of gay refugee Azamat, with all proceeds raised going to French charity Urgence Homophobie (Emergency Homophobia).

Among the artists volunteering to sing on the track and appear in an evocative video were Emmanuel Moire, Christophe Willem and Muriel Robin.

Reflections on Paris and London 2018

Two weeks ago the husband and I along with two friends flew out of Washington Dulles to start our 2018 visit to Paris and London.  For me, it was likely the 7th - or more - visit to Paris and like the 5th or sixth visit to London.  My first visits to both cities were back in the 1981-1983 time frame when I was in-house counsel working for an oil company handling various international matters.  Our travel companions, a straight couple, but gay friendly, had never been to either city and were paying our airfare and accommodations in exchange for us planning the trio and serving as tour guides, if you will.  The goal was to show them an amazing time and to also indulge our love for both cities, each of which is a world capital yet so very different in so many ways (both are very LGBT friendly and when we went by London City Hall today, a rainbow flag was flying)

If pushed to choose which city I love more, my vote would go to Paris.  I love the architecture and the way in which the central city has been spared from modern monstrosities or soaring towers which are a total disconnect with the beautiful historic buildings.  London, in contrast is often modern next door to 18th century buildings in part because sections of London were destroyed during the blitz in World War II.  Paris escaped destruction due to the commanding German general's refusal to destroy parts of the city notwithstanding Hitler's orders to do so.

Both cities offer wonderful dining opportunities with London perhaps having more diverse offerings.  But for the nearly 100 miles we walked over the last two weeks - the husband and our travel companions all had apps that measured the amount of their walking - I hate to think how much weight we would have gained.  

In terms of getting around, both cities have amazing mass transits systems that make most American cities look very pathetic at best.  In both cities we bought unlimited 7-day travel cards and we made extensive use of the Metro/Underground systems which make New York City's system look very poorly maintained in comparison.   The train systems for travel outside the cities make Amtrak look positively horrible and the speed at which the trains travel - not counting the Eurostar which is in a class by itself - are amazing.  America could learn a great deal from both the UK and France on how to build remarkable and cost efficient mass transit systems (they could do the same on the issue of healthcare, especially France).

Since this is an LGBT blog, I'd be remiss if I did not mention the local men in each city.  Both being world capitals and deeply involved in the fashion industry, both cities have LOTS of handsome men (and women for female LGBT readers), but the men of Paris, in my opinion are the "hottest" - to quote the husband - and most style conscious.  

If you have never visited either city, I recommend that you do so.  There are economic ways to do so, including looking for discount flights, sharing an apartment with friends, using travel cards as we have to get around freely, and getting a "London Pass" or the "Museum Pass" for Paris which saves a considerable amount of money - the London Pass even got us free rail travel to Windsor Castle.

I'm not sure when I will return to either city, but I suspect I will see both again, especially Paris.  As for blogging tomorrow, we head to the airport in the morning and then need to drive back to Hampton after we arrive in Washington Dulles International.  Post will be sparse at best.

GOP Message to Most Americans: Get Sick, Go Bankrupt and Die

Liar and modern day Pharisee, Mike Pence.

Sitting in Le Marais area of Paris as I type this post, several things come to mind.  One is that the French truly have a love of life and, unlike Americans work to live rather than live to work.  Another is that they are free from the constant fear of that one major illness or pre-existing medial condition that could wipe them out financially,  Why this freedom of such fear?  It's simple: France's healthcare system, rated by many as the best and most cost effective in the world. Yes, the French pay higher taxes, but walking around the city one sees few signs of poverty and an enviable lifestyle.  The contrast could not be greater compared to America where health care cost remain a continued concern for all but the very wealthy.  Indeed, the message the Republican Party seemingly sends to millions of Americans is like the caption of this post: get sick, go bankrupt and die.  This from the political party that pretends to embrace "Christian values"  and that now finds it strongest support from evangelical Christians and white supremacists (in my view, the two are increasingly synonymous).  A column in the New York Times looks at the menace of the GOP towards millions of Americans:  Here are excerpts:

Despite his reputation as a maverick, John McCain spent most of his last decade being a very orthodox Republican . . . . But he redeemed much of that record with one action: He cast the crucial vote against G.O.P. attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. That single “nay” saved health care for tens of millions of Americans, at least for a while.

But now McCain is gone, and with him, as far as we can tell, the only Republican in Congress with anything resembling a spine. As a result, if Republicans hold Congress in November, they will indeed repeal Obamacare. That’s not a guess: It’s an explicit promise, made by Vice President Mike Pence last week.

In the case of health care, however, there’s an even deeper problem: The G.O.P. can’t come up with an alternative to the Affordable Care Act because no such alternative exists. In particular, if you want to preserve protection for people with pre-existing conditions — the health issue that matters most to voters, including half of Republicans — Obamacare is the most conservative policy that can do that. The only other options are things like Medicare for all that would involve moving significantly to the left, not the right.

Health economists have explained this point many times over the years; but as always, it’s difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

If you want private insurers to cover people with pre-existing conditions, you have to ban discrimination based on medical history. But that in itself isn’t enough, because if policies cost the same for everyone, those who sign up will be sicker than those who don’t, creating a bad risk pool and forcing high premiums. That was the case in New York, where premiums for individual policies were very high before the A.C.A. For what Obamacare did was provide incentives to get healthy people to sign up, too. On one side there was a penalty for not having insurance (the individual mandate). On the other, there were subsidies designed to limit health expenses as a share of income. Republicans have tried to sabotage health care by doing away with the mandate, and have succeeded in driving premiums higher; but the system is still standing thanks to those subsidies.

The point, again, is that Obamacare is the most conservative option for covering pre-existing conditions, and if Republicans really cared about the scores of millions of Americans with such conditions, they would support and indeed try to strengthen the A.C.A.

Instead, they’re going to kill it if they hold on in two months. But covering pre-existing conditions is popular; therefore, they’re pretending that they’ll do that, while offering proposals that would, in fact, do no such thing.

Do they imagine that voters are stupid?  Well, yes. In recent rallies Donald Trump has been declaring that Democrats want to “raid Medicare to pay for socialism.”

But the more important target is the news media, many members of which still haven’t learned to cope with the pervasive bad faith of modern conservatism.

Sadly, when it comes to the GOP base, they are stupid.  Or, in the alternative, are so motivated by their racial hatreds that they blinded to the reality that they are voting against their own interests in most instances. 

Paris 2018: Day 1 and Day 2

Plaza Athenee from Avenue Montangne

Plaza Athenne - Cour Jardin

Looking up from the Cour Jardin

Our arrival in Paris was delayed due the closure of Dulles International on Saturday evening due to severe thunderstorms which closed the airport for roughly 2 hours and 20 minutes.  The result was that we missed out connection in London to Paris and had to catch a flight 3 hours latter than planned.  Our apartment on Rue de Perche is a wonderful two bedroom, two bath apartment in a early 1800's building a block from the Picasso Museum. We spent our first afternoon walking around the Marais and end up having dinner at Vito's, a restaurant that at lest on Sundays is the equivalent of Annie's in the Dupont Circle area of Washington, DC.   We ended the evening with a nightcap at Raid Bar on Rue du Temple, a gay bar.  

Yesterday, we had a lazy morning and then had lunch at the elegant and opulent Hotel Plaza Athenee, a hotel I stayed at frequently during my days as in-house counsel for an oil company.  While extravagant, it was my "thank you" treat to our friends who treated the husband and I to this trip where we are the trip planners and tour guides. We followed that with a stroll up Avenue George V and then the Champs Elysse to the Arch de Triomphe.  We rounded out the afternoon with a visit to a favorite men's boutique on Rue de Rivoli back in the Marais (I bought two sport coats). 

Macron Tears Down Trumpism

During an address to a joint session of Congress French President Emmanuel Macron demonstrated that he is everything that Donald Trump is not: young, handsome, well spoken, able to show empathy for others, and cares beyond simply himself.   Indeed, he looks and acts presidential while Trump comes across as crude, not overly bright trailer park trash with money.  I will confess that I love the French and that Paris is perhaps my favorite city in the world.  I also - unlike, I suspect far too many Americans - know that France is America's oldest ally and that but for the French fleet which blocked British reinforcements, the battle of Yorktown would have likely been lost by the American army under George Washington.  Likewise, many of the founding principles of America embraced by the Founding Fathers trace back across the Atlantic to French writers.  Thus, it was proper that Macron reminded Americans of everything being lost under the toxic Trump/Pence regime.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at Macron's speech.  Here are highlights:

Before French President Emmanuel Macron delivered an address at a joint meeting of Congress on Wednesday, the headlines about his trip to Washington centered on his apparent “bromance” with President Trump.  

But on Wednesday, as his three-day visit drew to a close, Macron shifted the story dramatically. In his speech to American lawmakers, he offered a comprehensive rejection of the main tenets of Trumpism, excoriating “extreme nationalism” and protectionism, championing climate-change science and defending the international liberal order. “You can play with anger and fear for a time,” Macron said, alluding to the themes that fuel right-wing nationalist movements in the West, “but they do not construct anything.”

 

Macron went on, urging his American audience to look beyond borders and walls. “We can choose isolationism. But closing the door to the world will not stop the evolution of the world,” he said. And he bristled at the rise of autocrats and illiberal democrats, which include some leaders favored by Trump: “I don’t share fascination for new strong powers and the illusion of nationalism,” he said.

 

Macron also cast a skeptical eye at Trump's efforts to slap tariffs on imports from allies and undermine existing free-trade deals. To Macron, this bid to boost American manufacturing jobs at home — combined with Trump's dismissals of climate change as a “hoax” — was counterproductive and shortsighted.

“Some people think that securing current industries and their jobs is more urgent than transforming our economies to meet the challenge of global change,” he said. In the final analysis, he suggested, the impasse cannot last. “In the long run, we will have to face the same realities,” he said. “We’re just citizens of the same planet.”

There's no “Planet B,” Macron pointed out, echoing an earlier argument he made about there being no “Plan B” for the Iran nuclear deal that Trump wants to dismantle. Then he drew thunderous applause from Democrats with this confident declaration: “I am sure one day the United States will come back and join the Paris agreement.”

 

Macron also played the role of the proud transatlantic ally. He hailed the historic French-American friendship and the two countries' shared sacrifices from World War II to the current fight against Islamist militant groups in various parts of the world. And he predictably appealed to a love of liberty and the many other cultural connections between the two countries.

Macron also summoned legacies largely ignored by Trump. . . . . . “Human rights, the rights of minorities and shared liberty are the true answers to the disorder of the world,” Macron said to Congress. Meanwhile, across the street at the Supreme Court, the Trump administration pressed its case to impose blanket travel bans on certain Muslim-majority countries.

There are few things Washington officialdom loves to discuss more than the importance of American leadership in the world. Macron did not disappoint. He reminded Democrats and Republicans that the nuclear deal Congress approved in 2015 was worth defending, and that the alternatives — a confrontation that may lead to war with Iran — would “replicate past mistakes.”

 

He also told his audience of the importance of the world order that “you built,” pointing to the institutions and international norms developed after World War II.  . . . . “You are the one now who has to help preserve and reinvent it,” he added, calling on Washington to help build a new world order “based on a more effective, accountable, and results-oriented multilateralism.”

 

Macron “solidified his standing as leader of the West (to the extent there still is a West) by his call today before Congress for an updated liberal world order to meet regional, global challenges,” tweeted Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations and a doyen of the Washington policy establishment. “His problem is a lack of partners in Europe and here in U.S.”

 

“The most likely result is that the American president won’t pay attention to what Macron was trying to say — indeed, that he won’t even understand that he has been so openly challenged,” wrote Post columnist Anne Applebaum. “And that may have been the point, for Macron’s speech will be perfectly understood in France, in Europe, and even in the United States (at least outside the White House).”

Former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, an inveterate Atlanticist, echoed the sentiments of many in her milieu with a tweeted jab at Trump: “It has been too long since a President delivered a speech in Washington about the need to defend democracy and support international cooperation.”

Emmanuel Macron - New Leader of the Free World?

With Donald Trump alienating America's allies right and left and even South Korea saying it's more concerned with Trump's erratic and unhinged behavior than that of the leader of its next door neighbor, one can certainly make the case that America and its toxic president are no longer the leader of the free world.  The United Kingdom, like America through is Brexit vote, has seemingly likewise withdrawn itself from that possible tile.   As a consequence, some have said that mantle now rests with Angela Merkel of Germany.  As a piece in the Washington Post suggests, Emmanuel Macron of France may have his sights on the title.  With so many Americans utterly ignorant of history - most don't know that it was the French fleet that save George Washington's butt at the battle of Yorktown - don't know that France was once a very great power.  If you have doubts, visit Versailles sometime, and call to mind that Canada was once a French possession as was a large part of Africa and the American Mid-West.  But I digress.  Here are article highlights:

Emmanuel Macron is a master of persuasion. In his youth, he seduced his married high school drama teacher, the woman who is now his wife. In middle age — with no government experience — he cajoled a sitting president into giving him a coveted cabinet position. Then — with no support from any established political party — he dazzled a nation, becoming, at 39, the youngest-ever president of France, a country where tradition is a way of life.

Judging from the new president’s calendar, however, the dip in domestic popularity is of little concern, for his roving political eye seems to have identified a new conquest. Macron may be the president of France, but now he seems to be running for a different office altogether: the leader of the free world. Following the election of Donald Trump — who ran on promises of “America First” isolationism — commentators worldwide immediately began referring to German Chancellor Angela Merkel as the de facto defender of the liberal world order. With her famously stoic demeanor, Merkel appeared the natural replacement. Throughout her long career, she has advocated diplomacy and international law, and has defended an embattled European Union.

But in his first three months in office, Macron has dared to tread where Merkel hesitates to go. In keeping with his youthful image, he makes bold statements in defense of global causes such as climate change action, as evidenced in his Twitter campaign to “Make Our Planet Great Again.” And in the style of the “French Obama,” he hosts international celebrities in the Élysée for “conversations” on hot-button issues — including both Bono and Rhianna this week.
 [T]he major plot points of his young presidency have all featured him in the international spotlight, either attempting to charm or stand up to powerful world leaders, often those unpopular in France.

This is not to say that nothing has happened on the domestic level since his election in May. Macron, a relative political outsider even a year ago, ultimately succeed in carrying out an almost unthinkable overhaul of French political life. The new centrist party he founded, République En Marche (Republic on the Move), now has an absolute majority in Parliament.

[H]is principal ambition to date seems to be casting himself as a master negotiator in a new world where all roads somehow lead to Paris.

“To some extent, France is back again,” said Pierre Vimont, a former French ambassador to the United States and the E.U., in an interview. “You have France pushing forward its interest, but doing so in a way that makes it take a central position on the world stage, because France likes to lead and likes to be seen as leading.”

This defense of French interests has taken forms large and small, including a last-minute move to temporarily nationalize France’s largest shipyard on Thursday — to save French jobs from a potential Italian takeover. But so far, it has mostly been the world stage on which Macron has set his sights. Last week, for instance, he hosted Libya’s two rival leaders for talks in a chateau outside Paris. The mission was tentatively successful: the meeting led to a conditional cease-fire agreement between Fayez al-Sarraj, Libya’s U.N.-backed prime minister, and Khalifa Haftar, the military leader who controls much of eastern Libya. Likewise, Vimont said, Macron has positioned himself as a similar mediator between Israel and Palestine and even between the United States and Russia.

Macron has hosted — separately — Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Trump, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In each of these meetings, Macron has used his considerable charm to play both sides, even while blasting Putin for Russia’s state-owned media being “organs of propaganda.”  But nowhere was Macron’s ability to seduce more on display than in the case of Trump, whom he invited to Paris after the two had a tense first meeting in Brussels in May. For Dominique Moïsi, a French foreign policy expert at the Paris-based Institut Montaigne, a think tank with ties to the Macron campaign, there is potential danger in Macron’s having “put himself in the limelight.”

“At the same time, the devil is in the details,” Moïsi said. “By receiving these leading opposite forces in Paris, he’s taking a risk. What if he fails?”

Macron’s young presidency has not yet experienced a major domestic crisis or attack. Likewise, none of his major policy proposals have yet been implemented — including his controversial push to liberalize France’s highly regulated labor market. Those reforms are due to be introduced in Parliament this fall, and could inspire massive protests. . . . As Moïsi put it, “The hard times are yet to come.”

I wish him luck.  Meanwhile, the husband and will be back in Paris next year - a friend who is retiring is taking us with her and her husband.  She has left us to plan the details. :)

Russia Probe Looms Large Over Trump

With even Senate Republicans saying that the House Republican's hastily passed version of Trumpcare is dead on arrival in the Senate, Der Trumpenführer's efforts to change the subject from Russiagate will likely hit a brick wall this week.  Today former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former acting Attorney General Sally Yates head to the Senate to testify and odds are that what they have to say will not be helpful to Trump and his likely co-conspirators who worked with Russian intelligence to throw the 2016 presidential election.  Add to this a newly unearthed 2014 interview with Eric Trump in which he said Russia was funding the Trump golf courses and it should make for a fun week for those who find Der Trumpenführer detestable.  I continue to hope that the Senate hearings and/or the FBI's review of Trump financial accounts reveal some true fire under all the Russiagate smoke.  If the nation is lucky, both Trump and Pence will be implicated.   A piece in Politico looks at what to expect on the Russiagate probe and the apparent death of the House version of Trumpcare.  Here are excerpts:

President Donald Trump’s health care victory lap is already grinding to a halt.

After the White House's biggest legislative victory yet with the House’s narrow passage Thursday of the American Health Care Act, momentum will slow as the Senate settles in to rework the bill — potentially from scratch. The White House is also heading for a political buzzsaw as Russia’s election interference takes center stage in congressional hearings.

Former acting Attorney General Sally Yates heads to Capitol Hill on Monday to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee about former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s conversations with the Russian ambassador and her efforts to warn the Trump administration about Flynn’s changing story. The ex-adviser was already in the headlines after The Washington Post and Associated Press reported Friday that Flynn had been warned by transition officials about speaking to Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

Meanwhile, the health care bill that the White House spent the weekend celebrating appears destined for the trash can on the other side of the Capitol. . . . Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), a moderate who is emerging as a powerful voice in the health care fight, told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday. "The Senate is starting from scratch. We're going to draft our own bill. And I'm convinced that we're going to take the time to do it right.”

Even so, Trump took to Twitter on Sunday to encourage senators along: “Republican Senators will not let the American people down! ObamaCare premiums and deductibles are way up - it was a lie and it is dead!”

House Speaker Paul Ryan’s spokeswoman AshLee Strong declared on Twitter on Saturday that AHCA had been scored twice by the nonpartisan CBO, ignoring the fact that the version the House passed was never assessed. The White House, meanwhile, said there was no point scoring the bill at all.

The health care victory lap also will be hard to sustain given the headlines about Russia’s interference in the presidential election and possible contacts between Trump campaign officials and Russian operatives. At the same time that the latest Flynn news was emerging on Friday night, news broke that a hacking operation linked to Russia had targeted moderate French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron, an attack similar to the sustained campaign against Hillary Clinton. Macron was elected president nonetheless on Sunday.

With Yates and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper appearing before senators Monday, the White House is bracing for new questions about its least favorite story.  Senators on Sunday were already being pressed on the Russia issue.

The cancer that is Trump/Pence needs to be fully exposed and hopefully imprisonment, not just impeachment is the final outcome.  Nothing is more delicious is to contemplate Trump convicted of treason and locked away for the remainder of his life. 

France Avoids Making America's Mistake

French president-elect Emmanuel Macron

With most of the votes counted, right wing Neo-fascist French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen has gone down to a nearly 2 to 1 defeat to centrist Emmanuel Macron who will be the youngest French leader since Napoleon Bonaparte.  Le Pen tried to excite the same emotions of hate and resentment that took Trump to the White House but French voters seemingly saw the dangerous the toxic brew Le Pen was peddling - in sharp contrast to aggrieved white voters in America, many of who will lose their health insurance coverage if the current hideous of Trumpcare were to pass. Hopefully, Trump's victory and the aftermath here in America proved cautionary to French voters and will do the same in Germany when it holds elections in September, 2017.  One can only hope that Macron can reinvigorate the French economy and help unify the European Union after the UK's foolish exit vote.  The Washington Post looks at the election results.  Here are highlights: 

The anti-E. U. French leader Marine Le Pen’s larger-than-expected defeat Sunday in her nation’s presidential election was a crushing reality check for the far-right forces who seek to overthrow Europe: Despite the victories for Brexit and Donald Trump, they are likely to be shut out of power for years.

Given one choice after another since Trump’s U.S. presidential victory, Western European voters have delivered mainstream candidates to office despite a post-November sense that an anti-immigrant populist wave was washing over the Western world. Far-right candidates in Austria, the Netherlands and France have faltered. The euroskeptic far-right party in Germany has collapsed in recent polls ahead of September elections. And an unforgiving election calendar now offers few routes into power for years.

The thwarted momentum comes despite clear evidence that views that would have been taboo to express just a few years ago are no longer too toxic to exclude politicians from coming a breath away from leadership. When Le Pen’s father reached a presidential runoff in 2002, his opponent refused even to debate with him, so unacceptable to the mainstream were his views. This time, many French citizens sat out the election altogether because they detested both Le Pen and Macron — even though the pro-European centrist Macron offered a vastly different platform from his opponent. Le Pen’s result, just above 34 percent with most of the vote counted, was still a historic high for her party.

French people have chosen the continuity candidate,” a visibly disappointed Le Pen said in a brief concession address. She said she would seek to rename her National Front party, a measure of the extent to which her defeat rattled supporterswho just weeks ago harbored hopes of capturing the Elysee Palace.  Instead, Le Pen’s numbers sank in the two weeks since she placed second in the first round of the French elections.

[T]he failure of the far-right to seize office comes in stark contrast to expectations in November that Trump’s ascendance in the United States would unleash a global wave of populist politicians. Le Pen was one of the first leaders around the world to congratulate Trump the night of his victory. Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders exulted the day after. And Trump advisers and top European far-right leaders conferred in the weeks after the U.S. election.

The subsequent elections have shown a clear trend in Western Europe: Voters are sick of the mainstream and fed up with their leaders. But they are still not ready to hand power to the far-right. The chaotic first months of the Trump presidency may actually have hurt Europe’s populists rather than helping them.

European leaders rushed to turn the page on a grim year for the bloc, embracing Macron’s victory as the first step in the rejuvenation of an embattled alliance against forces that would tear it apart. Many mainstream leaders feared political Armageddon if Le Pen had won. In Brussels, the seat of the E.U., cheers could be heard in the streets the moment the exit polls were released Sunday evening, as though a favorite soccer team clinched a match.

In Germany, meanwhile, the far-right Alternative for Germany has collapsed in opinion polls in recent months following post-Trump heights. The party presided over a smaller but still telling defeat on Sunday, bringing up the rear in Sunday’s vote in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein, with projections showing it winning less than 6 percent of vote.

Macron hopes to soften Germany’s exacting insistence on fiscal austerity as he imposes sweeping pro-business reforms inside his own country. If he succeeds, he may help disarm anti-E. U. voices across the continent. But if he fails to jump-start France’s economy — and Europe’s — he will fuel questions about whether the European Union is helping or hurting its citizens’ lives. 

I wish Macron lots of luck and success.  The far right needs to crawl back under the rocks from whence it emerged.  

Is Putin Trying To Reprise a Stolen Election in France?

Putin and Le Pen - both enemies of democracy

For the record, I continue to believe that Russian dictator - that is, after all, what he is - Vladimir Putin helped steal the 2016 presidential election for Donald Trump and that it is very likely that the Trump campaign cooperated with that effort.  Now, the same effort seems to be taking place in France where on the eve of the presidential run off election a massive dump of hacked documents has taken place with the apparent goal of damaging Emmanuel Macron and throwing the election to neo-fascist Marine Le Pen.  Le Pen has very open ties to Putin and her political party has even received funding from Putin's government and henchmen.  One would hope that French voters will be smarter than many angry white voters were and will see the hacking and document dump for what it is and run screaming away from La Pen.  If not, expect Putin to try to steal Germany's election next.  The irony in all of this is that the would be authoritarian rulers claim that are out to protect traditional values and the common citizen, yet as the House GOP's Trumpcare bill reveals, that is the furthest thing from the truth.  The House GOP's bill basically tells millions to just get sick and die and do the wealthy and the oligarchs a favor by doing so.  The New York Times looks at what can only be a Russian effort to undermine and destroy France's democracy.  Here are excerpts (note that fake documents were mixed in with real ones to dupe voters and lazy journalists):

PARIS — On the eve of the most consequential French presidential election in decades, the staff of the centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron said late Friday that the campaign had been targeted by a “massive and coordinated” hacking operation, one with the potential to destabilize the nation’s democracy before voters go to the polls on Sunday.

The digital attack, which involved a dump of campaign documents including emails and accounting records, emerged hours before a legal prohibition on campaign communications went into effect. While the leak may be of little consequence, the timing makes it extremely difficult for Mr. Macron to mitigate any damaging fallout before the runoff election, in which he faces the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen, who has pledged to pull France out of the euro and hold a referendum to leave the European Union.

The hacking immediately evoked comparisons to last year’s presidential election in the United States, during which American intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, ordered an “influence campaign” to benefit the Republican nominee, Donald J. Trump.

Groups linked to Russia, that are also believed to have been involved in the hacking related to the 2016 United States presidential campaign, have previously been accused of trying to breach the Macron organization. Security experts tracking the activity of suspected Russian hackers say they believe those same groups were involved in this latest attack.

In a statement, the Macron campaign said the hackers had mixed fake documents along with authentic ones, “to sow doubt and misinformation.”

The Macron campaign said the documents leaked Friday were stolen several weeks ago after the personal and professional emails of staff members at En Marche, his political movement, were hacked.

It was not the first reported hacking attempt of Mr. Macron’s campaign. In April, a report by the cybersecurity firm Trend Micro said there was evidence that the campaign was targeted in March by what appeared to be the same Russian operatives who were responsible for hacks of Democratic campaign officials before last year’s American presidential election. Mr. Macron’s campaign said the attack was unsuccessful.

Vitali Kremez, the director of research at Flashpoint, a business risk intelligence company in New York, said he suspected the involvement of a Russian-linked espionage operation known as APT28. “The key goals and objectives of the campaign appear to be to undermine Macron’s presidential candidacy and cast doubt on the democratic electoral process in general,” he said.

“If indeed driven by Moscow, this leak appears to be a significant escalation over the previous Russian operations aimed at the U.S. presidential election, expanding the approach and scope of effort from simple espionage efforts towards more direct attempts to sway the outcome,” Mr. Kremez added.

Security researchers who have been tracking APT28, also known as Fancy Bear, say it has been moving aggressively against NATO members and a variety of Western targets using various hacking tools, including so-called spear-phishing attacks, but also through the exploitation of vulnerabilities in technologies that allow hackers to invade their targets undetected by security software.

The National Commission for Control of the Electoral Campaign, a regulatory body, said it was contacted by the Macron campaign on Friday night. The commission, which planned to meet on Saturday about the hacking, urged the news media to be cautious in its reporting.

“It therefore asks the media, and in particular their websites, not to report on the content of these data, recalling that the dissemination of false information is liable to fall within the scope of the law — in particular criminal law,” the commission said.

The Macron campaign appealed to journalists to not do the hackers’ bidding by widely publicizing the contents of the emails.

Given what is known about Russia's involvement and Putin's goals of an ascendant Russia at the expense of Europe and America, I cannot fathom why anyone sane would vote for someone favored by Putin.  

On a different note, criminal hacking is not only occurring in the political realm.  More and more businesses and law firms are targets with the goal being to steal trade secrets and steal monies in trust accounts.  Nationwide, millions of dollars have been stolen from law firm trust accounts through hacked e-mails and altered wire instructions.