Obama et Hollande: Twin Freaks of Different Mothers?

There is a freakish resemblance between the national leaders of France and the US. Each is an ideologue, first and foremost. Neither are bright enough to understand how their respective nations could grow more prosperous, nor do they particularly care. Thuggish political mobsters at heart, they are only interested in leeching the wealth and accomplishments of others, to the acclaim of the popular media.

Twin Freaks of Doom

In France, Hollande’s class war approach has been disastrous for the French economy. His tax policies have prompted the start of a mass exodus of wealthy individuals, who are taking their money elsewhere in Europe, including to Britain and Switzerland. In the words of Laurence Parisot, head of the French Employers’ Federation: “Our country is, alas, becoming less and less attractive with every passing month whilst our neighbours are trying to become more and more attractive.”

Unsurprisingly, economic growth has taken a hit, with falling consumer spending and plummeting market confidence. France is slipping back into recession in the final quarter of 2012, with Europe’s second largest economy now projected to miss its deficit target and barely grow at all in 2013.

France’s economic failure is a sharp warning to the United States if it goes down the same path. Ominously for Barack Obama, Hollande’s approval rating has fallen to just 36 percent, making him the most unpopular French president in recent history (at the six month mark). _Twin Freaks of Doom

Obama simply doesn't care. In fact, one of his missions in life since childhood, has been to punish the US and Europe for their "oppression of third world peoples over the past few centuries." Obama's mother drilled that lesson into his head, and the only father-figure Obama knew as a child -- Frank -- made sure the lesson stuck.

France is probably doomed. Hollande has no idea how to pull the country out of the hole he continues to dig for France. Obama is, if anything, less intelligent than Hollande, and driven more by revenge than by ideology or simple thuggish greed -- both of which Obama possesses in abundance.

It will be an interesting few years for both unfortunate countries, France and the US. Try not to be too vulnerable to miscreants of this nature. Large scale damages are a certainty. Doom for their respective countries is not out of the realm of possibility. Take care of yourselves.

France Elects Its Own Obama -- Risks Rapid Decline

The French have been long enamoured with US President Barack Obama, and as a result they have elected a French equivalent: Francois Hollande. Monsieur Hollande is already beginning to have the same effect on French private enterprise which Mr. Obama has had on the US private sector.

“The situation is very serious. Some business leaders are in a state of quasi-panic,” said Laurence Parisot, head of employers’ group MEDEF. “The pace of bankruptcies has accelerated over the summer. We are seeing a general loss of confidence by investors. Large foreign investors are shunning France altogether. It’s becoming really dramatic.” _Evans-Pritchard

The biggest problem with political leaders of a socialist bent, is they typically have no real understanding of how economies work. Certainly Mr. Obama never worked outside of politics or academia, and the same appears to be true for Monsieur Hollande.

Modern leftist ideology is best described as a tautological fantasy ideology -- essentially unfalsifiable, and only answerable to anyone when national economies collapse and the fools are thrown out.

The fear is that a fiscal shock in 2013 will tip the economy into a sharp downward slide. “France needs more fiscal austerity right now like a hole in the head,” said sovereign debt strategist Nicholas Spiro.

“They don’t have any chance of meeting their growth target of 0.8pc next year, but that does not in itself put French debt at risk.

“The real danger is contagion if things turn ugly in Spain.” _Evans-Pritchard

Obama entered office just as the US was beginning to emerge from a significant financial crisis and recession. While Mr. Obama's policies made the US economy far more sluggish and depressed than it should have been, he was partially saved by the revolutionary shale oil & gas bonanza -- which occurred despite his policies rather than because of them.

Mr. Hollande has no reason to expect such a providential bailout from anyone or anything. Hollande has rejected shale drilling, and is also proposing drastic and potentially crippling reductions in France's nuclear power industry.

The near to intermediate future does not appear to be very promising for France. Of course, if Obama is re-elected, the future for the US is likely to be similarly dismal.

Hope for the best. Prepare for the worst. And remember: It is never too late for a dangerous childhood.

US President Obama Dreams of a "Post-American World"

I don’t buy into the president’s trendy “post-American world” fantasies. We are growing; Europe, Japan, China, and Russia are aging and shrinking. Is there a Facebook sprouting in Istanbul? Does Mumbai give us Wal-Mart? Does the world flock to Shanghai to learn brain surgery?

I am not worried that China’s one rusty carrier will match the power of about one-third of our eleven carrier groups. Fat flabby Americans still produce per capita three times as many goods and services as do three Chinese.

I’ve seen European and Arab universities; believe me they are no Caltech or Stanford. I’ve been in three hospitals abroad; the one in tiny Selma is to them as heaven is to hell. In most places abroad, I would not drink the water. I like American doctors; they don’t smoke as they treat you and don’t roll you into Dante’s Inferno on a gurney to rot. I don’t think they pulled out my tonsils years ago only to make a buck. My local Doc does not wish to lop off my leg.

Our gas and oil reserves grow; China’s and Japan’s shrink. If I move to China, as a Scandinavian-looking white guy I will never be accepted as fully Chinese; if a Chinese moves here, he’s liable to run a company. Barack Obama and most of us would never make it as a president or prime minister in Japan or South Korea, or for that matter France.

...I see no reason to apologize or bow abroad. I am all too aware that we helped save Muslims in Kosovo, Bosnia, Kuwait, Afghanistan, and Somalia and send them billions in aid to the West Bank, Egypt, and Jordan. I have no guilt about the Europeans. We have paid trillions in dollars for their defense, after saving them from Germany twice, and are far less protectionist in our trade policies than are they. Compared to the caste system in India, racialism in China and Japan, tribal chauvinism in the Arab World, and class distinctions in Europe, I find the U.S. pretty open and fair, meritocratic if you will.

Why, then, would I wish to kowtow to Saudi or Japanese royals, or to apologize in Turkey for past sins?

...In the last week, there was more talk on illegal immigration from open-borders activists, the Obama administration, and Mexico—all to the effect that the United States has to shape up, be more caring, and start granting amnesty (“comprehensive immigration reform”). But what are we missing? Did not over 11 million people enter the U.S. illegally, and without apparent care about the law? I would not drive into Mexico without legal identification, or sign affidavits that I knew were false, or abandon my car at the scene of an accident in Acapulco, or register for public assistance in Mexico City, but I am to expect others can do the reverse with impunity?

...This is proving to be a Manichean administration. It sees the world in terms dark and light, of us/them, and then must create the necessary binaries to divide and demonize—so strange given this was the narrative of the Obama campaign against Bush, not so strange given the Chicago origins.

After three years, I realize that lots of us are on the downside of about every one of the president’s new Mason-Dixon lines. Yet I am not a one-percenter like Jon Corzine or Nancy Pelosi. I did not send my kids to private schools as did the Obamas in Chicago. I live in a racially mixed area, one of the poorest in the nation—unlike the mostly white mansion environs of John Kerry. My siblings’ families are racially mixed; I’ve never bought and sold real estate, or made much money on investments. I am certainly, then, no Rahm Emanuel, Jamie Gorelick, or Franklin Raines. I never had any developer give me a sweetheart deal to expand my backyard as did Barack Obama. I have never in my life used the term “typical black person” and would not dream of talking in terms of being a “wise white guy.”_VDH

Victor Davis Hanson is being generous to the Obama administration. The truth is, the current US President is a divider and a demoniser of the highest order -- he must do, in order to survive politically.

The question is: What are American voters going to do about this Obamanation?