And it feels so good....
"Hollande’s ex-partner named to new French cabinet" by Alissa J. Rubin and Scott Sayare | New York Times April 03, 2014
PARIS — President François Hollande of France approved a new Cabinet on Wednesday, putting some high-profile figures — including Ségolène Royal, his former partner — in key positions, but sending mixed messages about his plans for France’s troubled economy.
The lack of clarity has worried European Union policymakers, who have watched France’s faltering economy with trepidation, in part because Hollande has resisted deeper structural changes.
He's got enough money to send French forces into Africa though.
With his ministerial appointments, Hollande appeared to be trying to satisfy more leftist factions within his Socialist Party as well as the European Commission, which has called for spending cuts and reform of the rigid labor market, but he seemed no closer to a coherent economic policy.
Little late, isn't it? Rearranging deck chairs gonna fool the French people?
Related: French Funny
Talk about mixed messages. I don't see the French people laughing.
Hollande campaigned on a promise to move the focus of European policymakers from austerity and toward growth, but when he came to office he largely set those ambitions aside.
No wonder he is the most hated president in French history.
UPDATE: The president now has a 17 percent approval rating
In remarks Monday, one day after his party suffered widespread losses in local elections across France, he remained vague, but seemed to lean again toward a pro-growth approach. He made more promises to cut taxes, saying he would reduce the burden not only on corporations, but also on low-paid workers. And he underscored anew his intent to preserve France’s generous social payments.
He's a true $ociali$t.
“It’s not about making savings just for the sake of making savings,” Hollande said in his televised address. “It’s about preserving our social model. In short, about being more fair and more effective.
That's why he is cutting spending by $70 billion while cutting taxes on corporations.
France’s growth has hovered at close to zero for the past two years, and unemployment stands at 10.4 percent, just below the EU average, according to Eurostat, the EU’s statistical arm.
I'm sure those numbers are cooked just like the ones we get here.
EU officials viewed Hollande’s remarks warily, seeing in them a suggestion that France would seek a further delay in its commitment to bring its budget deficit under the 3 percent of gross domestic product required under EU rules.
“France is aware of its commitments,” Jeroen Dijsselbloem, chairman of the Eurogroup of finance ministers, said at a meeting Tuesday in Athens in response to Hollande’s speech. “They were already given more time, and more work needs to be done.”
France has not made an official request for a delay in meeting its deficit targets. It was supposed to meet them by the end of 2013, but after negotiations it was given until the end of 2015. However, in 2013, the national deficit overshot the government target, ending at 4.3 percent of gross domestic product instead of 4.1 percent.
The government reorganization began Monday with the appointment of Interior Minister Manuel Valls as prime minister, succeeding Jean-Marc Ayrault. On Wednesday, Royal was named environment and energy minister, and Arnaud Montebourg minister of the economy.
Montebourg, whose economic ideas have enjoyed populist appeal, is known for jousting — with mixed results — with foreign investors and companies he viewed as daring to criticize the French labor system.
His appointment worries analysts because he has taken strong stands against the deficit reduction targets, said Guntram B.Wolff, the director of Bruegel, a European think tank.
“You get again mixed messages with very different people in the Cabinet,” said Wolff. “With Montebourg, it’s a very left approach and for sure he’s already announced he wants to delay the deficit reduction, which you can debate. But you can’t not debate the need to make reforms on the labor side and the structural side. And we don’t see that coming.”
All this means is the bankers might not get paid and they are nervous.
Montebourg will share economic responsibilities with the more sober Michel Sapin, a longtime friend of Hollande’s, who will become the finance minister. Sapin, as labor minister, had been in charge of the government’s halting efforts to stem France’s increasing unemployment. It is unclear how the government plans to divide tasks between Sapin and Montebourg.
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"France’s onetime power couple are reunited — at Cabinet table" by Sylvie Corbet and Angela Charlton | Associated Press April 05, 2014
PARIS — Was this a Cabinet meeting or a family reunion? The new French government’s first meeting included a man and woman who had four children together, split up in the public eye, and are now back together in the political spotlight.
Politically speaking, it’s not as awkward as it sounds.
President Francois Hollande shook up the government this week after his Socialist Party suffered an electoral defeat in nationwide municipal elections. Among two new faces in the Cabinet is Segolene Royal, a longtime politician and the mother of Hollande’s children, as environment and energy minister. The two split up in 2007.
The new team held its first meeting Friday in the Elysee Palace, with Royal and Hollande sitting almost directly across from each other.
People close to the pair said they will keep things professional at the Cabinet table.
Hollande’s and Royal’s lives and careers have been interlinked since they met in the late 1970s at the prestigious finishing school for France’s political elite, the Ecole Nationale d’Administration.
They entered Parliament together in 1988, elected in different constituencies. They entered the president’s palace for the first time together a few years later as staffers to President Francois Mitterrand.
As environment minister in 1992, Royal did something unprecedented for a French politician: she gave birth while in government, to her fourth child. And then she shocked people even more by inviting a TV camera into the maternity ward.
Royal said she did so ‘‘to help the cause of women, at a time when women are taking on more significant responsibilities.’’ Hollande made a guest appearance in the TV segment, joking about his big family.
Twice, Hollande and Royal competed to become the Socialists’ presidential candidate.
She landed the spot the first time, in 2007 — but lost the presidential race to conservative Nicolas Sarkozy. Hollande then won the party nomination and the presidency in 2012.
Related: Sarkozy's Stench Sticking to Hollande
Royal’s appearance at the Cabinet meeting would have been even more closely watched, or perhaps simply unthinkable, a couple of months ago, when Hollande was still living with first lady Valerie Trierweiler. The two recently broke up amid reports that he is having an affair with an actress.
They don't even give you her name?
See:
Hollande the Man Whore
Feeling the Love
No need to make a fuss, but I miss the tweets.
Royal said she will work with the president in the most ‘‘natural and institutional’’ way possible. Entering and leaving Friday’s meeting, the media-savvy minister and political survivor wore a broad smile.
Because she's got her former hubby by the balls!
Hollande and Royal have been talking more often in recent months, but only about political issues, according to two people close to Royal, former longtime lawmaker Jean-Louis Bianco and current parliament deputy Sebastien Denaja.
‘‘Their relationship is completely calm, I think this will not pose any problem to work together. I think that things will go very naturally, without one bothering the other,’’ said Bianco, who ran Royal’s 2007 presidential campaign.
Royal’s appointment has prompted criticism from those who fear she will have undue influence because of her special relationship with the head of state and who suspect she used that relationship to get the job. Her allies say that is unfair.
Well, she did sleep with him.
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Time for me to divorce myself from posting for today.
Also see: Queen Elizabeth II, pope exchange gifts at the Vatican
NEXT DAY UPDATES:
The royals like tea, right?
"Social conservatives in France may be brewing own tea party" by Anthony Faiola | Washington Post April 06, 2014
PARIS — Steeped in conservative rage and tasting of grass roots, a political backlash has traditional politicians and the media asking the once-unthinkable: Is “le tea party” brewing in France?
If it were, it would be populated by people such as Catherine Mas-Mezeran, a Parisian mother of three who wrinkles her nose at the mention of President François Hollande. She calls him ‘‘the socialist,’’ which, technically, he is. But if President Obama had the birthers, Hollande now has the baptismists.
Like others in a growing movement here, Mas-Mezeran firmly believes an unsubstantiated rumor emanating from conservative circles that Hollande may have secretly renounced his Christianity.
Is that where this is going?
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Their strength in numbers, however, cannot be ignored. The movement has transformed into the most sustained mobilization of social conservatives here in more than a generation.
A reinvigorated right delivered a devastating blow to Hollande in the recent local elections across the country, prompting a humbled Hollande to reshuffle the French government. He replaced Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault with Interior Minister Manuel Valls, a politician seen as more palatable by some on the right.
Meanwhile, above I'm told he went left.
Results of the runoff vote showed the far-right National Front scoring its biggest victory ever, taking 11 towns and a major district in Marseille in part by appealing to outraged residents. The left ceded more than 150 other cities to the center-right Union for a Popular Movement, or UMP.
And this frightens the agenda-pushers of corporate liberalism and government.
Losses by the Socialists also reflect economic doubts and disenchantment with Hollande. But across Europe, a continent often seen on the other side of the Atlantic as a bastion of liberal thought, several nations are in the throes of their own full-blown culture wars, and perhaps nowhere are they raging quite as fiercely as here in France.
Masterful, isn't it? Divert the conversation away from the economic $y$tem and divide everyone over social issues, with a propaganda pre$$ megaphone to help.
Tens of thousands are taking to the streets in repeated protests, many for the first time in their lives. They are organizing local assemblies and social-media campaigns even as some angry newcomers run against incumbents on the right who they see as not socially conservative enough.
And that kind of democracy is bad!
A show of strength on French streets in February led Hollande to backtrack on a measure that opponents feared could have helped same-sex couples have children through fertilization treatments and surrogate mothers.
Scores of social conservatives yanked their children out of public schools for one day in January to protest new lessons being tested in some French schools aimed at dispelling gender stereotypes.
The social conservatives said the lessons could lead to boys in dresses and girls playing mechanic, or even masturbation classes for children.
A continent already hit by economic upheaval is confronting a wave of bitter societal polarization over a host of issues from euthanasia to abortion and same-sex marriage.
Anything that will keep your mind of the international bankers and the EU picking your pockets in the name of austerity!
In Spain, the conservative government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy is seeking to push through a law dramatically limiting abortion rights, unleashing a bitter confrontation with the left and reversing the steady march of liberal social policies there since the death of General Francisco Franco.
In Poland, a measure to grant same-sex civil partnerships failed last year due to massive opposition, prompting Prime Minister Donald Tusk to say he saw no chances of such unions passing within the next 10 to 15 years.
During Germany’s national election campaign last year, center-right Chancellor Angela Merkel sparked outrage among progressives after expressing doubts about full adoption rights for same-sex couples.
Though dubbed the ‘‘Tea Party, à la Francaise’’ by some, the mobilizations here are in many respects still oceans apart from the conservative crusade that upended American politics after Obama’s election.
Oh, it's a "crusade," is it? How very telling.
There is no primary system in France to give social conservatives a decisive political voice. In addition, the conservative revolution here is far more social than fiscal.
Honestly, this spun slop is pure $hit.
I mean, we get the point and all and recognize the agenda-pushing pri$m that is promoting it. The Globe and AmeriKan media coverage is good only insofar as it shows you what axe they are grinding on a particular issue and what they oppose.
Otherwise, it's worthle$$ $hit.
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"First female mayor of Paris takes office
PARIS — The first female mayor of Paris took office Saturday, hailing a ‘‘great advance for all women.’’ Anne Hidalgo donned the blue, white, and red mayoral sash after a vote enshrining her victory in nationwide municipal elections on March 30 (AP)."
Also see: Deja Vu Tuesday
