Blue Star Chronicles

Via the Absentee Ballot

France has provided the American voters many lessons in how starkly contrasting candidates, failed policies of high taxes and overregulation and “scum” immigrants who regularly challenge their host nation’s culture, can inspire record turnouts of over eighty five percent of a population. In the most important election of a generation, French men and women marched to the polls to redirect the future of France.

The citizens had a real choice. They faced two candidates with differing present and future visions of a proud country who was on the verge of losing its grandeur.

Small businesses were suffocated in a system that punished growth while workers were penalized for laboring beyond thirty five hours and families were watching their rich culture yield to a prehistoric yet conquering one.

In one corner stood Sarkozy, a determined realist intent on implementing practical proposals to restore the French economy to its perceived rightful place in the lead pack of economic powers. His proposals targeted personal tax reductions, eliminating the thirty five hour work week and reforming a system that punished small businesses for each measure of their growth.

The other aspect of his candidacy possibly eclipsed his economic program which was his gritty resolve in preserving French culture in the face of the threat of radical Islam which had spread throughout France’s extensive immigrant community. He was fierce in confronting its menace and politically incorrect in characterizing its followers. Sarkozy views the world in absolutes where people are increasingly receptive to judging in relative terms.

The other corner was occupied by Madame Royal who, like liberal American politicians, campaigned by fear and castigation. To her and her followers, cutting welfare benefits, imposing immigration restrictions, introducing competitive economic measures and putting forth the idea that human beings were capable of 36 hours of work per week was draconian.

The voters disagreed.

Out of vogue are thirty five hour work weeks, unmanageable and unaffordable taxes, demanding and draining immigrants and an economy ill equipped to compete. In its place are paired down policies aimed at pragmatism and economic growth.

In her concession speech, without mentioning her opponent’s name once, she professed her hopes of a peaceful transition without riots. But, like many American civil rights activists before her, she had utilized the tired riot instigator. By warning against them, she was subliminally inspiring them.

Most importantly, these elections showed the failures of leftist policies. With a conservative in government in both France and Germany, Europe has shown a willingness to abandon the failed ideology that guarantees everything while accomplishing nothing.

The question becomes, will Americans have to experience failed immigration, bitter culture divisions and labor unions with too much power to recognize the necessity of a conservative government?

This doesn’t need any comments from me…..

Previous:

• Videos of Paris Burning
• France Elects a New President Nicolas Sarkozy and Paris Burns Again
• French Youth Ring in the New Year Burning Cars
• Paris Burning - Again!
• The French are Toast
• The French ‘I don’t wanna Have To Work for a Living Riots’
• France Woke up Feeling Rather Danish Today!

Jordin Sparks took American Idol tonight, in my humble opinion.

The rest just weren’t at the top of their games tonight.

That’s all.

Toasted Bread is staying on top of the riots in Paris and the reaction to the election of French President-elect Nicolas Sarkozy.

From National Review Online via Toasted Bread …. How did a conservative win the French election?

1. He stuck on ideas. He had specific solutions for specific problems — including some of France’s most intractable — and he stuck by them no matter what. He didn’t allow his ideas to become swamped in sentiment.
2. He reflected common sense.
3. Sarkozy simply ignored what the French press assumed the campaign should be about — the enshrinement of the 35-hour week or Le Pen or whatever — and stayed on-topic.
4. he didn’t give credit to constituency issues that weren’t his own (such as Royal being a woman).
5. He ignored meaningless issues, for example, Bayrou.
6. He prohibited cynicism, because he stuck with ideas.
7. He ran from losers… of his own party (Chirac and the rest of the UMP establishment).

More videos at Toasted Bread ….

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Fausta also has a great round-up …

Which is a great idea for American politics: it’s time we discard the misguided and destructive 1968 mentality.

Fausta also points us to Scrappleface who has Hillary Clinton’s reaction to the French elections.

Six men were arrested in the early morning hours this morning for plotting to kill as many Soldiers as possible at New Jersey’s Fort Dix.

Greg Reinhert, a Justice Department spokesman in Camden, N.J., described the six as “Islamic radicals … who were involved in a plot to kill U.S. soldiers at Ft. Dix in New Jersey.” [source]

The FBI received a tip in January 2006 after the jihadist took a DVD in to be copied. The contents of the DVD were disturbing. [source]

“The DVD depicted 10 young men who appeared to be in their early-20s shooting assault weapons at a firing range in a militia-like style while calling for jihad and shouting in Arabic, ‘Allah Akbar,’ or ‘God is Great.’”

The men arrested are Mohamed Shnewer and brothers Dritan, Eljzir and Shaine Duka, Serdar Tatar of Philadelphia and Agron Abdullahu of Williamstown, N.J. Statements made to undercover FBI agents included:

“My intent is to hit a heavy concentration of soldiers,” the man on the tape said. “You hit four, five or six Humvees and light the whole place up.”

There were other targets including American warships that would be docked in Philadelphia next year during the Army-Navy ball game.

UPDATE 3:30 p.m. ET: From news conference: They watched videos of attacks on American Soldiers. One video depicted an American Marine’s arm being blown off. The room erupted in laughter.

UPDATE 4:00 p.m. ET: This is a small cell with loose, if any, connections to larger terrorists cells. It seems better organized than the Miami cell that was busted about a year ago. My concern is that we won’t see the real-deal professional jihadists coming.

More:
Argghhh!, Murdock, Michelle Malkin, Webloggin, Right Truth, Iowa Voice, Wizbang, Outside the Beltway, Captains Quarters

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, Perri Nelson’s Website, The Random Yak, Big Dog’s Weblog, DragonLady’s World, The Bullwinkle Blog, Leaning Straight Up, The Amboy Times, The Florida Masochist, Conservative Cat, Pursuing Holiness, Rightlinx, third world county, stikNstein… has no mercy, The World According to Carl, The Right Nation, Pirate’s Cove, Wake Up America, Dumb Ox Daily News, High Desert Wanderer, Right Voices, Gone Hollywood, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

On May 6, 1945 U.S. forces liberated Plzen, Czech Republic from Nazi occupation.

From Stars & Stripes

PLZEN, Czech Republic

Crowds of American-flag-waving locals lined the streets here Sunday, cheering on a convoy of vintage military vehicles staged to mark the 62nd anniversary of the town’s liberation by U.S. forces during World War II.

The convoy included 120 vehicles ranging from Jeeps and half-tracks to trucks and motorcycles. It was part of a series of events in Plzen this month celebrating America’s involvement in liberating the town and the Western Bohemian region of what was then Czechoslovakia from occupying Nazis.

Local resident Mirko Trubka, who drove his 1942 Jeep in the parade, remembers when the Americans rolled into town 62 years ago on May 6, 1945.

“I was 6 years old then and I’m 68 now, three years older than my Jeep. Back then, we had our hands full of these,” he added, pulling a U.S.-made .50-caliber Browning machine-gun bullet from his pocket. Youngsters used to throw the shells on the fire and watch them explode, he recalled.

Like many in the convoy, Trubka wore a 2nd Infantry Division uniform. The first U.S troops in Plzen were from 2nd ID.

A few Americans joined with the Czechs at the parade, including Omar Bartos, a U.S. law student studying in the Czech Republic who said he was enjoying the celebration and the positive feelings from the locals.

“A lot of them remember the war and remember Americans liberating this place,” he said.

Rosie Crimens, a German civilian worker at the Grafenwöhr Training Area transportation office in Germany, got into the spirit of things dressed as a Women’s Army Corps lieutenant.

But some Germany-based U.S. personnel in the crowd adopted an attitude that would have warmed the hearts of the nation’s former Communist rulers.

“Where’s your identification. … We can’t be interviewed unless it goes through our public affairs officer,” was the response of two Americans when asked for an interview.

The parade ended with a party at Plzen’s Patton Memorial — a museum that tells the story of the U.S. Army’s time in the Czech Republic — that opened in 2005. Gen. George S. Patton was in command of the troops that took Plzen.

Outside the museum kids checked out a “Czech-U.S. base camp in Afghanistan” that included role-players acting as modern-day Czech and U.S. troops.

Patton Memorial museum curator Milan Jisa, who also dressed as a U.S. soldier Sunday, was eager to show off his collection, which included an array of U.S. uniforms, weapons, parts of a B-17 bomber that crashed near Plzen and other items.

Jisa, who started the museum with another Czech collector, Iban Rollinger, said he collected the objects more than 40 years.

When the country was ruled by Communists the pair had to hide their collections. Before the Iron Curtain came down in 1989 anyone who suggested Americans liberated Plzen risked jail, Jisa said.

The museum includes Communist propaganda that seeks to downplay the U.S. role in freeing Western Bohemia as well as a U.S. film of 2nd ID troops entering Plzen.

Jisa’s favorite artifacts are presents U.S. troops gave locals during the war.

The collection includes a helmet autographed by a group of U.S. soldiers, medicine, postcards, letters, pictures, Camel cigarettes, coffee, chewing gum, Hershey’s chocolate and copies of Yank, an Army magazine, and Stars and Stripes left behind by the American troops.

One display shows mannequins dressed in 2nd Infantry Division uniforms taking a German prisoner while another is devoted to the rescue of the country’s Lipizzaner horses by the 2nd Cavalry Regiment, now based in Vilseck, Germany.

There’s also a Czech dress that locals gave Patton, as well as one of Patton’s hats. Both items were donated by Patton’s family.

The story of the U.S. role in the liberation of Czech lands during WWII is written in the book “Along Came Freedom” by Roucka Zdenek, on sale at the museum.