... a fringe person

You're at the top of your game, and it's still very early......well, at least in California, it's early!

And oh boy do I ever agree about the awful part. Would that our election had had the same result. We would be living in a much calmer, SANER world.

I suspect that the French are wise because they have a much better educational system: one that is not run by right-wing Republicans!

Great to see you!

We failed to take the Brexit lesson seriously, the French got Brexit AND Trump as lessons of what could go wrong.

They had an unfair advantage.

Which is what I remind the righties here. Don't go pretending you're the majority. You won on a technicality and because you're easily duped. You're mindless drones, doing whatever Fox Noise tells you. We've always been the majority, even on election day. You're the minority. So don't get cocky.

What I also love to bring up with 45's flagging poll numbers, is that he's at 35% approval WITH 24/7 RW media cheerleading, something Nixon didn't have in the day. Think about it.

They want respect that isn't earned.

The French government policy is against fake news propaganda and limits partisan election polls. The people seem to be well educated and informed about the issues. Plus, they use 100% paper ballots. They probably have the most fair elections of any country.

Maybe that's why - they aren't AS misinformed.

Germany still has laws on the books that restrict free speech. No Nazi, or overtly Nazi-like propaganda is permitted. Fox doesn't stand a chance of getting a permit in Germany. Even if Fox DID get a permit in France, their premises would go up in flames within days, as the French are not timid in expressing their views in bold terms. Even newspapers that lean rightward in France would be bashed as "libbrul" by the American Republicans.

As for "Republicans," the mainstream center-right party in France adopted that name last year. They got completely shut out of the second round of the presidential election this year. In Germany, several decades ago, an ex-SS officer wanted to form a neo-Nazi party. Since the Nazi label is still forbidden here, he had look around for another name to call his nasty little movement. He found a perfect name right in the good old USA: "Die Republikaner."

When I mention that to our Republicans, they immediately whine, "you are calling us Nazis!" Nonsense. I said no such thing. I only pointed out that I find it highly unfortunate that a bunch of Neo-Nazis in Germany, led by a REAL former Nazi, found our Republicans so to their liking that they decided adopt their name.

They saw with their own eyes what would happen if they didn't go to the polls and vote. They saw the revelations of the Russian interference in our elections. They responded and defeated the far RW LePen. If only our electorate had the advance knowledge of what we know now, I would like to think our outcome would have been different.

You're exactly right. If the French had voted several months before us, LePen would have done much better. Another factor in France that wasn't mentioned that I think is important in the result is France's population is something like 15% Muslim, our's is 3% Muslim. Who would vote for an idiot that was clear that she hated you simply for being you?

The French also had time to see how a disastrous amateur like Trump led, how he blotched the simplest world affairs issues. All considered, they wanted none of that. I would like to think that if we had voted second and watched an elected Marine LePen screw up France and international relations for months, we would have gotten a different result here. But I am not totally sure about that. We have more race hatred filled idiots and people that believe that minorities have no right to compete for jobs and good lives, many believe that LGBTQ people don't deserve even basic human rights that everyone should have, people that believe that women are inferior to men in all respects.

most Americans, right wing ones the least, don't have the slightest clue who Le Pen is. World affairs?

My sister asked me about N. Korea once.
I asked, what about them?
She said, just nuke 'em.
That's her solution to world affairs.

China and Russia, who DO have nuclear ICBMs that can reach us won't be happy about all their citizens dying from our nuclear fallout from North Korea. Not to mention that there won't be a South Korea and all of our 7,000 troops there will long be dead before China and Russia nuke the US mainland.

My condolences on your sister. I am fortunate, all of my family are either moderates or progressives and NONE voted for Trump. Hang in there, maybe your sister's kids will turn out to be progressives, one can hope.

My sister's kids are great and her youngest just provided her with her 8th grandchild this week.

They are not political like their mother. She's been brainwashed by O'reilly and hannity for two decades so she's hopeless. Her kids are educated, but Christians, which is okay for me. I don't believe anymore. They are the future. My sister will be dead in a few years from alcoholism so I'm just hoping she's long gone before she can corrupt her grand kids. She's moving to FL in a few months and I hope to never to see her again.

My family are mostly Christians, but I am a Deist. I suggest that you reconsider never wanting to see your sister again, you have bonds to her that you can't break, don't let actions now torture you long after she is dead. Turn the other cheek, ignore or undo her worst actions, but I suggest that you endear the bond of blood that you two share.

but even my 84 yr old Mother doesn't want much to do with her either. She has burned all of those bridges. I am my best self if I have to see her, which lately is once every 4 yrs or so.

He was a wild child and undisciplined, with strife with my parents. I was serious about education and a calm child.

I remember being home from college on break. My brother stopped by the house, still wild and undisciplined, with hangerons around him. He found me reading something in my room, I think I was a college freshman at that time. He hung around working to drive a conversation with me, but I was so upset about his behavior that I didn't want to talk much. He finally embraced me and I gave a half hearted embrace back. I didn't recognize it then, but he was very proud of me, I was in college on my way to becoming and engineer, my brother admired that. A week later, just before I was set to return to college, my mom and my went to the local morgue to identify my brother's remains, he was changing a tire on a car, was struck by another car driven by a kid returning to the same college I attended, my brother died of shock beside an interstate highway before EMT could reach him.

My advice to you is you can't erase bonds of blood, regardless of how much you want to in the present. Don't let your future be what I deal with. That night in my room was the last time I would see my brother alive, I will never be able to undo not being warmer toward him and realizing that under his bravado, he was proud that I had chosen a path different from the one he chose.

Thanks for sharing it.

My father died when I was 15 and that was 42 yrs ago. He raised her like his own even though he wasn't her father. Dad married Mom when my sister was about 3. We never discussed politics at home when I lived there. Fox spews ruined my sister and one of my brothers (sort of). My brother and I still communicate but it's difficult because of the political divide in our family. He and my sister are tea party people. So we are pleasant toward each other but like my sister, I haven't seen him in 4 yrs either. I live out west and just moved back from Europe 3 months ago. They all live in the midwest, Pence state. My Mother is heartbroken that politics has divided our family. She's on our side.

we are not like them at all. Thanks for the convo...have a great day.

I'm not trying to be mean but I am seriously curious about the # of Trump voters that are alcoholics or drug abusers because I saw a lot of opiate addicts supporting Trump.

I'm just wondering if that matters or it's something else like where they live.

she lives in the Pence state so anything republican is good and everything liberal is bad.
She hated Mr Clinton and I remember that even though I wasn't involved in politics back then.
She's a lost cause.

Artificially boosted above his natural appeal, which is showing up in his dismal disapproval ratings.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/16/world/europe/marine-le-pen-france.html
Le Pen Loses Luster, Signaling Far Right’s Retreat in France, and Maybe Beyond
By ADAM NOSSITER | JUNE 16, 2017

SOISSONS, France — Just this spring, Marine Le Pen’s presidential campaign drew vast crowds who enthusiastically embraced her National Front’s stridently nationalist, anti-immigrant vision of France.

This week in Soissons, a somnolent provincial town far from the gaudy cast-of-thousands extravaganzas of the campaign, Ms. Le Pen was greeted by a few dozen somber National Front activists in a drab meeting hall. Even hecklers didn’t bother: Just a handful of weak-voiced protesters quickly dispersed.

Ms. Le Pen’s party, crushed by Emmanuel Macron’s 66 percent in the presidential runoff in May, fared dismally in last Sunday’s legislative elections. The National Front will most likely confirm these losses in a second round of voting this Sunday. And each day brings new revelations of internal backbiting and squabbles over strategy within the Front.

It is a head-spinning turnabout that reflects, at least for now, the fizzling of Ms. Le Pen’s fortunes in France. The National Front’s retreat also adds to the impression that far-right populism is losing its appeal more broadly.

There were interviews with people whose sentiments were solidly center-left who didn't like "any of the above," and voted for LePen in the first round to "shake things up and get the parties off their asses." Once she advanced to the second round, however, and it was either/or, they felt they had made their point and left her high and dry, since she didn't represent their true political stance at all.

I want him to solve the handful of issues that France with style and aplomb. Him succeeding will be the death knell to rightwing populism worldwide.

Hollande was a disappointment. He came
in riding on the hopes of progressives worldwide and squandered that with lackadaisical leadership and a string of embarrassing affairs.

I agree 100% that Macron is 100% better than LePen. LePen isn't a Trump clone, she is a David Duke clone.
Just remember this, the labor candidate lost too, Macron is a neoliberal and I will hold off on commenting whether his neoliberal policies help the 99% in France. If Macron fails, economically, LePen will still be lurking to step back in.

Excellent article a couple of days ago by Matt Taibbi in The Rolling Stone about how the 1% have controlled the narrative into Republicans vs Democrats, or in essence a 50/50 split. The big lie that the country, whether it be the U.S. or France is centrist and the voices of the 99% are unrealistic or naïve is a lie perpetrated by the 1%. Taibbi states that the real fight isn't right vs left but the haves vs the have nots. The have nots have a lot more votes than the haves and when they realize they are being conned they will win elections. I like to look at Britain instead of France where the experts were shocked that nut job Corbyn won 40% of the vote. Just a reminder that although Macron is 100% better than LePen he is one of those centrists, the labor candidate finished 3rd in France. People are waking up. slowly.

Macron got plenty of the votes that traditionally would have gone left, not because they were willing to get conned, but because the left had failed them so poorly. Hollande acted like exactly that which he was: an unconcerned bureaucrat. If you have weak (or no) ideology and no ideas, you become a bureaucrat.

Macron, in part because he was young, dynamic and steered away from ideology, got the "how-could-he-be-worse?" vote. Mélenchon left the Socialists years ago and went for a farther-left movement, even though Marchais had been discredited long ago, and got a commensurate percentage in the first round. Even my most leftist friends in France didn't vote for him in the first round. Labor in France is, with good reason, highly skeptical of politicians who claim to be their champions just a little too loudly, as they are the ones who least follow up when they have a chance to prove it. For that matter, the French right can pretty much say the same thing about their own leaders, which is why Macron was able to project the image of a champion of a center that isn't even there.

I'm only in Britain maybe once every two years, and know the place far less than France, where I am about once a week.

In France the right threw their support to the centrist candidate instead of the autocrat.

In the US the right backed the autocrat to the hilt. The GOP backed the autocrat to achieve their agenda- destroy government to give tax cuts to the rich. The GOP did that because the party has been purchased by about 10 billionaire families: Koch, Walton, Adelson, Mercer, Scaife, Olin. Billionaires and corporations have also created right wing think tanks and media that incite hate to achieve their goals of destroying government.

So that's the difference between the US and France. The GOP in America is autocratic and wants to destroy government, and they use political donations and right wing media to pursue this goal.

Your assessment would be extremely accurate.

for truth

and took preventive measures.