Vive la France!

[Kidlicious]

While that sounds good, you never really know. If the rules were different, strategies might have been different. Money spent in different places. There would be lots of differences. So unless those were the rules used, you really can't say for sure how it would have gone. But in this case, I also lean towards thinking Hillary would have won under different rules.

Macron won the popular vote in a landslide. Hillary only "won" it by about 1%.

[rah]

So what? My point was about the US election. Keep up with the program. Go back to the telletubbie table.

[Kidlicious]

I intended to respond to Oerdin.

[rah]

I shouldn't have expected a telletubbie to be able to quote the right person. Nevermind.

[Dinner]

Pure BS/wet dreams. He was elected on balancing state budget, reducing bureaucracy with 150.000 and get rid of the hopeless rules wrt. hiring/firing workers. He sure has a socialist past, but quit his job as minister since it didn't made sense.

Now if only Greece had a Macron that had the balls to do the same, maybe it could be a prosperous country.

Speaking of Greece. I hear Merkel rejected the latest bid to get more bail out funds and wants additional spending cuts. Why do the Greeks always sit and wait until they are about to default before doing anything? They should have just bit the bullet and deregulated and cut everything a decade a go as by now they would have bounced back with the recession only a distant memory. Instead they make sure it is a never ending crisis.

[Elok]

Because they're a democracy, and "I'm going to make your life pure **** for a while in the hopes of long-term fiscal stability" is a really tough sell? Bear in mind that you're from a country that achieved "healthcare reform," after years of long and painful battle, by finally agreeing to have the government subsidize the most grotesquely wasteful and inefficient healthcare industry on earth.

[BeBMan]

Speaking of Greece. I hear Merkel rejected the latest bid to get more bail out funds and wants additional spending cuts. Why do the Greeks always sit and wait until they are about to default before doing anything? They should have just bit the bullet and deregulated and cut everything a decade a go as by now they would have bounced back with the recession only a distant memory. Instead they make sure it is a never ending crisis.

Not sure what you're referring to, this is the latest I have heard:

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-39779812

From what I know they have had plenty of cuts and austerity. And yeah, it's pretty obvious and understandable they don't like it (nobody would), and even less when it comes from outside, esp. those who are hit hard by the consequences. But stating that austerity is bad is unfortunately not a solution for anything.

[Kidlicious]

Speaking of Greece. I hear Merkel rejected the latest bid to get more bail out funds and wants additional spending cuts. Why do the Greeks always sit and wait until they are about to default before doing anything? They should have just bit the bullet and deregulated and cut everything a decade a go as by now they would have bounced back with the recession only a distant memory. Instead they make sure it is a never ending crisis.

This is kind of a curious argument coming from a democrat. The only economists that I know of who believe this are Australian School or radical conservative neo-classical.

[Dinner]

Not sure what you're referring to, this is the latest I have heard:

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-39779812

From what I know they have had plenty of cuts and austerity. And yeah, it's pretty obvious and understandable they don't like it (nobody would), and even less when it comes from outside, esp. those who are hit hard by the consequences. But stating that austerity is bad is unfortunately not a solution for anything.

A week ago negotiators reached a tentative deal but Merkel said no to it demanding 18% more cut from pensions. Which I am OK with. The thing is Greece has had almost a year since the last round made clear what had to be done and now here we are at the deadline yet again and only now do they start doing anything.

[grumbler]

The basic argument had to do with the electoral college, how the US has it but France doesn't, and thus candidates fairly regularly lose the popular vote yet win the election due to the E.C..

Macron won big in cities but not in the countryside. Just Trump and Bush in 2000 lost cities but won in the countryside so they won due to the US system. If the US had a French style system Hillary would now be President and we would have had Gore in 2000.

If the US had a French style system it wouldn't be the US. The Electoral College is part of the grand bargain that got smaller states to sign on for the Constitution to begin with. That there are election where candidates barely lose the popular vote but disproportionately win the smaller states and thus win the EC vote is the system working exactly as designed.

The EC could use some reforms (like having EC votes assigned by congressional districts + 2 EC votes statewide), but the argument that it is somehow a mistake or badly broken miss the entire point. It is expressly designed to provide disproportionate representatives to the small states, and is an integral part of the entire US Constitution.

Also, Le Pen couldn't have won in the US with such a small fraction of vote, no matter how it was distributed.

[Aeson]

Actually it's not working anything like it was designed to. The EC was designed to allow slave states to get credit for some of their slave population without letting them actually vote, as well as to have the general uninformed voters pick an elector that would then use their own judgement as to which candidate to vote for. Both intentions are no longer as designed.

[Bereta_Eder]

I'm not sure about that. I didn't follow closely enough the whole campaign, but it seemed to me that the bankster label some tried to stick on him wasn't very convincing. Only Mélanchon's supporters swalowed it.
By electing Macron, France made the reasonable choice. They managed to avoid both the french Chavez or Tsipras (Mélanchon) and the french Farage or Geert Wilder (Lepen).

Macron might be a vanila, odorless, tasteless, choice, but at least France dodged the communist and the fascist bullets.
I do not expect much of his presidency, except a little bit of common sense. That is if the traditional parties let him do and do not sabotage his decisions. He will have to chose his prime minister with much care.

melanchon is indeed the french tsipras but I have gathered the feeling that it is important to have a condidate that comes from the outside, never held power


If he is right wing (trump) it's bad if it's left wing (tsipras) is good

[Bereta_Eder]

A week ago negotiators reached a tentative deal but Merkel said no to it demanding 18% more cut from pensions. Which I am OK with. The thing is Greece has had almost a year since the last round made clear what had to be done and now here we are at the deadline yet again and only now do they start doing anything.

I don't know about merkel but schauble looks like a toothless fool now

Also the right wing here said that tsipras would be a left parenthesis but he isn't.

I love how the right wing flails its arms around


And nobody likes germany. you like germany when it comes to greece, you hate it when it comes to the UK


**** off liberal nobody. irrelevant

as an arab saying goes, that tsipras recited, the dogs (=you) are hawling but the caravan keeps marching forward

[Bereta_Eder]

Also,
there is no deadline

[Bereta_Eder]

"made clear what had to be done?"

there is no "clear"

Greece doesn't take orders. It decides on its own with the stakes being destroying the EU