The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

 

The good:

France’s left-wing New Popular Front alliance and President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist coalition thwarted a far-right victory in legislative elections on Sunday, staging one of the greatest political upsets in recent French history.

The results were a major defeat for Marine Le Pen’s populist, anti-immigrant National Rally party, which had hoped that Sunday would mark the final step in its transformation from a fringe neofascist group into a mainstream political force.

Instead of ushering in France’s first far-right government since World War II, the French voters who turned out in high numbers on Sunday boosted the left and the center, which unexpectedly came in first and second, even appearing to stun some of their own lawmakers. [snip]

The left-wing alliance garnered at least 181 seats and Macron’s Together coalition got more than 160.

The far right had been comfortably ahead in the first round, with the support of 1 in 3 voters. An absolute majority of seats appeared to be in reach, and some polls had suggested that the party could end up with 200 seats more than Macron’s alliance.

But on Sunday, National Rally and its allies were third, winning 143 seats. At the party’s election night event, where jovial supporters had gathered to celebrate what they thought would be historic gains, the results were met with shocked silence. Some activists cried, observers said. [Ed.: cry more, fascists.]... (our emphasis)

Following last week's UK's election that resoundingly returned Labour to power after 14 wretched years of Tory rule, beating back the Marine Pen / Vladimir Putin fascist National Rally comes as a relief, however ephemeral considering the nature of French politics.  A relief, for now, but the fascists will be back, so the French must remain vigilant.

The bad:

A major Russian missile attack across Ukraine killed at least 20 people and injured more than 50 on Monday, officials said, with one missile striking a large children’s hospital in the capital, Kyiv, where emergency crews searched rubble for casualties.

The Russian barrage targeted five Ukrainian cities with more than 40 missiles of different types, hitting apartment buildings and public infrastructure, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a social media post.

Strikes in Kryvyi Rih, in central Ukraine, killed 10 people and injured 37, in what the head of city administration, Oleksandr Vilkul, said was a massive missile attack.

At the Okhmatdyt children’s hospital in Kyiv, rescuers were searching for people under the rubble of a partially collapsed wing of the facility, Zelenskyy said, adding that the number of casualties was not yet known.

Vsevolod Dorofieiev, the senior instructor of a volunteer medical unit, said some people had died but he did not say how many or whether they were children or adults.

On social media, Zelenskyy said: “It is very important that the world should not be silent about it now and that everyone should see what Russia is and what it is doing.”...

We can't afford to look away from what war criminal Putin is doing.  His ambitions to fracture the Western Alliance took a hit with the results of the French election, but the US and its NATO allies need to beef up their support for Ukraine's fight for freedom and against this murderous fascism.

The ugly: 

Hurricane Beryl is advancing inland on Monday morning in Southeast Texas and is bringing “extreme rainfall rates and flash flooding” to populated areas such as the Houston and Galveston metro areas.

“Extremely heavy rainfall will move northward this morning with areas of flash flooding likely,” according to the Weather Prediction Center.

“This will include areas of considerable to severe urban flash flooding with locally life-threatening impacts expected.”

“Numerous to widespread areas of flash flooding can be expected, and this will include areas of considerable to severe urban flash flooding with life-threatening impacts expected. Some of the major metropolitan areas including the Houston/Galveston vicinity will be at particular risk over the next several hours.” 

Extreme rainfall rates of two to four inches per hour are possible, especially where the inner eyewall or other organized bands east of the storm’s center pass through. Rainfall totals of four to eight inches are expected through midday.

Hopefully, people who were told to evacuate did so. 

Monday Reading

 

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.

In a bit of a dog-bites-man revelation, the January 6 committee, in the form of Rep. Liz Cheney, has enough goods on the Malignant Loser to make a criminal referral to the DOJ:

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol has enough evidence to refer former President Donald Trump for criminal charges, the vice chair of the panel, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), said Sunday.

“It’s absolutely clear that what President Trump was doing, what a number of people around him were doing, that they knew it was unlawful. They did it anyway,” Cheney told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”

She was responding to a New York Times report that the committee leaders were divided over whether to criminally refer Trump to the Justice Department, despite concluding they had enough evidence to do so on charges of obstructing a congressional proceeding and conspiring to defraud the American people. The report cited people involved in the discussions.

According to Cheney, the committee has not yet decided whether to make a referral.

“I think what we have seen is a massive and well organized and well-planned effort that used multiple tools to try to overturn an election,” Cheney said.

The division over referral seems to center around whether it would complicate any ongoing investigation that DOJ was already conducting--  an investigation, we might add, that is very slow in developing and whose targets remain largely unknown.

Putin's kleptocracy is on the verge of defaulting on its bond payments:

Ratings agencies say Russia is on the verge of defaulting on government bonds following its invasion of Ukraine, with billions of dollars owed to foreigners. That prospect recalls memories of a 1998 default by Moscow that helped fuel financial disruption worldwide.

Ratings agency Fitch said Wednesday that “a default or a default-like process has begun” because Russia missed a March 2 payment to foreign investors, such as funds that invest in emerging market bonds. That set off a 30-day grace period before the country would officially default.  [snip]

Once a country defaults, it can be cut off from bond-market borrowing until the default is sorted out and investors regain confidence in the government’s ability and willingness to pay. Russia’s government can still borrow rubles at home, where it mostly relies on Russian banks to buy its bonds.

Russia is already suffering severe economic impact from the sanctions, which have sent the ruble plunging and disrupted trade and financial ties with the rest of the world.

So the default would be one more symptom of Moscow’s wider political and financial isolation as a result of its invasion of Ukraine.

Sad!

They're going to a runoff in France's elections, as expected.  And the stakes are high, as E.J. Dionne, Jr., lays out:

French President Emmanuel Macron, the forces of liberal democracy and the alliance against Ukraine won a reprieve in the first round of France’s presidential election on Sunday.

Despite the worries of Macron’s supporters that he would barely take the top spot, he won 27.4 percent with nearly all the votes counted, well ahead of far-right candidate Marine Le Pen, who secured 24 percent in her third presidential contest. Macron’s relatively strong showing increased the likelihood that he will prevail when the two face off in the second round April 24. [snip]

Sunday’s outcome was a relief for Macron, an eloquent defender of liberal democratic values. A critic of a narrow and authoritarian nationalism, he drifted to the right on immigration in the face of the right-wing challenge.

Most Western leaders — center-left and center-right — will be rooting hard for Macron for fear that Le Pen, whose party was supported financially by Russian banks, will threaten the European Union and unified Western support for Ukraine. Macron will surely use Le Pen’s ties to Russian leader Vladimir Putin against her. After Russia invaded Ukraine, her campaign had to discard more than 1 million leaflets containing a picture of her smiling alongside Putin.  [snip]

The good news Sunday is that the total for the two extreme right candidates was lower than seemed likely only a few months ago. But the burden on Macron is enormous. He must fend off a far right that threatens not only his own nation, but liberal democrats everywhere — and, perhaps most immediately, the people of Ukraine.

Lastly, please consider a visit to Infidel 753's link round-up to interesting posts from around the Internet. His periodic essays on Putin's war on Ukraine are also recommended;  his latest is on Russian atrocities.

Decision Time For France

Today's preliminary elections for President of France have grave significance for the future of the European Union, the western alliance, and Russia's ambitions. Of the four leading candidates, Emmanuel Macron represents s steady, center- left model for governing who would maintain France's position in the EU. His leading opponent, the far-right xenophobic Marine Le Pen, is the Donald Trump of France: far right bluster, extreme rhetoric, and a threat to isolate France from Europe. He's barged into their election by endorsing her, too. All of this pleases none other than Russia's kleptocratic thug Vladimir "Vlad the Invader" Putin, who has been trying to fragment the EU and the western alliance through election meddling and propagating disinformation. His goal would be advanced by the election of Le Pen, who has visited him in the Kremlin and who (like Trump) has spoken warmly of the Russian autocrat.

We'll know later this afternoon who the top two candidates will be to face each other in a runoff election on May 7.

Hollande Beats Sarkozy: Vive la France!

Socialist Francois Hollande beat Nicolas "La Petite Merde" Sarkozy to become the new President of France today, signaling that the days of using the failed austerity approach to solving European economic woes are numbered. Formidable! Jubilant crowds in Paris greeted the election results:



Now if the Germans could just boot Frau Merkel...

(Photo: AP/Francois Mori)