Le Pen and Zemmour still haven’t got enough nominations – politicalbetting.com

Marine Le Pen is still the second favourite in the French Presidential betting although the time is running out for her to get the required 500 nominations. Zemmour is in the same position. Nomination finally close on February 4th.
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Also doesn't someone have enough spare nominations that he can push both Zemmour and Le Pen across the line - if so required.
https://twitter.com/komadovsky/status/1498401018555551747
"‼️#Ukraine will receive 70 more aircraft from NATO and the EU countries, says to the Ukrainian parliament.
Su-25, Mig-29 from Poland, Bulgaria, and Slovakia.
Bulgaria 🇧🇬 (MiG-29) - 16
Bulgaria 🇧🇬 (Su-25) - 14
Poland 🇵🇱 (MiG-29) - 28
Slovakia 🇸🇰 (MiG-29) - 12"
It is equivalent to 30% of Ukraine's pre-war airforce. 100% of Bulgaria's remaining MiGs and Su-25s, 100% of Slovakia's MiGs, ~130% of Poland's MiGs (I assume training/display craft quickly repurposed). No doubt this was underpinned by US promises of backfilling, but shows just how seriously they're taking this.
One of the main Ukr successes over the past week has been changing the narrative from one of certain imminent defeat (remember the German diplomat who said there was no point sending aid, because they'll be defeated in hours), to one where the West sees that military aid can make a significant difference.
The lack of anonymity is an interesting one I had not picked up before, in what was already a tough system. A large number of signatures being needed is one thing, but a select group including a geographical spread, that is next level.
Shows how much easier it is to become British PM.
Every other Guardian opinion piece on the Ukraine is calling out Putin as the sole cause.
Usyk joins Kyiv's defence. Can't we get Putin in a room with Usyk, Lomachenko, and the Klitschko brothers (all 4 of them millionaires many times over and signed up to territorial defence, 3 in Kyiv) and resolve this in a more civil manner?
Also, even if he is Les Republicains may fancy their chances in the legislative elections in June still
Dupont-Aignan managed it 10 days to go and ended up 207 over the line.
Not sure if Zemmour had an equivalent last time.
Sadly the wiki page for 2017 doesn't include a chart like 2017 showing the rate of progress, to see if they had late surges.
Zemmour has definitely picked up the pace, Dupont-Aignan looks on track, but at present rate of progress Le Pen looks like falling short. Needs a bump.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_French_presidential_election#Sponsorships
NOW OPEN THE BLOODY DOORS BORIS!!
https://twitter.com/thatfoxxybloke/status/1498328163570667525
Today's Harris poll has her fifth on 11%, barely half what Fillon polled and polling even behind Melanchon.
She loses a hypothetical run off with Macron 61-39 now compared with 52-48 a couple of months ago.
Her only hope must be for BOTH Le Pen and Zemmour to fail to be nominated and even then she may be in a fight with Melanchon for second place in the first round.
https://twitter.com/JoshuaPotash/status/1498332884121399307?t=kCJA54p9u_exjsxsj5taMQ&s=19
Germany should be offered the de facto political dominance over most Protestant and Catholic states located within Central and Eastern Europe. Kaliningrad Oblast could be given back to Germany. The book uses the term "Moscow–Berlin axis".[9]
France should be encouraged to form a bloc with Germany, as they both have a "firm anti-Atlanticist tradition".[9]
The United Kingdom, merely described as an "extraterritorial floating base of the U.S.", should be cut off from Europe.[9]
Finland should be absorbed into Russia. Southern Finland will be combined with the Republic of Karelia and northern Finland will be "donated to Murmansk Oblast".[9]
Estonia should be given to Germany's sphere of influence.[9]
Latvia and Lithuania should be given a "special status" in the Eurasian–Russian sphere.[9]
Poland should be granted a "special status" in the Eurasian sphere.[9]
Romania, North Macedonia, Serbia, "Serbian Bosnia" and Greece – "Orthodox collectivist East" – will unite with "Moscow the Third Rome" and reject the "rational-individualistic West".[9]
Ukraine should be annexed by Russia because "Ukraine as a state has no geopolitical meaning, no particular cultural import or universal significance, no geographic uniqueness, no ethnic exclusiveness, its certain territorial ambitions represents an enormous danger for all of Eurasia and, without resolving the Ukrainian problem, it is in general senseless to speak about continental politics". Ukraine should not be allowed to remain independent, unless it is cordon sanitaire, which would be inadmissible
https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1498404403279183873
Sounds frighteningly like 'resolving the Jewish problem'.
First time as tragedy, second time as farce?
++++
You have some weird creepy man problem with her. I suspect you fancy her and it disturbs you
She is a very mildly charismatic Tory lady politician who sometimes makes bad (and sometimes good) PR choices. She is not a notable duffer, like Gav Williamson or Grayling. She actually conveys a certain competence, and she annoys/charms others abroad - they certainly notice her, which can't be said for a lot of British Foreign Ministers.
Get off her case or, at least, be less *weird* about it
Successful Tory female politicians with a certain attractiveness have always had this effect on middle aged men. Since Thatch. She evoked some very strange feelings. Oedipal masochism in the switchy posh (spank me Nanny!) basic let-me-suckle-you stuff from the confused cucky left liberal middle classes, and resentful rape play fantasies in working class alphas.
Beard dye is ALWAYS a bad look. As are John Lennon hippie glasses . . . unless you're John Lennon . . .
More fundamentally, she may not be all that good at stump politics.
One event rarely defines an event as complex as the French presidential election. But the poor performance and sharp right turn of the centre-right candidate Valérie Pécresse in her supposedly make-or-break rally on Sunday has thrown the future of her campaign into doubt...
https://twitter.com/Mij_Europe/status/1493491968026066946?s=20&t=I0mUxD8Jn1phUN6RJzUE4w
@JimmySecUK
Two members of the Ukrainian civil resistance "acquire" a new Russian tank.🇺🇦
Many Ukrainian men have military experience, and as much Russian equipment is familiar to them it's not difficult to press captured materiel into service.👇
https://twitter.com/JimmySecUK/status/1498408012138127361
But his demons defeated him in the end. He is now a fat, near-unemployable-alcoholic, mourning his favourite son who killed himself
A melancholy narrative
It's hard to conclude it's not a form of misogyny that's unmasked when strong-willed women assert themselves who don't share their politics.
Putin is a bush-league Stalin, similar to how Mussolini was a 2-bit Caesar.
Russia should use its special services within the borders of the United States to fuel instability and separatism, for instance, provoke "Afro-American racists". Russia should "introduce geopolitical disorder into internal American activity, encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident movements – extremist, racist, and sectarian groups, thus destabilizing internal political processes in the U.S. It would also make sense simultaneously to support isolationist tendencies in American politics"
If these were goals, Putin has failed disastrously in the last few days on every one.
-The "Moscow-Berlin" axis is now about as close it was in 1943
-Finland is now about to join NATO
-The Baltics, Poland and Romania are closer to NATO, and further from "special status", than ever
-Greece is now moving as far away from Russia as during the height of the cold war
-Ukraine is now understood globally as a byword for indepedence and distinctiveness.
Oh dear !
https://twitter.com/FedorovMykhailo/status/1498392515262746630/photo/1
Hopefully these ideas will go the way of the scrapheap; a tale of woe for future Russian generations.
The more she tries to sound like Le Pen and Zemmour, the stronger the attraction of Macron for centrist voters.
Or just leaving it to the usual suspects, as per usual?
Getting a "Foundations of the 19th Cent." vibe - the title is almost certainly a reference
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Foundations_of_the_Nineteenth_Century
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houston_Stewart_Chamberlain
Her only chance is to hold the Les Republicains core vote to get her to the runoff and tack right to get the Zemmour, Le Pen and Dupoint Aignan vote and hope many of the leftwing vote eg Melenchon's, stay home rather than vote for Macron
Maybe I'm a bit old fashioned in this?
And Russia has successfully detached the UK from the EU, tho the consequent formation of a new English speaking global military alliance, AUKUS, is not on his wishlist, I see
Also, this bit doesn't seem to be going especially well:
China, which represents a danger to Russia, "must, to the maximum degree possible, be dismantled". Dugin suggests that Russia start by taking Tibet–Xinjiang–Inner Mongolia–Manchuria as a security belt.[1] Russia should offer China help "in a southern direction – Indochina (except Vietnam), the Philippines, Indonesia, Australia" as geopolitical compensation.[9]
Correction:
5:57PM
Last time 'Russia" as then the Soviet Union, invaded Finland it go a rather bloody nose, though it ended up with Vyborg, until then the second city of Finland.
However the Finns attacked again during WWII, took Vyborg but did NOT press the siege of Leningrad. If they had, Leningrad might not have held out.
Vyburg was returned to Finland after the war since Finland was treated as an 'enemy combatant'.
No it wasn't. Viipuri (aka Vyborg) was kept by the Soviet Union and is still part of Russia.
His dismissive verdict on the UK isn't too far from how the US sees us either to be honest. But frankly, being cut off from his ludicrous vision of Europe would be a lucky escape.
Much as I dislike Le Pen's politics, it would be rather absurd if she didn't even make the start line. Zemmour too.
But I do think today's politicians overthink things, as the unfortunate success of simplistic, brash figures can demonstrate. There's plenty to suggest that people will support or oppose the same policy depending on who is proposing it, and while there's plenty to be cynical about with that, one thing it says to me is that politicians actually have a far better chance of being real leaders than they think. They can deliver visions, even inspire, despite our cynicism, because we want to be.
Advance a cause well and you can sway opinion, not just bow to it, or listen to some big data nerd about crafting some PR message that will swing you a crucial 0.25% in upper west nowheresville amongst unemployed kazakhstani housewives with a background in metallurgy or whatever.
A political campaign is a story, tell it well and you have a shot - the best and most effective ones will have substance and good ideas to drive them as well.
"⚡️Zelensky: In five days of invasion, Ukraine was struck by 56 missile strikes, 113 cruise missiles were fired.
The complete closure of the sky for Russian missiles, planes and helicopters must be considered."
I suspect that this is where Zelenskyy's asking for things previously regarded as miracles approach runs out of road.
Not his fault (& the rest of the cast are pretty good too), but the script is awful - Cyrano is barely more verbally dexterous than Christian. Utterly lacking in panache.
Ukraine can join NATO the day Russia joins NATO as far as I'm concerned.
Obvioiusly: Marx and Engels on Marxism &c
Slightly less obviously: Gobineau, Darwin, Nietszche and Houston Chamberlain: major influences on Hitler and Nazism
Modern anti-Semitism and general racism is often reliant on the works of a rather obscure but arguably brilliant Californian professor called Kevin Macdonald. His books (I promise) are genuinely eye-opening and challenging. I am sure he is a personal anti-Semite and I reject most of what he says. But not all. He is bloody clever and would be world famous, I suspect, if his political viewpoint wasn't so toxic (for entirely understandable reasons). I remember reading that on the retirement of the great Malaysian leader Mahathir Mohamad one book was found by his official bed: a book by Kevin Macdonald
And now we see the same process with the Russian nationalists. This guy Dugin
I think it was simply a typo.
Is the Right Hon. Liz Truss MP really in this category?
Granted, she IS (currently) Foreign Secretary, but under recent Tory administrations this has become something of a joke office? As epitomized when it was held by that great comedian, Boris Johnson.
Of interest mainly for the Big House that comes with the job?
Liz Truss is barely making news in the UK, even in the throes of a first-rate international crisis. She's virtually invisible in the US right now, as is Boris Johnson.
NATO cannot get drawn into a possible direct confrontation with Russia, no matter how weak we think Russia is or how much we want Putin gone, the risks for all of us in Europe and the world are just too great.
Russia has NOT attacked a NATO member - that's a line Putin hasn't crossed. There's no reason for us to cross it.
The outcome has to be a political compromise which by its very nature will please no one but with which we will all be able to live. We should be thinking now about post-Putin Russia.
Ignore the line of whether a country is in NATO or not for a minute and ask a simple question - would you ever be willing to militarily oppose a country with nuclear weapons because it was doing evil? At some point, I would, because bullies mustn’t win. Perhaps you would not.