When the French people rejected the cumbersome and repressive EU charter so pressed on them by their former (YAY! Good riddance!) president, socialist, anti-America commie scumbag Jacques Chirac, I must admit that I was surprised — after all, signing off on socialism is the first big step in moving ones freedom in the essential direction of the chopping block, and the sheeple over there had previously seemed ready and willing to go the distance. I mean, when surrender and capitulation are nine tenths of a country’s collective stock in trade….

I had been following the polls on the political contest between Nicholas Sarkozy and his leftist opponent, Ségolène Royal, sort of loosely and noted, again to my surprise, that Sarkozy had been leaving Royal farther and farther behind as the election approached. Given that these polls came from mostly liberal and downright ultra-portside media sources, who normally tend to bias their reporting, in profound ways, to the left, this was a good sign.

And Sarkozy has been elected the new president of France.

Sarkozy campaigned on a platform of sweeping reforms, pledging to dismantle large portions of the social welfare state and to make France competitive on world markets again.
He also pledged to reduce taxes, shrink the size of government and shut down redundant government programs.

Carrying out these reforms will be an uphill battle, but Sarkozy believes that France is ready for a change. The French have lost faith in work, he says. “Reviving the work ethic is at the heart of my program.”

Unlike his predecessor, Sarkozy is not the weasel we would have previously expected to emerge victorious from a French election. He has a refreshing, reality based vision for his people and the spine to bring it to fruition. In fact, he seems more like the kind of politician we need but sadly lack in our own government here in the states(and he’s French!).

Instead of tired platitudes, Sarkozy is best known for sharp, new formulas, and has never shied away from shocking the politically-correct sensibilities of the media and political elites.

When riots erupted in the predominantly Muslim slums around Paris in November 2005, Sarkozy called the youths who were ransacking stores and firebombing cars “scum,” and said the area needed to be “cleaned out with a power hose.”

Relentlessly attacked for those remarks, Sarkozy never retreated and never expressed regret. On the contrary, he still refers to his actions during the riots with pride.

So one begins to wonder: Have the French people finally woke up and smelled the proverbial coffee? Have the implications of having allowed themselves to permit such a huge Muslim population into their country finally registered, as well as the rendered biproducts of a dhimmi government that chose to make excuses for the Muslims who rioted in France eighteen months ago? Have they finally realized the relationships between the present state of their economy and the very realistic, demographics based projections for the same economy a generation down the road, when their children or grandchildren will be coming of age?

And electing a pro-America president to boot.

Skeptic re the French that I am, I wouldn’t bet the farm that they’ll eventually become acceptable as those of most other nationalities, but I will begrudge the French my acknowledgement that they seem to have taken a step in the right (no pun intended) direction. Electing Sarkozy was, in my opinion, the best thing they could have done.

Now we can wait and see what happens….

Whenever I think I’ve seen it all over there on the left, something like this comes along.

H/T James Taranto.

First, my last month of extensive absences from the blogosphere, both from posting and visiting other blogs have resulted from the combination of a high stress, short-deadlined work project, the added factor of an alarming degree of disorientation due to sugar issues (adding to the pressure of said project — luckily I don’t believe in failure, so I managed to embrace the whole thing as just additional challenge). Now that the project is over and my other malfunction is on the cusp of being historical, I will be able to spend more time in posting and visitation, barring any unwelcome visits from Mr. Murphy.

Second, I had actually planned to post this one nearly a week ago, but, well…

The subject of this post is a career traitor — yes, liberal America, spearheaded by the Clinton Administration, somehow managed to succeed in making treason fashionable and beyond reach of prosecution. We’ve seen the New York Times commit blatant treason twice, and except for the symbolic and brief incarceration of an NYT journalist, the “newspaper of record” evaded the justice they deserved with a modicum of effort.

These days, the government addresses laws against treason like one of those old, old blue laws that nobody bothers to enforce anymore.

William Reinsch, formerly a Clinton Administration hatchetman Undersecretary of Commerce for Export Administration, was an individual whose major asset to that misbegotten socialist regime was the willingness to commit President Clinton’s treason by proxy. Reinsch (spit! No better than a Frenchman!), came away from the corrupt leftist quagmire of the Clinton Administration with a highly respected profession in the treason industry.

Reinsch had a checkered career prior to assuming his current role as Terror’s Lobbyist. For example, during the Clinton Administration, he used his senior position in the Commerce Department to facilitate and excuse China’s acquisition of an array of sensitive and even dual-use technologies, despite restrictions on such transfers.

Now, the former Commerce Under Secretary heads a trade council that favors doing business with America’s enemies and runs interference for those determined to do so. In his present role, Reinsch is working to counter citizens and their elected representatives who believe such business dealings are strategically ill-advised and morally repugnant.

Specifically, Reinsch’s trade association is mobilizing its considerable resources to help public pension fund managers, their Wall Street advisors and state treasurers fight off initiatives like one adopted last year by Illinois. It put an end to investments on the part of that state’s firefighters, police officers, National Guard personnel and other public employees in companies doing business with the Islamofascist and genocidal regime in Sudan.

Not too many decades ago, a scumbag like William Reinsch would have been publicly branded the traitor he was and dealt with accordingly. Today, well…

An August, 2006 article by Charles R. Smith serves as a reminder of Reinsch’s officially sanctioned yet criminal activities under Clinton. {Scroll down to Clinton’s Chinagate Scandal, though the entire link is profoundly well worth reading}

It should come as no surprise that the NFTC {my note, National Foreign Trade Council} is headed by Clinton-era former Under Secretary for Export Administration, William Reinsch. Reinsch claims, in his NFTC bio, that he “administered and enforced the export control policies and anti-boycott laws of the U.S. government and monitored the condition of the nation’s defense industrial base.”
Reinsch may claim to have “administered and enforced,” but his record from the Clinton years shows that little of either was in place at his office. During his term at the Department of Commerce, Reinsch oversaw the greatest military technology transfer to the Chinese army in U.S. history.

The Chinese army managed to obtain, steal, or buy supercomputers for nuclear weapons research, missile warhead guidance systems, missile nose-cone software, radiation-hardened chip technology, encrypted satellite communications, and Synthetic Aperture Radar systems.
The list of advanced military technology that passed through Reinsch on its way to Beijing is too long for this article. It would not surprise me to find that Bill Reinsch has several awards waiting for him if he should ever visit PLA headquarters.

Suffice to say that the NFTC could not have selected a more qualified individual if it is their intent to transfer whatever technology – military or otherwise – to China for hard, cold cash.
I once confronted Reinsch after a congressional hearing on secure communications. During that meeting, he denied that he had anything to do with the export of advanced encryption satellite technology to the Chinese military. At that point, I presented him with copies of documents showing that he was not only a major player; he also authorized the sale of precisely that technology directly to Chinese military-owned companies.

Wikipedia’s link-rich profile is here.

In any of the countries Reinsch supports more than he does the United States, a citizen like him would likely have been brought before some general or other whose only comment would have been, “Tek heem out and shoot heem!”