marine le pen comes out on top in france opinion poll

marine le pen, the head of france’s far right nationalistic part, the front, came out ahead of nicholas sarkozy, the current president of france and the head of the socialist party in an opinion poll, the bbc reports. marine le pen lead sarkozy by 2 percentage points.

what’s happened to ireland

the country has an unemployment rate of 14%, while far lower than the 20% in spain, it’s seemingly struggling a bit more. in 2009, christopher caldwell, who alternately contributes to the financial times and the weekly standard, wrote a lengthy piece on the new irish troubles that still englightens.

prior to the big bust of 2008–the one no one dares refers to as a depression, almost 80% of people in ireland owned their own houses (or apartments–we here choose never to refer to an apartment as a house).

now germany, and presumably france, who unwillingly lined up to assist greece last spring by forking over 20B a piece–about 250 per taxpaper’s head just in time to usher in the summer, are about to open their pocket books again. –pocket books. antiquated word. we know.

now, santa has approached these countries once again, in search of a handout. presumably the netherlands and the other eu countries will chip in –minus the other places whose populations gorged themselves on apartments and houses they couldn’t afford and placed all their financial aid in construction (a thinly veiled reference to spain and portugal.)

cameron advocates turkey joining the eu

unlike germany’s chancellor, angela merkel or france’s president, nicholas sarkozy. cameron is pro-turkey, when it comes to the country joining the european union. considering that the country is growing at an annual rate of 7% per year (unlike germany, france, or currently the uk), one would think that the common market would welcome a country that is self-sustaining and is not in dire need of tens of billions of euros to bail out its bank and government. but is this postering? or is cameron really trying to move the tory party closer to the center so that he can one day rule independently of the liberal dems?