There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true. —Soren Kierkegaard. "…truth is true even if nobody believes it, and falsehood is false even if everybody believes it. That is why truth does not yield to opinion, fashion, numbers, office, or sincerity–it is simply true and that is the end of it" – Os Guinness, Time for Truth, pg.39. “He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God’s providence to lead him aright.” – Blaise Pascal. "There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily" – George Washington letter to Edmund Randolph — 1795. We live in a “post-truth” world. According to the dictionary, “post-truth” means, “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Simply put, we now live in a culture that seems to value experience and emotion more than truth. Truth will never go away no matter how hard one might wish. Going beyond the MSM idealogical opinion/bias and their low information tabloid reality show news with a distractional superficial focus on entertainment, sensationalism, emotionalism and activist reporting – this blogs goal is to, in some small way, put a plug in the broken dam of truth and save as many as possible from the consequences—temporal and eternal. "The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." – George Orwell “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” ― Soren Kierkegaard
11% popularity: is it the bottom for Macron, or can he sink further?
The incredible shrinking President.
While French President Emmanuel Macron has been able to survive endless crises during his mandate, he has long been on a downward spiral in popularity that has left him in the gutter of history.
Macron is hated in France.
A new poll published Thursday (30) shows Macron as France’s most unpopular president in the past 50 years.
“The Verian Group survey, which polled 1,000 people and was published in the conservative daily Le Figaro, shows Macron’s approval rating at a staggering 11 percent — tying the lowest figure ever recorded by the firm.
The previous record-holder was Macron’s direct predecessor and former boss, François Hollande, who hit 11 percent in late 2016, shortly before announcing that he would not seek a second presidential term.”
NEW:
🇨🇵 French President Macron’s approval rating sinks to a record low of 11%, the lowest for any French president in 50 years – Verian poll pic.twitter.com/P3ECsqjsmz
Macron and Hollande share the title of France’s least popular president.
“Other polling institutes have reached similar conclusions about Macron’s slump following his unpopular decision to raise the retirement age and the months of political deadlock triggered by his decision to dissolve parliament following a far-right triumph in the 2024 European election.”
Brititte Macron slaps Emmanuel as they arrive in Vietnam – his tempestuous marriage is also not helping his public image.
“’Macron is constantly hooked on polls — he’d need to be blind or deaf not to realize that he’s disliked’, a former presidential adviser, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly, told POLITICO. […] The president has, the adviser said, ‘a poor understanding of the consequences that the reforms he believes to be necessary can have on the state of the country’.”
Needless to say, Politico’s reporting will not point out that Macron’s political downfall is linked to his adherence to Globalist suicidal policies emanating from Brussels, as well as his Ukraine obsession and constant war-mongering.
France and its hapless President Emmanuel Macron are in deep trouble…
On Monday, Macron’s government failed to survive a “no-confidence” vote as the country spiraled into crisis. What’s most worrying for Macron is that the vote wasn’t even close. Prime Minister François Bayrou was dumped overwhelmingly in a 364-194 vote. At issue: Bayrou’s sensible but unpopular notion that France had to cut spending to address a growing debt crisis.
“Sensible” and “socialism” don’t ordinarily go hand in hand. Thus, in office only since December, Bayrou was given an unceremonious heave-ho.
Macron turned to an old ally to replace Bayrou. He named departing defense minister Sébastien Lecornu to be the fourth prime minister of Macron’s government this year.
Lecornu is the only minister to have been in every government since 2017. He has his work cut out for him. He has to pass a budget by year’s end and deal with a growing protest movement that will fight tooth and nail to prevent Macron’s “austerity budget” from passing.
Macron gambled and called for a “snap” election last year, hoping to increase his slim parliamentary majority. It failed miserably when the populists and the far left made significant gains. Now, the streets are full of angry Frenchmen, and the nation’s stability is in question.
Protesters set fires as they blocked highways and gas stations across France early Wednesday as part of a new nationwide movement. Authorities deployed 80,000 police, who made hundreds of arrests and fired tear gas to disperse crowds.
The “Block Everything” movement was born online over the summer in far-right circles, but spread on social media and was co-opted by left-wing, antifascist and anarchist groups. It now includes France’s far-left parties and the country’s powerful labor unions.
Their joint day of unrest adds to the country’s political turmoil, after the collapse of centrist President Emmanuel Macron’s government earlier this week in a similar backlash over proposed budget cuts and broader anger at the political class.
‼️ Massive riots taking place in France as Macron weighs suspending social media to stem the tide.
The far left, the largest bloc in parliament, wants Macron’s scalp. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the longtime leader of the far-left party France Unbowed, said, “Only the departure of Macron himself can put an end to this sad comedy of contempt for Parliament, voters and political decency.”
Jordan Bardella, the president of the populist National Rally, said his party would give Lecornu the benefit of the doubt and refuse to join the far left in attempting to oust him. But Bardella wasn’t enamored of Lecornu.
“Emmanuel Macron’s motto: you don’t change a losing team,” Bardella wrote on social media. “How could a loyal supporter of the President break with the policy he has been pursuing for eight years?”
In the capital Paris, groups gathered and set up barricades at several entry points to the city. Demonstrations were expected to continue throughout the day, with travel disrupted as some of the main transport unions joined the strike.
Hundreds remained gathered outside Gare du Nord, one of the city’s main train stations, despite earlier attempts from police to disperse the crowds with tear gas.
“We are here, even if Macron doesn’t want us, we are here,” they chanted.
There were dramatic scenes outside a high school in eastern Paris, where police clashed with dozens of students who had blocked entry to the building.
French political observers believe it’s only a matter of time before Macron will be forced to call for another snap election. This would please both the left and the right, who believe they can gain a majority in parliament. The result of another snap election will probably be the same as the last: a hung parliament and more unrest in the streets.
As the United States and many other nations are pausing to remember the 80th anniversary of D-Day on June 6, CBN News takes a look back at that heroic day where thousands of men gave their lives to defeat an enemy who sought to enslave the entire world.
On the 40th anniversary of the D-Day invasion, on June 6, 1984, President Ronald Reagan, himself a World War II veteran, gave a speech on the very spot where Allied soldiers stormed the gates of hell and were victorious.
Although Reagan didn’t see combat, he did have a front-row seat. He was a member of Jack Warner’s First Motion Picture Unit for the Army Air Corps. From that vantage point, he saw all of the unedited combat footage come from every corner of the world, including footage of the American Army liberating the Nazi death camps at the end of the war.
Forty years ago, as the leader of the free world, President Reagan addressed World War II veterans and world leaders gathered at the site of the U.S. Ranger Monument at Pointe du Hoc, France.
“The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead or on the next. It was the deep knowledge — and pray God we have not lost it — that there is a profound, moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest. You were here to liberate, not to conquer, and so you and those others did not doubt your cause. And you were right not to doubt,” Reagan said.
Reagan, a man of deep faith in God, pointed to the faith of those who fought, recalling the sacrifice of all the Allied soldiers who hit the beaches of Normandy on that fateful day — what it meant for the world then and what it means for all of us now.
“The Americans who fought here that morning knew word of the invasion was spreading through the darkness back home. They fought — or felt in their hearts, though they couldn’t know in fact, that in Georgia they were filling the churches at 4 a.m., in Kansas they were kneeling on their porches and praying, and in Philadelphia, they were ringing the Liberty Bell,” Reagan continued.
“Something else helped the men of D-Day: their rock-hard belief that Providence would have a great hand in the events that would unfold here; that God was an ally in this great cause. And so, the night before the invasion, when Colonel Wolverton asked his parachute troops to kneel with him in prayer he told them: Do not bow your heads, but look up so you can see God and ask His blessing in what we’re about to do. Also that night, General Matthew Ridgway on his cot, listening in the darkness for the promise God made to Joshua: ‘I will not fail thee nor forsake thee’.”
He finished, “Here, in this place where the West held together, let us make a vow to our dead. Let us show them by our actions that we understand what they died for. Let our actions say to them the words for which Matthew Ridgway listened: “I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.”
BELOW: Watch President Reagan’s D-Day speech on June 6, 1984. (Video courtesy: The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.)
READ President Ronald W. Reagan’s Entire Speech on the 40th Anniversary of D-Day:
We’re here to mark that day in history when the Allied armies joined in battle to reclaim this continent to liberty. For 4 long years, much of Europe had been under a terrible shadow. Free nations had fallen, Jews cried out in the camps, millions cried out for liberation. Europe was enslaved, and the world prayed for its rescue. Here in Normandy, the rescue began. Here the Allies stood and fought against tyranny in a giant undertaking unparalleled in human history.
We stand on a lonely, windswept point on the northern shore of France. The air is soft, but 40 years ago at this moment, the air was dense with smoke and the cries of men, and the air was filled with the crack of rifle fire and the roar of cannon. At dawn, on the morning of the 6th of June, 1944, 225 Rangers jumped off the British landing craft and ran to the bottom of these cliffs. Their mission was one of the most difficult and daring of the invasion: to climb these sheer and desolate cliffs and take out the enemy guns. The Allies had been told that some of the mightiest of these guns were here and they would be trained on the beaches to stop the Allied advance.
The Rangers looked up and saw the enemy soldiers — the edge of the cliffs shooting down at them with machineguns and throwing grenades. And the American Rangers began to climb. They shot rope ladders over the face of these cliffs and began to pull themselves up. When one Ranger fell, another would take his place. When one rope was cut, a Ranger would grab another and begin his climb again. They climbed, shot back, and held their footing. Soon, one by one, the Rangers pulled themselves over the top, and in seizing the firm land at the top of these cliffs, they began to seize back the continent of Europe. Two hundred and twenty-five came here. After 2 days of fighting, only 90 could still bear arms.
Behind me is a memorial that symbolizes the Ranger daggers that were thrust into the top of these cliffs. And before me are the men who put them there.
These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war.
Gentlemen, I look at you and I think of the words of Stephen Spender’s poem. You are men who in your “lives fought for life . . . and left the vivid air signed with your honor.”
I think I know what you may be thinking right now — thinking “we were just part of a bigger effort; everyone was brave that day.” Well, everyone was. Do you remember the story of Bill Millin of the 51st Highlanders? Forty years ago today, British troops were pinned down near a bridge, waiting desperately for help. Suddenly, they heard the sound of bagpipes, and some thought they were dreaming. Well, they weren’t. They looked up and saw Bill Millin with his bagpipes, leading the reinforcements and ignoring the smack of the bullets into the ground around him.
Lord Lovat was with him — Lord Lovat of Scotland, who calmly announced when he got to the bridge, “Sorry I’m a few minutes late,” as if he’d been delayed by a traffic jam, when in truth he’d just come from the bloody fighting on Sword Beach, which he and his men had just taken.
There was the impossible valor of the Poles who threw themselves between the enemy and the rest of Europe as the invasion took hold, and the unsurpassed courage of the Canadians who had already seen the horrors of war on this coast. They knew what awaited them there, but they would not be deterred. And once they hit Juno Beach, they never looked back.
All of these men were part of a roll call of honor with names that spoke of a pride as bright as the colors they bore: the Royal Winnipeg Rifles, Poland’s 24th Lancers, the Royal Scots Fusiliers, the Screaming Eagles, the Yeomen of England’s armored divisions, the forces of Free France, the Coast Guard’s “Matchbox Fleet” and you, the American Rangers.
Forty summers have passed since the battle that you fought here. You were young the day you took these cliffs; some of you were hardly more than boys, with the deepest joys of life before you. Yet, you risked everything here. Why? Why did you do it? What impelled you to put aside the instinct for self-preservation and risk your lives to take these cliffs? What inspired all the men of the armies that met here? We look at you, and somehow we know the answer. It was faith and belief; it was loyalty and love.
The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead or on the next. It was the deep knowledge — and pray God we have not lost it — that there is a profound, moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest. You were here to liberate, not to conquer, and so you and those others did not doubt your cause. And you were right not to doubt.
You all knew that some things are worth dying for. One’s country is worth dying for, and democracy is worth dying for, because it’s the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man. All of you loved liberty. All of you were willing to fight tyranny, and you knew the people of your countries were behind you.
The Americans who fought here that morning knew word of the invasion was spreading through the darkness back home. They fought — or felt in their hearts, though they couldn’t know in fact, that in Georgia they were filling the churches at 4 a.m., in Kansas they were kneeling on their porches and praying, and in Philadelphia, they were ringing the Liberty Bell.
Something else helped the men of D-Day: their rock-hard belief that Providence would have a great hand in the events that would unfold here; that God was an ally in this great cause. And so, the night before the invasion, when Colonel Wolverton asked his parachute troops to kneel with him in prayer he told them: Do not bow your heads, but look up so you can see God and ask His blessing in what we’re about to do. Also that night, General Matthew Ridgway on his cot, listening in the darkness for the promise God made to Joshua: “I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.”
These are the things that impelled them; these are the things that shaped the unity of the Allies.
When the war was over, there were lives to be rebuilt and governments to be returned to the people. There were nations to be reborn. Above all, there was a new peace to be assured. These were huge and daunting tasks. But the Allies summoned strength from the faith, belief, loyalty, and love of those who fell here. They rebuilt a new Europe together.
There was first a great reconciliation among those who had been enemies, all of whom had suffered so greatly. The United States did its part, creating the Marshall plan to help rebuild our allies and our former enemies. The Marshall plan led to the Atlantic alliance — a great alliance that serves to this day as our shield for freedom, for prosperity, and for peace.
In spite of our great efforts and successes, not all that followed the end of the war was happy or planned. Some liberated countries were lost. The great sadness of this loss echoes down to our own time in the streets of Warsaw, Prague, and East Berlin. Soviet troops that came to the center of this continent did not leave when peace came. They’re still there, uninvited, unwanted, unyielding, almost 40 years after the war. Because of this, allied forces still stand on this continent. Today, as 40 years ago, our armies are here for only one purpose — to protect and defend democracy. The only territories we hold are memorials like this one and graveyards where our heroes rest.
We in America have learned bitter lessons from two World Wars: It is better to be here ready to protect the peace, than to take blind shelter across the sea, rushing to respond only after freedom is lost. We’ve learned that isolationism never was and never will be an acceptable response to tyrannical governments with an expansionist intent.
But we try always to be prepared for peace; prepared to deter aggression; prepared to negotiate the reduction of arms; and, yes, prepared to reach out again in the spirit of reconciliation. In truth, there is no reconciliation we would welcome more than a reconciliation with the Soviet Union, so, together, we can lessen the risks of war, now and forever.
It’s fitting to remember here the great losses also suffered by the Russian people during World War II: 20 million perished, a terrible price that testifies to all the world the necessity of ending war. I tell you from my heart that we in the United States do not want war. We want to wipe from the face of the Earth the terrible weapons that man now has in his hands. And I tell you, we are ready to seize that beachhead. We look for some sign from the Soviet Union that they are willing to move forward, that they share our desire and love for peace, and that they will give up the ways of conquest. There must be a changing there that will allow us to turn our hope into action.
We will pray forever that someday that changing will come. But for now, particularly today, it is good and fitting to renew our commitment to each other, to our freedom, and to the alliance that protects it.
We are bound today by what bound us 40 years ago, the same loyalties, traditions, and beliefs. We’re bound by reality. The strength of America’s allies is vital to the United States, and the American security guarantee is essential to the continued freedom of Europe’s democracies. We were with you then; we are with you now. Your hopes are our hopes, and your destiny is our destiny.
Here, in this place where the West held together, let us make a vow to our dead. Let us show them by our actions that we understand what they died for. Let our actions say to them the words for which Matthew Ridgway listened: “I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.”
Strengthened by their courage, heartened by their valor, and borne by their memory, let us continue to stand for the ideals for which they lived and died.
The French political establishment is following in the footsteps of other European parties by trying to ban their conservative opposition from office.
Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s National Rally and the current frontrunner to become the country’s next president, may be banned from holding public office for five years and even imprisoned if she is convicted in a politically-motivated embezzelement trial.
The 56-year-old has accused left-wing prosecutors of seeking her “political death” by requesting an instant five-year public office ban, a punishment that she says would be “completely disproportionate” for her alleged crimes.
According to prosecutors, Le Pen and several members of her National Rally party misused European Parliament funds between 2004 and 2016.
DEMOCRACY? The EU is desperate to keep conservatives out of power across Europe. Their latest effort is to ban the leading French presidential candidate, Marine Le Pen, from office for five years and to jail her for a campaign finance violation. pic.twitter.com/uaTtsdI3jB
They claim that Le Pen and others paid party staffers with around $600,000 in European Union money under the false pretense that they were working as parliamentary assistants.
She has denied any and all wrongdoing.
If convicted, she may also face a prison sentence of up to 10 years, although it would likely be substantially shorter than this.
Should she also be barred from office, Le Pen would be forced to pass the mantel to another, perhaps less experienced and recognized member of her National Rally party.
Le Pen would also not be the first European politician to be banned from office.
Earlier this month, courts in Romania shamelessly blocked the right-wing, anti-globalist candidate Calin Georgescu from running in May’s presidential election.
This move came months after Georgescu topped the poll in the first round of the country’s presidential election, a result that so shocked the establishment that they cancelled the election and rescheduled it for May.
Meanwhile, politicians in Germany have repeatedly considered banning the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party on the false premise that they are far-right extremists.
Despite the attempts to smear their reputation, AfD won 20 percent of the vote in the country’s recent elections on their platform opposing mass immigration.
And as Americans will never forget, Democrats and the deep state desperately tried to get Donald Trump off the ballot through an aggressive lawfare campaign.
In a video recently shared on Twitter/X, the always brilliant Victor Davis Hanson broke down how the MAGA revolution is not actually a revolution, but a counter-revolution aimed at reversing the damage that the left has done in recent years.
Hanson points back to the Obama years and follows through to the Biden years, which he correctly describes as Obama’s third and most radical term.
He points out the many crazy things the left has done in that time, changing the way we vote, tearing down statues, rewriting our history, inventing new genders and on and on.
He suggests that MAGA is a almost more of a restoration than a revolution.
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: They call it the “MAGA Revolution.” It is not a revolution, it is a counter-revolution. There’s a big difference.
This is a restoration, let’s use the word restoration.
We don’t know or appreciate what we’ve been through with eight years of the Obama administration and then the third more radical term of Obama using or employing the waxen effigy of Joe Biden.
The revolution that we’ve experienced was cultural, economic, political, and social. It was very similar to the French Revolution under Robespierre. Remember what they tried to do, they changed the days of the week, they renamed things, they tore down statues, they went after the church. Does this sound familiar?
In this revolution we’ve experienced, everything was up for sale and everything was negotiable.
We invented a third gender and rammed it down people’s throats. We tore down statues. We said 1776 was no longer the foundational date, it was 1619. We changed the very mechanism by which we vote — we went from 70% of the electorate voting on election day to 70% of the electorate, not doing that either through mail-in or early voting. That was a radical change that had no discussion. It was done by fiat. It was incredible.
Watch the whole thing below, this is amazing analysis:
Hanson is one of the great thinkers of our time. His take on this is perfect and if Democrats and the media wanted to understand the current political and cultural landscape, they would listen to him.
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