Although I'm a life-long small "l" Liberal voter, and Justin Trudeau is still the better leader of the major parties, he did made quite a few major political bungling.

Though the policies are sound, the implementations are a mess.

Overall, he can talk a good game but there are so many external forces fighting against him, nothing much has to gotten done.

Quite similar to France's Macron.

San Marino? Iceland? Finland? New Zealand? Switzerland? Holland? Denmark? Canada? Possibly Sweden? Id give them a shot.

Funny to imagine that. Montenegro pulling the strings for once instead of being pushed away from the camera by Trump. Half the world scurrying to maps in vain, trying to find it, the other half not knowing what the fuss is about as usual. You will buy our goat milk or we will impose tariffs on your fancy gangster guns, automobiles and helicopters!

As superpowers go, the US is not too bad. Its a fairly hands-off type superpower if you compare it to say the Roman Empire or Napoleonic France. Taking a long time to even annex Puerto Rico properly.

Wondering really how China will fare. Give it 25 years. And they sure wont ask as nicely as you just did.

Congratulations! Your video, Jumping The Tour Dr France Peloton 2019, has reached the #1 spot in the current Top 15 New Videos listing. This is a very difficult thing to accomplish but you managed to pull it off. For your contribution you have been awarded 2 Power Points.

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Your video, Jumping The Tour Dr France Peloton 2019, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Seems there's a bit of a history when it comes to jumping the Peloton
https://cyclingtips.com/2019/07/top-four-mountain-bike-jumps-in-tour-de-france-history/

Yes, widespread poverty, largely because of insane wealth inequality. (I'll elaborate if you wish) The rich had plenty to eat, and as the dismissive "let them eat cake" implied, had no concern for those who didn't. It was that disparity paired with the dismissal of the peasants plight by the ruling class that tipped a bad situation into civil war/revolt, imo.

Yes, poor are going hungry in the United States, maybe not starving to death often, but suffering to death from ailments caused by the only diets they can afford, which barely qualify as food. No, it's not to the extent of 1700 France, but we wouldn't tolerate anywhere near those conditions today, so that argument is ludicrous.

The real poor in America don't have roofs or electricity, where are these TV'S they're parked in front of exactly? The homeless problem is growing exponentially...those are the real poor surfs in this analogy, not just people like me who can live fine on $15k a year.

Nope. I am implying that in the late 1700's, the wealth inequality in France was combined with widespread poverty and starvation, and such conditions do not exist today in the US. The suggestion (Newtboy's) that we should fear a revolution today is unsupported. Back then, half of all children then died before the age of 10, many due to the famine they were experiencing. We just don't have the kind of poverty today in the US that the French peasants endured in 1780.

Yes, I have heard of the French Revolution. You seem to imply that the main cause was wealth inequality, but you have not offered any reason as to why you think that.

Many believe that the biggest contributor to the French Revolution was widespread poverty. Peasants were starving.

This condition does not exist today. Especially in the US, the poor are not suffering in the same way they were in France in the mid 1700's.

In France, it was necessary to riot in order to eat. Today's poor in the US have a hard time getting up from their TV sets.

Fox has filed an amicus brief with the court, in support of CNN’s lawsuit against Donald Trump. By default, this means that Fox is now participating in legal action against Trump. Fox also released a lengthy statement, saying in part that “passes for working White House journalists should never be weaponized.”
It seems your preferred source agrees with me, strongly enough to join the legal action against Trump....surprising.
Not surprisingly, Fox viewers are throwing a fit, certain the liberal media cabal has taken over, and they're threatening to quit Fox in droves this morning.

Does this mean you finally backed off your claim that an accurate English description of the scene in France by CNN and BBC were just vehicles for biased loaded language supporting an agenda?

I got interested in the economics of that refurb.

Looks like a new Gressel vice of roughly the same type can be bought for 550 Francs, which is just very slightly more than 550 US Dollars.

Nothing specific is said about time spent on the repair, other than getting off that one plate took "30 minutes of hammering", which is cut down to roughly 10 seconds of video. I figure that was a particularly time consuming caper to end up being the only thing shown where time spent was specifically mentioned. Some tiny bits of what we saw were roughly real-time, where all the work spent on a specific item was shown 1:1 in the video. But, lots of other stuff was probably somewhere between that 10 seconds : 30 minutes and 1:1 range.

I think a very conservative guess would be that each minute of video represented at least 30 minutes of work. So, 17 minute video x 30 = 510 minutes. Divided by 60 = 8.5 hours. As an extremely conservative estimate -- could easily be five or ten times that, particularly with lawyer-type "billable hours" consideration on what constitutes "work time".

But with that conservative estimate, he worked for (at the very least) 8.5 hours to repair something that could have been replaced for $550. Not including the new replacement smooth grips, etc. That's about $65 per hour. For extremely skilled labor.

I'm not mocking that at all -- I actually agree that it was quite satisfying to watch. But I think that just reaffirms that there must have been some real passion for the work there to decide to go through that very fiddly and skilled labor for what was likely much more than 8.5 hours rather than buying a new one and calling it a day. Not much of that kind of work ethic left these days -- and I sure as hell include myself in that!

You can label it whatever makes you sleep better but choosing to ignore facts that don't fit your agenda is silly at best.
Not sure why you keep bringing up Alex Jones...
Do you share Trumps love for him?
The investigation itself has been investigated and don't tell me it is all fine and dandy how they did it or the people involved with it.
Also Trump never called all the folks in the caravans rapists.
You should know that if you actually read what he said and not the way your treasured media bends it.
Just today a topless woman jumped over a security fence to protest Trump in France and CNN reported she was "accosted" by security officials.
I tried to watch the BBC for a while a couple of days ago and can't recall what upset me other than the way they seemed to frame everything
in this weird way.
Bending the facts of stories to fit something.
I have no idea what they would want to be pushing on people.
Do you?
It simply felt like I was being brainwashed to see everything their way.
Not a good feeling but I can't recall the story or stories now they were covering.
I too hope they get rid of Trump as I'm tired of a draft dodger talking about heroes and for many of the same reasons you don't like him.
I just wish the media was more mature about it.
Don Lemmon
Jim Accosta
Chris Cuomo
None of the above are mature.

Can a president seek asylum in France? Just wondering.

I've actually been looking, seriously, for work in Paris. There's a shit-ton of hoops to jump through beyond getting a sponsor. I really wish I had a Master's degree, because France has a special visa for people with high-demand skills who have a Master's or above.

I'm not sure what getting into Denmark would be like.

I have a few French friends, and as I see it there's quite a fundamental cultural difference at play here. I'll do my best to explain it, although I don't fully understand it myself.

There's a very fundamental French principle of equality that's considered as sacred as American freedom of speech. It means that when you're French, you're French, and explicitly not a member of a sub-culture. I heard about this when they banned wearing a hijab (I think) in schools: the children are French first, and must comply by French norms above others.

The French government have fought very hard to fight the foundation of religious and ethnic sub-cultures within France. This is obviously very different to the American approach of embracing your heritage and, just as Freedom of Speech has unwanted side-effects, so does this. The players are French, not African. Their cultural past was indeed wiped when they became French (at birth or otherwise). Yes, they're of African descent, but that's considered very different to being African.

Now, it's fair enough to argue the the American approach is better, but I think it's important to understand that this is not the French approach. There is a fundamental cultural difference there, and without understanding that, you're going to miss the point of their argument.