LondonLax

Remember all our musing earlier in the thread about whether Trump would pivot to become statesmanlike after the election

The spice man always delivers hilarity with his crazy capers. Melissa McCarthy is hosting SNL this week as well.

Yeah am interested to see where this goes.

At the moment LePen has a ceiling on her support so to her parties extreme views. She is leading the French version of the BNP. The danger is if she is able to remodel the party to a more socially acceptable version, akin to a French UKIP. She may well be able to reach a position of power.

If your government commits to a public spending program that directly requires your only revenue stream to be $x then it is no surprise when you run into problems when that revenue stream falls below $x. Norway is a much more diversified economy but not only that, they have diversified their sovereign wealth fund, furthermore, the revenue from oil is not linked to their social spending program. They understood that if it was its fluctuating price could not be relied on. Also, the 'free money' would distort the domestic economy via rampant inflation to such a state that it would wipe out local industry. Instead the money is invested in a wide range of companies, currency and properties around the globe with the majority of the profits reinvested in the fund. They draw down a small percentage (4%) as a dividend to spend on the local economy but populist governments are not able to raid the pot to deliver big social programs like Venezuela has.

Their who economy was based on oil exports, their success was tied to the price of oil. When it was $100 a barrel everything was sweet, since it dropped below $50 the country has fallen to pieces. The very definition of a 'banana republic'.

Interestingly in the Scandi counries parental leave is very generous and a portion is reserved for the father. This means that when a baby arrives both parents take some time out of their careers (usalluy about 6-12 months each?). Then their childcare places are heavily subsidised so both parents can go back to their careers sooner. They also have the smallest gender pay gap in the world. A portion of the pay gap is still down to prejudice though I think. I had read about a study where the same CV is shopped around to different employers, only the name on the top was changed from a female name to a male name. The 'male' CV gets more interviews than the female one unfortunately.

Granted it might not be for much longer but at the moment Northern Ireland are still a part of your country.

As a comedian how do you satirise these guys? Just the raw material is funny enough.

It seems like they were decent sized explosives, just to far away to do more damage than the broken wrist luckily.

Top Bantz!

So explain to me how Blair has been given 'more leeway' than Bush. Also, didn't your comment come about when talk of Obama's drone strikes came up? Obama was hammered over the drone policy. It increases under Trump and not a discussion about it anywhere. So who is getting more leeway on drone strikes?

Did you forget about Bush when making your point about Blair? Also, I'm pretty sure people still 'bang on' about Blair.

The rule of law doesn't seem to matter when you feel righteous.

Why else do you think the 'free market' types all want out.

When you call it "Obama's" inaction, didn't Obama want to retailiate but went via the proper channels and got voted down by congress? The inaction back then was in the Republican congress (Cheered on by Trump also telling them to vote down any kind of retaliation). It is pretty rediculous for Trump to now criticize Obama for not attacking Syria.

The Russians were warned (The US didn't want to hit Russians and start WW3), I am guessing Putin may well have passed on the info to Assad

I think you might want to reread what I wrote. I'm not sure if I need to spell it out to you but I personally believe Assad is responsible for the chemical attack and reprisals against him are justified.

Not sure why you are getting angry at me. I think you might have gotten the wrong end of the stick somewhere. Anyway, have a read of the comments, the Breitbart crowd are livid: http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2017/04/06/trump-orders-strikes-syrian-regime-airbase-response-chemical-attack/

My point was that Bannon and his Breitbart crowd will have been pushing the 'false flag' narrative. He's been pushed aside whilst the US blames Assad and launches airstrikes.

Interesting. It looks like the removal of Bannon and his Russian conspiracy theory's has paved the way for this.

How could Spain's veto be removed?

I was actually thinking more about McMaster. From what I have read he and Bannon were squaring off and Bannon has obviously lost out. Edit: I meant McMaster rather than Mattis. Interesting that he started out with Flynn and Bannon, both pro Russia, but now has traditional security council advisors in place.

I wonder if the switching up of Bannon (with his Russian sympathies) for traditional military hawks on the security council has something to do with this recent anti-Assad talk.