Two machetes
A guy – un mec – attacked soldiers guarding The Louvre and they shot him.
Police in Paris say a man attacked soldiers when they told him he couldn’t enter an underground shopping mall beneath the sprawling Louvre Museum with his bags.
Yves Lefebvre, a police union official, says the man tried to stab one of the soldiers. The attacker was shot five times.
Lefebvre says police found two machetes on the man.
There were about 1000 people in the museum; they were hustled into safer areas without windows if they weren’t already there. They were allowed to leave after a couple of hours.
Trump, of course, is overjoyed. He takes this to be a vindication of his cunning plan to Prevent All The Mooslims.
A new radical Islamic terrorist has just attacked in Louvre Museum in Paris. Tourists were locked down. France on edge again. GET SMART U.S.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 3, 2017
It’s bad. It’s horrible. It’s horrible that there’s that kind of hatred and ill-will brooding away and exploding into violence at intervals. What it’s not, however, is a serious threat to people in general. It’s nothing like the threat presented by, for instance, cars. It’s not even close to a reason to start banning refugees from Mooslim countries.
Radical Islam comes to Trump’s rescue with an attack in the Louvre. Trump responds by saying effectivley ‘it’s not about me, or my tax returns, or my attacks on science, or my attacks on environmental regulation…. It’s about Mooslims.’
The American Founding Fathers made the president an elected 18thC monarch: Britain, and her other planted populations (in her Australian, NZ and Canadian colonies particularly) avoided the problems with that.
Trump is in many ways a reincarnation of Mad King George.
One constitutional crisis coming up…… ?
https://www.bustle.com/p/upcoming-anti-donald-trump-protests-occurring-worldwide-to-mark-on-your-calendars-34067
Omar,
Yes, I was also considering the chances of Trump coming to power, or indeed, surviving in a parliamentary system. I can remember the long tortuous campaign to get rid of Nixon in the early 70s. It was remarkably similar to the process of forcing a king to abdicate.
Omar, the Founders didn’t do anything of the sort. They gave the president a few powers, but they spread the powers through the three branches of government.
Starting with Teddy Roosevelt, we have been seeing the president claiming more powers to himself. The Congress and courts have permitted that when it suited their purpose, and the people have been apathetic. The powers of the president grew through the 20th century because of some very strong chief executives, and in some cases, in some times of crisis like the Great Depression, two world wars, Civil Rights, and other things like that.
FDR had a lot of problem getting some of his programs through because the Congress and the courts stopped him; that’s why he wanted to pack the court with friendly appointments. That didn’t work. But by the time we got to Dubya Bush, the entire country seemed to believe the president was some sort of superpowered king that could do what he wanted. Now they elected someone who will do just that, and steamroll over everyone who gets in his way.
iknklast: Agreed with everything you say, here. I had trepidation every time Obama broke out the Executive Order pens, for this very reason–even when I agreed fully with his agenda, I was always worried about the possibility it would empower the next thug who got the office.
Omar, in the other colonies a suitably ‘strong’ prime minister can wield powers approaching that of a monarch, provided they have a local majority. Our democracies function through convention as much as anything else.
Sounds like an art critic to me.