When my daughter took french in HS i told her you only need to learn two words--"I surrender."

she was not amused :-(


Freedom Fries!

MAGA!

;-)

/r

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Steve

Hahahahahahaha! That's great! ;-)

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

If you meet him just say "vous etes in imbecile" Sorry spell correct keeps changing u n to in.

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They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within
Dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good T.S. Eliot

Perhaps he should go to Normandy and read the names on those 9,387 headstones.

If not for U.S. soldiers, that twit would be speaking German, not French.

This is from some time ago, probably completely inaccurate, but still makes me chuckle just the same:


Subject: The Complete Military History of France


Gallic Wars - Lost. In a war whose ending foreshadows the next 2000 years of French history, France is conquered by of all things, an Italian.


Hundred Years War - Mostly lost, saved at last by female schizophrenic who inadvertently creates The First Rule of French Warfare: "France's armies are victorious only when not led by a Frenchman."


Italian Wars - Lost. France becomes the first and only country to ever lose two wars when fighting Italians.


Wars of Religion - France goes 0-5-4 against the Huguenots


Thirty Years War - France is technically not a participant, but manages to get invaded anyway. Claims a tie on the basis that eventually the other participants started ignoring her.


War of Devolution - Tied. Frenchmen take to wearing red flowerpots as chapeaux.


The Dutch War - Tied


War of the Augsburg League/King William's War/French and Indian War Lost, but claimed as a tie. Three ties in a row induces deluded Frogophiles the world over to label the period as the height of French military power.


War of the Spanish Succession - Lost. The War also gave the French their first taste of a Marlborough, which they have loved every since.


American Revolution - In a move that will become quite familiar to future Americans, France claims a win even though the English colonists saw far more action. This is later known as "de Gaulle Syndrome", and leads to the Second Rule of French Warfare: "France only wins when America does most of the fighting."


French Revolution - Won, primarily due the fact that the opponent was also French.


The Napoleonic Wars - Lost. Temporary victories (remember the First Rule!) due to leadership of a Corsican, who ended up being no match for a British footwear designer.


The Franco-Prussian War - Lost. Germany first plays the role of drunk Frat boy to France's ugly girl home alone on a Saturday night.


World War I - Tied and on the way to losing, France is saved by the United States. Thousands of French women find out what it's like to not only sleep with a winner, but one who doesn't call her "Fraulein." Sadly, widespread use of condoms by American forces forestalls any improvement in the French bloodline.


World War II - Lost. Conquered French liberated by the United States and Britain just as they finish learning the Horst Wessel Song.


War in Indochina - Lost. French forces plead sickness, take to bed with the Dien Bien Flu.


Algerian Rebellion - Lost. Loss marks the first defeat of a western army by a Non-Turkic Muslim force since the Crusades, and produces the First Rule of Muslim Warfare: "We can always beat the French." This rule is identical to the First Rules of the Italians, Russians, Germans, English, Dutch, Spanish, Vietnamese and Esquimaux.


War on Terrorism - France, keeping in mind its recent history, surrenders to Germans and Muslims just to be safe. Attempts to surrender to Vietnamese ambassador fail after he takes refuge in a McDonald's.



The question for any country silly enough to count on the French should not be "Can we count on the French?", but rather "How long until France collapses?"

And this oldie but goodie (again, may be completely inaccurate but still worth a chuckle or two):

Great Minds Speak on the French
>
> "France has neither winter nor summer nor morals.
> Apart from these
> drawbacks it is a fine country. France has usually been governed by
> prostitutes."
> ---Mark Twain
>
> "I would rather have a German division in front of me than a French
> one behind me."
> --- General George S. Patton
>
> "Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your
> accordion."
> --Norman Schwartzkopf
>
> "We can stand here like the French, or we can do something about it."
> ---- Marge Simpson
>
> "As far as I'm concerned, war always means failure"
> ---Jacques Chirac, President of France
>
> "As far as France is concerned, you're right."
> ---Rush Limbaugh
>
> "The only time France wants us to go to war is when the German Army
> is sitting in Paris sipping coffee."
> --- Regis Philbin
>
> "The French are a smallish, monkey-looking bunch and not dressed any
> better, on average, than the citizens of Baltimore.
> True, you can sit
> outside in Paris and drink little
> cups of coffee, but why this is more stylish than sitting inside and
> drinking large glasses of whiskey I don't know." ---
> P.J O'Rourke
> (1989)
>
> "You know, the French remind me a little bit of an aging actress of
> the 1940s who was still trying to dine out on her looks but doesn't
> have the face for it."
> ---John McCain, U.S. Senator from Arizona
>
> "You know why the French don't want to bomb Saddam Hussein? Because
> he hates America, he loves mistresses and wears a beret.
> He IS French,
> people."
> --Conan O'Brien
>
> "I don't know why people are surprised that France won't help us get
> Saddam out of Iraq. After all, France wouldn't help us get the
> Germans out of France!"
> ---Jay Leno
>
> "The last time the French asked for 'more proof' it came marching
> into Paris under a German flag."
> --David Letterman
>
> How many Frenchmen does it take to change a light bulb? One. He holds
> the bulb and all of Europe revolves around him.
>
> "The heaviest cross I had to bear was the Cross of Lorraine"
> ---Winston Churchill

He probably already speaks German as most Europeans I've ever met are usually multi-lingual. But yeah, the comment was over the top.

You're right. Would it have been more appropriate to tweet that on September 1st? Wrong day and definitely wrong tweet, don't they teach anything in Ambassadorship 101? That said, the number of American pundits/commentators/politicians who endlessly lecture Europe on appeasement while simultaneously ignoring isolationism is really large. I doubt that you have ever taken notice of that.

C'est la vie....

By the way, seems like a good time to plug the movie "Darkest Hour"!!

He shouldn't have tweeted it at all. That's what you learn in Ambassadorship 101. But the French diplomatic corps is seemingly fond of lecturing the rest of us about how learned and wise they are, I suppose. ;-)

I'm with you on "Darkest Hour." Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill. Can't wait to see it.

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

Lived in Italy. It's easy to be multilingual when your forefathers basically whored themselves out around the Continent for centuries, and you live about a 30-minute drive away from another language. ;-)

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

Maybe he went to the same school that Trump did.

My observation about how tweeting makes a person disengage their brain applies, of course. ;-)

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

"va chier" would probably be closest direct translation. literally, it means something like "go take a shit" but for all practical purposes it's about "fuck you" or "go fuck yourself."

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____________________________________
https://lshtm.academia.edu/MikeCallaghan

http://howtobeswiss.blogspot.ch/

This is a French equivalent of:
"Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists" - GW Bush, President of the USA

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Remember - It's important to be comfortable in your own skin... because it turns out society frowns on wearing other people's

I am from Europe and speak four language (front door bragging :-) ). It is easy to do so as we in Europe have the tendencies to move borders every once in a while :-)

Did you also tell her the joke about how you found WWII French Rifles on EBay with the description "Never used. Dropped Once."?

Yah. Only every once in awhile. ;-)

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

Ugh. Don't remind me. ;-)

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

Ooh, I gotta remember that one! May come in useful... ;-)

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

In all seriousness, the flip side of this (as anyone who's played Risk is shirley aware) is that France, being essentially in the center of the continent, is awfully hard to defend. The same advantage to ease of traveling there as a tourist nowadays has always been a massive disadvantage when it comes to the ease of getting there for foreign armies, with little in the way of natural geographic or climatic barriers to help ward off invaders and being vulnerable on multiple fronts. It's easy to poke fun at them today for such a dismal military history and write it off as a function of their cultural psyche, but I've always thought it was kind of a chicken/egg deal of having it beaten into them over many generations at least in significant part due to inherent geographic disadvantages.

ETA... My boy likes to study linguistics, and how it's reflective of cultural history; our favorite example of the fluidity of borders and the mingling of languages in western Europe over the centuries is that 'mushroom' in German is simply the French word for mushroom (the distinction being something found in nature as opposed to a borrowed term for a prepared food item such as croissant or schnitzel).

The French found out the geographic realities of a defense in depth (or the lack thereof) the hard way with their Maginot Line. They have a difficult border to reliably defend, from a military standpoint. War on the Continent is HELL, that's for sure.

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

How would they know, they've never accomplished that !

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"I think I've cracked the code. double letters are cheaters except for perfect squares (a, d, i, p and y). So Leddy isn't a cheater... "

OH, SNAP! ;-)

I didn't mean to turn this into an indictment of La belle France in whole or in part. Just that ambassador.

But I do think that the last Frenchman to really kick a$$ on the border and such was probably Charles Martel in 732 CE. LOL!

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

And he wasn't even French