The Networks Snubbed Bush, Too

The White House ceremony Tuesday with the President and Vice-President was originally supposed to be a primetime address, but apparently told the White House to piss off instead. Evan McMorris-Santoro:

White House officials sought valuable primetime air for a rare, impromptu Tuesday night address to tout the accomplishment of signing up more than 7 million people under the Affordable Care Act.

But network officials refused to make the kind of accommodation they did previously for the announcement that Osama Bin Laden had been killed, for instance, and Obama was left instead cutting into the much smaller audiences ofEllen and other daytime shows.

Three sources familiar with the request confirmed the White House asked for the primetime slot in their effort both to emphasize a bright moment following the challenging roll out and, more important, to try to reintroduce the country to a law that remains unpopular. One top White House official referred BuzzFeed to another top official for comment on the conversation with networks, but the second official did not respond to a request for comment.

People familiar with the request declined to reveal which network blocked the primetime address, but broadcast networks have traditionally been much more reluctant than cable networks to provide the White House with evening air time.

Million dollar question:  when's the last time a President was flatly turned down by all the networks for an Oval Office address? 

Steve M. has the answer: it happened to Bush in October 2002.  He gave a primetime speech outlining his case for Iraq but only the cable networks carried it.

And then it happened again in May 2004 when Bush was speaking at the US Army War College.  Same thing, the cable networks carried it, but even FOX stuck to May sweeps programming.

So yes, it's disrespectful, but it happened to Dubya first.

Another Milepost On The Road To Oblivion

Billionaire Charles Koch is tired of you people, so he got himself an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal to let you guys know that he's tired of you people.

Conservative billionaire Charles Koch hit back against Democrats' attacks calling him "un-American" in the pages of the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, citing his corporate record and denouncing political cronyism.

"The more government tries to control, the greater the disaster, as shown by the current health-care debacle," he wrote in an op-ed. "Collectivists (those who stand for government control of the means of production and how people live their lives) promise heaven but deliver hell."

"Instead of encouraging free and open debate, collectivists strive to discredit and intimidate opponents. They engage in character assassination," he added, saying he was the target of "almost daily" attacks.

To recap, guy who uses his nearly unparalleled wealth and power from that most American of sources (inheritance and government largesse) to found his own super PAC dedicated to political attacks and character assassination of political enemies wants you to know there's nothing more un-American than saying bad things about him.

If you believe that government can ever be used to benefit a nation's people, then you're a "collectivist" and not a SUPER RICH AMERIPATRIOT like Chuck Koch here, so shut up because he's rich enough to buy an op-ed in the WSJ for crying out loud, who the hell do you think you are, hippie?

Fleeing The Scene

Continue to expect Senate Democrats up for re-election this year to run scared from Obamacare and immigration reform rather than defend their votes, with results like this Quinnipiac University survey.

American voters oppose the Affordable Care Act 55 - 41 percent and 40 percent are less likely to vote for a candidate who supports Obamacare, while 27 percent are more likely and 31 percent say this will not affect their vote.

Immigration also is a possible pitfall for candidates, as 39 percent of voters say they are less likely to vote for a candidate who supports a path to citizenship for illegal aliens, while 29 percent are more likely and 29 percent say it won't make a difference in their vote. 

But, there's good news for Dems too.

Reversing a slight shift to the Republican column, 40 percent of American voters now say they would vote for a Democrat for Congress this year, while 38 percent go Republican. Independent voters would vote Republican 35 - 27 percent.

And raising the minimum wage continues to be a big win in the D column with voters.

Raising the minimum wage is more popular as 50 percent say they are more likely to vote for a candidate who supports raising the minimum wage, with 25 percent less likely and 24 percent saying it won't affect their vote.

So no, immigration is not happening until the Dems get the House back.  But not raising the minimum wage is going to really hurt the Republicans, and the longer they hold out, the more it's going to haunt them.

StupidiNews!

• Army officials say four are dead and sixteen injured after a shooting incident at Fort Hood, Texas, including the shooter who took his own life.
• Another powerful earthquake rocked Northern Chile for the second day in a row, this one measuring 7.8 as Chilean officials once again evacuated coastal areas.
• The Obama administration says for the first time that it will allow the public to see just how doctors are paid for Medicare services and procedures.
• Brazil's central bank has raised the country's prime interest rate to 11% in an effort to control inflation, but bankers finally believe that further tightening may not be necessary.
• The crisis in Ukraine has now spread to end the partnership between NASA and Russia's space agency, however International Space Station operations will continue as normal.

Last Call For Bloody Bill's Next War

Conservatives have now seized upon Obamacare's success and have declared that they will destroy it or die trying, with Bill Kristol carrying the flag into battle waving the flag from a good distance away while directing others to fight for him.

No, Mr. President. No way, Mr. President. We do not accept, we do not acquiesce in, this deplorable piece of legislation. The debate is not over. The debate will continue. It must continue. What is at stake is sound health care policy for America. But what is also at stake is reversing your attempt, Mr. President, to transform a free country committed to limited government into merely another nation burdened with the worst aspects of big-government nanny-statism.

Mr. President, you have been elected our 44th president. We of course accept that, and we understand that you will continue to fight for your legislation and threaten to veto attempts to repeal and replace it. But we do not accept that you get to decide that the debate is over. We do not accept that you acquire any moral authority by claiming to enlist "history" on your side. We do not accept that your attempt to expand welfare state at the expense of individual liberty and the rule of law is true "progress."

President Obama, you might wish the debate were over. You might think you can intimidate us into conceding the debate is over. But you are wrong. The Republican party stands committed, acting through democratic means and as the agent of a self-governing people, to repealing and replacing Obamacare.

And so the next glorious, fever-bright war has been ordained and as Steve M. pointed out yesterday, will be the latest red meat rallying cry for the right as long as the law exists.  Meanwhile, here in Kentucky...

Propelled by a flurry of last-minute sign-ups, more than 370,000 Kentuckians are now enrolled in Obamacare, pleasing state officials who had pushed hard to get Kentuckians covered by private insurance or Medicaid before Tuesday's midnight enrollment deadline.

More than 1 out of every 12 Kentuckians — or 8.6 percent of the state's population — now has health insurance through kynect, the state's health-exchange set up to offer Obamacare coverage.

"We are thrilled with the level of interest and enrollment that we've seen," kynect's executive director, Carrie Banahan, said in a statement.

And so these 1 in 12 Kentuckians will just have to be casualties in Kristol's war.  Some 75% of those who signed up for KyNect here were previously uninsured, meaning that Kentucky cut the number of uninsured people in the state by almost half.

Too bad under a GOP Senate and President they;ll have to be uninsured again, but there are those who have to sacrifice in order to win Bloody Bill''s wars.

They just won't be made by Bill Kristol.

You Can't Buy Happiness, But You Can Rent Congress

Good news, everyone!  The Supreme Court has struck another blow for the rights of our most precious resource, Ridiculously Wealthy People in America to practice free speech by direct contributions to candidates and parties.  Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSBlog:

The Supreme Court pressed ahead on Wednesday with the majority’s constitutional view that more money flowing into politics is a good thing — even if much of it comes from rich donors. By a five-to-four vote, the Court struck down the two-year ceilings that Congress has imposed on donations to presidential and congressional candidates, parties and some — but not all — political action groups.

The main opinion delivered by Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., said confidently that corruption in politics will be kept in check by caps — left intact — on how much each single donation can be. Removing the ceilings on the total amounts that may given in each election cycle will not undermine those limits, Roberts predicted.

Boy, nobody's going to bother giving a bunch of checks for $2,600.  That would mean writing.  RIch people hate writing!

The decision was not as sweeping as the Court’s ruling four years ago, removing all restrictions on what corporations and labor unions can spend of their own money in federal campaigns (Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission), which has led to billions of dollars spent on politics. Even so, the practical result of the new ruling is almost sure to be that wealthy individuals will be able to spread their money around among more candidates and political groups.

Donors will get into legal trouble, the ruling emphasized, only if they demand a specific favor in policy or legislation in a direct exchange for the money they give. That is the only kind of corruption that the First Amendment will allow the government to attack, the decision stressed.

The Chief Justice’s opinion said that other recent changes in campaign finance law will work to reduce the risks of abuse, and it offered several other ideas for new limits that it implied might be constitutional. Whether the votes are there in Congress to pass any of those suggestions is problematic.

So, outright bribery is illegal.  Anything up to that point impinges on the free speech rights of rich people.

By the way, Justice Thomas made a point of writing a separate opinion that all campaign limits should be eliminated, and our elites should simply be able to purchase politicians outright as our forefathers intended, or something.  Don't like it?  The Chief Justice's opinion states that unlimited money in politics is basically vile speech, but must be protected anyway.

“Money in politics may at times seem repugnant to some, but so too does much of what the First Amendment vigorously protects,” Roberts wrote. “If the First Amendment protects flag burning, funeral protests and Nazi parades — despite the profound offense such spectacles cause — it surely protects political campaign speech despite popular opposition.”

Awesome.  Replace "Money in politics" up there with "Racism" or "Misogyny" or "Antisemitism" and you see where this is all going.  And so even cursory limits on buying candidates are now gone, just in time for the 2014 campaign season.  Anything short of outright pay for play is now legal and it's open season for the super rich to finish buying our political system.

"In a series of cases over the past 40 years, we have spelled out how to draw the constitutional line between the permissible goal of avoiding corruption in the political process and the impermissible desire simply to limit political speech. We have said that government regulation may not target the general gratitude a candidate may feel toward those who support him or his allies, or the political access such support may afford. They embody a central feature of democracy—that constituents support candidates who share their beliefs and interests, and candidates who are elected can be expected to be responsive to those concerns."

"You give a politician money to support an issue, they support the issue" is a central feature of democracy, yay!  So that means, what exactly?

Until today, federal laws prevented an individual from directly giving more than $123,200 to political candidates and committees during any two-year election cycle — an amount already so high that only a few hundred donors reached it in the 2012 election.

After today’s ruling in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, a single donor will be able to give $3.6 million dollars in one election cycle — money that political parties can funnel into specific campaigns with the full knowledge of who gave it.

May the best money/speech win, gentlemen. Chuck Pierce sums it all up:

The five-vote majority in favor of virtually unlimited corporate and individual spending in our elections is a rock solid one. Four days after almost every Republican candidate danced the hootchie-koo in Vegas to try and gain the support of a single, skeevy casino gazillionnaire, the majority tells us that there is no "appearance of corruption" in this unless somebody gets caught putting a slot machine in the Lincoln Bedroom on behalf of Sheldon Adelson. Money talks. Big money repeats itself, over and over, age after age.

And Republican National Committee chair Reince Preibus thinks the ruling is awesome.

"It's not like people are going to be able to write out million-dollar checks to the Republican Party or to an individual candidate," Priebus said Wednesday, a few hours after the ruling, in an interview with MSNBC. "All we're saying is the idea that you have aggregate limits -- in other words, you can't give the full amount to ten candidates running for office around the country, or you can't give the full amount to the Congressional committee, the Senate committee in the RNC, doesn't make any sense."

No, just checks for $123,300.  Freedom!

Oh and one last thing, this is the same exact Supreme Court that said that the 15th Amendment is antiquated and doesn't really protect the right of minorities to vote, by the way, when it struck down part of the Voting Rights Act.  Money's more important than black people voting, or something.

Just like our forefathers intended, if you recall.  America!

Unskewed All Over Again

Republicans have been driven to frothing hatred by Obamacare surpassing its 7 million signups goal, to the point where they're openly accusing the President of lying and daring him to prove otherwise.

Dean Chambers, notorious unskewer of 2012 presidential election polls, has his critical eye on a new metric: Obamacare enrollment.

"The Obamacare enrollments numbers are bogus. They don't even know how many have really paid for what they supposedly signed up for, and the 'back end' for the billing process of the Obamacare web site is not even functioning yet," he wrote in a Tuesday post on the law's 7 million announced sign-ups.

Sadly, that's about as far as Chambers gets in explaining his rationale. The Obama administration lied about unemployment to win reelection, so of course, they would lie about enrollment for the president's signature health care law, he says. The detailed explanations thattypified his 2012 coverage are nowhere to be found.

It's worth remembering that Chambers has company in high places, including the No. 4 Republican senator who accused the Obama administration of "cooking the books."

As Steve M points out, Republicans will simply add this to their list of perceived grievances that Obama and the Democrats must pay dearly for.

I think they'll find a way to demonize Obamacare forever. Look at what they've done with abortion. Look at how they continue to attack the social safety net as a "hammock." They demonize abortion and public assistance as immoral and destructive to society -- as long as a significant chunk of the white heartland gets health care from either work or Medicare, they can do that forever with Obamacare as well. And Obamacare has enough flaws that the number of people who love it may always be less than the number of people Republicans encourage to loathe it. (And if happy beneficiaries are poorer than the general population, they're less likely to vote than the middle-class haters.)

He has a point.  Obamacare will motivate millions more Republicans -- and Democrats, mind you -- to vote against the D's over the years than it will motivate people to vote for them, because as Democrats, we're not empowered by our problems, we whine and submit to them like cowards.

Republicans on the other hand are fully powered by hatred and will use this for a long long time.

StupidiNews!

• A California man has claimed the February 19th $425 million Powerball prize, after he took six weeks to gather a financial and legal team to handle his funds.
• Parents in Casey County, Kentucky have reportedly pulled their children from school after an atheist group was allowed to distribute literature at three schools in the district.
• A major 8.2 earthquake rattled Chile late Monday, setting up a major tsunami alert for the west coast of South America.
• Russian officials are furiously protesting a move by JP Morgan Chase to stop payment to a Russian insurance group due to new US sanctions.
• The US Navy is testing new anthropomorphic firefighting robots to help battle blazes in tight and dangerous shipboard conditions.

Last Call For Austerity Hysteria

And finally tonight, just another reminder of what a GOP takeover of the Senate would mean: the Ryan Budget on President Obama's desk, facing a "sign it or shut down the government" moment.

Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin on Tuesday will lay out a tough, election-year budget that purports to come into balance by 2024, in large part through steep cuts to Medicaid and food stamps and the full repeal of President Obama’s health care law, just as millions begin to see its benefits.

But even with those cuts, Mr. Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman, is counting on a boost of economic growth to balance the budget, a boost he says will be gained by reducing the deficit. Many economists believe such dramatic spending cuts — especially those affecting the poor — would have the opposite effect, slowing the economy and lowering tax receipts.

“This budget stops spending money we don’t have,” writes Mr. Ryan, the Republican party’s vice-presidential nominee in 2012 and a possible presidential contender in 2016. “A balanced budget will foster a healthier economy and help create jobs. This will ensure the next generation inherits a stronger, more prosperous America.”

For now, the Ryan Budget is a cruel April Fools' joke.  But if the GOP gets control of the Senate, there won't be anything from stopping them from passing his budget next year (assuming they eliminate the filibuster or find enough shell-shocked Democrats to go along) and putting it on the President's desk.

In his plan, military spending through 2024 would actually rise by $483 billion over the spending caps established in the 2011 Budget Control Act “consistent with America’s military goals and strategies,” while nondefense spending at Congress’s annual discretion would be cut by $791 billion below those strict limits.

In all, Mr. Ryan says, spending would be cut by $5.1 trillion over the next decade. More than $2 trillion of that would come from repealing Mr. Obama’s health care initiative, the Affordable Care Act, a political move that has become much more difficult with the closing of the first enrollment period. As many as 10 million Americans have gotten health insurance through the law, either through private policies purchased on insurance exchanges, through expanded Medicaid or private policies purchased through brokers but subsidized by the law.

As with past budget proposals, Mr. Ryan seeks to eliminate the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion, then turn the health care program for the poor into block grants to the states — saving $732 billion over the decade. He would also cap and block-grant food stamps, starting in 2020, cutting that program by $125 billion in five years. The budget relies on imposing new work requirements on food stamp and welfare recipients.

Such an approach “empowers recipients to get off the aid rolls and back on the payrolls,” Mr. Ryan writes.

Hard to get them off the rolls when the massive cuts would damage the economy to the point where millions of jobs would be lost.  Oh yes, and he's going to destroy Medicare too.

Here's the hard numbers:

But the toughest cuts would come from domestic programs that have already been reduced steadily since 2011, when Republicans took control of the House. Mr. Ryan’s 2024 domestic spending figure would be lower in nominal dollars than such spending was in 2005. Adjusted for inflation, it would be a 29 percent cut from today’s levels, and 28 percent below the average level of Bush administration spending.

A 30% cut to domestic programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and food stamps.  And yet if the GOP wins the Senate, that's exactly what we'll face.

What 2014 Could Look Like

A reminder from David Weigel that turnout is everything in 2014:

In 2006 the electorate was 79 percent white. Didn't hurt the party; boosted by the Iraq War backlash, Democrats won 47 percent of the white vote, up from 41 percent in 2004.

Then came 2008, the best Democratic election in a generation. Barack Obama won only 43 percent of the white vote in an electorate that was 74 percent white.

In 2010 the electorate vanilla'd up again—77 percent white this time—and the white vote for Democrats collapsed. They won only 37 percent of it, and only 34 percent of white men.

Now, here's the part that worries Obama. In 2012 the president won re-election despite his share of the white vote tumbling to 39 percent. How'd he do it? Whites made up only 72 percent of the electorate. Michael Dukakis had won exactly as much of the white vote as Obama, and look how he turned out. Twenty-four years of growing racial diversity and a black candidate at the head of the ticket worked wonders.

In 2014 the Democrats fret that the electorate will slip back to 2010 levels of diversity. They prevented a similar tumble in Virginia last year, but Virginia's now a stronger Democratic state than the ones where most competitive Senate races are taking place—Alaska, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Montana, North Carolina. (Democrats already expect to lose South Dakota and West Virginia, both states that have fallen out of the competitive range in presidential elections.)

Hence the voter ID laws reducing minority and college age turnout.  If there's another 2010-style turnout mix, the Republicans will not only win the Senate, but could very well get enough seats to surpass the 55 Democrats have now.  And the House?  Out of reach for the Dems for a generation.  Republicans with 250+ seats in the House?  You can throw away any shot at President Obama getting anything done.

The problem with the GOP blocking everything is that voters are giving up.  Republicans permanently blocking immigration reform is a perfect example.

Across the country, immigrant-rights advocates report mounting disillusionment with both parties among Latinos, enough to threaten recent gains in voting participation that have reshaped politics to Democrats’ advantage nationally, and in states like Colorado with significant Latino populations. High hopes — kindled by President Obama’s elections and stoked in June by Senate passage of the most significant overhaul of immigration law in a generation, with a path to citizenship for about 11 million people here unlawfully — have been all but dashed.

If black, Latino and Asian voters stay home on top of white voters giving up, 2014 will be, in the immortal words of Francis Underwood, "butchery".

Republicans Don't Know They've Lost On Obamacare

If the reaction Sunday of GOP Sen. John Barrasso is anything to go by, the GOP has no idea how to handle the news that Obamacare is working for millions of Americans.

Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) on Sunday dismissed the White House’s recent announcement that Obamacare enrollment had reached more than 6 million people, calling it a meaningless figure.

“I don’t think it means anything. … I think they’re cooking the books on this,” said Barrasso on “Fox News Sunday.”

Cooking the books.  Republicans will never believe a single American soul has been helped by Obamacare, except 9.5 million previously uninsured Americans have gotten coverage.  They exist, so Republicans are simply going to pretend they don't.

Steve Benen sums it up:

Even by GOP standards, this was a rather extraordinary moment. A member of the Senate Republican leadership – indeed, the chair of the Senate Republican Policy Committee – went on national television to accuse the White House of perpetrating a fraud based on nothing but his own hopes.

It’s hard to overstate how difficult it is to take Barrasso’s complaints seriously. For one thing, note the extent to which the far-right senator wants to have it both ways. When enrollment totals were low, Barrasso said the figures were very important. When enrollment totals surged, Barrasso said the figures don’t mean anything. At least some form of intellectual consistency would be a welcome change of pace, but it’s apparently in short supply.

For another, there’s literally no evidence to suggest the enrollment totals are illegitimate or have been “cooked” for political purposes. For a Senate leader to make such a reckless accusation out of frustration – a U.S. senator is apparently annoyed by American consumers gaining access to affordable medical care – is deeply irresponsible.

Nobody should be surprised by this, of course.  But this is where the Republican rhetoric has descended to, that of deeply hateful, stupid people.

StupidiNews!

• The US and Israel are discussing the release of convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard as part of a broader Mideast peace deal.
• St. Louis based Catholic healthcare firm Ascension Health is telling its physicians to no longer prescribe birth control medicine unless part of a hormonal therapy.
• Lawmakers from both parties on Capitol Hill say they will hold hearings to determine why automaker General Motors waited more than a decade to recall vehicles with faulty ignition switches.
• Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's salary in 2013 was $1 according to 2013 SEC filings, down from the half a million he took home as CEO in 2012.
• A California man has been sentenced to 14 years in prison for firing a laser pointer at an air rescue helicopter and later a police helicopter.

Last Call For All The Money

To recap, 2013 marked the fifth straight year of record US corporate profits.



But corporate taxes are too high and crushing business, and our economy is stalled out.  Or it could be that the rich are screwing us over at a record pace.  Corporate profits in the US have tripled since 2000.  Median real wage growth since 2000 for workers?  Flat, if not fallen. 




The American worker hasn't seen a dime from the these massive profits.  Now keep in mind that Republicans want to cut corporate taxes further to give corporations more profit.  They're not investing it in workers or wages or jobs, that's for damn sure.

So where's it going?





The top 1% account for about 40% of the wealth in this country, which is a terrible problem.  But that's misleading.  The bottom half of the top 1% account for only 7%.  The next 40% of that is about 11%.  But the top tenth of the one percent account for more than 21% of the wealth, and the top 1% of the one percent alone has 11% of the wealth of the entire US.  That share for the super-wealthy has doubled since 1998.

So the money is not going to anyone you know.  Not to your paycheck.  Certainly not to your schools or roads or water mains.  The rich are getting richer.  The rest of us are getting nothing.

But let's keep voting for Republicans who want to eliminate corporate taxes while telling us a rising tide floats all boats.  It floats yachts.  It drowns those who can't afford the damn boat.

Burned Out And Hungry

The United Nations has issued its first major report on global climate change since 2007, and the 2014 version is far more dire and feeding the world will only get worse as nations like the US and China continue to ignore the situation.

Global warming makes feeding the world harder and more expensive, a United Nations scientific panel said.

A warmer world will push food prices higher, trigger "hotspots of hunger" among the world's poorest people, and put the crunch on Western delights like fine wine and robust coffee, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded in a 32-volume report issued Monday.

"We're facing the specter of reduced yields in some of the key crops that feed humanity," panel chairman Rajendra Pachauri said in press conference releasing the report.

Even though heat and carbon dioxide are often considered good for plants, the overall effect of various aspects of man-made warming is that it will reduce food production compared to a world without global warming, the report said.

The last time the panel reported on the effects of warming in 2007, it said it was too early to tell whether climate change would increase or decrease food production, and many skeptics talked of a greening world. But in the past several years the scientific literature has been overwhelming in showing that climate change hurts food production, said Chris Field of the Carnegie Institution of Science and lead author of the climate report.

We've wasted another seven years since the last report and effectively done nothing thanks to the GOP and corporate America.  There's no reason to believe anything will improve in the future when nearly half of a major American political party doesn't believe the problem even exists (or in evolution, or the fact some Republican senators think that the Earth is only 6,000 years old for that matter).

So no, it's not going to get better as long as the anti-science wing of the GOP continues to wield outsized power.

A Strong Right Croissant

France's xenophobic (if not downright white supremacist) Front National party is making big gains in the countryside after Sunday's local elections.

Marine Le Pen, FN leader, said her party now has up to 1,200 municipal councillors.

“Today, we have clearly entered a new phase in our implantation (in national politics)," she said. "Today the Front National is shaking up the traditional duo of the Socialists and (centre-Right) UMP.”

Sunday's runoff round of voting came after a week that saw French unemployment surge to a new record - making a reverse of first-round losses by the Socialists unlikely, and a cabinet reshuffle by Mr Hollande possible as soon as Monday.

Some 80 per cent of the French want him to dismiss Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, according to a Harris Interactive poll this week, and Manuel Valls, the ambitious and tough-talking interior minister, is their favourite to replace him. Laurent Fabius, the foreign minister, is also seen a contender.

Final turnout last Sunday was 63.5 per cent - a record low for local elections in a country with a strong attachment to its mayors, who wield considerable power.

Dissatisfaction with Mr Hollande's tenure and a string of legal intrigues involving opposition conservatives were expected to dampen turnout. Next presidential and parliamentary elections are scheduled for 2017.

Hmm, record low turnout in regional elections leads to big gains for far-right wing nutjobs.

Now where have I read that story before?