What A Horrifying Thought

May 23, 2019 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helections, Helplessness, Higher Education, Home Cooking, Hostility, Hurt Feelings Tags: AfD, EU, EU-scepticism, European elections, European Parliament, Euroscepticism, France, Germany, Italy, Matteo Salvini, Netherlands 1 Comment

I shudder to think of what could happen to Europe after this weekend’s big European Parliament elections. I mean, should the people actually choose to vote for parties that would, gulp, “elevate the sovereignty and economic interests of individual member-states over the collective interests of the EU.”

The horror.

Salvini, who’s framed himself the de facto leader of this coalition, has embraced the slogan “Towards a Common Sense Europe.” Besides Le Pen’s National Rally and Wilders’s Party for Freedom, other far-right parties have joined the cause, including Germany’s Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) and Austria’s (currently scandal plagued) Freedom Party. Broadly, these leaders want to curtail immigration. They may want to reorient the EU’s priorities on the global stage, too.

But, mostly, they want to elevate the sovereignty and economic interests of individual member-states over the collective interests of the EU.

“There are no extremists, racists, or fascists in this square. Here you won’t find the far-right, but the politics of good sense. The extremists are those who have governed Europe for the past 20 years.”

PS: Isn’t that picture they chose to use for the article brilliant? No suggestive images here, folks.

Oh Great And Powerful Wahl-O-Mat…

May 21, 2019 By Hermann Observer in Habeas Corpus, Habitudes, Helections, Helplessness, Home Cooking, Humor, Hurt Feelings Tags: Elections, European elections, German, Germans, Germany, Political Parties, Voting, Wahl-O-Mat 3 Comments

Tell me who to vote for. But computer says no!

It’s odd. Germans seem to really love this goofy computer program that tells them how to vote. Now they’re upset because a German court has shut it down (temporarily?) because smaller parties feel they are at a great disadvantage here (which they are anyway because they are smaller parties). The “Vote-O-Mat” only allows the user to select up to eight parties for comparison purposes and this hurts the really tiny and the really wacko ones.

And this before the big European elections next week! OMG who’s going to tell me who to vote for now?

Das Gericht begründete den Schritt damit, dass man auf der Seite seine politischen Auffassungen nur mit dem Programm von bis zu acht Parteien abgleichen könne. Das sei eine Benachteiligung kleinerer und unbekannterer Parteien.

Data Privacy, Data Privacy Data Privacy…

May 20, 2019 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helections, Helplessness, Hideology, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Austria, Data Privacy, Data Protection, FPÖ, German, Germans, Germany, Heinz-Christian Strache, Political Parties, Politicians Leave a comment

That’s how the mantra goes. Unless, of course, it’s about the data privacy of a BAD Austrian nationalist, right?

No outrage about this blatant breach of data protection here in Germany, at any rate. Normally they’d be out in the streets about something like this.

A German data protection agency has suggested German media outlets were wrong to publish video that exposed Heinz-Christian Strache’s allegedly corrupt intentions.

News agencies violated privacy rights by publishing a secretly filmed recording of the now-former vice-chancellor of Austria, an official German data protection agency claimed on Sunday.

Stefan Brink, who heads the Data Protection and Freedom of Information agency in the German region of Baden-Württemberg, believes the tape of Heinz-Christian Strache has far-reaching negative repercussions.

“If we cheat political opponents, violate their privacy and even commit criminal wrongdoing, we ultimately harm our political culture and us all.”

Germans Are Just Crazy About The EU

April 24, 2019 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helections, Helplessness, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings Tags: Apathy, Elections, EU, German, Germans, Germany, Manfred Weber, Polls, Surveys Leave a comment

Or at least that’s the impression you get consuming the media reports here.

Manfred

In reality, however, nobody really knows what it is or how it works, much less who to vote for. Not even when a German is running for European Commission president in the upcoming election.

Only around one in four Germans (26 percent) knows who Manfred Weber is, just a month ahead of a European election he hopes will help propel him to being the next European Commission president.

But Weber, the lead candidate for the European People’s Party (EPP), is not alone in having a relatively low profile on the domestic political scene. According to a YouGov poll commissioned by dpa, 45 percent of Germans do not know any of the nine leading party candidates for the European Parliament election.

Stop The Presses!

March 26, 2019 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helections, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy Tags: German, Germans, Germany, History, Industry, Nazi Germany, Nazis 2 Comments

(Do they even have presses anymore?) This just in, folks: Some German industrial dynasties have a Nazi past!

Holy freakin’ Scheiße! Once this leaks it’s going to ruin the reputation of all the other German industrial dynasties out there. With a Nazi past, I mean. You know, like every single German industrial dynasty that exists? Without exception?

I’m shocked. And stunned. Just like those dynastists in this particular German industrial dynasty who just found out about it themselves. For, like, the very first time. Honest.

A German industrial dynasty with big stakes in various international brands has admitted brutality towards slave labourers during Nazi rule.

A partner in JAB Holding, Peter Harf, said the Reimann family was shocked by links to Nazi abuses, discovered by the Bild am Sonntag newspaper in archives.

“We were ashamed and turned white. You cannot gloss over any of that. Those crimes are abhorrent.”

Like Rats Leaving A Sinking Ship

March 20, 2019 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helections, Hideology, Humor, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: German, Germans, Germany, Greed, Hypocrisy, Losers, Political Parties, Politicians, Social Democracy, Socialists, SPD, Thorsten Schäfer-Gümbel 1 Comment

Only the ship already sank and the rats are all wet. In more ways than one.

Sometimes you’ve got to lose in life to get ahead. Like three times in a row. As did the SPD‘s top candidate for the elections in Hesse, Thorsten Schäfer-Gümbel, before landing this way cool cushy job as Personalvorstand bei der staatseigenen Gesellschaft für internationale Zusammenarbeit (GiZ) – the Human Resources Director at the State-Owned Company for International Cooperation – yesterday. For 200,000 euros a year.

Now that’s the kind of Social Democracy I can live with, pal. And hey; without losers, where would the winners be?

KÜNFTIG RUND 200 000 EURO JAHRESGEHALT FÜR PARTEI-VIZE SCHÄFER-GÜMBEL. Spitzenjob als Belohnung für SPD-Wahlverlierer!

Why Not?

March 8, 2019 By Hermann Observer in Hard Facts, Helections, Helplessness, Hideology, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings Tags: Angela Merkel, CDU, Chancellor, Gender, International Women's Day, Migrants, Migration, Muslims, Political Parties, Politicians, Women Leave a comment

She would certainly take uncontrolled migration more seriously than the current chancellor does.

A Muslim as German chancellor? CDU leader slammed for saying ‘why not’

The party of Chancellor Angela Merkel has been roiled by a debate about whether a Muslim could lead the CDU and one day become chancellor. One lawmaker couldn’t believe anyone would even suggest such a thing.

“Why not, if they’re a good politician, and they represent our values and our political views?”

PS: Happy International Women’s Day!

How Do You Reboot Something That Was Never Running In The First Place?

February 24, 2019 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Helections, Helplessness, Hideology, Hypocrisy Tags: EU, European Union, German, Germans, Germany, Leftists, Political Parties, Reform, Socialists, The Left Party Leave a comment

Germany: Left Party calls for EU ‘reboot’ at party convention.

Germany’s socialist party has presented a fundamental EU reform agenda at their convention in the western city of Bonn. Members decided against calling for the creation of a “European Republic” in the manifesto.

Now get this: They want to make the EU more “international” than it already is. International is why the EU isn’t working in the first place. Take their international EU border, for example. Their international currency (think Greece vs. Germany) really rocks, too. To name just a few structurally international shortcomings, I mean.

The one thing that could make something like the EU work is the one thing that all agree must never be mentioned, much less ever put into practice: A federation of sovereign, national states. No, the Eurocrats prefer, insist upon fixing and re-fixing and rebooting again and again and again…

“Our vision is anchored in a solidarity-based internationalism. Together with other left-wing parties, we stand for a fundamental change of policy in the European Union.”

German Of The Day: Grenzschließung

February 12, 2019 By Hermann Observer in Habeas Corpus, Hard Facts, Helections, Helplessness, Hideology, Higher Education, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings Tags: AfD, Angela Merkel, Borders, CDU, German, Germans, Germany, Immigration, Language, Migrant Crisis, Migrants, Political Parties, SPD 2 Comments

That means border closure.

Damn. Maybe Mini-MErkel isn’t so Mini-MErkel after all.

Much like the SPD desperately trying to get back the people who used to vote for them with yesterday’s Hartz IV shenanigans, Germany’s CDU 2.0 (can we call it post-Merkel yet?) is fighting to get back the voters who abandoned them in droves after Angela Merkel’s bat shit crazy migrant fiasco of 2015. Boss lady Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer has made it clear that this can and will never happen again – without pointing fingers or naming any names, of course – and has even said that her party would be prepared shut down German borders (no, really, they have borders, too) should it ever be necessary.

Odd. These are stands that the pure evil of evilness AfD has been taking from the start (that’s were the CDU voters ran off to). Now the CDU is acting as though they just figured this out all by themselves. Better late than never, I guess.

„Wir haben gesagt, als Ultima Ratio wäre das durchaus auch denkbar.”

German Of The Day: Antidemokratisch

February 3, 2019 By Hermann Observer in Hard Facts, Helections, Helplessness, Hideology, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy Tags: Bundestag, German, Germans, Germany, Language, Parliament, Politicians, Quotas, Women Leave a comment

That means antidemocratic.

Women in Germany won the right to vote in 1918, but a century later they still do not enjoy equal representation. Though the country is led by a woman — who will, most likely, be succeeded by another woman — fewer than a third of the members of the federal Parliament, the Bundestag, are female.

That’s why leading figures from all major German parties are now calling for parity: a 50-50 quota for male and female representatives in the Bundestag and the 16 state-level Parliaments. But is achieving a gender balance in Germany’s legislatures worth weakening another hard-fought accomplishment, the right to free electoral choice?

In a word, no.

Der gute Zweck heiligt nicht den Zwang.

Observing Hermann

“Was interessiert mich mein Geschwätz von gestern?”

Category Archives: Helections