Rocket Science This Ain’t

September 24, 2017 By Hermann Observer in Hard Facts, Helections, Helplessness, Higher Education, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings Tags: AfD, Alexander Gauland, Angela Merkel, CDU, Elections, German, Germans, Germany, Media, Political correctness 1 Comment

Wow, I’m so thankful that somebody finally cleared this up for all of us.

German far-right leader says Merkel’s refugee policy enabled his party’s rise.

Well I guess we’ll know more about this development later on today.

Washington Post: You were for decades a member of [Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union]. As far as you’re concerned, did you leave the CDU or did the CDU leave you?

Alexander Gauland: Angela Merkel changed the CDU from a party that had convictions to a party that’s an empty balloon. There’s nothing in it any longer. A lot of decisions of Angela Merkel — transitioning to renewable energy, refugees, changing of the military from conscription to volunteer — ran opposite to what we called in former times “the soul of the CDU.”

Washington Post: Do you find that Germany is more divided now than it has been in previous years?

Alexander Gauland: Yes. It is more divided now. Because in the beginning of the refugee crisis, all media and all politicians were for refugees. The people who didn’t like this very much didn’t find their opinion in the media. And they couldn’t discuss their fear about what was going on in Germany. And that did divide the German society into the people who want to help [refugees] and the other ones who said we have enough problems in this country.

Das Ende der Bundesrepublik

“The Slow Death Of Europe’s Social Democrats?”

September 22, 2017 By Hermann Observer in Helections, Helplessness, Hideology, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings Tags: Elections, Europe, German, Germans, Germany, Social Democracy, Socialism, SPD Leave a comment

How ya figure? They’ve been dead for years already, Spiegel Online. Don’t any of you over there ever read the papers?

I would even ALMOST venture to say that it’s ALMOST time for a social democratic walking dead rennaisance. But the key word here is ALMOST. It won’t be anytime soon. They’re going to get annihilated in this election on Sunday. Again.

In 2000, social democrats or socialists were part of the government in 10 out of the 15 countries that made up the European Union at the time. These days, though, the picture is a drastically different one. There is a real chance that German Social Democrats will no longer be part of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition following Sunday’s vote and the same could happen in Italy after voters there go to the polls next spring. Were that to happen, center-left parties would only be part of six EU governments out of 28 member states, all of them on the European periphery: Malta, Portugal, Romania, Sweden, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

If I Had A Vision I’d Go See My Doctor

September 21, 2017 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helections, Helplessness, Home Cooking, Humor Tags: Angela Merkel, CDU, Elections, German, Germans, Germany, Language, Politics, Refugees 3 Comments

Die Mitte (the middle) is where it’s at, folks. Well it’s certainly where I’m at. And you can’t have visions from here in the middle. I mean, I may not always know what I stand for but I always know where I’m standing..

And that’s what Germans want, the middle. The middle of the middle, even. The middler the better. No meddling with the middle. We’re right in the middle of an election campaign, after all. Did you know that Mittelmaß (literally “the middle measure”) means mediocrity in German?

Sure, there was a little Abweichung (deviation) from the middle with that batshit crazy refugee number of mine. Quite a big deviation, actually. But I apologized. Sort of. And now I’m back home, smack dab in the middle of where you want me to be. Just call me. Mutti. Mutti in the middle.

See you on Sunday!

Perhaps the closest she came to setting out a vision was a year ago, as she presented this year’s budget in parliament. Germany, she said, has seen a lot of change since World War II, and “change isn’t a bad thing.” But she also vowed to defend the status quo in the broadest sense of the term: “Germany will remain Germany, with all that we love and hold dear about it.”

“Whoever has visions should go see a doctor.”
– Helmut Schmidt

German Of The Day: Nichtwähler

September 17, 2017 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Helections, Helplessness, Hideology, Higher Education, Home Cooking Tags: AfD, Die Partei, Elections, German, Germans, Germany, Language, Political Parties, Satire, Voting 2 Comments

That means non-voters.

And who do German non-voters vote for? Die Partei, of course.

Twelve straight years of Angela Merkel have left politics feeling a little dry for young people in Germany. But now a satirical party is experiencing a surge in popularity after it was set up as a joke at the expense of the old system…

In the last few months the party has seen its membership swell to reach more than 25,000, just shy of the 26,000 members of the rising and much-publicised extreme-right party Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD), which is expected to enter parliament for the first time this year.

Nichtwähler wählen: Die Partei.

First, Split Your Vote

September 15, 2017 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Helections, Home Cooking Tags: Elections, German, Germans, Germany, Voting Leave a comment

Then overhang it on a balance seat. That’s how Germans vote, folks. And they smirk at our electoral college? Of course we do, too when we lose. But still. No wonder they can’t vote Merkel out of office. Es ist einfach kompliziert. It’s simply complicated.

How are seats calculated in the Bundestag?

The system starts to get complicated when Germans split their votes, meaning they vote for a candidate from one party in the first vote and for a different political party in their second vote. That can throw off the balance of seats in parliament so that one party is more strongly represented than they should be based on the results of the proportionate second votes.

So Germans created “overhang” and “balance seats.” Those are extra seats in the Bundestag that ensure every candidate who was directly elected gets a seat while political parties are still proportionally represented based on the number of votes they received. A German state’s population is taken into consideration when votes are converted into seats.

After Germany’s 2013 parliamentary elections, there were 631 seats in the Bundestag, including 33 overhang and balance seats.

German Of The Day: PARTEI

September 11, 2017 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Helections, High Art, Higher Education, Home Cooking, Humor Tags: Elections, German, Germans, Germany, Language, Political Parties, Satire, The Party Leave a comment

PARTEI officially stands for “Partei für Arbeit, Rechtsstaat, Tierschutz, Elitenförderung und basisdemokratische Initiative,” or “Work, Rule of Law, Animal Protection, Elite Promotion, and grass-roots democratic Initiative.”

Finally, a political party for the rest of us. I mean, you.

“If it doesn’t matter to you who sits in the Bundestag, wouldn’t it be great to be represented by someone who could care less that he does sit there?”

What I like about a satirical party like the Party is that its meaninglessness, as compared to the meaninglessness of a number of serious political parties here, has a meaning.

As for its campaign goals, Die Partei’s election manifesto is replete with meaningless political platitudes pushed to the edge of absurdity: “Die Partei supports the implementation of all-encompassing, universal, total justice, at least twice as much justice as the SPD (Social Democratic Party). Any complaints about supposed injustices will be suppressed with the utmost force.”

„Wenn es dir egal ist, wer im Bundestag sitzt, wäre es dann nicht schön von jemandem vertreten zu werden, dem es egal ist, dass er im Bundestag sitzt?“

The Anti-War Is Over (If You Want It)

September 10, 2017 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Helections, Helplessness, Home Cooking Tags: Anti-War Protests, Demonstrations, German, Germans, Germany, Ramstein 1 Comment

I certainly want it. Remember these guys? They travelled here in a DeLorean from the 1980s. A DeLorean station wagen or something.

They materialized again in front of Ramstein Air Base for an anti-war protest rally protest. US-Amerikan warmongering is warmongering again or something. I honestly had no idea. Hey, it’s election time in Germany again but I’m not sure which party is supposed to be getting the votes here. The Marxist-John-Lennonist-68-Internatinal-Front?

Zuletzt hatte die bundesweite Kampagne die Atomkrieg-Drohungen von US-Präsident Donald Trump gegen Nordkorea scharf kritisiert. Sie forderte die Bundesregierung auf, “öffentlich den USA jede Unterstützung für ihre Kriegsvorbereitung zu verweigern”.

Must Have Been The Reds

September 7, 2017 By Hermann Observer in Helections, Helplessness, Humor Tags: Angela Merkel, Elections, Germany, Puns, Tomatoes Leave a comment

Who threw those tomatoes at Angela Merkel, I mean.

They were probably just trying to catsup in the polls.

“Well, whoever did it,” one guy said. “I love you from my head tomatoes.”

Lettuce pray that doesn’t happen again.

German police say they’re investigating who threw two tomatoes at Chancellor Angela Merkel during an election campaign event in the southwestern city of Heidelberg. Police spokesman David Faulhaber told The Associated Press on Wednesday the tomatoes came from a group of hecklers on the sidelines. Witnesses Tuesday said they had been yelling things like “hypocrite” and “traitor to the people” in apparent criticism of Merkel’s migrant policies.

PS: What’s red and invisible? No tomatoes.

Plague Beats Cholera

September 4, 2017 By Hermann Observer in Helections, Helplessness, Home Cooking Tags: Debates, Elections, German, Germans, Germany, Merkel, Schultz, TV 4 Comments

That was a debate? I’d say that’s debatable.

Aren’t these two the heads of the parties that form the current coaltion government in Germany? What on earth are two people who are condemmed to agree about everything they do going to debate about? That’s right. Nothing. And that’s what we got last night. A whole lot of it.

German of the day: Schnarch. That means snore.

The leaders of Germany’s two biggest parties went head to head on TV for the only time ahead of the September 24 vote. Merkel and Schulz sparred on topics ranging from migration to foreign policy.

Maybe The Taliban Could Run For Election Here, Too

September 3, 2017 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helections, Helplessness, Hideology, Home Cooking, Horror, Humor, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy Tags: Berlin, Elections, German, Germans, Germany, MLPD, PFLP, Terror, Terrorists Leave a comment

The German election system certainly is a transparent one. It is easy for anyone here who is interested to see, for instance, that Germany’s Bundeswahlleiter (Federal Election Commissioner), whoever that might be, has one hell of a sense of humor.

He/she has allowed the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), an Iran-backed terror group, to campaign as a political party in this month’s parliamentary election. The punch line, I guess, or one of them, is that the PFLP plans to run with the Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany.

No one here is interested, however. Why should they be? The PFLP is just another one of those boring, everyday German political parties that puts everybody asleep. Sure, it’s been linked to numerous terror incidents and killings and all that but it’s not like it’s the AfD or anything.

Die MLPD betreibt jetzt Wahlkampf als internationalistische Liste/MLPD, unter anderem mit der palästinensischen Terrororganisation PFLP, die durch Anschläge bekannt wurde.

Observing Hermann

“Was interessiert mich mein Geschwätz von gestern?”

Category Archives: Helections