Uppity In Your Face

My, how time flies. It’s been two months now. Talk about the tail wagging the dog.

SPD

Time for new elections, I’d say.

The SPD got 25.7% of votes compared with Mrs Merkel’s 41.5%. Mrs Merkel’s supporters are growing frustrated…

The bizarre situation has arisen because Mrs Merkel, her strong showing notwithstanding, fell just short of a majority of seats…

Mr Gabriel made another concession to the SPD’s left wing: a formal resolution on November 14th to be open in future to coalition talks with Die Linke. The two “red” parties used to detest each other, Die Linke considering the SPD sell-outs to capitalism and the SPD viewing Die Linke as a chaotic troupe of Marxists nostalgic for East Germany and dangerously hostile to NATO and America. Now, however, there is speculation that the SPD could break a coalition with Mrs Merkel in mid-term and go on to form an all-left government, unprecedented at the national level, dubbed “R2G” for red-red-green.

Just get it over with already, already, and call for a new election. They’ll never stop wasting your time otherwise.

The most important country in the European Union is thus being run by a caretaker cabinet, unable to take important decisions.

Speaking Of Bad Hair

And just when you thought that this might maybe truly and honestly be the last time any of us would ever have to see or hear anything more of Claudia Roth again…

Roth

Denkste (not a bit of it)! She just got the office of Deputy Presiding Officer of German Parliament “thrown at her” and something deep down inside of me (causing me a whole lot of indigestion) tells me that she’s going to take it.

We’ll see. Die Hoffnung stirbt zuletzt (hope dies last), you know.

Wer meinte, endlich Ruhe vor Claudia Roths mitteilsamer Betroffenheit über so ziemlich alle Missstände dieser Welt zu haben, hat sich zu früh gefreut.

PS: And not much of a surprise here, I guess. Germany’s Greens ruled out any further coalition talks with Angela Merkel’s conservatives early on Wednesday, leaving the chancellor to focus on discussions with the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) in her efforts to form a new government.

At Least It Wasn’t The NSA

The Unification Day celebrations are now officially over. Red-Red-Green coalition talks anyone?

STASI

Well what do you know? It turns out that the chief executive secretary of the Left Party in the Bundestag was a “top agent” of the Stasi. Sachen gibt’s die gibt’s gar nicht (what will they think up next?).

Left Party boss Gregor Gysi is absolutely shocked, of course, and just cannot understand how a person like that could infiltrate a political party like his.

But at least Left Party members are able to take solace in the fact that said agent was clearly not an insidious agent of North American imperialism (excluding Canada) and a rotten capitalistic scumbag opertive working for that reactionary bourgeois NSA spy system so in the news and up in our faces these days but rather an easy-going and progressive comrade type who was not at all forced to work for a quaint totalitarian state once located in the immediate vicinity but then inexplicably disappeared and was only trying to make the world a more, you know, social place to live

Schwerer Schlag für die Linke: Die Geschäftsführerin der Fraktion im Bundestag, Ruth Kampa, war offenbar eine Top-Agentin der Stasi. Fraktionschef Gysi will davon nichts gewusst haben.

No Berlin Wall Here

Not unless you look at how Berliners vote, that is.

Berlin

There was no great cross-border migration in the city after 1989. People had security of tenure in their flats, and they stayed put. Berlin had a large concentration of members of the Socialist Unity Party (as the communist party in East Germany was called), as well as the civil servants and Stasi operatives who kept the communist state running, and they have remained in their areas and transferred their loyalty to Die Linke.

PS: Speaking of cross-border migration, whatever happened to Ray? You know, that Dutch dude who ripped off Berlin’s youth services for 30,000 euros while doing his memory loss show for months on end? Well, he just got slammed with all the Härte (severity) of German law and will now have to perform 150 hours of community work AND receive counseling. Yowie. Let me tell you what. The Germans do NOT mess around when it comes to dishing out draconic punishment.

Mummy Not Mummy

You got your real live German “Mummy” (Mutti).

Mummy 1

Then you got your el cheapo 2,000-year-old German plastic dummy “Mummy” somebody found in an attic in a place called Diepholz.

Mummy 2

Both have caused an overnight sensation, however. Sort of. Only the “The Mummy of Diepholz” is a fake while Mummy is the real thing. Although… Come to think of it, she hasn’t actually been unwrapped and x-rayed by scientists yet.

“I believe that my father brought this box from a trip to Africa.”

Inconvenient Truths

Greens

No, not just the one about top German Green party leaders having to resign after seeing their party’s vote drop to 8.4 percent under their leadership (from 10.7 percent in 2009).

Climate

There is also the one that climatologists are going to have to face – according to the Spiegel, of all places – about the data showing how global temperatures just aren’t rising the way they had so alarmingly and repeatedly predicted they would.

This is a dilemma. Or another moment of inconvenient truth? I guess the question now is how the Greens and the climatologists are going to get together and manage to kick-start the fear and get it reved up again. Or what other options could they possibly have?

The number of people who believe in such a coming apocalypse, however, has considerably decreased. A survey conducted on behalf of SPIEGEL found a dramatic shift in public opinion — Germans are losing their fear of climate change. While in 2006 a sizeable majority of 62 percent expressed a fear of global warning, that number has now become a minority of just 39 percent.

PS: It must be hard to be cool and smug and still get whooped bad by  a dull, frumpy and uncharismatic “Swabian houswife.”

FDP R.I.P. Greens With Envy.

FDP

With 4.8 percent, the FDP was well below the 5 percent needed to enter parliament, and 10 percent below their showing in 2009. For the first time since 1949, the liberals will not be represented nationally.

Greens

The Greens took 8.4% of the vote, enough to win representation in parliament, the Bundestag, but too little to form its preferred coalition with the Social Democratic Party, which won 25.7%.

“The FDP is tough. They have a deep history. They have representatives all over the country, including in the municipalities. They are deeply anchored in society, in the public – so it’s not yet the end of the FDP.”

Nach der Schlappe bei der Bundestagswahl will der Vorstand der Grünen geschlossen abtreten. Volker Beck zieht sich als Parlamentarischer Geschäftsführer zurück.

Now Get Out There And Vote!

Bierleiche

German of the day: Bierleiche. This means “beer corpse.” You know, when one of those thirteen beers was bad?

Eineinhalb Stunden nach Beginn des Oktoberfests in München ist die erste Patientin mit Alkoholvergiftung in der Wiesn-Sanitätsstation gelandet – angeblich nach nur einem Bier. Normalerweise kommen die ersten Patienten aber schon früher.

I Got Your Center-Right For You Right Here

Merkel

Although it might as well be a center-left. Um, is there even a difference between the two in Germany anymore?

Two days before the vote, a survey by Forsa for private broadcaster RTL showed Merkel’s conservatives — the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its sister Bavarian party the Christian Social Union (CSU) — 14 points ahead of the SPD, meaning she will almost surely return for a third term.

But her combined center-right bloc, which includes the business-friendly Free Democrats (FDP), was in a dead heat with left-leaning opposition parties, with both camps on 45 percent.

That makes the election in Europe’s largest economy too close to call.

“I still don’t know who I’m going to vote for.”

Creepy Northhampton Clown Identified

Grusel

In Berlin of all places.

Clown

The Northampton Clown, who spooked residents with a series of freaky night time appearances, has said that he never wanted to scare anyone with his antics.

The figure, who made global headlines when he was spotted in full clown attire on Friday 13, has said that he “just wanted to amuse people.”

“Wie bei einem Horrorfilm.”