German federal election (September 18, 2005)

[Bono]

Part of the problem is, that the NPD doesn´t care whether people who have sex are married or not, for example, as long both are of the same race.

LOL

[Bono]

'Specially since she wasn't.

LOL

[Bono]

Could there possibly be a CDU-FDP-Green coalition?

[Bono]

 

So, in the case that CDU/CSU and FDP won't have a majority this sunday anarchy will either become our new official form of government

pweese

[Bono]

I totally saw this coming.

[Bono]

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Could there possibly be a CDU-FDP-Green coalition?

So, am I a visionary or not?

[Bono]

I have a question.
Asides from some babble about fiscality and labor laws, did CDU have anything that at least resembled a reformist program?
Or is it just a coincidence that the party that actually came forward with strong reform proposals(FDP) got one of their best results in the late years?

[Bono]

Merkel is going to be chancellor.
Norbert Lammert (CDU) is going to be Bundestagspräsident (comparable to the British speaker.)
Schröder will apparently retire.
There are going to be 8 SPD and 6 CDU and CSU ministers.

SPD - Foreign affairs (loses some European competences), Employment (three year experiment of employment and economy ministries fusion is over), Finance, Justice, Environment, Transportation (also the closest thing to an East Germany department), Health, International Development.
CDU or CSU - Defense, Home, Economy (enlarged with some Euro competences, reserved for Stoiber), Agriculture (that will once again be its name ), Education (the federal German education department is about as powerless as the US one, in case you wondered), and that catch-all Families/Women/Youth one.

And they've already fleshed that much out before they're beginning official negotiations!
These are o/c going to take another while.
Oh, and in the end, party conventions will have to vote on the result. This is a formality in the CDU and CSU and might prove interesting in the SPD (though it'll pass...but, say, 60% to 70% yes votes would of course be seen as a vote of no confidence into the result...). I'd also like to see just how many votes Merkel will be missing in the official chancellor election.

So, waht happens to wittle Guido?

[Bono]

Nominal leader of the opposition?
Oh wait, that's Wolfgang Gerhardt.

Whozzat?

[Bono]

Pff, status quo.
I hope this coalition falls in shame and disgrace.

[Bono]

Yeah, together with the Vice Chancellery, Müntefering will also take over the office of the Minister of Labor. And with Frank-Walter Steinmeier we will have a foreign minister nobody ever heard of... neither abroad nor at home.

Only three members of the old Schröder cabinet, Brigitte Zypries (Justice), Ulla Schmidt (Health), and Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul ("Economic Cooperation and Development", in other words: foreign aid) will keep their posts. The rest are new faces. Of those three, Wieczorek-Zeul will be the only minister left from the original Schröder cabinet (which took office in 1998).

Go Red Heidi! Both she and Zypries are South Hessians after all.
Steinmeier has been a close Schröder aide all these years. I'll admit his nomination as Foreign Minister is a bit surprising to me. It will also be a bit disappointing to WMS et al.
 
Finance - former NRW PM Peer Steinbrück. Dull. Old Right. Would have very much been the CDU's choice for vice chancellor. 58 years old, a state minister for the economy from 93 to 00 and for finance from 2000 to 2002 when he took over as PM. Voted out of office a couple months back.
 
Employment - Franz Müntefering. Also to be Vice Chancellor, but unlikely to ever be the chancellor candidate. He's already 60. Party chairman (will he stay on in that position as well? Not sure. Schröder might take over again, actually.) Leader of the Parliamentary Party from 2001 to 05. Was Minister for Transportation 98-99, then General Secretary of the SPD until 2001 IIRC. And I think he used to be a minister in North Rhine Westphalia before 1998.
Foreign: Frank-Walter Steinmeier, 49 years old. Was Kanzleramtsminister (under secretary at the chancellor's office? Groping for an accurate translation into Americanospeech here...maybe just go with Chief of Staff. Not accurate but will do. ) throughout the Schröder years.
Justice: Brigitte Zypries
International Development: Heidi Wieczorek-Zeul
Health: Ulla Schmidt. All of them staying on in their former posts, held since 2000, 1998, and 2000 (? Anyways, since the year of the Mad Cow Disease panic)
Transportation: Once again goes to an Easterner, Leipzig's Lord Mayor Wolfgang Tiefensee. He'd been offered the job in 2002 but declined. He'd also been asked to run for state PM of Saxony last year, but declined. Well, seems he's finally listened to the sirens' call...
Environment: Sigmar Gabriel, 46. State PM of Lower Saxony from 99 to 03 (youngest state PM ever at the time). I'm glad they've found a place for Gabriel, but not glad it's environment. I was hoping for Michael Müller at environment you see...
Peter Struck, Minister of Defense from 2001 to 2005, Leader of the Parliamentary Party before that since 98 (when his election was seen as rather a surprise) will likely return to that job.

CDU ministers supposed to be named monday. Given that *official* negotiations have hardly begun, I find all of this dreadfully early. On the part of the SPD, I suppose there's some tactical calculations too. Anybody happy with the choice of ministers has a reason more to be in favor of the government actually coming into place.

So, SDP takes all the ministires that would be needed for actual reforms?
I can gather that this will be nothing than the continuation of SDP politics by other means.

[Bono]

The grand coalition will be a failure. No doubt on it.

^^^^

[Bono]

I'm told they're going to put sales taxes up... is this serious or some sort of sick joke?

Both.

Funny thing is that it's the CDu that's gonna get blamed, even though the SDP controls all important minitries.