Schroeder's party is out but it's not a sure thing that Merkel will be chancellor.

Not saying this is a bad thing or anything, but didn't our exit polls last November show Kerry winning?

She's winning on Schroeder's inability to right his country's moribund economy

If you're not employing what amounts to slave labor (ex. PRC) there's not any hard leftist governments presiding over economies anywhere that aren't "moribund".

One might think after 100+ years of abject failure the leftists would realize this.

"the little bastards betrayed us again" - HST

Tony, the lefties keep thinking that if they got more of your money, they'd fianlly be able to get it right.
Still it'd be nice to have a central european leader not be chanting "Death to America" every day.

the lefties keep thinking that if they got more of your money, they'd fianlly be able to get it right.

If it were "just money" they wanted a lot of people would probably go along -- those fucking rats want the soul of a nation too.

They want to turn us into a "dependency society" full of generalized incompetents incapable of fending for themselves, even in the most trivial manner, all across the spectrum of human activity.

Anyone with the slightest bit of self reliance is looked at suspiciously. Local ordinances are passed prohibiting people from doing simple maintenance work on their own houses and vehicles.

ex. I was doing the brakes on my car the other day (new rotors/pads and one new caliper) and a county code guy was driving by and stopped to tell me I wasn't supposed to do that.

I told him it was the difference between $230 in parts or $600 taking it to some repair shop ($1000 at a VW dealer). Apparently this one wasn't "fully assimilated into the hive" and understood that price delta was significant to most people. I caught no further grief about the brake job.

Tony - where is this place that won't let people work on their own vehicles?

Palm Beach county FL.

The ordinance is obviously ignored by many people...

Look at NJ - you can't pump your own gas in that retarded state. State law dictates an attendent pump it.

I should clarify - the ordinance isn't against working on your car per se, rather against doing it in your driveway.

I wonder what they'd say if I parked it on the lawn rather than in the driveway?

Mind you - this is a county govt (democrat dominated of course) that has been whining a LOT lately about the high cost of housing and how it impacts workers like teachers, cops, clerks, etc who aren't making megabucks. Yet they do all in their power to compel those same lower earners to SPEND MORE MONEY by passing facist ordinances like this.

Its not like I was taking in repair work and there was a dozen cars littering the yard and engine blocks being used as planters.

Tony, the lefties keep thinking that if they got more of your money, they'd fianlly be able to get it right.

Laissez le bon temps rouler!

This election is actually WORSE than if the weasel had received more votes.

The only 'good' news is the relative strength of the small Free Democrats who seem to have done better than expected.

The useless 'Greens' held their votes, and a new variety of leftist loon in the form of the 'left party' picked up 7% of the votes,probably from Schroeder.

There is no way that this can be considered a 'good' result. Not by Germans and certainly not by the US. It won't promote economic reform and Germany will still be a hotbed of anti-Americanism.

I would be interested to see the results broken down by geographic segment, as I suspect they reveal a growing East-West divergence in attitudes,as the East continues to hang like an albatross around the neck of the relatively wealthy Western areas.

There is no way that this can be considered a 'good' result. Not by Germans and certainly not by the US. It won't promote economic reform and Germany will still be a hotbed of anti-Americanism

This is good though - it means we can still laugh at their ineptness and double digit unemployment rates for many years to come.

If nothing else, a bunch of lefties running a govt always provide good comic relief and perspective on how truly bad things would be in the US if democrats were ever in power again.

"Still it'd be nice to have a central european leader not be chanting "Death to America" every day. "

Poland? The Czech Republic? I really think they should be counted as part of Central Europe these days, as they were historically before the Iron Curtain artificially divided Central Europe.

Holy shite!
The new German Pope is paying dividends already.

Am I the first to make this connection?
Huh? Huh?