Meet your next president...I hear he has a PHD.
Posted on 09/18/2005 12:12:37 AM PDT by alessandrofiaschi
Voting began in Germany's closely fought election today with millions of undecided voters holding the key to a result that will have major implications for economic reform in Europe.
Angela Merkel, a Christian Democrat (CDU) chancellor, is expected to emerge as Germany's first woman chancellor, displacing Gerhard Schroeder who has led Germany for the past seven years at the head of a centre-left government of Social Democrats and Greens.
A provisional result is expected to be announced in the early hours of Monday morning. The final opinion polls published on Friday gave Merkel's centre-right coalition with the liberal Free Democrats (FDP) a slim lead in a race it once dominated.
High stakes For Germany and the rest of Europe, the stakes in the election are high. Some five million Germans are out of work, the country's pensions system is in crisis, its public finances are overstretched and the economy that once drove growth in Europe is now acting as a drag on the rest of the continent.
Analysts say that if Germany succeeds in pushing through reforms, they could be a model for change in the rest of Europe. Surveys show that most Germans believe the system needs changing but they are deeply uncertain about how far the changes should go and how the burden should be shared.
Schroeder's own "Agenda 2010" reforms to welfare and labour market rules have been the most ambitious attempt to overhaul the social security system in decades. They have been attacked by the conservatives and by some commentators as not going far enough. The reforms were bitterly resented by voters. - Reuters
their = there.
What time, US, will any voting results be released?
To quote my post from the other thread:
"In Germany polls traditionally close at 18.00 aka 6pm local time (central european summer time) - that should be 9am pacific (daylight saving) time, 10 am mountain time, 11am central time and exactly noon eastern time.
That is also the time when there will be the first predictions as to who has won. A somewhat reliable prognosis of the outcome should be expected around 8pm local time - two hours later, except when the race is to close to call."
Meet your next president...I hear he has a PHD.
Thanks, and good luck.
She looks so funny. I LOVE HER!
Do you have any results?
I'm hanging on this one also for the results
Thanks for the ping!
I will add a link with Election results, as soon as possibile. Have fun!
Thanks, allesandro.
Here's the latest article posted on cnn's site concerning the German elections:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/09/17/germany.election/index.html
It's ridiculously biased towards Schroeder whom CNN proudly refers to as the "Comeback Kid of German politics." Also, CNN does their utmost best to minimize Merkel's 6 point lead in the polls describing it as "marginal." I'm sure if Schroeder were leading by 6 points they would label that "solid."
Germany, conscription, and expiditionary forces ...
A big reason why Germany is unable to sustain an large expiditionary force is because of its reliance on conscription.
People generally support a draft for the purpose of national defense, but, how sending troops abroad connects to national defense is not clear to many people. Conscription, therefore, is inconsistent with a democracy deploying expiditionary forces.
In addition, because of the heavy cost of training and equipping a modern army, conscript armies are ineffective and costly. We showed in Iraq that a relatively small, well-trained, well-equipped, and well-led army, supported by intelligence, air and naval assets, could attack and defeat a much larger army.
In order to support conscription, the German military has too many ground troops and has short-shrifted its air and navy.
At this time, only the Greens and the Free Democrats support ending conscription. The Free Democrats want a professional military, and the Greens ... well, who knows!
The Social Democrats were considering a professional military, but concluded that it would be more expensive and dropped the idea. This reflects the bankruptcy of socialist thinking, nowadays, when a decision as fundamental as fairness in pay is subordinated to the attempt to keep the welfare state solvent.
I remember when my father was an NCO and we lived in public housing in Omaha, NE, because we were under the poverty line. That was before we ended the draft. Whether or not we have a draft, we should pay our men and women in uniform fairly. Therefore, a professional military does not cost more, it just makes the cost explicit. In fact, by reducing turnover and for other reasons, it is more efficient.
Of course, we should always want to have civilian control of our military, and we should always want to have a healthy mix of ROTC officers, and to send many of our career officers to civilian universities for advanced degrees, and have National Guard forces that - usually - are not federalized, and to have other ways of insuring that our military is always a democratic military.
Looking at Japan, they have a totally ramped-up military, with excellent soldiers and officers, and top-of-the-line equipment. They now have three aircraft carriers under construction, of the type we deployed to New Orleans. These aren't Nimitz-class, super-carriers, but they are very capable, multi-purpose ships that can support a wide variety of very demanding missions. This is the way that Germany should go. We and the world need all the democratic nations to join in the defense of liberty.
Ahhh... leftist media... always so "delusional".
Thanks for the ping to this topic.
"She is vehemently opposed to Turkey's bid to join the European Union, which could please Chirac. Initially an enthusiastic supporter of Ankara's bid, he has become more ambivalent on the subject after the French electorate made clear its resistance to the idea."
Chirac has been ambivalent all along, using the carrot of EU membership to reduce US influence with the Turks, and with (obviously) little intention of actually going through with it.
A regular Google search on "german election" brings up (as the third item) a CNN page titled "CNN.com In-Depth Specials -- Schroeder wins re-election."
It's from 2002.
#1, it's awfully odd that such a page would still be up three years on, on the CNN website, where stories don't have much of a shelf life, and;
#2, it's awfully odd that Google would have that so close to the top, unless it's someone's idea of trying to mislead voters into thinking the 2005 election is decided.
http://newsfromrussia.com/politics/2005/09/18/63112.html
German election: Turks follow tradition by voting for Schroeder
17:38 2005-09-18
Germany's Turks faced a stark choice Sunday: Angela Merkel, who says their homeland should not be part of the EU, or Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder who has long said it should.
As they voted, most interviewed said they favored Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats who, historically, have been thought of as more welcoming to Germany's immigrants than others, including Angela Merkel and the Christian Democrats.
The question of Turkey's possible membership in the European Union is a potent issue. Schroeder supports Turkey's eventual entry, but Merkel and the conservatives have said the country, which bridges Europe and Asia, should only have privileges, not full membership.
Other Turks, however, saw the vote as between the lesser of two evils, noting that Merkel's plans to revive the floundering economy appealed to them, but not the perceived notion that it was hostile to them because of where they were born.
Others said they didn't favor Schroeder or his party, but cast their ballots for the incumbents out of necessity.
This is Germany's first election in which candidates have considered Turks, who began arriving 45 years ago as guest workers, to be a large enough voting bloc to sway the results.
Of the 2.6 million Turks living in Germany, some half a million were eligible to cast votes. In the tight race between Schroeder and Merkel, they could play a key role in deciding the winner.
It was too soon to say exactly how Turkish Germans voted. Past studies have shown that the group the nation's largest Muslim group has tended to support Social Democrats or the Greens. But recently those two parties, which govern together in a coalition, have irritated many Turks by putting through social welfare and unemployment reforms, which have seen cuts to benefits.
Ahmet Iyidirli, a candidate for the Social Democrats of Turkish origin, said that given the vulnerability of Turks and other immigrant groups it was especially important to preserve many welfare benefits against market reforms proposed by the conservatives.
"Giving in fully to the market would be the wrong way the socially weak groups will become the losers in our society, and we don't want this," he told The Associated Press after casting his ballot.
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