Don't hatchet your AfD before you count, Friedrich

 Germany’s Merz fails to be elected chancellor in shock first-round parliamentary vote

... “Friedrich Merz became the first chancellor candidate failing to be elected in the first round of voting in the Bundestag. However, he remains likely to win sufficient support eventually,” Carsten Nickel, deputy director of research at Teneo, said. 

Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Berenberg, described the situation as a “bad surprise.” He echoed comments suggesting Merz would still become chancellor eventually, but “the unprecedented failure to be elected in the first round would still be a bad start for him.” ...

AfD ‘extremist’ label sets up political high-wire act for Friedrich Merz

... Merz’s party, the Christian Democratic Union, has been torn over how to deal with the AfD. Merz tacitly cooperated with the party earlier this year – despite insisting he would not – to push migration policies through parliament. And on the local level, his party and the AfD have cooperated on issues such as a ruling that the German flag should be hoisted in schools. ...

This number seems wei tu lo

 

IMF Warns Trump Could Cost the World a Trillion Dollars

The Guardian

 

Is that all?

 

World GDP in 2023 was $106.2 trillion according to the World Bank, whose graph shows that the 2009 Great Recession contraction was $3.34 trillion. The Grauniad is worried that the Trump trade war will cost a third of the 2009 contraction, based on an analysis by the IMF, "the most sober of global institutions" lol.

 

Meanwhile there was a 2015 contraction in global GDP which was much larger, $4.55 trillion. That was much worse than the so-called Great Recession. And much worse than the global impact of COVID in 2020, which was $2.39 trillion according to the World Bank's data.

 

Why isn't this popularly discussed?

 

AI laughably tells me "global GDP did not actually contract in 2015".

 

 

 

 

 

But the World Bank itself traces the 2015 global GDP hit to a massive contraction in trade, at the heart of which was the forced restructuring of the Chinese economy under Xi Jinping, who is a communist reactionary.

 

The sizes of the tariffs of Donald Trump, which far exceed those of the Smoot-Hawley era, especially with trade hegemon China, seem uniquely poised to wreak havoc on a world whose experts today can't draw the obvious parallel to the right year.

Trump's tariffs mean that the skies will be empty, along with the shelves

 Boeing hopes to find new buyers for up to 50 planes returned by China

... Two Boeing jets have returned to the US from China, with another on the way, after the imposition of steep 125% tariffs on American imports. China imposed the levies in retaliation to the White House’s 145% rate that threatens to significantly slow down the world economy. ...

Blank Sailings Rattle Trans-Pacific Trade as China Imports Nosedive

... Container shipping companies have blanked at least 80 sailings this month, compared to 51 in March 2020, when volumes crashed amid early Covid-19 lockdowns, Sea-Intelligence said. ...

Ron Klain says Biden's brain was applesauce, but still believed Biden should have stayed in the race after the bad debate with Trump

 Well, that doesn't make any sense.

From the story here:

... Even after the disastrous debate, by his own telling to Whipple, Klain believed Biden should have stayed in the race – a statement that jars with Klain’s account of debate prep at Camp David. ...

 

All I can think of when I read about Democrats wanting a more angry, a more centrist candidate, a more combative leader who meets the moment, is that they had all that in Joe Biden and they dumped him

The outright treason against their own president is the Democrats' real problem with their own voters, who lost faith in them and voted for Trump instead.

 

 

Democrats have never been so angry. Who will step up and lead them?

Democrats are furious. And they want their leaders to get mad, too.

“I wish you’d be angry,” a constituent told representative Gil Cisneros, a Democrat of California, at a recent town hall. At an event in Minnesota featuring a panel of Democratic attorneys general, an activist voiced a similar sentiment: “Get angry, man,” punctuating the message with a profanity.

The anger roiling the party, slow to build, is now a forceful current coursing through the electorate and pulling in Americans terrified that the country is descending into authoritarianism. Democrats – with no leader to guide them and little power to wield in Washington – are scrambling to harness the sudden fury. ...

 

Of course, we all know that that Joe Biden, especially the centrist Joe Biden, didn't really have control of his own White House, covering up which until it couldn't be covered up anymore just shows that the incumbent wasn't really trustworthy either.

 

Another Trump MO is his perverse demand for reimbursement from totally wrecked countries which we "helped"

 

Rosie throws in the towel and BlackRock declares the boom and bust cycle over

 Gee, when have we heard that before lol?

Headlines like this are appearing because of the fools we have put in charge

 Germany draws up list of bunkers amid Russia tensions: App planned for public to find emergency shelter in places including underground train stations and car parks

The country of 84 million people has 579 bunkers, mostly from the second world war and the cold war era, which can provide shelter for 480,000 people, down from about 2,000 bunkers previously.

Maybe try Schlachthof Fünf.

 

 

Continuing this morning's northern theme, the newly re-elected governor of Montana, Greg Gianforte, is also more popular than Donald Trump in 2024

Well, you would be too in Montana if you slugged a reporter from The Grauniad, but I digress.

 

Delegates to the Democratic Convention in Chicago can't speak freely in the Democrat Party for fear of being removed by the gang leaders

 

 The fix was in already on Sunday after Biden withdrew and endorsed Kamala Harris. 

All 50 state chairs of the party quickly asserted their endorsement of Harris, according to Reuters.

But the blessed GRAUNIAD found out the truth: Delegates who aren't down for the Harris Cause fear having their delegate status revoked by those state chairs.

It's a gang, not democracy.

Delegates are, by and large, local volunteers expected to spend thousands of dollars to fly to Chicago and attend the convention. It’s often viewed as a reward for activism and dedication, but it’s typically a far less consequential role than it might be next month.

One delegate who isn’t yet old enough to drink expressed his mounting anxiety about how things are unfolding and how little has been predictable.

“I’m a young, young person,” said the delegate, who requested anonymity because he feared being replaced by his state chair. “This is my first convention … And this is scary. It’s super anxiety-inducing, and crazy, and so much.”

More. 

Democracy dies in darkness.

People forget that Joe Biden came in fourth in Iowa and fifth in New Hampshire in 2020 and was still neck-and-neck with Bernie in the primary popular vote until March 14th

 

 

 

 

 

Democrats ended up with Joe because the alternative was a lefty, Bernie, who would surely lose to Trump.

The same calculus applies today. Possibly win with cognitively challenged Joe, or lose with lefty Kamala Harris.

Joe was extremely unpopular in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Joe endeared himself to Iowans by calling them fat liars.

 

 

And he endeared himself to New Hampshireites by calling them lying dog-faced pony soldiers.

The common thread is the projection. It's Joe who is the liar, along with all his accomplices in the DNC and the media.

 

Final results of French election: "far right" up 62%, adds 55 seats in National Assembly, Macron loses 88

 And now the final results have arrived with the left-wing NFP alliance on 182, Macron’s centrists on 163 and the far-right RN and its allies on 143.

Here.

Labour sweeps to UK victory on minor improvement to support as disaffected pro-Brexit and anti-immigration voters abandon feckless Conservatives for Nigel Farage's Reform Party

Keir Starmer to become PM. Have fun stormin' the castle!

Liberal Democrats and Greens made relatively huge gains while the Scottish National Party took it up the kilt. Sinn Fein utterly collapsed lol.

Turnout was low at 60%, the post-war low being 59.4% in 2001.

It's ludicrous. The UK Reform Party got all of four seats for all that damage done to Conservatives. Nigel Farage, 60, is gearing up to make his next big impact in 2029, when he'll be 65. Whoop-dee-doo. 

 

The UK Guardian

Albert Einstein, just because it's Tuesday

 From his diaries:

“I noticed how little difference there is between men and women; I don’t understand what kind of fatal attraction Chinese women possess which enthrals the corresponding men to such an extent that they are incapable of defending themselves against the formidable blessing of offspring”.

From their editor:

"the remark that must strike the modern reader as most offensive is his feigning not to understand how Chinese men can find their women sufficiently attractive to have offspring with them." 

-- The Grauniad, 2018

 

 

 

Easy mistake:

Navalny would be alive today had he stayed in Germany in January 2021, but he just had to go back didn't he

 Opposition Leader and Putin Critic Alexei Navalny Dies In Prison at 47 :

Navalny looked healthy when he appeared by video for a courtroom appeal on Thursday. Speaking from prison, Navalny complained about the frequent fines he received while in a punitive cell and asked the judge to send him some money “as my own is running out thanks to your decisions”. ...

In 2020, Navalny fell into a coma after a suspected poisoning using novichok by Russia’s FSB security service and was evacuated to Germany for treatment. He recovered and returned to Russia in January 2021, where he was arrested on a parole violation charge and sentenced to his first of several jail terms that would total more than 30 years behind bars.

 

 

Real Clear Politics becomes The Grauniad lol, The Grauniad is convinced that killing your baby is the winning issue of our time

 

Abortion Is Biden's Strongest Issue. He Should Act Like It

Moira Donegan, Guaridan

The left is upset that Joe Biden isn't more enthusiastic about it, dammit:

 

Biden himself is not a particularly convincing abortion rights advocate. He is, at best, unenthused about the issue. Biden speaks of abortion in stilted, euphemistic terms, talking about “restoring the protections of Roe” or “a woman’s right to choose” more than “abortion”. (He did not use the word in public remarks until he was forced to after facing pressure from activists.) On the stump, he frequently ad libs, straying from prepared remarks to make his dislike of abortion clear. In one set of remarks last year, he unhelpfully offered that he was “not big on abortion”. In remarks this past week, he characterized his own position using anti-choice buzzwords, saying he was opposed to “abortion on demand”. ... Biden is talking like he believes that abortion remains a delicate issue, as if it is something he thinks he will lose by being too strong on.

It was a TRAP lol

 Presidents of America's top universities too stupid to see it coming!

 

Yesterday's obnoxious Nazi Barbie is 2023's Person of the Year

 

Time.

2015 here:

Camille Paglia has written a scathing critique of Taylor Swift, referring to the singer as an “obnoxious Nazi Barbie” whose “twinkly persona is such a scary flashback to the fascist blondes who ruled the social scene during my youth”.

For the tax write-off you idiots

 Why would Elon Musk want to deliberately destroy X?

 Arwa Mahdawi

 

Musk can extract the $44 billion price tag for tax loss purposes and relaunch the thing as the everything platform he keeps talking about. 

This reminds me of the incredulity of Wall Street over Powell's relentless increases to the Federal Funds Rate. He telegraphed it repeatedly months in advance and then raised rates incrementally and said he would keep doing so, but they would not believe, and still do not.

 

Christmas means it's time for someone to find more evidence of Chicom slave labor in a garment

 Reported here.