Those video excerpts are terrifying… Terrifyingly badly created and terrifying how many idiots there are out there to whom this appeals.
WSJ says Musk and Vance should have stayed out of the German election.
https://x.com/Markus_Soeder/status/1896997030775734650
Germany is rearming completely. Everything the Bundeswehr needs is being purchased.
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Great. Now they can hope the Greens aren’t as petty and liars as Merz and his CDU and Söder and his CSU were the past years and in the election campaign, when they hindered everything because of how bad debt is. Now a trillion in debt isn’t an issue anymore. They’ll try do it with the old/current Bundestag, where the CDU isn’t even the biggest party and need Greens support.
I agree with it, like many and unlike Merz said this is necessary years ago, but if this goes through and anyone here attributes this to Merz only I’m going to bite their fucking face off.
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Friedrich Merz, a month ago, complaining about how all the Social Democrats can do is make debt and how they should just cut the spending.
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If I were the Greens I’d have him publicly apologise for all the shit he’s been throwing at them and have him say you were right and I was lying. Simple. He can do it for the country, for Europe, right?
And also, the current proposal has a massive debt (500 billion) for infrastructure, not just military/security, so the opinion above is kinda bullshit.
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What a load of bullshit. Not at all what I said.
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To make this clear - apparently CDU and SPD were able to come up with this current proposal within days. Including 500 billion for infrastructure, whatever that actually means. They need the Greens, it’s obvious they’ll have to have negotiations with them, like CDU and SPD did the past days.
Btw, FDP could theoretically play a part as well, but they just don’t give a fuck.
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Ah, now it’s something no one could have seen coming? Interesting.
Anyway, you clearly don’t understand what I’m saying, probably my English, so it’s rather pointless.
Really ?
Jesus Christ.
Can we all calm down. World is already fucked up enough without us turning on one another in here.
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I would defer to CL on German politics, and I live there.
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Hard to defer to someone who is trying to drown you in acid instead of explaining his actual point, but whatever. There was not anything I could defer to as such.
At least one of the insults that was thrown at me was kind of creative and amusing. So I’ll give it another go.
It’s really not that complicated. The CDU/CSU doesn’t have a majority, not in the new Bundestag and even less in the current/old Bundestag. For anything they want to do, they need allies (debt) and/or a coalition (new government).
Fortunately for them there are parties that agree that a) a new functioning government needs to be established and preferrably rather quickly - that would be the SPD now and b) we face massive challenges in military/security but also need other massive investments along with that, none of which can be financed from the usual budget with a debt brake - that would be the SPD and the Greens. Those two have said this all along, the CDU wanted to win a campaign, so just talked a bit of bullshit.
CDU and SPD have prefered to do the talks about the debt stuff among themselves (as they are in coalition talks), apparently they were able to come up with an agreement that involves both a change to the debt brake (Schuldenbremse) but only for military spending AND a Sondervermögen (off the books debt, needs to be constitutional as well) for infrastructure. They were able to come up with that agreement in just a matter of a few days, they even had a short Carnival break in between. So the idea that such massive stuff can’t be done in a short time is obviously not true. This was a negotiation, give and take. Infrastructure is something that is important to the SPD but also for the CDU, so I suppose that was the easiest area to get an economic impulse for the two to agree on.
Now they need the Greens for the necessary constitutional changes. It should be absolutely obvious that this, just like with the CDU and SPD talks, has to be a negotiation, you’ve got to give them something. This is normal politics and quite frankly the Greens would be fucking stupid not to at least try to get something. I’m not a Green, but I suppose that could be e.g. using some of that money (500 billion) for infrastructure for some green environmental energy stuff. Could also e.g. be another exlusion in the debt brake, like they did for military. Or something like that.
Also, these are gigantic sums being thrown around, obviously you don’t just say yes within minutes after a press conference that didin’t involve you. These numbers are also so big, that quite frankly, even if there were new majorities after a future elections years from now, pretty much no government will have any more room for additional debt. So yeah, this is a one shot, it has to be right.
And the responsibility to make this work lies on ALL sides. This goes for the coalition talks between CDU and SPD and this debt brake stuff involving the Greens. Responsibility atm isn’t a one way street, where one side just rolls over and Merz gets his way. Also the Greens, as now effectively an opposition party in waiting, would be politically stupid not to throw some shade back at Merz for his obvious flip flop.
Hope this helps to clear up what I was trying to say.
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Yes, it does. It was an excellent post and a very good explanation in every form and way. Very sensible. Although I obviously take issue with the insinuation that I started insulting you, which from my pov is absurd, it is literally pointless to continue to take offence at something that was so obviously unimportant and in retrospect, I also note that you warned you had a short fuse “and would bite someone’s face off”. I take some self criticism that I didn’t take that into account to the degree that I should, as you are clearly incredibly pissed off at the incomming chancellor; something I should also respect and be more cautious.
I’m tired @Cologne-Liverpool. Tired of the world unraveling, like you, I become defensive and particularly when people I respect are caustic, like you were. My mood is not the best lately, I’ve been in a state of geopolitical panic since 2023 when I realised in the summer that Ukraine was going to lose unless aid was scaled up significantly and nothing fucking happened. I have been exceptionally frutrated at human beings around me who claim to be interested in world events, but do not realise the danger of Ukrainian defeat and Russian victory, and sometimes I post when I have slept too little and then I am not at all able to take even smaller insults well.
But the solution is really mostly not entering debates when you are too tired to post something deep and I absolutely failed there.
Because it is obviously true, I laser in on what I think is the most important and where the world is now, I have started to ignore and discard other matters that is not security related and I am willing (in Norwegian politics) to prioritice it over aboslutely anything else (I am a Social Democrat, but I don’t vote for them at current, since they don’t want to invest enough, so I have turned to neoliberals of all things, which stinks, because I loath their economic politics; but it’s not a priority for me right now and I keep wishing the Left will get a grip), and I tend to get tunnel vision lately. Which is hardly who I used to be.
Before 2014-16, my main interests was social policies . That really changed in a significant way in 2020, when I realised that Russia would likely invade Ukraine, because I understood the scale such a war would take, unlike some others around me. I honestly wish so much, that I could go back to care about wealth distribution, global warming, better healthcare for the elderly, Norwegian drug-reform, infrastructure and the environment; like I used to care most about. It’s just that since Russia’s invasion, I have been convinced that not any other large problem can be truly solved during the middle of this crisis (such as global warming and better wealth distribution, it seems forlorn to solve those large systemic issues in the middle of a security crisis), before the war is solved and we no longer have a looming danger of industrial war.
Perhaps it is a bit different for me, I am from a wealthy country, but a small one, bordering Russia. We have no shield. I have absolutely not faith anymore in the Americans honouring Article 5 in the event of Hybrid-war against Norway and I find that worry all-consuming, to the degree where nothing else really matters anymore for me politically. 2-3 years ago, I used to debate with myself and others, how to turn at least the West green (and later the world), but this I discared since i realised that we would likely have to re-arm, and that industry would need to be excepted from carbon taxation, so I have lost faith in the Paris Agreement since the invasion really. I am still in 2-3 environmental FB groups, but I don’t spend much time on it anymore as a topic really, nor have I kept up with academic reasearch.
But I would absolutely love to go back to care about just that. It’s the person I would like to be. But then the security threat needs to go away, since this is absolutely my primary concern. Not for myself. I don’t really care about my own life to a large degree, but I do care about our culture and history surviving the coming century, because we do actually have something relatively decent. Almost all of Europe has that. I would like it to survive and the coming Multi-Polar World seems awful to me. Europe re-arming is not exactly a dream scenario, it would be nice if wealth could be spent on something more kind and worthy.
But absolutely, you are right. Such a big plan like we are talking about in Germany, should have a good parliamentarian basis. You are very right about that, and yes, it is also rather obvious that it needs to be cemented (true for all states really) properly and I frenzied a bit past that, because to me, geopolitically, it is so imporant to respond to Trump as fast as humanly possible, because there is a chance that not everything unravels completely if one does.
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She seems to think that voting irregularities only affect her party. There is as much chance that they affect other parties to a similar level.
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