In a sick twist, now that the Trump-bashing Steinmeier has been promoted from foreign minister to head of state, his former position goes to Sigmar Gabriel.
Who has insulted Trump even more gravely (as reported in my last sitrep).
Gabriel is a pathetic loser. Under his leadership the SPD has become a shadow of its former self. (In 1990 the SPD had close to a million members, today not even half that. Gabriel may not be the main culprit, but he certainly did nothing to reverse course.) In its current state the SPD is useless for everybody except for the higher ranking members of the party. Sandwiched between Merkel’s left-leaning CDU and the LINKE, the SPD’s only hope is that people who always voted SPD, will still vote SPD, probably mainly as a matter of habit.
So to get ready for the elections later this year the SPD has prepared as follows:
  • Steinmeier gets to be president of Germany and gives up his position as foreign minister.
  • Gabriel gets to be foreign minister (hopefully not for long) and gives up his current ministerial post and, more importantly, his position as party leader.
  • Schulz gets to be party leader of the SPD and candidate for this years election.
What a horrible move. As questionable as Steinmeier has been as foreign minister, replacing him with a bag of slowly composting, rotten potatoes would have been better than installing Gabriel. The former change might have gone unnoticed, but Gabriel will be noticed, and not for the better.
He summarised Steinmeier’s advice for him as : “Mach keinen Scheiß.” or “Don’t fuck up.”
What is he talking about? He already “fucked up” big time. If he had any sense of decency he would resign in shame and let people a take a turn, who have not already demonstrated their incompetence.
“Retire, write your memoirs, or something… But please get out of the way. It’s over for you. The Germans (which you partly insulted as “Pack”) do not respect you, your own party does not respect you, your fellow politicians do not respect you, and no one will respect you as a “German emissary”. Please spare yourself and Germany the embarrassment of being her foreign secretary.”
The best part of this story is that the SPD replaced Gabriel with Schultz.
This will look good for a couple of weeks at most. I see no way this can still look good this autumn, when people vote. But admittedly for now it looks pretty good.
All elections in Europe this year will mainly be about “Pro-One-World-Order” or “Against-One-World-Order”. Or “more EU power, more centralisation” versus “less EU power, more regional independence”. And there is no doubt where the people of the world and the EU lean.
The EU is already history and can only be saved by dictatorial violence for some time. And the SPD in Germany elects the one person that symbolises the party’s submission to this hated institution more than anyone else…
Gabriel is just incompetent but Schulz symbolises the EU-devil. This campaign will, I hope, end very badly for the SPD.
Like most established parties the SPD should listen to the people who could potentially vote for them, but instead they ridicule them. They should be agents of the people they represent, instead they try to force whatever they want on people and belittle them when they dare disagree. Here is SPD’s Ralf “Pöbel Ralle” Stegner:
from 0:09
Guest:
I would like to try to show the panel what they look like from down here to the common people (1). On the one hand we hear that Germany is a democracy, a free nation under the rule of law. It is not OK to claim that you are the only one fit to represent others (2). And still Stegner says “They (AFD) do not belong up there, no matter what the people think. That is verbatim what you said less than an hour ago.
That leaves me wondering: How democratic is such a position? And how is it acceptable in a democracy that the political parties polarize to such an extreme, with all the negative consequences this entails? It must be possible that even a major party (3) has enough respect for a new up-and-coming party. That they at least acknowledge that they made mistakes. Otherwise this movement would not even exist. In this context I need to mention that since your policies are ignoring European asylum laws by decree, and accusing all critics of the current refugee policies as inhuman (4), it comes as no surprise that people who think for themselves, Mr. Stegner, even if they are not part of the parliament, say: “That is not true. Yes, we want to help, but this should have been done differently.” In this case law and order have been eliminated. Mrs. Merkel said: “I know the way, I’m going there, and who ever dares criticise me is an indecent person.” And the populace stands up to this, that is the situation.
– Moderator gives Stegner the word –
Stegner:
Stegner (2:06):
As long as a party has not been outlawed, it can nominate candidates for parliamentary elections. So far, so good…  But I see no reason whatsoever, for a party like the SPD, with core values like freedom, justice and solidarity, to engage with people who agitate against foreigners, who promote intolerance, who tolerate anti-semitism, and many more such things. With such a party my party will not cooperate. Say whatever you will, and even if you have 20 percent, which I find sad… Luckily in most German states 80% give their vote to other parties, that is also part of the truth. (6)  That you get a lot of attention and that you manage, in a country like Germany with a free press – spontaneous laughter in the audience – to talk of “Lügenpresse” … Yes we have a constitution in which the freedom of the press – I am not sure how you, for example (turns to the Swiss moderator), are “under the government’s boot”. In how far you are forced to do things against your will, it did not seem to me that way. Even thinking about “Lügenpresse” when certain things are reported shows that, sometimes we are dealing with lunatics. I would advise such people to seek medical treatment, I certainly do not have to work with them. They are voted into parliament, which is bad enough… But my party will fight them politically.
Good job, Ralle. That is how you win hearts and minds. Just keep on babbling incoherent bullshit, but make sure the people you talk to understand that you talk down to them. People love that. When you talk about “free press” and they laugh, they do not laugh at you… They laugh with you. “Ha, Ha.”
Funny stuff. Just next time: Don’t let it get to you that much. Keep your cool. You are a fraud and everybody (except for your 20 percent of fifty percent) knows it. For now all the others do is ask questions. Just keep your mouth shut and enjoy that while you still can.
But seriously: I think this moment of spontaneous laughter is very revealing. Much like this one:
 This kind of instinctive laughter probably tells you much more about what people think than interviewing them in a formal setting could, it comes from the collective gut.
Other News:
***Horst Seehofer Breaks Ranks, Praises Trump, Demands End of Sanctions Against Russia:
***So Called “Humanitarian” NGOs Work Hand in Glove with Human Traffickers:

  
Read the article, I should have linked to it earlier, sorry.

A 39 year old convicted murderer, who already served his sentence, was accused of abusing his 25 year old girlfriend. He smuggled a blade into the courtroom from jail and assaulted the victim as she was getting ready to testify.
The victim’s attorney says he received death threats from the defendant’s brothers.
***More Law and Order in Germany – She had it coming:
Just look how provocatively she minds her own business. And isn’t a kick in the back of unsuspecting victims traditionally the hallmark of manliness?
***Let’s end on a funny note:
The Netherlands welcome Trump:
Thank you for your time.
Translation Notes:
  • German: “Ein Spiegelbild vorhalten” / English: “Show someone what they look like in a mirror” more or less
  • “Alleinvertretungsanspruch ist undemokratisch” – I do not know how to translate that better. If you have any ideas feel free to post them in the comments
  • “Volkspartei” means something like “relevant party of old”. Imagine e.g. new parties becoming more relevant in the US and the Democratic Party ending up with around 20% of the vote. That is when they might invoke their status as a “Volkspartei”. In Germany only SPD and CDU are usually referred to as “Volksparteien”. It’s a pretty silly concept.
  • “menschenverachtend”
  • “Was ich bedaure”
  • That is very misleading. Most people in Germany do not vote at all. The “non-voters” have almost always been the biggest voter block, ever more so recently. Stegner should say: We are losing ground even among the indoctrinated idiots we took for granted. Only a little more than half the population believe in the game we call democracy, and of those almost 80% percent vote for “non-SPD-parties”.