Hiya, guys! The bad penny has returned.

My condolences to those who may have happily gone to bed at night thinking my absence was a permanent feature, but alas - your reprieve was temporary. Our boy was in the States for the first time in three years, and I wasn't going to miss a second of it, not for love, money, or even Donald Trump winning. 

In between copious rounds in the kitchen cooking favorites, nervously watching the electrical meter spin as he did load after teeny load of laundry - left every light in the house on while eating us out of that same house and home - I did have time to take notes on things I saw happening just in case they slipped by my eagle-eyed colleagues who did such a terrific job covering all the juicy mayhem shorthanded.

Honestly, this little nugget I bookmarked was one of the moments the Germans themselves came up with the word schadenfreude for.  The very day Trump was busy blowing the electoral doors off Harris, their so-superior, too-smug-by-half government coalition blew apart.

Oh, God bless - the irony is so delicious, I could spoon it up.

On the 13th of September, I wrote a post about that self-satisfied air of German superiority raising its ugly Teutonic head once again as the specter of a Trump presidency was coming ever closer to reality. The German Foreign Office had just taken a very public shot (figuratively) at Candidate Trump on X over his stance on renewables during the recent debate.

...My wonderful, gentle readers here know I have been pretty merciless about the German ruling coalition of Green grifting Bond villains over the past two years as they relentlessly carved away at both their citizens' standard of living and the country's economy - all in obsequious, mewling service to the gods of NetZero.

Hasn't done a thing but bankrupted the country.

And their boast is fraudulent in any event. They're not producing enough power to run their country, period. If you get half of the power you have at any given time from renewables, but all of it combined isn't enough to do the job, and you still have to import power? Well, guess what?

What do your claims of an "energy system that is fully operational" even mean?

They've also never gotten over Trump's legendary clashes with Angela Merkel, CNN's anointed 'moral leader' of the West.

He pwned the woman at every. Single. Turn. 

And, whatever iteration of it ensued post-Merkel, the German government has spent the past almost four years with a case of perpetual butthurt over the ex-president, bullishly plowing forward to prove Trump wrong even as their continuing failures prove him right.

...The current state of affairs in the country - Merkel's carefully nurtured open immigration policies are sinking her country under the very weight of them, have her successor's coalition holding onto power by their fingernails, and a formerly compliant German populace becoming angry, restless, and actively turning to previously verboten political parties out of desperation - could have all been avoided or at least mitigated.

Not in Germany alone, either. Merkel's dreams are going up in populist smoke across the formerly sacrosanct European Union, infiltrating the very halls of Brussels.

Insult to ultimate Teutonic injury, they may well be forced into dealing with Trump again.

God willing, right?

I'll be smirkin' like a mofo when it happens.

And they will be forced to deal with Trump again. That much is decided, but who will 'they' be when the time comes? Olaf Scholz looks to be in, as the Brits say, a spot of trouble.

WHO'S SMIRKING NOW?

They lost nordstream 2 and became slaves to American liquidfied natural gas. Even as their energy prices quadrupled

They look like idiots now

— Hannibal Barca (@HanniblRomanus) November 12, 2024

Well...I am, for sure. Someone find that Foreign Office Xweeter for me, will you?

I want to ask him how it's going.

After Germany’s government coalition collapsed in a dramatic fashion when Chancellor Olaf Scholz fired Finance Minister Christian Lindner of the pro-business Free Democrats, Scholz said he would lead the country with a minority government, despite calls from opposition leaders on Thursday for early elections.

The chancellor said the minority government would be made up of his Social Democrats and the Greens until early next year — even as the leader of the biggest opposition bloc in parliament, Friedrich Merz from the center-right Christian Democrats, called for an immediate no-confidence vote and new elections.

Scholz stressed again on Thursday, that he does not want to call a vote of confidence before Jan. 15.

“The citizens will soon have the opportunity to decide anew how to proceed,” the chancellor said, according to the German news agency dpa. “That is their right. I will therefore put the vote of confidence to the Bundestag at the beginning of next year.”

Scholz was hoping to hold out until the regular elections scheduled for this fall - he might have had a chance to get the most popular of the populist parties (AfD) mostly shunned and banned by then, considering how their parliamentary "democracy" works alongside/with the courts against political rivals who can be painted with 'right-wing extremist' brushes.

But no one seems willing to cooperate with Olaf any longer, who insists he's going to run the country his way, and the squeeze is on the chancellor to call the elections stat. 

Minority governments aren't unheard of in German history, but they have a longevity problem when they do attempt one. And Scholz is having a hard time getting anyone to play ball with him.

They all smell blood in the water, and with the current mood in the country and the state of the economy, no party wants that blood to be theirs.

A minority government is not completely new to Germany, although they have been rare at the federal, rather than state, level.

...The chances of success for a minority government would hardly be any better today. The SPD and Greens would need partners for each decision on a case-by-case basis.

The conservative union of the CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), ruled out joining a coalition with the SPD as a junior partner under Chancellor Scholz. 

It could, however, help a minority SPD-Green government to gain a majority in the Bundestag as part of a looser confidence-and-supply agreement. However, the CDU-CSU bloc currently appears more interested in pushing for new elections.

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is doing the same and support from the populist party for the SPD and Greens would be out of the question on principle.

The pressure campaign is on, and Scholz is making moves to appease the factions agitating for a confidence vote. He's set an early tentative date for national elections in February and has called for a confidence vote on 15 December.

Should Scholz lose the December vote as widely expected, the parliament will have to be officially dissolved, and off they go to the races.

...Germany is set to hold elections on 23 February, following the collapse of the governing coalition.

The country was plunged into crisis after Chancellor Olaf Scholz, of the Social Democrats, fired the finance minister and coalition partner, Christian Lindner of the Free Democrats, following weeks of internal tensions.

The February date is a proposal and there are several steps to confirmation. The German press agency DPA reported that these were largely a formality.

It said the next step was for Scholz to put the current government to a confidence vote on 16 December.

If he loses, which is the expected outcome, the election date will formally be proposed to President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. He will then have 21 days to dissolve the German parliament, the Bundestag.

What's perhaps an omen of things to come involves one of my favorite Bond villains in Scholz's coalition, Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck. As the Green Party representative, Habeck has also been the architect of many of the climate cult mandates and policies that have driven the German economy into the dirt. 

However, his and his party's waning popularity didn't impede his ego any when he saw the opportunity to dance on Scholz's political grave.

In classic progressive fashion, the Greens have big plans to straighten out the climate skeptics. Why, he even returned to X to, um...get the truth out there.

German Economy Minister Robert Habeck will announce his intention on Friday to run for the post of chancellor on behalf of the Greens, a source familiar with the matter said, days after the collapse of the country's three-way coalition.

The break-up of Germany's coalition following months of infighting over budget and fiscal policy has paved the way for an early election, with Chancellor Olaf Scholz, a Social Democrat, aiming for a vote in March.

....His reputation was tarnished, however, after he was forced to overhaul an unwieldy law to ban new oil and gas heating systems and ditch an ill-fated gas levy that critics said would hurt consumers while benefiting energy companies.

A cost-of-living crisis and an economic downturn have shifted many Germans' focus away from climate protection, weakening the appeal of the Greens. Habeck's approval ratings have dropped to just 26% from a peak of nearly 70% in mid-2022.

"He's not just the climate minister, he's also the economy minister, and the economic policy problems in Germany are now being blamed on him," Marschall added.

His party is now polling on 11%, down from 14.8% in the 2021 election, meaning it is unlikely to be in a position to actually run the next government. The opposition conservatives are currently polling first on around 32%.

Maybe he should read the bones first. 

A five-month-old German government plane doesn't seem to care for the Green Party any more than the voters do...

German Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck has reportedly been left stranded at a tech event in Lisbon after the German Government’s jet broke down.

The Airbus 350-900 — named Kurt Schumacher after the famed anti-Nazi resistance fighter — blew a fuse in one of its engines while still on the ground, with the fault being judged serious enough to prevent take-off on November 12.

The failure of the five-month-old aircraft meant that Habeck would not be able to travel until the evening of November 13.

According to a report by Bild, he will miss the beginning of Germany’s campaign season, with the Bundestag soon to be dissolved to allow snap elections in February next year.

...and the country isn't sure it has enough paper for ballots to hold an election.

Germany should not hold its snap elections too early due to, among other things, “the increasingly difficult procurement of paper” for election ballots, according to Ruth Brand, head of the Federal Election Commission. https://t.co/0YXElof0g9

— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) November 13, 2024

Ach du lieber, those Germans have done a bang-up job on the country in the past four years, no?

If only someone had warned them.

I wonder who's sneering now?

Germany really saw Trump win and pulled one of these immediately pic.twitter.com/z2AbEi6t0w

— FAustrR1an 🪽 (@DrunkAustrian) November 6, 2024

Yeah.

That's definitely a smirk I'm feeling right now.