After a series of infanticides in the region, Wolfgang Böhmer (CDU), PM of Saxony-Anhalt state in East Germany blamed them on holdover East German mentality, stemming from communist East Germany's free provision of abortion: the latter supposedly created a culture in which mothers apparently see infanticide "as a means of family planning".
But this jump from abortion to infanticide, while ignoring the social differences and regional downfall after re-unification, was one too far even for some in the CDU, Die Welt writes. The choir of outrage and rejection includes the PM of Thuringia, Dieter Althaus (CDU), who fears a damage to the reputation of all East Germany. Today Merkel told him to shut up (he should not repeat it).
However, support comes from Catholics, as well as Richard Schröder [no relation to the former Chancellor], a respected Lutheran theologian and SPD man from East Germany. From the latter even while, ironically, he submits that "no scientific study supports it yet". *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
The week before the Hamburg elections, he again spoke out against his own party, this time leading to the start of the party exclusion procedute against him.
Now he fights the threatening exclusion while continuing to shoot at the current leadership in his very open arguments against getting closer to the Left Party and replacing all fosil fuels with renewables. He says with Beck's strategy, the SPD "is risking everything that is there in the centre to win nothing".
*Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
G-SPD / | FDP-CDU
L / \ G-SPD / X | FDP-CDU
Chatzimarkakis certainly thinks (hopes) that. Surprisingly, I don't see any signs yet. (But maybe I haven't looked close enough.) One conflict factor, economic-liberal Oswald Metzger left the party last year (as I reminded Martin the other day). To me it appears the Realos tolerate the Fundis (and vice versa) for now, no Clement- or even Steinbrück-style inner opposition. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
By the way, the greens are the party which has in average the richest voters, followed by the FDP, CDU, SPD, and with by far the poorest voters the left. Der Amerikaner ist die Orchidee unter den MenschenVolker Pispers
I had a faint memory of such a headline, which I found now: Grüne lösen FDP als Partei der Besserverdiener ab - DER SPIEGEL - SPIEGEL ONLINE - Nachrichten
...repräsentative Umfragen bei Wählern beider Parteien, die der Mainzer Wahlforscher Jürgen Falter ausgewertet hat. Demnach lag im Jahr 2002 das mittlere Einkommen bei den Grünen zwischen monatlich 1750 Euro und 2000 Euro, bei den Freidemokraten lediglich zwischen 1500 und 1750 Euro.
...however, other polls get different resuts, depending when they are made and by whom. In 2005, Vor allem FDP-Wähler zweifeln an Westerwelle - DIE WELT - WELT ONLINE:
Daß es sich aber nicht bei jedem der genannten Kategorien um Vorurteile gegenüber den Liberalen handelt, zeigen die freiwilligen Angaben über das durchschnittliche Haushaltseinkommen. Während Befürworter der CDU/CSU (durchschnittlich 2532 Euro), der SPD (durchschnittlich 2529 Euro) und der Grünen (durchschnittlich 2356 Euro) etwa alle auf gleichem Niveau liegen, sticht das Durchschnittseinkommen der FDP-Wähler im direkten Vergleich deutlich hervor. Es liegt bei 3379 Euro.
But, re your question, the first study, the one that has the Greens richer than the neolibs, says that 25% of Greens has income above €3000, vs. "only 23%" of liberals (methinks the difference is statistically insignificant). *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
DoDo:
CDU/CSU (durchschnittlich 2532 Euro), der SPD (durchschnittlich 2529 Euro)
etwa alle auf gleichem Niveau
First poll: a comparison of FDP and Greens voters based on an opinion poll, showing average monthly incomes in the range:
"Those who fight might lose, those who don't fight have already lost." - Berthold Brecht
This comment brought to you by the scarier voices inside my head
Or something.
CDU wil eb CIU, SPD will be PSC. Greens will be ICV ad left-aprty wouuld eb ERC well sort of becuae inc atalonia there is te antioanalsitic side).. plus FDP being PP? well not really this does not match.. but nothing matches the spanish PP in Europe except for berlusconi.. well and Poland.. and well the hardcore small aprties in Austria and.. well Danemark... oh my god it is spreading!!!!
A pleasure I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude
While their loss of direct domination is the most apparent, it is just them who are in the most comfortable and safest situation in coalition pokers.
Intuitively, I'd say the same is true for the Dutch equivalent, the CDA, that rarely has not been part of government. It probably also helps that in the Netherlands the christian fundies are represented in their own parties (CU and SGP) and hence don't form part of a government coalition - except for the current one... CDA has the reputation now to be opportune: swing left or right during coalition building - I could imagine the CDU growing more and more into a similar position. Although I know little of the internal factions within the party.
Now that you mentioned the Dutch Christian fundies, that reminds me of something. The CDU/CSU of course does cover Catholic fundies (mainly in South Germany), but not the protestant fundies (Lutheran Church in North Germany is decidedly more liberal and sane).
However, there is a separate Christian fundie party backed by the as yet dwarf Protestant fundies, the Partei Bibeltreuer Christen = Party of Bible-Faithful Christians (PBC). It is nowhere near entering the parliament: a mere 0.12% in the 2005 federal elections, but I still find a mass of 57 thousand convinced creationists somehow... worrying. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
And indeed I think that the CDU will not take its "Leipziger Parteitagsbeschluesse" very serious. In 2005 the CDU ran a full economic free market campaign (as you probably know, but maybe accidental readers not) and the outcome was much worse than expected. We have grand coalition now, so CDU and SPD can't go completely in different directions on the issues, but I frankly don't see on which substance CDU and SPD will run their next campaigns as probably no party will explain that the current period was a complete waste of time and after all the politics was as well not so incredible different from the red-green gov under Schroeder (Can anybody name something significant happened during the last years, else than the VAT increase and some family policy where the CDU minister did a pretty much SPD like policy?). Der Amerikaner ist die Orchidee unter den MenschenVolker Pispers
One of the Dutch Christian parties, the SGP or 'Staatskundig Geroformeerde Partij', is definitely fundie, they don't allow women to vote(their husbands do it for them). the otheone, the CU or ChristenUnie is more mixed, and recently got a lot of CDA voters who thought the CDA had become too conservative/neoliberal.
I know, and this is why I shudder at the thought of even just tens of thousands of PBC list-voters: those must be real hardcore creationists; and they proselytize. Just checked prior results (the first figure is votes on party lists, the second votes for directly elected candidates):
1994-8: +10%/+73% 1998-2002: +41%/+53% 2002-5: +7%/-20%
On the other hand, I checked how they fared in recent regional elections where they ran, and that does indicate a ceiling:
Baden-Württenberg: 2001-20,528, 2006-26,759 Rhineland-Palatinate: 2001-5,379, 2006-4,973 Mecklenburg-Vorpommern: 2002-1,312, 2006-1,957 Bremen: 2003-1,009, 2007-960 Hessen: 2003-6,674, 2008-did not run Lower Saxony: 2003-7,819, 2008-5,851 Hamburg: 2004-1,571, 2008-did not run *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
PBC are in part subsidiaries of, in totality fans of, and supported/funded by, the US fundamentalists. Thus they bring forward the entire ideology: the millenarist Christian fundie support for Israel (because the Book of Revelations predicts the re-emergence of Israel and it fighting a big war just before the Apocalypse), creationism as 'science' and 'evilution' as false science, push for homeschooling, abortion is evil. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
PBC leader Gerhard Heinzmann, who has no problem being labelled a Christian fundamentalist, said he was pleased with Bush's re-election. "There's an extraordinary agreement on issues between our supporters and Bush voters," Heinzmann said, citing opposition to gay marriage and abortion as examples. Both groups "not only elect their government, but also pray for its members," he said. And that's what counts, he added. ...Rüdiger Hauth, who monitors religious sects for the Evangelical Church, Germany's largest Protestant church, in the western German region of Westphalia, said there are ten thousands of supporters. But Richard Ziegert, Hauth's colleague from the southwestern region of Palatinate, believes that there are more than 250,000 radical Christians in the country and US missionaries are increasingly coming to Germany to spread the word.
"There's an extraordinary agreement on issues between our supporters and Bush voters," Heinzmann said, citing opposition to gay marriage and abortion as examples. Both groups "not only elect their government, but also pray for its members," he said. And that's what counts, he added.
...Rüdiger Hauth, who monitors religious sects for the Evangelical Church, Germany's largest Protestant church, in the western German region of Westphalia, said there are ten thousands of supporters. But Richard Ziegert, Hauth's colleague from the southwestern region of Palatinate, believes that there are more than 250,000 radical Christians in the country and US missionaries are increasingly coming to Germany to spread the word.
/make your cross where it belongs "If you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles." Sun Tzu
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
A Presidential European: Uffe Ellemann-Jensen
Reportedly watching the final in Lisbon ,on a portable television, while attempting to extricate his country from the treaty rejection mess his voters had created for him, Mr. Ellemann-Jensen watched Denmark pull off a resounding victory over the German machine. Entering the hall where the formal dinner marking the final night of this inaugural EU summit, Ellemann-Jensen famously quips to reporters "If you can't join them, beat them!". Negotiations, successfully followed up by the Edinburgh accords in the following year, save the Maastricht treaty, nascent EU institutions and Denmark's membership in them.
My latest one is "After darkness comes fuel" (which is an actual commerical slogan here by BP) - I like "After fuel comes darkness" a lot better...
I had completely forgotten about Ellemann-Jensen. Serendipity strikes!
The Modem being a form of the FDP which has indeed accepted some right-wing ecology proposals, and moved bit to the left... Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères
"Y" = (Ypsilanti) = politics
From ArborWiki
City of Ypsilanti's Mayor is elected every four years. Ypsilanti has a council/manager form of government with a weak mayor. This means that the Mayor basically functions as an at-large Councilmember and presides over Council meetings, in contrast to "strong mayor" cities, like Detroit, where the Mayor's office has significant control over day-to-day governance of the city.
http://arborwiki.org/index.php/Ypsilanti_Mayor
(I'm thinking of the "Y" campaign--easy to remember the Y! Y = politics)
"J" = (Major Major Major Major) = military
Or:
Major Major Major Major is a character in Joseph Heller's classic novel Catch-22.
He has the surname Major, and at birth his father gave him the first and middle names Major and Major, despite informing the mother that he had named the boy 'Caleb' in accordance with her wishes. She only discovers Major Major Major's real first and middle names when his birth certificate is required for him to enter kindergarten, and the shock leads to her death. The novel explains this was a joke on his father's part, and notes that it is not a particularly funny one.
Inducted during World War II, he is promoted from Private to Major while still in boot camp, without attending the Officers Training Corps or any advance warning at all. This is caused by an IBM machine with a "sense of humor almost as keen as his father's". A recurring joke in the book is that he bears a striking resemblance to Henry Fonda, even to the point of some people thinking that he is in fact Henry Fonda. In an interview, Heller states that he would imagine Major Major to either be played "by Henry Fonda or by somebody who looks nothing like Henry Fonda."
During the novel, it is revealed that he can never be promoted nor demoted, because the army has only one Major Major Major Major and Ex-PFC Wintergreen does not intend to let this change.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_Major_Major_Major
(Hope this is okay!) Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
Do you have any online references for Frankfurt?
It is an intriguing model.... Dialog International
