Skip to main content

A tale of two elections

 Perhaps many Americans may not know but Germany just switched to a new leader of their nation.

Herr Olaf Scholz was elected and took office as post war Germany's ninth CEO aka Chancellor of the Federal Republic.

No drama.  No media sensation.  Nothing. Lot of car rides between the Parliament aka Reichstag building and Presidential palace to follow the due process of being anointed (post the ballot process) and it was over.  When he appeared in the parliament for the confirmation every lawmaker and photographer in attendance was wearing a mask.  No exceptions.

NYT put this story lower down on their first page.  Covid and American spending bills took up the top half.

He takes over from Ms Angela Merkel who ruled Germany for 16 years and was a true leader and powerful lady without being pompous or wanting to strut it.  She did the job of an elected official as a public servant is expected to do.

Mr. Scholz is likely to follow in her footsteps and even took out the 'help me god' portion of his swearing in of the ceremonial oath.  He believes in the power of humans to help each other the media reported.

Among the first people to congratulate Mr. Scholz was his primary opponent in the race for Chancellorship.  Ms Merkel wished him success and he responded in kind praising what she had achieved for modern day Deutschland.

Contrast that to what happened when Biden took over from Trump.  And reflect.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

New England is gleaming in the fall

 This autumn the weather gods cooperated as we took a family trip in the northeast to see six states that qualify or makeup what is known colloquially in America as New England. Mass, Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut and Rhode Island (tiniest state in the union). The outing helped tally up the states we either lived in, visited or have worked in to 47. Guess which three have eluded this intrepid traveling family. Any rate the drive was all in about 1,800 miles and included some memorable geographic wonders or points of interest.  Easternmost part of state of Massachusetts being one.  Furthest drivable road east in Mass being another. Visit to all Ivy League schools (term harkens to a collegiate athletics conference and generally regarded as elite academic institutes of some repute worldwide) is another random bucket list item of which this trip afforded the chance to knock two more of the list.  Dartmouth in Hanover, NH and Brown (and its sister institute the RISD  - school f

Searching for a lavish 'fill in the blank with other adjectives and gender' in bed

 Many of the readers of this blog have experienced this. Strange sounding messages popping up in your text or WA or emails all day long from some exotic sounding locale with an out of this world individual looking for love, sex, money or other paraphernalia to get a high. I mean granted that electronic spamming is a low cost enterprise and all but the sheer volumes and the variety in these exhortations is beyond imagination. Having a desire to engage you in some sort of sexual payola or invest in some arcane crypto scheme must be a profound algorithm that someone from Oklahoma to Odessa is cranking on through the night and watching one in a few million fall for. Otherwise this nonsense would not exist I suspect. It would be funny to watch the lifecycle of some such persona that creates said content and that of a prospect for this invite becoming an unwilling or willing participant. Then that whole thing could go on some social channel and earn likes and subscriptions for someone else a

Lakeside frivolities

 We moved to the Charlotte area not knowing where exactly our new home would be. Turns out it was by a popular lake formed by the damming of the Catawba river which flows north to south in the Carolinas. Local electricity generation utility built a series of dams along the waterway for hydro and couple nuclear plants as well to supply the state grid.  The lake our house butts into is Lake Wylie. While tract home build has picked up in the Carolinas the developer often carves out parcels that they can get their hands on leaving behind privately owned lots that the individual owner may not want to sell. Our house is part of a subdivision but backs into actual lake front yardage that has always been part of legacy family owned properties who chose to build a cabin or getaway and did not sell to a corporation wanting to build in the hundreds. As such we can see the water through the year but it does not afford actual water access.  That privilege is to our neighbors who still maintain thei