Friedrich Merz has been elected as German chancellor following a second Bundestag vote on Tuesday. The leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) had initially fallen six votes short of the required 316-vote threshold earlier in the day, but hours later rallied conservatives and allies in the country’s parliament to win 325 votes.

The situation is unprecedented in Germany’s post-war history, as no prospective chancellor had previously failed to be voted through by the Bundestag at the first try after securing a coalition agreement.

Merz faced opposition from 289 MPs, many of them from the Left and Green parties, who voted against the 69-year-old.

The second vote took place after four factions agreed to alter parliamentary procedures to avoid delays. According to Politico, urgent closed-door meetings were held in between the votes.

The two-month-long siege is a “clear and calculated effort to collectively punish over two million civilians and to make Gaza unliveable”.

“This is genocide in action,” said one official with  Amnesty International on 2 May, referring to Israel’s two-month humanitarian blockade in Gaza which has resulted in death, starvation, and suffering on a nearly unimaginable scale.

Julia Conley

The European Union, that grand and failing dream of technocrats, is dying. Its decline is not sudden or dramatic but a slow unraveling, a bureaucratic collapse in which every policy designed to sustain it only hastens its demise.

The death of Old Europe: The living corpses in Brussels have forgotten how to fight for their world
Between uncontrolled migration, propagandistic ideology and self-suffocating green agenda, the EU has only itself to blame for its decline

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oW5B0uh0n8
Massive Escalation: Russia Announced that NATO Launched Preparations for Seizure of KALININGRAD

As you may have already noticed, since 2007, the North Atlantic Alliance has regularly conducted military exercises near the Russian Federation's western borders. Moreover, starting in 2014, the intensity and regularity of these military exercises have increased significantly. At the same time, even Western military experts admit that these NATO exercises are not intended to defend Europe or to contain Russia....

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

         Gus Leonisky

Creating negotiating leverage? Trump and Bessent are delusional. Russia already knows that there is, “no daylight” between the US and Ukraine. Were it not for US actions to quash previous negotiations, to supply weapons, ammunition and intelligence, and to fund Ukraine’s government, this war would be over. If Trump thinks that this gives him leverage to pressure Putin to end the war, then it is just one more example of Trump’s detachment from reality. 

      by Larry C. Johnson

The Christian fascists and oligarchs gleefully handing Donald Trump his sharpie and executive orders are not making war on the deep state, the radical left or to protect us from “antisemites.” They are making war on verifiable fact, the rule of law and the transparency and accountability that is only possible with a free press, the right to dissent, a vibrant culture and a separation of powers, including an independent judiciary.

Eighty-nine. That’s the magic number. It will take at least 89 cardinals to elect Pope Francis’ successor. [The author has returned to UCA News after a year away].

That’s the two-thirds supermajority of the 133 men who will enter the Sistine Chapel on 7 May for the largest conclave in history. It would have been even larger had two other cardinal-electors not been too ill to participate.

Robert Mickens

The federal election result carries some hard-won lessons. The overarching lesson for the Liberals is to accept that they’re just not very good at politics.

A fundamental failure: They’ve been suffering a shrinking share of women’s votes since 1996. But the evidence shows they prefer to keep the boys’ club intact even if it pushes them into extinction.

BY Peter Hartcher (SMH)

In their search for guidance after their crushing defeat on Saturday, Liberals and their media allies are turning to sources of conservative wisdom, including Margaret Thatcher. I haven’t seen any of them citing Thatcher’s 1975 observation: “In politics if you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman.”

Arkansas GOP Senator Tom Cotton is just ITCHING for a war with Iran. In a recent congressional hearing Cotton pointedly asked President Donald Trump's nominee for chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine if he is prepared to propose bombing Iran as an option to the President. Cotton also mocked antiwar voices who suggest that our foreign policy is leading us into yet another “endless war.”

Guest host Aaron Maté and former Democratic Congressman Dennis Kucinich discuss the shiver that runs down Cotton’s leg whenever he thinks of dropping bombs on innocent people in the Middle East.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwaG4LI2QRs

==========================

The speakers discuss the ongoing Ukraine war, criticizing U.S. involvement and framing it as a geopolitical trap for former President Trump, who they argue should have immediately withdrawn all support to Ukraine upon taking office. They believe that doing so would have ended the war early, with Russia still achieving most of its goals. They argue that Russia was always willing to negotiate for a neutral, demilitarized, and "denazified" Ukraine, but the West ignored this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGXmXH1YdzE

As trade tensions flared between the world’s largest economies, communication between the United States and China has been so shaky that the two superpowers cannot even agree on whether they are talking at all.

At a White House economic briefing this week, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent demurred multiple times when pressed about President Trump’s recent claim that President Xi Jinping of China had called him. Although top economic officials might usually be aware of such high-level talks, Mr. Bessent insisted that he was not logging the president’s calls.

I’m a proud lonely weed

In the middle of the median strip

A small crack for me to creep

Through the concrete decrepit

I am an unwanted plant in the wrong place 

With insignificant blooms and ugly face

So the humans say but I think I’m pretty

And prolific too short-lived unfortunately

Some call me dandelion or pissenlit

Others insist on Taraxacum officinale

Because they work in the department of weedology

At the Oxford University where scientists study

My friends clover or Trifolium repens

Groundsel or Senecio vulgaris

And of course Oxalis and its cousins

It seems to me that Trump has gone a little crazy by his 100 days of presidency. On paper, he did very well, but he He clearly had no idea the extent of Zelensky's idiocy and the hatred of European idiots for himself.

Trump cannot publicly recognize an Overdue clinical addict and an absolutely insane nonentity — it will turn out to be an unsightly portrait of "who have we been feeding from a nipple for three years?". And it is difficult to get out, keeping face and dignity.

BY MORNING COFFEE

Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah’s ascent to the presidency is a landmark achievement for Namibia and a beacon of progress for gender equality in Africa.

Two travellers discovered on the beach

    An Oyster, carried thither by the sea.

'Twas eyed with equal greediness by each;

    Then came the question whose was it to be.

One, stooping down to pounce upon the prize,

    Was thrust away before his hand could snatch it.

"Not quite so quickly," his companion cries;

    "If you've a claim here, I've a claim to match it;

The first that saw it has the better right

    To its possession; come, you can't deny it."

"Well," said his friend, "my orbs are pretty bright,

    And I, upon my life, was first to spy it."