The eternally recurring barnyard allegory that is the German political scene has their karmic Luger set to “Hay�. The feint of heart may want to cover their eyes because The Financial Times really knows how to blow up my skirt:

Germany slid into political chaos on Sunday night as the election produced a hung parliament, with both chancellor Gerhard Schröder and his challenger Angela Merkel claiming victory and the right to form a new government.

And by “Chancellor Gerhard Schröder� they mean Former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. Chalk up another win for The Coalition. Or is it?

Not one to let rumors of “instability� upset the lucrative oil deal he just signed with Putin to punish Poland and the Ukraine, Gerhard fired up a little of that vaunted Germanic Fascism:

Schroeder defiantly taunted Merkel in a joint television appearance Sunday night, saying she would not receive the post of chancellor in any deal with the Social Democrats.

“If Mrs. Merkel manages to form a coalition with the Free Democrats and Greens, I can say nothing against it,” Schroeder said. “But she will not win a coalition under her leadership with my Social Democratic Party.”

Asked if he would be chancellor in a left-right coalition, Schroeder answered, “How else would it work?” (emphasis mine)

Great Moments in German History

Signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop / Nazi-Soviet Nonagression Pact

Signing of the Northern European Gas Pipeline / Nazi-Soviet Nonagression Pact

Former Chancellor Schröder refuses to concede after loss.

Maybe this guy was on to something:

The metaphysical comfort–with which, I am suggesting even now, every true tragedy leaves us–that life is at the bottom of things, despite all the changes of appearances, indestructibly powerful and pleasurable–this comfort appears in incarnate clarity in the chorus of the satyrs, a chorus of natural beings who live ineradicably, as it were, behind all civilization and remain eternally the same, despite the changes of generations and of the history of nations.

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