Another Visit from a Politician

Peer Steinbrück visited Ulm yesterday.  He is the main challenger for Chancellor.  There was a different setup than for Angela Merkel, so I was able to get slightly better pictures.

Die Kanzlerin

German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited Ulm today. Elections are in September. I didn't get very good pictures.

Voting, German style

I finally got my absentee ballots today for the European and local elections being held this weekend (they were postmarked May 22nd, so I'm guessing the Italian mail held them for a while). It was quite the package -- a total of 5 ballots, for a combined total of 87 votes! (thanks to the concepts of "Kumulieren und Panaschieren," i.e. cumulate and split one's vote) And no voting machines, but just good, old fashioned crosses. Always amusing are the over 30 parties on the European ballot, among them such parties as the "Europa-Demokratie-Esperanto" party, the "Newropeans," or the "Piratenpartei Deutschland" (yes, that's the German Pirate Party). I also counted 4 parties dedicated to old and retired people. I guess that's a sign of the times.

Thank You

America

Vote

This is the most important part. It ain't over till it's over. We don't want something like this to happen:

Yes, You Can!

If you can vote in the upcoming U.S. election, and are possibly even undecided, please read this.

Never in living memory has an election been more critical than the one fast approaching—that’s the quadrennial cliché, as expected as the balloons and the bombast. And yet when has it ever felt so urgently true? When have so many Americans had so clear a sense that a Presidency has—at the levels of competence, vision, and integrity—undermined the country and its ideals?
[...]
At a moment of economic calamity, international perplexity, political failure, and battered morale, America needs both uplift and realism, both change and steadiness. It needs a leader temperamentally, intellectually, and emotionally attuned to the complexities of our troubled globe. That leader’s name is Barack Obama.

On a lighter, yet related note, check out the pumpkins and babies.