The difficulties that Iraqi Shia, Sunnis and Kurds have had in governing their country following their elections have given the world lots of headaches, especially for the United States. But if you really want to see a group of political parties having a difficult time putting together a stable coalition, look to Germany. The best headline I’ve seen in a while comes from the English version of Der Spiegel: Germany Loses Its Own Election. Here are some other English language links from the same publication:

• Merkel’s Bitter Defeat
• Who Want’s to be Germany’s Chancellor?
• Preliminary Results Show Schroder, Merkel Stalemate

Incidentally, it says a lot about the sad state of American mainstream media that the German elections got almost no attention from the U.S. press (espectially TV news; my favorite newspaper, The Wall Street Journal, naturally had a full-length, front-page article). I mentioned this issue to a couple of people yesterday, and neither of them knew what I was talking about – they hadn’t seen anything about Germany’s election. It was all Katrina, all the time yesterday it seemed.

Meanwhile, Bill Roggio makes a good point in talking about Afghanistan’s Toothless Taliban. They threatened to kill people if they voted, but acheived nothing more than a series of local disturbances. Roggio gives the tally, as provided by the BBC:

• A skirmish between police and Taliban. Two police and three Taliban are killed.
• A French soldier is killed by a land mine.
• Two rockets fired at a UN compound.
• One Taliban fighter killed during an attack on a police station.
• A candidate’s house is bombed, injuring five.
• Three rockets fired at Jalalabad airport.
• A rocket attack on polling station in Andar district of Ghazni province.
• A rocket attack on polling station in Dargam district of Kunar province.

Contributed by Kirk H. Sowell of Arab World Analysis.com