Bad Kanada, Bad!

Remember when Canada used to be one of the good countries (as seen from a German point of view)?

Well now those crazy canucks went and done it and have formally withdrawn from the Kyoto Protocol on climate change ITSELF, just like that, and just days after that cheesy last-minute el cheapo compromise on climate change in Durban that got German environmentalists over here (and everywhere else) all hot and bothered and globally warmed up and stuff. Sheesh.

And all for the love of money!? Why those no-good-dog-sledding-pill-pushing-maple-smokers. Can you imagine that? Is nothing sacred anymore? Since when has money made the world go around, people? Oh. That long, really? Damn.

So now even the Canadians are acting like, well, Americans. Talk about the wheels falling off your dog and pony show climate change bandwagen.  What does this mean? Where do we not go from here? Like, other than Germany, who’s going to be next?

“Canada’s obligations under Kyoto would cost $13.6bn (10.3bn euros; £8.7bn): “That’s $1,600 from every Canadian family – that’s the Kyoto cost to Canadians, that was the legacy of an incompetent Liberal government.”

8000 Jobs For A Better World

For a better dream world, I should say.

You know, for a better dream world without nuclear energy? Germany utility RWE plans to cut costs – and 8000 jobs – as it trys to come to grips with Germany’s decision to phase out nuclear power by 2022 – and then continue to import it´s nuclear power from France and others instead.

These 8000 jobs will just be the start of it, of course.  But aller Anfang ist schwer, as the Germans say: The first step is the hardest. It will get a lot easier firing folks once “the movement” gains movement, I mean progresses.

The Color Of Money

We’re the Greens. You know, green like money (well it’s green back home)? And that’s what it’s going to cost you too, having voted for us like you did – and yet will (the Greens have become a Volkspartei or major party since Fukushima, remember?).

We only want to help you and we are only doing this for your own good, but in order to ecologically retrofit the German nation it will unfortunately be necessary for our subjects everywhere, green or not, to pay quite heavily through the nose.

It’s all about Umverteilung (redistribution – of other people’s money), as usual. And here at our party convention in Kiel we have come up with just a few of the ways with which this will soon be done:

The toll for trucks will be increased.
The company car privilege will be phased out.
Ecological taxation will be increased, loopholes will be closed.
The tax advantage for married couples will be phased out.
Reduced rate exceptions for the value added tax will be eliminated.
The top tax rate will be increased to 49% (beginning with 80,000 euros gross).
The flat rate withholding tax will be replaced with a progressive tax.
A capital levy on “the rich” will be introduced.
A capital tax will be introduced (replacing the capital levy on “the rich” after ten years).
A “financial market transaction tax” will be introduced.

Like we said, these are just a few modest suggestions for Vorspeise (an appetizer). Just wait until we are actually in power.

Qualität hat ihren Preis (everything comes at a price).

Viva la revolución verde!

Our Wind Farms Would Work Just Great

It’s just that we don’t have the cables to bring the energy to shore (nor the money to lay them).

The network operator building those giant offshore wind farms planned to be a “supporting column” in Germany’s coming-one-day-but-not-in-any-way-near-there-yet energy turnaround, is no longer able to continue “work as usual.”

Like the Dutch government before them, having learned that offshore wind power is too expensive and that it cannot afford to subsidize the entire cost, the good folks at TenneT TSO GmbH are now about to throw in the towel, seemingly unable to find financing in the private sector that would allow them to continue their over cost and behind schedule project (it’s probably them damned durn banks doing this again, or that 1%).

The connection from Water World (Wind World?) back to Planet Earth has turned out to be more complicated and expensive than politically correct planners had originally thought, in other words, provided they had even thought about it at all.

But don’t worry, Green Shirt ideologues have already assured us that “If Tennent can’t swing the offshore development, somebody else can.” Money seems to be no object here, you see. When it’s not yours, I mean.

“Wenn Tennet den Offshore-Ausbau nicht schultern kann, müssen andere ran.”

Dumbass Computer Gamers

As everybody out there knows… All this computer game nonsense (not to mention the violence) is dumbing down our kids and ravaging our European cultural identity (or at least yours).

“Scientists at the Berliner Berliner Charité medical school have made a surprising discovery: Moderate computer game players have a great deal more brain volume.”

Von wegen, Computerspiele machen dumm – Untersuchungen mit Magnetresonanztomografen ergaben, dass die Hirnstruktur von moderaten Computer-Spielern ausgeprägert ist.

Staunch Communist Seeking Deluded Socialist For Meaningful Progressive Relationship, Common Starry-Eyed Idealist Undertakings And Hot Passionate Sex

And just when you thought the Left Party freak show couldn’t get any freakier.

Now when former Left Party boss Oskar Lafontaine and Sahra “The Stalinist” Wagenknecht aren’t working on plans to redistribute other people’s wealth and ensure that the means of other people’s production are at the service of the whole of society, they’re – you might want to look away here – gettin’ it on.

Like how revolting can revolution get?

“Es ist alles gesagt.”

99% Plus 53% Makes How Much Percent?

Now that it’s getting cold and wet on Wall Street (and elsewhere) the 100% of the 99% are beginning to reevaluate whether or not they will be able to continue whining at 100% or whether it might not be better for them now to just shut up already and start biting the bullet like that ugly 53% does.

There could never be a 53% movement in Germany, you know. Germans are always in the upper 80s to lower 90s.

53 Prozent, weil dies die Menge derer sei, die mehr Einkommensteuer zahlen, als sie an Abschreibungen und sonstigen Entlastungen zurückbekommen. “Wir sind diejenigen, die für diejenigen zahlen, die sich gerade über dieses und jenes und irgendwie alles beschweren.”

 

Germans Puzzled By Rising Electricity Prices

They are also puzzled about the increased number of “mini-blackouts” taking place across the land.

And no one can properly explain these mysterious phenomena, although the Internet portal Verivox gave it a halfhearted try: The increased share in the costs for renewable energy and the ten percent wholesale energy price increase which resulted after the shutdown of eight nuclear power plants this sommer are responsible.

To be fair, electricity prices rise here very year. To be unfair, most German media and the poltical elite refuse to admit that the price increases now taking place are a direct result of their hysterical nuclear phase-out Aktionismus (politicking).

Als Grund gab Verivox die gestiegene Umlage für die erneuerbaren Energien sowie die Erhöhung der Großhandelspreise an, die für rund 15 Euro Mehrkosten im Jahr verantwortlich sein werden. Die Großhandelspreise waren nach der Abschaltung von acht deutschen Atomkraftwerken im Sommer um rund zehn Prozent nach oben geschossen.

The Scam That Keeps On Giving

Word has clearly gotten out now. What used to be a Geheimtipp (insiders’ tip) has now become a full-fledged and nationally recognized Volkssport (national sport): Early retirement due to mental illness.

Up some 6,000 from the previous year, more and more Germans (71,000) are now being “forced” to retire early each and every year because they suffer from things like anxiety disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, multiple generalized anxiety disorder, mega ultra super mulitple generalized really really bad anxiety disorder and other such imaginary diseases.

In fact, being mental is now the number one main excuse used to have to go into “involuntary retirement” in Germany, with the average age of these hapless victims being 48, by the way.

Fear industry profiteers, I mean experts, are happy to report that the increased number of diagnosed cases is due to a greater willingness of sufferers to openly admit their problems, although none of these experts are able or willing to explain where this sudden willingness comes from.

Über das Thema werde jetzt “offener geredet und deshalb diagnostizieren Ärzte jetzt eher psychische Ursachen von Leiden.”

Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life

First the good news: Germans are no more depressive than they used to be.

The bad news is that they are now no longer expected to keep their depressions to themselves and are being asked to come out of their closets to tell everybody about it.

The numbers are shocking or something. Fear industry experts at the Foundation for German Depression Assistance say that there are four million depressed people in Germany, two-thirds of them being women. Just like the rest of us, their lives are filled with angst, emptiness and desperation. But unlike others, these folks are much easier to manipulate (by organizations like the Foundation of German Depression Assistance, for instance) and can and will be made to come public with their ailments, real or imaginary, thus “breaking a taboo” and further increasing their number and the throng of psychotherapeutically challenged pilgrims to organizations like, well, take a guess.

The development is in fact so dramatic that comedian Harald Schmidt has been asked to get involved as a sponsor. And anybody who wasn’t depressed before attending a conference moderated by this guy will be by the time he leaves.

Gee. All of this gives German depression assistance a whole new meaning or something.

Vier Millionen Depressive in Deutschland – das kann nicht nur am Fernsehprogramm liegen.