Germans Now Lecturing Americans About Religion

Or at least I think that’s what they’re doing here. Or maybe they’re just lecturing us about mandatory healthcare insurance, which clearly seems to have some religious significance in Germany.

I mean, we all know how Germans are famous for being so religious and all, but I had no idea that they had begun spreading their evangelical zeal to Obamacare, of all things. But spread they have and we should take their prosthelising in earnest (they certainly do).

Why just take a look at some of the deeper observations to be found within this religious tract, I mean Spiegel article:

In Germany, people are baffled by how hostile a country as religious as the United States can be to the principle of mandatory healthcare insurance.

The US comes across to not only Germans, but to many Europeans, as a religious country. Don’t religious Americans love their neighbors?

“For me the US is a very religious country. It doesn’t matter which religion I look at — love thy neighbor is a very, very important point in religion.”

For her, the apparent deep religiousness of many Americans doesn’t jibe with their unwillingness to be part of a healthcare community.

Well there we have it. Sin and transgression everywhere you look. The devil has entered our US-Amerikan house and will divide and fall it. All because, well, I’m not really sure why. But I think it might be because we as Americans don’t worship mandatory healthcare insurance like other folks do. Amen.

Thanks, Germany. We’ll come to see the light yet. You just wait and see.

Germans Can’t Fathom US Aversion to Obama’s Healthcare Reform

German Ecological Energy Turnaround Working!

As long as power plants that burn fossil fuels remain in operation, that is.

The Federal Network Agency warns that if ecologically questionable coal-fired power stations do not stay in operation, the German power grid will crash. Especially in Southern German “assured capacities” are missing.

Power stations old as dirt (and at least as dirty), ready to be shut down due to the high environmental pollution they cause, will have to remain in operation.

Details, details. The main thing is that Germany’s ideologically-fired power elite stay in power long enough to keep that visionary progress of theirs a comin’.

Die ökologische Energiewende in Deutschland scheint ohne umweltschädliche fossile Kraftwerke nicht zu funktionieren.

What’s One More Delay For The BBA?

The Berlin Brandenburg Airport, I mean. Or isn’t it the Berlin Brandenburg Willy Brandt Airport?

Or does it stand for But Berlin Went Broke Already? Better not Bother With Booking Ahead?

Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit said the delay will cost money but declined to put a price tag on it.

Those Airbus A380s Look So Freakin’ Cool

Especially when they’re Boeing 747-8-Jumbos.

Mit einer Rumpflänge von 76,3 Metern übertrifft die 747-8 als jetzt längster Passagierjet den Airbus A340-600 um knapp einen Meter und den Airbus A380 um vier Meter. Das Boeing-Flagschiff kann bis zu 600 Passagiere aufnehmen.

Germany Drains Spain’s Brains

In a ghoulish plan to intensify their already ironclad grip of an anemic Europe, depraved German industrialists have now begun luring unsuspecting southern European engineers to Germany by offering them well-paid jobs which will allow them (the depraved Germans) to drain their brains at leasure.

To make matters worse, if that were possible, another grisly gimmick has also been introduced in which so-called “blue cards” (green had already been taken) are being offered to skilled non-EU workers, as well. Although ostinsibly intended to “make the immigration process” easier, this “blue card” babble is clearly just another cynical euphemism for more German brain draining activity.

The gruesome brain-sucking capitalist bastards.

In December, a planeload of 100 Spanish engineers flew to nearby Stuttgart for a weekend of job interviews. Within a month, about a third of them had been hired. And some German companies have been making connections over the Internet, simply plucking Spanish, Portuguese, Greek and Italian professionals from sites like LinkedIn.

German Tourists Avoiding Greece This Year For Some Reason

German tourists may gladly zip off to some of the most dangerous places on earth you can imagine, but not even they are crazy enough to be heading down to Greece any time soon.

“The Germans aren’t coming here this year but there’s no reason for them to be afraid,” one Greek guy said. “Honest,” he should have added.

“We don’t have a problem with the German people, only their government,” another guy added, who forgot to say “Really.”

“That’s just the way Germans are: if there’s trouble in some country, then Germans just don’t go there on their holidays.”

German Offshore Wind Farms More Deadly Than Fukushima

Nobody promised the Germans a rose garden when the so-called “energy turnaround” turned around the corner here last year.

So that’s why the three deaths and 80 serious accidents that have taken place so far while building Germany’s so badly needed offshore wind farms are being registered here with such stoic equanimity (or are being ignored altogether). Progress must march on or something. Keine Widerrede (no talking back)!

Do me a favor and wake me once this energy turnaround nonsense has finally turned around (as in over) and died itself.

Der Leiter des Havariekommandos in Cuxhaven, Hans-Werner Monsees, forderte gegenüber FOCUS ein „besseres und dichteres Rettungssystem“. Sonst drohe die Zahl der Toten und Schwerverletzten weiter zu steigen – in den nächsten Jahren werden bis zu 7000 Windräder vor der deutschen Küste installiert.

1 Percent?

That’s right. E-books only account for 1 percent of all book sales in Germany.

Why is this? Let us count the ways…

Germans believe they cannot read as well on digital reading devices. This is because they have never held a digital reading device in their hands, much less tried to read from one, but still.

Germans are convinced that they are “better” at reading from paper (I don’t make this stuff up, people).

Like savages who believe that a camera captures your soul, Germans believe that an e-book reader captures the souls of the books it, uh, holds captive (OK, that part I did make up).

But the biggest reason of all Germans don’t like e-books and e-book readers is that Germans don’t like technology. Technology that isn’t German, I mean.

“In Germany we’re still at 1 percent, but that’s already an increase of 77 percent from the previous year.”

PS: Of course low e-book sales in Germany might also have to do with the fact that German book prices are set by the German culture mafia (by the publishers!? = you pay the same artificially high price everywhere) so they get to set the e-book prices, too (you can pay up to $25 for one). And although printed books are exempt from Germany’s 19 percent value added tax, e-books aren’t. Not that the system is rigged or anything. I’m just saying.

We Hate Those Evil American Rating Agencies

But we don’t have the confidence (investor or otherwise) to create one ourselves.

The project to set up a European rating agency to challenge the dominance of American firms is at risk of collapsing, the German business daily Financial Times Deutschland reported on Monday. International consulting firm Roland Berger can’t find enough investors for its plan.

Hey, you-know-what happens. But don’t worry about it, Europe. It’s not like anybody is going to be rating you on this or anything. When in doubt (and you always are), just keep on bitching and moaning instead.

Ihnen wird nicht nur wegen Fehlbewertungen eine Mitschuld an der Finanzkrise gegeben. Auch ihre Rolle bei der Beurteilung der dramatischen Rettungsbemühungen und -konzepte für hochverschuldete Euro-Länder wie Griechenland, Portugal und Irland ist umstritten. Das Urteil der Ratingagenturen prägt letztlich vielfach die Marktreaktionen auf solche Bemühungen.

Ship? What Ship?

This must have been a big misunderstanding or something. A German-owned freighter loaded with weapons from Iran bound for the Syrian regime of Bashar Assad and stopped on Friday near the Syrian port of Tartus has now disappeared off the watery face of the earth.

Und das ist auch gut so (and a good thing, too), as we all know that Germans would never disregard a weapons embargo, neither for fun nor profit, being the pedantic pacifists they are, so this must have been one of those Fata Morgana things that happen out there on the high seas from time to time.

Weapons from Iran? Maybe it was that infamous ghost ship the S.S. Günter Grass.

Der Frachter, der schweres Militärgerät geladen hat, schaltete seinen Transponder aus und ist nicht mehr zu orten.