Der Spiegel rushes to tell us.
Because other politicians have been caught on mic saying bad things, too.
Only they were bad. So there.
“Nach meiner Wahl habe ich mehr Flexibilität.”
Category Archives: Helections
Germany’s Energy Turnaround Rocks
They never promised you a rose garden (actually, they did). It looks like Germany’s Energiewende (the energy turnaround = shutting down nuclear power and waiting for solar and wind energy to pick up slack) is going to have its price, too.
And it looks likes the first installment will by about a seven percent increase in energy costs for private housholds. But Germans pay these increases gladly, I think. At least for now (seven percent is just the start, of course). It’s back to the future. It’s for the common good. Or it’s for saving the planet or something.
Uh, like why don’t they just have “the state” pay for it. Oh, that’s right. They already are (the taxpayers are, that is).
Stromtrassen, Umschlagwerke oder intelligente Stromzähler kosten den Staat Milliarden. Draufzahlen muss am Ende oft der Verbraucher – offenbar bis zu sieben Prozent in den kommenden Jahren.
Our Holy Hymnal Election Video, Amen
Wow. If anyone appreciates good propaganda, it’s these guys. The Der Spiegel clearly, if not accidently, got this one right: Obama, Amerikas Supermann.
“Oscar winner Davis Guggenheim directed it, Oscar winner Tom Hanks narrated it: Barack Obama’s election strategists have released a 17 minute promotional film. It stylizes the US President as a lonely hero who has single-handedly led his country out of crisis.”
Coming soon to a living room near you.
“Dieses Video ist für die Fans, und ihr wisst, wer sich angesprochen fühlen sollte.”
But At Least He Didn’t Say Nazi
Sigmar Gabriel, the head of the German Social Democratic Party and possible candidate for Chancellor of Germany, finally decided to break with that long and rather tiring SPD tradition of calling dissenters Nazis and tried out something new and refreshingly different instead; labelling the state of Israel an “Apartheid-Regime” on his Facebook page.
And to give the whole thing a little more umpf, he decided to publish this while visiting Israel and the Palestinian territories. Now he gets to pretend to defend his comparison of Israel to a racist state live and in color, right there before those terrible racists themselves (the Israelis, not the Palestinians). I tell ya, you got to have instinct in this business. Go SPD!
“I was just in Hebron. That is a lawless territory there for Palestinians. This is an apartheid regime, for which there is no justification.”
Lots of Luck, Pal
He sure is an ambitious character, I’ll give him that much: Future German president Joachim Gauck “wants to rid Germany of angst.”
I’ll be the first to agree that what this nation needs is a good psychiatrist, but to actually rid Germany of angst?
That would be like ridding zebras of their stripes.
That would be like ridding muskrats of their musk.
That would be like ridding Americans of their apple pie.
No, no. I’ve just changed my mind. This not only can’t be done, I don’t believe it should even be tried. It would be immoral or something. And potentially dangerous. No, it would be absolutely positively dangerous. Let’s just let this sleeping, angst-ridden dog lie, el presidente.
Germany’s next president, wants to reinvigorate the nation with his passion for freedom and democracy. His emotional, at times unguarded rhetoric will liven up German politics — but could backfire if he isn’t careful.
German Austerity Still Quite A Rarity
Despite all the talk to the contrarity.
The German government didn’t reach even half of its planned savings in the federal budget in 2011. Only 42 percent of the spending cuts named by Merkel’s coalition government, comprised of the conservative Christian Democrats and the business-friendly Free Democratic Party, were actually not implemented…
The government is also falling behind on its targets for this year. Of the originally planned €19.1 billion in savings, less than half has been implemented…
This lapse (in reaching savings targets) is particularly embarrassing for the German government because the news comes just after 25 European Union member states agreed in early March to an international fiscal pact obliging them to adhere to greater fiscal discipline…
The aim of the pact is to make EU countries maintain binding austerity measures that leaders hope will contain the debt crisis and prevent countries like Greece from being able to pile up massive debts again.
And countries like Germany will show them how to do it, see? Next year, maybe. Or the year after that. Hard to say for sure.
“It (the pact) is a milestone in the history of the European Union.”
Gazprom Gerd Strikes Again
Former chancellor Gerhard Schroeder (SPD) is always good for popping a cork or two.
This time he’s ruffled a few German feathers by getting all warm and fuzzy about his good old buddy Vladimir Putin again. More specifically about Putin’s stunning (not) election victory over the weekend, praising him for being the “flawless democrat” that he is.
But this is nothing new. Schroeder has always been generous with praise for Putin. Especially since landing that 1 million euro-per-year consulting job from him at Gazprom’s Nord Stream consortium – just a few months (weeks?) after having left office.
Wes Brot ich ess, des Lied ich sing.
Being A Pirate Sucks
I got your “aye me buckos” for you right here. Even the best-run running joke gets old after a while (or in this case the worst-run).
It turns out that too much transparancy leads to too much transparancy after all. That is: Finally being able to see that if you want to accomplish something in life (or even in politics, yuk), you’re going to have to work really, really, really hard for it.
Top pirate wench Marina Weisband quit first due to “health reasons” (she was clearly sick and tired of all this adolescent nonsense). Swashbuckling chairman of the Berlin pirate pack himself Gerhard Anger quit not long after that due to “the immense pressure” of having to actually get up every morning to go to work.
Like, life in the Internet was never like this. You can stick this reality bite crap back up to where the sun don’t shine, dude. A party “in tune with the Berlin vibe” is still a party. And every party has to come to an end sometime.
„Ich ertrage diese emotionale Belastung nicht.”
Germans Still Scared Of The Internetz
Actually, it’s only the older, digital immigrant kind of Germans who are still scared of the Veb. You know, around 85 to 90 percent of the population?
And these are the folks who want politicians to introduce ever more stringent anti-Internet legislation (more is more here) and get all hysterical about data privacy for data that nobody’s interested in and ran Google Street View out of town and would never think of ever putting their faces (or anything else) on Facebook, provided they could even find the dad dern thing, and think that flash mobs are real mobsters with machine guns and stuff like that and on and on and on. And, oh yeah, these are also the folks who vote here. So there we have it. Old dogs, nix tricks. Tricks are for kids.
Sogenannte Digital Outsiders hält die Angst, die Kontrolle über ihre persönliche Daten zu verlieren, davon ab, überhaupt online zu gehen. Sie fürchten zudem, mit einem versehentlichen falschen Tastendruck das Internet zu löschen.
“Tax Advice Mission” Impossible
How about a little more sensitivity here, Greece? Germans are only trying to help.
And it doesn’t look like they’re going to stop trying to help you anytime soon, either. That’s why if they can’t get that “budget commissioner” they proposed to help monitor the Greek government’s (lack of) management of its finances, some 160 German tax collectors have now selflessly volunteered for assignments in Greece to help gather Greek taxes more efficiently. And as you can imagine, when it comes to taxation and tax collection, German efficiency can really hurt.
A recent flurry of acrimonious exchanges between Athens and Berlin reflect deepening doubts among mainly northern members of the 17-nation euro zone about Greece’s ability and willingness to overhaul its economy to satisfy lenders’ demands.
Observing Hermann 