Soaring German energy costs in the wake of the country’s transition to renewable energy have seen more and more firms thinking abut relocating their operations. The US looks like a sound alternative, associations claim.
And this even though everybody (everybody Green or SPD) knows that fracking is EVIL.
“If we don’t get on top of the country’s energy transition to renewables and are not able to rein in energy costs in the process, German industry’s competitiveness stands to suffer.”
When it comes to money matters, I mean.
Like I mentioned earlier, only in Germany can a political party go for (and actually get) votes by promising to raise taxes.
But I now stand corrected: (actually hope to get) is what I should have written. It turns out that not even do-gooder mainstream green-like German green people like the idea of increased taxes all that terrible much. At least not when the cameras have finally been turned off and they can answer a survey in peace and quite when the Green Shirt party watchdogs aren’t breathing down their necks.
Ever since the announcement of that wacky plan of theirs to raise the top rate of income tax to 49 percent for those earning 80,000 euros ($104,000) a year or more (and to 45 percent from 42 percent above 60,000 euros), voter support for them has dropped steadily.
I guess there’s GREEN in theory and GREEN in practice after all. And practice makes perfect, you know.
Die Grünen erreichen im Politbarometer nur noch 13 Prozent. Dass die Steuerpläne der Partei schaden, glauben 53 Prozent.
And the “Barbie Dreamhouse Experience” must be wiped from our collective memory. And said dreamhouse must be razed to the ground, too. This is because Barbie is a clear and present danger and a real threat. At least here in Berlin it is.
And as far as I can tell, these are the German feministic reasons for this:
Everything is pink. Barbie and her Dreamhouse are a “pink-colored, sparkling world of beautiful illusion.”
There is an “endless” closet, cupcake baking kitchen, fashion runway and pop-star karaoke stage” inside (OK, I’m with them when it comes to this part).
The Dreamhouse gives “children the chance to taste the sweet nectar of life as a doll” and the protestors don’t like “pretty propaganda” like this.
They find it unfair that “not many women have the possibility of creating such a life for themselves.”
They think that Barbie is a role model that makes young girls want to “always look good, and to cook and clean.”
Barbie and her Dreamhouse “lead to eating disorders,” too.
And on and on and on. The head feminist, Michael Koschitzki, a member of the far-left Left Party’s youth organization, has spearheaded the protest movement against the Dreamhouse, printing thousands of flyers and calling on fellow feminists to gather outside for speeches and protest outside the temporary attraction on Thursday.
I’m speechless, almost. And I’m not making any of this stuff up, either. And these aren’t little girls cranking out this nonsense. These are real live feminist grownup human beings openly calling to picket a Barbie house, albeit a “Barbie Dreamhouse Experience” kind of house, but still. And the worst part of all this? The Barbie Dreamhouse Experience will be charging adults €15 just to get in.
“Barbie has again become a tool for some to advance their own agenda.”
Ever notice the emotional reaction you get whenever the subject is brought up (I’m talking about gun control in US-Amerika, of course)? The reaction from both sides of the argument, I mean? You know, these irrational, knee-jerk, pre-programmed reactions driven by fear and hate, totally devoid of logical or critical thinking (as is the case with other issues like abortion, religion, women’s rights, gay rights, etc.)?
And have you ever noticed how Germans like to sit back and smirk at these reactions from their expensive, comfortable and cushy seats way up there on the moral high ground? I know, you probably haven’t. But they do.
Well, take a look at what happens when a well-meaning SPD Gutmensch (do-gooder) suggests that a 120km/h speed limit be put on all German autobahns.
The whole country goes ape shit and that’s that. Punkt. Ende. Aus. “Debate” over in gefühlte (what felt like) five minutes. So I guess the only difference here is that there is no other side to the argument – as is/has been so often the case in Germany.
“Eine absurde, überflüssige Debatte.”
Germany’s gun control laws are some of the most restrictive in Europe. Unfortunately, not all armed criminals and nutcases who live here appear to have been properly informed.
Some idiot just killed three people and injured three more near Aachen, before shooting himself into a coma.
Shootings like this happen quite regulary in this country. Nobody likes to address the issue, other than to suggest introducing even stricter gun control laws, but it happens here quite regularly all the same.
Discussing shootings that take place in US-Amerika, on the other hand, is a downright popular obsession here. This is because Germans feel that Americans need more gun control legislation like the Germans have here in Germany, get it? Me neither.
Der Hintergrund des Amoklaufes ist noch unklar. Man könne nur spekulieren, sagt der Oberstaatsanwalt.
In a Wagner opera? What will they think of next?
I mean, it’s not like Wagner could ever be accused of having been an anti-Semite or anything.
The Rheinoper, based in Dusseldorf, said some of the audience had to seek medical help following early performances of Tannhauser.
But the producer “refused” to tone down the staging, set in a concentration camp during the Holocaust.
“With paramount concern, we note that some scenes (especially the shooting scene) were depicted very realistically.”
PS: Speaking of needing medical attention, happy Vatertag already!
Here in Berlin. Just like the teargas will be tomorrow.
And if we’re really lucky, we’ll have a good old-fashioned senselessly violent “Antikapitalistischen Walpurgisnacht” (anti-capitalist Walpurgis Night) tonight, too!
So y’all have a wonderful German May Day celebration, ya-here (not established as a public holiday until 1933)?
In der Vergangenheit war es in Berlin in der Walpurgisnacht und am 1. Mai häufig zu gewalttätigen Ausschreitungen am Rand von Demonstrationen der linken Szene gekommen. In diesem Jahr wollen sowohl linke Gruppen als auch die NPD in Berlin demonstrieren.
Ever feel like you fell down the rabbit hole? Spend some time in Germany and then you’ll know what I’m talking about.
Only in Germany can a political party go for (and actually get) votes by promising to raise taxes.
Delegates at a Greens party convention in Berlin yesterday voted through plans to raise the top rate of income tax to 49 percent for those earning 80,000 euros ($104,000) a year or more, and to 45 percent from 42 percent above 60,000 euros. They also backed a “wealth levy” on the richest to pay down 100 billion euros of Germany’s state debt over 10 years.
And a whole lot of German voters actually get excited about this kind of nonsense. It’s often a zero-sum mentality game over here, you see. You know, the way of thinking that hinges on the notion that there must be one winner and one loser and for every gain there is a loss? Take from the rich and give to the poor, in other words. Or Umverteilung (redistribution), if you prefer.
Of course what the Green Shirts are actually doing is selling “equality” where there is a huge demand and buying Neid (envy) where there is an even bigger supply.
“Nirgendwo in der OECD ist die Ungleichheit so schnell gestiegen wie in Deutschland.”
Or will not be happening, I should say.
As you know, Germany is green. And Germans are greener than green. Why, Germans are so green that Jamaicans want to roll them up and smoke them.
And Germans also like sticking to “the plan,” too (think Stalingrad). So they do not, I repeat do not appreciate it when, as in this case, their ambitious environmental plans get disturbed by unforseen technological developments that were not considered in the original plan and therefore start turning the whole Schlamassel (mess) into a really, really big and annoying, well, Schlamassel (think Stalingrad again).
It goes like this: “Ambitious environmental goals are far less meaningful if the economy withers in achieving them.” So when something really tempting comes along like shale gas drilling (hydraulic fracturing or “fracking”), a technology that could give Germany access to enough reserves to feed natural gas demand for 20 years, then that gets not-so-thoroughly-green people (yes, there still are a few specimens left) to thinking, plan or not.
So there we have it. And that’s the end of it (ask any German Green Shirt). Fracking can’t happen here. It is ideologically inadmissable. Fracking is something that those crazy Americans and their evil multi-national oil companies do, not us (multi-national oil companies are always American, by the way – don’t ask). Nope, fracking can never happen here. Never in a million years. Not this year anyway.
“We are sitting on Swiss cheese. The risks are just too high.”
This is German regulation madness at its best. Or, to be fair, Berliner Green Shirt regulation madness at its best.
The city district council of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg (the Greens) is currently causing not just a little bewilderment by refusing to name the square in front of Berlin’s Jewish Museum after Moses Mendelssohn, the German Jewish Enlightenment philosopher. No, not because they’re anti-Semites (at least not openly). It’s because Mendelssohn was not a woman.
You see, the district parliament decided back in 2005 (Greens and SPD) that 50 percent of the district’s streets and squares had to be named after women. Until that goal is reached, no new streets or squares will be allowed to be named after men, except in exceptional cases. Which this one isn’t, I guess.
This is about as small-minded as you can get, of course, and it fits perfectly with mainstream Green ideology, I find, in that nothing the Greens ever do or say can ever be allowed to be labelled as being small-minded or petit bourgeois in any way. But of course practically everything they do, well, is.
Die kleingeistige Posse spielt vor der Tür des weltweit bekannten Jüdischen Museums. Die Hauptakteure hocken in der mit Abstand stärksten Fraktion des Bezirks: Es sind die Grünen. Sie schämen sich nicht, „das leider falsche Geschlecht“ Mendelssohns in einem Satz mit dem „Projekt Unisextoiletten“ abzuhandeln.
PS: Speaking of Berlin city government in action: Oh boy! The new tourist tax is here! The new tourist tax is here!
