A smack upside they green veggie heads, in other words.
If you believe the latest voter survey, that’s what the German Greens are getting at the moment.
Seems to have something to do with their recent Veggie Day Offensive. Or maybe it has something to do with their overall everyday offensiveness or another one of their many other offensive ambitious dreams for Verbotsrepublik Deutschland. Hard to say for sure.
NEUE WÄHLER-UMFRAGE SCHOCKT TRITTIN & CO.
Only this blunder was made by the Greens themselves during the Red-Green coalition government reign back in 2005.
Hard to believe really, but their 328-page election program “Time for Green Change” actually denounces as “a fatal policy change” the legislation they themselves introduced that increased the percentage of what employees have to pay for their share of the statutory health insurance here (employers pay the rest).
Well, I suppose it is better to realize one’s mistakes late than never and all that, but I’m not sure if that is really what was intended here.
If it wasn’t for Schadenfreude, I wouldn’t have no Freude at all.
“Bei all den erhobenen Zeigefingern gegenüber den anderen scheint kein Finger mehr für saubere Recherche im eigenen Laden frei gewesen zu sein.”
“US Experts Want More Leadership from Germany”
There hasn’t been any leadership in the US for about five years now. Somebody ought to start doing it one of these days.
Germans aren’t the only ones with interests at stake in next month’s election. The US is watching too — and Washington is hoping that, once the campaign is history, Germany will show more leadership on global issues.
“I think the assumption Americans have is that Germany should always step up and take responsibility commensurate with its weight in the world.”
PS: There was yet another anomaly in the GCG (Gun Control Germany) yesterday.
Money is like water (or maybe like beer). It has to go somewhere. And 40 billion euros just made its way to Germany.
While fear has driven money away from Greece and Spain and co, making the government cost of repaying debt in these countries seem prohibitive, in Germany it has been quite different. Fear has boosted Germany coffers…
One thing is for sure, putting it in Greek bonds is risky. Spanish, Italian and Portuguese bonds don’t seem much safer either. But German bonds, in contrast, feel as safe as a safe house in a land with no crime. In fact so safe are German government bonds or bunds, perceived to be, that there have been times when the yields on some of them have been negative.
So actually, Germany has done rather well out of fear created by the euro crisis – or should that be the other way around – a euro crisis created by fear?
Bausünden are building sins. Or building blunders? Or architectural abberations? Whatever. Berlin knows how. It’s just what they do here.
Photographer Turit Fröbe has now published an illustrated book about some of the most awful abberations, which must have been pretty difficult to compile. I mean, there is just too much to chose from here.
I love them all, by the way. The more sinful the better.
“Gute Bausünden zu finden, ist viel schwerer, als man denkt.”
Well, actually there are. But in this case I’m not so sure.
The satirical political party “Die Partei” gathered Thursday at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate to debut its latest campaign demand: eradicating tourists from the German capital.
The protest is a play on a debate in recent years in Berlin on how mass tourism threatens to transform the Brandenburg Gate, an important historical site in the city, into a a cheap Disneyland-like attraction.
Ob Ost, ob West, nieder mit der Touri-Pest!
Zum Sommer gehört auch Günter Grass (Günter Grass is also a part of sommer – predictable as he is, just like those other Sommerloch monsters mentioned below).
This time the grand old man of letters suddenly felt the urgent need to attack former SPD boss (and now over-the-hill ex-Left Party boss) Oskar Lafontaine as being a sleazy traitor to the grand old SPD’s grand old cause, whatever the grand old hell that was.
I can only assume that this little outburst must have something to do with the upcoming federal elections. The SPD has ruled out ever forming a coalition government with the Left Party (one of the very few things they have managed to do right), but this is mostly because the Left Party, like the SPD itself, is already extinct (nobody has broken the part about the SPD being extinct to the SPD yet, however). Grass, of course, is about as SPD and as extinct as you can get.
And it doesn’t really matter that Grass is actually right about Lafontaine here. All it points out to me is just how much he and Lafontaine have in common. Nobody out there takes them seriously anymore.
Günter Grass gehört zum Sommer wie das Reptil zum Badesee.
This is definitely one of my favorite rituals over here. Like the reliable old groundhog back home, at least one weird animal sighting is guaranteed to take place in Germany during the so-called Sommerloch season.
This year’s winner is a terrifying alligator snapping turtle that actually attacked a young swimmer in Bavaria somewhere. Or maybe he didn’t. But still.
Like I said, this happens over here every year. Here are just a few examples. Who says that “news” isn’t a product that you can just turn on and off at will? Depending upon the demand, I mean. Which obviously seems to be pretty low at the moment (it’s a Sommerloch, like I said).
And all of these scary monsters have one other thing in common, too: They never get caught. Some böse Zungen (malicious tongues) even suggest that these creatures don’t even really, you know, exist?
The turtle, nicknamed Lotti, is likely to be some 40cm (16 inches) long and weigh at least 14kg (30 pounds).
Beautiful German weapon sales of the week – past six months, I mean.
Because somebody has to admire them.
When it comes to Germany’s BND foreign intelligence service having forwarded massive amounts of data to the NSA – legally, I mean.
Take the good old SPD, for instance. They’re hollering the loudest at the moment. And this despite the fact that this particularly evil cooperation with US-Amerika is nothing new at all to them. So not new, in fact (an agreement made in the year 2002), that the SPD’s Frank-Walter Steinmeier was the guy wearing the responsibility hat when this agreement was made – the current governing coalition was not even in power.
But hey, you know how it is when a political party is out of power (in more ways than one) and crawling and scratching to get back into the game. In an outrage and all. In a panic, I mean.
“In my view, the opposition has only itself to blame. Pretending to be the firefighter just to be caught as the arsonist – you can’t play both of these roles with any credibility.”
Observing Hermann 