SPD To Announce Candidate Later

November 21, 2016 By Hermann Observer in Hard Facts, Helplessness, Home Cooking, Humor, Hurt Feelings Tags: CDU, Elections, German, Germans, Germany, Merkel, SPD Leave a comment

Now that Angela Merkel has opened the campaign for next year’s parliamentary elections in Germany by announcing her intention to run for a fourth term, the folks over at the SPD have made it clear that they intend to wait until they are good and ready before announcing their candidate, probably sometime in 2018.

They don’t have a candidate who has a chance in hell, get it?*

Am Montagmorgen hatte SPD-Vize Ralf Stegner erklärt, die SPD werde “bald” über ihren Kandidaten befinden.

*Chancellors aren’t directly elected here, of course, but the SPD is now an under-20%-party.

German Of The Day: Multikulti

November 20, 2016 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Helections, Helplessness, Hideology, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy Tags: AfD, CDU, Elections, German, Germans, Germany, Language, Merkel, Political Parties, Politics 2 Comments

That means multiculti, as in multicultural. And this is a word that is suddenly “out” for Angela Merkel’s CDU, for some inexplicable reason.

But to compensate for the loss, Modernisierungsverlierer (modernization losers) is now officially “in” with them. And just in case you were wondering, we are once again moving into election season in Germany and these “losers” are the same ones who have helped parties like the AfD become “winners” in recent years. Sounds vaguely familiar somehow but I can’t seem to put my finger on it at the moment.

Im Entwurf für den Leitantrag, der beim Parteitag Anfang Dezember beschlossen werden soll, sprechen die Christdemokraten ausdrücklich jene Bürger an, “die sich als Modernisierungsverlierer sehen und derzeit noch bei populistischen Parteien von rechts und links ihre Zuflucht suchen”.

German Army Now In Hot Water For Defending Itself

November 11, 2016 By Hermann Observer in Helplessness, Hideology, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy Tags: Afghanistan, Bundeswehr, German, Germans, Germany, Politics, Taliban, Terrorists Leave a comment

After Germany’s consulate in northern Afghanistan was attacked by a suicide car bomber, killing six and injuring more than 120 others, Bundeswehr soldiers there clearly overreacted by killing two men on a motorcycle who refused to stop when ordered to do so.

Or at least that’s what we will most likely be hearing in the German Reichstag in the coming days, weeks and months to follow.

The Bundeswehr killing people? What will they be expected to do next? Go to war?

Nach dem Anschlag auf das deutsche Generalkonsulat in Masar-i-Scharif hat die Bundeswehr in der nordafghanischen Stadt zwei Motorradfahrer erschossen. Die beiden Männer sollen sich über die Aufforderung, sofort anzuhalten, hinweggesetzt haben.

Expat Democrats Utterly Speechless But Vow To Remain Smug

November 10, 2016 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Helplessness, Hideology, Humor, Hurt Feelings Tags: Berlin, Clinton, Democrats, Expats, German, Germans, Germany, Trump 6 Comments

The crowd of expats who packed the Democrats Abroad election night party in Berlin to watch live election coverage by American broadcaster CNN was conspicuously young and conspicuously female. There had been much talk about apathy among so-called millennials in this campaign, but you wouldn’t have known that in the German capital…

Of course that was then and this is now.

“I’m in too much of an emotional state,” said expat Democrat X, when asked what she thought about the new President-elect. “No comment. But wait. I will say that you can bet we will bounce back from this and be just as self-righteous, priggish and self-satisfied as we ever have been. Mabe even more so. But just not right now, OK?”

Nobody Has The Intention Of Building A Wall

November 7, 2016 By Hermann Observer in Hard Facts, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hysteria Tags: Berlin Wall, German, Germans, Germany, Migrants, Munich, Refugees, Walls 1 Comment

Like, duh. That’s because it’s already been built.

A 12-foot high barrier – higher than the Berlin Wall – is being erected in the German city of Munich to protect locals from young refugees who are set to move into the area.

Sie hatten wirklich keine Vorahnung?

German Engineering At Its Finest

November 6, 2016 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Hi-tech, Home Cooking, Humor, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy Tags: Audi, CO2, Deception, Defeat Devices, Dieselgate, Fraud, German, Germans, Germany, Language, Technology, VW Leave a comment

Fortschritt durch Technik. That’s Audi’s motto and means progress through technology.

And their latest advance in defeat device technology is a great step forward in consumer deception indeed.

Audi’s defeat device, camouflaged as a warm-up function, keys in on movements of the steering wheel to detect if the car is in the lab or not. Once in normal traffic, however, this warm-up function is deactivated and the vehicle switches to a higher fuel consumption mode, thus producing more CO2. Brilliant, don’t you think?

Come on, America. Why can’t you produce technology like this? These new fangled electric cars everybody is talking about these days don’t have any of this cool stuff.

So schummelte Audi bei CO² – Mit einer Software sollen Messergebnisse manipuliert worden sein.

Kraut EU Commissioner Sorry He Called Chinese Slitty-Eyed

November 4, 2016 By Hermann Observer in Helplessness, Higher Education, Home Cooking, Humor, Hurt Feelings Tags: Chines, EU, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Language, Racial Slurs 1 Comment

He actually meant to call them Chop Sticks. Or maybe Chinks. Or at the very least Ping Pongs.

What a Herm. This Boxhead Hun needs to get with the times already and call up the Racial Slur Database on that Heinee Handy (smartphone) of his. He is responsible for EU digital policy, after all.

“Frei von der Leber, as we say in German.”

Young Germans Shamelessly Copying Americans Again

November 2, 2016 By Hermann Observer in Hard Facts, Helplessness, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings Tags: German, Germans, Germany, Media, Political Institutions, Politics, Polls, Religion, Skepticism, Studies, Surveys 1 Comment

Or at least that’s what the latest “Generation What?” survey taken by a German media group indicates to me: More than 70 percent of the young people here have no confidence in politics.

When asked about political institutions, only 27 percent replied that they “more or less” had confidence in them. Only one percent asked said they trusted these institutions completely.

They were nearly as skeptical when it came to confidence in religious institutions and in the media itself.

Mehr als 70 Prozent der jungen Menschen ohne Vertrauen in die Politik.

Germans Now Allowed To Watch So-Called “Music Videos”

November 1, 2016 By Hermann Observer in Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helplessness, High Art, Home Cooking, Humor, Hurt Feelings Tags: Copyright, GEMA, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Music Videos, YouTube Leave a comment

Damn. The down side here is that this is finally going to let South Sudan pass Germany by. When it comes to blocking online music videos, I mean.

The internet video platform YouTube and the German rights collection society GEMA have reached a deal under which artists who are GEMA members will receive payment when one of their videos is viewed, both sides announced on Tuesday. The agreement also brings an end to the red “blocking banners” notifying users in Germany that access to their favorite music was banned for copyright reasons.