Merkel’s Hand-Picked Successor To Introduce A New Era For The CDU?

Uh, OK. Boy, and it looks like she can hardly wait to start, too.

New era

She ought to adopt Merkel’s name while she’s at it, too. Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer is a real tongue-twister (say that ten times really fast).

Germany’s conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) must build on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s legacy but move on from her era, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who is running to be CDU leader, said on Wednesday.

“This is the end of the era,” Kramp-Karrenbauer, presenting her candidacy for the CDU leadership, said of Merkel’s time as party leader.

Uh, no it’s not. Not with you it isn’t. Some call her Mini-Merkel.

Kandidatin Kramp-Karrenbauer – Für eine “neue Ära” der CDU.

Germany Idealistic, Naive And Leftist?

How ya figure?

Maassen

“I’m seen in Germany as a critic of idealistic, naive and leftist foreign and security policy,” the fired head of German domestic intelligence said on his way out. He just got put out to pasture. Early. Thought criminals pay heed.

Dismissed when he questioned the authenticity of videos showing far-right extremists chasing immigrants in the eastern city of Chemnitz, Maassen became the lightening rod of German self-righteous rage.

This time Maassen, whose agency monitors extremist threats to Germany’s constitutional order, compared the videos to Russian propaganda and presented himself as the victim of a witch-hunt by “radical-left forces” in the Social Democratic Party (SPD), junior partner in Merkel’s coalition.

“I can imagine a life outside public service, for example in politics or business.”

“Trump Still Clicks”

CNN title: Trump’s been president for two years. Germans still can’t look away. Nor will they look away. Because they can’t.

Trump

Why should this surprise anyone? This a perfectly normal everady pathological German obsession, no different than their irrational infatuation with Obama before Trump and their Verteufelung (demonization) of Bush before him (and on and on it goes). Germans are hysterical in these matters. It’s a collective psychological issue, an obsession with US-Amerika in the end. What is more, this collective hysteria is very profitable for the brain police in German media who milk it daily.

I’ve always liked this guy’s take on it (a Spiegel man himself): “German schadenfreude knows no bounds, particularly when it comes to the United States. The country loves to feel superior to a superpower like America. Yet Germany also harbors a childish infatuation with Obama — one which has little political grounding. The reasons are psychological. …The criticism of America has always been a bit infantile. One is familiar with the theory from psychoanalysis, when people talk about transference, or when suppressed feelings or emotions are overcome by projecting them onto others. It may work for a while, improving one’s feeling of self-worth by devaluing an imagined adversary. But it always falls short. Which is why the ritual must be constantly carried out anew.” – Jan Fleischhauer

Over two floors of Der Spiegel’s glasshouse building, walls bearing seven decades of the magazine’s covers serve as a colorful chronology of modern history. On one wall are cartoons of an angry yellow-haired man that are so provocative they’re impossible to miss.

“Trump still clicks, people are interested in those stories — and the same applies to our magazine stories and covers.”

The Nerve

After all Germany has done for Iraq.

Siemens

Germany’s main industry federation said U.S. pressure to quash Siemens AG’s $15 billion power-plant deal with Iraq is unacceptable and shows how President Donald Trump’s “America First” stance is corroding business decisions.

Iraq signed a memorandum of understanding with General Electric Co. on Oct. 15 after U.S. officials warned Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi that U.S.-Iraqi relations would be at risk if his government accepted the deal with Siemens, Bloomberg reported.

Hey. All’s fair in love and business (Siemens is fighting back).

“To implement the America First doctrine in this way in the global competition of multinational companies is not acceptable.”

Method Merkel

Although eight out of ten Germans feel that it’s time for Germany’s national trainer Joachim Low to go (his recent failures have been breathtaking), an all-time low for Low, Low won’t go.

Low

But, then again, why should he? He’s in good company. The numbers are very similar with regard to Chancellor Angela Merkel and nobody can get her to leave, either. She, like Low, refuse to face the consequences of their actions (or lack of action) while depicting themselves as being alternativlos (without alternative). There always is an alternative, however, as we all know, and the clock is ticking for both of them.

The coach could change things but he isn’t doing so. The team needs new blood.

He Served Almost His Entire Sentence

Of fifteen years (a life sentence in Germany, by the way. For his part in killing nearly 3,000 innocent people.

September 11

One of the only two people who has been tried and sentenced in connection to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks is a free man again – and is heading back to his native Morocco.

Mounir el-Motassadeq boarded a flight in Frankfurt on Monday after his conviction more than a decade ago for being a member of a terrorist organization and accessory to the murder of the 246 passengers and crew on the four jetliners used in the attacks.

“It’s a good feeling to know that Mr. Motassadeq is out of the country,” Hamburg’s Interior Minister Andy Grote told The Associated Press…

The only other person sentenced in relation to 9/11 – co-conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui – has been serving a life sentence without parole in Colorado’s ADX Florence, the same facility that houses Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, and other Al Qaeda operatives, like “shoe bomber” Richard Reid.

Mounir al-Motassadek (44) in seine Heimat Marokko abgeschoben – im Ferien-Flieger!

Reality Can Be Like That

Germany’s green dreams run into climate change reality – Berlin’s commitment to stay nuclear free complicates Europe’s push to lower emissions.

Green

The contradictions in Germany’s energy policy are coming home to roost.

It’s struggling to balance efforts to combat climate change while at the same time shutting down its nuclear power plants.

Don’t sweat it, Germany. If you need any advice on how to improve things in the CO2 department just contact the folks in Washington.

“The rushed and improvised exit from nuclear power that some support is not our policy. Recent events prove that pretending otherwise is a pure illusion.”

German Of The Day: Korruption

That means corruption. It’s a foreign word here, though.

Audi

Unless, of course, you’re talking about VW, Daimler, BMW, Audi

Now it’s out that Audi tampered with the chassis numbers of their test vehicles to hamper the emissions scandal investigation going on in Korea. And it looks like this was all directed from Germany.

Please note: The next time Germans get morally outraged about the next big moral outrage in US-Amerika – and it won’t be long – remember that absolutely nobody here in Germany pays the slightest attention to any of this dieselgate made in Germany crime and corruption stuff. They’re all serfs owned by the German automobile industry.

Audi hat jahrelang Fahrgestellnummern von Testautos gefälscht und so die Aufklärung des Abgasskandals in Korea behindert. Die Vorgänge wurden offenbar von Deutschland aus gesteuert.

 

Der Spiegel Analyzes The “Kavanaugh Disaster”

As only Der Spiegel can. And oddly, they almost got it right.

Kavanaugh

For one thing, they were honest enough to admit that it was a disaster – for them, of course – because “the President and the Republicans achieved a great victory.” And then they continue  on with their five-point explanation of why this is such an awful, terrible and unspeakably bad thing.

1. Trumpism reigns. They got that right, too.

2. The Kavanaugh nomination was a farce. They almost got that right. The nomination itself wasn’t a farce, of course, but the freak show that accompanied it most certainly was.

3. Consensus culture is a foreign word. Absolutely correct. Take Germany, for instance, where they call it Konsenskultur. Every German knows that there is no consensus when it comes to Angela Merkel’s migrant madness meltdown, for example, but the difference between Germany and US-Amerika here is that the Germans behave as if there is. Germans normally being the all too direct ones, it is the Americans this time who make no qualms about how divided they are in Trump America.

4. There are no clear rules for dealing with accusations. Not true. Making false accusations, like the ones made against Kavanaugh here, is against the law. American laws allow those falsely accused of a crime to pursue a course of action in court, generally based on defamation of character. And this, I believe, needs to be done here.

5. The Supreme Court is now in a real mess. Well, they got the mess part right, I guess. But the Supreme Court mess is now in the process of being cleaned up, although there is certainly still quite a bit of work yet to do.

All in all, a solid job, Spiegel journalists. I’ll give you a seven for your five points this time. Keep the change.

Mit der Wahl von Donald Trumps Kandidaten Brett Kavanaugh zum Richter auf Lebenszeit am Supreme Court haben der US-Präsident und die Republikaner einen großen Erfolg errungen.

German Of The Day: Umweltsünder

That means environmental sinner. You know, like Germany? Head of the class when it comes to climate protection? Or so we were led to believe.

Trump

Despite pulling out of the Paris climate agreement, that awful, terrible US-Amerika – under that awful, terrible Donald Trump himself – leads the world in cutting CO2 emissions.

According to the numbers put out  by the IEA (already back in March), CO2 emissions have risen in most of the large national economies, Germany included. Some countries, however, bucked the trend and have succeeded in reducing the amount of greenhouse gas produced, including the USA, Great Britain, Japan and Mexico.

Damit verringern die USA ihre Emissionen schon im dritten Jahr in Folge. Die Deutschen halten sich für die größten Klimaschützer – auf dem Papier.