Reported in a German newspaper? Openly? No sinister conspiracy theories? No ifs, ands or buts? I’ve seen it all now.
President Obama is under pressure: Surveys indicate that he is losing one state after another to Romney. He doesn’t have many chances left to turn the trend around.
Romney hat den Trend auf seiner Seite.
So it wasn’t me.
Fumes coming from a toilet at Berlin’s Tegel airport on Saturday sickened 53 people, local media reported.
Die Experten vermuten, dass Reinigungsmittel falsch dosiert wurden.
How about Hollmerk?
The two capitals (Berlin and Paris) always begin from very different positions, whether there is a socialist or conservative administration in Paris.
The concern in Berlin is over what is seen as the absence of a clear strategy on eurozone reform from the new French government. There is a deep suspicion that France is happy to have a weaker euro, higher inflation, and a looser monetary policy than Germany.
Mr Hollande’s refusal to incorporate the recent “fiscal compact” into the French constitution is one reason that Germany is now pushing for every country to sign a bilateral budget “contract” with the European Commission, that can be enforced by a powerful budget commissar… But Paris regards Ms Merkel as being overly focused on building deeper European political integration in a way that ignores deep-seated reticence in France reflected in the 2005 referendum defeat of the then-planned EU constitution.
Not.
Worried about grassroots unrest after Germany’s electrical grid operators announced they were nearly doubling the charge consumers will pay to finance subsidies for renewable energy as Germany phases out nuclear power, Big Sister herself has reacted boldly and decisively by going into hiding and pretending as if none of this were really happening.
Long used to this tactic, worried German consumers were assured, sort of, as they will now be paying an additional 60 euros per year, “taking overall add-on power taxes up to about 185 euros.” But that’s just the start, of course.
Sheesh. Why do Germans see everthing energy turnaround-related so negatively these days? You know, like as in black? Or like as in blackouts, I should say?
“The costs for consumers and industry of the electricity price charge for renewable energy has risen to an unbearable degree.”
Support for Germany’s Atomausstieg (nuclear phase-out) ain’t what it used to be, it seems. And it seems to have something to do with Geld (money), or something. With reality, in other words.
According to an Emnid survey, 77 percent of German voters asked say it is very important that energy costs remain affordable while only 53 percent care if the nuclear phase-out succeeds or not.
Welcome back to the real world, volks, I mean folks. Hey, you are here in Germany after all. And there is a clearly discernable pattern here. Once the first wave of hysteria is over, it always goes back to es darf eben nichts kosten (OK, but only as long as it doesn’t cost anything).
Für sie ermittelte Emnid auch, dass zwei Drittel der Bürger maximal 50 Euro pro Jahr mehr für Strom zahlen wollen.
Germans weren’t fooled one minute by Mitt Romney’s impressive performance during the first presidential debate (just see photo below).
And now they are being reassured by German Presseorgane (press organs) that the sudden, completely unexpected and, well, near miraculous drop in the American unemployment rate to 7.8% will ensure that the right guy (as in left guy) will get re-elected after all.
Alles wird gut (everything will fall into place). Alles wird gut… Oder?
Noch nie wurde ein US-Präsident bei einer Arbeitslosenquote über acht Prozent wiedergewählt.
That’s some, uh, 4,600 vehicles. At this rate, the German government’s plan to have 1 million electric cars on the road by 2020 will be reached easily.
Or maybe not. Because those pesky German consumers still haven’t got the message and think that these babies are too expensive and don’t have a long enough range to make them attractive as, you know, as cars.
So that’s why the German government, flexible as it is, has now said that their goal of 1 million electric cars by 2020 (set last year) has now become a goal of 600,000 electric cars by 2020. I can’t wait to see what next year’s goal for 2020 will be like.
Damn. I’m impressed. This German Energiewende (energy turnaround) is getting easier and easier to reach all the time.
“If we don’t create incentives, then the whole thing is going to fail,” the Green party said in a statement.
Here is another interesting German commentary by American Eric T. Hansen in Die Zeit.
I’d like to translate it all, but I can’t, so I won’t (no time). Here are a few highlights, though:
Critical thinking does not allow for self-criticism. Where would we be then?
Critical thinking is not debating, it’s finding concensus, or, as I call it, harmony nagging (Harmonienörgeln): Two people criticize a third person so long until the two become friends.
If I want to hear a new or even a different perspective on something, I have to turn to the Anglo-American press. Regarding certain questions – for instance whether nuclear energy, genetically modified corn or having Mitt Romney as president might also have certain advantages – many of my German friends are not even aware that two sides to these arguments even exist.
I too understand Mitt Romney’s positions quite well and suspect that he would make just as good (or bad) a president as Obama. In America that makes me an intellectual. In Germany that makes me a right-winger.
Everything is so serious for the Germans, and they need to know immediately: “Who is my friend, who is my enemy?” For Americans and their debate clubs, however, there is always an element of playfulness involved.
Auch ich verstehe die Positionen eines Mitt Romney gut und ahne, dass er ein ebenso guter (oder schlechter) Präsident wie Obama wäre. In Amerika macht mich das zu einem Intellektuellen. In Deutschland macht mich das zu einem Rechten.
Germans everywhere are all aflutter these days at the prospect of their United States President maybe not being automatically reelected after all, like which ought to be selbstverständlich (understood) or something but isn’t irgendwie (somehow).
German political scientists have namely just discovered that the unemployment rate in the US of Obama is well over 8 percent (and has been during the entire Obama administration), poverty levels are way up (3.6 million more Americans live off state support than before he entered office), the rate of founding new companies is at a thirty year low, government spending and debt have risen to incredible levels and the economy will simply not kick into gear, with no recovery or White House plan to change any of this in sight (and with no George W. Bush in sight to blame anymore, either).
Otherwise though, Obama is still the perfect guy for the job. So alles wird gut (everything will fall into place), they HOPE (way cool slogan from somebody a few years back).
Gouverneur Martin O’Malley geriet in Verlegenheit. Ob es den Menschen besser gehe als vor vier Jahren, wollte ein Reporter von dem demokratischen Gouverneur Marylands wissen. “Nein”, hatte O’Malley geantwortet.
After basking in the glory of his warmly received and highly acclaimed anti-Israeli poem in April, Germany’s Nobel Prize-winning author Günter Grass just can’t seem to help himself and has published yet another poetic work criticizing Israeli policy.
In his latest magnum opus, he praises, among other things, “A Hero in Our Time,” Mordechai Vanunu, who served 18 years in prison for espionage after betraying his country’s nuclear secrets to the Sunday Times of London.
By absoulte sheer amazing coincidence, Grass just released this work in a new book of poems yesterday appropriately entitled “Eintagsfliegen” (One-Hit Wonders) and in no way intended or intends to bring any unwarranted attention to himself and/or said book which can now be purchased online or at a bookstore near you.
And please remember: This is not, never has been nor never will be anti-Semitic abuse. Enlightened Germans (and all Germans are) don’t do that kind of stuff (anymore). This is freakin’ German Nobel Prize-winning author Gunter Grass we’re talking about here, people. For crying out loud.
In 2006, Grass admitted in an interview that he had joined the Waffen-SS as a teenager at the end of World War II, and was accused at the time of having hidden the truth for decades while at the same time pointing the finger at others for hiding their Nazi past.
Observing Hermann 