Pirates!
This is what happens when you fail to deliver (even when nobody ever really knew what you were supposed to deliver in the first place). Hey, what goes around comes around. Or was it what comes around goes away? I, for one, thought they’d never be von gestern (yesterday’s news).
“Since the Pirates have been around, the optical decorum has lapsed, and it’s undignified.”
Is this any way for a marauding mob of pilfering plunderers and freeloading freebooters to behave?
Worried about financial bottlenecks during upcoming election campaigns, Pirate party boss Bernd Schlömer has threatened to admonish dilinquent party members. Many (42 percent) have failed to pay their annual membership fee of 48 euros.
Nach Angaben von Schlömer haben rund 42 Prozent der mehr als 33.000 Mitglieder ihren Jahresbeitrag von 48 Euro noch nicht bezahlt.
No horror here. Or terror, if you prefer. How does that German proverb go? Lieber ein Ende mit Schrecken als ein Schrecken ohne Ende?
That is, better an end with horror than a horror without end. And that’s where we’re at with Greece now, finally.
German Vice Chancellor Philipp Roesler said he’s “very skeptical” that European leaders will be able to rescue Greece and the prospect of the country’s exit from the euro had “lost its terror.”
Get it over with already, people, and move on.
In a brilliant and risky move never yet attempted by a left-wing politician ever before, SPD boss Sigmar Gabriel has boldly proposed to improve his parties chances at next year’s federal election by “blaming the banks” for everything that has gone wrong in the financial sector and elsewhere.
“Mind-blowing,” one German political commentator said. “No one has been able to put these complex puzzle pieces together like this up until now. But by calling the banks extortionists, accomplices to tax evasion, hustlers and manipulators, Gabriel develops a subtle analysis of a highly complicated theme, thus making it easily accessible to the man on the street.”
“Die versammelte Linke in Deutschland betrügt sich selbst und betrügt die Bürger, wenn sie einerseits die Krise mit immer neuen Schulden bekämpfen will – und dadurch die Abhängigkeit von den Banken und Finanzinstituten erhöht, die man andererseits blindwütig an den Pranger stellt.”
“The entire left tricks itself and the citizens when, on the one hand, it calls to fight the crisis with ever more debt – thus making us even more dependent upon the banks and financial institutions – and then, on the other, mindlessly blaming them for everything.”
For the Pirate Party in Germany, I mean?
Sheesh. Even I thought it would take them longer than this to roll over and die. But the latest Emnid poll shows that their popularity (or lack of it?) has rapidly dropped to the lowest level since March (8 percent compared to their all-time high of 12 percent).
But hey, what can you expect from a party with an ex-boss who advises voters not to vote for them anymore.
Auf die Frage „Sollen wir die Piraten wählen?“ würde er inzwischen mit „Nö, lassen Sie es lieber bleiben“ antworten. Er sei von der Bilanz der Fraktion „immens enttäuscht.“
I had no idea Auflösungserscheinungen (signs of disintegration) could occur this quickly with “progressive” political parties, not even in Germany. But disintegrating they are, two of them, right before our very eyes.
Let’s make a bet:
In three years at the latest, the Left Party will have completely lost whatever very, very little relevance they are said to have once had (still have?).
In two years time, no one will be reporting about the Pirate Party at all anymore. Not even Der Spiegel.
If I lose the bet, I’ll admit that I was wrong and you can buy me a cup of coffee. If I’m right, I won’t have to admit I was wrong and you can still buy me the cup of coffee.
“Ich bin müde, ausgepowert, erschöpft.”
PS: Little Big Man Oskar Lafontaine just shot himself in the foot for the last time (I hope) and the Left Party is now mutating back to roll over and die on either side of its natural East-West divide, with the Communists of the East literally dying off like flies and the Möchtegern (wannabe) Communists of the West having lost interest and now wandering off for the latest next great cause (see Pirate Party). The Pirate Party has already long reached its fraternity house gag zenith and just will not function, “transparancy” or not, because it refuses to develop a platform more suitable for the inhabitants of Planet Earth, much less a structure of any kind, and the people supposedly running the show throw in the towels quicker than they can learn how to use them (they don’t bathe regulary, get it?). That guy up there (and the guy right after him) quite from exhaustion after a couple of days of something that used to be called “work,” just like that.
I wish I could make stuff like this up but I can’t.
Before.
And after.
A lot can happen in five (5) months. Well a lot sure did for this guy.
The FDP, which supports free markets and low taxes, has traditionally been a kingmaker in German politics… Frustrated with his party’s squabbling leadership, he (Christian Lindner) stepped down as general secretary of the FDP on a national level late last year. But in March the party picked him as its lead candidate in state legislative elections in North Rhine-Westphalia, and got an immediate boost in national opinion polls.
She’s tired. She’s tired of being admired.
Just after walking the German Pirate Party plank due to exhaustion, ex-Pirate political manager Marina Weisband dropped the boom on her mobbing male marauders by outing them as being just as chauvanistic and sexist as male types everywhere else are, political or otherwise. Why who would have thought that? You sweet little…
Sie habe sich nie als “Star der Piraten” gesehen, sondern als “von den Medien gehypte Person.”
I’m really starting to like these Pirate guys, honest.
I mean, everybody knows that it’s all a big elaborate practical joke anyway, so why not just calm down, folks, and kick back and enjoy their fifteen minute ride of fame in vollen Zügen (to the fullest)?
One of the latest Pirate humdinger zingers (there have been so many these days that I’ve lost count) is the Berlin state parliament floor leader’s comparison of his party to another German party that turned out to be a bit less of a joke: “The rise of the Pirate Party is as fast as that of the NSDAP between 1928 and 1933.” Just in case you didn’t know, the NSDAP was the Nazi party.
No politician in Germany, not even the geekiest of geeks, can say something like that by accident. So again: It was a joke. It had to have been. It really was a joke. A Pirate joke. Wasn’t it?
The remark was an outrageous transgression that can’t be excused by the party’s lack of experience.
