“We can continue to screw up our image just fine all on our own, thank you,” A party spokesman said.
With comrades like these who needs enemies?
“Seine Zeit ist einfach vorbei.”
Tag Archives: Politics
Lots of Luck, Pal
He sure is an ambitious character, I’ll give him that much: Future German president Joachim Gauck “wants to rid Germany of angst.”
I’ll be the first to agree that what this nation needs is a good psychiatrist, but to actually rid Germany of angst?
That would be like ridding zebras of their stripes.
That would be like ridding muskrats of their musk.
That would be like ridding Americans of their apple pie.
No, no. I’ve just changed my mind. This not only can’t be done, I don’t believe it should even be tried. It would be immoral or something. And potentially dangerous. No, it would be absolutely positively dangerous. Let’s just let this sleeping, angst-ridden dog lie, el presidente.
Germany’s next president, wants to reinvigorate the nation with his passion for freedom and democracy. His emotional, at times unguarded rhetoric will liven up German politics — but could backfire if he isn’t careful.
I Put The Dick In Dictator
Germans everywhere were stunned after outgoing, laugh-a-minute Belarussian president Alexander Lukashenko caused an undiplomatic uproar by telling Germany’s foreign minister Guido Westerwelle that it is “better to be a dictator than gay.”
“What does he mean, gay?” several of the shocked Germans asked simultaneously.
“Are you kidding?” another German said. “I had absolutely no idea that Guido Westerwelle was one of those.”
“Guido? Gay?” one enraged bystander said. “Why I’ll show that tater dicked dick tater a slur or two. Take that faggity assed hat of yours off and come over here and fight like a man!”
Being A Pirate Sucks
I got your “aye me buckos” for you right here. Even the best-run running joke gets old after a while (or in this case the worst-run).
It turns out that too much transparancy leads to too much transparancy after all. That is: Finally being able to see that if you want to accomplish something in life (or even in politics, yuk), you’re going to have to work really, really, really hard for it.
Top pirate wench Marina Weisband quit first due to “health reasons” (she was clearly sick and tired of all this adolescent nonsense). Swashbuckling chairman of the Berlin pirate pack himself Gerhard Anger quit not long after that due to “the immense pressure” of having to actually get up every morning to go to work.
Like, life in the Internet was never like this. You can stick this reality bite crap back up to where the sun don’t shine, dude. A party “in tune with the Berlin vibe” is still a party. And every party has to come to an end sometime.
„Ich ertrage diese emotionale Belastung nicht.”
Speaking Of Ingratitude
Don’t the Libyans appreciate everything the Germans have done for them? Gee, I guess they don’t.
Before the Libyan revolution, Germany was the country’s second-largest trading partner. But then Germany abstained in a 2011 UN vote to militarily intervene in its civil war. Now that the war is over, German businesses and think tanks are finding that most Libyans want little to do with them.
“Water doesn’t flow uphill on its own / And wars, too, don’t stop themselves.”
But Germans Deny Wrongdoing All The Time
Germans on the street, I mean.
And they’re always open to receiving bribes or being granted advantages.
And they regularly blur the lines between personal, business (and political) advantage.
And the actions they take are never illegal.
So why should one lone guy up top be singled out and have to resign for doing the same damned things that they do? Just because he holds a meaningless, ceremonial office that nobody here respects in the first place, I mean.
I’ll tell you why. It’s because people always tend to get more upset about those who resemble them most. This guy just had to go.
Auch der Mainzer Karneval reagierte kurzfristig und änderte einen Wagen für den Rosenmontagszug. Wulff wird auf dem Wagen als geprügeltes Staatsoberhaupt im Boxring gezeigt. “Das Wort “angeschlagen” werden wir in “K.o.” verändern.”
Not With This Chancellor
Five minutes of excitement is better than no excitement at all.
A group of young conservative politicians, concerned about Germany’s catastrophic demographic development (or the lack of it), received less than a warm welcome by their very own Chancellor Angela Merkel herself today: They’re pushing for a tax on the childless, you see.
Although most politicians are normally crazy about raising taxes or introducing new ones, Frau Merkel made it quite clear that the buck (the euro?) stops here. Like practically everybody else in Germany, she doesn’t have any kids, either.
„Ich glaube, die Diskussion der Einteilung in Menschen mit Kindern und ohne Kinder ist hier nicht zielführend.“
HFBS
I call it Hurt Feelings Burnout Syndrome (HFBS). With an emphasis on the BS. Oh man, I had to laugh out loud while reading the latest on the poor, misunderstood German front.
It appears that many German intellectuals are very concerned about how their European neighbors think of them (Germany) these days. Needless to say, it isn’t very highly at all. And some have come to the stunning conclusion that they are so disliked at the moment because, now get this, they are so big and strong. Imagine that.
Germany is the USA of Europe – only with a different history.
You don’t need to puzzle for very long about the question of why so much Nazi name-calling is going on at the moment: For the first time since 1945, Germany has appeared in full strength again. Not because anybody wanted it, but because the European debt crisis has made the most economically powerful country the most politically powerful one, as well. Germany is now intervening in the internal affairs of others in a big way.
Slowly but surely, the country is taking over a role for Europe that the USA has played for the rest of the world for so long, as being the country that uses (and sometimes misuses) its power, the country that is to blame for everything, the country that is supposed to save everything and is reviled for the way it does it. What has America not been accused of? The CIA has always been behind everything and American imperialism has always been the motivation.
How moving. Or something. And the rest of the story? Now folks are calling Germans Nazis again (as if they had ever stopped). Boo-hoo-hoo already. Come on, Germany. Wake up and smell the coffee. You’re the big kid on the block. Run with it. Enjoy. It comes with the turf.
And in a related story (I find), it turns out that Germans are also now “burning out” like flies (it’s hard to carry on when nobody likes you, I guess). This imaginary disease (yet another American import – are we having irony yet?) is currently running rampant among Germany’s workforce, with nearly 1 out of 10 sick days in Germany in 2010 being attributed to it (tendency rising). Another connection to US-Amerika? Oh my God. No wonder so many Germans are getting sick. Please note: The high-brow daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung questioned why burnout was being written so much about in Germany, while in France, which is economically a lot worse off, “it’s hardly a preoccupation at all.”
Remember: HFBS is incurable, but there are many effective treatments. One of them is shutting the #!?#! up.
Man braucht wirklich nicht lange an der Frage rumzurätseln, warum die Nazi-Vergleiche im Moment so oft gezogen werden: Zum ersten Mal seit 1945 tritt Deutschland wieder mit voller Macht auf, nicht weil man das gewollt hätte, sondern weil die europäische Schuldenkrise das ökonomisch stärkste auch zum politisch mächtigsten Land gemacht hat. Deutschland greift nun tief ein in die inneren Angelegenheiten Dritter.
Allmählich bekommt das Land für Europa eine ähnliche Funktion, wie sie die USA lange Zeit für die ganze Welt hatten. Als jene Macht, die ihre Kraft gebrauchte, manchmal missbrauchte, die an allem schuld war, die alles retten sollte und sich dafür beschimpfen lassen musste, wie sie es tat. Was wurde den Amerikanern nicht alles Übles angedichtet, immer steckte die CIA hinter allem Bösen, stets wurden die Amerikaner des Imperialismus geziehen.
PS: I hate to admit it, Germany, but I guess we’ve got more in common than we would like to admit (thanks for the idea, Old Phat Stu).
Ich wulffe, du wulffst, er/sie/es wulfft…
Not that anybody out there knows who the German President is or could really care less if they did, but a new German verb has just entered the language (in his honor?) referring to, well, referring to what, anyway?
The new German verb refers to the manner in which scandal-plagued President Christian Wulff has sought to manage revelations that he accepted a favourable home loan from a businessman, holidayed at the villas of the wealthy and left a threatening message for the editor of Bild newspaper.
It’s called wulffen and actually has two meanings (at least two), according to the director of the German Language Association in Dortmund. The first is to talk on and on unprompted. The second means to be evasive about a particular issue without actually telling a lie.
Damn. I really had no idea that politicians the world over have actually been wulffen with me the whole time.
“It means something in-between.”
There Does Bear A Certain Resemblance
I always knew that I never liked George Clooney and I thought I knew why (he makes such lousy movies), but this latest comment of his has made me reevaluate my opinion.
He announced that he would like to play the role of Angela Merkel, if anybody would ever offer it to him, because “I‘ve always wanted to be like a small German woman.”
No, I don’t know what that was supposed to mean, either.
And no, it’s not just his films anymore, nor his boring pacifism and human rights concerns or his inane and poorly acted political morality made in Hollywood that gets my goat this time, it’s the fact that he clearly wants to dress up like a woman (albeit as one who wears pant suits all the time) and just doesn’t have the guts to do so.
And here I thought the guy prided himself in having a little integrity. Puh-shaw.
“Fast jeder hat doch mal einen Joint oder eine Wasserpfeife geraucht.”
Observing Hermann 