My very left leaning German friend is bemoaning the fact that there is no affordable housing, in fact, no housing AT ALL, available in the Aachen area. I tried explaining to her that the immigrants have it all and the government and her taxes are paying it, to no avail. She can’t believe it. But those hundreds of billions to be used to pay for immigration are just drops in the bucket. German citizens should be made fully aware of how much the German government is already forking over with their taxpayer money. I’ve watched the NY Post cover in great detail, that for whatever monies Hochul sent to Mayor Adams to pay for illegals and their housing. It was never enough. In 3 years alone, 2.3 billion was spent in just NYC alone. That doesn’t include any other the other costs, healthcare, education, etc. Germany is in an even bigger pickle. Many come from poor countries and are illiterate in their Muslim language. If they read at all, they read from right to left. Now try and teach them a whole new language, new moral code (remember the No No box from Finland) and reading from left to right. At least 207 voted against this nonsense, it would be interesting to see who those 207 are. On the other hand, one of my most fervent wishes might come true now- the EU Bloc crumbling. There was loud grumbling about the addition of Greece and it almost happened, but maybe now, when no one in the bloc has any money to share with the others, and they are all collective takers, it will finally crumble.
As someone who has also tried to "explain" some stuff to left-leaning Germans ("Where do you think money comes from, anyway? Have you ever heard of something called the bond market?") I've come to the conclusion that facts don't matter to people using magical thinking.
Many people have absolutely no clue about money, taxes etc. About 13 years we were buying a house and our lawyer started into a big talk about interest and repayment and our obligations. We cut her short, explaining that we understood about borrowing because we were adults and had previously taken out loans to buy property. However, she had previously worked dealing with bankruptcy and retold how many people including so called highly educated people, lived off their credit cards. Some of them were totally surprised to find out that yeah, you can't just pay the monthly interest. So this is the new normal, I think. Money grows on a money tree that the government picks to pay for everything.
Yes, again and again. Patiently. As if to your own child. That is patient, not insulting, hopeful that eventually they will understand the bell curve and the sigma concept.
If we show some empathy, and ask them to explain how it (eg, Merz's program) will work....then eventually they (some of them) use others' ideas to eventually see things a different way.
But, yes, something else, not us, must break through what you quickly call their magical thinking.
Know a woman in a project we sponsored, living from job to job precariously, of esoteric musical expertise. Complained about her prospects as the city of Berlin cuts spending in the cultural sector, because, well, migrants need housing and whatnot, one billion p.a. "Imagine all the money spent on border security now, what a waste!" That it's not border security but welfare, housing etc. that has to be paid, and that this is money that cannot be spent on culture - lost on her. Unable to connect the dots. (No pity, btw.)
My NY-born mother and NY-born father grew up in Yiddish-speaking households and learned English in kindergarten. Neither of them went further than HS because they needed to start earning.
Both spoke English with a NY inflection, not a Yiddish one, though they remained bilingual all their lives and they sounded like higher-educated people. My mother had the most beautiful handwriting--so lovely and distinctive that the name on her headstone is a facsimile of her signature. They were ethnic and strongly-cultural Jews but they were also all-American. Even my mother's uncle, born in Ukraine and who never lost his accent, was a US Army vet. I think he served as a cook.
Your parents' IQs were probably two standard deviations higher than those of these immigrants...Eric Hoffer was a half-blind illiterate migrant worker when a woman gave him glasses and he started to read and self-educate, discovering that he had a powerful intellect..He became head of the International Longshoreman's Union, and a highly respected philosopher....
Thwarting the capacities of women is a real bad thing. Of course if my mother had had the chance to go to college and perhaps have a satisfying job I wouldn't be here. But boy did I pay for it.
Same for my dad.
On the other hand perhaps the world was saved from another couple of progressive academics or whatever. Fate works out as it will.
I must say in the early years in South Africa you could go rather far with little education. She only managed to as far as standard 7 (+/- 9 years of school) but was allowed to train as a nurse and ended up as a fully trained nursing sister. Later on she changed careers and ended up as the manager of a Hotel. Good old days in South Africa when you could still work your way to the top. Of course, regrettable, apartheid played a role in it. My father had to borrow money to study from standard 7 and ended up at the top of his career, we all paid for it though as he ended up as an absent father because he had no time for family life. Neither my brother or I went any further in our studies even though, even if I have to say so, we have an IQ above the average, because we are all messed up! A mother and father working all the time,☹
Heck. I went far on little education--at least far enough to have a middle-class lifestyle in NY of the '70s with nothing more than a HS diploma, a few laughable college credits and a glorious (if I say so myself, validated by everyone else who said so) telephone voice. It was hard to fire me when callers kept telling my bosses what a great secretary they had.
Sorry you had such a rough time but really, you gotta have the right stay-at-home mom to have any hope of an easier one.
You are missing the most significant fact: none of those people should be in Germany in the first place. It wasn't a neighbouring country, Germany didn't bomb their homelands, and only 24% of the original waves were even Syrians (that's the official German statistics).
Why do the German people have to suddenly accept over 2 million aliens who would never have been able to enter the country under any other circumstances except Mufti Merkel just executively deciding to do so? It's just so bad, I don't know how to describe it except to say that the negative reports you hear aren't even the half of it since so much goes unreported in the German press. To give you some idea, a female journalist and writer I was speaking with in 2019 told me that during her book tour around the country she had been groped or touched by indolent young Muslim men in every Hauptbanhof (central train station in a city). I'm sure that is a widespread occurance for women across Germany. They don't work, they just hang out and looter in public places making everyone uncomfortable and getting in the way. They shouldn't be in Germany, period.
You betcha. Look, when I was in kindergarten there was a little boy who started off the school year crying because he only spoke Italian. Didn't take him long to become English-fluent. Among all the other rackets in the US has been the ESL crime syndicate.
When I was in the first grade in 1971 there was a Mexican boy in my class who didn’t speak a word of English. One year later he spoke fluent English without an accent
I agree. A few years back I was visiting my son who'd just left university and was living with a group of friends. One had come to New Zealand from Russia as a child. His English was perfect. He explained that this happened within a few months of being in an English speaking class. However what was interesting was the other young people who were insisting how terrible it was (losing his culture being forced to speak English) even though he was very clear how it absolutely was the best thing for him. Although if it happened now, being Russian would not be so okay.
Young kids learn a foreign language so easily if you just let them learn naturally. I went to a French university in 1973-74 to study French, and my 3 year old daughter went to a French nursery school in which no one spoke a word of English. The kids ran around talking and playing, and at first my daughter just mimicked what they said but before long understood it all and she was totally fluent in French...3 year old French, of course. Perfect accent, too! When we were out and about the local French thought she was native French, and when they heard her speak to us in English they commented about how cute it was that she was speaking a foreign language!
QUOTE: If they read at all, they read from right to left. Now try and teach them a whole new language, new moral code ... and reading from left to right.
These are tired cult-Marx talking points to gaslight Westerners into believing that Third Worlders are INCAPABLE OF MORAL AGENCY.
Illiterate Western peasants 200 years ago had no difficulty whatever understanding the dominant "moral code," and were punished harshly for any transgressions.
Today, Third Worlders in advanced countries - whatever their general shortcomings - are very smart and nimble when it comes to understanding what they can and cannot GET AWAY WITH, often with the help of various publicly-funded "services" and "NGO's" supporting them at every step.
An illiterate tribal Afghan would never dream of assaulting a woman from another clan, because the inevitable result would be violent retaliation by the victim's CLAN against the perpetrator's ENTIRE CLAN. No "social worker" would intercede to argue that the perpetrator had merely been regrettably ignorant of the "moral code."
As regards language, anyone educated to read his language in the Arabic script will also have been taught the Roman alphabet, and will be able to read at least basic English. Convenient protestations of linguistic ignorance and lack of ability to learn should be taken with a large pinch of salt.
Try having my comment READ TO YOU a few more times, this time SLOWLY.
Hint: the word “QUOTE” in all caps has a special meaning in written exchanges which may be difficult to grasp from a purely auditory perspective. But perhaps you can ask the person reading to you to give you a rough idea of what “QUOTE” means in written English.
When the demand is essentially infinite, no amount of supply will ever be enough. The more money and resources these folks apply, the more they will find that what they have done is woefully inadequate and will need to expand exponentially.
Only by turning off the supply, will the demand look elsewhere.
I always thought of the German people as being well educated, pragmatic, a little arrogant, and maybe a little rude, but I never thought they were stupid. How is this vote even possible? And where is the uprising in the streets? Is Germany just going to give their country away without a fight? What in the hell is wrong with you people?
I have a high school friend whose mom is German and came here with a WWII soldier. She had lived outside one of the death camps. To this day mom and her daughter both adhere to extreme liberal progressive ideals. I have given up attempting to reason with either of them. Their minds are like concrete boxes made to shelter uranium, nothing gets in or out. No logic goes through in any conversation. I don't understand their views given the situation her mom lived under as a teenager. She was aware of what was happening in the camp near her town, but she denies its truthfulness: "It was a work camp." And now they're both sure our current administration is a Nazi dictatorship, while the last was trying to "save democracy". She claims she wants to live in Germany, and I've encouraged her to do so (she won't as life for her in Northern CA is too cushy). Yes, she'd think the change in the Constitution is lovely, as she thinks DOGE is horrific.
my stupid brother wrote on his FB page: "I am fearful of what I see happening in America today. My parents went through Nazi dominated Europe. I know their stories of that atrocity. In my priviledged upbringing, I still think I have a visceral connection to those trying, scary, painful experiences—because they TOLD ME ABOUT THEM AND I LISTENED. It kills me to see members of my family—siblings, cousins—be ignorant of the depravity that is arisen in America. This isn’t freedom, it is dominance. Remember I said this: you who thought you wanted this will find it’s nothing like what you wanted. But they will deceive you long before you see what you wrought. Exactly, when you wake up from your self-righteousness and Neanderthal instincts, you will slowly see what they did.
MARK THIS: 23 Feb, 2025"
I do not know even what the hell he means. My parents grew up in Holland.
and the only "sibling" he is pointing out is Me and my husband. What an idiot
I've begun to ignore them. I don't like either political party and have realized that I've become more someone who wants a leader who will follow the Constitution. We don't have anyone who will do that. It's like being a Libertarian and Constitutionalist. I don't know if a third or fourth party system would ever work here. I do have misgivings about the Republican Party and feel a close watch should be kept on some of their policies. Still, overall their actions aren't the dictatorial ones that the Democrats used under Obama and Biden.
Oh, I've trained for this with hours of the first too many seasons of Walking Dead (sitting with a friend in rehab, long story, but I loved the chick with the katana.
Every lesson of history is eventually forgotten, but I didn't expect the reversal to happen so suddenly! Does that mean we're 15 years away from... you know...
It is clearly a serious flaw in any constitution that allows representatives to continue passing laws after an election in which they lost. Why is this allowed? Surely the day after the election power should transfer immediately.
The US has a similar problem in which the losers get plenty of time to break things and fuck stuff up after losing an election. The UK on the other hand sees a transfer of power within days of the vote.
It is a loophole in the German constitution that would never have been foreseen or used in a functioning democracy.
By far the most predominant occupation in the German parliament (at least among those who have ever worked outside of politics) is law. Hence, it is no surprise that they are not interested in the spirit of the law—only the letter of it.
Even the best constitution will fail if the governing class does not believe in its foundation.
This was already the case 100 years ago—"Democracy without democrats," as they said in the Weimar Republic, in the last 20ies.
QUOTE: It is a loophole in the German constitution that would never have been foreseen or used in a functioning democracy.
Any legal system can function only if the people have a developed MORAL code independent of top-down legislation. John Adams famously noted that "the American Constitution is meant for a religious and moral people."
At the intersection of moral and legal codes, a sense of SELF-RESTRAINT is an indispensable precondition for a functioning system, i.e., the idea that some actions technically permitted under the formal written law are nonetheless improper and unacceptable. This sense of self-restraint is what MERZ and his co-conspirators have shown they signally lack, to say nothing of the brazen shamelessness displayed in full public view.
A good indication of whether a constitution is truly lived by the people is its brevity.
If it is strongly believed, it doesn't need many words—like the Ten Commandments.
The original U.S. Constitution is quite short.
The German Constitution has almost 150 articles (and don’t even get me started on the German tax code, the longest in the world). Yet, even then, it feels quite empty and easy to interpret.
A good example is German free speech laws: it doesn’t say you have the right to free speech and can say what you want. It merely states that you can have your own opinion.
But even then, the writers of the German Basic Law were much bigger believers in democracy than the current lot of immoral apparatchiks.
But the US Constitution is very difficult to amend, requiring a 2/3 vote by both houses of Congress, and must be ratified by 3/4 of the States...There's an alternative of calling a Constitutional convention, but that has never happened and probably never will...
it's easier to amend if those in power cheat and pretend ratification requirements are reached with fraudulent statements, like with the 16th amendment.
helped them a lot that records were on paper, scattered throughout the States and federal storage areas. but people who've physically searched out the ratification documents say that the number of states ratifying the 16th wasn't even close to the requirement and even if it was several states' paperwork wasn't filed within the necessary deadline.
Might be intentional to allow the previous authorities to destroy capacities, get rid of archives, etc. before a handover in case… you know…
It’s just the singular obsession of the West in general and Germany in particular since the war! And I gotta say, it’s not necessarily a bad idea to have that. The obsession is bad, but then again the original case did happen, and it was actually very bad.
Problem is that that doesn’t work with a governing class completely devoid of virtue and sense of proportion. But then again, what does.
One of the very few good things about our system in Oz. There’s generally a caretaker period both before and after the election until the new government is sworn in, in which they may not make major changes to laws.
I imagine those vile politicians who put this together are feeling and will feel empowered.
Grape soda, I love the way you put it.
It's like getting out of a plane and that feeling of flying, until you realize your parachute is knotted and not pulling on the air to slow anything down.
Does no good with self-inflicted high energy prices. Won’t fix anything.
Nations in energy deficits can’t have robust industrial policy. Nations in energy surplus can. Most people think energy is a derivative of the economy. They have it exactly backwards. The economy is a derivative of energy. And Europe’s is weak because it produces none, because it chose diffuse, nonreliable, expensive energy over dense, reliable, affordable energy.
These are not our rules. Just physics.
Nothing will change except taking on more debt until Europe kicks the Green party and its ilk to the curb.
By strange coincidence, this is exactly what China wants western governments to do, keep burning money. And when they've borrowed the money, siphoned off lumps to their mates/favourite causes, they can jet off to the latest COP Climate Communism Conference. What a lovely life for Eurocrats!
A betrayal of democracy but nevertheless good politics. The cartel parties need to halt populism and spraying money everywhere is a pretty good strategy.
I doubt the CDU boomers, content to watch millions of immigrants flood into Germany, will revolt at adding debt that will be someone else’s problem, especially because it is allegedly for traditionally conservative boxes (infrastructure, defense, etc). If in ten years all that money has only bought four tanks and a rusty windmill once the green NGOs take their cut, well, again, that’s someone else’s problem.
The clock, for Germany, began ticking when the state colluded with the Great Hegemon, on the other side of the Great Moat, to blow up the pipeline that made Germany possible.
Not trying to be smarty pants but Germany's fall, and Europe's, indeed the entire West started way back when the cancers of Socialism and Communism were not properly killed off but allowed to grow in our public insistutions and education service. Now we have a Communist Islamist Alliance eating away at western society.
I suggest you look deeper into James Burnham and his goals and achievements at the U.S. State Department. It might surprise you that it's a lot more complex than you believe.
“At the very least, XXX voters ought to have had a say in this decision, and yet the cartel parties have conspired to deny them any voice.” I can’t think of a nation where this isn’t true. We’re playing Cops & Robbers with no cops.
Not sure if you’re being sarcastic because they DO have that, and it’s called just that: The Ministry to Protect the Constitution and Security. Hah! Obviously, they’re all in on the graft.
Yes, sarcasm. Because as we are all aware, the greatest threat to the constitution comes from the citizenry it protects, not from the thieving politicians. So the Ministry's targeting lasers have all been precisely on target.
I remember admiring some of their calm judgments years ago against political moral panics: for example when the NPD (tiny bunch of loony Neo-Nazis) were going to be banned. The court decided that this was unconstitutional, because the NPD were no threat whatsoever to the German Constitution - among other reasons, because they were almost wholly under the control of mole agents of the
I remember thinking: You Germans have really got this sorted, with adults in Karlsruhe giving a well-deserved, polite slap to the posturing children in the Bundestag: can we have some of that?
I really hope that Karlsruhe hasn't fallen yet. To be fair, the constitutional amendment is - as far as I can tell - only a _proposal_?
Surely Germans can see what an insult Merz's idea is? Whether they come from "Wirtschaftswunder" or "Aufgestanden aus Ruinen"? Surely the answer, from the people, should be "NO"?
This whole saga is a shameful debacle and is being met with absolute horror by non-idealogically motivated Germans (ie most of them) not just for the egregious breaches of trust that Merz and his CDU have visited upon the electorate but for the cynical, in-your-face manipulation of parliamentary process which whilst not illegal flies in the face of all previously accepted standards of normative behaviour. This is worse by factors than Biden‘s provocative support of bombing initaitives of Russian territory in late December to spoil the pitch for the incoming President. I am both disgusted and appalled.
Which is why we're reading about the [non-existent] public protests?
I'm not saying similar problems don't exist elsewhere on the old continent, but I was always led to believe the majority of Germans were fiscally conservative. I'm amazed not to be reading about public protests concerning this farce. Moreover I'm curious as to what the CDU rank and file think of all this?
My guess is that our idea of the fiscally conservative German and the fiscally conservative establishment institutions is now out of date. I have been listening (as much as I can bear to) to MSM (ARD/ZDF) interviewers questioning mostly senior AFD members of the current Bundestag and am astonished by the aggressive way in which they question the integrity of those protesting this unbelievable breach of trust. I have not registered one ounce of sympathy for the outrage, instead they are criticised for questioning the „democratic legitimacy“ of the process implying that the protesters are „anti democratic“ - it is beyond absurd. So - I guess there are no protests because conservatives tend not to take to the streets to ululate (that is the domain of the hyperventilating, permanently aggrieved Socialist class and the pubescent and they are definitely NOT protesting) and the material is probably quite arcane and incomprehensible to most people.
We're in an illiberal era, so I can appreciate the msm/institutional response (it's like the c19 playbook etc). My fear is by the time a sizable minority, or if we're optimistic, the majority, wakes up in terms of realizing the consequences of where all this hubris will take us, it won't matter, because the wheels for events much greater than our individual countries will be in motion.
It seems more and more to me that it's not really about for what to spend the money for since they are so vague with the purposes that I don't buy it that they actually believe in any real emergency. What if the debt is the purpose? I normally don't like that people make such a big issue about Merz having been in the board of German Blackrock, but speculating with insider knowledge on such a massive spending spree in Germany (and therefore probably as well in the other EU-countries) and its consequences on bond prices seems more likely to me than Merz being the biggest negotiation moron ever existing not being able to even think a little bit strategically
I think "what if the debt is the purpose" is a really good question, and I say this as someone who, like you, is totally exhausted of the Blackrock angle. It's crazy how much eagerness there is to spend and how little specificity about what needs to be bought.
Watching the implosion of Western "democracy" after all the suffering & pain they've brought to the rest of the world via endles machinations is, lovely, just lovely.
I can assure you that it's the SAME people who infiltrated our western democracies to gain dominance and abuse the people and resources of other nations, who have now directed their "programs" internally, upon the people of the west.
Hardly fair to blame the common people, when they've been lied to, manipulated, and kept in the dark regarding machinations done on "their behalf".
But the migrants bring many new jobs to Germany ,like head shrinking and African witch graft . To shrink the heads of German political leaders will be a great blessing before they explode .
It's just that in English, the phrase would be "witch craft", but also in English, "graft" means "fraud, generally in the form of taking bribes and using one's official position for unlawful personal gain", so I thought it was *very* appropriate. :D The whole thing is certainly a huge graft.
It's objectively interesting that I have the same feeling as two years ago when they bombed the North Stream pipeline: This sense that from here on something changed, that this is a watershed moment of a kind. One of these moments that to the willing makes it unmistakeably clear that this is not the world anymore that you knew, that we have entered the realm of lies; not only lies but open lies, for all to see it who want to. The one was unveiling the exterior state of affairs, the other today the interior. Not that I didn't know; only that the veil has come down on this one too. It's as if the system for the first time admitted openly to be a liar all by itself. (Difficult to explain this feeling.)
I too had that feeling about the Nord Stream demolition, that things which had been imperfectly hidden were now coming into full view.
Today’s development also reminds me of the U.S. Congress’s passage of TARP in 2008: as bad as the substance is, the really chilling part is the purposeful communication that no alternatives to the path of destruction will be permitted.
Yeah. It is the giving up of any appearances that is so, well, breathtaking. (And still most people go by "Well, it's not too bad, had to be done, why complain, it's the best for all of us. How does it inflict you personally though?" Mindboggling.)
My very left leaning German friend is bemoaning the fact that there is no affordable housing, in fact, no housing AT ALL, available in the Aachen area. I tried explaining to her that the immigrants have it all and the government and her taxes are paying it, to no avail. She can’t believe it. But those hundreds of billions to be used to pay for immigration are just drops in the bucket. German citizens should be made fully aware of how much the German government is already forking over with their taxpayer money. I’ve watched the NY Post cover in great detail, that for whatever monies Hochul sent to Mayor Adams to pay for illegals and their housing. It was never enough. In 3 years alone, 2.3 billion was spent in just NYC alone. That doesn’t include any other the other costs, healthcare, education, etc. Germany is in an even bigger pickle. Many come from poor countries and are illiterate in their Muslim language. If they read at all, they read from right to left. Now try and teach them a whole new language, new moral code (remember the No No box from Finland) and reading from left to right. At least 207 voted against this nonsense, it would be interesting to see who those 207 are. On the other hand, one of my most fervent wishes might come true now- the EU Bloc crumbling. There was loud grumbling about the addition of Greece and it almost happened, but maybe now, when no one in the bloc has any money to share with the others, and they are all collective takers, it will finally crumble.
As someone who has also tried to "explain" some stuff to left-leaning Germans ("Where do you think money comes from, anyway? Have you ever heard of something called the bond market?") I've come to the conclusion that facts don't matter to people using magical thinking.
Many people have absolutely no clue about money, taxes etc. About 13 years we were buying a house and our lawyer started into a big talk about interest and repayment and our obligations. We cut her short, explaining that we understood about borrowing because we were adults and had previously taken out loans to buy property. However, she had previously worked dealing with bankruptcy and retold how many people including so called highly educated people, lived off their credit cards. Some of them were totally surprised to find out that yeah, you can't just pay the monthly interest. So this is the new normal, I think. Money grows on a money tree that the government picks to pay for everything.
Same in the UK. Exactly
The more us voters say - Enough!! - the more people we don't want, the more they import.
Ireland's worse, the pols have destroyed the country in no time at all.
If you want smugidiot craven virtue signalling dummies.
Go to Ireland.
Because we're different!
Well, I do think it is worth explaining.
Yes, again and again. Patiently. As if to your own child. That is patient, not insulting, hopeful that eventually they will understand the bell curve and the sigma concept.
If we show some empathy, and ask them to explain how it (eg, Merz's program) will work....then eventually they (some of them) use others' ideas to eventually see things a different way.
But, yes, something else, not us, must break through what you quickly call their magical thinking.
Never did....
Know a woman in a project we sponsored, living from job to job precariously, of esoteric musical expertise. Complained about her prospects as the city of Berlin cuts spending in the cultural sector, because, well, migrants need housing and whatnot, one billion p.a. "Imagine all the money spent on border security now, what a waste!" That it's not border security but welfare, housing etc. that has to be paid, and that this is money that cannot be spent on culture - lost on her. Unable to connect the dots. (No pity, btw.)
My NY-born mother and NY-born father grew up in Yiddish-speaking households and learned English in kindergarten. Neither of them went further than HS because they needed to start earning.
Both spoke English with a NY inflection, not a Yiddish one, though they remained bilingual all their lives and they sounded like higher-educated people. My mother had the most beautiful handwriting--so lovely and distinctive that the name on her headstone is a facsimile of her signature. They were ethnic and strongly-cultural Jews but they were also all-American. Even my mother's uncle, born in Ukraine and who never lost his accent, was a US Army vet. I think he served as a cook.
These are choices.
Your parents' IQs were probably two standard deviations higher than those of these immigrants...Eric Hoffer was a half-blind illiterate migrant worker when a woman gave him glasses and he started to read and self-educate, discovering that he had a powerful intellect..He became head of the International Longshoreman's Union, and a highly respected philosopher....
Thwarting the capacities of women is a real bad thing. Of course if my mother had had the chance to go to college and perhaps have a satisfying job I wouldn't be here. But boy did I pay for it.
Same for my dad.
On the other hand perhaps the world was saved from another couple of progressive academics or whatever. Fate works out as it will.
I must say in the early years in South Africa you could go rather far with little education. She only managed to as far as standard 7 (+/- 9 years of school) but was allowed to train as a nurse and ended up as a fully trained nursing sister. Later on she changed careers and ended up as the manager of a Hotel. Good old days in South Africa when you could still work your way to the top. Of course, regrettable, apartheid played a role in it. My father had to borrow money to study from standard 7 and ended up at the top of his career, we all paid for it though as he ended up as an absent father because he had no time for family life. Neither my brother or I went any further in our studies even though, even if I have to say so, we have an IQ above the average, because we are all messed up! A mother and father working all the time,☹
Heck. I went far on little education--at least far enough to have a middle-class lifestyle in NY of the '70s with nothing more than a HS diploma, a few laughable college credits and a glorious (if I say so myself, validated by everyone else who said so) telephone voice. It was hard to fire me when callers kept telling my bosses what a great secretary they had.
Sorry you had such a rough time but really, you gotta have the right stay-at-home mom to have any hope of an easier one.
You are missing the most significant fact: none of those people should be in Germany in the first place. It wasn't a neighbouring country, Germany didn't bomb their homelands, and only 24% of the original waves were even Syrians (that's the official German statistics).
Why do the German people have to suddenly accept over 2 million aliens who would never have been able to enter the country under any other circumstances except Mufti Merkel just executively deciding to do so? It's just so bad, I don't know how to describe it except to say that the negative reports you hear aren't even the half of it since so much goes unreported in the German press. To give you some idea, a female journalist and writer I was speaking with in 2019 told me that during her book tour around the country she had been groped or touched by indolent young Muslim men in every Hauptbanhof (central train station in a city). I'm sure that is a widespread occurance for women across Germany. They don't work, they just hang out and looter in public places making everyone uncomfortable and getting in the way. They shouldn't be in Germany, period.
Typos: *Mufti = Mutti, *looter = loiter.
This is a snapshot of NYC, right there.
You betcha. Look, when I was in kindergarten there was a little boy who started off the school year crying because he only spoke Italian. Didn't take him long to become English-fluent. Among all the other rackets in the US has been the ESL crime syndicate.
When I was in the first grade in 1971 there was a Mexican boy in my class who didn’t speak a word of English. One year later he spoke fluent English without an accent
ESL programs have always been a patronage project. Nobody hates little minority children more than minority lady teachers do.
I agree. A few years back I was visiting my son who'd just left university and was living with a group of friends. One had come to New Zealand from Russia as a child. His English was perfect. He explained that this happened within a few months of being in an English speaking class. However what was interesting was the other young people who were insisting how terrible it was (losing his culture being forced to speak English) even though he was very clear how it absolutely was the best thing for him. Although if it happened now, being Russian would not be so okay.
Young kids learn a foreign language so easily if you just let them learn naturally. I went to a French university in 1973-74 to study French, and my 3 year old daughter went to a French nursery school in which no one spoke a word of English. The kids ran around talking and playing, and at first my daughter just mimicked what they said but before long understood it all and she was totally fluent in French...3 year old French, of course. Perfect accent, too! When we were out and about the local French thought she was native French, and when they heard her speak to us in English they commented about how cute it was that she was speaking a foreign language!
QUOTE: If they read at all, they read from right to left. Now try and teach them a whole new language, new moral code ... and reading from left to right.
These are tired cult-Marx talking points to gaslight Westerners into believing that Third Worlders are INCAPABLE OF MORAL AGENCY.
Illiterate Western peasants 200 years ago had no difficulty whatever understanding the dominant "moral code," and were punished harshly for any transgressions.
Today, Third Worlders in advanced countries - whatever their general shortcomings - are very smart and nimble when it comes to understanding what they can and cannot GET AWAY WITH, often with the help of various publicly-funded "services" and "NGO's" supporting them at every step.
An illiterate tribal Afghan would never dream of assaulting a woman from another clan, because the inevitable result would be violent retaliation by the victim's CLAN against the perpetrator's ENTIRE CLAN. No "social worker" would intercede to argue that the perpetrator had merely been regrettably ignorant of the "moral code."
As regards language, anyone educated to read his language in the Arabic script will also have been taught the Roman alphabet, and will be able to read at least basic English. Convenient protestations of linguistic ignorance and lack of ability to learn should be taken with a large pinch of salt.
Try having my comment READ TO YOU a few more times, this time SLOWLY.
Hint: the word “QUOTE” in all caps has a special meaning in written exchanges which may be difficult to grasp from a purely auditory perspective. But perhaps you can ask the person reading to you to give you a rough idea of what “QUOTE” means in written English.
When the demand is essentially infinite, no amount of supply will ever be enough. The more money and resources these folks apply, the more they will find that what they have done is woefully inadequate and will need to expand exponentially.
Only by turning off the supply, will the demand look elsewhere.
I just fear for my poor children and grandchildren for all they will have to go through before all this madness is over.
I guess 80 years of enforced self-hatred did their work.
I always thought of the German people as being well educated, pragmatic, a little arrogant, and maybe a little rude, but I never thought they were stupid. How is this vote even possible? And where is the uprising in the streets? Is Germany just going to give their country away without a fight? What in the hell is wrong with you people?
Well. Look at all the Ivy League Jews providing legal support for those who've said right out loud they'd like to make skull mountains of them.
I have a high school friend whose mom is German and came here with a WWII soldier. She had lived outside one of the death camps. To this day mom and her daughter both adhere to extreme liberal progressive ideals. I have given up attempting to reason with either of them. Their minds are like concrete boxes made to shelter uranium, nothing gets in or out. No logic goes through in any conversation. I don't understand their views given the situation her mom lived under as a teenager. She was aware of what was happening in the camp near her town, but she denies its truthfulness: "It was a work camp." And now they're both sure our current administration is a Nazi dictatorship, while the last was trying to "save democracy". She claims she wants to live in Germany, and I've encouraged her to do so (she won't as life for her in Northern CA is too cushy). Yes, she'd think the change in the Constitution is lovely, as she thinks DOGE is horrific.
she is nuts. Many of the left feel this way.
my stupid brother wrote on his FB page: "I am fearful of what I see happening in America today. My parents went through Nazi dominated Europe. I know their stories of that atrocity. In my priviledged upbringing, I still think I have a visceral connection to those trying, scary, painful experiences—because they TOLD ME ABOUT THEM AND I LISTENED. It kills me to see members of my family—siblings, cousins—be ignorant of the depravity that is arisen in America. This isn’t freedom, it is dominance. Remember I said this: you who thought you wanted this will find it’s nothing like what you wanted. But they will deceive you long before you see what you wrought. Exactly, when you wake up from your self-righteousness and Neanderthal instincts, you will slowly see what they did.
MARK THIS: 23 Feb, 2025"
I do not know even what the hell he means. My parents grew up in Holland.
and the only "sibling" he is pointing out is Me and my husband. What an idiot
I've begun to ignore them. I don't like either political party and have realized that I've become more someone who wants a leader who will follow the Constitution. We don't have anyone who will do that. It's like being a Libertarian and Constitutionalist. I don't know if a third or fourth party system would ever work here. I do have misgivings about the Republican Party and feel a close watch should be kept on some of their policies. Still, overall their actions aren't the dictatorial ones that the Democrats used under Obama and Biden.
It was a literal mathematical impossibility any of that happened. You're completely insane to be peddling such outright nonsense.
The Berlin class are profoundly stupid.
And of course it will be a sign of being a "far-right extremist" to oppose this.
Ridiculing laughter is a good retort to any of that.
That sort of thing doesn't work in Germany. They just try to ban your party altogether.
Or maybe German politicians have been secretly longing for hyperinflation for the last 100 years, and finally got their chance to ignite it...
Weimar Republic Deja vu?
That’s been my thought.
Note to self: Time to rewatch "Dead Snow."
Great, now I need to look up another movie that I've never heard of...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGg_HeCB0vM
OIC, zombies! 🧟🧟♀️🧟♂️
Oh, I've trained for this with hours of the first too many seasons of Walking Dead (sitting with a friend in rehab, long story, but I loved the chick with the katana.
Well. But those weren't Nazi zombies. Not as potent, surely.
Every lesson of history is eventually forgotten, but I didn't expect the reversal to happen so suddenly! Does that mean we're 15 years away from... you know...
It is clearly a serious flaw in any constitution that allows representatives to continue passing laws after an election in which they lost. Why is this allowed? Surely the day after the election power should transfer immediately.
The US has a similar problem in which the losers get plenty of time to break things and fuck stuff up after losing an election. The UK on the other hand sees a transfer of power within days of the vote.
It is a loophole in the German constitution that would never have been foreseen or used in a functioning democracy.
By far the most predominant occupation in the German parliament (at least among those who have ever worked outside of politics) is law. Hence, it is no surprise that they are not interested in the spirit of the law—only the letter of it.
Even the best constitution will fail if the governing class does not believe in its foundation.
This was already the case 100 years ago—"Democracy without democrats," as they said in the Weimar Republic, in the last 20ies.
Lets hope our 30ies won't be that awful.
QUOTE: It is a loophole in the German constitution that would never have been foreseen or used in a functioning democracy.
Any legal system can function only if the people have a developed MORAL code independent of top-down legislation. John Adams famously noted that "the American Constitution is meant for a religious and moral people."
At the intersection of moral and legal codes, a sense of SELF-RESTRAINT is an indispensable precondition for a functioning system, i.e., the idea that some actions technically permitted under the formal written law are nonetheless improper and unacceptable. This sense of self-restraint is what MERZ and his co-conspirators have shown they signally lack, to say nothing of the brazen shamelessness displayed in full public view.
Yes, that sums it up well.
A good indication of whether a constitution is truly lived by the people is its brevity.
If it is strongly believed, it doesn't need many words—like the Ten Commandments.
The original U.S. Constitution is quite short.
The German Constitution has almost 150 articles (and don’t even get me started on the German tax code, the longest in the world). Yet, even then, it feels quite empty and easy to interpret.
A good example is German free speech laws: it doesn’t say you have the right to free speech and can say what you want. It merely states that you can have your own opinion.
But even then, the writers of the German Basic Law were much bigger believers in democracy than the current lot of immoral apparatchiks.
I would say that you hit it on the head.
I can't speak to other countries but the reason the US is like this is because the US was created in 1776 before airplanes and the internet existed.
In the real world, everything takes time and you cannot do things instantaneously.
and the people who use this vulnerable time to insert poison pills or poison federal judges don't wish to update the process at all.
But the US Constitution is very difficult to amend, requiring a 2/3 vote by both houses of Congress, and must be ratified by 3/4 of the States...There's an alternative of calling a Constitutional convention, but that has never happened and probably never will...
it's easier to amend if those in power cheat and pretend ratification requirements are reached with fraudulent statements, like with the 16th amendment.
helped them a lot that records were on paper, scattered throughout the States and federal storage areas. but people who've physically searched out the ratification documents say that the number of states ratifying the 16th wasn't even close to the requirement and even if it was several states' paperwork wasn't filed within the necessary deadline.
Might be intentional to allow the previous authorities to destroy capacities, get rid of archives, etc. before a handover in case… you know…
It’s just the singular obsession of the West in general and Germany in particular since the war! And I gotta say, it’s not necessarily a bad idea to have that. The obsession is bad, but then again the original case did happen, and it was actually very bad.
Problem is that that doesn’t work with a governing class completely devoid of virtue and sense of proportion. But then again, what does.
One of the very few good things about our system in Oz. There’s generally a caretaker period both before and after the election until the new government is sworn in, in which they may not make major changes to laws.
European govts have a similar concept but there is no definition of what major means.
Headed for interesting times. Wheee! Maybe going over a cliff feels like flying at first.
I imagine those vile politicians who put this together are feeling and will feel empowered.
Grape soda, I love the way you put it.
It's like getting out of a plane and that feeling of flying, until you realize your parachute is knotted and not pulling on the air to slow anything down.
(An experience I actually had once, btw.)
I’m never doing that!
I imagine no one picks up a bad parachute on purpose. I certainly didn't know.
The vile politicians are doing this now and will ride the economy down until it crashes.
"I'm jumping out of the airplane."
"Wait! we're at 12,000 feet and you don't have a parachute!"
"So, what's your point?"
"How are you going to keep from hitting the ground and splattering?"
"I don't know right now, but I'm sure I'll be able to deal with that problem when I get there."
Sadly, this seems too true.
BUT: I did chuckle, and THAT is good!
Lol
The fall was great, but the landing was a bummer.
Feels like flying all the way to the sudden stop.
Ha
Does no good with self-inflicted high energy prices. Won’t fix anything.
Nations in energy deficits can’t have robust industrial policy. Nations in energy surplus can. Most people think energy is a derivative of the economy. They have it exactly backwards. The economy is a derivative of energy. And Europe’s is weak because it produces none, because it chose diffuse, nonreliable, expensive energy over dense, reliable, affordable energy.
These are not our rules. Just physics.
Nothing will change except taking on more debt until Europe kicks the Green party and its ilk to the curb.
If you don't already, subscribe to Doomberg, you should.
Of course we do!
Then all is right with the world. At least the part of the world currently on my laptop screen
If you’re in Europe, just don’t look outside.
in 8 days I will be in the Europe of North America, trying not to hang myself in despair
Don’t come to Canada, we are clueless here
The solution to exploding Russian gas pipelines is to move German industry to Russia ,where German industry would be save from imploding .
By strange coincidence, this is exactly what China wants western governments to do, keep burning money. And when they've borrowed the money, siphoned off lumps to their mates/favourite causes, they can jet off to the latest COP Climate Communism Conference. What a lovely life for Eurocrats!
A betrayal of democracy but nevertheless good politics. The cartel parties need to halt populism and spraying money everywhere is a pretty good strategy.
I doubt the CDU boomers, content to watch millions of immigrants flood into Germany, will revolt at adding debt that will be someone else’s problem, especially because it is allegedly for traditionally conservative boxes (infrastructure, defense, etc). If in ten years all that money has only bought four tanks and a rusty windmill once the green NGOs take their cut, well, again, that’s someone else’s problem.
If the Green NGO's take their cut, it will be 1 tank and 4 rusty windmills
The clock, for Germany, began ticking when the state colluded with the Great Hegemon, on the other side of the Great Moat, to blow up the pipeline that made Germany possible.
No, it started in 2015 when 1 million alien "New Germans" were suddenly dumped on the ordinary people. That later became over two million.
Not trying to be smarty pants but Germany's fall, and Europe's, indeed the entire West started way back when the cancers of Socialism and Communism were not properly killed off but allowed to grow in our public insistutions and education service. Now we have a Communist Islamist Alliance eating away at western society.
I suggest you look deeper into James Burnham and his goals and achievements at the U.S. State Department. It might surprise you that it's a lot more complex than you believe.
“At the very least, XXX voters ought to have had a say in this decision, and yet the cartel parties have conspired to deny them any voice.” I can’t think of a nation where this isn’t true. We’re playing Cops & Robbers with no cops.
The price of Law abiding is slavery and then extinction.
"This was a proposal to amend the constitution and dismantle our strict debt brake in all but name."
Sounds like Germany should have some sort of ministry whose job it is to "protect the constitution." Your thoughts?
Not sure if you’re being sarcastic because they DO have that, and it’s called just that: The Ministry to Protect the Constitution and Security. Hah! Obviously, they’re all in on the graft.
Yes, sarcasm. Because as we are all aware, the greatest threat to the constitution comes from the citizenry it protects, not from the thieving politicians. So the Ministry's targeting lasers have all been precisely on target.
There already is one, and it's VERY NICE (to quote Monty Python): https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundesverfassungsgericht.
I remember admiring some of their calm judgments years ago against political moral panics: for example when the NPD (tiny bunch of loony Neo-Nazis) were going to be banned. The court decided that this was unconstitutional, because the NPD were no threat whatsoever to the German Constitution - among other reasons, because they were almost wholly under the control of mole agents of the
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Office_for_the_Protection_of_the_Constitution) (BfV)!
I remember thinking: You Germans have really got this sorted, with adults in Karlsruhe giving a well-deserved, polite slap to the posturing children in the Bundestag: can we have some of that?
I really hope that Karlsruhe hasn't fallen yet. To be fair, the constitutional amendment is - as far as I can tell - only a _proposal_?
Surely Germans can see what an insult Merz's idea is? Whether they come from "Wirtschaftswunder" or "Aufgestanden aus Ruinen"? Surely the answer, from the people, should be "NO"?
This whole saga is a shameful debacle and is being met with absolute horror by non-idealogically motivated Germans (ie most of them) not just for the egregious breaches of trust that Merz and his CDU have visited upon the electorate but for the cynical, in-your-face manipulation of parliamentary process which whilst not illegal flies in the face of all previously accepted standards of normative behaviour. This is worse by factors than Biden‘s provocative support of bombing initaitives of Russian territory in late December to spoil the pitch for the incoming President. I am both disgusted and appalled.
Which is why we're reading about the [non-existent] public protests?
I'm not saying similar problems don't exist elsewhere on the old continent, but I was always led to believe the majority of Germans were fiscally conservative. I'm amazed not to be reading about public protests concerning this farce. Moreover I'm curious as to what the CDU rank and file think of all this?
But Russia bad so everything else jolly good.
My guess is that our idea of the fiscally conservative German and the fiscally conservative establishment institutions is now out of date. I have been listening (as much as I can bear to) to MSM (ARD/ZDF) interviewers questioning mostly senior AFD members of the current Bundestag and am astonished by the aggressive way in which they question the integrity of those protesting this unbelievable breach of trust. I have not registered one ounce of sympathy for the outrage, instead they are criticised for questioning the „democratic legitimacy“ of the process implying that the protesters are „anti democratic“ - it is beyond absurd. So - I guess there are no protests because conservatives tend not to take to the streets to ululate (that is the domain of the hyperventilating, permanently aggrieved Socialist class and the pubescent and they are definitely NOT protesting) and the material is probably quite arcane and incomprehensible to most people.
PS This piece https://open.substack.com/pub/germanreview/p/what-is-the-point-of-the-cdu?r=21olc&utm_medium=ios offers some valuable perspectives. The MSM has been entirely corrupted over the last ten years. There are no bastions of fiscal conservatism any more
Thanks for the link! Subscribed 😊
We're in an illiberal era, so I can appreciate the msm/institutional response (it's like the c19 playbook etc). My fear is by the time a sizable minority, or if we're optimistic, the majority, wakes up in terms of realizing the consequences of where all this hubris will take us, it won't matter, because the wheels for events much greater than our individual countries will be in motion.
Stunning.
Democracy means only for those of the inner circle, as they see fit. The little people can just pay for it all.
The Iron Law of Oligarchy remains undefeated.
It would seem so. The same players turn up over and over again, regardless of the huge mistakes they make. See ECB, EU27 Kommission and more.
It seems more and more to me that it's not really about for what to spend the money for since they are so vague with the purposes that I don't buy it that they actually believe in any real emergency. What if the debt is the purpose? I normally don't like that people make such a big issue about Merz having been in the board of German Blackrock, but speculating with insider knowledge on such a massive spending spree in Germany (and therefore probably as well in the other EU-countries) and its consequences on bond prices seems more likely to me than Merz being the biggest negotiation moron ever existing not being able to even think a little bit strategically
I think "what if the debt is the purpose" is a really good question, and I say this as someone who, like you, is totally exhausted of the Blackrock angle. It's crazy how much eagerness there is to spend and how little specificity about what needs to be bought.
All the better to crash the system, my dear……….
Those crashing the system theories sound far fetched but it sure seems like that is what’s happening
A fitting outcome later this month will be the SDU and the Greens finding a way to keep Merz out of the big chair.
It would serve him right, and cement his position as the biggest fool in modern German politics.
Watching the implosion of Western "democracy" after all the suffering & pain they've brought to the rest of the world via endles machinations is, lovely, just lovely.
Your ire is misdirected.
I can assure you that it's the SAME people who infiltrated our western democracies to gain dominance and abuse the people and resources of other nations, who have now directed their "programs" internally, upon the people of the west.
Hardly fair to blame the common people, when they've been lied to, manipulated, and kept in the dark regarding machinations done on "their behalf".
But the migrants bring many new jobs to Germany ,like head shrinking and African witch graft . To shrink the heads of German political leaders will be a great blessing before they explode .
I don't know if "witch graft" was intentional or a typo, but either way, I love it. :D
Warmek ,By witch graft I mean hexen kraft in German . I do speak some German ,but not enough to avoid mistakes .
It's just that in English, the phrase would be "witch craft", but also in English, "graft" means "fraud, generally in the form of taking bribes and using one's official position for unlawful personal gain", so I thought it was *very* appropriate. :D The whole thing is certainly a huge graft.
Once the "commoner" realizes that their struggle is directly tied to Gaza, DRC, Sudan, Mexico etc. We may make some progress
I agree on principle, but in practice it's hard to enjoy it when you live under it....
You can gloat but it will affect you in ways you don't expect.
Cope
It's objectively interesting that I have the same feeling as two years ago when they bombed the North Stream pipeline: This sense that from here on something changed, that this is a watershed moment of a kind. One of these moments that to the willing makes it unmistakeably clear that this is not the world anymore that you knew, that we have entered the realm of lies; not only lies but open lies, for all to see it who want to. The one was unveiling the exterior state of affairs, the other today the interior. Not that I didn't know; only that the veil has come down on this one too. It's as if the system for the first time admitted openly to be a liar all by itself. (Difficult to explain this feeling.)
You mean that bombing that has been almost completely memory-holed?
It seems like almost everything gets instantly memory-holed!
I too had that feeling about the Nord Stream demolition, that things which had been imperfectly hidden were now coming into full view.
Today’s development also reminds me of the U.S. Congress’s passage of TARP in 2008: as bad as the substance is, the really chilling part is the purposeful communication that no alternatives to the path of destruction will be permitted.
Yeah. It is the giving up of any appearances that is so, well, breathtaking. (And still most people go by "Well, it's not too bad, had to be done, why complain, it's the best for all of us. How does it inflict you personally though?" Mindboggling.)
Understanding that we are all in the Matrix.