It’s not enough that the government imposes confiscatory taxes and funds all sorts of entitlement programs, in Germany a bank manager was taking money from the “rich” clients to give to the “poor”:
German banker admits transferring money from rich to help poorer clients

The 62-year-old branch head of one German bank was hailed as a hero after she confessed to transferring money from rich customers to help her poorer clients. Already, she has been dubbed “Die Robin Hood Bankerin”.

She was given a 22-month suspended sentence after moving more than €7.6m (£6.9m) in 117 transfers between 2003 and 2005. The court in Bonn was told that the employee, who has not been named, took no money for herself.

The judge referred to her stealing as “altruistic behavior”.

Here in the US we get the government to take our money and bailout the banks and financial firms because they are “too big to fail”.

That German judge would be impressed.

As we all know, Obama had a busy, busy Monday and didn’t attend the celebration of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Instead he sent a videotaped speech which you can listen to here (please note it’s instant-play).

Of course, not a word about Ronald Reagan.

Via Ace, did Obama not show up because it wasn’t all about him?

Compare Obama’s words with Ronald Reagan’s:

Why shold we care about the fall of the Berlin Wall?

Czech Republic president Vaclav Klaus discusses the events of 1989.

When you have a chance, read The Anchoress’ review of The Lives of Others. I haven’t watched the movie yet but will later this week. (Correction – I did see it in a cinema when it first came out but clearly need to see it again)

Rich Germans demand higher taxes

Rather than become personally involved in their communities and find ways to creatively enrich their lives through charity, these fools can’t wait for the nanny state to do it for them, so they want higher taxes:

A group of rich Germans has launched a petition calling for the government to make wealthy people pay higher taxes.

The group say they have more money than they need, and the extra revenue could fund economic and social programmes to aid Germany’s economic recovery.

Germany could raise 100bn euros (£91bn) if the richest people paid a 5% wealth tax for two years, they say.

The petition has 44 signatories so far, and will be presented to newly re-elected Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The group say the financial crisis is leading to an increase in unemployment, poverty and social inequality.

Forty-four people with too much time and money in their hands, and one one brain among them.

Cut all CO2 emissions?

Climate Roulette

It came in July, courtesy of the chief climate adviser to the German government. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, chair of an advisory council known by its German acronym WBGU,

Ooo-kay

is a physicist whose specialty, fittingly, is chaos theory. Speaking to an invitation-only conference at New Mexico’s Santa Fe Institute, Schellnhuber divulged the findings of a study so new he had not yet briefed Chancellor Angela Merkel about it. The study has now been published. If its conclusions are correct–and Schellnhuber ranks among the world’s half-dozen most eminent climate scientists–it has monumental implications for the pivotal meeting in December in Copenhagen, where world leaders will try to agree on reversing global warming.

Schellnhuber and his WBGU colleagues go a giant step beyond the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN body whose scientific reports are constrained because the world’s governments must approve their contents. The IPCC says that rich industrial countries must cut emissions 25 to 40 percent by 2020 (from 1990 levels) if the world is to have a fair chance of avoiding catastrophic climate change. By contrast, the WBGU study says the United States must cut emissions 100 percent by 2020--i.e., quit carbon entirely within ten years. Germany, Italy and other industrial nations must do the same by 2025 to 2030. China only has until 2035, and the world as a whole must be carbon-free by 2050. The study adds that big polluters can delay their day of reckoning by “buying” emissions rights from developing countries, a step the study estimates would extend some countries’ deadlines by a decade or so.

I hope the esteemed members of the WBGU will forgive my audacity, but here’s my advice:

• humans
• animals
• plants

exhale CO2. Yes, the biologists are the ones who say so, and I know chaos theory physicists aren’t best friends with biologists, but really.

For “the world as a whole must be carbon-free by 2050″, it would mean the extermination of all forms of organic life on the planet, and even then you would have the carbon generated by their rotting process.

Friends don’t let friends stay on crack. Put down the pipe, guys.

Either that, or get a better translator.

Jonah Goldberg and Ace are posting on it too.

German Ship Transporting Arms for Iran; German registry,

In an operation reported on by SPIEGEL over the weekend, US soldiers entered the freighter Hansa India in the Gulf of Suez at the beginning of October and discovered seven containers full of 7.62 millimeter ammunition suitable for Kalashnikov rifles. An eighth container was full of cartridges suitable for the manufacture of additional rounds. The incident is particularly awkward for Berlin as the Hansa India is registered to the Hamburg-based shipping company Leonhardt & Blumberg.

Investigators suspect that the arms were part of an Iranian shipment bound for either the Syrian army or for Hezbollah, the militant Islamist group. US officials have pointed out that the delivery is in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1747, which prohibits arms shipments either into or out of Iran.

According to Leonhardt & Blumberg, the 243-meter-long (297-foot-long) ship has for years been under charter to the state-owned shipping company Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines. Two US warships halted the Hansa India after receiving a tip-off from intelligence services.

Following an intervention by the German government, the US allowed the ship to continue on to its destination in Malta, where the containers were secured.

Ed Morrissey points out that

the Syrian army is almost certainly not the intended client. They manufacture their own 7.62 mm cartridges and don’t need to import them. That leaves Hezbollah…

Perfunction has more on the ship, while Carl in Jerusalem says,

Earlier on Monday, I reported that Britain had decided to boycott Islamic Republic of Iran shipping lines. I guess now we know why.

As you may remember, last year Italian daily La Stampa revealed how Iran is using Venezuela to duck UN sanctions.

Pres. Obama is addressing the UN general meeting right now.

Moe

The President is going to speak the same day as Iran’s Ahmadinejad, Libya’s Gadhafi and Zimbabwe’s Mugabe; you have to wonder whether Syria’s al-Assad and/or North Korea’s Il-sung had scheduling conflicts. Doesn’t anybody at the White House check people’s work before they send it out?

Also at the UN, Germany wants U.N. walkout if Amadinejad denies Holocaust

Germany will walk out of the U.N. General Assembly if Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust in a speech he will give Wednesday, and it wants other European Union countries to do the same, the foreign ministry said.

“We will leave the hall if President Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust or makes anti-Semitic statements … we are making efforts toward a unified European position,” a spokesman said Tuesday.

Just last week Ahmadinejad was denying the Holocaust.

Why is the UN inviting him anyway?

I’ll be talking about this (and about Gaddfi’s tent, they tell me) in today’s CNN Live’s Blogger Bunch at 12:15PM. See you there.

UPDATE
Video

I had the pleasure of being in the same panel as Steve Clemons of The Washington Note, Adam Kushner of Newsweek, and Omid Memarian of Human Rights Watch.

UPDATE
Welcome, American Power visitors!

The new diplomacy: Guess who’s not coming to dinner?

Barack and Michelle Obama decline dinner with the Sarkozys

The Obamas turn up in Paris this evening, but have declined a dinner invitation from the couple next door: the Sarkozys.

President Obama’s reluctance to spend more than minimum time with the French leader on his visit for the D-Day anniversary has come as an embarrassment to the Elysée Palace.

America’s First Family will not be dining with President Sarkozy and his wife, Carla Bruni, even though they are staying at the residence of the US Ambassador, yards from the Elysée apartments where the Sarkozys spend their weekends.

Mr Sarkozy’s staff were trying yesterday to arrange another private moment between the couples. Mr Obama is due to fly back to Washington tomorrow night or on Sunday.

But hey, it’s not just Sarko being snubbed. It’s Angela, too!

French worries about being snubbed were matched in Germany, where media and politicians are convinced that the brevity of Mr Obama’s trip there and a decision to avoid Berlin demonstrated his disapproval of Angela Merkel, the Chancellor.

I wonder if Angela and Sarko’s Wiis are gold-plated.

Somewhere in Georgia, Jimmy Carter is grateful.

Update
It gets worse,

The White House’s coolness has added to embarrassment at the Elysée Palace over the way they have bungled what Sarkozy wanted to be a supreme Franco-American moment in Paris and especially Normandy. The final straw for Paris was the White House’s undiplomatic public reproach this week to Sarkozy for failing to invite the British Queen to the 6th of June ceremony.

Obama is turning up in Paris on Friday evening, but spending the evening privately with Michelle and his entourage. He is not due to see Sarkozy and Carla Bruni at the Elysée. Their only tête-à-tête will be in the Normandy town of Caen on Saturday. The Americans have refused a French request for the two men to hold a joint press conference. The D-Day ceremony at the US cemetery at Colleville, by Omaha beach, has now been widened to include Britain’s Gordon Brown and Prince Charles and Stephen Harper, the Canadian Prime Minister. Then Michelle Obama is staying on in Paris on a private visit for several days.

Via Drudge,

“The country needs new undies” campaign features Angela Merkel in a billboard offering people trading in their old underwear a five-euro (seven-dollar) discount on a new pair. Hopefully the old undies will get burned somewhere.

And here I was complaining about the lack of respect for the Office of the President the other day.

Who’s next, Sarko?

Let’s hope is not Hugo.

I linked to this last evening, but here’s the extended version:
Why I like Angela Merkel (and you should, too)

Why do I like Angela Merkel? There are many reasons. One important reason was epitomized yesterday when Gordon Brown, still (but not for long) the British Prime Minister, tried to stir up support for his $2 trillion (plus) “global New Deal.” Quoth Merkel:

“I will not let anyone tell me that we must spend more money

Merkel was not alone:

The Spanish finance minister, Pedro Solbes, also dismissed new cash being pledged at Thursday’s London summit.

“In these conditions I and the rest of my colleagues from the eurozone believe there is no room for new fiscal stimulus plans,” he said.

Obama’s in for a disappointment, too:

The assault by European Union leaders also represents a defeat for President Barack Obama, who is desperate for other big economies to copy his $800 billion stimulus plan.

We live in wondrous times: Unlike the US administration, the Germans and the Spaniards don’t want more government spending, and the Brazilian socialists want more free trade.

The president of the EU, former Czech president Mirek Topolanek, considers Obama’s stimulus plan “the road to hell:”

AC/DC fans rejoice.

While Lula’s spicy remark and Brown’s savior dreams may add material for reporters, it’s looking like the G20 may end up a dud.

And that’s a good thing.

Jules Crittenden commemorates the Battle of the Bulge, which started on December 16, 1944, 64 years ago today,

Hitler’s hope was to cut supplies to the Allied armies, divide the Brits and Americans, get a separate peace in the West and turn his full attention to the Russians. The Germans punched a bulge in the Allied line deep into Belgium, giving the battle its name. But the bulge wasn’t nearly big enough, and they quickly got bogged down well short of their objective. The battle took on the qualities of a strange Teutonic nightmare. 1st SS Panzer Division elements executed 88 American prisoners in the snow at Malmedy, survivors being finished off with headshots, and murdered 11 black American POWS after apparently torturing them with knives in a ditch at Wereth. Other SS trained to pass as Americans and while they failed to take their bridges, they succeeded in spreading chaos behind American lines. Hard fighting slowed the German advance, prevented them from taking key intersections and bridges, and cut some German units off. The drawn-out winter combat became the stuff of history, both dread and awe-inspiring, most notably in the siege at Bastogne, which gave the paratroopers of the 101st the opportunity to fight in all directions and a chip on their shoulders to this day over the notion they were saved by Patton. Gen. McAuliffe earned his own place in history when the Germans demanded his surrender and he replied, “Nuts.” An old paratrooper I interviewed a few years back, a resident of the Bedford VA who was at Bastogne, insisted McAuliffe actually said “Balls!” and a staff officer cleaned it up. But here’s a staff officer who says that’s not so.

Jules has done a monumental job, and his post includes photographs and comprehensive links which includes books ready for gift-giving. Go read it.

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