Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany found that
Those primitive hunter gatherers, at age 30, had the same odds of dying as a modern Swedish or Japanese man would face at 72.
Which doesn’t mean that you’re as spry at 72 as you were at 30.
But you didn’t need me to point that out, did you?
I’ll now go back to nursing my cold. Beeehave while I’m away.
Papers released this week by the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) – the German foreign intelligence agency – show information gathered by German operatives 50 years ago during the tense days of the Cuban missile crisis.They reveal that Castro personally approved a plan to hire former Nazi officers to instruct the Cuban revolutionary army, offering them wages that were four times the average salary in Germany at the time and the chance to start a new life in Havana.
They papers, dating from October 1962, show that four former officers from the elite Nazi death squads had been invited to the Cuban capital, although subsequent reports could only confirm that two had arrived.
It also showed how the Castro regime negotiated with two traffickers linked with Germany’s far Right to purchase Belgian made pistols to arm the Cuban forces.
The conclusion drawn by German secret service officials was that the Cuban regime wanted to free itself from total dependence on Soviet backed training and supplies.
Humberto Fontova asks So just what did the SS soldiers teach the Cubans, anyway?
First off, Castro’s troops are hapless draftees who probably detest the regime as much as anyone in Miami. They have no stake in its wars. But mainly, it’s the rampant megalomania and paranoia of their commander in chief that accounts for the Cuban military’s astounding stupidities and failures.Communist armies in general and Castroite armies in particular promote officers not on battlefield merit but strictly on political reliability, which is to say on lackeyism, cowardice and donkeyheadedness.
Plus, Fidel needed Soviet money for all this grandstanding, just as he now needs Hugo’s oil.
While the Crisis Ensnares [the European] Central Bank in Desperate Bid to Save Euro, the man who said, “If the EU ever had any intention to democratize itself it would have done so in the Constitutional Treaty,” has his say in the European Parliament:
UPDATE
Daniel Hannan; You can have the euro or you can have democracy – you can’t have both
President Ronald Reagan – June 12, 1987
General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!
Moe Lane raises the question because,
It is my first instinct to treat this report of Ronald Reagan Jr’s… commentary… by simply letting it pass by without a response. For those not wishing to click through, the boy (use of term deliberate) is indulging elderly liberal fetishists everywhere by making the claim that his father was suffering from Alzheimer’s as far back as the 1984 debates*, as well as ‘details’ regarding a supposed operation in 1989 that had even the US News & World Report doing some fancy footwork in order to avoid having to declare it a lie. It’s the Left; it’s pornography; it’s Left-porn. Outside of that particular niche market, its utility is… low.
As Moe says, a man “doesn’t need to defecate on the memory of his father in order to feel less of a failure.”
I was going to write about the French riots, the British spending cuts and layoffs, and the German budget but Monty at Ace’s did it better than anything I can come up with:
This is our future
This is our future if we don’t change our ways.
Exhibit A: England faces the largest budget cuts since World War II.
Exhibit B: France is tearing itself apart over a move to bring state pensions under control.
This is the end result of the welfare-state. The Europeans (and Democrats here at home) want a utopia where all needs are met, all the hungry are fed, all the children warm and safe, all the sick made whole, all the evil punished and the innocent made free, a land where all is peace and all live in harmony. Instead, the welfare-state is waste and weakness and impoverishment and upheaval and ennui. It is generational warfare, class warfare, enormous debts, squalor, meanness, shortages, selfishness. It is, at base, the end of civil society. Communist economies fall faster because they take the poison pure; it takes the merely socialist ones more time to sicken and die.
Go read the whole thing.
Before: They loved him, they really loved him, back in July 2008,
Berlin, 2008:
Berlin police estimated more than 200,000 people attended the speech. That is almost three times the size of the largest crowd Obama has yet drawn in the United States, an outdoor rally in Oregon that drew an estimated 75,000.
After: Those fickle Germans, two years later, asking,
Will Obama Be the ‘Jimmy Carter of the 21st Century’?
My estimation is that things are going to get a lot worse, and by the time Obama’s out of office, they’ll be wishing Obama was the ‘Jimmy Carter of the 21st Century’.
Instapundit: “ACTUALLY, THAT’S A BEST-CASE SCENARIO”
Update,
Obama’s first lost the Germans, and now lost David Brooks, too:
He [Brooks] is so indignant about this, in fact, that if this was the only thing that David Brooks had ever wrote you would be forgiven for concluding that David Brooks did not spend the last election cycle helping to get elected President the man who is now busily mucking up coordinating the cleanup. Which is, indeed, so mucked up that local governments are preemptively announcing that they’re not going to wait for the Feds to do to them what the Feds have done to Louisiana.
Will those workers remember this when it’s time to vote?
Note to TV newscaster who wants Obama to hand out money to the workers who won’t be able to work:
Despite recent history, President Obama doesn’t get to hand out money to anyone he wants. I’m a bit hazy on this after the past 18 months, but my recollection is the Constitution vests Congress with the power to authorize spending and prohibits money being drawn from the Treasury “but in Consequence of Appropriations made by law.”
…and make things worse:
Geithner Plans to Press Germany on European Rescue
Parliament in Berlin Approves Country’s Share of Massive Bailout Fund; U.S. Treasury Secretary to Meet With Schäuble
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is bringing two messages to officials in Berlin next week: be more sensitive to potential market reactions to policy moves, and work faster on the massive European rescue program that German lawmakers blessed Friday, approving the country’s €147.6 billion ($182.93 billion) contribution.
Since the bailout here worked so well, let’s go tell the Germans to speed up their bailout of Greece.
What could go wrong?
Being a head of state while you’re only 5’5″ must be tough, even when your wife is 5’10″:
People joke about your stoop:
And use your height in car ads:
German ad pokes fun at Sarkozy’s height:
Car rental company Sixt makes fun of Nicolas Sarkozy in a poster advertising campaign. Will the French president see the funny side?
There could be trouble ahead for the car rental company Sixt following its latest advertising campaign.
A German poster for the company carries a picture of the French hatchback the Citroën C3 with the slogan encouraging customers to “Do the same as Madame Bruni, choose a small French model” ((“Machen Sie es wie Madame Bruni. Nehmen Sie sich einen kleinen Franzosen”).
Here’s the ad:
Obviously they didn’t realize what it means when a short man is with a tall woman…
Abuse Scandal in Germany Edges Closer to Pope
— A widening child sexual abuse inquiry in Europe has landed at the doorstep of Pope Benedict XVI, as a senior church official acknowledged Friday that a German archdiocese made “serious mistakes” in handling an abuse case while the pope served as its archbishop.The archdiocese said that a priest accused of molesting boys was given therapy in 1980 and later allowed to resume pastoral duties, before committing further abuses and being prosecuted. Pope Benedict, who at the time headed the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, approved the priest’s transfer for therapy. A subordinate took full responsibility for allowing the priest to later resume pastoral work, the archdiocese said in a statement.
…
The archdiocese said that a priest accused of molesting boys was given therapy in 1980 and later allowed to resume pastoral duties, before committing further abuses and being prosecuted. Pope Benedict, who at the time headed the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, approved the priest’s transfer for therapy. A subordinate took full responsibility for allowing the priest to later resume pastoral work, the archdiocese said in a statement.
Here’s a graphic on the history of the abuse case.
And, as the article shows,
In Munich case, a priest from Essen, “despite allegations of sexual abuse, and in spite of a conviction — was repeatedly assigned work in the sphere of pastoral care by the then-Vicar General Gerhard Gruber,” who worked under Benedict when he was the archbishop.The priest, identified only with the initial “H,” was moved to Munich in January 1980, where he was supposed to undergo therapy, a decision that was taken “with the approval of the archbishop,” according to the archdiocese’s statement. Benedict was archbishop of Munich from 1977 to 1982.
In June 1986, the priest was convicted of sexually abusing minors and given an 18-month suspended sentence with five years of probation, fined 4,000 marks and ordered to undergo therapy.
the sex abuser is now free, and his identity is still concealed.
There is no justice. None at all.
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.
