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Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

In my day, never was longer.

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

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Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

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Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

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I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

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JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

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T R E 4 5 O N

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

Roe is not about choice. It is about freedom.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Open Thread: Germany, Not Having A Great Week

Open Thread: Germany, Not Having A Great Week

by | 86 Comments

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Nor is FIFA, apparently…

Or The Donald, for that matter…

This guy, on the other hand:

Reader Interactions

86Comments

  3. 3.

    Corner Stone

    It was obvious yesterday that GER was the better team than ENG but that they just didn’t give a shit when it came down to it. So ENG gets 3rd and GER gets to go home and consider their lack of effort.

  5. 5.

    Corner Stone

    The USA team put GER on their back hip and said come play with me, if you can. And they could not.

  6. 6.

    Corner Stone

    Waiting to see where the horse’s head gets placed in Greece after the Greferendum result.

  8. 8.

    Poopyman

    Did Germany coach Silvia Neid have anything to say after the match?

    Oh, never mind, it wouldn’t have been important.

  10. 10.

    Amir Khalid

    @rikyrah:
    See who Joe Biden is having the conversation with in that picture? That’s none other than the Brazilian football legend Pele.

  11. 11.

    Corner Stone

    I wonder if this narrator for Shark Week sounds like this in real life? Can you imagine being his grandkid?
    “And then it was clear, nothing like this ice cream truck had been seen at this park before. Measuring 18ft it circled the swings endlessly, giving its prey no chance to escape…”

  14. 14.

    PurpleGirl

    From the top:

    Donald Trump, June 16: “When did we beat Japan at ANYTHING?”

    Ah, The Donald, maybe a little thing called the 2nd World War in the Pacific…

    Idiot.

  17. 17.

    Major Major Major Major

    There’s a married homeowner with child complaining about how the San Francisco he grew up in has changed, maaaan. “We like making people happy, what we don’t want is Uh, well, this… This techie crowd! So different from what we used to do in the 80s! I got a bigger kick out of selling them a cocktail than I do from them… Like, these kids come in and like, can I have, uh… Some obscure cocktail?”

    The complaint seems to be that 21-year-olds are idiots.

  22. 22.

    Brendan in Charlotte

    To be fair – the end of their week was brought on by their own hubris. Their soccer downfall was due to horrible officiating.

  24. 24.

    Bill Murray

    @efgoldman: 2012 Olympics Women’s Soccer Final, that might count, although the fraud money probably wasn’t in real estate

  25. 25.

    Corner Stone

    These “shark scientists” are just assholes. Stop high fiving when you stick a Mako with a multi pound camera rig.

  26. 26.

    Amir Khalid

    @Joel:
    It used to be a Ramadhan tradition in Malaysia: not a week would go by without some fool kid losing fingers from playing with fireworks, and thus spoiling his Eid al-Fitri somewhat.

  27. 27.

    Cacti

    We’ve beaten the Germans twice at their favorite national sport…

    And also at the FIFA Women’s World Cup.

  29. 29.

    Corner Stone

    @Major Major Major Major:

    How did I end up in a non-punk straight bar.

    I’m pretty sure Omnes will have more than a few words for you when he stops his turn at the upside down spinal adjustment table he utilizes a few times a week.

  30. 30.

    opiejeanne

    @Major Major Major Major: Or they want a cocktail that the goober behind the bar hasn’t learned yet, but maybe is an old standard Like a gin fizz? I ordered one a few years ago and a friend who was with us had to coach him through it.

    Someone else ordered another drink, popular about 40 years ago, not too obscure, like a sidecar (I think that was the name) and he got out a book to look it up.

  31. 31.

    divF

    @Major Major Major Major:

    How did I end up in a non-punk straight bar. Poor decision.

    Are you still there and live-blogging your annoyance ?

    Now that you’ve brought it up, how did you end up there ? It’s not as if there aren’t other choices out your way.

  33. 33.

    PurpleGirl

    @Major Major Major Major: Rockaway Beach and the Rockaways are part of the borough of Queens. But you have to go through Brooklyn to get there by train. And Queens IS a part of New York City. Again, idiots.

    Don’t know what this topic refers to to, but Rockaway Beach is part of NYC by way of Queens county.

  34. 34.

    Redshift

    Hey, Elizabelle!

    I’m not going to do a long review. But a few comments. I wasn’t too sure about spending many hours at RFK, especially since I was going by myself, but I had a great time. I would disagree about Heart, though (they were the entry in the lineup that sold me on the show.) I thought they were great. And at least where I was, almost everyone other than the Foo Fighters got an enthusiastic reaction from some people and polite interest or indifference from others.

    I enjoyed everything, and it was great to see acts that I know I really should see while they’re still around, but somehow never manage to.

    And to top it off, an epic Foo Fighters show! They played for something like two and a half hours, and it was very personal, with Dave Grohl telling tales for the hometown crowd.

  35. 35.

    NotMax

    @opiejanne

    Sidecar.

    Mmmmmmmmm.

    Brandy, Cointreau, lemon. What’s not to like?

    Presume what you ordered was a sloe gin fizz? Sloe gin and gin are practically different species.

  37. 37.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Elizabelle: Thanks for the concert report. Cherry Bomb was a song from the Runaways, Joan Jett’s band before the Blackhearts(late 70’s, early 80’s). One of her bandmates in the Runaways, I’m too lazy to look up her name, had early admission to UCLA(ya got to be wicked smart to do that, even then). She deferred her admission until the band broke up and did quite well in Westwood, well enough to get admitted to Harvard Law School. When she was a 1L one of her study partners was a thin black guy with big ears and funny name. Wonder what happened to him?

  42. 42.

    Bill Murray

    One of her bandmates in the Runaways, I’m too lazy to look up her name, had early admission to UCLA

    Cherie Curry, I think

  43. 43.

    PurpleGirl

    @NotMax: Thank you; learn something here at BJ all the time. (And I’ve been a Queens resident since I came home from a Manhattan hospital.)

  44. 44.

    mdblanche

    @divF: Joseph Goebbels. Admittedly that’s more of a lifetime career assessment. And between World War I, the Weimar Republic, and the first years of the Great Depression, unless this turns into another economic crash I doubt Merkel can even make the bottom ten.

  46. 46.

    srv

    Ted Cruz goes Reaganesque:

    “I salute Donald Trump for focusing on the need to address illegal immigration,” the Texas senator said on NBC’s Meet the Press in an interview that aired Sunday. “The Washington cartel doesn’t want to address that. The Washington cartel doesn’t believe we need to secure the borders. The Washington cartel supports amnesty and I think amnesty’s wrong, and I salute Donald Trump for focusing on it. He has a colorful way of speaking. It’s not the way I speak, but I’m not going to engage in the media’s game of throwing rocks and attacking other Republicans. I’m just not going to do it.”

  47. 47.

    mai naem mobile

    I’ve been watching Michelle Caruso.Cabrera AKA Maria Bartiromo Jr on CNBC on the Greek crisis. Early last week she was talking to a working 58 yr old man and he was all for retiring early and MCC blames the crisis on overeegulation.and young retirees etc. Ofcourse MCC and her NY anchor pals were just aghast that regular working people can retire in their 50s and they all just do their tut tutting about that and ofcourse they warn that Americans should work till 70. Ofcourse OMG rich people can’t pay more than 40% taxes( never mind that the effective rate is closer to 22%.) Later on the week they had MCC on again on how this was awful and how she saw all these elderly pensioners waiting at the ATMs and the video clip shows all.these old people. I’m just wondering what happened to all the ‘young’ retirees. Why weren’t they standing at the ATMs? None of the.anchors asked her that.

  50. 50.

    opiejeanne

    @NotMax: yes. Forgot to tell you it was a sloe gin fizz. Duh. Part of the problem was that I think he heard “slow”.

  52. 52.

    mdblanche

    @srv: If Ted Cruz doesn’t like this country’s immigration policy, then he should go back where he came from.

  54. 54.

    Kropadope

    @srv:

    It’s not the way I speak, but I’m not going to engage in the media’s game of throwing rocks and attacking other Republicans

    Perhaps unintentional, but this could be the first acknowledgement by a (supposedly) mainstream public official that the media is Republican.

  57. 57.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @MobiusKlein:But only one is referenced by the Ramones and, if Queens is mentioned in the conversation, it is the one in New York.

  58. 58.

    different-church-lady

    I had Sepp Blatter once. But the doctor gave me penicillin and I got better.

  60. 60.

    grrljock

    We watched the USA v Japan match at BC Place. Unbelievably awesome experience. The crowd was the most well behaved crowd I’ve ever been in. One of the best parts? The resounding boo the crowd gave to the FIFA reps!

  62. 62.

    JustRuss

    @Kropadope:

    Perhaps unintentional, but this could be the first acknowledgement by a (supposedly) mainstream public official that the media is Republican.

    I don’t think so. I think Trump is complaining that the evil liberal media is tricking those poor Republicans into attacking each other. To which I would reply, if you’re stupid enough to get suckered by the ChuckTodds, you really shouldn’t be running for anything.

  64. 64.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Librarian:

    I’m not even sure that Goebbels was officially chancellor.

    I think that you are correct. It was an elected office. When did such an election take place?

  66. 66.

    mdblanche

    @different-church-lady: I didn’t know Loretta Lynch is also a doctor.

    @Omnes Omnibus: Hitler named Goebbels as his successor before killing himself. Goebbels killed himself the next day. Chancellor only became an elected office at the start of the Weimar Republic and stopped being one until after the war once President Hindenburg started using his emergency powers.

  67. 67.

    Librarian

    @different-church-lady: Yikes, I didn’t know that, thanks for that. Prince Max is still pretty high on the list of bad chancellors, along with von Schleicher, who handed the office to Hitler, and some of the Weimar chancellors, several of whom really sucked.

  69. 69.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym

    @Librarian: Hell, no. Max of Baden was actually a good chancellor for all 37 days he had the office; made sure that Ludendorff didn’t backslide and decide to continue the war. He didn’t really favor liberalisation, but he did bring the majority parties into the government. No, Max is one of the best pre-1945 chancellors Germany had.

    Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, on the other hand, was a complete disaster. He’s the second worst by almost as large a margin ahead of #3 as he is behind #1.

  70. 70.

    mdblanche

    @Librarian: You can debate whether von Schleicher or von Papen did more to help Hitler into office. They both had very dirty hands. And their predecessor Bruning also deserves blame for being the first to encourage Hindenburg to start governing by decree. He was an austerian who hated democracy, so he probably marks the lowest level Merkel risks sinking to.

  72. 72.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym

    @mdblanche: I have a hard time making any of the last three pre-Nazi chancellors individually anywhere close to as bad as von Bethmann-Hollweg. Brüning was in an ugly position that I don’t think was navigable by anyone. That doesn’t excuse him; he was definitely bad, but I he isn’t responsible for everything that followed.

    Von Papen was a fundamentally weak man who was mostly used as a tool by those around him. Again, that doesn’t excuse him, but it makes it difficult to see him as the worst of chancellors. Saying that he is gives the man more credit than he deserves.

    Von Schleicher is certainly a villainous presence in German history, but he did the vast majority of his damage before his brief stint as chancellor.

    Von Bethmann-Hollweg, though, has it all. He alienated pretty much everyone in the Reichstag. His duplicity after the assassination of Franz Ferdinand ensured that there was no peaceful resolution to the crisis. He pushed a Polish policy that was basically proto-Lebensraum. Since he had made sure that he had no political allies in the parties, he was easily marginalized by the OHL.

  73. 73.

    redshirt

    I was shocked to learn that the name Prussia has no relation to the name Russia.

    You’d think they’d be related, being so close in spelling and in geography/history, but nope.

  75. 75.

    Tommy

    The world is fucked up. I went to my local bar late tonight. Two 22 year olds were being hit on by men old enough to be their dads and I might have stepped in. Their mom was with them and almost seemed to be pushing it. Total drunk. Just injection myself. That stopped.

    As the night ended there were five people in the bar other than me. one the bartender. Two of them drinking drinks I bought them hours ago.

    The bartender poured put shot after shot and never offers me one. I have not ordered a drink where I didn’t tip at least $1.50 if not more.

    I got a little aggressive and said, “hey WTF. Is this how you do business. I am not ordering cheap drinks. I tip well. I am standing here and you treat me like this.”

    She said they were test cases

    I then said you are an idiot and you miss my point. No more business for you.

    So that is how my late night went ……….

  77. 77.

    redshirt

    Also, the history of Germany is fairly strange and interesting. Did you know parts of Germany were actually parts of England back in the day?

  78. 78.

    Tommy

    @redshirt: Nope. 2.5 blocks walk home. I got a DUI a few years ago. Not something I will ever, ever do again. Worse thing I might have ever done before.

  80. 80.

    SRW1

    @divF:

    Heinrich Aloysius Maria Elisabeth Brüning, chancellor from 1930 – 1932; also known as Austeritus I.

  81. 81.

    divF

    @SRW1:

    Heinrich Aloysius Maria Elisabeth Brüning

    Looked him up on Wikipedia. Typical Austerian of the period, plus politically inept.

  82. 82.

    Brendan in Charlotte

    @Corner Stone: #1 – no DOGSO red card for Johnston vs. US; #2 Correct call vs. England, just should not have been called in a 0-0 game during extended extra time.

  86. 86.

    SFAW

    @redshirt:

    “What a long, strange trip it’s been” was the working title of Jerry Garcia’s doctoral thesis on German history.

    “Rot und weiss, blaue Schuhe von Wildleder
    Ich bin Onkel Fritz, wie geht’s Ihnen    ?”

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