German Media Take a Final Opportunity to Profit from Bush - Declare America Ruined

One last Hate-Bush Hurrah at Der Spiegel... 

"The Bush Warriors: End of the Show" - a play on an earlier Der Spiegel cover. Kinda funny, kinda sad, kinda pathetic at this point...

And let's not forget Stern declaring the United States ruined...

"The Ruinator: In just eight years George Bush has governed the most powerful nation in the world to its ruin. A balance sheet."  (The torn American flag is a nice Hate-America touch for the Stern readership...)

Stern logic: OK - you just stated that the United States is ruined in your cover headline. So let us ask then: What is the point of assessing the situation with a so-called "balance sheet" (that is certainly nothing more than a radically biased laundry list of how Bush is the most terrible leader since Hitler) other than to confirm the prejudices of those who want desperately to believe that the USA is finished? 

Our question to readers: If Obama wins - how will the anti-American pundits in the German media react?

• Will they initially let out a (mandatory) cheer or euphoria only to slowly (and perhaps intentionally) seek to find fault in Obama to regain the crucial high ground from which to bash the mega-scapegoat United States?
• Will they turn to other targets within Germany or elsewhere until Obama takes some military action or appears to be acting unilaterally?
• Will they step-up criticism of aspects of American society that they have always criticized apart from the government - such as the death penalty, guns, racism, etc.?
• Will they start to really love Big Brother USA? (Yeah - maybe we are smokin' something?)
• Other? 

Give us your thoughts...

UPDATE: Not a surprise. Our friend Florian Guessgen of Stern chimes in with a highly predictable article (Bush = evil dark lord, Obama = great hope). And let us remind you American friends - you are the ones who refuse to see the world in anything but black and white.

Comments

[clarsonimus]

It's a real feeding frenzy, isn't it? Not like anybody was expecting otherwise. It doesn't help that some of their "best" material comes from us (as in US). This guy was pretty good two weeks ago: http://www.zeit.de/2008/43/Meine-Jahre-mit-Bush
along with two other American articles (one on either side, so-to-speak) explaining how the sky fell, I mean is still falling. But we should enjoy this while we still can. If everything goes to plan, the sky will stop falling on November 4th, right? Then will never ever hear any of this stuff again... Right?

[americanbychoice]

nothing will change. The overall German hatred of the US is almost pathological.After all, aren't the Americans those low life
Europe(o)ns who dared to try to find freedom and a better life by divorcing themselves from their aristocrat masters, who declared independence without that being granted?
Germans would love to see America in ruins in order to pronounce their intellectual superiority. You see a daily onslaught of negativism about our country in their media. Contrast that with their reporting about Russia or China. Their silence is deafening. What a weak group of people the Germans have become. They actually utilize our freedom of speech to their advantage, while they report nothing negative about Russia and China. Of course those nations wouldn't be as quiet as we are. Retaliations may cut them off the energy they are beholden to.
Always have someone else do the dirty work, be it in conflicts or simply buying nuclear energy from France. As long as it isn't done on German soil, it's ok.
I still maintain, Most Americans would die for their country, Germans would whine for theirs.

[Buckeye Abroad]

I saw the Spiegel cover walking through Frankfurt airport tonight. Couldn't help but laugh actually. It makes Spiegel just look desperate.

Not sure Ray-- if McCain wins nothing will change as the Congress is set to be ruled by dems, so they will have an old "war monger" to beat on for 4 years and his "hussy" VP. If the narcissist Marxist wins, then they might celebrate their comrade's "bold" initiatives as he pathes the road to serfdom with "insightful, courageous" intentions. I am sure they will make condenscending remarks of his gaffes along the way, all the while giving him a pat on the head for trying to get it right.

I read Spiegel from time to time (when found on the train or plane), but I find most the articles lacking in substance and mostly seems to be reinforcing an opinion with little fact to accurately come to a conclusion.

[Texas_Blueblood]

I just don't understand how they can continue on with this kind of journalism. Are Stern and Der Spiegel the equivalent of the National Enquirer?? They have to be for pure entertainment value.

"The Ruinator: In just eight years George Bush has governed the most powerful nation in the world to its ruin"

I would like a German to explain this to me. How has George Bush ruined the US?

Before you answer I have some actual figures on the economy..

http://www.data360.org/dataset.aspx?Data_Set_Id=354

When GWB took office adjusted US GDP was

Jan-2000 $9,695,600,000,000

The latest figures show:

Jul-2008 $11,720,000,000,000

Our economy has grown by 20.8% under GWB, approximately 17% more than the rate of inflation. This was the second highest rate of GDP growth in the last 100 years.

So essentially because it has contracted by 0.3% in one quarter the US is finished?? The German rate of economic shrinkage is 300% higher.

Ok, so let's move on to the Iraq War.

The German media claimed that the war was unwinnable. They claimed that the US military would be slowly destroyed and that the entire Middle East would be drawn into WW3.

That didn't happen, we won. We converted our biggest enemy in the region into our biggest ally. In October, out of 1,500,000 active soldiers in the US military, 8 were killed in Iraq. October showed the lowest number of Iraqi casualties as well.

http://icasualties.org

So how is the US ruined?? Is it because globally our positive ratings plummeted during the height of the Iraq war?? It seems they are rising again and will surely go through the roof when military action in Iraq ceases. By the way our global approval ratings were much worse during the Vietnam war.

http://pewglobal.org/

I personally find it a bit odd that our approval ratings are higher in Iraq than in Germany. It's OK to bomb Germany into rubble, they'll eventually love you for it. Just make sure your Secretary of Defense doesn't call Germany "the old Europe" thereby implying that Germany is a has been nation. They as a people are incapable of absorbing a single insult without dispensing millions in return.

Let's move on to the all powerful EU. It was supposed to convert into a super power and stand up to the US. The Irish shot down the Lisbon Treaty, the British hate you for continuously trying to absorb them. The EuroZone is now far smaller in economic terms than the US economy and the combined military forces of the EU member states wouldn't last 3 weeks versus the US. Not quite what you were looking for was it??

So tell me, how is it that the US is finished??