Meet Angela Merkel, Dale Carnegie graduate

Eleni Chrepa, Bloomberg:

Greek President Karolos Papoulias slammed Germany’s finance minister for recent comments about his country as stalled bailout talks stoked tensions between Greece and the northern European countries funding its rescue.

“I don’t accept insults to my country by Mr. Schaeuble,” Papoulias, who fought in the resistance against the Nazis during World War II, said in a speech today. “I don’t accept it as a Greek. Who is Mr. Schaeuble to ridicule Greece? Who are the Dutch? Who are the Finns? We always had the pride to defend not just our own freedom, not just our own country, but the freedom of all of Europe.”

Papoulias’s comments came as Wolfgang Schaeuble and other European officials pushed Greece to gouge more cuts out of its budget to qualify for a new bailout that would stave off an economic collapse. Schaeuble today blamed Greece’s New Democracy party, the second largest, for holding up agreement on a new rescue package and his deputy, Steffen Kampeter, compared Greece to a “bottomless pit.”

Granted, it’s very slightly unfair to blame Merkel for the comments by her Finance Minister, but its her administration. Aren’t the riots in the streets enough for the Germans to stop throwing gasoline on Greece?

This is why the US has generally been successful at the application of soft power, at least up until Bush 2. At least in the past, it was able to refrain from being an a–hole in public.

Contrary To GOP Bloviating, Keystone XL Won’t Start Construction Until 2015

Just in case you were wondering whether John Boehner’s bill to “force” Obama to build the Keystone XL Right! Now! was serious legislation or political theater, now you know — it’s theater:

The Calgary, Alberta-based company said Tuesday in an earnings release that its executives continue to work with Nebraska to determine the best route that avoids Nebraska’s environmentally sensitive Sandhills region.

Last month, the administration of President Barack Obama denied a permit for the project, but left the door open for TransCanada to apply for a new pipeline route. The company said last month it expected the new application would be processed in an expedited manner so that it could be in service in late 2014.

TransCanada has now moved that back to early 2015.

Hat tip to David Dayen. As Dayen says:

While the report makes it sound like the denial of the permit is responsible for this pushback of the start date, as Johnson explains it’s really the mandate from the state of Nebraska for a new route around the underground aquifer in the Sand Hills region. That requires the deployment of a new route, which has to be mapped out and planned. And that leads to the delay. Incidentally, that mandate in Nebraska was carried out by a Republican governor and a Republican legislature, concerned about the impact of the pipeline on their environmentally sensitive areas.

Your move, Oompa-Loompa Boehner.