Libertarian Follies: Bill Weld Names Angela Merkel His Favorite Foreign Leader; Gary Johnson has a HIGH TIMES Flashback

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Chris Matthews, Gary Johnson and Bill Weld

The 2016 Libertarian Party ticket of Gary Johnson and Bill Weld is a joke.

The Party has been hijacked by two B-list political self promoters - one, a quasi-socialist pothead with a permanently fried memory; the other, an Obama-supporting professional dilettante.

And neither is any more libertarian than, say, Mark Ruffalo.

Yesterday, during a televised town meeting, they were both interviewed by MSNBC's Chris Matthews. Johnson had another self-proclaimed "Aleppo moment" when he couldn't name a foreign leader that he most admired. (It was pretty clear that he couldn't name a single foreign leader, period.) Finally, he blurted out, "the former president of Mexico," but when Mathews asked him "which one?" he merely replied with a pathetic hang-dog look.

Weld tried to help him by saying "Fox" (for Vincente Fox, Mexican president from 2001 to 2006) and Johnson enthusiastically nodded his head.

"Yeah, Vincente Fox. He was terrific."

Then right at the end of the clip, Weld offered his own choice - "Meaurkle," he said, pronouncing the German Prime Minister's name with a dilettantish accent.

As if mass sexual assault were particularly libertarian. Though, perhaps for Johnson and Weld, it's right up there with gun control and forcing Christians to bake cakes.

But I couldn't figure out Johnson's choice of Vincente Fox. As the center-right President of Mexico for six years, Fox didn't do a lot more than make gaffes and preserve the corruption and gang killing status quo. Could Johnson have named Fox because of his recent tiff with Donald Trump? Or perhaps Johnson simply remembered him from his time as governor of a border state.

Then I came across this on Wikipedia:

Vicente Fox gave a video interview in July 2013 to High Times, in which he discussed the failure of drug prohibition, and cited Portugal's decriminalization policies as "working splendid(ly)". He said he supports drug legalization despite not being a user himself...

Bingo.

Innocent Fun in Merkel's Police State: Children Invited to Try Out Toy Water Cannon Truck (VIDEO)

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Hey kids! If you join the Bereitschaftspolizei, you can spray water at people! It will be just like a picnic game!

It was the Bereitschaftspolizei or rapid-reaction police that used water cannon to suppress an opposition PEGIDA march a few months ago in Cologne (see second video).

Comparisons are increasingly being made to the Volkspolizei, the East German paramilitary force responsible for enforcing public order. Volkspolizei units helped build the Berlin Wall, among other things.

In the video, children, including toddlers, line up to take target practice at a plastic cup.

The warning written on the side of the pretty toy vehicle, means "Please keep your distance."

Text of Anti-Erdogan Poem BANNED in Germany

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Jan Böhmermann

I don't want to spend time explaining the whole Böhmermann affair. But, as many of you know, German comedian Jan Böhmermann got into legal trouble by reading on television an expletive laced satirical poem about Turkish President Recep Erdoğan. Many believe Angela Merkel authorized the pending possible prosecution of Boehmermann as a sort of additional payment to Erdoğan for pretending to regulate the entrance of thousands of Muslim soldiers into Europe or whatever--a payment in addition to the billions of Euros he's already receiving.

Today, a German court in Hamburg banned the public recitation of the poem. Or rather, it declared that only six lines of the twenty-four line poem could be recited. 

I'm going to reproduce the poem below. But if it's okay, I'm going to take out the really dirty  words and in the style of Lenny Bruce, replace them with "blah" or some variation thereof. Purists can find the actual text here. And you can see the television clip where the poem was recited here.

Vituperative Criticism (Smear Poem)

Dumb as a bag, cowardly and uptight

that’s what Erdoğan the President is.
His blahs reek awfully of döner kebab,
even a pig blah smells nicer.
He’s the man who beats up girls
while he’s wearing rubber masks.
Most of all he likes blahing goats
and oppressing minorities,
kicking Kurds, whacking Christians
while watching child porn.
And even in the evenings, instead of sleep,
it’s all about blah with a hundred sheep.
Yes, Erdoğan is totally
a President with a small blah.
Every Turk is heard to warble,
that stupid blah has got wrinkled blahs.
From Ankara to Istanbul
everyone knows, that man is gay,
perverted, lice-ridden and a zoophile,
Recep Fritzl Přiklopil.
His head as empty as his blah,
the star at every gangbang party
until his blah burns while blahing.
That’s Recep Erdoğan, the Turkish President.

I assume the permissible abridged version reads as follows: 

that’s what Erdoğan the President is.

And even in the evenings, instead of sleep,
Yes, Erdoğan is totally
Every Turk is heard to warble,
From Ankara to Istanbul
That’s Recep Erdoğan, the Turkish President.

The really silly part about the whole affair is that while the poem is certainly disgusting and offensive, the most disgusting and offensive parts are obviously false. Only a portion of one sentence--"oppressing minorities, kicking Kurds, whacking Christians"--could possibly have any connection to reality, and even the effect of that is largely muted by the "while watching child porn" at the end.

So part of the point was not to offend Erdoğan per se, but to do something for the sake of doing it merely because one wasn't supposed to. That is a standard part of the comedian's repertoire. In this case at least, the audience seemed to think it was funny.

Böhmermann would later confirm that he might also have had a political motive--to test the limits of freedom of expression in Europe amidst (as I would put it) the current climate of fear, intimidation and censorship inspired by a rising Islam.

The results of the test are in. Not only can you not criticize Muslim despots, you cannot even joke about not criticizing Muslim despots.

Wikipedia reports the comedian's reaction even before yesterday's ruling: 

In an interview with Die Zeit on 3 May, Böhmermann sharply criticized Angela Merkel. "The chancellor must not waver when it comes to freedom and human rights", he said. "But instead she filleted me, served me a neurotic despot for tea and made me become a German Ai Weiwei. (the Chinese dissident) " His "belief" was shaken, "that every person in Germany has a non-negotiable, inalienable right to exercise certain basic rights: the freedom of art and the freedom of expression." Merkel did "obviously not think for a moment" about the poem, which he said was only an illustration of an insult: "It was much too dumb for me to insult Erdogan. I think, anyone can see this from the stupid smear poem."

Four weeks ago, Böhmermann was put under police protection and he temporarily suspended all of his radio and television activities. I am unclear as to whether they have resumed.

Angela Merkel is Utterly Deranged or a Liar or Both

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"I'm not sorry I was wrong. I'm sorry I was caught."

Yesterday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said this about the perhaps 1.5 million Muslim "migrants" admitted into Germany in 2015 (equivalent to close to 2% of the existing population of Germany and perhaps 10-20% of the population of twenty-something German males):

We need ... to say to people that this is a temporary residential status and we expect that, once there is peace in Syria again, once IS has been defeated in Iraq, that you go back to your home country with the knowledge that you have gained.

So that's what it was all about? Temporary shelter from ISIS? As far as I know this is the first time she has ever said this. As I understood it before, it was all about assimilation and so forth. But they're actually going back soon?

Are the Muslim North Africans and Afghanis going back to their own countries once ISIS is defeated in Syria?

With the knowledge that you have gained?

Does the knowledge that you have gained include how to lynch Christians in refugee camps without getting caught? How to sexually abuse women and boys in those camps? How to molest women at train stations? How to rape 72-year-old women?

Maybe those Muslims should have been studying the moral example set by 20th century German politicians.

Okay, maybe not.

Or perhaps the knowledge that you have gained pertains to studying at close range the death throes of decadent, suicidal, post-Christian cultures.

In that case I think they've probably learned something.    

Merkel is desperately trying to defend a horrific set of decisions that has and will cost countless thousands of lives--German lives and non-German Muslim lives. She thinks she can cling to power with this? I don't know. I think getting Mark Zuckerberg to collaborate with the current German police state is probably a better bet.

She must know what she has done. An honorable woman or politician would say: "I have done wrong. I apologize. This is how I propose to redress the harm that I have caused ." Or better, "I resign."

But not Angela Merkel.

I should say that it is the current governing class of Germany (CDU and SPD) who have behaved like pre-1989 Communists (see below). For them to accuse their opposition of this (who they harass and threaten at every opportunity) is grotesque.  

From Reuters:

NEUBRANDENBURG, Germany (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel tried on Saturday to placate the increasingly vocal critics of her open-door policy for refugees by insisting that most refugees from Syria and Iraq would go home once the conflicts there had ended. 

Despite appearing increasingly isolated, Merkel has resisted pressure from some conservatives to cap the influx of refugees, or to close Germany's borders. 

Support for her conservative bloc has slipped as concerns mount about how Germany will integrate the 1.1 million migrants who arrived last year, while crime and security are also in the spotlight after a wave of assaults on women in Cologne at New Year by men of north African and Arab appearance. 

The influx has played into the hands of the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD), whose support is now in the double digits, and whose leader was quoted on Saturday saying that migrants entering illegally should, if necessary, be shot.
Merkel said it was important to stress that most refugees had only been allowed to stay for a limited period. 

"We need ... to say to people that this is a temporary residential status and we expect that, once there is peace in Syria again, once IS has been defeated in Iraq, that you go back to your home country with the knowledge that you have gained," she told a regional meeting of her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. 

Merkel said 70 percent of the refugees who fled to Germany from former Yugoslavia in the 1990s had returned. 

Horst Seehofer, leader of the Christian Social Union (CSU), the CDU's Bavarian sister party, has threatened to take the government to court if the flow of asylum seekers is not cut. 

Merkel urged other European countries to offer more help "because the numbers need to be reduced even further and must not start to rise again, especially in spring". 

A MILLION MORE 

Fabrice Leggeri, the head of the European Union's border agency Frontex, said a U.N. estimate that up to a million migrants could try to come to Europe via the eastern Mediterranean and Western Balkans next year was realistic. 

"It would be a big achievement if we could keep the number ... stable," he told the magazine Der Spiegel. 

Merkel said all EU states should have an interest in protecting the bloc's external borders, and all would suffer if the internal passport-free Schengen zone collapsed and national borders were closed. 

AfD leader Frauke Petry told the Mannheimer Morgen newspaper that Germany needed to reduce the influx through agreements with neighboring Austria and a reinforcement of the EU's external borders. 

But she also said it should not be shy about turning people back and creating "border protection installations" - and that border guards should, if necessary, shoot at migrants trying to enter illegally. 

No police officer wanted to shoot at a migrant, Petry said, adding "I don't want that either but, ultimately, deterrence includes the use of armed force". 

Such comments evoke memories of Germany's Cold War division, when guards in the communist East, led by Erich Honecker, were under orders to shoot people attempting to cross the heavily fortified border into the West. 

"The last German politician who let refugees be shot at was Erich Honecker," said Thomas Oppermann, a senior member of the Social Democrats.