US Representative Don Young of Alaska Blames Friends of Suicide Victim for the Suicide

Rep Don Young (R, AK), not a suicide expert.

The last time we heard from Representative Don "We Used to Have 50-60 Wetbacks" Young, he was displaying his ignorance of economics. This time our Wingnut Hero is blaming friends of a suicide victim for the suicide, comparing gay marriage to bull sex, and bossing students around for how they hold their hands while daring to confront the great and powerful Republican congressman.

I shit you not.

But then, witnesses say, Young said suicide shows a lack of support from friends and family. 

That comment stunned students and staff still mourning the loss of a student who died Thursday, staffers say. 

"When I heard 'a lack of support from family' and I heard 'a lack of support from friends,' I felt the oxygen go out of the room, but I gasped as well," Spargo said. "It just isn't true in these situations. It's just such a hurtful thing to say."  

Both Spargo and Swick say a friend of the victim, moved by emotion, shouted at Young, “He had friends. He had support.” 

“The kid said, ‘It’s depression -- you know, a mental illness,' ” Spargo recalled. As she remembers, Young replied, “ ‘Well, what, do you just go to the doctor and get diagnosed with suicide?’ ” 

At some point during the exchange, several school staffers say, the congressman also used either the words "---hole” or “smartass.”

My only regret about this story is that in a room full of high school students, apparently no one used their cell phone to record the event. Maybe they didn't expect the fireworks from a US Congressman.

The real hero of this story is Wasilla junior Zachary Grier, who, had heard that the Congressman had threatened to hurt his opponent, Democrat Forrest Dunbar, because Dunbar had touched Young's arm. Young Zach apparently has a sense for wingnut pressure building up, as he decided to ask a couple of questions that just might keep the congressman angry and talking.

Grier got up and asked Young about Ballot Measure 2 that would legalize recreational marijuana -- “he was completely against it” -- and followed up with questions about the Kodiak debate. Young twice told him to get his hands out of his pockets. Grier complied politely, several witnesses said. 

He got in one more question, this one about same-sex marriage.
“I asked why is it so bad in your eyes?” Grier said. 

As Spargo described it, Young answered, “You can’t have marriage with two men. What do you get with two bulls?” 

Witnesses say Young then said something about a lot of "bullshazzle" or some word resembling the more familiar obscenity.

Colorful language for a high school, but more telling is the tendency of these older scumbags to jump right to the animal sex when asked about homosexuals. Kind of makes one wonder what happened to the congressman during his formative years... Of course, Young didn't care much for a smart ass (and I use the word with respect and admiration) kid, so he ran and tattled to the school principal:

Spargo talked briefly with Young on his way out. He asked her about the student who shouted at him. The principal said he was a friend of the boy who died. “ ‘I’ll take care of it,’ ” she told Young. 

“He told me, ‘That boy needs to learn some respect,’ ” Spargo recalled.

Blame a kid for his friend's suicide, and then say that kid needs to learn respect. This is the GOP political philosophy in a nut shell.

We Don't Even Know What All Diseases They Have

Where the white women at? Via.

“Our schools cannot handle this influx, we don’t even know what all diseases they have. Our health care systems can’t withstand this influx.”-Louie Gohmert

It's Louie Gohmert week (month/year/decade/century) here at Keep Talking, Wingnuts, so I'm just going to have to amplify, again, Gohmert's disgustingly wrong and old "diseased immigrants" meme.

Via LOLGOP, we have more evidence that today's' wingnuts are just recycling old bullshit. Maybe they're lazy. Or maybe they like to stick with what they think are tried and true strategies for fueling xenophobia. Whatever their pitiful excuse is, their current fact-less tirades are so insulting to the kids fleeing violence in countries the US has funded right wing death squads in that I really do hope they keep talking.

Consider:

Dr. Elizabeth Lee Vliet, a Fox News commentator and former director of the ultra-conservative political group Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, writes in the McAllen Monitor that measles is among the “diseases the United States had controlled or virtually eradicated” that are “carried across the border by this tsunami of illegals.”

Fact check: UNICEF reports that 93 percent of kids in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador are vaccinated against measles. That’s better than American kids (92 percent).

Furthermore, it’s absurd to claim that the U.S. has eradicated measles while Central America has not. In fact, measles outbreaks have resurged in some American cities. By contrast, according to the World Health Organization, neither Guatemala nor Honduras has had a reported case of measles since 1990.

From the 1896 Edition of the Rams Horn. 

And from Fox News contributor Marc Siegel (author of "False Alarm: Profiting from the Epidemic of Fear"--I shit you not):

...unaccompanied minors “are a likely source” of the mosquito-borne dengue fever spreading to Texas. Siegel ignores two key public health points: First, legal immigrants and travelers are a much larger group than undocumented folks, and just as likely to carry dengue. (I don’t know about y’all, but I’ve never been screened for dengue fever at the Texas-Mexico border.)  Second, mosquitoes can fly.

America is a lot more brown than it was when Eisenhower authorized Operation Wetback, so picking on brown people (or worse) isn't going to be as effective for getting people to vote for you as it used to be. But I'd have to review of a few of my history books to find a time when the xenophobes in America openly denigrated children. This kind of behavior probably won't stop many Jeb Bush Republicans from voting for a Louie Gohmert when given the chance. The question is, how many Democrats will get off their asses in a mid term and vote against one?

Louie Gohmert Just Won't Shut Up and That's a Very Good Thing

Congressman (!) Louie Gohmert

As I've said before, if I were a rich man I'd send Louie Gohmert, Sarah Palin, Steve Stockman, and Michelle Bachman on a speaking tour of swing states and congressional districts, especially along the US border with Mexico. You can keep up with a lot more of the crazy shit they say by watching #KeepTalkingWingnuts on Twitter. I can't post every crazy thing they say... Too busy trying to start another small business.

Today's bonus round of Keep Talking, Wingnuts is brought to you by Congressman (!) Gohmert (it's so odd that I shudder every time I write congressman before his name). It's one thing when a bunch of xenophobic voters show up to yell at a busload of kids trying to escape the violence in countries right wing US governments have been funding right wing death squads in for years. It's quite another when a US congressman suggests we stop the influx of these children by killing them when they cross the border.

Think I'm kidding?

“That’s why I’m hoping that my governor will utilize Article 1, Section 10, that allows a state that is being invaded — in our case more than twice as many just in recent months, more than twice as many than invaded France on D-Day with a doubling of that coming en route, on their way here now under Article 1, Section 10, the state of Texas would appear to have the right, not only to use whatever means, whether it’s troops, even using ships of war, even exacting a tax on interstate commerce that wouldn't normally be allowed to have or utilize, they’d be entitled in order to pay to stop the invasion.”

Yep. You read it right. Louie Gohmert wants to treat the influx of children (running from violence in countries that Louie Gohmert's wingnut buddies in the White House fucked with for decades by funding right wing death squads) like an invading army. He wants to use "whatever means" to stop this "invasion." Including troops. And since Congressman (!) Gohmert served in the US Army, he most certainly knows what troops do to invading forces. But maybe he didn't see combat while he was in the Judge Advocate General's Corps after Vietnam.

The congressman also said, "We don’t know what diseases they’re bringing in." I doubt any diseases they do have could be any worse than the outbreak of measles near Rep. Gohmert's district in North Texas that's a result of anti-vaccine wingnuts fueled by rhetoric from, you guessed it, Louie Gohmert, who agreed with noted I-lost-an-election-to-Barack-Obama-Republican Alan Keyes that it's a scary thought that liberals are using vaccines to kill off enough of the population so that they could control the rest.

Somebody please get this mental midget a bigger soapbox.

Minnesota House Candidate Wants to Tell Us about the AIDS

Bob Frey, Friend of Michelle Bachman, photo via Queerty

Please tell us more about the science behind AIDS, Bob Frey, candidate for Minnesota House district 47A in Carver County, Minnesota:

But when questioned about his position on social issues, Frey added that it “does certainly need to be addressed for what it is. It’s not about the gay agenda but about the science and the financial impact of that agenda. It’s more about sodomy than about pigeonholing a lifestyle.”   

Pigeonholio!

Frey then explained his view: “When you have egg and sperm that meet in conception, there’s an enzyme in the front that burns through the egg. The enzyme burns through so the DNA can enter the egg. If the sperm is deposited anally, it's the enzyme that causes the immune system to fail. That’s why the term is AIDS – acquired immunodeficiency syndrome.”

 The Minn Post story helpfully lets us know that this view, which Bob shares with his son Mike (scientific consensus!), has no scientific validity. Not that that matters one bit to the wingnuts who'll be voting for him.

These Gish Gallopers always make me think of On Bullshit, by Harry Frankfurt:

"...bullshitters seek to convey a certain impression of themselves without being concerned about whether anything at all is true. They quietly change the rules governing their end of the conversation so that claims about truth and falsity are irrelevant. Frankfurt concludes that although bullshit can take many innocent forms, excessive indulgence in it can eventually undermine the practitioner's capacity to tell the truth in a way that lying does not. Liars at least acknowledge that it matters what is true. By virtue of this, Frankfurt writes, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are."

Update: House district and county corrected. H/t to Ole Olson.

No Coal Mines on Mars

KT state Senator Brandon Smith, The Thinker

Via Hunter, I hear that the Kentucky State  Senate Majority Whip, Sen. Brandon Smith, is so worried about the just over 0.6 percent of total employment in the state that is coal mining jobs that he's taken to the halls of academia for proof of how silly this whole global warming thing is.

“As you (Energy & Environment Cabinet official) sit there in your chair with your data, we sit up here in ours with our data and our constituents and stuff behind us. I don’t want to get into the debate about climate change, but I will simply point out that I think in academia we all agree that the temperature on Mars is exactly as it is here. Nobody will dispute that. Yet there are no coal mines on Mars. There are no factories on Mars that I’m aware of.”

Click on through for the fun scientific stuff, like the vast difference in average temperatures. But for the sake of an academic exercise, if we did find coal deposits on Mars, it would be proof of life on another planet, and it would be a handy way, assuming there's enough of it, for us to terraform Mars. You know, if you believe the physicists in academia who tell us that adding CO2 to a planet's atmosphere makes the planet hotter. Like what happened on Venus. Without any coal mines or factories. That I'm aware of.

I'm Sorry You Misunderstood My Comparison of Obamacare to the Holocaust

TN State Senator Campfield, via ThinkProgress

Via TPM, Tennessean is Tennebelivin:

"Democrats bragging about the number of mandatory sign ups for Obamacare is like Germans bragging about the number of manditory [sic] sign ups for "train rides" for Jews in the 40s."--TN state Sen. Stacey Campfield (R, Of Course)

The fun part is the non-apology apology...

"I regret that some people miss the point of my post."

You regret that "some people" missed the point, but not that you made it?

"It was not to offend."

But it did.

"In no way was my post meant to diminish or detract from the pain, suffering and loss of human life that occurred during this dark time in human history."

But it did.

"At no point in our history have we ever faced a federal government and administration with a lower regard for human life"

Do you have any idea how many native Americans Andrew Jackson killed? Or do you not consider Native Americans "human."

Do you have any idea how many Presidents supported slavery?

"I will continue to stand up against the government takeover of the nations [sic] healthcare."

Good for you. Now apologize for your disgusting statement, because this IS NOT an apology.

Oh, and yes, you can get AIDs from heterosexual sex, Senator.

Campfield defended his outrageous comments, saying he was simply speaking “on the fly,” and that while he’s not an AIDS historian, “I’ve read and seen what other people have read and seen and those facts are out there.”

They're not facts, Senator. But please, keep talking.

Maine Representative Lawrence Lockman is Sorry He's Such a Dick

Via Raw Story

This wingnut's been talking for years. Now he says he's sorry. Sure thing, Bobble Head.

Lockman falsely suggested HIV and AIDS could be spread by bed sheets and mosquitos, and he also said the progressive movement helped spread the virus by claiming “the practice of sodomy is a legitimate alternative lifestyle, rather than a perverted and depraved crime against humanity.”

That's just what he does to warm up. "Blame the Liberals" is Wingnutville's Central Park. This guy was a bit more creative than most of the craizified factor.

“If a woman has (the right to an abortion), why shouldn't a man be free to use his superior strength to force himself on a woman?” Lockman said. “At least the rapist’s pursuit of sexual freedom doesn’t (in most cases) result in anyone’s death.”

Keep talking!

In the past few months, Republicans have called Wendy Davis, a Democratic candidate for Texas governor, “Abortion Barbie,” likened Alison Lundergan Grimes, a Senate candidate from Kentucky, to an “empty dress,” criticized Hillary Rodham Clinton’s thighs, and referred to a pregnant woman as a “host.” 

Democrats do not just get mad when they hear those words. They cash in.

The best part is, they don't need anyone to remind them to open their mouths. They can't even shut up when their best political minds tell them to.

I doubt we've heard the last of Lawrence Lockman...

It's Not Just the Wingnut Politicians Who Should Keep Talking

A recent Pew Research poll spells out what we all know about wingnuts. And as you all know, I love it when they say, out loud, exactly what they believe. In fact, if I were a rich man, I'd pay Louis Gohmert, Steve Stockman, Michelle Bachman, and even some more "mainstream" Republicans to take a swing state soapbox talking tour.

But those are just politicians. Surely, they don't speak for most Republicans. Our Republican neighbors and family members couldn't possibly be the same cruel assholes as those people.

Yeah. They wish.




Shorter Republican voters: Screw the poor and immigrants. Let poison and global warming run free through the environment. Let our infrastructure crumble. What energy problem, we've got fracking! Spend more on the Pentagon.

The poll shows even more problems for the GOP.




The poll also shows us the conclusions people have drawn after listening to the soon-to-be-rump party's spokespeople. The GOP won't compromise, isn't concerned with my needs, is more extreme, is more influenced by lobbyists, is less honest and ethical in governing.

The bit of cognitive dissonance on the last question is precious.

Please, keep talking, wingnuts. We're listening.