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.

Representative Steve King Proves that Immigrants Have Won the Debate

Rep Steve King using visual aids to show illegal
immigrant calf size. Credit.

I am seriously considering raising money to send Iowa Representative Steve King on a speaking tour of the Southwest and Florida. I figure if I can raise $50,000 from pro-immigration Democrats, or even a few sane Republicans, if such things exists, I could entice him into an all-expenses-paid tour of the major swing states with large, rapidly growing, and young Latino populations.

I would also set up a voting registration booth at every event, and encourage the people who just heard representative King speak to register to vote, especially in mid-term elections when we progressives seem to be too busy or lazy to get off our asses and vote.

My only rule for Representative King would be that he absolutely must keep saying shit like this:

There are kids that were brought into this country by their parents unknowing that they were breaking the law. And [immigration reform supporters] will say to me and others that we have to do something about the 11 million, and some of them were valedictorians. [...] It's true in some cases, but they aren't all valedictorians, they weren't all brought in by their parents. For every one that's a valedictorian, there's another 100 out there that they weigh 130 pounds and they've got calves the size of cantaloupes because they're hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert.

Jed Lewison wonders about the cantaloupe image, but I figure it's because he's afraid some large-legged immigrant would kick him in the balls, given the chance.

Since this is Steve King who keeps talking, we know that 99% of what he says is pure crap, and the other 1% he gets right is just dumb luck. For example, it seems like the math just doesn't add up. If 100 out of every 101 undocumented immigrants had a big load of weed on his or her back, we'd see that most drug arrests at the border were of immigrants with dope on their back. The truth, of course, is something Steve King can't be bothered with: 80% of all drug arrests at the border involve a US citizen.

The center looked at an extensive set of records -- 81,261 drug seizures between 2005 and 2011 -- but the numbers don't tell the whole story. In about half of those cases, Border Patrol agents didn't catch anyone and the drugs were abandoned, according to the report, so we don't know the identity of those smugglers. But arrests were made in more than 40,000 drug seizures over that time period, and a U.S. citizen was involved 80 percent of the time.

But the best part about this is that even though he's drawn rebukes from damn near everyone, including Speaker Boehner, he's sticking up for himself. In order to stick up for himself, of course, he has to keep talking, and now he has demonstrated why I love it when wingnuts keep talking (link to Taegan Goddard, because I refuse to link to Breitbart's Ghost):

You know when people attack you--in this business, when you're in this business, you know that when people attack you, and they call you names, they're diverting from the topic matter. You know they've lost the debate when they do that. We've talked about it for years. Tom Tancredo and I joked about it that that's the pattern. When people start calling you names, that's what confirms you've won the debate.

Catch that? Yep, I tweeted at him to ask him if, since he's calling over 99% of undocumented immigrants drug mules, that means they've won the debate? No answer yet.

Same Old Rusty Dog Whistles Dripping with Centuries Old Spit

GOP Rep Lou Barletta, via That's My Congress

Just days after GOP Rep. Don Young of the great white north kicked off the latest incarnation of Operation Wetback, Rep Lou Barletta, a GOP congressman from the Pennsylvania section of Upper Appalachia, might have accidentally stumbled into saying something stupid about immigration:

“Let’s not take on any more water on this sinking ship,” he said. “Let’s patch the holes. Then we’ll decide what do we do with all this water that’s here.”

I don't have any evidence that he accidentally said this, though. He might be getting his soggy talking points from the Great GOP Fax of the Universe, in which case this is the same old dog whistle they've been blowing for decades. It's the same dog whistle that got the first marijuana laws passed. It's the same dog whistle Eisenhower used to round 'em up and send 'em home. The odds may be good that this wingnut (with a distinctly immigrant sounding name) might have some kind of history of being anti-immigrant. Who knows? Probably best not to mention it.

Maybe the New York Times doesn't have access to Google. That would explain why the reporter of this latest story on the GOP's obsession with dampness couldn't find basic facts like Rep. Barletta's lack of basic facts.

When the law passed, Barletta told the Washington Post, "I will get rid of the illegal people. It's this simple: They must leave." On the day the city passed the measure, Barletta wore a bulletproof vest to illustrate his concern over crimes he said were being committed by undocumented immigrants. Statistics, however, showed that undocumented immigrants were hardly responsible for a crime wave in Hazelton: the city's data showed that of 8,575 felonies committed in the city between 2000 and 2007, 20 had been linked to undocumented immigrants. Later, forced to admit that he had no proof of an illegal immigrant-caused crime wave, or proof that illegal immigrants were crowding Hazleton's schools and hospitals, or even any idea how many illegal immigrants were in Hazelton, Barletta responded, "The people in my city don't need numbers."

Apparently the people in his congressional district don't need numbers, either, since they decided to send this Bullshitting Wingnut to congress. Or, maybe he's just a nice guy with something important to add to the conversation on immigration and race. I can't really decide which, so I guess I should be nice, and just say it's "a gaffe." Too bad some New York Times reporter doesn't go keep him talking; we might find out what he really thinks.

Don "Bridge to Nowhere" Young Ruminates on Other Ways to Cross a River

Leila Kheiry of Ketchikan Community Radio (KRBD) interviewed Don "Bridge to Nowhere" Young and she did a pretty good job of keeping him talking.

Young said that if the United States were forming today, no individual state would agree to be part of the government; they all would prefer independence.

Well, he's off to a good start, but I would suggest that the states that take more from the federal government than they put in, like Alaska, would probably want in because, you know, free money for parasites! For Don Young, states that suck from the Federal Teat don't count, but you individual 47%-ers need to get some skin in the game!

“I really think that everybody should consider my 10 percent solution,” he said. 

“Everybody put 10 percent of their salaries, including those on government welfare, so everyone has something in the game – a little skin in the game – including all the agencies and the whole bit; you’d balance the budget.” 

Young admits that his 10-percent idea is unlikely to find support in Congress. But, he said former presidential candidate Mitt Romney was correct when he said that 47 percent of Americans don’t contribute, and that is a large part of the current problem. 

Image via The Economist

So, the 47% of Americans, many of whom (because Ronald Reagan wanted to encourage them to work instead of being on welfare) get to use the Earned Income Tax Credit, are a "large part of the current problem" but Alaska and the other states that take more than they pay in aren't?

OK, then.

Young keeps talking, because that's what wingnuts do, and displays his ignorance of basic economics by calling for more industry, and less reliance on imports, to bring jobs back to this country. Before he got into politics (a long time ago) Young worked in construction, fishing, trapping, gold mining, tug boating and teaching fifth grade. He apparently never took economics (or didn't pay attention when he did), or he'd know that his support for a high dollar policy is the exact opposite of what you'd want to do to lower our trade deficit and create manufacturing jobs in the US. But then, consistency isn't really a wingnut trait. Bullshitting is.

Operation Wetback, image via Immigration of the 1950s.

Young is, however, capable of noting the effects of productivity on labor intensive industries like agriculture.

Young also believes that Americans need to bring industry back to this country rather than relying on imports. Doing so would increase jobs, although he understands that automation has reduced the number of labor positions available.

“My father had a ranch; we used to have 50-60 wetbacks to pick tomatoes,” he said. “It takes two people to pick the same tomatoes now. It’s all done by machine.”

I'm guessing the GOP is going to keep Don Young away from their new Latino outreach efforts. Of course, he kept talking today in an attempt to limit the damage from his racist slur.

"I used a term that was commonly used during my days growing up on a farm in Central California," the Republican congressman said in a statement issued to a local television station in Anchorage. "I know that this term is not used in the same way nowadays and I meant no disrespect."

Young was born in 1933 and raised in Sutter County, California. He got an associate's degree in education from Yuba College in 1952, served in the army from 55-57, got a bachelor's degree from Chico State College in 1958 and moved to Alaska in 1959. According to the CNN story:

The word was used by the U.S. government in the 1950s for "Operation Wetback," a massive crackdown on illegal immigration along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Operation Wetback, image via US Slave.

Merriam Webster, Wikipedia, and even the Urban Dictionary all agree that the word is, and always has been, a racial slur. If the congressman has proof of the word being used in a way that's not a slur, he's not offering that proof with his non-apology apology. Use of the word is disrespectful  and there is no other way to use it. But then, we already knew that Young is a bullshitter.

He keeps talking in the KRBD interview, about taking advantage of the shipping routes through the arctic he helped create by distorting free markets in favor of his oil company executive friends, and the ethics investigations into his possible past crimes, which he defends by claiming there's a statute of limitations.

But once you swim across Talking Wingnut River, there's really no turning back.

If the Antebellum Shoe Fits

Jeb's the serious one.

"All too often we're associated with being anti-everything: anti-immigration, anti-women, anti-gay."-- Jeb Bush

So, right off the bat we know Jeb Bush is a bullshitter, and no, not because he's a Bush. Because we all know that there are plenty of things Republicans are for: war, the drug war, guns, calling globs of cells people, forcing people to live as vegetables, dying in pain, living in pain, and executions, to name just a few. But Bush's point is well taken by a core of GOP moderates who might be willing to compromise on such issues in order to move America slightly further to the right.

So, yeah, Jeb, you're often associated with being anti-a-lot-of-things, but we all know about those fun things you're for, and the majority of Americans are sick of them. And while many Republicans are starting to leave the reservation/plantation/re-education center on issues like gay marriage (now I know why I lost money on Portman as Willard's VP pick), the core of the party--the people who show up and vote in Republican primaries--are just fine with being for a bunch of sick shit most Americans hate, and against things most Americans like.

Poll after poll shows that in blind taste tests, when Americans are shown the issues separated from their political baggage, they're liberals. On wealth equality, for example, Americans would much prefer a much more equitable distribution. On taxes, Americans agree with the Congressional Progressive Caucus. On abortion, Americans are pro-choice. On marijuana, Americans are for medicinal and more and more for outright legalization. Even a large chunk of the right says they're sick of war (whether I believe their bullshit is another question). And gay marriage is quickly becoming all the rage. Seems hippie punching is finally losing it's appeal. Maybe the southern strategy will be next to go?

Jed's bullshit aside, the GOP seems to be anti-a-lot-of-things Americans like, and they seem to be for a bunch of things Americans can't stand. Gerrymandering and bullshitting still manage to get a lot of Republicans elected, but they can only get them so far when they've painted themselves into congressional districts that resemble Mississippi circa 1963, or when you're national candidates have to shake an etch-a-sketch to try to make people forget all the wingnuttery you espoused to get through the frat boy hazing line/road kill cook-off known as the GOP primaries.