... says Rep. Steve King (R) of Iowa.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/12/steve-king-iowa-congressman-geert-wilders-immigration
QuoteIowa congressman lauds far-right Dutch politician, warning over 'demographics'
Republican Steve King offers praise for anti-immigrant politician Geert Wilders, saying: 'We can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies'
The Republican congressman Steve King applauded the far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders on Sunday, using Twitter to write an apparent rejection of immigrant children in the United States and Europe.
"Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny," the Iowa representative wrote, linking to another tweet in praise of Wilders, who has espoused anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric, and last month called Moroccans "scum". "We can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies," King wrote.
David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, quickly tweeted his approval, writing "God bless Steve King" in all capital letters.
King was first elected to Congress in 2002 and represents a solidly Republican district in north-western Iowa, where both he and Donald Trump received over 60% of the vote in 2016.
The Iowa Republican has aligned himself with the European far right before. He met with the French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen with fellow a Republican congressman, Dana Rohrabacher, last month in Paris. In September, he posted a photo of himself with Wilders and wrote: "Cultural suicide by demographic transformation must end."
In October, King deleted a retweet about Britain's decision to leave the EU and, in December, expressed his condolences about the loss of the far-right Freedom Party in the Austrian presidential election.
King's tweet follows a televised tirade on MSNBC in July asking what nonwhite "subgroups" had contributed to society.
King has long been one of the most vociferously anti-immigration members of the House Republican caucus and is known for his controversial rhetoric on the subject. In 2013, King said that for every valedictorian whose parents were undocumented immigrants, "there's another 100 out there who weigh 130 pounds and they've got calves the size of cantaloupes because they're hauling 75lbs of marijuana across the desert." The Iowa Republican has also compared immigrants to dogs and called illegal immigration a "slow-rolling, slow-motion terrorist attack on the United States."
This week, King urged Trump to "purge" all of Barack Obama's political appointees from government service.
"I will use the word purge," he said. "I've used it over the last few days. I think that needs to happen. I think it's a descriptive word that fits well within the English language, and I know there are people that will attach extra meaning to that. I don't know a better word to use."
Q: In what century was civilization last seen in the area of land now commonly referred to as Iowa?
Quote from: garbon on March 13, 2017, 04:03:02 AM
Q: In what century was civilization last seen in the area of land now commonly referred to as Iowa?
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi1.kym-cdn.com%2Fentries%2Ficons%2Foriginal%2F000%2F005%2F848%2Fancient-aliens.jpg&hash=8d2fc1a8e893548a5d170b09592200dcfd07929e)
I thought he was from Maine.
Quote from: Eddie Teach on March 13, 2017, 04:25:46 AM
I thought he was from Maine.
That's Angus King. Completely different guy. :lol:
Peter King is from New York. He's a different kind of crazy, though.
Quote from: CountDeMoney on March 13, 2017, 05:59:32 AM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on March 13, 2017, 04:25:46 AM
I thought he was from Maine.
That's Angus King. Completely different guy. :lol:
Peter King is from New York. He's a different kind of crazy, though.
Peter King is the one I always mix him up with.
Quote from: CountDeMoney on March 13, 2017, 05:59:32 AM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on March 13, 2017, 04:25:46 AM
I thought he was from Maine.
That's Angus King. Completely different guy. :lol:
Peter King is from New York. He's a different kind of crazy, though.
I was talking about Steve King the author. :sleep:
Quote from: Eddie Teach on March 13, 2017, 07:00:23 AM
I was talking about Steve King the author. :sleep:
I know of a Stephen King who is an author, never read Steve King.
QuoteRep. King: 'I meant exactly what I said' with 'babies' tweet
By Louis Nelson
03/13/17
10:43 AM EDT
Offered a chance to clarify what he meant Sunday when he wrote on Twitter that "we can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies," Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) said Monday morning that "I meant exactly what I said."
"I've been to Europe and I've spoken on this issue and I've said the same thing as far as 10 years ago to the German people and to any population of people that is a declining population that isn't willing to have enough babies to reproduce themselves," King said on CNN's "New Day." "I've said to them, 'You cannot rebuild your civilization with somebody else's babies. You've got to keep your birth rate up and that you need to teach your children your values.'"
The Iowa congressman's original tweet was written in the context of support for Geert Wilders, a far-right candidate to be the prime minister of the Netherlands. King wrote that Wilders "understands that culture and demographics are our destiny."
The post earned the endorsement of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, who wrote "GOD BLESS STEVE KING!!!" on his own Twitter account.
But King's remark also prompted criticism, including some from his GOP colleagues. Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.), the child of Cuban immigrants to the U.S., addressed King directly on Twitter, asking him, "What exactly do you mean? Do I qualify as 'somebody else's baby?' #concernedGOPcolleague."
On CNN, King insisted that his concern was not about race but about culture. He said enclaves of immigrants exist in the U.S. who are in their second and third generations yet have refused to assimilate to American culture. Similar problems, he said, are "far worse in Europe." He called himself "a champion for Western civilization," which he said "is a superior civilization and we want to share it with everybody." :lol:
Protecting and building American culture, King said, is what he meant with his "somebody else's babies" remark on Twitter.
"We're a country here, that if you take a picture of what America looks like, you can do it in a football stadium or a basketball court and you see all kinds of different Americans there. We're pretty proud of that, the different-looking Americans that are still Americans," he said. "And there's an American culture, an American civilization. It's raised within these children in these American homes. And that's one of the reasons why we require that the president of the United States be raised with an American experience."
King told CNN that "there's been far too much focus on race, especially in the last eight years." He accused liberals of "looking for hatred" and being uninterested in unifying the nation's racial divides.
"Actually, if you go down the road a few generations or maybe centuries with the intermarriage, I'd like to see an America that's just so homogenous that we look a lot the same, from that perspective," King said.
Very strange given that what, America has been pretty good at integrating immigrants? Also, I wonder if his 'we look a lot the same' in that last line is that we'd all look white.
Quote from: CountDeMoney on March 14, 2017, 05:14:31 AM
Quote from: Eddie Teach on March 13, 2017, 07:00:23 AM
I was talking about Steve King the author. :sleep:
I know of a Stephen King who is an author, never read Steve King.
You probably wouldn't appreciate asking Trump henchman Stephen Miller to explain what "pompatus" was either.
Quote from: Eddie Teach on March 14, 2017, 05:53:58 AM
You probably wouldn't appreciate asking Trump henchman Stephen Miller to explain what "pompatus" was either.
You fucked up and won't admit it. So Trumpian.
IT'S THE SAME NAME
Yes, I'm sure Mr. King's agent, publishers, estate and legal representation feel the same way, too.
Quote from: garbon on March 14, 2017, 05:33:35 AM
Very strange given that what, America has been pretty good at integrating immigrants? Also, I wonder if his 'we look a lot the same' in that last line is that we'd all look white.
aren't there people still speaking Dutch or German in Pennsylvania? Filthy 'migrants refusing to assimilate :mad:
I'm sure that's what he had in mind.
Quote from: viper37 on March 14, 2017, 08:38:58 AM
Quote from: garbon on March 14, 2017, 05:33:35 AM
Very strange given that what, America has been pretty good at integrating immigrants? Also, I wonder if his 'we look a lot the same' in that last line is that we'd all look white.
aren't there people still speaking Dutch or German in Pennsylvania? Filthy 'migrants refusing to assimilate :mad:
I'm sure that's what he had in mind.
Doesn't matter, especially if they're a white guy named Stephen/Steve.
Saw the talking heads on CNN parsing and analyzing and tut-tutting this guy's comments like it was some carefully reasoned thesis. No one pointed out the simple fact that the guy is just an rambling idiot. We've reached the point where people get voted to Congress who are the mental level of the guys handing out leaflets in the subway or the poor slobs shouting random nonsense in the middle of the street.
I HAVE A CHANCE TO BE ELECTED!
Quote from: viper37 on March 14, 2017, 08:38:58 AM
Quote from: garbon on March 14, 2017, 05:33:35 AM
Very strange given that what, America has been pretty good at integrating immigrants? Also, I wonder if his 'we look a lot the same' in that last line is that we'd all look white.
aren't there people still speaking Dutch or German in Pennsylvania? Filthy 'migrants refusing to assimilate :mad:
I'm sure that's what he had in mind.
About 9.000 Dutch speakers according to wikipedia (160,000 in the US).
Van Buren should have put an end to this English nonsense when he had the chance. :mad:
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on March 14, 2017, 11:23:36 AM
Saw the talking heads on CNN parsing and analyzing and tut-tutting this guy's comments like it was some carefully reasoned thesis. No one pointed out the simple fact that the guy is just an rambling idiot. We've reached the point where people get voted to Congress who are the mental level of the guys handing out leaflets in the subway or the poor slobs shouting random nonsense in the middle of the street.
We've reached the point where we're collectively doing harm to ourselves out of spite. I'd like to think that this is a teenager phase and not a terminal mental illness.
Quote from: DGuller on March 14, 2017, 12:26:47 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on March 14, 2017, 11:23:36 AM
Saw the talking heads on CNN parsing and analyzing and tut-tutting this guy's comments like it was some carefully reasoned thesis. No one pointed out the simple fact that the guy is just an rambling idiot. We've reached the point where people get voted to Congress who are the mental level of the guys handing out leaflets in the subway or the poor slobs shouting random nonsense in the middle of the street.
We've reached the point where we're collectively doing harm to ourselves out of spite. I'd like to think that this is a teenager phase and not a terminal mental illness.
So we won WW2 as tweens? The future looks bright, then.
Though our college years of binge drinking and frat parties will be rough.
question is of course: is the statement wrong?
Demographics certainly seem to matter. And while no one can predict the future it's not that hard to see that when a certain demographic keeps rising its influence will go more profound. And in case of that certain group that's unlikely to be a positive development for us.
Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on March 15, 2017, 02:28:14 PM
question is of course: is the statement wrong?
Demographics certainly seem to matter. And while no one can predict the future it's not that hard to see that when a certain demographic keeps rising its influence will go more profound. And in case of that certain group that's unlikely to be a positive development for us.
Yes.
Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on March 15, 2017, 02:28:14 PM
question is of course: is the statement wrong?
Demographics certainly seem to matter. And while no one can predict the future it's not that hard to see that when a certain demographic keeps rising its influence will go more profound. And in case of that certain group that's unlikely to be a positive development for us.
Latin Americans, East Asians and Indians are far larger groups of immigrants in America than Middle Eastern ones. We'll be fine.
Fertility rates in most ME countries have steeply declined over the past few decades. Total births per woman in ME&NAfrica have gone from about 6.5 in 1980 to around 2.75. Turkey and Iran are below replacement now. Lebanon is way under, Syria probably is now as well.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on March 15, 2017, 05:36:10 PM
Fertility rates in most ME countries have steeply declined over the past few decades. Total births per woman in ME&NAfrica have gone from about 6.5 in 1980 to around 2.75. Turkey and Iran are below replacement now. Lebanon is way under, Syria probably is now as well.
OMG ME genocide!!!111
Also: fuck that white nationalist Iowan rep.
Quote from: Valmy on March 15, 2017, 07:21:37 PM
Also: fuck that white nationalist Iowan rep.
You better get on board, man. It's hip to be racist again, and Stevie King is in the vanguard #HawkeyeStrong
Well, at least we know Yi didn't vote for him.
Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on March 15, 2017, 02:28:14 PM
question is of course: is the statement wrong?
Demographics certainly seem to matter. And while no one can predict the future it's not that hard to see that when a certain demographic keeps rising its influence will go more profound. And in case of that certain group that's unlikely to be a positive development for us.
What would this say if translated from gibberish? Some demographics matter, some don't. Saying "Demographics certainly seem to matter" is like saying "comparisons matter."
I have no idea what "certain demographic" you coyly refrain from mentioning. Bigots? Yes, as bigots "keep rising" they get to become Presidents and presidential advisers and Languish posters. You are correct that that's unlikely to be a positive development for us. We already have one you and don't need more.
We can restore western civilization with a lot of dead brown babies.
Quote from: Ed Anger on March 15, 2017, 07:57:59 PM
We can restore western civilization with a lot of dead brown babies.
Not if my basement is in any way representative. Running out of room, and no restoration yet.
Ed has a sign in his front yard that says "Dead Fetus Storage." Because storing dead fetuses is his fucking business.
One more and I'm an ace.
DONT FLUSH
The fuck is up with that avatar? Christmas for Crackers, starring Bobby Lee?
Quote from: CountDeMoney on March 15, 2017, 08:05:22 PM
The fuck is up with that avatar? Christmas for Crackers, starring Bobby Lee?
:whistle:
Challenge accepted, suh.
:lol:
Mew.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/03/why-steve-king-keeps-winning-214913
QuoteWhy Steve King Keeps Winning
In the controversial congressman's district, bluntness resonates.
While most of the country was freaking out about Steve King's recent comments about America's demographic destiny—"racist old white man," "disgusting human being," "you need to resign" were just a few of the comments on Twitter—Iowans were a bit less surprised. Count the state's governor among them.
"Steve King is Steve King," Terry Branstad, a fellow Republican, said of the U.S. congressman's latest explosive rant.
On Sunday, King, who represents the state's northwest corner, had tweeted in defense of the Dutch anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim politician Geert Wilders: "Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny. We can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies." When observers pointed out that the sentiment mirrored the infamous 14-word credo of white supremacists—"We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children"—King didn't back down. Asked about the tweet on CNN, the congressman declared that he had "meant exactly what I said" and added, "If you go down the road a few generations, or maybe centuries, with the inter-marriage, I'd like to see an America that is just so homogenous that we look a lot the same." At the end of the interview, he recommended that viewers read The Camp of the Saints, a French novel about immigration that is widely considered xenophobic, if not openly racist. Not long afterward, in another interview, King predicted that "Hispanics and the blacks will be fighting each other" before the country becomes majority-minority. In the midst of it all, the white supremacist website the Daily Stormer embraced King as a "hero."
It was far from the first time that Iowa's most controversial politician had provoked outrage. On the possibility of a President Barack Hussein Obama in 2008, he said, "The Al Qaeda, and the radical Islamists and their supporters, will be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on September 11." On the Supreme Court's ruling in favor of same-sex marriage in 2015: "Their ruling really says anybody can marry anybody. ... You could marry your lawnmower." King had also tried to block abolitionist heroine Harriet Tubman from becoming the new face of the $20 bill, and displayed the Confederate flag on his desk in Washington—never mind that Iowa fought with the Union during the Civil War.
And yet, King keeps winning—and by large margins. He has served Congress for 14 years, making him the state's most senior member in the House, and served in state politics for six years before that. His position has made him a—forgive the cliché—kingmaker not just in Iowa politics, but also nationally, given our state's place in the presidential election process. In 2015, nearly a dozen Republican hopefuls trudged up to Des Moines for King's year-old "Iowa Freedom Summit" in a testament to his growing political clout.
All of which helps explain why Chelsea Clinton, Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) and CNN commentator Ana Navarro were enraged by King's latest comments, labeling them racist, but his fellow Republicans are generally loath to criticize him too harshly. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, GOP House Whip Steve Scalise and former presidential candidate Jeb Bush all spoke out against King's remarks without using "racist" in their initial condemnations. Neither did most every prominent Iowa Republican leader—Governor Branstad, U.S. Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst, State Republican Party Chair Jeff Kaufmann and others—even as they artfully tried to distance themselves from the comments.
How does King seemingly survive every flare-up?
It helps to understand the district he represents—Iowa's 4th—which covers much of the western half of the state and stretches across the northern third, as well. While the area includes mid-size cities like Ames, Fort Dodge, Mason City and Sioux City (with populations between 25,000-85,000), most of it is made up of rural areas and far smaller cities where the census bureau counts in the hundreds, not thousands. They are towns like Cleghorn, Mallard and Lytton that no one outside the state has ever heard of—unless they are professional political operatives.
Geographically, the district encompasses 39 of Iowa's 99 counties, making it the largest of the state's four congressional districts. (Iowa used to have five districts but lost one over the past decade as the stagnant population failed to keep up with growth in other parts of the country.) King, who founded a construction company before entering politics, lives in the heart of this Republican bastion, in rural Kiron, a town struggling to reach a population of 300.
Locals here in the Hawkeye State are generally proud to think of their neighbors as "Iowa nice." But another word—besides the four-lettered kind his critics often use—comes to mind for those who have watched King, 67, for years: blunt. It's a descriptor they use almost with a sense of endearment.
"He's blunt and says what he thinks," says Gwen Ecklund, who earlier this year concluded eight years as the Republican chair of Crawford County, in western Iowa. King grew up in the area, and Ecklund has followed and supported his political career for decades. As she explains it, that brusqueness turns some people off—while others love it. "I think it is the same phenomenon as Donald Trump," she figures.
"He's very charismatic," says her husband, Arlan, who sat nearby in the couple's home in Denison. "He's a gifted orator. He can easily speak for 45 minutes without notes."
But there is more to King's tells-it-like-it-is appeal. Northwestern Iowa is changing. Financially, the farm community has struggled over the past few years with commodity prices for corn and beans often falling below the cost of production. That's helping to shrink the rural population, especially among younger people, who are increasingly looking to bigger cities like Des Moines and Cedar Rapids for better job opportunities. According to the U.S. Census, King's home county of Crawford now has a population of about 17,000 people—about 4,000 fewer than it had in 1900.
The area had been nearly all white for generations, but that, too, has been slowly changing as more Hispanic immigrants have arrived. In 2000, the county was about 93 percent white. That's now dropped to 82 percent, with Hispanics accounting for nearly all of the change. Eager to make a living for themselves, many newcomers have been willing to take lower-paying jobs in agriculture, manufacturing and meat-packing. And not everyone is comfortable with the changing look of schools, grocery stores and churches in town.
"There are some 'Steve Kings' out there," says immigration attorney Jason Finch, who practices in Denison and nearby Storm Lake, two communities with rising immigrant populations. And he doesn't mean it as a compliment. "I had a county attorney tell me it was his life's mission to deport as many immigrants as he could."
Still, Finch reckons that anti-immigrant sentiment is held by a shrinking majority in the region, and where it exists, he says, it tends to be rooted more in ignorance than racism. "The younger generation handles it a lot better than the older generation does," Finch says.
Politically, much of King's district is deeply conservative, with registered Republicans (nearly 200,000 of them) easily outnumbering registered Democrats (fewer than 125,000). That makes it hard for challengers to take on King, no matter how many controversial assertions he makes.
In 2012, King was tested by a genuinely tough reelection fight. His opponent was Christie Vilsack, the spouse of a popular former Democratic governor, Tom Vilsack, who would later become U.S. secretary of agriculture. King's district had been redrawn, and was less Republican as a result. But King ended up getting a boost from Branstad, who had grown concerned with the dynamics of the race and personally sent staff to help the campaign. King won by 8 points.
The next year, as Congress debated comprehensive immigration reform, King took a stand as one of the most conservative—and controversial—voices speaking out against illegal immigration. "For every one who's a valedictorian," he told Newsmax, referring to young undocumented immigrants crossing the border, "there's another 100 out there who weigh 130 pounds. And they've got calves the size of cantaloupes because they've been hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert." Iowa Republicans cringed at the words, but no prominent leader strongly denounced King at the time.
His margin of victory on election night in 2014? It was 23 points—far higher than his margin against Vilsack two years before, but just about par for the course for King. In fact, King has long crushed his competition. With the exception of 2012, he has won by at least 21 percentage points in each of his reelection bids; in 2010, the margin was 34 points.
Nick Ryan understands why. Last year, Ryan, one of the state's most well-known Republican operatives and donors, helped to orchestrate the first primary challenge King has faced since winning his seat in 2002. Ryan's chosen candidate, State Senator Rick Bertrand, lost by 30 percentage points.
"He's an ideologue," Ryan says of King. According to Ryan, the true believers in Iowa cheer King when he says what they want to hear about abortion, same-sex marriage, immigration, the constitution and those dreaded liberals—even if the congressman is more likely to deliver his message on cable TV shows than talking with local Iowans, and even if King himself admits he has not authored a single piece of legislation that has become law. (Neither King nor his congressional office responded to requests for comment for this article.)
Ryan believes comments like King's latest—which have been criticized more vehemently than in past—make the congressman politically vulnerable, and he is searching for another primary candidate for 2018.
"His rhetoric has gotten more coarse," Ryan says. "And more weird."
Still, if the past two decades in Iowa politics prove anything, it's that King can survive controversy. He's already fundraising off the backlash against him, declaring, "I refuse to stand down." And most longtime Iowa political hands think King is pretty much invulnerable.
"No one will ever get close to him in a general election. It's too heavily Republican," says Chris Rants, the state's former speaker of the house who represented the northwest corner of Iowa for 18 years. "You don't draw crossover voters. You don't generally get many moderates in a primary. His comments aren't going to change anything."
They sure won't, William Jahn told me. Jahn watches all the fuss over King on TV from his front porch. His rural Coon Rapids house sits about 100 yards just outside King's district boundary lines in Guthrie County. He sympathizes with King's idea about a culture in decline—and doesn't think that's racist.
"There isn't a racist bone in King's body," he says. "We are a nation based on Western values. I think Steve King is courageous to do it. Some cultures are better than others."
That kind of talk makes the Ecklunds back in Crawford County a little squeamish.
"He says things that have some merit, but he can go too far," Arlan Ecklund tells me. "Sometimes he goes off the deep end and needs to know when to stop talking."
"But he says what he thinks. That's part of his magnetism," he adds.
What about those who claim King's thinking is white nationalism?
"I don't think so," Arlan reflects. "Our son-in-law is a native of the Dominican Republic. He became a citizen about three years ago. Congressman King spoke at his ceremony. I think he just believes things need to be done in the right way."
Gwen Ecklund agrees. Racist? No. Passionate conservative? No doubt. "The reality is no matter what he says, someone will have a problem with it," she says.
But if the pattern holds, no matter what he says, her controversial congressman will also likely remain King of the land.
Sounds delightful.