Rick Perry, Asshole of the Day for July 23, 2014 by TeaPartyCat (Follow @TeaPartyCat)
There’s a crisis on America’s southern border, and it’s not poor adult immigrants coming for work and opportunity, it’s children fleeing violence in Central America. Rather than stay and risk death, they travel hundreds of miles with very little resources with the hope of safety in America.
But of course in America, the very people who most loudly proclaim their Christianity don’t want to help. They shout loudly to deport these children who have swelled the detention centers and strained the resources to support them. There’s lots of loose talk that Obama is “in on it”, or that Obama is not following the law, but he is following the law— a law signed by George W. Bush designed to keep immigrant children safe, whether they came here legally or not. And as to the “in on it” allegation, unless you believe that Obama got Central American drug gangs to escalate the violence and killings, there’s just no plausible other conspiracy here.
We’ve featured several assholes who have spoken out on the crisis in various ways:
Sarah Palin accuses Obama of exploiting foreign children to orchestrate a crisis
William Gheen wants Americans to mail dirty underwear to politicians and refugees
Rep. Louie Gohmert wants to shoot 10-year-old refugees at the border
Rep. Phil Gingrey fear mongering about unvaccinated immigrant children when he doesn’t think American children need to be vaccinated
Rep. Adam Kwasman yelled at a school bus of citizens because he thought they were undocumented immigrant children
But there’s the run-of-the-mill fear mongering, conspiracy theory, and xenophobia; and then there’s Rick Perry.
Gov. Perry, you may recall, was a serious contender for the GOP nomination in 2011 until he suggested that deporting children was wrong, and his numbers were sliding even before his Oops moment. But that was then.
As the crisis has escalated Perry has tried to play to his base while still governing like a human, but if the two are in conflict, guess which he does?
He said Obama was in on it somehow, and then stuck to it when pressed whether he really believed that days later.
He refused to shake Obama’s hand, the customary gesture when the President comes to a governor’s state.
As he let the right wing hype machine make a big deal out of Obama saying he didn’t want to do a photo-op on the border, Rick Perry did a photo-op with Sean Hannity on the border, playing at soldiers.
And then this: This week Perry said he would send the Texas National Guard down to the border. Sounds like he’s doing something. But is he? Here’s what the Texas National Guard General says about the deployment:
Most of the 1,000 National Guard troops headed to the Texas-Mexico border will take up observational positions and detain people only if they interfere with their mission, a top general over the deployment said Tuesday.
Texas Adjutant General John Nichols said the troops will help deter illicit traffic while U.S. Border Patrol agents deal with a record spike of unaccompanied minors entering the country. The Texas National Guard troops are headed to border on the orders of Republican Gov. Rick Perry, who has been a chief critic of the White House response to the crisis and is considering another run for president in 2016.
Nichols said troops will be armed for their safety, but when asked if their weapons would be loaded would say only that ammunition would be in magazines.
So will they be stopping people at the border? No.
What can they do? Nothing.
They are observers. They can stand there with possibly empty guns looking tough. Looking like Perry is doing something.
It’s all just for show. For Fox News footage. For his 2016 campaign commercials, and especially for his SuperPAC that he won’t coordinate with.
But it’s not to help secure the border, like he’s pretending to the GOP base of xenophobes. Not one single bit.
Oh, and one last thing— Perry expects us to reimburse him for this piece of pointless theater. Yep. Mr. States’ Rights wants federal money to pay for the deployment he ordered.
So, for making a big show of sending the National Guard, even though they can’t and won’t do anything, Rick Perry is Asshole of the Day.
It is Gov. Perry’s sixth time as Asshole of the Day. Previous wins were for saying his wife never meant to defend women’s right to control their own bodies claiming his abortion bill is about protecting women’s health, even though it has no provision to save the life of the mother saying all women should be forced to have babies as teenagers because Wendy Davis did suggesting that expanding Medicaid will invent people to be sick refusing to shake Obama’s hand and saying Obama was “in on” the border crisis somehow
Stephanie DotyFull story: Talking Points Memo
Weary of Wonderland
July 23, 2014
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
