Comparing illegal immigrants to cattle, Congressman Steve King has proposed erecting an electrified fence along the US-Mexico border. King, a Republican from Iowa, made the remarks on the House floor Tuesday. He also brought along a model of his proposed fence, but refrained, perhaps due to logistical challenges, from actually electrocuting an illegal immigrant stand-in.
ThinkProgress has the video and a transcript of King’s remarks, including his comment that “[w]e could electrify this wire with the kind of current that would not kill somebody, but it would simply be a discouragement for them to be fooling around with it. We do that with livestock all the time.”
Livestock, whether the real thing or as code for Mexicans, figured elsewhere in the speech when King said his fence could be easily disassembled. “If somehow they got their economy working and got their laws working in Mexico we could pull this back out just as easy as we could put it in. We could open it up again or we could open it up and let livestock run through there, whatever we choose.”
Maybe we could put branding pens at strategic locations. With King’s Leggo-like construction system, that shouldn’t be difficult. We could even go high-tech and microchip whatever mammals we decide to admit, although that might alienate the GOP’s Revelationist constituency.
I’m guessing King didn’t come up with the fence design all on his own, but the livestock comparison, while probably shared by some of his constituents and fellow Congresscritters, is wholly his own and vaults him into the elite rank of truly loony members of the House. Although come to think, the rank has swollen to the point that it’s not so elite anymore. At any rate, please welcome Rep. King.
He’s only now letting us know what actions he might take against those not like him. We’ve been finding for some time that if you or a close friend is gay, an active woman, from a foreign non-European country in the last 60 years, or free thinking, he doesn’t like you.
Vote Schulte.
Steve King is a gross embarrassment to every thinking person in his district in Iowa – myself among them.
Several of us have put up a website to keep track of all the terrible things Steve King says and does in our name.
http://www.kingwatch.org is produced by a team of private citizens from Iowa’s 5th District. Check it out, and let your friends know about it.
Once upon a time, there was a ban on props, thus all those posterboards were verboten.
Now, they allow models. When Rep. King brings in little figures representing immigrants and sheep, I guess we truly are in trouble.
I have this image of Doc in Back To the Future with his models.
Didn’t we learn anything from the Berlin Wall or the Great Wall of China???
Steve King is a real-life fascist.
Claudia, I think the lesson Steve King took away from previous walls can be summed up in two words: “modular construction.”
King’s congressional district line is a mere 2 1/2 miles to my east so I get local coverage. When this congressional district included Ames, Iowa, home of Iowa State University, it sent Tom Harkin to Congress (before Harkin was elected to the Senate). This has become a safe Republican seat simply by replacing Ames with Sioux City. Sioux City used to be the third largest livestock and meat packing center in America. Today much of that capacity has moved 30 miles to the southwest where mostly illegal Mexican immigrants perform the work. Perhaps King should be directing his ire at Tyson Foods (formerly Iowa Beef) for the plight of Sioux City.