The above is one of the more famous families from Boone County. At any rate, every up and coming right wing douchebag politician trying to make a name for himself has done something similar to what you are about to read:
A state delegate has launched an online petition to urge Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin not to take in Syrian refugees.
So far, the governor’s office said it and homeland security have received no requests for Syrian refugees to come into the state. Catholic charities had been trying to relocate an unspecified number of people before the terror attack in Paris, but they had no received permission from the State Department for anyone.
Still, Del. Joshua Nelson has received about 3,000 signatures for his online petition so far. The Boone County Republican issued an open letter to Tomblin, as well as President Barack Obama, demanding that “un-vetted” Syrian refugees not be allowed to take up residence in the Mountain State. It’s not exactly clear how anyone could be vetted in chaotic circumstances going on in Europe, still Nelson said he fears a “Trojan horse.”
A spokesman for the governor said the information Nelson is spreading is not true.
“Delegate Nelson is unfortunately spreading information that is not true or accurate,” Chris Stadelman, director of communications, said in a statement to Eyewitness News. “The Governor’s Office has not been contacted by the federal Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement regarding large-scale placements of Syrian refugees, and we do not anticipate a federal request for placement of refugees in West Virginia. Any smaller placements likely would take more than a year to occur. In any case, the state would ensure that proper security screening was conducted by federal and state officials.”
This is of course, futile, because Governor’s don’t get much say in this, it appears:
The problem for Jindal, Abbott and the other governors opposed to admitting refugees, however, is that there is no lawful means that permits a state government to dictate immigration policy to the president in this way. As the Supreme Court explained in Hines v. Davidowitz, “the supremacy of the national power in the general field of foreign affairs, including power over immigration, naturalization and deportation, is made clear by the Constitution.” States do not get to overrule the federal government on matters such as this one.
Just in case there is any doubt, President Obama has explicit statutory authorization to accept foreign refugees into the United States. Under the Refugee Act of 1980, the president may admit refugees who face “persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion” into the United States, and the president’s power to do so is particularly robust if they determine that an “unforeseen emergency refugee situation” such as the Syrian refugee crisis exists.
And if that wasn’t enough, there’s this little tidbit:
All of the attackers from Friday’s massacre in Paris so far have been identified as European Union nationals, according to a top EU official. The announcement further casts doubt on the validity of a Syrian passport found near the bodies of a slain attacker.
“Let me underline, the profile of the terrorists so far identified tells us this is an internal threat,” Federica Mogherini, the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy/Vice-President of the European Commission, said after a meeting with EU foreign ministers. “It is all EU citizens so far. This can change with the hours, but so far it is quite clear it is an issue of internal domestic security.”
So to summarize:
1.) Show the Syrian refugees the video of Boone County, and most of them would probably choose to go elsewhere.
2.) If, for some insane reason, they chose to emigrate to Boone County, the Governor and this idiot hilljack state delegate can’t do anything about it, because it’s in the fucking constitution that they hold so close.
3.) None of the Syrian refugees were responsible for the attack.
4.) If today’s right wing was designing the statue of liberty, she’d have no torch, just an extended middle finger with the inscription: “Fuck you, I got mine.”
Obama v Rubio, Cruz and Jeb¡
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
Clearly, the fact that the attackers would forge a Syrian passport to try and redirect blame to refugees only proves that we can’t allow Syrian refugees in!
/wingnut
scav
Well, on slightly stronger evidence, we in Illinois might call upon mandatory investigation of all police officers apparently killed in the line of action and their immediate families for possible misappropriation of funds, no?
Calouste
So I don’t do twitter, but I’d like to comment on Cole’s latest tweet that the Statue of Liberty was of course a gift from the French, and was already ironical by the time it went up, considering the US had passed the Chinese Exclusion Act 4 years earlier.
cokane
Dunno if white ppl in West Virginia can actually say “I got mine”
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
Also, since I’m feeling the need for snark today and this is a (relatively) safe target: if we allow more Syrian refugees in, we could end up with another Steve Jobs! The horror!
(In case anyone on the planet is unaware, Steve Jobs was an adoptee whose father was a Muslim Syrian immigrant.)
smintheus
Point no. 4: Worth the website’s price of admission.
mai naem mobile
When did Americans turn into such pants wetting pooh-seas?
Gimlet
From “The Independent”
“The single most intriguing fact is that the passport was there at all,” one French official source said. “It was not actually on the terrorist’s body, or what remained of it. It was lying nearby, as if meant to be found.”
French investigators fear that the apparent “planting” of the passport is part of a sophisticated propaganda war being waged by Isis. “There are three possibilities,” one source said. “He is the man whose name is on the passport. He was a false refugee, travelling on a false passport. Or he is someone else and a false passport was deliberately left there to sow confusion.”
Baud
@mai naem mobile: This American didn’t.
But if you are talking about the right, fear is a drug that makes them feel justified in telling Obama how to behave.
RSA
In one way we’re seeing a re-run of 2001, where people who live pretty far away from any plausible target for terrorists think that they’re next. I’ll guess that the average person living outside America hasn’t even heard of West Virginia. Probably a good percentage of Americans don’t even know it’s one of our states. So not to worry.
Baud
Syrian refugees are wreaking havoc with this website right now.
Kay
You never know what will happen to people when they get here- where they’ll end up. We have a big (relatively big, so small!) community of Laotian Americans. Their parents or grandparents started in Maryland and Virginia (they tell me) and then it gets sort of blurry and messy. People found jobs and bought houses so told other people to come here, that sort of thing.
Anyway! They are completely accepted and no one but them ever talks about their original arrival, and then only the older ones, and only if you ask.
max
@mai naem mobile: When did Americans turn into such pants wetting pooh-seas?
1998, I believe, although the warm up act started in 1990 if I recall correctly. What with the sudden shortage of communists.
@Baud: But if you are talking about the right, fear is a drug that makes them feel justified in telling Obama how to behave.
I think blackness and being a Democrat covered that already back in 2008, I believe. This is about pretending to know something about war.
max
[‘A beautiful day in the neighbor…’]
Kyle
As to point 4, I agree but I’d put a Christian spin on the sign that’s appropriate here at the holiday season: There’s no room in this inn.
Baud
@max:
True, but that’s not the lie they tell to themselves to justify their behavior.
agorabum
@mai naem mobile: after 9-11 when one party decided that reacting in bedwetting terror was the right response, since it encouraged deference.
Kay
@Baud:
It’s insane. How are they planning on stopping travel between states? Can’t I just go to an adjoining state and then take a bus?
Has Rand Paul introduced a bill to ban interstate commerce yet?
Kay
Real profile in courage there, John Kasich.
Baud
@Kay:
I wish Obama would give every Syrian refugee family a CD with John Denver’s Take Me Home, Country Roads.
Almost heaven, West Virginia, Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River.
Life is old there, older than the trees, younger than the mountains, blowing like a breeze.
Country roads, take me home to the place I belong.
West Virginia, mountain mamma, take me home, country roads.
I might submit an online petition to the White House.
Elie
Not sure what has been happening, but couldn’t comment until just now…I would type and nothing showed
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: Why do you hate refugees?
Ruckus
@cokane:
They can if they worked in a coal mine.
max
I wish Obama would give every Syrian refugee family a CD with John Denver’s Take Me Home, Country Roads.
I was going to say ‘Oh, god’ and then I said, hrmmmm. Except I wouldn’t wish any of that on any poor refugees.
max
[”We were going to be beheaded!’ ‘Well, listen up, ragheads, we got this cross see, and we’re gonna set it on fahr, and if you don’t like it, you’re next.”]
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
I just figured the sooner they missed war-torn Syria, the sooner they’d return.
Elie
I often wonder how the Republicans would manage to endure WWII. We didn’t have a victory in battle for months. Also, Obama now must keep the WORLD safe. The attack happened in Paris but its his fault. Perfect. No tolerance for a long, indefinite war with Isis with setbacks (which is realistic). We also must not allow any attacks anywhere in the western world or our policy is a failure…
Kay
@Baud:
Mike Huckabee is on CCN. He just said “Americans are afraid”. Too bad he’s just a corrupt grifter who will never again run for office or a person could run ads where they take that out of context.
germy
@Elie:
Happens to me all the time. I don’t get the “awaiting moderation” message; I just disappear.
I guess they’re still tinkering under the hood.
max
Speaking of the OP: The above is one of the more famous families from Boone County.
Ah, what a fabulous birthday it has been. Especially since my psychopathic step-father (of sorts) came from the general vicinity of Boone county. So, flashbacks! Yay!
max
[‘I’ll send you a fucking jar of mustard already, Cole, what’s the fucking address?’]
Lit3Bolt
http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2015/11/weve-seen-this-movie-on-refugees.html
Steve M. is right. Anyone who fights for the right on this moral issue is going to lose politically.
Maybe people would feel better if Obama issued a Skittles Alert and told everyone to buy duct tape?
MomSense
@Baud:
You’ve got my vote. One of my all time favorite songs.
Gimlet
Psst, over there – an abortionist!
WP – MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. — Sen. Ted Cruz Sunday continued to call for Muslim refugees from Syria to be barred from entering the United States but opening the borders to displaced Christians, arguing there is not a “meaningful risk” that Christians will commit terrorist acts.
“There is no meaningful risk of Christians committing acts of terror. If there were a group of radical Christians pledging to murder anyone who had a different religious view than they, we would have a different national security situation,” Cruz (R-Tex.) told reporters in a middle school gym here.
Ken Knight, 54, a heating and cooling technician from Florence, S.C., said he agrees with Bush and Cruz that only Christian refugees should be let into the country.
“I wouldn’t bring the Muslims. They cut your head off. You can’t trust them. I’m sure there are good ones, but they’re like the mob. Once you get in, you can’t trust them,” he said after a church service Cruz attended in Florence.
MomSense
@Omnes Omnibus:
Stop. It’s a beautiful song.
Baud
@Kay:
Liberal Americans seem quite confident and resilient. But we’re not Real Americans in his book
Baud
@MomSense: It’s bittersweet, ain’t it?
Omnes Omnibus
@MomSense: For whatever reason, Germans love the song. When I was living there, it was played all the time in bars and people sang along. I have issues with the song.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
LOL. I’ve read that some people felt that way about Wagner after WWII.
maya
Clearly, ISIS is coming straight at WV. Boone County brains are a little known, radical mooslim epicurean delicacy.
Elie
@germy:
Yeah – I figured so went away and came back and it seemed to work again…. I didn’t get any message. Just anything that I typed in the entry box did not show…
Gimlet
@maya:
ISIS is coming straight at WV. Boone County
Maybe they can stop along the way and get a marriage license from Kim Davis.
Mike J
@Kyle:
More appropriate, the time when Jesus, Mary and Joseph were refugees living in Egypt to escape violence.
Elie
@Gimlet:
..And who, pray tell, is burning down black Christian churches? Hmmmmmm — those nice White Christians is who. Whole list of white Christian terrorists…
Gimlet
@Elie: You’re not supposed to peak under those white pointy hats.
cmorenc
@max:
Actually, that is the one really good song John Denver ever did, as well as about the best (and only) positive promotion of the state of West Virginia I’ve ever encountered (with some small possible exception for our own John Cole in his curmudgeonly fashion) Everything else John Denver did was syrupy schmaltz-folk-pop that was hard to listen to for my tastes.
Patrick
Isn’t if funny how FoxNews and right-wingers keep claiming that Obama is a lawless tyrant with no respect for our constitution, yet about 15 Republican governors have now stated that will disobey our laws and refuse to accept refugees from Syria.
Matt McIrvin
Someday, a lot of us are gonna be refugees. And guess what! Americans are world famous for going bugfuck and murdering lots of people. I look forward to hearing what the Canadians have to say about us streaming north when our part of the continent becomes uninhabitable.
Aunt Kathy
Oh, dear, I’ve got some West Virginia Whites in my ancestry, but as far as we know, they weren’t the Boone County Whites. But, hey, it was a few generations back, so there could have been some moving around.
We did have two White brothers marry two sisters from a neighboring family, and then some more intermingling back forth between those two families. We don’t seem any worse for wear….
Patrick
@Gimlet:
I guess they don’t teach “love your enemies” and “turn the other check” at that Christian church.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: That song has always annoyed me just because the Blue Ridge Mountains and Shenandoah River are really more characteristic of western Virginia than West Virginia. (The Shenandoah pokes momentarily into WV right around Harper’s Ferry, but that’s the only bit.)
Mike J
@cmorenc:
He had one other recording you may like.
Gimlet
@Patrick:
Apparently they use a “new” conservative Bible. The other one was a liberal, possibly even socialist one.
Patrick
@Gimlet:
I guess I’m not a Christian anymore then as I believe in the bible I was taught decades ago.
Mandalay
@mai naem mobile:
Huckabee just said on TV: “Americans are afraid right now”. How uplifting and inspirational.
Others might talk about pissing their pants though fear, but Mike actually does it. And where he leads, others follow.
Roger Moore
@Gimlet:
You left out the link.
MomSense
@Baud:
That it is.
@Omnes Omnibus:
Ha!
cmorenc
@Mike J:
It helps to hear a pleasing version of “Country Roads” by someone other than John Denver, to avoid mental contamination with his schmaltzy grinning voice and face. For example, this most excellent version by Russell Moore and IIIrd Tyme Out.
I agree with your assessment of that “other” mangled JD song you linked to :=)
raven
Ya’ll are full of shit
Toots and the Maytals – Take Me Home Country Roads
ublished on Nov 21, 2013
Almost heaven, West Jamaica
True ridge mountains, shining down the river
All my friends there, older than those ridge
Younger than the mountains, blowin like a breeze
JPL
OT.. Does anyone have a feed to msnbc international? Rockin rooster has been having problems all day
C.V. Danes
I have to say, it’s hard not to hate people who define their lives by hate.
Frankensteinbeck
@Gimlet:
This kind of rhetoric did wonders for Carson’s poll numbers, and is what got Trump the lead in the first place. It will be interesting to see if this gives Cruz a boost. His problem is that it might get drowned out in all the other anti-Muslim racist noise.
A guy
I don’t want the Syrian refugees here in West Virginia. We have no jobs to offer them.
Gimlet
First “The Ferguson Effect”, now this
Guardian – The director of the CIA has criticised “hand-wringing” over the role of spy agencies in hunting terrorists and called for legal constraints on surveillance to be reviewed in the wake of last week’s Paris attacks.
John Brennan’s comments on Monday represent the most significant pushback yet against recent reforms of a surveillance programme that swept up millions of Americans’ telephone records and was exposed by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. They came as pressure grew on internet companies in Silicon Valley to share users’ data and prompted civil liberties campaigners to warn against an overreaction.
Shell
Are these the same governors who tried to pass legislation banning Ebola patients when those couple of cases showed up in the US Made just as much sense.
********************
Saw news footage of Mutt and Jeff (McCain and Lindsey Graham) blathering on about how “we need boots on the ground!” Boots on the ground WHERE? Are we supposed to invade Syria now?
germy
Ray Charles did a nice version of Country Roads
srv
What this country really needs is a Foreign Legion. Take all these immigrants, whip them into shape, teach them some civics, and put them on their own frontlines.
Problem solved.
gelfling545
@Omnes Omnibus: My sister & her husband lived in Japan during the first boom of the Karaoke craze. They were locally renowned for their performance of that song.
germy
Do you know what this country needs today?
A seven cent nickel. Yes siree, we’ve been using the five-cent nickel in this country since 1492. Now that’s pretty near 100 years daylight saving. Now why not give the seven cent nickel a chance? If that works out, next year we can have an eight cent nickel. Think what that would mean? You could go to a newsstand, buy a three cent newspaper, and get the same nickel back again. One nickel carefully used would last a family a life-time.
– Groucho Marx, Animal Crackers
gelfling545
Here in WNY we have a sizable refugee community. In general, refugees who are resettled do not get to even pick the country they will be settled in, much less the State or County. Sometimes, if they have relatives in an area they will be sent there but mostly you go where you’re sent. I don’t imagine that Buffalo would have been the destination of choice for too many if they had ever even heard of it.
lamh36
Damnit…I hope folks go out and vote, cause John Bel Edwards is bringing it to Vitter
@Taniel
EZSmirkzz
Two problems I see with your argument John; 1, you’re probably the last Republican that I know of to be persuaded by facts, and 2, you’re probably the last Republican that I know of to be persuaded by facts.
If however you could convince the poor dears that the daesh within the ranks of refugees all have Alladin’s Lamps, and would grant them three wishes, then we might be on to something.
As usual YMMV.
Mike in NC
Currently reading an ebook on the Scandanavian countries. Sweden has the most open immigration policies, allowing an average of 100,000 people into the country each year, and a large number come from the Middle East. At the same time, about 50,000 choose to leave every year, assuming they cannot adapt to the alien culture and harsh climate.
lamh36
Omnes Omnibus
@lamh36: Oliver’s been on fire all day.
Roger Moore
@lamh36:
Sadly, the heartless of today would fail to get the message and continue being awful, or they’d turn it around somehow as a justification for what they already want to do. These are the same people who can claim “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me” means you only have to be nice to other Christians.
SiubhanDuinne
@Roger Moore:
I like the imprimatur of the Colbert Report interview!
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@lamh36:
I’m sure I’m not the only person betting that Vitter is not going to be able to keep his diaper on until Election Day.
J R in WV
@EZSmirkzz:
Dude, John isn’t a Republican any more, so shut up!
John, the East Virginians and such like people give us a hard enough time over being country. I don’t think we really need West Virginians giving each other a hard time over the group of West Virginians who seem to be crazy.
After all, Indiana, Texas, Kentucky, Arizona, etc, etc also seem to be governed by Republican assholes, and Earl Ray (who is still a Democrat!) hasn’t appeared to be (yet) giving into the blind unthinking fear that the Republicans seem to think is the all-American way to react to an attack in France.
And I think President Obama should be asking Republicans on TV just how they think the USA should be preventing native French folks from committing crazed terrorist attacks in FRANCE!!!!! Or why America is responsible for French internal security.
But anyway, I live one county over from Boone county, and am a retired fellow who was gainfully employed for many years. My wife was born in Jeffrey, WV, a small coal town in Boone county, and was well edjumacated at the WVU, worked a whole career, and is still a pretty bright person, if I do say so who has been married to her for nearly 45 years now.
So COLE, lighten UP on West Virginia, dude!! We aren’t nearly at the bottom of the list of states any more!
Thanks for listening, if you are, actually.
That is all, carry on.
Peale
@gelfling545: number 11 on ISIS lists of humiliations that will be avenged is that Sabres Stanley Cup massacre. Say what you will, but they understand injustice when they hear of it and take such losses very personally.
JPL
@lamh36: I read that Edwards said Vitter lies more than Pinocchio.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Roger Moore:
Hell, I’ve heard from liberals who seemed very confused by the message of a song as simple as “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” It’s about thinking of people other than yourself during the holidays, idiots, not about imposing Christmas on other countries. Yeesh.
Amir Khalid
@cmorenc:
Is there no love for Grandma’s Feather Bed?
Annoying cookies
MEANWHILE I STILL HAVE TO DELETE COOKIES TO REFRESH THIS BLOG.
Paul in KY
@max: Actually one of his best songs, IMO.
Berial
Just read the responses to this 538 post. Can you smell the fear of ‘the other’ coming from there? For people that express how ‘manly’ and ‘courageous’ they are compared to their ‘limp wristed political opponents’ they sure do seem to be afraid of just about EVERY damn thing that isn’t a white guy. Which is really ironic, considering the people MOST likely to harm them or just fuck them over in general are white guys.