Teabagger Allen West Finds Himself A Crackpot Chief Of Staff Who May Actually Be Crazier Than He Is!

People For the American Way's Right Wing Watch blog is doing a fantastic series on one aspect of the new Congress that will be seated in January, The Ten Scariest Republicans Heading To Congress. I can't imagine who the grand finale will be but yesterday they featured South Florida psychopath Allen West. West is already causing some waves in DC because of his determination to pick a fight with the Congressional Black Caucus because of the Hate Talk Radio host he hired as a chief of staff. We'll come back to that in a moment since she's had some memorable things to say on-air. I don't know if they're as outrageous as West referring to women as "oral relief stations," although, presumably, if Florida women would have minded West wouldn't have won last week.

West, an Army veteran, became a YouTube sensation by criticizing “this tyrannical government” and crying out: “if you’re here to stand up to get your musket, to fix your bayonet, and to charge into the ranks, you are my brother and sister in this fight.” He said that the country was engaging in “class warfare” between “a producing class and an entitlement class,” which is composed of Obama supporters.

While serving in Iraq, he was forced out of the Army for his violent handling of an investigation of a police officer. During the interrogation, West dragged “him outside, pushed his head into the sand, and fired a gun next to his face to get him to sing.” According to West: “It wasn’t torture. Seeing Rosie O'Donnell naked would be torture.”

West also has close ties to the Outlaws motorcycle gang, which an NBC News report found had criminal-ties and a website that features a page honoring members who are in prison, extolling “members convicted of violent crimes, including murder.” In a letter, West wrote: “Please, no more references to ‘criminal’ because I can tell you, they have the utmost respect for me and that which I seek to achieve. I was never more amazed at how members of the Outlaws guarded me during a one hour cell phone radio interview.”

Moreover, he addressed events sponsored by Outlaws-linked organizations, used Outlaws members to harass his rival’s campaign workers, and writes a column for their magazine. Their magazine, Wheels on the Road, has also used anti-Semitic, racist and sexist material, and once called women “oral relief stations.”

West encouraged his supporters to use violence in suppressing the votes of opponents, saying, “You've got to make the fellow scared to come out of his house.”

He maintains that it is “unfortunate” that gays and lesbians are serving in the military, and compares homosexuality to adultery. West is also radically anti-choice. On abortion rights, he has said “I believe all future discussion on this issue should move us toward the elimination of abortion except in the most extraordinary of circumstances,” and accused pro-choice groups of “promot[ing] abortion as a means of birth control.”

West wants to eliminate the progressive tax system. He supports tax cuts for the rich, and calls Wall Street Reform a “sham.” He’s advocated for eliminating the Departments of Energy and Education.
On immigration, he claims that illegal immigrants should not have access to care in emergency rooms, and that Muslim terrorists are coming through the border with Mexico. West’s first decision as Representative-elect was to choose as his chief of staff right-wing radio talk show host Joyce Kaufman, who called for illegal immigrants to be “hung on the central square.”

A Republican partisan, West said: “I hate big-tent. I hate inclusiveness. And I hate outreach.” West uses extreme rhetoric against Democrats and liberals. He said that liberals resented the fact that he saved the lives of American soldiers. On the anti-Islam blog Atlas Shrugs, he wrote that progressives “detest anyone who has the courage of conviction and love of America, something which they find unconscionable." In the same post, he wrote, “Liberals seek to destroy any institution of intrinsic value: God, country, family, honor, valor, courage, VIRTUE... Why? Because if such things exist, then they must be defended, which brings them back to their fear of action." He also claims that Democratic combat veterans Joe Sestak and Patrick Murphy “hate the military.”

West says that Obama does not “care for this country” and wants to “make it like some type of third world socialist cesspool,” and is not an American since he grew up in Indonesia and “never played little league baseball.” He compared Obama and his “tyrannical government” to the rise of Adolph Hitler and the Nazi party in Germany, and dubbed the Obama Administration a “thugocracy.”

Militantly anti-Muslim, he consistently criticizes Arabs and Muslims, and he told Atlas Shrugs’ Pamela Geller that the Bible is evidence the Arabs are a “wild” people: “the Angel of the Lord said to [Hagar]: Behold you are with child, and you shall bear a son, you shall call his name Ishmael, because the Lord has heard your affliction. He shall be a wild man; His hand shall be against everyman, and every man's hand against him. And he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren.' Ishmael of course became the beginning of the Arab people....and God's word is immutable truth.”

He has suggested that there are “thirty-six training camps” run by terrorists inside the US, and that soldiers are becoming “brainwashed” by terrorists who “infiltrated the military.” According to West, Islam is “not a religion” but a “theo-political belief system and construct” that must be destroyed.

Yes, this is now an elected Member of Congress. When West ran against Klein, then a freshman, in 2008. West got 140,104 votes (45%) to Klein's 169,041. Klein drew 55% in both Palm Beach County and Broward County in the Democratic-leaning 22nd. (At the same time Obama won 52% of the district.) This year Democratic voters just did not come out to the polls. 115,411 of West's voters came out but only 97,051 of Klein's did. West won in both counties by about the same margin. The post above referred to the Hate Talk Radio host he hired as chief of staff, Joyce Kaufman. If you think he's a crackpot, just take a look at some of her rantings and ravings (what he refers to as "her 20 years of experience on the political scene in South Florida" that he claims will give him "helpful insights and perspective."

* She said Jewish people voted for President Obama because “they don’t embrace being Jews anymore.”

* She said Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan “looks basically like Ed Schultz in drag.”

* Discussing illegal immigrants on her show, she said: “If you commit a crime while you’re here, we should hang you and send your body back to where you came from, and your family should pay for it.”

* At a rally with West standing by, she said: “Calling illegal immigrants ‘undocumented workers’ is like calling a drug dealer a pharmacist without a license.” “There are people who want to change your way of life, and some of them may be your gardeners,” she said.

* She also blamed undocumented immigrants for pollution and disease: “We are destroying the environment in this country at an incredibly accelerated pace because of this group of people who have come to this country and have to live a very substandard existence. They don’t have mufflers on their cars. I mean, it sounds like silly nonsense, but it’s not. The cumulative effect is huge. They live, you know, 10 to a household; they bring disease with them.“

The district was described by The Almanac Of American Politics as being "affluent, elderly, with a large Jewish population politically very active in condominium groups." Don't ask me... but weren't these the same elderly Jewish people who screwed up so badly when they went to vote, casting ballots for Buchanan instead of Gore, that we wound up with George W. Bush in 2000 because of their inability to read a ballot? I mean, literally, the exact same ones? It's like some kind of fatal attraction for Nazis or something!