The shame of Iowa, Rep. Steve King (IA-05), recently met with the editorial board of the Des Moines Register. Previously, King has claimed that terrorists "dance in the streets" if Obama wins in November. A member of the editorial board asked him about that statement. His response and a link to the video is below.
Watch for yourself. I can't embed the video, so here's the link.
Selected transcript:
REGISTER: Back in March, you said terrorists would be dancing in the street if Barack Obama were elected. Do you still believe that and can you explain that?
KING: Uh yeah, and in fact I'm still waiting for the first high profile public person to declare me to be wrong about that and apologize to me and the world if I'm right. I think it's just true.
...
If someone would sit down here and they would say my name was Sean Patrick O'Malley, it would be kind of hard for them to convince us that they didn't have some Irish in them. And that's the way that extrapolates over to the Middle East.
To someone as vile as King, Middle Eastern automatically means terrorist. My first name is Italian in origin, but I'm of Danish decent. In Steve King's world, I must be a member of the mafia. I don't know how he gets up in the morning knowing that everything he says that day will be 100% wrong.
Continuing...
I don't want to give our enemies anything that they can claim as a victory because it inspires them and they recruit more enemy.
I cannot begin to describe how much I hate the fact that this right wing racist represents my state in Congress. This is a man who claims
KING: I'm one of those members, one of 11 that voted no on the Katrina funding, the $51.8 billion to Katrina. That was the best vote I put up in Congress in six years.
He has to go and you can help kick him out the door. Rob Hubler needs your donations. $5, $10, $20...whatever you can spare.
In their endorsement of Hubler, The Storm Lake Times said:
So if you like what’s been happening — the financial meltdown, the war in Iraq, the erosion of civil liberties, the scorn heaped on hard-working Latinos, the intolerance of people who are not just like you — then you should vote for Steve King this November.
If you want a change from the Bush Years, then there is no question that you should vote for Rob Hubler.
Hubler is no flame-thrower. He simply wants to expand renewable fuels through incentives that Steve King has voted against. He wants to provide health insurance for more children from poor families; King voted against this, too. Hubler, a veteran of submarine service in the Navy, wants to make sure that our veterans get the protection they need in service and the care they need after discharge. He wants to put an end to torture of detainees in US custody; King described such torture as something like fraternity hazing.
That should be enough for any member of the netroots to dig deep and throw a few bucks his way.
(See Elise's diary for more examples of King's idiocy.)