The Dusty Dog

Scumsucking Spin Machine

I think it's a pretty safe bet that Clay Bennett was thinking about republicans when he drew this cartoon. Describing them as "lower than pond scum" also comes to mind.

The republican hypocrisy continues to just astound and amaze me. The shameless backtracking and outright lying is appauling, and the mainstream media rarely, if ever, covers it. Case in point.........

This week's case in point is their dispiccable excuse for immigration reform. Remember that, boys and girls? It was spearheaded by the repukes in Congress, including Long Island, NY's own Peter King. Their attempt to criminalize immigrants by making it a felony to bypass the daunting excuse for immigration laws, which does nothing but stall and separate families, is nothing short of horrific. King even tried to make those who help immigrants felons, including food banks and religious institutions. Scumwads, all of them. As we all know, when ya lay down with dogs, ya get up with fleas. But, in this image of dubya and petey, is rather debatable who's the dog and who's the flea.

But, it now gets worse. As we all may already know, this miserable effort to "reform" immigration failed in Congress. Yeah, that's a good thing. But, leave it to Ken Melman and his repuke henchmen to now blame the democrats for "criminalizing" illegal immigration. Huh????!!!! Wha?????!!!!


One thing that repukes are good at is spin. Of course, there are tons of other things they are good at, like lying, war mongering, and stealing the US Treasury blind. But, I digress. This time, I'll stick with their immigration spin.

First, I visited one of my favorite professional blogsites, Taylor Marsh. She's got this story about Melman blaming democrats for the failure of immigration reform. But worse, he blames them for supporting the felonization (is that a word?) of illegal immigrants. Yeah, he turned it completely around. According to Taylor Marsh:

Senator Reid and the Democrats were right to keep the Republican amendments out, which were meant to scuttle the bill, as far as it's been reported, while stopping a bad bill from getting through. A bad bill that was not going to solve the challenge we face on illegal immigration.

The first problem with the bill is that it wasn't funded, including border security. How can we secure our borders without funding what we need done? In addition, there was not any provisions to target employers, from what I've been able to gather so far. This is a critical part of it, also having to do with funding. You can't target employers if you don't fund the division charged with investigating employers to make sure they're following U.S. labor laws.

But, what Melman and the repukes have done is create a Spanish-speaking radio spot, directed specifically at Spanish-speaking immigrants, of course, because they are afraid of losing the Latino vote. This add serves to swiftboat the democratic minority, who you may remember have very little power in Congress, by blaming them for this immigration debaucle and the effort to criminalize the immigrants. (Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm repeating myself.....) The repukes are shameless liars, and more shameless spinners.

Now, off to Talking Points Memo (directed there by Taylor Marsh)......

The argument is really pretty egregious even by GOP standards. House Republicans put up a bill to make being an illegal alien a felony. An amendment was proposed that would have made it a misdemeanor. As the AP reports, "Democrats, including members of the Hispanic Congressional Caucus, voted against the amendment, arguing they did not support criminal penalties. Nevada Republicans Jon Porter and Jim Gibbons also voted against the amendment, which failed. The felony provision remained in the bill, H.R. 4437, and it passed the House on a largely party line vote."

So Democrats wouldn't vote for criminalizing at all. Ergo, they're for making it a felony.

Of course, the scariest thing about all this is that many immigrants are very poor, and their access to the internet and non-mainstream media sources may be very limited. So, they could actually believe the repuke crap. But, that's the point, and Melman knows it. Why else do it. He and the entire repuke party are doing whatever it takes to remain in control after the 2006 Congressional elections. To them, it's just a means to an end. Fact is, if they lose control, they lose the whole ball of wax.

Picture this: democrats who control Congress with full investigative control and subpeona powers.

posted by Dusty Dog at 4/15/2006