"They're hiding in caves!"
by digby
I know it's hard for people to keep up with wingnuttia. It's pervasive and loonier than usual. But nobody is more full of wingnut nonsense than Ben Carson and somebody needs to take him in hand.
Here's a fact check from a couple of weeks ago:
ABC's Martha Raddatz debunked GOP presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson's claim that Planned Parenthood engages in racist population control by targeting black communities.
On the August 16 edition of ABC's This Week, Carson spoke with Raddatz on the campaign trail in Iowa. Raddatz asked Carson about his controversial comments he made on August 12, when he said Planned Parenthood is targeting African-American communities to control their population by placing "most of their clinics in black neighborhoods." Raddatz debunked this claim, saying, "Planned Parenthood estimates that fewer than five percent of its health centers are located in areas where more than one-third of the population is African-American".
That's an unusual example of somebody fact-checking him in real time. But he apparently believes everything he hears from right wing cranks and it leads him astray. Lately he's been talking about using military drones to blow up caves on the border where some looney sheriff told him all the illegals are hiding before they come over the border. he thinks we should blow them up, taliban style. (He insists that we shouldn't blow up the people inside but is unclear on just how we will know they are empty.)
But all this begs the question: what's the hell is the deal with these caves? I just did a cursory search on google and can't find any stories about caves hiding illegal immigrants. What I did find was this one story about Carson going on a helicopter tour with Arizona Sheriff Paul Babeau, (the married former GOP candidate who was exposed by his undocumented gay lover when he ran for congress in 2012.) Breitbart was there and reported on the tour and even they don't say that illegal immigrants are hiding in caves. Here's what this was about:
“Nobody does,” Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu told Breitbart News when asked who has operational control of this region of the United States of America.
Babeu was on a helicopter tour of Mexican drug cartel scout locations in caves in the side of mountains throughout the desert about 70 miles inside the U.S. border. Essentially, that means U.S. sovereignty is gone for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of square miles throughout the American southwest.
Babeu was leading the helicopter tour with Dr. Ben Carson, a GOP presidential candidate, after briefing Carson on everything happening at the border.
Among other things that Babeu showed Carson and Breitbart News on this helicopter tour were how this far inside the border on high ground there are scores of scout sites where cartel operatives serve as lookouts for smugglers bringing drugs, people and other contraband into the country.
“If they can operate up to this degree, 70 miles north of the border, in law enforcement we call that a clue,” Babeu said in a brief exclusive interview outside the helicopter after landing back at the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office. The lack of United States sovereignty this deep into the country is highly concerning to Carson, who told Breitbart News that this shouldn’t be happening.
“We should stop them at the border,” Carson said. “They shouldn’t be 70 miles inside the border. We should stop them at the border. As the sheriff indicated, if we were to take like 6,000 troops and put them at the border, you wouldn’t have those people coming inside the border.”
They were talking about drug cartels, not immigrants. And even the crazed Babeau doesn't suggest that we blow up these caves, which is ridiculous. Carson wants to put troops on the border, like East Germany used to do, in order to keep out people from coming into the country to pick strawberries and clean your house. He rivals Trump for sheer weird wingnuttiness. He believes everything he hears and that's when he's not misunderstands it in the first place. I think it's probably a good idea to add him to Trump's totals if you want to have a good guess just how many Republicans are out of their ever-lovin' minds.
The southwest is full of interesting caves with cave writings and all kind of geological wonders. I don't think we're at a point where we need to destroy our own natural beauty to salve the feelings of a bunch of white supremacists who are worried that Mexicans are going to take away their All American right to eat Taco Bell and drink Corona.
Here's Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico:
Let's blow it up!
