If you want to know what it’s like to interpret current events after way too many trips to the Christmas party punch bowl, this week’s coverage of fiscal issues at Breitbart.com is the place to go.
On Thursday, Paul Ryan was blasted there for selling out the country, no less, in promoting an omnibus spending bill that cleared the House on a tense, dramatic 316–113 vote. Today the Breitbartians are charging that the selfsame bill is opening the door to “nearly 300,000 visas for Muslim migrants in one year.”
Why would Ryan do something like that at a time when polls are showing shocking numbers of Republicans wanting to shut down mosques and ban all Muslims from entering the country? The short answer: He didn’t. Buried deep in Julia Hahn’s piece is the math showing that most of that large number is a matter of calculating how many people from Muslim countries are getting visas under current policies for this or that reason. Many of them are students and people working here legally, not “migrants.” The only new “visas” are for the 10,00o Syrian refugees we’ve all been arguing about for the last month and who will be vetted half to death before being allowed into the country.
But never mind all that: Hahn is off to the races with lurid warnings of the imminent spread of sharia law and genital mutilation, before suddenly lurching into a screed on the completely unrelated topic of H-2B visas for (typically) high-tech workers, which has nothing specifically to do with Muslims.
Hahn concludes by darkly noting that the nine founding members of the House Freedom Caucus all voted for Paul Ryan as Speaker, making the exposure of America to the Muslim hordes possible. A conspiracy so immense …
Gazing at the photo of a bearded Ryan at the top of the Hahn piece, you have to wonder if the Breitbart folk are alluding to the viral wing-nut rumor that the new Speaker has converted to Islam.
Can you even imagine it? Ryan is having enough trouble juggling the influences of Ayn Rand and St. Thomas Aquinas. Adding Sayyid Qutb to his brain food would probably make his head explode.
