Rep. Allen West Calls Democrats Nine-Foot-Tall Aliens

Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.)<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/allenwestfl/5927171983/sizes/z/in/photostream/">Allen West</a>/Flickr

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Here’s a quick lesson in how political fundraising works: If you say crazy things about your political rivals, your base will give you a ton of money. But as a consequence, your political rivals will also find themselves raising a ton of money, which means that if you want to keep your head above water, you have to continue saying increasingly nuttier things.

That brings us to Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.), a bomb-throwing tea party rock star who’s moving into a new district that gave 51 percent of its vote to Barack Obama in 2008, and is considered to be one of Democrats’ top targets this fall. West has $3.3 million on hand for the fall—an enormous sum for a House candidate at this stage in the race. Not coincidentally, though, the two biggest fundraising hauls from Democratic House challengers nationwide came from the likely nominees in the district West currently serves in (Fla.–22), and in district he’s moving into (Fla.–18).

So what do you do if you’re Allen West? You keep on keeping on. Here’s a Facebook note he posted last week:

Here we go again, the artful dodger, President Barack Hussein Obama, bribing the electorate with political gimmicks. We are witnessing a political propaganda program of Orwellian proportions designed to manipulate and deceive the American people. This is so reminiscent of the Twilight Zone episode “To Serve Man”. Obama and his liberal progressive disciples are the modern day Kanamits. My warning to you all, don’t fall for the intellectually dishonest rhetoric and become post-election day dinner America!

What is a Kanamit? The Broward–Palm Beach New Times helpfully informs us that the Kanamit were “a race of nine-foot-tall aliens that come to Earth and cure famine, blight, and nuclear warfare.” But that was all just a ruse for their real goal: “their kindness is really just a not-very-elaborate ruse to fatten up the human race so they can be carted back to the Kanamit home planet to be eaten. A Kanamit book called To Serve Man that was discovered by the humans turns out not to be about helping man at all—it’s a cookbook.” It’s people!

Here’s the pivotal scene from the episode, now that I’ve spoiled it for you:

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

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