JOEY VENTO IS DEAD. I'M SHEDDING NO TEARS.

Via Fox Nation, I see that Joey Vento has passed away:

The owner of the landmark South Philadelphia cheesesteak stand who once told customers to order in English has died.

Family members confirm to Action News that 71-year-old Geno's Steaks owner Joey Vento has died of a massive heart attack on the way to the hospital.

His family said Vento had recently undergone successful surgery for colon/rectal cancer after being diagnosed last year....

Vento was beloved by man[y], but he was also a controversial figure.

In June 2006, Vento and Geno's made headlines over two small signs posted at the shop stating, "This is AMERICA: WHEN ORDERING 'PLEASE SPEAK ENGLISH."' ...

Vento has since been active in Tea Party politics. He was recently in Iowa for the Republican Iowa Caucus and has received a number of awards from the Tea Party....

Yeah, what a prince. Here he is at a tea party rally a couple of months ago quoted bogus immigration statistics and accusing President Obama of hating America and deserving impeachment:



Thirty percentage of our prison population is illegal. Why are we locking them up and giving them three squares a day? They're living better in jail than in their own country! I say ship 'em back, let their country take care of them!

(In 2007, after hearing Lou Dobbsa say something similar on TV, David Leonhardt of The New York Times dug up the realnumbers. The foreign-born population in federal prisons -- legal residents and otherwise -- was actually 24% in 2001 and 20% in 2005. In state prisons, it was 4.6% from 2000 to 2005. Leonhardt wrote: "Over all -- combining federal and state prisons -- 6.4 percent of the nation's prisoners were noncitizens in 2005. This is down from 6.8 percent in 2000. By comparison, 6.9 percent of the total United States population were noncitizens in 2003, according to the Census Bureau.")

More from Joey Vento:

These people come here, they don't want to assimilate. All they want to do is drain us. They got their hands out. Our forefathers came here, we had something to offer. We made the country great.

(Some of our Joey Vento's people, who were also my people, had an interesting way of making the country great -- with machine guns. But never mind.)

Obama's the wrong man in that office there. He's actually an empty suit. I believe he's a communist. I believe he should be impeached.... He has no respect for this country. Our military, I don't know how you can stand behind this man when you know he hates you. He loves every country that hates and wants to destroy us. Our country and our friends, he goes against.

Oh, and a bonus video: Vento at his most eloquent:



Yeah, my eyes are dry.

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UPDATE: Michele Malkin weeps for "Joey Vento, assimilation warrior."