Politics: Where we struggle to kneel in the muck.

[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
Do we have armed forces in France? Are terrorists questioning Chirac's legitimacy and trying to kill him? If yes to both, then I'm indignant.

I guess criticism of the Saudi royal family is out of bounds too, then.

[SlaveNoMore]

Tyrone Slothrop
Stevens isn't a citizen anymore, and when you're dealing with foreigners it makes a certain amount of sense to err on the side of caution.

When was he ever? He was born and raised in London by Cypriot and Swedish parents.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by Not Bob
Ah, sebby. Where to start?

OK, "Bad Bad Leroy Brown" was a huge hit for Croce, but it ain't the song that people who think he was an artiste have in mind when they sigh wistfully over his passing. Try "Time in a Bottle" or "Operator."

Personally, I prefer Cat's "Moonshadow" or "Father and Son" to "Peace Train." I have a fond spot for Cat in my heart because the hot hippie chick who worked at the local record store smiled at me when she rang up my purchase of "Teaser and the Firecat" lo these many years ago. "That's a really great albumn, man" she purred. "Aren't you Not Nick's little brother?" Not Nick gave me five bucks for that one.

You attack the poetry of Harry Chapin by picking on "Taxi"? You really are a moron, aren't you? Had you mentioned "Cats in the Cradle," I would have frothed at the mouth in rage at that song, and agreed with you -- forgetting that "Taxi" is pure genius. "She was going to be an actress, and I was going to learn to fly."

I miss Greedon Lightfoot. He was my favorite sock.

"Cats in the Cradle"??? Damn you, damn you Bob, you vengeful bastard. Now its stuck in my fiucking head. I. Will. Kill. You.

"M'boy, wuz jus like me..." Ah, Dylan Thomas couldn'tve captured the feeling of crusing down the road in your Grand Tourino any better. "Taxi" is the 70s radio equivalent of Don McLean's mean spirited 10 minute assualt on American listeners, "American Pie." Disregarding the fact that Buddy Holly is perhaps one of the most overrated artists of all time, McLean decided to explain to us to for an excruciating ten minutes why Holly's passing was so important. Obviously, it really affected Don. Too bad the rest of humanity didn't give a shit. No, the music didn't die. At least in Taxi's cycle (which might as well be as long as Wagner's the Ring cycle after minute 6), somebody gets stoned and runs into a hottie he used to nail.

I'll give you Father and Son. Its actually a very poignnat song. In fairness to Yusuf, he did have the gift of brevity and imagery in his songs, unlike Chapin, who explained - thus robbing all the soul he could ever hope to infuse in his music - every stitch of every interaction between his characters like faulkner writing an appellate brief to music. But I'll give him 30,000 Lbs of Bananas - I think its amusing. Even if it cruelly trivializes the death of a hapless migrant truck driver. But that was Harry. Spontaneous son of bitch that he was...

When i have a son, I plan to listen to Cats in the Cradle while I rock him to bed. Then I'll coolly step out onto the patio and shoot myself for the betterment of humanity.

[Aloha Mr. Learned Hand]

Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
The People For the American Way Foundation monitoring polling places...

That's nice and all as far as I'm concerned, but one of the cities this well-known ultra-liberal group "targets" as a site for monitoring due to disproportionate "disenfranchising" is Chicago? Puh-lease.

Who's going to "disenfranchise" them here? The voters are mostly Democrats, the election officials (local, county and state) and judges are almost all Democrats (many polling places have no GOP judges), the cops are mostly Democrats and the court system is almost all Democrats...

For fuck's sake, we don't even disenfranchise the Dead here, why would we do it to the Living?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Sidd Finch
Ty, if you are going to lecture me then you ought to at least firm up the point that you made, and on which we disagreed. I didn't say the FBI had finally established some brilliant method of determining who was funding terrorists. I said that Cat was deported, I believed, because of his donations to charities that support (yes, I should have said "are believed to support") terrorists, and not because of his position on Rushdie, as you suggested.

Nothing you say suggests that he was barred because of what he said about the fatwa against Rushdie. You agree that it was because of donations. You (appropriately) question whether that is too broad a net, but that's different than saying it was because of what he said about Rushdie.

The Cobourn (sp?) point wasn't directed at you, FWIW. Nor did I think you necessarily disagreed with me re donations, but your post was the springboard for mine. Maybe he gave money to bad people in order to fund them to do bad things, but maybe he gave money with the best of intentions to an apparently legitimate charity, without any knowledge of what they later did with it.

Plus, he did bring it on himself. Anyone who could walk away from that kind of talent should be beaten with sticks. I bet he's not even allowed to watch Harold & Maude, for god's sake.

Was he really talented, or just a one-hit wonder? I won't pretend to know.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
When was he ever? He was born and raised in London by Cypriot and Swedish parents.

Oops. Nailed for my ignorance about Cat Stevens. I thought he had U.S. citizenship and relinquished it, but maybe I'm thinking of someone else.

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
What group did he give money to? What did they do with it? What did he know ex ante?

Hamas.

Ty, you would want the government to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he was a threat before they could keep him out. While that may be the standard for convicting someone of a crime and taking away their liberty, that is not the standard to be applied to keep suspect foreigners out of our country. A foreigner has no right to enter our country. It is a privilege we extend to them. We can stop extending it at any time and for any reason we wish. A foreigner doesn't have a constitutional right to enter this country and doesn't have a constitutional right to due process on that decision.

Now once they are already in this country, I agree, the situation is different. They do have some rights. But not before they enter.

[Not Me]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
When was he ever? He was born and raised in London by Cypriot and Swedish parents.

I take back whatever good things I have said in the past about the Swedes.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Not Me
Hamas.

Cite, please, you shit-making-up troll.

Ty, you would want the government to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he was a threat before they could keep him out. While that may be the standard for convicting someone of a crime and taking away their liberty, that is not the standard to be applied to keep suspect foreigners out of our country. A foreigner has no right to enter our country. It is a privilege we extend to them. We can stop extending it at any time and for any reason we wish. A foreigner doesn't have a constitutional right to enter this country and doesn't have a constitutional right to due process on that decision.

I certainly didn't say that the government should meet the same evidentiary burden to exclude an foreigner as a jury would require to convict -- I just pointed out that the standard that the government is applying in these means that they may not even know or think that Stevens intended to give money for the wrong reasons. Whatever the foreigners' rights or lack thereof, it's a drag for us citizens who can't be visited by foreigners. For example, I got to send back my tickets to see Cubanismo at Zellerbach Hall this year after they had trouble getting into the country. Maybe some people like Cat Stevens' music as much as I like Cubanism. This is your cue to go off again about how Muslims are the problem, not Cubans.

[ilikenewsocks]

Originally posted by Not Me
I take back whatever good things I have said in the past about the Swedes.

And the Norwegians probably aren't on your Ramadan card list ever since the bastards gave Arafat the Nobel Peace Prize, right?

[ilikenewsocks]

Bowing to a barrage of complaints from Jewish groups, retail leader Wal-Mart Inc. has stopped selling "The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion," an infamous anti-Semitic tract long exposed as fake.

I'm too lazy to google if Mein Kampf is still available.

[Aloha Mr. Learned Hand]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Cite, please, you shit-making-up troll.

Actually Ty, check any story on Yahoo! news on this and they cite "suspicions" of funding Hamas and Sheik Rahman's organization (whatever it's called) as the reason he was on the watch list and was denied entry to Israel in 2000. I can't say that he did this or not, or whether the alleged funding was direct or indirect, but that is the cited reason for whatever its worth.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Aloha Mr. Learned Hand
Actually Ty, check any story on Yahoo! news on this and they cite "suspicions" of funding Hamas and Sheik Rahman's organization (whatever it's called) as the reason he was on the watch list and was denied entry to Israel in 2000. I can't say that he did this or not, or whether the alleged funding was direct or indirect, but that is the cited reason for whatever its worth.

The significance of the distinction between whether his money went to the directly or indirectly, and with or without his knowledge, was the whole point of my prior posts. I'll wager that he didn't send money directly to Hamas, but I've already demonstrated how little I know about Cat Stevens.

[Gattigap]

Today the RNC acknowledged that they did run the "Liberals will ban your Bible" mailer in Arkansas and W. Va.

Despite its idiocy, GOPers hoped to mobilize the Christian Soldiers to go to the polls to keep gays from burning their Revised King Jameses.

Unfortunately for Bush, it may not be having the effect that it wanted in flyover country.

• But as the appeals become public, they also risk alienating moderate and swing voters.
  
  An editorial on Sept. 22 in The Charleston Gazette in West Virginia, for example, asked, "Holy Moley! Who concocts this gibberish?"
  
  "Most Americans see morality more complexly," the editorial said. "Many think a higher morality is found in Christ's command to help the needy, prevent war and pursue other humanitarian goals. Churchgoers of this sort aren't likely to believe childish allegations that Democrats want to ban the Bible."

Even its defenders had a hard time with this one.

• Mr. Parker, of the Interfaith Alliance, said, "I think it is laughable to think that someone could be arrested for reading out loud from the Bible.''
  
  But Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, argued, "We have the First Amendment in this country which should protect churches, but there is no question that this is where some people want to go, that reading from the Bible could be hate speech."
  
  Still, Mr. Land questioned the assertion that Democrats might ban the whole Bible. "I wouldn't say it," he said. "I would think that is probably stretching it a bit far."

"Maybe not the Golden Oldies like Genesis," he added, "but certainly the Liberals are out to get my New Testament and cover them with gay cooties, so we must remain vigilant."

[SlaveNoMore]

Tyrone Slothrop
Oops. Nailed for my ignorance about Cat Stevens. I thought he had U.S. citizenship and relinquished it, but maybe I'm thinking of someone else.

Hey, I guess if we can forbid Cat Islam from entering the US, then Egypt can keep out Madonna for becoming a Jew *

* Next week, China bans her for Shanghai Surprise