Idiot wind, blowing like a circle around my skull,
From the Grand Coulee Dam to the Capitol.
Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your teeth,
You’re an idiot, babe.
It’s a wonder that you still know how to breathe.–Bob Dylan, Idiot Wind
What is it about politics in South Carolina? They send some of the goofiest Republican wingnuts to Congress and do so without any shame or sense of embarrassment. There’s Sen. Jim DeMint, holder of some of the most extreme views in the U.S. senate and ranked by National Journal as the most conservative member of that body. Then there’s dufus Joe Wilson, who had the bad manners to shout out that the president of the United States was a liar during the State of the Union address, a low to which the House has never sunk in Congressional history. The state was also represented in the U.S. senate by Strom Thurmond who, while championing white rights managed to sire a child with his African-American ‘hired help.’ Citizens were so happy with Strom’s representation that they retained him as their senator till he was about 130 years old. Did they not care that their state was represented by someone who was practically embalmed?
And let’s not forget that native son Lothario, Gov. Mark Sanford who decided it would be a great idea before running for president to carry on an affair with an Argentine TV newscaster. After exposure of his philandering, the Republican-dominated legislature didn’t even think Sanford had done enough wrong to warrant impeachment. Nevertheless, in a family values state like South Carolina, Sanford’s political goose is cooked. Which opens the door for yet more wingnut Republicans to enter.
So now we have Congressmember Gresham Barrett proposing, I hope as a campaign stunt, that the U.S. expel all Iranian visa holders from these shores. The Stop Terrorist Entry Act, would not only prevent any Iranian from entering the country, it would criminalize as terrorist those who are current legal visa holders.
Trita Parsi notes what the U.S. would’ve lost had it implemented Cong. Barrett’s crackerjack legislative proposal years ago as it should have:
…Such important and inspiring figures as Christiane Amanpour, tennis great Andre Agassi, and eBay founder Pierre Omidyar would have never called the United States home, nor would the United States benefit from the innumerable contributions to medicine, engineering, science, and academia that Iranian-Americans made in the last half-century.
One of these, Prof. Muhammad Sahimi keynoted the Iran-Israel conference I organized last month at Town Hall here. Sahimi is one of the nation’s foremost experts on the Iranian nuclear program and a noted opponent of the current clerical regime. Besides, if the professor were expelled back to Iran he’d likely be imprisoned by the authorities, who killed one of his brother after the 1979 Revolution because he treated a wounded student organizer opposed to the government.
Congressman Barrett, have you forgotten that one of the premises of this country as espoused by Emma Lazarus in the poem that graces the Statue of Liberty is that we are the Golden Door opening our arms to embrace the oppressed, the enslaved and those who need a home and are seeking liberty because they have lost theirs in their old home?
Many Iranian-Americans came to this country to escape repression at home. We left the country we called home in search of a better, more secure future free from social, political, and religious repression. In the years that have ensued, we have established ourselves and our families in communities across the country and built new connections between Iranians and Americans.
In his attempt to protect America, Barrett adopts tactics that are about as un-American as they come:
Your proposal discriminates against individuals who are in this country legally, based on nothing more than their family’s place of origin. Instead of celebrating the opportunity to inspire a new generation of world leaders and to imbue them with positive feelings toward the United States, your bill would label entire groups of people terrorists based on their nationality and have them summarily deported.It can’t get more un-American than that.
Barrett claims he is introducing his bill in response to the Fort Hood shooting and Detroit terror attack. But the fact is that no Iranian has been implicated in these incidents and the Iranian regime has never been implicated in any attack on these shores. Furthermore, his legislation could not have stopped the attacks by the U.S. Army major or Nigerian since it would not have affected them. Talk about grandstanding for the home crowd. If this is what it takes to get elected governor of South Carolina it’s a wonder the only people who would want to job are of Barrett’s ilk.
I’m sorry to generalize about South Carolina. There are probably some wonderful residents like Cong. Jim Clyburn, who championed Barack Obama’s candidacy. But God, what these fine people are being asked to put up with to have to share a state with ’em!
Oppose the Barrett punitive legislation by signing the NIAC petition.
Senator Barrett reminds me of our Gov’ner down heah in Jawga by the name of Sonny sump’in or other. Back during the the long ‘dry spell’, he held a public prayer vigil asking the big guy upstairs to send some rain our way. At first, it didn’t seem to help. But some months later we had so much rain that floods destroyed a lot of homes in the ‘lanta suburbs. Then ol’ Sonny what’s his name went a beggin’ to the Fed’ral Gov’ment (cause’n the state was plumb broke) for money to help people rebuild (probably in the very same flood plains). “And so it goes.”
P.S. Next time I think a ‘rain dance’ might be more prudent. After all, much of Georgia was originally part of the Cherokee nation. Although the Cherokee nation was recognized by the Supreme Court and had its own territory with distinct boundaries, President Andrew Jackson openly defied the decision and told the state of Georgia to “light a fire under [the Cherokees]. They’ll move.”
“John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it! … Build a fire under them. When it gets hot enough, they’ll go.” -Andrew Jackson, 1832, The Trail of Tears Across Missouri
My hair dresser is an Iranian. Nobody messes with my hair dresser. If they try, they will be beyond sorry.
I didn’t mention there are other Arab nationalities in danger of expulsion through this legislation including Yemeni, Syrian & several others. So I hope you are not included in any of these otherwise I may have to find immigration lawyers for you & your hairdresser!
I can see the blog campaign now: “Nobody messes with our Shirin!!”
If they deport `Ali, I’m going wherever he goes! You just don’t separate a lady and her hairdresser like that!
I want an Iranian hair dresser…
By the way, just saw a great Lebanese-French film the other night (very close to a documentary, really) called ‘Sous les Bombes’ about a Shiite Lebanese mother who goes looking for her very young son in the south of the country after the awful bomb devastation wrought by Israel in the summer of 2006. It’s an excellent powerful film, really shook me up, y’all should see it if you haven’t.
You really see how much of the country’s infrastructure and built environment was destroyed, not to mention lives destroyed (vast majority civilian).
I’ll share – IF you can afford him. :o}
I suspect that this bill will be dismissed rapidly in committee, though the fact that it actually came up at all is embarrassing enough. Someone needs to tell Congressman Barrett that not only do virtually no Iranian-Americans support terrorism, very, very few of them support the current regime in Iran.
Many of them are, to the best of my knowledge, either Iranian immigrants who came to the US after the clerical regime in Iran took power (some of them close to the Shah’s government), or their descendants.
Jackson was quite vile and corrupt on the issue of native Americans and their land, including long before he became President. His only real saving graces as a President (which partially help make up for his corruption, his introduction of the accursed “spoils system” (which set back the development of a truly professional civil service in the United States for decades), his terrible economic policies in his second term, his destruction of the National Bank, and, of course, his actions towards the native Americans) were that he heavily promoted universal suffrage (for men) regardless of property ownership, and that he suppressed South Carolina in the “Nullification” crisis. He also threatened to hang John C. Calhoun, which would have been a tragedy for Calhoun but likely a benefit for humanity.
That was VERY funny!
:Richard: the bad manners to shout out that the president of the United States was a liar during the State of the Union address, a low to which the House has never sunk in Congressional history”
Isn’t the State of the Union address a yearly thing? not every time the president come and talk to the legislature, no? and bad manners? so when your congress was debating how to put fire under the Cherokees it was “mannered”?
I was under the impression that Andre Agassi is, like Kiano Reeves, of Lebanese descent.
“Andrew: Someone needs to tell Congressman Barrett that not only do virtually no Iranian-Americans support terrorism, very, very few of them support the current regime in Iran.”
IF Iranian visa holders support the current regime you support deporting them? the very, very few of them? does NMH support terrorism?.
Rafi, are you really that big an idiot, or are you just pretending?
Didn’t like my riddler style? i’ll try the numbers way.
1. It wasn’t the State of the Union address, i think.
2. If you think some bozo calling potus a liar is “a low to which the House has never sunk in Congressional history” you are either hyperboling or ridiculous, dagesh on history, this is a tough business.
3. Giving a list of succesful Iranians-Americans is great for moral, in a Jews-Nobel kind of way, but it is irrelevent, Amenpour and Agassi are citizens, i think.
4. Talking about a “bundle” of Iranians visa holders who support “terrorism” or the regime also can leads to silly arguments like “the onus is on the good part of the group to take care of the bad, the bad apples”, it should be government-controlled and on a case by case basis, not giving visas in the first place when need be.
5. I read that MP Galloway is persona non grata in Egypt, he doesn’t support the regime.
It’s not your “riddler style” that makes you sound like an idiot.
It wasn’t the State of the Union but rather an address to Congress on the economic crisis I believe.
I’d appreciate it if you tried not to maul the English lang. Do pls. find another incident in which a member of Congress shouted that a president was a liar during an address to Congress. If you can’t then I’m afraid you are the one who is ridiculous.
But they weren’t always. And under this legislation they would’ve been deported before they became citizens.
No, that’s not what I meant. My criticism was of the so-called “justification” of the bill, which seemed to be based on an entirely wrong conception of Iranian-Americans as somehow being a “terrorist threat” (hence the bill title, the “Stop Terrorist Entry Act”). I pointed out that this is not the case.
“What is it about politics in South Carolina?”
I hope your opening words, Richard, aren’t merely rhetorical. The place should be discussed and analyzed like one of those formaldehyde-soaked frogs we used to dissect in junior high school. I’m not certain whether this progenitor of malevolent morons and maniacs would be number one or two on my list of states I seriously wish would secede for the good of the vast majority in this country. What a miserable lot of word-vomiting churls, trigger-happy (think Civil War) fools, racists, and often sadly living proof that evolution does not always work properly. Good God, for how long – a century or so? – did they continue to send to the U.S. Senate that mummified embarrassment, Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond, beloved of Trent Lott and who, among his other contributions to society, secretly impregnated a young black woman? Who know, maybe the Likud Party originated in South Carolina. After all, any old petri dish will do when you’re trying to cultivate a dangerous political toxin not devoid of religious ramifications.
are we as free to blast away at Howard Berman, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the late Tom Lantos, Gary Ackerman, Chuck Shuman, all of whom have, and are, leading the economic equivalent of targeting Iranians for no legitimate purpose?
Why not? Don’t even get me started on Tom Lantos. I have no problem speaking as ill of him dead as I did when he was alive. He didn’t become a decent human being by dying.
I never liked Lantos’ politics & prob. wouldn’t have liked him as a human being or Jew either. But I think anyone who survived the Holocaust deserves a modicum of respect even if his later politics were repulsive. Plus dying of cancer has got to be a tough way to go.
I might feel compassion for his suffering as a human being, but that does not require me to pretend he was a decent person, or to respect what he stood for either while he lived or after his death, regardless of what he went through in life, or how he died. In fact, if I believed in such things, which I do not, I might consider that whatever he suffered in his life and the manner of his death to be justice for the massive human suffering he happily supported and encouraged as a member of the United States Congress.
Deporting people on the basis of where they come from is plain wrong. One cannot change place of birth. On the other hand, deporting Muslims makes sense, since they can always stop being Muslim. Indeed, if we change Iranian to Muslim then I believe we cover every single instance you brought up, such as the U.S. Army major, the Nigerian, etc.
Certainly if 19 religious Jews were involved in 9/11 and in 14,000 other attacks since then throughout the world as Muslims have been, and a major tenet of their faith was the Judaization of the whole world, then I certainly would be in favor of legislation banning any more religious Jews from coming in, and deporting those we already have. I say this as a Jew.
99.99999999% of Muslims are not terrorists, however, if they are faithful to their God, then by Jihad (peaceful or otherwise) they are required to turn whatever dar al-Harb they are in, into a dar al-Islam.
Right about here was when I stopped reading & realized it was you who weren’t making any sense and, in fact, were quite daft. Deporting Muslims? On what basis? That they all eat Christian babies for breakfast & rape women & force conversions on infidels???
You’ve violated so many of my comment rules I’m not even gonna give you another chance. And I don’t have the energy or interest in pointing them all out as I would usually do. You’re banned.
I’ve never heard anyone accuse Muslims of eating Christian babies and certainly none do for the simple fact that it is not mentioned in the Quran. The other things you mentioned, raping women and forced conversion only apply to a small number of Muslims, certainly not the vast majority.
No, the reason to deport Muslims, is because in every country that they have so far come to, they not only do not assimilate, they demand that their host country accommodate their religious views of the world. Switzerland is banning minarets, France is banning the veil, soon Europe will be banning any further Muslim immigration.
Now these are things that rational men can argue over. But banning me without engaging in at least a few conversations with me? Smacks of intellectual poverty.
You’re a disgusting Jewish racist & make me sick.
No, they aren’t. You’re a racist which ipso facto means you are not rational. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
Your views aren’t “intellectual” but they are poison. I hope you choke on yours.
1. My hairdresser is a Muslim. You can spout whatever evil crap you like about Islam, and Islam will survive just fine, but don’t even THINK about messing with my hairdresser, or I’ll be messing with you big time! When you threaten to separate a lady and her hairdresser, you have stepped over a big red line.
2. “if…a major tenet of their faith was the Judaization of the whole world” “by Jihad (peaceful or otherwise) they are required to turn whatever dar al-Harb they are in, into a dar al-Islam.” What a shame you have been banned. It would be such fun to cut you up into little, teeny tiny pieces over this bit of utter rubbish. Just for the record, jihad, whether in the sense of holy war, and even moreso in the sense of the greater, personal jihad, has nothing whatsoever to do with the Islamization of anything, let alone the whole world.
But mainly, if you value your boy parts, don’t even THINK about messing with my Iranian Muslim hairdresser. IS that clear?
Time will tell who is right.