Johnny Coli

They hate us for our freedoms, so if we don't have any, maybe they'll leave us alone.

Losing a freind out of nowhere is a tough loss, indeed Guff. He sounds like a great guy, and I will hoist one in his honor tonight. Sorry for the loss of your freind, and that family's husband/dad.

So it's totally cool with you that the party that has contol of all three branches of government is passing legislation (or attempting to pass legislation) that helps them in their goal of staying in power? And they're calling it "reform"? And I'm a whiner for pointing out the hypocrisy? Just trying to get a clear picture of what you're trying to say in your eloquent post, Joe.

From the Washington Post... GOP Seeks Curbs On '527' Groups What with all the scandal surrounding Jack Abramoff, and his disclosed ties with members of congress (mostly those in the GOP, but who's counting, right), you'd think the GOP would want to at least pretend that there was some reform in the works. Right? Yeah, right. That was pretty predictable, of course. But this wasn't. So "reform" really means cripple your opponent? Uh huh. We get it, Chris, we get it.

A suit like that goes for big bucks now with the retro set. You could have killed'em on the left coast with a get-up like that.

You still got that suit? That is a thing of beauty.

Very slick, Dean. Very slick.

That Ace dude and his lucky beanie have to go. No-talent hack gettin' by with his looks. I hate him. Once again, Kevin Covais is the closest thing to punk rock this competition has ever seen. No talent. No moves. An absolute black eye on the show. Our fight to bring down corporate rock and roll is in this anti-hero's mighty hands. Simon gets it. He knows how dangerous Covais is. That's why he came out swingin'. But Covais went right back at him in true punk style. The transformation of Kevin Covais into Kevin Co-viscious is almost complete. He is a heroin addiction and a dead girlfriend at the Chelsea Hotel away from immortality. I raise my middle finger to him. Melissa, or as my wife calls her, "The Pig," is done. How do you forget the words to a Stevie Wonder song? Twice!? Unlikable, and should be going home. Soon to be another hit and run at a cheap Hollywood motel. Bucky. Poor, poor, Bucky. I'm almost pulling for him, because he's totally out of his element. He's an underdog, an everyman, a car painter. Unfortunately, the country vote is now split because of Pickler and the merger between the guys and gals. Out of The Saucey Mynx and Bucky, who do you think the NASCAR crowd is going to vote to keep around? Bucky is "The Pig's" only chance of not getting tossed into the alley with the trash. Elliot bombed, but he'll still be able to survive. It's weird, but his family in the cheering section all had exceptional teeth. If Mandisa doesn't get to sing "It's Raining Men" at some point in this competition, I will feel cheated. Anyone want to bet Seacrest is seeing a therapist after spending time down around her sweaty ankles? You're a better man than me, Ryan (shudder). Pickler also bombed, but in true AI style, they have Seacrest do a freaking interview with her to rehabilitate her image with the voters. The fix is in, people. My wife is convinced that Taylor Hicks is gay. Just an FYI. We're liberals. We know what we're talking about. Paris, Lisa Tucker and her hot mom, and Katherine McFunbags are all safe. Daughtry. Wow. To tell you the truth, this guy should quit the competition right now while his stock is so high...come out early and declare eligability for the draft. Seriously, why does this guy need to be AI#5? Look at what that Bice guy from last year is doing. That song he did last week was atrocious. Chris, get the hell out now. You are way to good for this nonsense. By good, I mean talent, of course. I'm almost certain that I will hate the musical genre you will end up in. The Pig goes tonight. Bucky goes if the NASCAR fans abandon him for the Saucey Minx. They will toy with Co-visciuos all night, though. Just pack all that hate away, little buddy. Save that hate....

And the prosecution is looking to trump him in that regards... Half a case I'm thinking this is pretty much the definition of witness tampering... There's actually much, much more, but I'd have to quote the entire article. How this is not a mistrial is outside my understanding of court procedure...but I don't see how you could blow this even more if you just had all the witnesses lie? ScotusBlog has some analysis...Setback for U.S. on Moussaoui As an aside for a possible seperate discussion...What does this "win at all costs, rights be damned" say about the death penalty in the US in general (taking Moussaoui out of the equation)?

Ned Lamont announced his candidacy for Lieberman's seat...Today's Hartford Courant His candidacy to unseat Lieberman for the Dem nomination is a total longshot. That being said, a strong showing in the primaries could send a significant message to GOP Joe that his cuddling up to this administration won't be tolerated. Responding to a criticism of negative campaigning leveled by the Lieberman camp (interesting that they would even respond to a total unknown who just announced his candidacy...hmmm...), is Tom Swan: That's a great line.

I’ve scoured the internet for the direct quote that G-Bib has in the initial post, but can’t seem to find the hypocritical racist democrat that made that statement. Let’s just continue to level the charges of racism and xenophobia only at the Dems, even though they don’t have control over either the House or the Senate or any committees, and even though it was the GOP leadership that ultimately sank the deal.

Sending an outline of the opening statement and a commentary on witness testimony to seven future witnesses doesn't sound like an accident to me....MSNBC updated link

Good. Get them all on the record, especially the Dems who are up for re-election. This means you, Joe Lieberman...MSNBC So, Joe, you'd rather coordinate the ransacking of the constitution with this administration, rather than actually take them to task for breaking the law? There's already a "critically important program" in place to help fight terrorism...it's called FISA. You know, the one the Bush administration didn't feel was good enough and decided to maneuver around without telling anyone...the law that they admitted they ignored. Get them on the record now, during the primaries. Keep it in the headlines. Vote the enablers out of office.

Like I said, I wasn't commenting on the merits of the statement. I was just trying to see where they were coming from.

Without getting into whether or not the view is baseless or has merit, I believe that statement means that the deal would have seemed more palatable had the company simply been owned by a foreign entity, and not an actual foreign government. I can see the distinction. It's like the difference between a palestinian owning the company vs. a company owned by the PLO....individual vs. nation-state. EDIT: The PLO is probably not a great example, but you get my meaning.

Two groups just filed summary judgement motions...SCOTUSblog

I like how they let them thank their "fans"...you know, all those fans that didn't vote for them.

Words versus deeds, Mr. Candidate. Of course he didn't say "All arabs are terrorists." But, you can't tell me that the anti-terrorism policies of this administration, and their fast-and-loose interpretation of civil liberties doesn't have an impact on the perception of the populace at large when the people predominantly singled out by those policies are arabs. You can't say "Muslims are our friends!", then round them up by the hundreds on questionable INS violations, detain them for no reason then say "sorry, won't happen again, they're really our good buddies, please don't burn down their convenient store." Here's the report on law enforcement practices in NY after 9-11, via the US Commision on Civil Rights. March 2004 report From the executive summary: Here's more from the main body of the report: Whether stated or not, there was a single group that was predominantly viewed as suspect post-9-11. That group was/is people of arabic descent. It's pretty powerfull to see a group of men taken away. The less tolerant members of society tend to think "guilty" when seeing someone led away by the FBI. For clarification, my history on this board should be pretty rock-solid with respect to racism and xenophobia. I am not condoning what congress did, for whatever their reasons were for doing it. The Monkey is free to think it is completely due to racism. That's his view. I'm merely pointing out that, if that is your view, and there is in fact a strong undercurrent of xenophobia in the US with respect to arabs, a lot of that sentiment can be attributed to how the Bush administration reacted in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks. Clearly, I do not think it is right, and I am not...repeat not...defending it. I also think that how the administration handled this deal should be held up to some scrutiny as well.

Where am I arguing "against" racism being part of this? You're saying it's the only thing in play. I'm saying it was a part of why the deal got nuked, and it arose through 5-plus years of ramming these views down peoples throats. I find it more ironic that the same administration that argues "for" racially profiling to combat terrorism, are the ones screaming loudest about racism now.

A couple quick questions/points: First, if the US is looking to extend a hand to a ME-based company, shouldn't it pick a company/corporation/whoever that someone would have to perform a superhuman effort to dig up a terrorist link to? The UAE usually pops up pretty quick. There has to be thousands of companies out there with more than 1 degree of seperation from themselves and Hamas or 9-11. Second, the Bushies brought this on themselves. It's been beaten to death that "arab states" support terrorist organizations. Gitmo isn't full of Norwegians. We didn't pre-emptively invade the Portugese. Any moron could have greased the wheels for this deal by floating some good vibes about how great the UAE is. But no. In fact, the major players in the administration got collective amnesia as soon as it hit the airwaves, then gave the laughable response "Trust us." Third, I'm sure there are plenty of companies lined up to make a bid for control of these ports. These guys (the administration) are supposed to be "board-room" guys, and yet they stomp their feet and pound their fists becasue they can't do a deal with this one company. The American people are the stockholders, and they overwhelmingly didn't like this deal. It's not their (the people) job to get all the facts, it's the admin's job to get the facts, and sell it to the stockholders if that's what it takes. They didn't forsee the need, and they didn't do all they could to get the stink off this deal, deserved or otherwise. Blame xenophbia. But there's a hell of a lot more to this than knee-jerk anti-arab sentiment.

Playing devil's advocate here: Who cares? Was this deal really the last item that tipped the scale of hatred? So a deal involving a major company didn't go through? If we're that worried about perception in the ME, isn't there a lot of other things we can be doing? EDIT: Just saw Gbib's post.

They don't read legislation, why would they read your email. You should have mailed it to Santorum with a $100 bill pinned to it. Then he'd at least open it up.

I think you bring up a good point. There will be a certain segment of politicos, after realizing exactly what they have done, that will be looking to lay the blame on someone. It stands to reason that they will erroneously stick it with Schumer and Hillary because they are easy, visible targets. Were they vocal? Absolutely, but no more so than any of the GOP'ers who were stepping over themselves trying to regain their "Party of National Security" standing.

I find it hard to believe that Hillary and Chuck are the sole reason the GOP wouldn't back Bush on this deal. I wasn't aware they had that kind of pull on the other side of the aisle in both the Senate and the House. You don't like the way it went down. Cool. You're entitled to your opinion. But lets stick to the facts. All the vocal opposition from the Dems in the world usually falls on the deaf ears of the majority party. The GOP sank this deal (almost unanimously) to save their asses in November.