Have We All Been Living in the Same Country as the Bush Administration for the Last 5 Years?

I can't believe that the Bush Administration was willing to go to the mat for Dubai Ports World. In what alternate dimension was this going to be acceptable to the American public?

With as hard as the White House is sticking to the United Arab Emirates company taking over the 6 major U.S. ports, I wonder which Administration crony stands to profit.

SIDEBAR: Quietly, the information that it is more than 6 American ports who would be under the control of this company. How many would it be? Try 21.

This has to be about the Benjamins. Only money could make intelligent people think something this stupid is a good idea.

SIDEBAR: Oh and now that the firestorm of public debate is rising, the Bush Administration and Dubai Ports World have agreed to delay the finalization of the takeover.

Wonder how long they are going to wait for the American public to look somewhere else before they finish this deal?

And the Administration sent Condoleeza Rice to the UAE to sooth their feelings about the deal being talked down by the American public and the Congress. That could be damaging to her future political aspirations. We don't need future potential Presidential candidates kissing ass in the Middle East...bad enough that they do it to lobbyists here in the States.

SIDEBAR: I really hope that Condolezza becomes the NFL's next commissioner. Better job. Better benefits.

HA! Now there is a potential poll in there somewhere.

Oh geez...a couple of weeks before the ports deal became public the UAE company, Dubai Ports World, who wanted to take over the 21 U.S. ports, donated $100 million dollars to Katrina relief...uh huh.

Bush finally managed to do what he promised in his first Presidential election campaign. He promised to reach across the aisle in Congress and bring both sides together. Well, it worked. Both Republicans and Democrats hate this deal. Good work, George.

A Chinese daily paper is reporting that there was a "secret" deal between the Bush Administration and the state-owned UAE firm Dubai Ports World which would have allowed the company to take over the ports while sharing intelligence and cooperating with U.S. investigations.

Now, I can't speak to the veracity of the report in the Chinese paper...but isn't it exactly what we suspected when we first heard this story breaking.

Sigh...the India Economic Times confirmed the story above from the Chinese paper.

The New York Times threw down some facts and figures related to the burgeoning controversy regarding the Ports deal.

A lot of ink and screen time are being allocated to this story and, rightly, so. This is a big story. No freaking way should major points of egress to the United States be under the control of countries that harbor terrorists who want to kill Americans. No way. No how. Uh uhh.

And, of course, the spectre of racism is being used as a reason for why Americans are opposed to the Ports deal. Nope...it has to do with a nation/region of the world where evil organizations are operating and who want to destroy our lives and our people.

This quote from the above article makes the pucker factor rise:

Politicians have raised concerns that some of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers used the United Arab Emirates as an operational and financial base. And critics contend the UAE was an important transfer point for shipments of smuggled nuclear components sent to Iran, North Korea and Libya by a Pakistani scientist.

The resistance of the American people to this deal has less to do with racism and more to do with words like September 11th, the UAE as operational and financial base, nuclear components, Iran, North Korea, and Libya.

And the UPN Daily Buzz just pointed out another important fact. The UAE is one of the few countries in the world who recognize...the Taliban. You remember them, right? They were the bad guys in Afghanistan.

The deeper we dig into this stuff, the worse it seems as a business deal.