Dude, you COMPLETELY ripped off my final “incidentally…” para. I am FORCED to create a self-consciously silly rejoinder with some kind of online comic creation engine.

On a more serious note, it’s “toe the line”.

I couldn’t resist and followed the linky. Now I must bathe in Listerine for the rest of the night.

Rush, Hannity and Assrocket never deviate from dear leader’s course.

Tweety- I apologize and I give you full credit.

I love you, man

Awww..!

Hey, hey, hey! We don’t do gay stuff on this blog!

Except when we do. Which is all the time.

Never mind.

Awwww..!!

Brad, it’s getting late and you need to relax. Why don’t you start in on that case of Steele Reserve. All the cool kids are doing it!

Ick. I’m actually really, really, really stressed out right now. My posts have gotten a lot shorter recently, if you haven’t noticed 🙂 Making fun of Hindrocket is just a way of blowing off steam.

Take a jog or three around the block and then down a couple of SR’s that’ll help you relax.

Not to get all gay on you or nothing but your posts are awesome as always.

Not to get all gay on you or nothing but your posts are awesome as always.
Seconded.

If I lived in America, I’d be really concerned about a deal like this. People in the security community pretty much concur that the most likely place that a nuke or other weaps can come into the country is ports, and these countries have some pretty unsettling proximity to terroristic groups.
I realize that this might seem a little racist, especially when I argue against racial profiling, but putting the UAE in charge of port operations seems to just give terrorists a chance to find a way to work around any existing port security (which is again, minimal).
Then again, I’m certainly no expert on the matter, any other learned SN!ers want to weigh in???

It’s amazing that the true believers/wingers are portraying this as a race issue when they’ve been playing that card in an underhanded way for the last 300+ years now.

To me it’s simply a matter of whether the deal received the proper scrutiny and oversight. Not just for security related issues but also to make sure that the financial aspects of the deal are on the up and up. From what I’ve read the Bushbags did not go through the legally mandated 45-day review process. That and their history of incompetence and cronyism give me pause.

Dang! Firedoglake is now saying that the 45-day review process may not have been required! But it sounds like the bushwagons skipped over quite a few other requirements.

http://firedoglake.blogspot.com/2006_02_19_firedoglake_archive.html#114066664157650875

Gregor! Dude! Where have you been, man? Um, not to get all “gay” on ya….

I realize that this might seem a little racist, especially when I argue against racial profiling,

Well, the UAE is a foreign government. I don’t think it’s a matter of race at all, but one of making deals with a shady, royalist oligarchy with close ties to the very people who we most need to keep out of our ports….

I think I’m more alarmed than Brad is, but I also live about five miles from Port Elizabeth, which is where the nasties would come in if there were another attack on New York. ..

I gotta agree with Gavin on this. But my other objection is that Bush has essentially called bullshit on his own “Security Is The Only Thing!” attitude that he’s been using to skirt laws and demonize opponents.
If this doesn’t seem even a little hinky, then nothing else should either. We’ve been using “guilt by association” for a while now, and if security is no longer the Bush administration’s top priority, to the point where they will “err on the side of safety”, then we need to hold them to that.

If there are higher priorities than security, then there are, and Bush doesn’t get to go around shouting “War president!” anymore when someone wants to start a debate on something he’s doing.

This is just more evidence that they *aren’t* taking this whole “terrorist threat” seriously–they’re using it as a cynical political ploy to attack their enemies and dissenters.
And that needs to be at least part of the story.

Learned SN readers, HAHAHA good one.

Well, after all, you’d have to be foolish to question “a man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius”, wouldn’t you?

Marq, I was in the long thread for a while and also in Ethiopia for a month or so (both true)!

I think this boil up over the ports is xenophobic and reactionary for various reasons.

However, I’m not the type to piss my pants every time an Arab steps onto an airplane. AssRocket and Rush make a living castigating Muslims and Arabs, for them to suddenly turn into rational human beings because the Presnit said its ok is a testament to their cretinism.

The fact that Bush says he didn’t know about the deal until it was done sends off red flags. Either he’s trying to wash his hands of this, or he’s really, really incompetent, or both. Probably both.

so the Rocket is quoting from an “email from the administration”??? what is that about? and why couldn’t he post the actual email, if it was real. I suspect he just made it up. But if not, now we know how he gets his opinions.

Personally I don’t think foreign owned companies (any) should be in control of US ports. This goes doubly for companies that are state owned…

Now do I think there is a higher chance of some device coming through a port if the UAE is in charge then if a company based in a European country? No, I don’t.

The fact is our port security sucks no matter who is ‘managing’ the port. We ‘inspect’ less than 5% of all containers entering the country, which isn’t even a full in depth inspection each time).

So no matter who is the manager of a given port, the chance of someone smuggling in materials to kill americans is the same. We are screwed, not because of the parent company running the port, but because we secure our ports much like we secure or chemical plants, cursory at best….

Of course any chance to watch wingnuts attack the admin. is a good thing……….

Aside from the various ties to 9/11 in regards to the UAE, there’s this disturbing bit about the Hariri assassination. Not good.

I finally figured out what this all reminds me of. The whole witch hunt thing, where some dumbass starts the ball rolling, and soon everyone’s accusing everyone of being a witch (or in this case a terrorist), and then suddenly someone accuses the governor’s wife (or the president’s foreign pals as it were), and the governor, who had been ignoring/swept up in/exploiting the whole thing, suddenly discovers sweet, sweet reason and demands people settle down and stop being crazy.

The worst part is, after saving his wife, the governor is *still* going to point at some other poor crazy woman with a cat next week and say she’s a witch.

David Brooks is still drinking the Kool-Aid™, too.

(Commenter’s Note: I wish I could find an online verion of this that wasn’t behind the NYT paywall. It was in the dead-trees version of the Austin American-Statesman, but not in the online version.)