Who's (About To Be) Sorry Now? Maybe everyone who clamored for a US company to take charge of the ports.
Who's it gonna be? a) KBR/Halliburton; b)Jack Abramoff(?!?); c) John Gotti Jr.; or d) Tony Soprano?
Let's connect some dots, shall we?
Dubai backs out of the ports deal...and everyone hopes it tip-toes away quietly. (Boston.com here) "A Dubai company's decision to transfer to a U.S. entity operation of U.S. ports should defuse the controversy, the White House said on Thursday." But not without some spicy racism language and "it sends a bad message" (Yahoo here)
Uh, no...what sends a bad message it that we're supposedly putting billions of dollars into security via the BSRs (Big Spending Republicans). So why are the ports so messed up? And the borders? IS the GOP serious about security or merely hoping to maintain a culture of fear in order to feed it's spending addiction?
Name (1) American-run-operated-owned-whatever global ports management company...(Daily News here) "Congress may want American companies to operate the U.S. ports that Dubai has agreed to unload, but good luck finding them." Oh really? (Sneaky, crooked) Halliburton / KBR comes to mind.
Cheney's very odd choice of remarks as he quotes a "leader in Lebanon". "The "leader in Lebanon" whose analysis Cheney apparently trusts is Walid Jumblatt, a racist anti-Semite who has celebrated the deaths of U.S. soldiers and referred to Condoleezza Rice as "oil-colored." (Think Progress here)
Jack In The House Redux - more in a long series of delicious Gotcha! politics "The chief of an Indian tribe represented by the lobbyist Jack Abramoff was admitted to a meeting with President Bush in 2001 days after the tribe paid a prominent conservative lobbying group $25,000 at Mr. Abramoff's direction, according to documents and interviews." (here) Looove the PIMP MY RIDE piece from Wonkette (here). Jack Abramoff: The true gangsta gift that keeps on giving.
The Middle East According to Putin (MSNBC here) "What is Putin's game? On the most simple level, Kremlin analysts say, he sees himself picking up the pieces of a failed foreign policy led by Bush, whose confrontation with Iraq has come to grief, whose approach to Iran is all but stalemated and whose democracy project in the Mideast has empowered Islamists." Russia wants and needs the Iranian oil (as do we and the EU, don't kid yourself). Is Russia going to come out the peacemaker between Iran and the US?Halliburton in Iran - hey, wait a minute! Isn't this part of the axis of evil and the guys Bush says need to be stopped from developing nuclear stuff? - (from 2/16/06 Newsweek ) "Halliburton's new deal, in which it will participate in a $308 million project to develop Iran's huge South Pars natural gas fields, was not at first publicly announced by the company. " more: "Halliburton's new Iran contract, moreover, appears to suggest a far closer connection with the country's hard-line government than the firm has ever acknowledged." Halliburton. Seems like they're everywhere, doesn't it?
John Gotti Jr. - Free At Last "Gambino crime family scion John A. "Junior" Gotti dodged a legal bullet for the second time in eight months Friday when a federal jury deadlocked on racketeering charges against him, leading to a mistrial. " (Yahoo here) Didn't the mob run the docks / ports for years and years? Maybe they still do....
New Sopranos Season begins Sunday (review Weekly Standard here). Can't wait, and, hey, Tony may be the best choice among all these clowns, no?
Finally, " D.P. World statement says, they're not saying that they are selling them. They are simply saying that they are transferring them. So, that could very well mean that they could create a legal entity that is based in the United States, that has American managers, and even an American board of directors, but could still be effectively controlled by -- by Dubai." (from PBS Newshour yesterday)
Who's Sorry Now? You decide.
