Homeland Security explains UAE port contract

Another good one, Shava. You 're keeping everyone informed and I, for one , look forward to more dirt from you.

It's hard to imagine a more arrogant administration than this one. Impossible to parody this crowd. Thanks, Shava

ILWU, according to the link, is the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. Sounds like these Republicans want to have a foreign company control US ports in order to stick it to a labor union.

A few more capers like this and maybe the public will stop trusting the Republicans over the Democrats on national security issues.

Just to clarify (and you can look at the tags and the group this was posted to) this is an Onion style parody. Some friends and I were speculating what the real agenda of Homeland Security and the administration was on this one, and when this giggle came up I had to blog it.

But it is depressing how easy it would be to believe this. And I did find that almost no one today who I asked could identify exactly where the UAE are, what their form of government was, and so on.

It is interesting to note that the UAE are VERY liberal for the region, very modern in thought, relatively. Girls are educated along side of boys. Schools are religiously and racially/ethnically integrated. There is a lot of investment in public infrastructure, technology training (also for girls! they are doing a better job than we are really, in this). My friend Andy Carvin has spent a good bit of time in Dubai and says wonderful things about it. They are, in fact, good allies of the US.

UAE was just formed in 1971. They've got 100 years of oil reserves, at the rate they're pumping. Their per-capita GDP is better than the EU's over all, falling just about the same rank as Sweden.

So in a way, I wonder if it *isn't* racial/ethnic/relgious profiling to consider that they'd be a risk. I mean, would we consider a Bosnian company to be a risk? What about an Indian company from some largely Moslem region of India?

Ultimately I think this is disasterous politics, but I wonder how bad a decision it might really be.

Myself, I wonder if the control of ports shouldn't be one of those things that we decide, like infrastructural telecommunications companies, to be an infrastructural resource not subject to foreign ownership.

would someone throw a bunch of bananas at the President already... maybe that would distract him a bit... or give him a blow job so we can impeach him!!

Thanks for the article. What else is the fox up too! The Bush Administration has reached an exciting level of an Imperial Presidency gone astray! Hush, Hush, sweet George, the publics gonna cry!

Funny, I didn't realize this was a parody, except that some of the quotes attributed to Chertoff seemed a bit too frank to be real.

I will probably never be a good standup comedian, since my humor comes dessicated.

That's OK. I have the same trouble sometimes with Al Franken. He reports on actual events, and his facts are well-researched, but sometimes he's making a joke, and he says it with the same deadpan reporting voice, and it takes a moment.