The Port Thing

America, if you don't find this hilarious, I just don't know how to talk to you. For the last five years, this administration has argued that we can do whatever the fuck we want, world opinion be damned--torture people, make them disappear into secret prisons never to be heard from again, listen in on the phone conversations of US citizens without warrants, etc.--as long as it keeps America safe, or, frankly, gives the appearance of keeping America safe. Then, yesterday, the President was all like "Well, we can't just be running around telling the United Arab Emirates that they can't run our ports just because it's an Arab country. It wouldn't look right. What kind of message would that be sending the rest of the world?" And then he threatened to veto any legislation that Congress might approve that halted the deal. Yes, the "Tough on Terror" President is going to side with an Arab country against the US Congress. You can almost hear the Democratic leadership wetting itself with glee. Time and time again the Democrats have been handed political gold only to turn it into lead. But finally, here comes a political opportunity so easy that even they cannot fuck this up, because Republicans are also on-board. And all this veto talk that was so important yesterday? Well, it doesn't take a seasoned journalist to interpret what this headline means: Bush Didn't Know About Ports Deal. He's going to try to back away from all that tough talk to save some political face. Still, it's pretty funny that something that was so important yesterday that he was going to veto any effort to derail it, is so unimportant today that the President didn't even know about it.