… we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. (President Abraham Lincoln)

But … we can damn sure turn it into a casino-lounge venue.

H/T: Free Republic

The Anchoress steers her readers in the direction of this important read: a trenchant, sobering piece by David Warren, published at RealClearPolitics.

An excerpt:

And from a mixture of fear of, and sympathy for, large, recent, Muslim immigrant communities in the West, we confuse domestic and foreign issues. I do not doubt the great majority of Muslims, in Canada and around the world, are decent, “moderate” people, who want no part in a “clash of civilizations”. But it has become obvious they can do nothing to stop the triumph of “Islamism” internationally, or oppose the fanatics proselytizing in their own communities.

Stop now and take the time to read it.

Frank Laughter of Common Sense Junction has his finger on the pulse in terms of the president’s waning popularity and suggests between the lines that George W. Bush’s penchant for insularity and habitual stubborness has caught up with him, both within the GOP’s ranks and across the American heartland.

The president won re-election in 2004 largely on the basis of his leadership in the global war on terror (GWOT), which was cast in stark contrast during the campaign to the ever-vascillating, bumptiously “reporting for duty,” John Kerry. But, George Bush cannot have it both ways. You cannot heighten Americans’ concern about another “9/11″-type strike at our homeland, while at the same time allowing our nation’s borders to remain scandously porous. And I’m not referring here just to our contiguous borders with Canada and Mexico. Our borders also include our east and west coasts, which are made particularly vulnerable by the off-loading at our ports of millions of domestic and foreign shipping containers that are only negligibly inspected (i.e., in the range of just 3% to 5%).

To borrow from the name of Frank Laughter’s blog, it’s all about common sense and Americans possess that in bushel baskets. But an insular president seems to have lost sight of that. He didn’t just threaten the Congress the other day with a veto. In his characteristic swagger, the president threatened to veto Americans’ common sense.

(Continued…)

Two well-regarded, conservative bloggers have received distinctly different forms of flattery for their writing skills.

The Anchoress reports that Bob Owens of Confederate Yankee has been given a guest blogger stint at The Washington Post. That and more: WaPo published an interview of Mr. Owens, as well. Congratulations, Bob!

Meanwhile, Debbie Schlussel expresses outrage in this post over what she contends is an egregious example of plagiarism by Swift Boat author, Jerome Corsi. Sympathies to Debbie!

Do recall that Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) owes his re-election in large part to President Bush, who backed Specter over conservative Republican challenger Pat Toomey.

Some think Senator Specter has shown his appreciation in ably steering the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings for the two Bush nominees to the SCOTUS, John Roberts and Samuel Alito.

I think the payback has come in spades with Specter’s introduction of legislation that , were it to pass, would give the Bush administration (and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce) its much-desired Guest Workers Program on a silver platter and, in the process, debunk what Bush has maintained of late is a GWP sans amnesty for illegals already in this country.

Be vigilant and keep an eye on Specter! And read this!

(Continued…)

Question becomes: are the President of the United States and the Department of Homeland Security Secretary, Michael Chertoff, who were oblivious to the UAE-owned Dubai Ports World deal at the outset, now giving us a portion of the real story or are they still being misled by their staffers?

Why I ask this? Because WorldNewsDaily is now reporting a significant broadening of the scope of the deal that has a foreign government-owned entity assuming operations’ management responsibilities for a number of American ports. Indeed, Jerome R. Corsi reports the following:

Dubai Ports World is scheduled to take over operations at 22 U.S. ports, not six as previously reported by most major media. According to the website of P&O Ports, the port-operations subsidiary of the London-based Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Co. (P&O), DPW will pick up stevedore services at 12 East Coast ports including Portland, Maine; Boston; Davisville, R.I.; New York; Newark; Philadelphia; Camden, N.J.; Wilmington, Del.; Baltimore, Md.; and Virginia locations at Newport News, Norfolk, and Portsmouth.

Corsi continues:

Additionally, DPW will take over P&O stevedoring operations at nine ports along the Gulf of Mexico including the Texas ports of Lake Charles, Beaumont, Port Arthur, Galveston, Houston, Freeport, and Corpus Christi, plus the Louisana ports of Lake Charles and New Orleans.

This, of course, squares with information I cited in my earlier post of today. If we keep pulling on this thread, the president’s suit pants may drop to the floor!

(Continued…)

In a recent post, I tried this historical analogy to make the case that simply because the United Arab Emirates is a trusted ally of the Bush administration in the GWOT they shouldn’t necessarily get a pass in taking over port management operations for six of America’s major ports.

Russia was a critical ally of the United States in World War II and integral to the defeat of Nazi Germany. Would that fact have made Americans comfortable were FDR to have staunchly defended (and with the threat of a presidential veto, no less) a deal “vetted” by his administration (and without his prior knowledge) for a Russian-owned company to take over the management of six critical American ports and during wartime?

Humor me. Let me try another.

What if “the deal” was that a UAE-owned company was about to assume management of the flight training of commercial airline pilots in the United States and the president and federal government high-ups were reassuring Americans that the TSA would continue performing airport security regardless — i.e., that it, not a Dubai-owned company, would continue removing the shoes of elderly women sporting canes and posing serious security risks to the nation?

Just something to think about as center-right polibloggers continue their Olympic-class pirouette’s, turning their “True North” compass bearings in the direction of President Bush’s myopic justification of the Ports’ Deal.

(Continued…)

From World Trade Magazine, I quote an excerpt from this article by Jeremy N. Smith (published March 1, 2005):

Today, Houston takes the vanguard of a thorny new category of American port management: anti-terrorist protection. “Along the fifty-mile Houston Ship Channel, there are more explosive materials, toxic gases, and deadly petrochemicals than anywhere else in the country,” observes the November 2004 Texas Monthly. “Most security experts agree that it’s one of America’s top targets.” Chairman Edmonds concurs, estimating that about half of the nation’s daily gasoline and petrochemical supply derives directly from private industry sited on the ship channel. Last March, the FBI announced a high terrorist alert specifically for the area.

All of which leads me to ask: if the President of the United States and Michael Chertoff are okay with Dubai Ports World, an United Arab Emirates-owned company, taking over the management of operations at six major U.S. ports, would they similarly be unconcerned if the deal further embraced an operations’ management role in the Houston Ship Channel — just a matter of miles from the downtown of America’s 4th largest city and on a waterway where more explosive materials, toxic gases, and deadly petrochemicals exist than “anywhere else in the country?”

(Continued…)

The president didn’t know about it; nor, as it turns out, did DHS’ secretary Michael Chertoff. Who, exactly, is minding the store? Well, if 12 - 20 million illegal aliens in this country (and more border-jumpers on the way daily) are any guide, you have your answer on the state of post-”9/11″ national security. And to think that the president and the DHS chief are the two who have been reassuring us that security in place to protect our ports will be unchanged by the UAE-owned Dubai Ports World deal. Wonderful. Just wonderful.

Then there’s this snippet from a retired U.S. Navy officer and reader of Hugh Hewitt’s blog who sent Hugh an e-mail, a portion of which is very telling:

From time to time I go down to the port in LA and Long Beach. When I get to the gate, yes, there is a guard there. I tell him where I’m going, and he signs me in and waves me through. (There doesn’t seem to be a system in place to validate that I am authorized on that given day to be in that particular place.) Our system isn’t exactly air-tight today.

(Continued…)

And here I had always heard that the President of the United States receives a highly-sensitive, daily, security briefing from the intelligence community.

Appears not.

That or the same intelligence agencies that had set up firewalls that prevented them from sharing intelligence with one another pre-”9/11,” haven’t learned a damn thing post-”9/11″ and have now set up a firewall among themselves and the Oval Office.

Are we to assume that the intelligence agencies that “vetted” the UAE-owned Dubai Ports World deal decided that there was no inherent security risk in having an Arab company manage six of this country’s key ports and that, accordingly, this little item didn’t even become a bullet item on the daily security briefing?

That should give Americans a real sense of comfort. We’re in so much better shape now then pre-”9/11″ with our INTELL.

The president threatened his first veto ever yesterday in staunchly defending a deal that he knew nothing about until after his administration finalized the deal and word of it got out on the street and a firestorm ensued. Kind of like Middle Easterners receiving flying lessons — no harm, no foul, no nothing until commercial jets are flown into skyscrapers!

This crap is getting old.

FOLLOW-UP: Your government at work.

FOLLOW-UP II: Wonder if this kind of information ever made it into the president’s daily security briefing? DO READ IT, FOLKS. (H/T: Free Republic)

If there’s anything Elia Kazan, Mario Puzo, and David Chase taught me, it’s that America’s ports are made-to-order venues for mob infiltration and control. And there was a comfort in that, as amazing as that admission might sound. After all, as longshoreman Terry Malloy said to mob-controlled union boss Johnny Friendly:

You take them heaters away from you and you’re nothing, you know that? You’ll talk yourself in the river! You take the good goods away and the kickbacks…and shakedown cabbage and the pistoleros and you’re nothing! Your guts is all in your wallet and your trigger finger! You gave it to Joey, you gave it to Dugan… and you gave it to Charley who was one of your own. You think you’re God Almighty, but you know what you are? You’re a cheap … lousy, dirty, stinking mug … and I’m glad what I done to you! You hear that? I’m glad what I done! And I’m going to keep on doing it …

Life was so much simpler then. Get a cheese-eater — you know, a canary — to sing to the Crime Commission and law and order was restored to the docks.

But now, if George W. Bush and his accomplice, Jimmy Carter, have their way, the mob will be supplanted in short order by United Arab Emirates-owned Dubai Ports World and suddenly management of six major American ports, including the hiring and firing of dock workers, will become the province of Arabs!

The Johnny Friendlys are about to get a rude awakening, I’m afraid, from guys with names like Mohammed Zake Ammawi and Merwon Othaman El-Handi. And these guys are in to goat meat and suitcase bombs, not Veal Marsala and heaters. Worse, it doesn’t take much to get their blood up. Michael Corleone may have always said, “It’s business, it’s not personal …,” but these new guys kill over cartoons and damn near everything under the sun is perceived by them as a slight to be avenged.

I guess the question for Americans is: do we want freight or an intifada to arrive at Hoboken’s docks?

Here’s a must-read column by Michelle Malkin on the Dubia Ports World deal and I found it linked in a well done post by Betsy Newmark on the same subject. I’m on the same page with Betsy and Michelle.

Captain Ed continues to stay on top of this boiling issue and adamantly opposes the deal.

Kevin Alyward of Wizbang! appropriately calls the president “politically tone deaf.” Shades of the president’s initial reluctance to pull his curious nomination of Harriet Miers.

Laura Ingraham is doing a splendid job on the subject on her morning radio talk show. I tune in on News Talk KRLA. And her Web site carries germane links. She’s a gemstone of the Conservative Movement.

And Nick Anderson’s political cartoon in today’s Houston Chronicle makes the point well, I think (although perhaps I out did him this time around!). And, to be sure, kudos to the Chronicle’s editorial writer.

(Continued…)

Now, then, doesn’t this beat all. President Bush, who has allowed a huge increase in the size and scope and cost of government during his two-term tenure without ever once exercising his constitutional veto power, says he will exercise it for the first time if Congress attempts by legislative fiat to undo the UAE-owned Dubai Ports World takeover of the management of six major American ports!

My, my, my — seems the president’s back is up over this deal to insinuate Arab management into America’a ports. Harvard Business School must have blessed its economics. I suppose if tough border-security legislation sans amnesty and convoluted Guest Worker Programs ever passes Congress and reaches the president’s desk he’ll veto that too.

Well, this for me is the straw that broke the camel’s back.

In an age of global, Islamofascist terrorism and at a time when America’s fighting men and women are battling overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan, I don’t want to be told that the Dubai Ports World scheme has been vetted at the highest levels of a government that didn’t anticipate and thwart the “9/11″ attack and has let our nation’s borders go unsecured for decades. I’m hardly reassured!

I salute the president for the people he has placed on the SCOTUS and elsewhere in the federal judiciary. Neither the other party nor its presidential candidates were viable options and that political party continues its blind course of neither marshalling domestic and international solutions nor protecting unborn life.

(Continued…)

Imagine this: you’re a Katrina-displaced New Orleanian, you’ve just recently been forced out of your government-defrayed accomodations at a tired-looking motel, your FEMA-funded mobile home has proven anything but mobile and still sits in a cow pasture in Hope, Arkansas, your own flood-ravaged home in the Crescent City’s Lower Ninth Ward has been condemned by government authorities and will be bulldozed, any opportunity to feed yourself and your family has been upended by hordes of illegal aliens landing the construction jobs for the federally-funded rebuilding of your city, and now you open up a newspaper and read that the Bush administration has blessed a business deal that would permit United Arab Emirates-owned Dubai Ports World to take over management of six major U.S. ports, including the Port of New Orleans.

Now is that what President Bush promised last September when he spoke to the nation from New Orleans’ Jackson Square — namely, that an Arab company would be esconced in the Port of New Orleans long before New Orleans’ evacuees were able to return to their city and begin their lives anew?

Amazing how swiftly the government can move on behalf of foreign business interests and foreign governments, and how appallingly slow it responds when hapless American citizens need help.

And how preposterous is it that Department of Homeland Security’s Michael Chertoff, of all people, is spending his time these days making the Bush administration’s case for the Dubai Ports’ deal, assuring Americans that the matter has been thoroughly vetted, safeguards are in place, and the arrangement poses no security problem to the nation, when he should be directing, among other things, the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast and the securing of our nation’s porous borders?

Millions and millions of illegal aliens are trampling our borders and insinuating themselves into every nook and cranny of American life, and the best an American president can say is that “they’re here to do the jobs that Americans refuse to do” and pitch a Guest Worker Program geared to American business interests. Right, Mr. President!

Millions and millions of domestic and foreign shipping containers come inbound to our nation’s ports each year and, at best, the suspect Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is inspecting only 3% to 5% of them, leaving what Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) calls “a gaping hole in America’s security.” Meanwhile, DHS Chief Michael Chertoff and Secretary of State Condi Rice pitch Arab management of six major U.S. ports and reassure Americans that all is well! Right, Bush Administration!

Does this most recent bit of insanity juxtaposed with 12 - 20 million illegal aliens afoot in our land cause you to think that government as protector of the people is an illusion and that our nation’s security is being forsaken by big money interests? If so, you’re thinking as I am.

(Continued…)

Even as recently as this past week, President Bush was out on the political stump making the case for a Guest Worker Program in order that there be sufficient workers available to do the jobs that, according to him, Americans refuse to do. That’s been his careworn refrain throughout his porous-borders’ presidency and that’s the hand-picked canard he’s sticking with no matter how disingenuous.

Do take the time here (PLEASE) to read all of the president’s words on immigration and border security and Guest Workers to get the flavor of the man who bends to the will of Mexico’s Vicente Fox:

Let me answer immigration first, and then talk about the unfunded liabilities inherent in Medicare and Social Security as a result of baby boomers like me and you retiring with not enough people to pay it, to pay the bill.

First, immigration. There are a lot of people working here in America doing jobs Americans will not do. And that is a fact. And it’s a — as I told you, we deal with the way the world — the way it is, not the way we hope that it is, and therefore, how to deal with that issue, what do you do? You got people working here, doing jobs Americans won’t do.

My attitude is, you recognize it for what it is, and you say, you can do this on a temporary basis. You say, if there’s a willing employer and a willing worker on a job an American won’t do, then it’s okay to fill that job, so long as you’re not here permanently, so long as this is not — (applause.) And so I believe there ought to be a temporary worker program. We’ve tried this in America before — pretty successful, at least in my own home state of Texas. You got people — Red Putnam over there, he’s got people — probably have been bringing people in to pick oranges, I don’t know. Agriculture relies upon a lot of people willing to do the work that others won’t do. And it seems like to me that there ought to be a legal way to make this happen without creating a sense of amnesty or permanency.

And so, one, I have to deal with immigration rationally. Now, we’ve got an obligation to enforce our borders and our coastlines, and we’re spending a lot of money to do so. The Texas border is long and it’s hard to enforce. I mean, it’s a lot of miles, a lot of empty country. And so we’re using new technologies — drones, infrared, some mounds, some fencing in cities, to try to make it harder for people to cross. But the truth of the matter is, a lot of our Border Patrol agents are chasing people who are coming here to work, see. And it seems like to me that if we could have a rational system that would enable people to do this on a temporary basis, it would take the pressures off the borders. People would be able to come in here in a rational, legal way.

Now, as I told you, I’m not for amnesty. You got about 8 million-plus people here illegally. My worry is if the — all of a sudden legal citizens, then another 8 million comes. And I don’t think that makes any sense. So in terms of immigration, I’m for border enforcement, and strong border enforcement, with a rational guest worker program that’s temporary in nature, where it’s understood that you’re working here for a period of time, then you’re going back on home.

Now, I want to talk to you about what’s happened as a result of the current program. When you make something illegal, and there’s a — you know, people coming here to work, people figure out ways around it. I’m not old enough to remember the old whisky days of Prohibition, but I remember reading about it — people still made whisky, because people wanted to drink it.

And so guess what’s happening today. We’ve got people getting stuffed in the back of 18-wheelers, driving across hot desert to find jobs that most often or not Americans won’t do. There’s a whole smuggling industry as a result of making temporary work — not making it legal. A whole smuggling industry — coyotes they’re called — and it’s inhumane, it just is, any way you look at it.

You know, family values don’t stop at the Rio Grande River. If you’ve got starving children and there’s a job over here in America that pays you more than it does in Mexico that an American won’t do, you come and do that job and get that money back to your family.

Secondly, one way to make immigration policy work is you’ve got to enforce the law. And so you’ve got to go to employers. I’m not going to come to your home building site — but anyway. (Laughter.) You come to enforce the law, right? And so you’re a home builder out here in the Tampa area; a bunch of people show up, roofers show up, and say, you know, we’re legal, here’s my card. You’re not in the business of telling me whether or not that’s a forged document, or not. You don’t know. It looks real. And that’s all you’re expected — but I’m telling you, they’re forging these documents. There’s a whole underground industry. They’re smuggling people and they’re forging documents. And our borders are being over — it makes it much harder to enforce. And so I think by having a rational plan, temporary worker, no amnesty, will expose these people runners and drug — document forgers for what they are. So that’s my answer on immigration.

(Continued…)