Squiggler

Port Deal - Follow up

Because of my cold and headache, I missed listening to the hearings on the DWP deal. Astute Blogger has a good summary and confirms my reasoning for changing my own mind as detailed HERE.

I've been monitoring the MSM coveage of the Port Brouhaha, and they CONSTANTLY refer to it as a CRISIS because Bush approved, "transfer of control of six of our largest ports to a foreign country." This is such a BIG LIE that there's really only one word for it: BULLSHIT. Here' are the FACTS: (1) According to DHS testimony at today's Senate Armed Services Committee Briefing, the six ports in question have 829 TERMINALS - each LEASED by the LOCAL Port Authority to PRIVATE COMPANIES. (2) These private companies ALREADY INCLUDE FOREIGN COMPANIES. (3) P&O leases 24 of these 829 terminals, and ONLY these TERMINALS will now come under the corporate control of a corporation in part owned by Dubai - which is inarguably one of our very best allies in the LONG WAR. (4) Our PORT SECURITY has NOTHING/ZERO/ZILCH/NADA/BUPKUS to do with who off-loads/on-loads containers in the terminals in our ports, and stores them and lades them on trucks. Ports are owned by the locatities (like the NY/NJ Port Authority) - and they stay owned by them. The US Coast Guard and DHS are in charge of security of these ports, and they stay in charge. According to DHS, EVERY (as in 100%) container is screened before it is LOADED ON TO A SHIP HEADED HERE, and by the end of the year 80% of all containers will be checked for radiation and/or X-rayed. This FORWARD-BASED security is what's essential to PREVENTING a terrorist from getting a container into our ports - and not checking cargo once it's in the port -THAT WOULD BE TOO LATE. Dubai Port World ALREADY FULLY COOPERATES with this process. The CFIUS Committeee was UNANIMOUS in determining that this transfer of leases (for only 24/829 terminals) from a British company to a holding company in part owned by our ALLY Dubai presents NO SECURITY CONCERNS. This was UNANIMOUS; the CIA and DNI, FBI and DIA AND EVERY SINGLE INTELL' ASSET IN EVERY DEPARTMENT - Treasury, State, and DOJ and DHS ALL AGREED. THEREFORE: This brouhaha is either PURE BS or simple DEMOGUERY. Take your pick. Bush is right. Hillary, Schumer and Michelle Malkin are totally WRONG If the MSM got the FACTS out - instead of merely repeating the BS - REPEATING THE BIG LIE, over-and-over, then the public would quickly agree. (MSM stories HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE. Blog round-up HERE.)

Oh the joy ...

The diabolical side of my personality, that part I refer to in the header of this blog that says "with an attitude - and sometimes a wink" is laughing my A$$ off at John Podoretz's answer to the question as to "why an American company can't run American ports?"

WHY ISN'T THERE A HOMEGROWN FIRM...? [JPod] You ask why an American company can't run the ports, John. Ah, but there is one. And only one. And it's called Halliburton...

My ears hurt just thinking of the screeching that would arise from the moonbat brigades.

Dubai Port deal - good or bad? Everyone needs to calm down and take a deep breath.

Like so many others, when I first heard about the proposed Dubai port deal, my gut reaction was "no way!" I had many of the same questions and reservations as I've been reading on many, many blogs, including some of the most influential.

I've backed off though and up until now, I've kept my thoughts to myself. Today, I'm going to go against the trend. Why or what has changed my mind?

Well, my former boss for one. Former Representative Helen Delich Bentley, after her life as a very popular and tough Congresswoman in the 2nd District of Maryland 1985-1995 (the port district), is now a consultant for the Baltimore Port Authority. When she speaks on these matters I listen. HDB has been covering the port since her earliest days in Baltimore, when she was a reporter for the Baltimore Sun assigned to cover the port (1945-1969), and long before she became politically active. She is also the former Chairman of the Federal Maritime Commission, U.S. Gov't. (1969-1975)  This is a woman who is extremely outspoken when she doesn't think something is a good idea. She is a fighter, she is one tough broad - take my word for it - I worked for her for nearly five years. If she says this is an okay deal, I believe her. She is a former Republican Congresswoman, but don't let that distract you. She has never minced her words (her nickname was/is "Lady Bleep") when it came to issues she was against, no matter which party was involved. It is one of the reasons she used to get elected with approximatley 75% of the vote in a district 11 to 1 democrat to republican. She always put her constituent's and her district's interests above her own political affiliations. And the Port of Baltimore is her baby.

The critical point is that Dubai Ports World won't be running the port of Baltimore, or any other U.S. port for that matter. What it would be doing, as ex-Rep. Helen Delich Bentley (R-MD), a respected expert on Maritime matters, explained in a Feb. 18th letter, to the "Baltimore Sun," is hiring the longshoremen to load and unload the cargo from the vessels. The Maryland Port Authority, an agency of the state, she underscored, would continue to "run the port of Baltimore's public terminals and be the spokesman for the port in general." Bentley added that this transaction only means that the "UAE's Dubai Ports World will be the firm bidding competitively for contracts to handle cargo coming off or loading on to ships in the six ports where P&O Ports has contracts. Baltimore is one of those ports." (2) It is also important to emphasize that the vast majority of the cargo handling in the six U.S. ports mentioned above is done by union labor, who are locally based workers. They are card carrying members of the International Longshorman's Association (AFL-CIO), which is headquartered in New York City. This is the same union, (Local 829 ILA), that this writer belonged to, in Baltimore, back in the late 1950s. The idea that the longshoremen will somehow not be able to do the same kind of highly professional stevedoring work for Dubai, which they did for the P&O company, and other stevedoring companies before them, just doesn't fly. For the ILA member, it will be just another day's work on the docks, irrespective of who's doing the hiring. [MORE HERE]

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Bentley "Letter to the Editor" 18 February, Baltimore Sun:

Port Administration runs region's port The Sun's headline "UAE firm to run 6 U.S. ports" (Feb. 12) is misleading with regard to the purchase of a British company, Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co., commonly referred to as P&O Ports, which did become the property of Dubai Ports World (DPW) of the United Arab Emirates on Feb. 13. The story states that P&O "runs Baltimore's public terminals." That's not true. P&O Ports is a stevedoring company that has competitively bid contracts with the Maryland Port Commission to perform certain duties at its public terminals in the port of Baltimore. A stevedore company is one that hires longshoremen to load and unload cargo from ships. Therefore, that corporate transaction means that UAE's Dubai Ports World will be the firm bidding competitively for contracts to handle the containers and other cargoes coming off or loading on to ships in the six ports where P&O Ports has contracts. Baltimore is one of these ports. The Maryland Port Administration will continue to "run" the port of Baltimore's public terminals and be the spokesman for the port in general. The private terminal operators will continue to run their terminals. Helen Delich Bentley Lutherville The writer is a former member of Congress and a consultant to the Port of Baltimore

Well Duh!

Poll: Republicans tend to be gun owners PRINCETON, N.J., Feb. 16 (UPI) -- A Gallup poll finds that Republicans are more likely to be gun owners and hunters than Democrats. The poll found that 40 percent of U.S. residents say they live in a household with a gun in the home or on the property. Thirty percent say they own a gun personally while 12 percent say the weapon belongs to another member of the household. A majority of Republicans, 55 percent, report living in a household with a gun, while only 32 percent of Democrats do. Overall, equal numbers of gun owners use the weapons for protection, hunting and target shooting. But these numbers also have a partisan tinge, with Republicans more likely to give hunting and target shooting as reasons for owning a weapon. The poll says that gun ownership has gone up and down over the years. In October, when the Gallup Organization conducted its most recent crime poll, it found that a smaller percentage of people own guns now than from 1959 to 1968 and 1989 to 1993. In 1999, only one in three households had a gun. © UPI, Headline News Powered by Bravenet.com

I suppose we fall into this category, although the two .22 rifles in this house were inherited from my Grandfather and they haven't been fired since long before he died in 1965. During my Navy wife days when I was home with small children alone while my husband was away for months at a time on sea duty, my weapons of choice were a heavy duty claw hammer and a can of red pepper.

I am not anti-gun. I took the NRA course when I was in high school through a program that my Girl Scout troop took part in. Both my kids, son and daughter, went through a gun safety course that my Uncle supervised. I'm against gun laws that do nothing but make it illegal for law abiding citizens to own weapons.

I'm reminded of a visit my Mother received not long after my father died (1958) from the Chief of Police of our borough. He was concerned that my Mother was now alone with a child in the home (me), so he brought her a small handgun to keep in her bedside table. He also brought her a police whistle. That whistle hung over the spindle of her headboard for the rest of her life. Since her passing, it has found a new home hanging from the headboard of my 4-poster. When I was in college, my Mother took a job in New York City and, as a law abiding citizen, turned in the handgun and replaced it with her trusty baseball bat that she drove huge nails through, making it a formidable and probably very lethal spiked weapon. She kept this under her bed until the day of the "home invasion" I've detailed elsewhere. At that point, she insisted on keeping this weapon under her covers. I used to worry that she'd roll over on one of those spikes and impale herself in her sleep. However, I wouldn't have wanted to be the person who surprised her in her bed. She was a tough ol' broad right to the very last day of her 94 years.

Questionable practices, lack of integrity, or outright treason?

At what point do we as individuals and we as a nation put partisanship, and in some cases rabid partianship, aside in the interest of being American citizens?

I realize that a miniscule number of people actually read the New York Times. However, the influence the NYT has had over the country goes far beyond the actual number of people who have ever seen even one edition of the paper. For years, other newspaper, TV and radio news have bowed to the Times and parroted whatever they print or put out on the wires as gospel. I can't speak to the level of competence of the Times in other eras, but it is obvious that in today's world, the Times has become nothing more than a gossip rag that only cares about playing a type of tabloid gotcha journalism. Their irresponsiblility and lack of integrity in both their reporting and the editing is staggering and has jeopardized this country's national security, its ability to deal with a national crisis, and undermined the confidence the U.S. generates in our interactions with other international entities (See the Goss editorial).

Is it that the arthritic old grey lady is just not able to compete in today's high tech, high speed communications world and so they fake it? Or is it something far more dangerous, a deliberate attempt to superimpose itself as more powerful than the people and the government through false reporting and outright lies? For instance, how many times each day, each week, each month do articles appear that are picked up and broadcast around the world that are falsfied so as to present the "rabid" partisanship point of view of the editors of the Times rather than report the actual facts? Mike Spruell at Media Blog cites an example:

The New York Times reported today that Michael Brown told someone in the White House around midnight Tuesday morning that the levees in New Orleans had been breached and the city was flooding. The article doesn't say who Brown told or when that information reached Bush, but it does incorrectly allege that Bush was on vacation in Texas that Tuesday. In fact, he was in San Diego giving a speech about the war. Now, Drudge is reporting that the White House is asking the NYT for a retraction: NEW YORK TIMES’ Eric Lipton today writes that President Bush was “on vacation in Texas” on August 30th but their own reporter filed a pool report that day from San Diego where POTUS giving a speech on the War on Terror and was visiting soldiers and families of the fallen. Sources tell DRUDGE that the original story filed by Lipton did not contain the sentence about Bush being on vacation and that it was added by an editor. The White House is seeking a retraction.

This lie may seem insignificant, but this simple lie managed to color the entire country's view that the President didn't care about the people of New Orleans. It was designed to undermine him and any efforts his administration would make from that point forward. This was calculated by the Times to have just such an effect. Sloppy reporting? I submit that that excuse will no longer fly. The Times is guilty of outright lying ... manufacturing facts in order to support their editorial political point of view. Their loyaties to the enemies of this country, both internal and external, rather than their responsibilities to their readers to be impartial and honest is unconscienable, unacceptable, and perhaps treasonable. In another entry on Media Blog, entitled "Worst NYT Issue Ever," also from today, Mr. Spruell makes this observation:

Being able to spot issues of the New York Times that are more biased than others is like being able to tell individual squirrels apart.

Sad commentary on a paper that used to be thought of (and trusted) as the eyes and ears of the nation and perhaps the world.

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Related:

A look at bloggers as sources of correction for big media (BBC) HERE and a plug for Glenn Reynolds' new book, AN ARMY OF DAVIDS HERE and check out what Google (the newest poster boy for censorship) is saying about Michelle Malkin's attempt to bypass the wooses of mainstream media and get the true story out about the Danish cartoons and the forgeries attached to them as well as the forces behind them. VIDEO HERE. And Captain's Quarters has this about YAHOO:

Internet giant Yahoo! joins Microsoft and Google in bending to the Chinese autocracy, only this time they helped jail an activist for freedom in the nominally Communist nation. The London Times reports that Yahoo! coughed up records used to send a dissident to prison for ten years:

We are under attack by external enemies, we are under attack by internal forces who put ideology and greed (see: Google Co-founders Cash In) above the interests of citizens, who need factual, TRUTHFUL, and complete information to make informed decisions. We totally agree with the Captain's conclusion:

Janis Joplin once sang, "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose." It appears that attitude has infected the Internet giants, who value the blood money they get from helping to oppress the Chinese people than the freedom that gave them the opportunity to exist. Shame, shame, shame.

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UPDATE:

We are reminded that the New York Times isn't the only one who continues to lie to the public and perpetuate urban myths to our detrimate in a post entitled "The Big Lie Continues" (read it all):

AP continues to promulgate the myth: Wilson's revelations cast doubt on President Bush's claim in his 2003 State of the Union address that Niger had sold uranium to Iraq to develop a nuclear weapon as one of the administration's key justifications for going to war in Iraq. Of course, it wasn't possible for Joe Wilson to cast doubt on such a claim, because President Bush never made such a claim, in the SOTU or elsewhere, but that never seems to stop these people. Why do they continue to think they can get away with this, when anyone can go read that speech?

Why the flap over NSA surveillance of foreign calls to U.S. is so hypocritical

From Chicago Sun Times:

Mayor Daley on Monday embraced a radical plan to require every licensed Chicago business open more than 12 hours a day to install indoor and outdoor cameras.

"Block clubs, community organizations want cameras. ... They can't walk down the street. ... Their kids have to go around a corner away from the gang-bangers. You can't walk to church. You can't get on the CTA. ... Cameras really prevent much crime. Cameras also solve a lot of crime. The terrorist attacks in London were solved by cameras. The whole incident was solved by cameras," Daley said.

Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce President Jerry Roper estimated that 12,000 businesses -- maybe more -- are open for more than 12 hours a day and, therefore, would be covered by the sweeping camera mandate. That includes roughly 7,000 restaurants, more than 100 hotels and scores of retail establishments.

Big sigh!