- No one is much afraid of W. After the president threatened to veto any bill that interfered with the transaction, Congressional leaders simply shrugged their shoulders and passed it anyway, with the House committee involved voting something like 65-2 in favor of scotching the deal. I'd dearly love to see Bush veto something, especially with the amount of pork that's been coming through Congress lately, but he hasn't, which remains one of the most puzzling things about this presidency.
- Islam is not winning any p.r. battles. Dubai is as close to an actual U.S. ally as anyone in the Gulf region, but even they are viewed with great suspicion these days. I don't think anyone is buying the "Islam is a religion of peace" trope any more. And that has implications well beyond this particular incident.
- The Department of Homeland Security is the Holy Roman Empire of government. As was pointed out back in the day, the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire. I don't know what DHS is supposed to do, but there's little evidence that it does much of anything well. The perception out there is that we as a nation are no more safe now than we were on 9/10/01. And billions of dollars have been allocated to doing little more than moving around office furniture in the federal bureaucracy.
- Demagoguery is always in season. One thing I can guarantee is that DHS could definitely not protect anyone standing between Charles Schumer and a microphone.
Well, on to the next manufactured crisis.
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