Month: March 2006

Dubai’s royal family are po’d at the furor over the ports deal brought on by Capitol Hill Republicans and Democrats. They’re preparing to retaliate, not with military might, but with a power equal to. They’re ready to kick our wallets.

Retaliation from the emirate could come against lucrative deals with aircraft maker Boeing and by curtailing the docking of hundreds of American ships, including U.S. Navy ships, each year at its port in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the source added.

And don’t think that doesn’t scare some folks.

It is not clear how much of Dubai’s behind-the-scenes anger would be followed up by action, but Boeing has been made aware of the threat and is already reportedly lobbying to save the ports deal.

The Emirates Group airline will decide later this year whether it will buy Boeing’s new 787 Dreamliner or its competitor, Airbus A350. The airline last fall placed an order worth $9.7 billion for 42 Boeing 777 aircraft, making Dubai Boeing’s largest 777 customer.

And when the subject is Boeing, it becomes a matter of interest to Congress. Specifically, House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.).

Any repercussion to Boeing could put House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) in a delicate position. Boeing’s decision to move its headquarters to Chicago has been seen as calculated to facilitate a close relationship with Hastert. He is against the ports deal, and his office did not return calls by press time.

There is reason for the White House to be concerned. If Dubai feels like they’re being disrespected by the United States, one response could be to limit our military’s ability to use ports in their country.

A Republican trade lobbyist said that because the ports deal is a national-security issue blocking it would not be in violation of World Trade Agreement rules.

“In terms of them retaliating legally against the U.S. … I don’t think there are many options there,” the lobbyist said.

But when it comes to the emirates’ cooperation in the war on terrorism and in intelligence gathering, there is concern that some help may be pulled.

“If we reject the company in terms of doing the [ports] work, they are going to lose a lot of face. In the Arab culture, losing face is a big deal,” a former government official said. “We risk losing that help. It is not an empty threat.”

Dubai is a critical logistics hub for the U.S. Navy and a popular relaxation destination for troops fighting in the Middle East. On many occasions since the ports story erupted, the Pentagon has stressed the importance of the U.S-UAE relationship.

Last year, the U.S. Navy docked 590 supply vessels in Dubai, plus 56 warships, Gordon England, deputy secretary of defense, said in a Senate hearing last month. About 77,000 military personnel went on leave in the UAE last year, he added.

It all comes down to money and access. Congress will find a way to pass the deal if a loss of state dollars is at stake. Likewise, the Bush administration will find a way to keep our military vessels in Dubai. So, this leaves me wondering if the fight against the port deal is really just a waste of time for everyone involved. While it may score short term political points for one side or another, it doesn’t appear that any of this will stop Washington from pursuing the goal – pocketing the money and securing the needed access.

Dubai Ports World has had enough, and they’re not going to take it anymore.

The United Arab Emirates company that was attempting to take over management operations at six U.S. ports announced today that it will divest itself of all American interests.

The announcement appears to head off a major confrontation that was brewing between Congress and the Bush administration over the controversial deal.

It was not immediately clear how the divesture would be handled or what U.S. company would take over the operation.

As much as the president wanted this deal to go through, it was dead the minute the blogosphere took hold of the topic. Soon after, the MSM grabbed on and then the calls started coming in from voters nationwide. That’s when Congress’ ears perked up, and all the action started.

We haven’t reached the end on this deal though

White House officials have not backed down in the face of the brewing revolt, however. At the same time the GOP leadership was meeting with Bush, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan repeated Bush’s vow to veto any legislation that interferes with the deal. He has made clear the president’s position is unchanged.

I still don’t know why the president is willing to go to the mat on this whole matter, especially if he didn’t know about it until after his administration had given it the green light. There seems to be a whole lot more to this story than we know today.

I think books will be written on this subject and only then will we see the full picture. For now it’s an explicitly divisive political issue, one that won’t go away as long as Bush continues the fight.

I’m leaving London today to head back home. Blogging will be light until I return and bring my brain back to pacific standard time.

Be well.

He who owns the data, wins.

It’s becoming a well known fact that there are two parties within the Democratic National Committee. On the one side, there is DNC Chairman Howard Dean and his Deaniacs; on the other, Hillary Clinton and a cadre of hangers-on from her husband’s administration. Both parties harbor various grievances against the other. Dean has his own ideas for what the Democratic Party should look like, while the Clinton camp believes the DNC is woefully unprepared to deal with the juggernaut that is the Republican National Committee. Outranked in money, technology, and good ‘ol fashioned organization, Hillary’s friends believe something needs to be done, and quick. If not, the Democrats will be left with empty pockets and another term out of power. To prevent this, a former Clinton deputy chief of staff, Harold Ickes is preparing to invest massive amounts of money into a voter profiling super database which will compete with the vast amount of voter data held by Republicans. A’majority of the money for the project is being donated by George Sorros.

Officials at the Democratic National Committee think that creating a modern database is their job, and they say that a competing for-profit entity could divert energy and money that should instead be invested with the national party.

Ickes and others involved in the effort acknowledge that their activities are in part a vote of no confidence that the DNC under Chairman Howard Dean is ready to compete with Republicans on the technological front. “The Republicans have developed a cadre of people who appreciate databases and know how to use them, and we are way behind the march,” said Ickes.’

“It’s unclear what the DNC is doing. Is it going to be kept up to date?” Ickes asked, adding that out-of-date voter information is “worse than having no database at all.”

Meanwhile, the DNC will continue to move ahead in their efforts to strengthen a database they built for the 2003-2004 election year cycle. Each project is expected to cost at least $10 million dollars.

Voter data held by the RNC has been the envy of Democratic operatives for some time.

Under the direction of Bush adviser Karl Rove, the RNC and state parties repeatedly tested the voter file and different ways to contact voters to determine which were most effective at boosting turnout.

“They were smart. They came into our neighborhoods. They came into Democratic areas with very specific targeted messages to take Democratic voters away from us,” then-DNC Chairman Terence R. McAuliffe said after the 2004 contest. “They were much more sophisticated in their message delivery.”

Ickes has pulled in additional financial resources from a new group called the Democracy Alliance.

While Democratic leaders struggle to find a unifying message, a money and intelligence split is the last thing the party needs. The question is, do they have enough time? Are they willing to throw away any chance at gaining seats in Congress to put all their eggs in a 2008 basket?

The suspense is intoxicating. I hope it’ll last.

I can’t wait to see how the moonbats react to this one.

Vice President Dick Cheney gifts $2.7 million dollars to George Washington University Medical Faculty Associates, the hospital that saved his life back in 2000, and has provided treatment for him since.

Today’s edition of the New York Times contains a story about the relationship of three characters, the gist of which bears all the resemblance of the classic struggle that occurs when individuals suddenly find themselves intertwined with one another. This menage et toi is one filled with high drama, doubt, suspicion, and jealousy. It’s about insiders and outsiders; friends and enemies. But a problem exists for the reader of this story. Like the patron who enters the theatre in the middle of Act 3, the reader will find it difficult to identify this drama as either a tragedy or comedy, and as such, they will have to quickly distinguish the good guys from the bad. Eventually that reader, in his sole discretion, will choose whose side he’s on.

The characters in this story are a public relations firm working for the largest corporate retailer in America, a reporter working for the largest newspaper in America, and a cache of independent writers. The actors are Mr. Marshall Manson of Wal-Mart PR firm Edelman, Michael Barbaro of The New York Times, and Bloggers. That’s where I come into the story.

I’m not going to go through an exhaustive replay of all the twists and turns on this. It’s easy enough to get caught up. Feel free to read past stories from Barbaro to understand the NYT position on Wal-Mart. Likewise, it’s just as easy to read what other pro Wal-Mart bloggers have to say about this matter. As for me, I’m simply going to give insight into my part in this play.

The New York Times has for the last couple of months focused on the corporate practices of Wal-Mart, its leadership, and now one of the public relations firms it employs. In today’s story, Barbaro finds that the retailer has enlisted the help of individual bloggers who have previously identified themselves as being sympathetic to Wal-Mart’s cause. Barbaro questions the independence of the bloggers who receive pro Wal-Mart news from Mr. Manson. He questions our ability to be objective, our disclosure practices, and wonders if we are really nothing more than robotic echo chambers for the corporate home office.

Under assault as never before, Wal-Mart is increasingly looking beyond the mainstream media and working directly with bloggers, feeding them exclusive nuggets of news, suggesting topics for postings and even inviting them to visit its corporate headquarters.

But the strategy raises questions about what bloggers, who pride themselves on independence, should disclose to readers. Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest private employer, has been forthright with bloggers about the origins of its communications, and the company and its public relations firm, Edelman, say they do not compensate the bloggers.

But some bloggers have posted information from Wal-Mart, at times word for word, without revealing where it came from.

I’m a conservative, and my blog postings reflect this position.

I am a member of a group of bloggers who receive emailed information from Marshall Manson concerning Wal-Mart. I accepted an invitation to receive the story tips and I decide which ones interest me and which don’t. I’ve never been compensated by Edelman, Manson, Wal-Mart or The New York Times. I’ve never been offered compensation to write any blog article.

Mr. Barbaro spoke to me on the telephone last week as he was preparing his story. We spoke about my relationship with Manson and my feelings about Wal-Mart. During the conversation it became clear to me that Barbaro was missing important information about bloggers and the blogosphere we populate. I explained that there are few rules, if any. There isn’t a code of ethics other than the heart and soul of each individual blogger. There are a wide variety of blogging styles; the copy-and-pasters, the linkers, and those who write then cite.

On this blog, I do a little of everything. Sometimes the published story is the best way to communicate my message, and when that’s the case, I’ll copy and paste a lot of it within the article I’m posting. Other times, a simple linked headline is enough. That’s the blogosphere. It isn’t the newsroom of America’s largest newspaper.

Barbaro has heard something about bloggers. He understands us to be unpaid citizen journalists who are quick to point out our biases. Yet he kept questioning me on my independence, and asked whether I ‘felt’ bad or good about the idea that I might be perceived to be in Wal-Mart’s pocket. Their lackey, if you will. I made it clear to him that I have never felt any pressure to spin the few Wal-Mart focused blog posts I’ve written in either direction. All throughout the interview, I sensed a sort of bewilderment in Barbaro. To his credit, he wasn’t condescending. He didn’t come after me for being rather harsh to him in a recent article I wrote. He didn’t try to minimize the effect bloggers have had on this story, or any other. He just sort of hung there with me, puzzling and puzzling, trying to relate. It was clear that this New York Times reporter was navigating uncharted waters. 

I don’t think it is evil for corporations to enlist bloggers to amplify their message. If the blogger decides to push the message along, it’s his or her choice. Conversely, if a blogger chooses to counter that message, again, it’s their choice. If a blogger has a passion for a particular topic and they write a lot about it, it’s possible that first time readers could assume the blogger’s professional interests somehow intersect. In the blogosphere, that’s usually a bad assumption to make. I have a feeling that Mr. Barbaro read many of our blogs for the first time while doing research on this piece. In many ways he jumped to conclusions about who we are and what we do.

On the issue of disclosure, if I include information from other sources, I link it. If I am introduced to stories from sources via email and I decide to blog about them, I go to the linked web pages and cite them for my article. I don’t typically mention or credit the individual who emailed me. It’s as simple as that.

I alone choose what I blog about. When I receive tips from people, I consider each, but I quickly abandon the ones that don’t interest me. If representatives from TARGET stores wanted to send positive news stories to me, I’d accept the invitation and read the tips. Big or small, it wouldn’t matter who the corporate entity was. The same conditions would apply. I make the call.

You can read each Wal-Mart focused blog post I’ve written by viewing my search page here.

Wanna know how Hendrik Hertzberg of The New Yorker characterizes VP Dick Cheney?

His bureaucratic ruthlessness, his domineering influence over a feckless President who seems fated to remain forever inexperienced, his will to power combined with an alleged lack of ambition to succeed his nominal boss—he is universally agreed to be one of the two most powerful officials in the executive branch of the federal government, though it is not universally agreed which one. Truly, this is the Bush-Cheney Administration, in alphabetical order. The hyphen looks like a coy equal sign—not the towhook it was for Clinton-Gore, Reagan-Bush, Carter-Mondale, and Nixon-Agnew, to say nothing of Hoover-Curtis and Roosevelt-Garner.

So how do you really feel Hendrik? Come on, you can tell us. Stop feigning ignorance.

Too bad…the New Yorker used to be a pretty good magazine. Oh well, if the rag goes under do to a lack of readership and Hendrik loses his job, I’m sure he’ll have a ready made bed over at Kos. Rumor has it that it’s being kept warm by Marcos as we speak.

USAToday should be ashamed of itself.

8,000 Desert During Iraq War

At least 8,000 members of the all-volunteer U.S. military have deserted since the Iraq war began, Pentagon records show, although the overall desertion rate has plunged since the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001.

Oh, but wait…there’s one more important line in this story…way, way, way down at the bottom of the story.

The vast majority of desertions happen inside the USA. There is only one known case of desertion in Iraq.

In light of the way the headline frames the story, this is an important little detail, don’t you think?

Ray Nagin doesn’t know when to quit.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin is playing the race card in his bid for re-election, reminding black audiences that his white opponents “don’t look like us.”

Appearing Saturday before the NAACP’s Family & Technology Center in Houston, Nagin noted that 23 candidates had entered the mayoral fray before the registration deadline last week.

“Very few of them look like us,” he told the audience of about 200, whom the Houston Chronicle described as “almost totally black.”

Nagin was in Houston to encourage displaced Katrina evacuees to cast their absentee ballots for him.

Some refugees, however, made it clear they still harbor resentments for the way he botched evacuation efforts.

“You waited until it was too late. The mandatory evacuation was too late and there were people who drowned,” said evacuee Eugene Jefferson, who the Chronicle described as “emotional and tearful.”

“Now you want us to vote for you?” Jefferson huffed.

For the good of New Orleans, let’s hope the people of that great city know how to quit Ray Nagin.

So, was she arrested for protesting or for belly trespassing?