By Scott Wright

Depending on which side of the political aisle you sit on, all the recent hullabaloo about the Bush administration's United Arab Emirates (UAE) port deal probably either sounds like a non-story (for Republicans) or the end of the world (for Democrats).

I'm somewhere in the middle, which is probably where the truth of this story really lies. Still, there are several aspects of the GOP's latest talking points memo that don't sit so well with me.

In an editorial last week, conservative yapper Rich Lowry castigated Democrats who have cried foul over the ports deal, calling the liberal stance on the issue "isolationism and nativism."

It sure seems funny to me that when Democrats lump all Arabs together for security purposes, they're accused of being "isolationists." Back in 2001, when the Bush administration was busy, night and day, trying to figure out a way to convince the American people that Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were pretty much the same Arab -- at least for the purposes of all-out military action -- there was no call from butt-kissers like Lowry to lay off the nonsensical rants.

So that's reason enough not to fall for it this time around, right? Right. Let's just not be so hypocritical about pointing out other peoples' faults, OK conservatives? Obviously, anyone with even a smidgen of common sense will admit that the Bush administration's lousy argument four years ago doesn't make for a sensible argument now.

But here's the rub. See, these particular Arabs -- from the UAE -- are tight with the Bush family, have been since before Gulf War I. And a few weeks before the port deal was mysteriously OK'd by the administration without undergoing the proper security checks, the UAE donated $100 million to victims of Hurricane Katrina. That's what politicians call "greasing the wheels," folks.

All boiled down, you get this: the Bush administration botched the communications aspect of this ports proposal -- gee, imagine that -- by allowing this deal to slide past Congress unannounced. Then, after concerns were raised, Bush's first reaction was "I'll veto any attempt to block this legislation."

Blockheaded George W. Bush hasn't vetoed a single, solitary bill from Congress since he took the job (literally) in January 2001, and now he's going to veto any attempt -- politically motivated though it may have been -- to conduct a security review of a hush-hush deal that gives control of dozens of terminals at ports around the country to a company owned by a bunch of those same Arabs the administration has been warning us about for the past five years?

Even Republican Sen. Trent Lott, Miss., was "offended" by Bush's rapid-fire response to the request for more time to study the deal.

Lott said he felt the president made him feel "threatened ... before I even knew the details of what was involved or whether I was going to vote for the bill or not." Lott said he called the White House and told a presidential aide, "Don't threaten me like that again."

Republican Rep. Sue Myrick, felt pretty much the same way. Her reaction to Bush's port deal was, "Not just no, but HELL NO!"

I'm not ready to scream "HELL NO" about the port deal just yet, but it seems to me more and more people in this country are getting ready to scream the same expletive at the president himself, and I'm behind that effort 100 percent.

If you need additional reminders of what's wrong with George W. Bush, check out the Associated Press video of the pre-landfall Katrina meeting attended via video phone by the president in the days leading up to the disaster. His people told him the levees wouldn't make it through the hurricane and then four days later Bush said, on national TV, "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees." There's all the proof you need that the president of the United States of America is either an idiot or an out-and-out liar. Either way, I don't want him with his finger on my remote control, and I sure as hell don't want his thumb on The Button.

If conservative talk radio is any indication, the GOP half of the general public is not comfortable with the Bushies telling us this port deal is nothing to worry about, especially after they've spent the last five years telling us we should be worried about absolutely everything. Still, in his column, Lowry said it's inevitable that the Democrats will "mix their message" by combining their stance regarding the ports deal with their defiant (if weak-kneed, I admit) stand against the overly-aggressive intrusions of the re-vamped Patriot Act and the illegal NSA wiretapping program.

Typically, Lowry is the one with his head in the sand who isn't getting the message. He's looking at the Democrats' position from a security point of view, when he should be looking through his oversight goggles. Lowry, and most of the GOP-controlled Congress, have forgotten that one of the legislative branch's most important jobs is to conduct oversight of the executive branch. And the dipsticks you Republicans out there have elected to run this country have failed horribly in that capacity, as this ports deal and other recent revelations are now making obvious.

No Republican will ever vote for Hillary Clinton for president, and neither can I. But Democrats have got to put their heads together and come up with a better bunch than the clowns in charge now because they're dragging us all under the Big Top.

And the circus we're seeing inside is far from entertaining -- in fact, it's downright embarrassing.

Scott Wright is a member of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists and an award-winning member of the Society of Professional Journalists. He is a native of Cherokee County.