I am making...

...the Peter Brady voice-cracking performance of “It’s time to change; it’s time to rearrange!” the official song of the Bush administration. (Hopefully the third time will be the charm, and this post will stick around this time.)

Now the White House is claiming that Bush didn’t know about the port deal until after it had been approved.

President Bush was unaware of the pending sale of shipping operations at six major U.S. seaports to a state-owned business in the United Arab Emirates until the deal already had been approved by his administration, the White House said Wednesday…

"The president wants this deal to go forward because it was followed by the book and he wants Congress to understand that," [White House counselor Dan Bartlett] said on CBS' "The Early Show." He told Fox News Channel that Bush felt strongly that "we need to be adding strategic partners" in the Mideast…

"I can understand why some in Congress have raised questions about whether or not our country will be less secure as a result of this transaction," the president said. "But they need to know that our government has looked at this issue and looked at it carefully."

How the hell does the president know, without a doubt, that the vetting process and other aspects of the deal were followed “by the book,” that the issue was looked at “carefully,” if he wasn’t even aware of it until after it had been approved?

Totally missing from this article: Any explanation whatsoever on how or why the deal was approved without the president’s knowledge.

This guy is a total puppet. They—whomever “they” consists of; some combination of Cheney, Rove, Andy Card, and who knows who else—tell him what’s what and assure him it was all done through the proper channels, and then he goes out and defends it, without bothering to do any fact-checking of his own. If They say it’s what’s best for the country, then he agrees. And if They say it was done right, he trusts them. And if They say that it’s worth using his first-ever veto on, then, by god, he’ll use that veto. He has no fucking clue what’s going on.

And goddammit, these people work for us. I want to know who’s really running this show. Who in the administration is approving deals like this without the president’s knowledge? This is ridiculous.