Bad Things Comma Very

So called because the damn Firefox kept freezing up for some reason when we tried to title the post Very Bad Things.

There is bad news today, and it comes in the form of Bill Maher's leadoff monologue joke: The Dubai firm that had arranged to buy the port management contract (or whatever, frankly this was a nothing story until today and we are for once proudly ignorant of the details of the whole thing,) has backed out of the deal due to pressure from the public reaction in the US, thanks to Lou Dobbs et al. Which is maybe a neutral fact. Until you learn that in the absence of that firm to make the deal now the port management contract will apparently go to "an unnamed American entity." And that the semi-official scuttlebutt is that the unnamed entity is in fact wait for it Halliburton.

Not hard to imagine what that decision making moment in the Veep's office was like: "They don't want me to sell the ports to Dubai? F*** 'em, I'll give it to Hally. (Because you just know he's got a pet name for his baby.)

-.- (or "dash dot dash," "K" in Morse code, which is telegraph operator code for "switching tracks.") (lame historical tidbit courtesy of the Standing Eight Pompous Pedant Foundation.)

-This is The Eight's 60th post, which we only mention by way of demonstrating that we passed 50 a while back without making any fuss.

-Over the next week, Standing Eight may or may not post our usual, oh what's a fancy word for it, "stuff," from glamorous International Waters. And you know that once you get CQ miles out from shore there are no rules.