FUNNIES: Bush Gave Up Our Seaports for Lent -- 3/5/26

March 5, 2005 — -- A roundup of the late-night comics.

Jay Leno: This marks the beginning of Lent. And you know what President Bush is giving up for Lent? Our seaports, yeah!

Bill Maher: President Bush got off the plane in Pakistan and said Pakistan is a force for freedom in the Arab world. Only problem there is Pakistan is not free and they're not Arab.

Leno: It was reported in the papers this week [that] even as Hillary Clinton is working to try and stop this Dubai Port deal, her husband Bill Clinton was advising Dubai on how to get the deal through. She's trying to stop it. He's trying to make the deal. Forget women, now he's cheating on her with other countries.

Stephen Colbert: Last week, tensions boiled over between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in Iraq with the destruction of the Shiite Golden Mosque, an action that could well foment a civil war -- if we're lucky. Because if there's truly a civil war in Iraq, by definition we can't be part of it. That's called an exit strategy, folks.

Craig Ferguson: The president has just been in India. He's going through his Maharishi period. … He's made the headlines for defending outsourcing in India, and I think that might have been a mistake. I don't know, you know? That's kind of playing the room a little too much. You know, he's talking about it's OK for American jobs to go to India. Doesn't he know that we get the news here?

Leno: You know that deal for the Arab country to run our ports? This is on everybody's mind. Let's go live now to the port of New York and talk to Dubai Port World Chief Officer, and Deputy Ruler of the Emirate, Sheikh Hamdan. Let me ask you this: Didn't you expect this kind of reaction?

Sheikh Hamdan impersonator: No, no, because we couldn't believe we were given the job ourselves. We submitted the name as a joke, to crack ourselves up. I mean, who, who knew that they were going to take us seriously? You are a funny and a mysterious people, you are.