I am neither a Nativist nor a Populist

So I don't think the Bush Administration's stand on the UAE/American Ports issue is the wrong one. You want an American company to do it? Guess Who is the only company with the expertise. Can you say "Halliburton?"

Ha! Ha! Hahahahahaha!

[Do I sound like my big brother? Sorry. Or maybe I'm not. Kind of a Romulus and Remus thing, if you know what I mean. (We're not twins. I've accused him of raising me. Anybody remember Lucan?)]

OK, Kellogg, Brown and Root. Who's counting?

I worked for Halliburton one day. It was a day-laborer position in--or, I should say, out of--Odessa, Texas. I was a Newby and I acquitted myself like an FNG. But, luckily, everything went right and I lived to BS on the WWW.

The crew I worked with that day was so professional that I have no f***in' idea how they could do what they did even with me as a dead weight to slow them down.

I'm a big, strong man, but I still don't know how to wind up 300 yds of frayed steel cable in two minutes without shredding my leather gloves, let alone the hands inside them.

That's what they asked me to do, and that's what they ended up doing for me. They paid me for my 13 hour day with them....

Wait a minute! That was Burton Well Service that I'm describing. I ended up working for the summer of 1984 for Welltech. It's Welltech that was a byword (future WOD) among the oil well servicing companies of [the extremely hazardous] oil field of Permian Basin.

Oh, yeah. WellTech was a subsidiary of Halliburton.

They centralized their operations and canned my ass.