It needs to be said

Bush may use the Bill of Rights as toilet paper.

But Pat Roberts leads the Republicans on the Intelligence Committee in wiping Dear Leader's ass with it.

You know there is a lot of talk about the Republicans running away from Bush because of his low poll ratings. The Dubai ports deal is cited as an example.

Please spare me this bullshit!

The Dubai deal is failing only in small part because it gives the GOP Congress a chance to assert its independence -- and the NY Times article falls for this hook, line and sinker.

But it isn't the main reason.

The Dubai Port World matter is that rare phenomena where rational argument is joined by irrational bigotry. One of the reasons this is unpopular is strickly because it awards a group the GOP has spent four and a half years telling us to be afraid of -- the people who are a lighter shade o' brown and worship Allah. A nice bit of bigotry even older than other equally stupid forms of prejudice (sorry black people) but younger than other stupid forms (you win, so to speak, Jewish people. Yahway? No, YahYAY!).

It is the fear of the "Aaa-Rab" driving the sentiment of too many. To the mouthbreathers all Muslims are Arabs -- except Farrakhan, who being black is just as frightening to them. The anti-Arab/Muslim genie was let out of the bottle and left out there to fester by the Bush Administration. It needed that feeling not to invade Afghanistan, but to get away with "fuck Saddam we're taking him out". And now they need it as a tool in rattling the now flimsy saber against Iran. All muslim nations, if not Arab.

Live by the implicit slander, die by the implicit slander.

But the notion of widespread rebellion in the GOP is a load of shit.

If there was rebellion, the Republicans, specifically Hegel and Snowe, on the Senate Intelligence Committee would have actually been committed to oversight. They are not, they are still terrified of what actually exposing the Bush regime to the light of day will demonstrate. They are terrified of what is inside.

When the GOP starts allowing the American people to look inside the workings of this most secretive regime, then I'll believe there is not just rebellion, but an actual love of what is supposed to be the American Governmental System. For right now they live partly in the fantasy world of thinking nobody will ever find out and partly in the real world of hoping that at least no one will find out until after Bush is out of office.

UPDATE:

It appears that Juan Cole wrote about this as well. And damn him, he wrote as if he knows more about the subject that I do! Just because the guy has a Ph.D and studied something his whole adult life, he somehow becomes more qualified to make the same points I do, only better.

The hatemongers think that the American public is sort of like a big stupid dog, and you can fairly easily "sic" it on whoever you like. Just tell them that X people are intrinsically evil and that the US needs to go to war to protect itself from them. Then they turn around and blame those of us who don't want our country reduced to footsoldiers in someone else's greedy crusade for being "unpatriotic."

All human beings are the same. They all have the same emotions. All laugh when happy and weep when sad. There are no broad civilizations that produce radically different behavior in human beings. All are capable of violence. (Christians killed tens of millions in the course of the 20th century, far, far more than did Muslims).