A rare moment

Honestly, I do not understand the response of members of the Democratic party to a UAE company running operations at some ports in the U.S. Yes, I understand that they are trying to score points, but they are doing it by running quickly to the right. They are expressing xenophobic attitudes of the sort that are normally reserved for those conservatives who carry on about immigration concerns. Seriously, these people need to get back in touch with the term "liberalism" and the meaning behind it's philosophy. I suppose the fallacy in this approach is that Democrats are liberal which is often not the case despite Republican propaganda to the contrary.

Don't get me wrong. If you want to go after the incompetence in the way this was handled (either the disclosure or the process, which I'm not at all certain was incompetent) I'm all for it. If you want to go after possible corrupt practices involving John Snow's connections, then I'm all for it. If you want to go after the David Sanborn angle on corruption, then I'm all for that, too. Heck, if you want to do some in depth research into administration statements that might have contributed to this level of xenophobia, then I'd support that.

But I agree with Bush that xenophobia has no place in this discussion. It's a red herring by Bush, of course. Let the Republicans eat their own on that portion of the topic and let cooler heads prevail. And while you make your arguments based on reason, remind the xenophobes that Chinese companies have similar contracts in the U.S. and that country has been known to spy, steal secrets, and abuse human rights (as Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, and Cisco were reminded of last week).