Posted on 02/21/2006 12:32:20 PM PST by Brian Mosely
ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE (AP) — President Bush says the deal allowing an Arab company to take over six major U.S. seaports should go forward and he will veto any bill that would stop it.
"greed is good. greed works."
If you trust God to protect us, then this deal should be of no concern to you, since we could not thwart the will of God or raise a finger in opposition to his might and power.
So since we are obviously talking about earthly things, and not about God's devine will, unless you have a plan to convert all the muslims to christianity (and realise that God himself has no such plan), you will have to accept that many people will be driven by far baser motives than yours.
Free market capitalism works because it exploits the natural desire of man to please himself and turns it into a force for the common good. I want to make money, you want to make money, we both make more money if I don't blow up your store because then you would blow up my store.
Government exists to make sure that a powerful person doesn't blow up everybody else, and other than that we just compete for money and somehow it makes us all wealthier and better off. The invisible hand makes our greed good.
In a perfect world, we would all be communists. But not godless communists, we would be god-filled communists, living under the all-powerful hand of the benevolent dictator to whom we would pledge our allegiance. And we would each contribute according to our abilities, and we would each receive according to our needs.
Marx promised people heaven on earth. That was his secret. Heaven without obedience, without God. It of course failed, because greedy people would let others work and take more than they needed.
Sorry to go down THAT road. All for a simple business transaction that does little more than change who gets to pocket the profits from the cargo shipping business, arabs in the UAE, or arab stockholders in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and whereever else the P&O stockholders lived.
I believe I understand all of the facts regarding this Administration and our lack of border/port security.
Globalism and Compassion run amok.
I see no evidence of that.
What I do see are a bunch of scared little rabbits, hiding under the bed because an Arab might do some business in the United States.
Why are the Sauds in the business of creating a Philistine Terror State? Why are the Sauds in the business of buying up American media?
You remind me of the folks who waged attacks on US citizens of Indian/Pakistani/Arab descent for retaliation after 9/11.
We've already done that with the trade/current account deficit. The largest shareholder in citigroup is a saudi sheik. The financial data at citi is more dangerous than this silly port deal.
God help Free Republic when 'nopardons' gets to determine the meaning of words.
Bozo beeper! LOL!! I should get one of those, my beeber was stuned.
Pat who? Pat Buchanan? He's an anti-Semite, latent Islamocommienazi.
Try another line of smear, please.
When people start making stuff up, that's a sign it's time to go to bed.
Adios.
Like I said, victimhood!
...and you are the FR queen of nasty. Everyone knows it...
Everyone? Everyone? Gosh, I should be flattered.
I'm quite congenial to reasonable people, actually.
As my sweet little grandmother use to say, "If you have to tell people you are "something," you probably ain't."
Obviously, you KNOW NOTHING! And you would feel right at home, in the KNOW NOTHING PARTY! What a pity, for you and Pat, that that party died out so very long ago. LOL
ROTFLMO!!
I'm not funny; DoNotDivide said so. He's been here a whole six weeks, so I'll have to take his word for it.
Put down the bottle. You're embarrassing yourself.
I'm terribly chastened. LOL
Let me see, what was it that unleashed your ire? Was it truly a lack of backbone on my part? I somehow doubt it.
I tend to suspect it has something to do with a reply I addressed originally to you rebuking one line of attack you advanced to another. Here is your post.
How sad that FReepers are now agreeing with Michael Savage and Chuck Schumer! Fickle soup, anyone?
My response to you...
Eh, I found myself on the side of Jesse Jackson over Terri Schiavo and Pat Buchanon on Miers substantively if not in their chosen overall rhetoric, interesting bedfellows don't really determine if this is a good or bad deal. After all, carter is for it.
However, choosing to move beyond mere agreement over nixing the deal into DU rhetoric is beyond respectable. The fact so many have done so damages their arguments against the port sale. That is what I find both pathetic and sad, and what I'm reacting against tonight.
The hysteria and excessive rhetoric have largely prevented a reasoned debate over the matter. Minus a couple of posters on either end that have risen above it as I slowly wade through this thread.
So, because I nuked your line of attack of being in bed with Savage and Chuck, given carter is in favor, you are reliant on silly attacks on my character. If you want a backbone, here is an example of one beyond the above quotations. Grow up. Take the critisism of the line of argument for what it is. A Draw at best if you attempt it. You may also note I devote far more time to critisizing the folks that engage in wholesale attacks on G.W.B's character than I devote to critisizing this one line of an argument you chose.
I have gone on record as NOT having a position yet on the port deal. I suppose I could march off half cocked as so many have and declare one right here and now to satisfy you, but satisfying your sensibilities isn't a concern of mine. What I have gone on record on : a) Politically a bad move b) instinctively I'm negative toward the deal but willing to give G.W.B. a fair hearing because too many folks are acting hysterically in opposition than rational c) do not have enough knowledge of port deals to give an educated opinion or conclusion at this time d) Bush is not a drunken shrub in a bubble selling us out to terrorists e) not everyone against the deal is an Arab hater d) Bush has threatened VETO's on numerous items so it's silly to advance the argument in feigned outrage as though this is the first time he's made the threat.
All in all, your attack against me is typically representative of the discourse of much of this thread and nothing but reaction to the original posts highlighted that evidently touched a nerve with you.
At best, at this moment in time, I find the heat of the conflict to reside around two opposing views.
Domestic security (ports/borders) and foreign investments in our security (building democracies/incentives encouraging cooperation in the WOT). Generally I favor both. This is one of the rare circumstances when each collide, and that is at the heart of a lot of resistance to this deal. Some place more of a premium on one or the other. I happen to view each as necessary and it why I'm on the fence so far, preferably I'd like to be convinced they are complimentary in function but I am not yet there. Too wishy washy for you? Too damn bad. I'm not going to make a pretense of being decided when I am not. Now take your tantrums to another interested in engaging the thread in a catty fight.
You and I see differently. It's attitudes like yours that drove the Shah out of Iran and created the mess we have today.
It's attitudes like yours that drove Americans out of Beirut.
It's attitudes like yours that allowed OBL to dent our interests the world over and emboldened his kind.
It's attitudes like yours that shrugged off Mohammedan involvement from Iraq to the Phillipines in the OKC bombing that left us with Clinton's "Domestic Terrorism Bill" the next day.
Not much I can do about that. That's on you.
No.
I am saying that there is no evidence the security of our ports will be effected in any way by the purchase of the P&O company (a stockholder-owned company based in the UK) by the DP World company (a company owned by the UAE government).
The same people will do the same jobs on March 3rd as are doing them on March 1st. The money will just go into different pockets. Of course, first 6.7 billion will go from those pockets into the pockets that used to get the profits, so it will be some time before that is balanced out.
The UK government does't control P&O, it's stockholders do. I don't know who they are, but I'm betting there are muslims with large holdings, probably from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and even the UAE. I'd rather that than a state-run company, but this isn't about what I would "rather" have, I would rather have Halliburton be the premier port company.
This is simply about whether the President should abuse the law to block the sale of a company to another company for no reason other than political expediency based on racism.
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