Investors from the United Arab Emirates helped fund the $23 million Neil Bush raised for Ignite!, the learning systems company that holds lucrative No Child Left Behind Act contracts in Florida and Texas. The "Cow" is an Ignite! portable computer designed to work in a classroom, providing interactive instruction aimed at improving students' scores on standardized tests. If you loved Billy Carter and "Billy Beer," you're certain to love Neil Bush and the "Ignite! Cow. ---Jerome R. Corsi writing in World Net Daily.

The news is breaking about the Bush families business ties to the UAE. It's going to be hard for the Republican Party hacks to try to blame this one on political grandstanding. It's coming from Jerome R. Corsi, a Swift Boat activist who co-wrote with John O'Neill the No. 1 New York Times best-seller, "Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry."

This one is particularly juicy because it turns out the UAE has been funding the company that Neil Bush is running that has the "No Child Left Behind" contracts in Florida and Texas.

Remember Neil Bush? The Bush family member who was personally fined and permanently banned from any further activities in banking for looting the Silverado Savings and Loan, which collapsed in a scandal that ultimately cost taxpayers an estimated $1 billion?  

It's not going to help Bush's faltering image among the voters the Republicans need on election day to be reminded of what a mess No Child Left Behind is.  The fact that Neil Bush has the NCLB contracts in Texas and Florida, and his business partners are  the Sheiks at the UAE and a Russian oligarch isn't going to make them any happier about it either.

Republicans are not going to like the fact that this is all going to come out during the debate of Senator Clinton's bill to prohibit the outsourcing of port management to foreign governments.  Oh well, as the saying goes, "What comes around, goes around."

"We wouldn’t turn the management of our airports or customs service over to a foreign government, and we shouldn’t do be turning our ports over to one either," – Senator Hillary Clinton (D) NY during the Senate hearings on the Bush Administration to turn the management of American ports to a company owned by the UAE.

"In regards to selling American ports to the United Arab Emirates, not just NO -but HELL NO," - Rep Sue Myrick (R-NC),

"We don't like the tone of this. Many of us see a hint of racism there, disguised as security concern." - Abdul Khaleq Abdulla, a political scientist at Emirates University

"You have to wonder what the motivation is of people who didn’t have a problem with a British Company running our ports, have a problem when the company is owned by Arabs." – President Bush’s comments on CNN in response to a question about opposition to his administration's decision to turn the management of American ports over to a company owned by the government of UAE.

It’s really a cheap shot to call the opposition to his DPW deal racist. Republicans are going to have problems calling Clinton a political opportunist, when he’s making comments like this to the media.

 Actually, a lot people who are complaining about the DPW deal DID have a problem with outsourcing the management of our ports ANY company owned by a foreign government! And a lot of them said so when the Clinton Administration outsourced the management of the Panama Canal and the port of Long Beach to a company owned by the Communist Chinese Government.

While Clinton’s position on this issue might well be politically motivated, the problem is that she is on the right side of the issue this time around. America’s ports should be managed by private companies owned by American citizens, or better yet, public corporations that report to the American people through their elected representatives

 "I am concerned with the Dubai deal, not only because of national security implications, but the economic implications. The Dubai deal outsources our ports to the state owned entity of a foreign government. This deal turns back on the free market principles that have guided this nation into economic prosperity." --- Rep. Patrick T. McHenry (R)-North Carolina

"The only surprise is that the administration is surprised by the intense reaction of the American People". --- Senator Edward Kennedy, (D) Massachusetts

"The UAE, a loose federation of seven emirates on the Saudi peninsula, was an important operational and financial base for the hijackers who carried out the attacks against New York and Washington, the FBI concluded." --- Jackson News Tribune on the government that owns DPW, the company that the Bush Administration selected to outsource port management

It rattles the public’s nerves that a company owned by Arab sheiks is operating seaports where security concerns are high.

Why aren't America's ports being managed by an American company, owned and managed by U.S. Citizens? Or better yet, a publicly owned corporation accountable to the American people through their elected representatives?

This isn’t the first arrangement where the U.S. Government has outsourced the management of American ports to a foreign government. Under Democrat President Clinton, the Communist Chinese-controlled shipping conglomerate Hutchison Whampoa took control of ports at both ends of the Panama Canal in 1999. Similarly, the Communist Chinese-controlled China Ocean Shipping Company –COSCO- set up shop in Long Beach, CA’s port.

The people that Bush has selected to run our country are so alienated from everyday folks that they have no clue on what's really on people's minds on things like this.  The Republican base expected a change when they elected President Bush, and instead his administration is continuing the same sort of liberal elitist policies.  

"It reminds me of that old story of the guy holding the gun to his head saying, if you come one step closer, I'll pull the trigger," ----Frank J. Gaffney Jr., president of the Center for Security Policy and a conservative adviser to Republicans on national security issues, on Bush2's threat to veto any bill Congress sends him prohibiting the outsourcing of Port management to a Middle Eastern company with ties to terrorism.

Go ahead, dummy. Pull the trigger.  I dare you.

Tennessee Legislature HB3199 by Vaughn, Cochran. (SB3402 by Crowe.) Abortion - Requires woman to notify man by whom she is pregnant prior to the woman having an abortion. - Amends TCA Section 36-2-318 and Title 39, Chapter 15, Part 2. Source: http://www.legislature.state.tn.us/bills/currentga/Summary.aspx?BillNumber=HB3199

No sooner then a conservative majority was assured in the Supreme Court, then there was a flurry of state legislation to restrict abortion-on-demand. One of the first things to topple Roe vs. Wade will be parental and spousal notification.

The arguments of Civil libertarians that the state should not be involved in pregnancy decisions has always been suspect.  Society is ALREADY involved in almost every pregnancy decision, and rightfully so, since it is society that assumes the burden of the child's welfare should the parents prove unable or incompetent in raising a child. 

State intervention in pregnancy is not only common, but encouraged for the sake of both the child and the mother.  

"It's unbelievably tone deaf politically at this point in our history... Most Americans are scratching their heads, wondering why this company, from this region, now".

                                                          --Senator Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) , on the sale of a company owned by the government of Dubai, the playground of the United Arab Emirates.

American political conservativism is facing a crisis over the disconnect between the theory and the reality of free trade.  It doesn't take a AEI fellow to understand the simple connection between economic sovereignty and domestic security.

So, it's not surprising that Bush2/Republican Party/Wall Street is facing a rebellion in it's populist paleo-conservative rank-and-file base over the sale of the British company that manages operations at six American ports to a corporation owned by the government of Dubai, the playground of the United Arab Emirates. 

What political conservatives fail to acknowledge is the simple fact that not only is 'international trade' is an economically unsustainable idea, but that free market fundamentalism embraced by the Republican Party and the Bush Administration is incompatible with their their fundamental values. 

"Yes, some of the 9/11 hijackers were UAE citizens. But then the London subway bombings last year were perpetrated by citizens of Britain, home to the company (P&O) that currently manages the ports that Dubai Ports World would take over. Which tells us three things: First, this work is already being outsourced to "a foreign-based company"; second, discriminating against a Mideast company offers no security guarantees because attacks are sometimes homegrown; and third, Mr. Graham likes to talk first and ask questions later." 

                                            Wall Street Journal Editorial

''I really don't understand why it's OK for a British company to operate our ports, but not a company from the Middle East." 

                             President Bush, on the outsourcing of the management of American ports to a corporation owned by the government of Dubai, the playground of the United Arab Emirates.

The implication from the Wall Street/Bush2 Crowd is: What are you people, some kind of racists who thinks Arabs are more likely than Brits to be terrorists? Beside, being concerned with homeland security is a poor substitute for being a hawk abroad.

It's all very simple, and makes perfect sense: since we must INVITE the world into America, therefore, we must continue to INVADE the world to make it safe for America.

Of course, if you disagree, you are either racist, anti-semitic, or sympathetic to terrorists.