If I don't make fun of Lileks at least once a week I get all stopped up

It figures the one Bush administration "scandal" on which conservatives and liberals agree -- the Dubai Ports World proposal -- is the one which is the biggest non-issue of the entire W. presidency. Anyway, Lileks has something to say about it, because, well, Lileks always has something to say. Just a few notes:

- He starts out by saying he has "a few words on the Dubai Ports World imbroglio, written without pause or editing, which is probably just as well". You know, I'm pretty sure that I've never read anyone who boasts as much as Lileks does about not reading or editing their stuff before posting it, and I'm definitely sure that he's the only right-wing blowhard who actually comes right out and admits that it's a good thing he doesn't think twice about what he's saying.

- He says he's not going to make a prediction about how it will all shake down, and then says "if I had to make a prediction" -- which, of course, he not only doesn't, but just said he wasn't going to. Then he makes a prediction. No one's making you do this, you know, Jimmy.

- The Dubai ports contract will be a "critical turning point", he non-predicts, "if (the Republicans) lose a city". James Lileks is absolutely obsessed with terrorists totally destroying an American city. I doubt he's gone more than a week at a time for the last five years without mentioning it, and honestly, I don't think he'll be well and truly happy unless it happens. For him, the hundreds of thousands of casualties would be totally worth showing all the liberal how wrong they were.

- Like most people who are writing about this nonniest of non-issues, his argument goes like this: Yes, I know that the U.A.E. is a powerful American ally. Yes, I know that companies in Dubai already operate businesses all over America. Yes, I know that having a knee-jerk reaction to an Arab company running security at American ports (even though all the actual work will be done by Americans) smacks of racism and only reinforces the dangerously false idea that we are at war with the Arab people. But STILL! That's what people think (not me of course, ho ho ho), and this is really tone-deaf because it conflicts with racist American ideas held by people less enlightened than me, so shut up.

- Lileks uses the opportunity to argue that some businesses should not be outsourced to foreign lands. This is not an argument he has made previously.