The US *did* land on the moon. This is not evidence to suggest they’ve landed on Venus too. It is however the reason I’d be citing someone else come time for the moon landing anniversary. Yhe many, varied not-liars who could also recount a historical event without discrediting themselves.

It’s as solid as any evidence we have that al-Qaeda carried out 9/11.

ed.”

Right. Now all you need is some evidence that 1980s Lebanon is in future-tense Afghanistan. Seriously, read what is written.

Again, why are we involved in this at all? We have enormous problems right here at home. Our economy is cratering horribly. We have massive national debt, and our military is worn so thin that even basic national defense could prove to be a major challenge. In other words, it going to be virtually impossible for us to compete militarily with the major world powers such as Russia and China in any military confrontation for the foreseeable future.

We can begin addressing this by pulling all of our forces and personnel out of the Middle East. This means ALL of them and it should began and it should be completed as quickly as our transport ships and planes can extract them. The situation in Lebanon should be left to the folks in these countries to decide. If they interfere in our affairs, it should be made known to them that we will meet such interference forcefully. The nuclear arsenal needs to be upgraded to handle contingencies like this. Again, we are not able to match up with the major powers or a number of others in any conventional conflict. Therefore the nuclear arsenal becomes even more important.

We can begin to fix the economy by slashing the maximum corporate income tax rate from its current 35% to 15%. This would result in more money being invested back in the economy. We should begin to develop all of our own oil, gas, and coal reserves. This means ALL of them and build more refineries. This will have the added benefit of less money going to people who don’t like us.

Finally, for our national security interests we should secure the borders and place a moratorium on all immigration for a minimum of ten years. The moratorium on immigration from Middle Eastern countries should be indefinite. This will give the immigrants who are already here ample time to become assimilated into our society and it will give us breathing space to fix the immirgration system.

In order to get talent from other countries that we may need, we could institute some type of a guest worker program. Ohter countries use things like this. Perhaps this can work for us as well.

Yes, and so very different from Mr. Bush actually holding his hand and tra-la-la-ing down the lane.

The bowing down was a bit of a joke relating to Bambi’s bowing down to the Saudi King. Sorry, I thought that would have been obvious.

Let me rephrase — how does not mentioning Hezballah equal “bowing down”? Obama also didn’t mention Vladimir Putin . . . is he bowing down to Russians?

Neither you nor I know why Obama may be taking it easy on Hezbollah in some irrelevant statement that literally no one cares about.

Either of us could come up with theories. Let’s start with the possibility that we are trying to reach out to Hezbollah. Or maybe we’re sending a veiled message to Israel. Or maybe there are hostage or other type of negotiations going on and taking an easy shot would be a bad idea right at this moment. You don’t know, and neither do I.

As for understanding the ins and outs of Lebanese politics please don’t try to tell me that anyone — including the Lebanese themselves — know who is playing which game at which moment. All we know for sure is what Israel wants us to do, and despite the uncritical Likud-love of the Right wing, the desires of the current Israeli government are not synonymous with our interests.

Obama calling out Hezbollah would do precisely nothing to advance US interests. Nothing. And failing to do so likewise has no impact. This game does not rise or fall on some boilerplate commemorative message issued in Washington. Christ, if it was that easy we’d be able to save the world with press releases.

So this is again manufactured outrage. The Right wing noise machine will use Bibi’s displeasure to gin up another disingenuous attack on Obama. Limbaugh will rant, Beck will slobber, Hannity and the rest will have yet another excuse to lie and slander and avoid talking about issues.

Of course it wasn’t all planned during the Bush administration. I was reminding you of the repeated, massive foreign policy failure of the GOP, and of our unwillingness to be lectured by people who brought nothing but damage to this country.

You’re right, I probably should’ve said “Arabs” instead of “Muslims”.