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The kind of American Muslims who give a crap what CAIR says are not going to be impressed by anything the President says. They hate him and the rest of America all the same.

And if the President, as you say, is pandering to the Muslims in America out of fear...FEAR... is all the more disturbing.

I see nothing wrong with what the President said, and I refuse to subscribe to the idea that anti-Muslim statements woul be at all productive.

Again, no one is asking that the President make an "anti-Muslim" statement, but that he not equate the Koran with the Bible. Best that he not mention it at all.

He doesn't care if he offends Christian Americans because we're not the ones threatening to slit throats, behead people, crash jetliners into skyscrapers, and blow stuff up. So, he's pandering to those who support that and do that out of fear. And you're OK with that?

What part of alienating our allies, including Iraq, Jordan, and Turkey, do you not understand? What part of the Constitution have you not read that you think it would be constitutional for a President to name a religion as an enemy?

I am out of patience with folks like you. You are bigots, and I am not certain but what you are on this forum just to make it look like a weirdo site.

You describe Dubya's acknowledgement of positive things in the Koran as "pandering" and his motivation as fear.

Indulge me, as this has bearing. As a waitress, after long bitter experience I found that the only sure way to deal with rude, asshole customers was to be as sweet as pie to them. It accomplished many things. It made them feel like the chumps they were, especially when they left without leaving a tip, which they inevitably did -- their shame was too profound to dare leave a dime. It made observers more sympathetic to my plight. It gave me more strength and self-respect than had resulted times before when I succumbed to justifiable and righteous anger. It was also just plain fun to see the powerless rage in the assholes when they saw that I would only respond with smiles and contrition and politeness.

An ignorant or short-sighted observer would perhaps have lamented that I was pandering to the rude customers out of fear of losing a tip or generating a complaint to my boss.

But in truth, the boss probably would have backed me up and kicked the people out had I snapped, and either way, sympathetic customers who witnessed what I had to put up with would usually compensate generously for any lost tips by over-tipping themselves.

Most important, and what made me so certain that "respecting" their bad ways was so correct, was the fact that they dared not look me or anyone else in the eye by the time their meal was through. They knew they were the chumps, so did everyone else -- and I hadn't said a single nasty word. They had no excuse, no foundation for offense. I learned a lot from rude customers.

You choose the words "fear" and "pandering" to describe Dubya's motives and actions. I know better.