This is from the Federalist Patriot email.
“There are, according to news reports, some 25,000 Americans in Lebanon. The question is: What the hell are they all doing there? I’ll tell you what they’re not doing. They are not in Beirut with Jimmy Carter doing Habitat for Humanity work. Beirut has been one of the fastest-growing cities in the region… [T]wenty-five thousand Americans were looking for investments, working on behalf of investors, or vacationing—in short, making or spending money on their own behalf. This eruption is not like a volcano, a tsunami, or a hurricane where no one could possibly have predicted what was going to happen. Americans who are in Lebanon knew—or should have known—what the dangers were… There are no commercial flights into or out of Beirut, but to get a sense of what this would otherwise cost, an Orbitz.com search shows a roundtrip fare of $2,035 on Delta from Baltimore-Washington Airport to Tel Aviv and back. Assuming a one-way fare is half the round trip (I know that’s not true, but bear with me) that’s $25 million not including food on the way to, and while in, Cyprus nor housing while waiting for a flight to the U.S.” —Rich Galen