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It's The CIA, Not The KGB

Newsweek is trying to kick up dust in a paved parking lot with an article by Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball titled "Keeping Secrets From The CIA". The subject is serious--and deadly--business. Yet reading it at times feels like watching the closing scenes of a "Rocky & Bullwinkle" episode, complete . . . Go
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Obama Walks On Water

Obama not only snoozes in church, he walks on water.


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Originalism

Constitutional "Empathy"
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Dhimwit Of The Month


 

 
Dhim·mi (dîm-mî or zîm-mî) - An Islamic term that refers to a subjugated non-Muslim person living in a Muslim society.  Second-class status is confirmed by the legal system and dhimmis do not share the rights of their Muslim rulers.  (ex. of use: "Hey Jimmy, if you want to be a dhimmi, then you'd better learn how to shimmy.")

Dhim·wit (dïm-wît) - A non-Muslim member of a free society that abets the stated cause of Islamic domination with remarkable gullibility.  A dhimwit is always quick to extend sympathy to the very enemy that would take away his or her own freedom (or life) if given the opportunity.
 



 



April 2008 Dhimwit: John Esposito


"Show me the money!"

John Esposito is a name unfamiliar to many, but there are few people on the planet more deserving of general Dhimwit honors than this Catholic apologist for Islam, who is currently on the Saudi payroll at Georgetown University. 

Technically, Esposito is the founding director of the "Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding," which already tells you a lot about the man.  Anyone with a decent set would have long told the Saudis just how pathetic this guise of religious tolerance really is, when they won't even allow churches on their own soil.

As for Esposito, just two years before 9/11, the second edition of his book “The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality?” was published.  In it, the professor told a primarily American audience that the threat of Islamic extremism is overblown and that they actually have nothing to fear from the Religion of Peace. 

Only in academia can being so fantastically wrong about something of such tragic significance actually be a boost to one’s career.  Inexplicably, John Esposito found his profile enhanced by the loss of thousands of innocent lives and has since devoted himself to trying to convince Americans that they are the real bigots.  (This evidently delights his Muslim handlers, who find in his writings yet another excuse to put off introspection and reform).

This month, Esposito is promoting his new book “Who Speaks for Islam?  What a Billion Muslims Really Think.”  Not surprisingly, it is Esposito himself who speaks for Islam and, as such, the voice of a ‘billion Muslims’ sounds remarkably similar to his own.  In fact, when it comes to U.S. foreign policy, Western values and the superiority of Islam, the resemblance between Esposito’s personal views and that of a “billion Muslims’ is downright uncanny.

Esposito bases his new book on Gallup polling, which has an objective ring to it at first – up until one discovers that the “Senior Scientist” on the cited Gallup project is none other than Esposito himself.  Having the ability to influence the wording of survey questions yields some rather curious findings, such as the claim that Americans are three times more likely to support the killing of innocent people than are the Iranians, whose country pioneered suicide bombings and whose religion fuels over a thousand deadly attacks on civilians each year.

As with his earlier (pre-9/11) effort, “What a Billion Muslims Really Think” is designed to play on Western tastes and convince readers that they have no reason to be concerned about an ideology with an explicit agenda of political and cultural dominance.  Toward this end, Esposito either glosses over or ignores inconvenient details that might otherwise alarm anyone who is mindful of Islam’s irreversible creep into the West.

For example, the professor makes much of the finding that two out of three Muslims believe that the 9/11 attacks are “morally unjustifiable.”  That a third of all Muslims (almost a half billion people) say they agree to some extent with the carnage seems to be of trivial concern to him.  Esposito also fails to mention the rather critical detail that only 18% of all Muslims believe Muslims were really responsible for 9/11!  Who or what then, are they really condemning?

Many other natural questions go unanswered in the book.  Why do more Muslims oppose the U.S. action in Afghanistan, for example, than they did the brutal attack on New Yorkers and others which prompted it?  If Muslims are so opposed to religious extremism, then why do less than 1 in 10 support the overthrow of the Taliban?  If Muslims place such a high value on the lives of others, then where is the outrage when such attacks occur?  Why hasn’t Osama bin Laden been burned in effigy?

At the end of the day, “What a Billion Muslims Really Think” is really just an exercise in illusion – a parlor trick to fool readers into thinking that they do not see what they see.  By stacking survey questions so as to yield preferred results, Esposito has the advantage of creating the very data to which he then refers.

Even the overall sampling is somewhat suspect.  Esposito claims that his modeling method represents “90% of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims,” which is both patently absurd and a glaring indication of the manipulation taking place behind the scenes.  How is it possible to “include” 1.2 billion people while “excluding” 130 million others?  Who is really being “excluded” when a contrived survey sample of a few thousand is said to be representative of over a billion other people?

Each day, dozens of innocents are murdered explicitly in the name of Islam somewhere in the world, yet in all of the forty countries that lost citizens on 9/11, only one Muslim was killed by one person in revenge for the slaughter on that day.  What explains Islam's violent temper?  In the Sudan, over a million Christians have lost their lives to a Jihad-minded government that has also displaced millions more from their homes – yet sympathy in the Muslim world is reserved only for Palestinians.  What explains Islam's astonishing self-absorption and lack of human empathy?

Hundreds of Westerners have lost their lives on their own soil to Islamic terror in the years since 9/11.  Millions of Muslims overseas celebrated the attacks that day and continue to openly support the thousands of other Muslims who are as determined as ever to commit mass murder in accordance with Qur’an’s expressed hatred for those outside the faith, even as the West sacrifices cherished values to accommodate mass numbers of Muslim immigrants whose gratitude is as weak as their sense of entitlement is conspicuous.

Yet, along comes Professor John Esposito to tell us that it is Westerners who have the tolerance problem.

The Saudis have definitely bought their man.

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Climate Summary


Coolest April in 11 years...

The average temperature in April 2008 was 51.0 F. This was -1.0 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average, the 29th coolest April in 114 years. The temperature trend for the period of record (1895 to present) is 0.1 degrees Fahrenheit per decade.
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The Media Loses When Iraq And The US Win, Apparently

Sadr wins another battle by surrendering!


First the media declared Basra a military disaster, then complained that Maliki didn’t achieve victory quickly enough for them. Then they predicted disaster for Maliki and the US when they turned their attention to Sadr’s biggest power base, sure that a civil war would break out that would undo the gains achieved under the surge — gains they mostly ignored in the first place. They started toting up combat deaths and opined that Bush’s strategy had failed.

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Not Giving Ground

McCain debates torture on O’Reilly


McCain remains adamant that strict interpretation of the Geneva Convention will save American soldiers from torture in future wars. I’d argue that it hasn’t saved American soldiers from torture in any war, save perhaps World War I. Japan, for instance, was one of the earliest signatories to the GC and still treated American POWs more barbarically than did the North Vietnamese — also a signatory. We should treat POWs consistent with our own values, which would strongly argue against torture anyway, but don’t tell me that refraining from waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would keep jihadists from beheading and torturing American soldiers now or in the future.

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Junk Science

Schumer Chucks the FDA? - Who needs the Food and Drug Administration? New York Democrat Sen. Chuck Schumer and personal injury lawyers certainly don’t -- at least to the extent the agency gets in the way of their political grandstanding and a multi-million dollar payday, respectively.

A Climate of Belief - The claim that anthropogenic CO2 is responsible for the current warming of Earth climate is scientifically insupportable because climate models are unreliable

Brits offer a taste of Kyoto - Great Britain is a decade ahead of Canada in the global warming debate and what's happening there today is instructive for us.

British taxpayers were among the earliest conscripts into the war on global warming, long before Canada, where Liberal Leader Stephane Dion is only now talking about pricing carbon (i.e. a carbon tax) if he wins the next election.

However, when you examine the views of the British people today, the news isn't good for climate hysterics or Britain's Labour government, now led by Gordon Brown, which suffered heavy losses in recent local elections.

A survey last month of 2,002 British adults by the respected polling firm Opinium Research found:

- 72% are unwilling to pay higher taxes to fight climate change.

- 67% believe the government's green agenda is simply a ploy to raise taxes.

As Opinium's head of research, Mark Hodson, described the findings in the Daily Mail and Independent newspapers: "Britain appears to be feeling increasingly negative about being more carbon neutral. We are questioning the truth behind being greener and many feel the government is creating a green fear for monetary gain." (Lorrie Goldstein, Edmonton Sun)

Federal Polar Bear Research Critically Flawed, Argue Forecasting Experts in INFORMS Journal
Deficient forecasting methodology casts doubt on threat to polar bear population, say authors in Interfaces study

HANOVER, MD, May 8, 2008 – Research done by the U.S. Department of the Interior to determine if global warming threatens the polar bear population is so flawed that it cannot be used to justify listing the polar bear as an endangered species, according to a study being published later this year in Interfaces, a journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS®).

On April 30, U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken ordered the Interior Department to decide by May 15 whether polar bears should be listed under the provisions of the Endangered Species Act.

Professor J. Scott Armstrong of the Wharton School says, “To list a species that is currently in good health as an endangered species requires valid forecasts that its population would decline to levels that threaten its viability. In fact, the polar bear populations have been increasing rapidly in recent decades due to hunting restrictions. Assuming these restrictions remain, the most appropriate forecast is to assume that the upward trend would continue for a few years, then level off.

“These studies are meant to inform the US Fish and Wildlife Service about listing the polar bear as endangered. After careful examination, my co-authors and I were unable to find any references to works providing evidence that the forecasting methods used in the reports had been previously validated. In essence, they give no scientific basis for deciding one way or the other about the polar bear.” (Informs)

Shell Oil president wants more access to energy resources - COEUR d'Alene, Idaho - The United States' reliance on foreign oil is increasing because of limits on where companies can search for resources, the president of Shell Oil Co. says.

"The U.S. prohibits access to its own natural resources," John Hofmeister said. "We need more oil and gas, whether it's onshore Alaska, or offshore Alaska."

There are also large energy reserves in Alberta's oil sands and in oil-rich shales in Colorado, Hofmeister said in a speech Tuesday to the National Association of Attorneys General conference here. (Associated Press)


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