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Friday, June 5, 2009

400-408Dr. Hugh Ross, founder and president of Reasons to Believe (reasons.org), and he's both an astrophysicist and a pastor – his "Paradoxes" apologetics class is free and open to the public and held every Sunday at 11:15am at Sierra Madre Congregational Church.  Don't forget to sign up for his Today's New Reason to Believe email blast.
413-423Dr. Hugh Ross  Has science revealed anything to you that would undermine your confidence in the Bible?
428-437Dr. Hugh Ross 
443-452Dr. Hugh Ross
458-508Tom Krannawitter, Associate Professor of Political Science at Hillsdale College (hillsdale.edu), and author of Vindicating Lincoln: Defending the Politics of Our Greatest President.  Tom earned his Ph.D. in Political Science at Claremont Graduate University, and is a Senior Fellow at the Claremont Institute (claremont.org), and he's taught at both Claremont McKenna College and Azusa Pacific University.
• Thomas Krannawitter, IBD (6/4/09) Identity Politics Are Not 'Progressive'.
512-523Tom Krannawitter.  Weren't the founder's racists?
528-538Tom Krannawitter.  What about the 3/5's clause?
544-554Tom Krannawitter
558-608Robert Spencer, founder of JihadWatch.org, and author of his latest Stealth Jihad: How Radical Islam is Subverting America without Guns or Bombs, on the President's Cairo Speech to the Muslim World.
• Robert Spencer @ Jihad Watch (6/4/09) Platitudes and naiveté: Obama's Cairo speech.
•• Charles Krauthammer (6/5/09) The Settlements Myth.
In his much-heralded "Muslim world" address in Cairo yesterday, Obama declared that the Palestinian people's "situation" is "intolerable." Indeed it is, the result of 60 years of Palestinian leadership that gave its people corruption, tyranny, religious intolerance and forced militarization; leadership that for three generations rejected every offer of independence and dignity, choosing destitution and despair rather than accept any settlement not accompanied by the extinction of Israel.
That's why Haj Amin al-Husseini chose war rather than a two-state solution in 1947. Why Yasser Arafat turned down a Palestinian state in 2000. And why Abbas rejected Olmert's even more generous December 2008 offer.
In the 16 years since the Oslo accords turned the West Bank and Gaza over to the Palestinians, their leaders built no roads, no courthouses, no hospitals, none of the fundamental state institutions that would relieve their people's suffering. Instead they poured everything into an infrastructure of war and terror, all the while depositing billions (from gullible Western donors) into their Swiss bank accounts.
Obama says he came to Cairo to tell the truth. But he uttered not a word of that. Instead, among all the bromides and lofty sentiments, he issued but one concrete declaration of new American policy: "The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements," thus reinforcing the myth that Palestinian misery and statelessness are the fault of Israel and the settlements.
One benefit of the Obama Presidency is that it is validating much of George W. Bush's security agenda and foreign policy merely by dint of autobiographical rebranding. That was clear enough yesterday in Cairo, where President Obama advertised "a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world." But what he mostly offered were artfully repackaged versions of themes President Bush sounded with his freedom agenda. We mean that as a compliment, albeit with a couple of large caveats.
So there was Mr. Obama, noting that rights such as "freedom to live as you choose" and "the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed" were "not just American ideas, they are human rights." There he was insisting that "freedom of religion is central to the ability of peoples to live together," and citing Malaysia and Dubai as economic models for other Muslim countries while promising to host a summit on entrepreneurship.
There he was too, in Laura Bush-mode, talking about the need to expand opportunities for Muslim women, particularly in education. "I respect those women who choose to live their lives in traditional roles," he said. "But it should be their choice."
Whatever a well-meaning President Obama thinks, occasional American outbursts against Muslims are not analogous with the terrorism directed at Westerners or the hostility toward Christianity shown in most of the Muslim world. Try flying into Saudi Arabia with a Bible, as compared to traveling to San Francisco with a Koran. One can easily forsake Christianity; one can never safely leave Islam. European worries about headscarves are not the equivalent of the Gulf states' harassment of practicing Christians. Sorry, they're just not.
There are no Arab coffeehouse discussions today about the nearly 1 million Muslims killed over two decades by the Soviets in Afghanistan and the Russian government in Chechnya, yet there is constant haranguing over Abu Ghraib, where not a single inmate was killed by rogue American guards. In short, neither logic nor morality is in abundance on the Arab Street, and conjuring up American felonies will not change that.
"On the one hand, on the other hand" — what Greek rhetoricians knew as men/de — when delivered in mellifluous tones, can suggest a path to reconciliation. But denial of fundamental differences leads nowhere. Our problems with the Middle East will dissipate, as have to varying degrees our problems with Japan, Southeast Asia, South Korea, and South America, when the region adopts, in part or in toto, open markets, consensual government, and human rights. Until then, we are in an uneasy and dangerous waiting period.
President Obama's intent is noble, but therapeutic efforts to disguise the truth never really work. We will see how the short-term good created by his therapeutic speechmaking compares to the long-term harm caused by telling the Muslim world, once again, that its problems were largely created by us — and, therefore, that we are largely responsible for providing the remedies.  –– Neither is true.

• FRC Washington Update (6/4/09) Outreach or Overreach?

Much is being said about President Obama's speech today at Cairo University. Left-leaning pundits have touted the speech in a leading Arab nation as a bold outreach to "the Muslim World." It may be a bold outreach from a political perspective, but it was certainly a bold overreach from a factual and historical perspective.
Quoting from the Koran four times, the President said, "Islam has always been a part of America's story. The first nation to recognize my country was Morocco...let there be no doubt, Islam is a part of America." Actually, Mr. President, it was Holland. On November 16, 1776, officials at Saint Eustatius in the Dutch West Indies fired "the first salute" to a warship bearing the American flag. The event was the subject of a best-selling history book by Barbara Tuchman, two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize. The President is certainly entitled to his own opinion of America. But, as Ronald Reagan said, he is not entitled to his own facts.
President Obama went on to cite John Adams' words when second president signed the Treaty of Tripoli in 1796. Adams, at the time, said we had "no enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility of Muslims." The only problem was that the Barbary Pirates, then operating out of Tripoli, continued to prey on American shipping. Although he didn't use "micro loans" or new "science and technology" funds, Adams attempted to buy them off and failed. By 1800, nearly one-fifth of the federal budget was consumed in trying to pay off predatory rulers in North Africa. When Thomas Jefferson succeeded Adams in 1801, he dispatched warships and U.S. Marines "to the shores of Tripoli" to fight for American rights. Jefferson was determined not to pay tribute to the Muslim rulers of North Africa and to stop their seizing U.S. merchant ships and selling American seamen into slavery. That effort succeeded.
And yes, Jefferson did own a copy of the Koran as President Obama stated in his speech today. But the reason he read it when he was serving as our ambassador in Paris was to see if it could really be true--as Arab diplomats were telling him--that the Koran gave them the right to attack and enslave Americans and all other "infidels." Jefferson concluded from his reading that America must fight--not pay tribute--to protect her citizens.
612-623Robert Spencer
628-638Robert Spencer
644-652Robert Spencer
657-700 – • Fox News (6/5/09) U.N. Nuke Watchdog Finds 'Manmade' Uranium in Syria.  The IAEA found it at a second site, not the North Korean nuclear site Israel destroyed back in 2007.  In addition, Iran now has 5,000 centrifuges, has a stockpile of 1,339 kg (3,000 pounds) low-enriched uranium, and is rapidly working on a solid-rocket delivery vehicle that can go undetected because it will not require a long fuel-up process as liquid-rockets do.
• Betsy McCaughey (6/5/09) Obama's Voodoo Health Economics: Cutting our medical care is bad science.  Ms. McCaughey, former lieutenant governor of New York state, is founder of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths.
• NYT Editorial (6/5/09) The Cairo Speech.


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