Back of the Envelope

Once again this is late. Once again I've changed the timestamp to put it in the right place.

Sluggy Freelance -- Despite two days of filler, this was a very good week for Sluggy. So what if alt-Bert is dead, the DoP demons have captured alt-Riff, and alt-Zoe is now terrified of Torg, Torg's got a talking magic sword!

Day by Day -- It's the media this week. Even Fox News isn't immune.

It's Walky! -- It's a week for revelations. Beef is working for the bad guys willingly. But so is Mrs. Walkerton!

College Roomies from Hell!!! -- Roger meets the dragon while Diana figures out the truth about Roger.

General Protection Fault -- A tearful reunion of Fooker and Sharon. It's about time!

Schlock Mercenary -- Kevyn comes up with a way to ger Breya's ship running at slightly below optimal capacity.

I've been remiss not to point out some excellent articles by Doc Rampage. Be sure to read the following:

fisking David Greenberg -- Doc takes Mr. Greenberg to task for his partisan attempt to sound reasonable. A brief example:

[Greenberg]

Myth No. 3: Reagan was an incorrigible optimist. Or, as we've been hearing, his sunny disposition made him impossible to dislike. This is more a half-truth than a whole lie. Certainly, Reagan charmed political antagonists like Tip O'Neill. His morning-in-America campaign tapped into a public sense of hope. And he could deploy humor brilliantly. But Reagan also possessed an ugly mean streak. It was evident back when, as California governor, he warned student protesters, "If there has to be a bloodbath, then let's get it over with." Anyone who has watched the replays of Reagan saying, "I paid for this microphone, Mr. Green," or "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall," can see the manifest ferocity that was as crucial to Reagan's persona as his self-effacing grin.

I don't know if Greenberg is deliberately slandering Reagan here or he really is incapable of distinguishing between "an ugly mean streak" and courage. His second two quotes suggest the latter. The fact that he thinks his readers will interpret those two quotes as "an ugly mean streak" suggests that Greenberg is just morally stupid and can't see the difference.

As to the first quote, Greenberg obviously hasn't seen enough westerns. When the good guy points a gun at the bad guy, he has to make the bad guy understand that he means to use it. That's the only way to avoid using it. By making the students believe there really would be a blood bath, Reagan was trying to avoid a bloodbath. This should be blatantly obvious to everyone, including the students at the time. And if Reagan really was willing to have a blood bath? Well, the alternative was anarchy. The willingness to do what needs to be done is not a mean streak, it's courage. Get a dictionary, Mr. Greenberg.

The UN's sex-for-food scandal -- Doc thinks the sex-for-food scandal is overblown:

At the risk of being viewed as callous, I'd like to point out that prostitution is a nearly universal accompaniment of troops. The phrase "camp followers" sometimes specifically refers to prostitutes (and almost always includes them). These UN soldiers are acting no differently than any other soldiers in history, including American soldiers.

If there is a real horror here, (and I emphasize "if") it is that these girls are being so poorly fed at the refugee camp that they are forced into prostitution for a banana or other small bit of food. But I'm skeptical of even that. From the article, it seems that these girls are all former victims of sexual slavery. That is, it seems that they were all kept prisoner and raped repeatedly, by many men, over a long period of time before they got to the camps. And they came to the camps with babies conceived by those rapes.

on whether Bush is a conservative -- Doc takes on Andrew Sullivan in his attempt to paint Bush as... well, I guess I'm not really certain what Andrew's trying to do. He lists a bunch of Bush's conservative positions and then says they prove that Bush isn't really a conservative. Anyway, this appears to have been Doc's impression as well: "Now, anyone who reads my blog knows I'm not a Bush fan. I didn't vote for him, and if the Democrats had put up any kind of reasonable candidate, I would likely have voted against him this year. But really, this list of complaints is so off-the-wall that someone has to respond to them..."

All in all, it's good reading. You may not agree with all of it (I don't), but I highly recommend taking the time to read it.

Although he likes Bush, Mark Steyn wishes he were as well-spoken as Reagan:

I feel a bit like a guy who’s been dating a pleasant lady in the office for a couple of years and suddenly bumps into the gal he always adored in high school. As readers will know, I’m very supportive of George W. Bush, especially on the foreign policy front. But it was unfortunate that a week of 24/7 Ronald Reagan greatest hits on the cable networks should have had to stop once or twice a day to cross to a blinking, groggy Dubya at some G8 press conference with a duplicitous pseudo-ally going round in circles on Iraq for the umpteenth time. Bush is a great and remarkable president and, between Normandy and G8 and the UN, he actually had a very good week. But gosh, it’s hard not to miss the Gipper...
....
Bush has set himself a similar challenge — to remake the Middle East. I think he can do it. He’s played a shrewd hand with both fractious Iraqi politicians and devious UN diplomats and he’s seen off Chirac, but at home there’s undeniably a rhetorical shortfall, as there was in his Reagan eulogy. He could use some Reaganesque clarity and toughness, plus a little more lyricism in the patriotic uplift. But one of the problems with the Bush Administration is that they think they’re so good at walking the walk they don’t have to bother talking the talk. Wrong. Last week conservatives were reminded of everything they’ve missed these last ten years. Never glad confident ‘Morning In America’ again? Your call, Dubya.

It's hard to disagree with Steyn. On the whole, I agree with what Bush is doing and what he's trying to do. I think that too often he refuses to make the strong arguments he needs to make, preferring to let his actions speak for themselves. If the media were the bastion of truth and objectivity it makes itself out to be, that might work. But it's not. Even without the transparent liberal bias, all too often its quest for sensationalism and bad news would keep it from reporting on what's really going on. I'm just glad blogs are taking up some of the slack.

But do we believe them? The 9/11 Commission has severely damaged its own credibility already, so when they make a statement like this, we wonder:

Bin Laden also explored possible cooperation with Iraq during his time in Sudan, despite his opposition to Hussein's secular regime. Bin Laden had in fact at one time sponsored anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan. The Sudanese, to protect their own ties with Iraq, reportedly persuaded Bin Laden to cease this support and arranged for contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda. A senior Iraqi intelligence officer reportedly made three visits to Sudan, finally meeting Bin Laden in 1994. Bin Laden is said to have requested space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded. There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda also occurred after Bin Laden returned to Afghanistan, but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship. Two senior Bin Laden associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between al Qaeda and Iraq. We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States.

First, note that the commission doesn't deny links, just that these links included actual co-planning of attacks (something that no one's ever made a strong claim for, although there are tantalizing bits of evidence). Andrew McCarthy puts this in perspective:

That doesn't appear to be what it is saying at all. This is clear — if anything in this regard can be said to be "clear" — from the staff's murky but carefully phrased summation sentence, which is worth parsing since it is already being gleefully misreported: "We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States." (Italics mine. [McCarthy's]) That is, the staff is not saying al Qaeda and Iraq did cooperate — far from it. The staff seems to be saying: "they appear to have cooperated but we do not have sufficient evidence to conclude that they worked in tandem on a specific terrorist attack, such as 9/11, the U.S.S. Cole bombing, or the embassy bombings."

The same might, of course, be said about the deposed Taliban government in Afghanistan. Before anyone gets unhinged, I am not suggesting that bin Laden's ties to Iraq were as extensive as his connections to Afghanistan. But as is the case with Iraq, no one has yet tied the Taliban to a direct attack on the United States, although no one doubts for a moment that deposing the Taliban post-9/11 was absolutely the right thing to do.

I would point out, moreover, that al Qaeda is a full-time terrorist organization — it does not have the same pretensions as, say, Sinn Fein or Hamas, to be a part-time political party. Al Qaeda's time is fully devoted to conducting terrorist attacks and planning terrorist attacks. Thus, if a country cooperates with al Qaeda, it is cooperating in (or facilitating, abetting, promoting — you choose the euphemism) terrorism. What difference should it make that no one can find an actual bomb that was once in Saddam's closet and ended up at the Cole's hull? If al Qaeda and Iraq were cooperating, they had to be cooperating on terrorism, and as al Qaeda made no secret that it existed for the narrow purpose of inflicting terrorism on the United States, exactly what should we suppose Saddam was hoping to achieve by cooperating with bin Laden?

Frankly, the commission report hasn't added anything new, merely restated the evidence for cooperation (while leaving out some significant, and what McCarthy would call inconvenient, evidence) and rehashed the conventional wisdom. I'm not impressed, but then, I'm not too surprised. Read all of McCarthy's article.

This is the best Sluggy Freelance in a long time. Not only is Torg cool when he runs to rescue the girl, he takes along a sentient magic sword--which no one knew was magic until now (although I have speculated about that being the case). All right, enough of me crowing about Sluggy Freelance. This is one webcomic which you really need to read from the beginning.

The Christian Carnival is up at Belief Seeking Understanding. Douglas Bass has divided the carnival into two parts, the first one here and second here.

As you may have noticed, there's a new button on my sidebar that takes you to Amazon. I've recently become an Amazon Associate, which basically means that if I link to a book on their website, I'll get a commission if someone follows the link and buys it. I also get a commission if someone follows the general link in my sidebar and buys something. I figured it wasn't a bad idea, as I tend to link to their website anyway whenever I'm discussing a book. I've been in the program for almost two weeks now, and I've only made the link once, so it's pretty clear that I'm not abusing it. But, if you intend to visit Amazon anyway, you may want to follow the link in my sidebar. (That's the one at the bottom: there's another button to Amazon's Honor System, but that's only for direct donations, and it doesn't say Amazon on it.)

This sort of thing would usually slip beneath my radar, although Tim Blair is having a lot of fun with it. From the New York Times, of all places:

Like a caged hamster, Senator John Kerry is restless on the road. He pokes at the perimeter of the campaign bubble that envelops him, constantly trying to break out for a walk around the block, a restaurant dinner, the latest movie.

Congrats to the VRWC operative who managed to slip that one into the paper of record. I don't even want to know who he bribed to make it happen.

Seriously, you'd think any newspaper editor who wants to make a good faith effort not to belittle a candidate (something I think they should do regardless of political bias) could come up with a better choice of words. For a counterexample, I have a tendency to pace when I'm thinking. When I'm in my own home, this doesn't bother anyone but me. If I do this while at work, however, it can annoy my co-workers. If they ask me to stop, I do, embarrassed that I'd fallen into the habit again. Just a month or so ago one co-worker said I was distracting her by pacing around like a caged tiger. So I stopped, embarrassed again, but being called a caged tiger did a lot to assuage my pride. If my co-worker, who is not a native English speaker, has enough tact to boost my ego while asking me to stop being so annoying, you'd think that the New York Times ought to be able to manage it for the man they want to be president. I realize Democrats, with their victim cult belief system, may have difficulty understanding why most men would rather be considered tigers than hamsters, but surely they realize that the dumb masses out there would rather have a tiger than a hamster as president during a time of war.

La Shawn Barber wants to know why we blog and why we read blogs. For me, the second part is easier to answer than the first part. I started reading blogs during the Iraq War in 2003. I tried to follow the war in the usual news outlets--CNN, MSNBC, ABC. It became clear very fast that I wasn't getting the whole story. The doom and gloom that they were preaching just didn't match up with what any idiot with a map could see. I found a bit of insight on MSNBC in the form of glennreynolds.com, where I could find links to other places with more accurate information on the war. This in turn brought me to Glenn's "other" blog, Instapundit. From Instapundit, of course, I discovered all sorts of other blogs, and soon I was reading them daily.

As for why I started to blog myself: the first reason was just one of productivity. I felt that with all the blogs I was reading, I just wasn't producing a whole lot, and I wanted to be writing something. And part of it was that I'd occasionally feel I had something to contribute to the debate, and commenting on the blogs of other people just wasn't a very good way to make my contribution.

If you want to submit a post to the Christian Carnival, send an e-mail to Douglass Bass of Belief Seeking Understanding. The post should be of a Christian nature, although it can also cover other issues from a Christian point of view. Please include the following information:

Title of your Blog
URL of your Blog
Title of your post
URL linking to that post
Description of the post

The deadline is 11:59:59 PM Tuesday.

Old Post: My last post on this was here.

Joshua Davey at Letters from Babylon argues that free will and eternal security are inconsistent:

If this is true, then I believe the Arminian who holds to eternal security puts himself in a very difficult position indeed. For if he believes that humans exercise genuine free will in the choice whether or not to accept the salvation that Christ offers, but at the same time believes that the believer cannot lose his salvation, he is essentially saying that the believer, in accepting Christ, forfeits at least an element of his free will—he cannot “un-choose” salvation. Thus, the Arminian who holds to eternal security seems to be saying that (1) part of what it means to be made in the image of God is to have genuine free will, (2) humans exercise this genuine free will in their choice whether or not to accept the salvation offered by Christ (3) once humans have accepted Christ, they cannot exercise their free will to un-choose salvation. To me, what seems to follow from this is that the Arminian who holds to eternal security must also believe that in making the choice to accept salvation, humans surrender their free will as to that most important decision, which in essence means they surrender part of the imago dei. And because I do not believe that humans can surrender part of the imago dei, I believe that holding to both Arminian free will and Calvinist eternal security is incoherent.

I'll admit that I do not find this argument very compelling. As surrender to God is in fact a large part of what it means to accept His grace, giving up a portion of your free will does not seem incompatible with the view that it is initially your will to give. He likens making the choice to accept God to crossing a street--sure you can cross it, but you can also walk back. I tend to think of our relationship with God in more binding terms, such as a contract or, more fittingly, a marriage. A marriage cannot be easily undone, at least not as Jesus saw it (Matthew 5:31-32), where, sure, you can have a divorce, but that's just a legal fiction, not really an end to the marriage. Admittedly, even from Jesus's view, a marriage could be undone (by adultery), but it still wasn't as easily unmade as made.

Of course, I have some peculiar views on God's relationship to time and thus his relationship with us linear creatures, so I tend to view these things in a different light entirely.

Once again, I'm a bit late, so the timestamp is changed to put it in its proper place. It was a pretty slow week anyway, so there's not a whole lot to discuss.

What I remember about Ronald Reagan -- My own reminiscences of our 40th president.

Saved once, saved always -- How a view of God outside of time affects my view of eternal security

Wait, you mean scientists aren't altruistic guardians of the truth? -- A few thoughts on the motivations of scientists