Still good

I've read Wizard of Id for more than 40 years.
Still good, and relevant.
LOL!

Misrepresentation

I sometimes get comments from people who say they would prefer the steadfastness of GW Bush and his commitment to his own principles now matter what to the lying of Bill Clinton.
They refer in a general way to Clinton's public and court-room lying.
Generally they don't specifically say it, but they mean the affair with Monica.
It is not said whether they think (or know) that Clinton has lied about other things.
I think that lying, in general, is a pretty bad thing.
One should not do it.
But lying is also a subtle thing.
And betraying trust is a part of it.
One can betray trust without telling a deliberate lie.
Not telling the whole truth is one way.
Shading things to make a situation look to be something it isn't.
And the responsibility of the leader of the free world to not betray our trust in these ways is pretty great.
I follow the website Fact Check.
It reports on misrepresentations of facts by politicians of all kinds, and the government in general.
The latest article tells about the misrepresentations in Bushes' latest news conference about children's health insurance. Click here.
And about the situation in Iraq. Here.
Given the scope of the effects of these misrepresentations, I still choose those of Clinton any day.

Latest late-nighters

"How many saw the president's speech last night? He pre-empted regular programming, which is nice, because viewers tuning in to see 'Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader' for once got to feel they actually were. Yeah, he offered really no new strategy that I saw, but, of course, a new slogan: 'Return on Success.' Sounds like a Dr. Phil book." --Bill Maher

"Did you know last night's presidential speech was the first one broadcast in Hi-Def? And again, I don't think President Bush quite understands what that means. If fact, when they told him it was Hi-Def, he said, 'Oh great. Does that mean we don't need that lady with the sign language up in the corner anymore?" --Jay Leno

"In political news, Vice President Dick Cheney is very upset about the way General Petraeus has been treated by the Democrats. Vice President Cheney said it is horrible that people mock and insult a soldier. I'll be sure to pass that on to John Kerry when I see him." --Jay Leno

Yesterday in Australia, a TV comedian dressed himself up over there as Osama Bin Laden and got within feet of Bush's hotel. They got him, and the Bush spokesman said it was obviously not the real Bin Laden because they caught him." --Bill Maher

"Last night in this state of California, the first Republican debate was held at the Reagan Presidential Library. The candidates tried to distance themselves from President Bush. Apparently, the first step in distancing yourself from President Bush is appearing at a library"--Conan O'Brien

"This is the week that Congress sent the president a bill to bring the troops home, which, of course, as he promised he would do, vetoed it. The president said setting a deadline for withdrawal was setting a date for failure. And we all know, this is a president who likes his failures unplanned and spur-of-the-moment." --Bill Maher

Keys to success

Posters

If you follow Christian blogs you know that selfmade posters have been very popular lately.
You can make your own here.
TeamPyro has made quite a few criticizing the Emerging Church.
Click here and scroll down.
And of course a number of Emergent people have made their own.
You can see some of them here.
Kind of cute stuff.
I like this one:

Actually, I've been trying to work on an equal basis with women (in and outside of the church) for some years now.
It's not easy for me to do sometimes, because of biases from my background.
But it has made my life much richer.
Thank you, ladies.

Followup Mr. Bumbler

Here is an excerpt from the interview with Bill Clinton on Larry King.
The subject is the capture of terrorists (like last week in Germany) and whether Clinton is optimistic or pessimistic about the future.
Again - whether you agree with him or not, there is an ability to think clearly, articulate, and presented a balanced and nuanced view, the kind of thing we sorely miss nowdays.
Notice here that he credits Bush with the fact that there has not been an attack on US soil since 9/11.
Take a few minutes to watch....

Mr. Bumbler

Yesterday I saw a bit of the interview with Bill Clinton on Larry King Live.
Clinton is so articulate and in command of the facts and issues (regardless of whether you agree with him or not).
And our Mr. Bumbler is still going around the world.

One a week

Senate Guru 2008 has published a list of scandals involving Republicans in 2008.
There has been one a week - actually more: one every 5.7 days.
See the list here.
A number of commenters want to know where the list of corruption in the Deomcratic party is. Wouldn't it be more fair to publish that list also?
Good question, but not really relevant.
My mother always said that it doesn't matter what the other boy does - you keep your own nose clean.
And another person comments - right on the money: Actually, since W has been in power, I have had a hard time reconciling the depth of the corruption with the lack of outrage, or even coverage.
Bingo.

Kickin' ass

CNN reports the following (and I have read it in other sources, too):

WASHINGTON (CNN) — When President Bush made a surprise visit to Iraq last weekend, he made clear he was pleased with what he saw.
"The security situation is changing," Bush told reporters during the visit. "There's more work to be done. But reconciliation is taking place."
But according to the Sydney Morning Herald of Australia, the president gave a more-to-the-point assessment to Australia Deputy Prime Minister Mark Vaile.
"We're kicking ass," Bush said to Vaile Tuesday, according the Herald, after the deputy prime minister inquired about his trip to Iraq.

I know whose I'd like to kick........

English

Last week the videoclip of Miss Teenage South Carolina answering a question with complete nonsense spread like wildfire over blogworld. Click here to see it yourself if you haven't already.
Recently I've come across a blog dedicated to pointing out the wrong use of the apostrophe. Here is the blog. You'll find examples like:

Ladie's room.
Gordon win's again.
Abuse for writer's.

I'm (notice the apostrophe) proud to announce that I corrected one of these in the main evangelical missions magazine, EMQ. They had their Reader's Respond section until I, in a gentle mail, reminded them that it should be Readers Respond. Really - I did it very nicely, and it was immediately changed.......

This one has nothing to do with the apostrophe, but it is hilarious. It comes from a report about the Philadelphia Phillies losing to the Florida Marlins (it was a crucial game).

Anyway, the last at-bat is described this way:

Rollins then flew out to center on the next pitch to short-circuit the rally and deflate any momentum Philadelphia had still been carrying from its four-game sweep of New York earlier in the week.

Can't you just see Rollins flapping his arms and levitating while the stadium crowd goes crazy, wondering if he really will make it to center field, and, if he does, ready to believe in miracles and immediately join this church?

For those of you who don't know what is wrong with this sentence, it should be flied.

Ah - English is difficult. Just ask our Commander in Chief.

You knew I'd somehow get to him, didn't you?

Partisanship

In remarks about the resignation of Attorney General Gonzalez, President Bush made the following statement:

After months of unfair treatment that has created a harmful distraction at the Justice Department, Judge Gonzales decided to resign his position, and I accept his decision. It's sad that we live in a time when a talented and honorable person like Alberto Gonzales is impeded from doing important work because his good name was dragged through the mud for political reasons.

It is very clear that partisanship is as bad in Washington as it has ever been.
Surely it has not gotten better since Bush took office.
He was the one who promised he could reach across political lines, having been so successful in Texas. He saw it as his moral duty.

Although you can't directly blame a leader for the failures of his followers, a measure of competence is how you get people to follow you and your ideals.

Again: a failing grade.

Moms (sigh): we're so glad they love us

Cheney

This interview of Jon Stewart with the biographer of Dick Cheney Stephen Hays is really good.
Worth taking the time to listen to. Jon is really good at getting to the real issues.
But first, watch this:

God loves the world according to Pyromaniacs

If you want to experience first-hand what kind of exegetical summersaults Augustinians have to perform to explain how God can love the world while condemning some or many to hell, check this link to Pyromaniacs.
I read this blog because I want to be balanced in my reading, but I disagree pretty thoroughly with their theology.
And I find it interesting that there are almost no dissenting voices on their comments any more. People have given up trying to interact fruitfully with them.
But - check it out for yourself.

Talbott (2)

Talbott also makes this observation: God commands us to love Him above all else, and to love our neighbor as ourself.

According to the Augustinian view, there are people whom God does not love, people whom He sends to an everlasting hell. The book of Romans says, for examnple: " Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated."

Interesting that God commands Jakob to love Esau as himself, but God feels free to hate Esau.

Last Picture

The last picture before we left La Fayette, where we've been the last ten days. I think I have not mentioned here that we have been on vacation in Philadelphia and Georgia the last 2 weeks. We go back to Holland on Friday.
Hooray for the Dutch vacation practices!

Thomas Talbott

While on vacation I have read a book by Thomas Talbott about universal reconciliation. The book is called “The Inescapable Love of God”. It is a fascinating book, because it approaches this subject from a philosophical and logical viewpoint, and less a theological one.
A few quotes from the book:

“A cardinal doctrine of Christian faith is that God, being a loving Creator, is at work in the world redeeming sinners…But Christians have often disagreed among themselves about the extent and the ultimate success of God’s redemptive activity, and those disagreements reflect surprisingly different conceptions of the divine nature. The conceptions are so different, indeed, that some might wonder whether all Christians in fact worship the same God.
Here is a relatively easy way to understand these issues and to organize our thinking about them. We begin with an inconsistent set of three propositions:

1. It is God’s redemptive purpose for the world (and therefore His will) to reconcile all sinners to himself.
2. It is within God’s power to achieve his redemptive purpose for the world.
3. Some sinners will never be reconciled to God, and God will therefore either consign then to a place of punishment, from which there will be no hope of escape, or put them out of existence altogether.” (pg 43)

Talbott comments that there are Bible verses that seem to support each of these propositions.
Talbott comments further that each of the three main streams of theological thinking in the church reject one of these three propositions – and thus a proposition that seems to have Bibical support!

Augustinians (and Calvinist and the Reformed) reject the first proposition, believing that God has elected a select group of people for salvation. Propositions 2 and 3 stand, because Gods will to save some cannot be thwarted and hell is real.
Arminians (evangelicals) reject proposition 2. God does want to save everyone, but because people have a free will, they are free to reject God’s salvation. God is thus not able (or He limits himself because of man’s free will) to save everyone.
Universalists reject proposition 3. God does desire to save everyone, and He will accomplish His redemptive purpose. An eternal Hell with no hope of restoration cannot exist.

I quote again:

“So here, then, are three quite different pictures of God: According to the Augustinian picture, God’s redemptive purposes are not thwarted, but He is limited in in love; according to the Arminian picture, God’s love is unlimited, but His redemptive purposes are thwarted by factors over which he has no control; and according to the universalist picture, God’s love is unlimited and his redemptive purposes are unthwarted as well. Accordingly, a question that may now arise is: “Which of our three pictures best preserves the praiseworthy character and glory of the divine nature?” And, two additional questions: “Which picture, if true, would provide the firmest foundation for hope? – and which seems the most likely to cultivate our fears?” (pg 48)

Pretty interesting stuff. I'd be interested in what you think.

Incompetence again....

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates offers a blunt review of the (political) situation in Iraq after his visit there.
Reflecting on the difficulty of political reconciliation there, Gates said:

“We probably all underestimated the depth of the mistrust and how difficult it would be for these guys to come together on legislation, which, let’s face it, is not some kind of secondary issue.”

I don't have the training, expertise and experience of American diplomats, but my experience with living in other cultures makes me understand in a second how difficult it is to deal with mistrust among cultural and tribal groups. This is a job that will take decades.

It's too bad incompetence is not an impeachable offense.
In a parliamentary system of government, these guys would have been out on their ears long ago.

Logic

President Bush made this statement in his speech yesterday in South Carolina, while he was trying to drive home his talking points:

Some note that al Qaida in Iraq did not exist until the U.S. invasion -- and argue that it is a problem of our own making. The argument follows the flawed logic that terrorism is caused by American actions. Iraq is not the reason that the terrorists are at war with us.

Apparently, someone who notes the simple fact that al Qaida wasn't in Iraq before the botched US follow-up to the invasion, and wonders what that has to say about our being in Iraq and the war on terror, is guilty of flawed logic.

The person asking that question is not suggesting that the terrorism is caused by U.S. actions.
I know, because I have the same question.

The questions we want answered are:
1. Al Qaida was not in Iraq before we invaded, and could come into Iraq because we botched the follow-up. Can you say what went wrong and what we could have done differently? That is an important question, not to harp on mistakes of the past, but to learn for the future. (Imagine that we do invade Iran sometime...)
2. What do we need to do to keep al Qaida from coming into other countries in the Middle East? We know the Taliban is regaining strength in Afghanistan. How can we prevent al Qaida from coming in with them?
3. Why should we trust the intelligence information you now present to "prove" al Qaida is in Iraq and what their intentions are any more than the intelligence information upon which you went to war?
4. How's the hunt for Osama bin Laden going?

If any of my 5 readers can show me where my logic is flawed, I'll write an email of apoplogy to the President.

Demotivation

At DESPAIR, INC., we believe motivational products create unrealistic expectations, raising hopes only to dash them. That's why we created our soul-crushingly depressing Demotivators® designs, so you can skip the delusions that motivational products induce and head straight for the disappointments that follow!
Here are a couple of their posters. Great idea! I feel better already!