A Christian Triumph

I just thought I'd share something really uplifting with you all. If you have time read the following article-

http://www.christianchurchestogether.org/news/070209.html

Christian Churches are coming together to help decrease poverty! What a Christian Triumph! It bodes well for the world that denominations across ecumenical and racial lines can all come together to accomplish a common goal. Things like this give me true hope for the world we live in. I pray we'll continue to see more of these type of efforts in this country and others. Christians could do so much if they would stop focusing on their differences and continue to come together on issues like this that we can all agree upon.
I pray that the efforts will continue. And I'll definitely be looking for ways to get involved in projects like this one!

Bush's Legacy

First of all let me just state that this post is for humor only. I don't really believe the following, I just always enjoy cockamamie theories and I thought this one was good for a laugh. (Though I do believe everything I'm going to say about Reagan and I really don't care for him as a president.)
My mother recently brought up the point that Bush seems to not care about the type of legacy he is leaving behind. With the disastrous Iraq War still going on, the gap between the rich and poor reaching new unbelievable heights, and global warming finally starting to be believed to be a real threat that Bush has ignored his whole administration, groups of historians have already started proclaiming him the worst president in history.
But why would a man not care what type of legacy he left behind as president. Does he really want to go down in the history books as the worst leader our country has ever had?
It doesn't seem to make much sense until you insert my ridiculous theory into the equation.
Here's my thought. Bush knows it's too late to change how people remember him. But it's not to late to change how people remember a certain fellow president of ours, one who he's always admired and wished to emulate.
I think Bush is trying to improve Ronald Reagan's image.
You see, Reagan is dead now and it's started to come closer to the time where people will be allowed to more closely scrutinize what he did while he was in office. And if those who have no memory of what the country was like under Reagan start to look at his actual record, there are things there to find that could tarnish the former president's image. (I really hope my father and my friend Pi don't read the following or I fear they'll never forgive me.)
After all, Reagan supported numerous ruthless dictators in his fervor to prevent communism from spreading. A case could even be made that after Nixon and Carter's work in the presidency, the Cold War could have ended in the beginning of the 80s if not for Ronald Reagan stretching it out for another decade. Reagan stirred up anti-communist paranoia again and gave the country an old bogeyman to be desperately afraid of for another 8 years. Then there's how Reaganomics really seemed to have injured the country's economic situation and drive it into a stagnant state that wasn't corrected until 8 years of Clinton's fiscal policy. And if we read the encyclopedia it tells how during the Iran/Iraq War, we were the ones who gave money and weapons to Saddam Hussein, effectively putting him into power.
What would happen to conservatives everywhere if the image of their most beloved president ever became damaged when fully put under the microscope? It would be more than many of them could bear.
But never fear. Bush has devised a foolproof strategy. He may not be able to save his own image but he can at least save Reagan's.
After all, when you compare all the the things Bush has done to the legacy of Ronald Reagan, the old movie star looks pretty darn impressive doesn't he? Sure there were a few things he did that weren't that great, but he was a political genius compared to Bush!
So fear not President Bush. We may remember you with disdain and loathing and you may go down as the worst president in history, but your ineptitude has saved the reputation of your idol. Compared to you, Ronald Reagan will always be remembered as a Saint and a National Hero.
At least by everyone but me and my mom. ;)

Bully Coulter vs. Jim Wallis

My friend Claire recently sent me one of the latest articles from Ann Coulter's website. Here's the link to her recent ranting-

http://www.anncoulter.com/cgi-local/welcome.cgi

The first thing that struck me about this article was her continual chastisement of the Hollywood set and how they waste their riches on frivolous things such as massive mansions and expensive water by the case. I almost laughed myself silly at her outrage because what does she think all those rich Republican CEOs and businessmen do with their money? She's okay with them spending their fortunes however they want, but if Hollywood Stars are free with their money it's a sin? Yet another famous Coulter double standard. (And I'll bet of the two groups, the rich Democrats give a lot more of their wealth to charity.)
But the gist of this article is that she's basically declared a crusade against global warming. Ironically she seems to be one of those irrational Republicans still holding on to the notion that scientists are still solidly on both sides of the aisle on the global warming issue. I know of course that she hasn't actually watched "An Inconvenient Truth," (in fact I think global warming is more inconvenient to her than anyone else as it punches a giant hole in one of her favorite arguments) but if she had she would know a study has been done of hundreds of scientific articles on global warming, and absolutely none of them disputed the fact that global warming is real and significantly affected by humans.
Still this is the same woman who recently called John Edwards a faggot, so I shouldn't expect any kind of willingness to hear others out who don't agree with her, or to even write about her opinions in anything other than a haze of hatred. Simply put Ann Coulter is a bully and it's silly of me to expect her to act like anything else.
This becomes particularly apparent when I contrast her to my new hero, Jim Wallis. Mr. Wallis recently wrote an article discussing the denial of certain Christians on the Religious Right who like Ms.Coulter are convinced that global warming is a bogeyman made up by liberals and not worth our time. Here's the article-

http://www.beliefnet.com/blogs/godspolitics/2007/03/jim-wallis-dr-dobson-lets-have-real.html

Wallis points out, without insulting anyone I might add, that there is no reason global warming shouldn't be considered as much of a moral issue as issues like abortion and gay marriage. In fact in a show of his usual brilliance he goes on to say the following-
Is the fact that 30,000 children will die globally today, and everyday, from needless hunger and disease a great moral issue for evangelical Christians? How about the reality of 3 billion of God’s children living on less than $2 per day? And isn’t the still-widespread and needless poverty in our own country, the richest nation in the world, a moral scandal? What about pandemics like HIV/AIDS that wipe out whole generations and countries, or the sex trafficking of massive numbers of women and children? Should genocide in Darfur be a moral issue for Christians? And what about disastrous wars like Iraq? And then there is, of course, the issue that got Dobson and his allies so agitated. If the scientific consensus is right - climate change is real, is caused substantially by human activity, and could result in hundreds of thousands of deaths - then isn’t that also a great moral issue? Could global warming actually be alarming evidence of human tinkering with God’s creation?
So there it is. Can we as Christians really put these prescient issues on the back burner and deny that they are just as moral as the issues Republicans claim have greater importance? Part of the reason Coulter and those like her bother me so much is they spout the dogma that "moral" politics can only involve abortion, gay marriage, and the teaching of sexual abstinence. Yet the mistress of morality and her fellow holier-than-thou colleagues ignore issues like poverty, the war in Iraq, and global warming, which have just as much a right, if not more, to be considered moral politics as well. Statistically those three issues kill far more people than those few the Far Right is all up in arms about. Christians can't claim to support a culture of life if they turn a blind eye to those dying by the political issues that Democrats are traditionally concerned about, and claim that abortion, abstinence, and gay marriage are the only "moral" concerns in politics we should be worried about.
I can't stop those of you who want to believe the hateful and ignorant things that Ann Coulter says. But between her and Jim Wallis, I certainly know who I respect more. I choose to support a culture of life-for ALL issues, not just the ones championed by the Far Right.
Let's end the Religious Right's monopoly on morality. There are definitely more pressing issues at hand than just the ones they're laying on the table.