Leftist Christian

Out of all the cable news channels, I would have to go with C-SPAN. I abhor Fox, and the others are too cookie-cutter and milquetoast. This one just runs footage straight through with no comment. If one is to pretend to be unbiased, this is about the only way to do it. Recently Jon Stewart confronted the hosts of Crossfire about their "debate" style--what I get from it is that to appear unbiased, networks feel that they must dish out their criticism entirely equally. Or they just don't at all. Aren't there some objective criticisms of the Bush administration that should be commonplace by now? On a program on Sundance channel called "Fahrenheit 9/11: A Movement in Time," Dan Rather discusses feeling as though his hands are tied in reporting on the current administration (the clip is from a panel of prominent network reporters). I've gotten this same impression watching Saturday Night Live the past few weeks. Do they feel they need to pretend to an unbiase...

Our president is a “compassionate conservative.” This week, it has been estimated that 100,000 Iraqi lives have been taken. We’ve been beyond 1,000 U.S. soldiers’ deaths for a while now as well. This, at least, is in the name of the Bush administration’s interest in Iraq. We were told this was because of the development of weapons of mass destruction there. Then we were told that it was to spread freedom. For those of us who don’t sense the ring of truth in these, we suspect that it has something to do with oil and Haliburton contracts. If so, God help them. Or as Bob Dylan said, “Even Jesus could never forgive what you do.” If Bush loses sleep over this as he claims he does, I hope it occurs tenfold. If you are planning on voting for Bush because of his position on abortion, consider recent findings that the number of abortions has increased under his administration. Further, it was found that the number has been higher under conservative administrations and lower under liberal admin...

I woke up to some interesting news this morning about Howard Stern confronting Michael Powell as a caller on a San Francisco radio show. Stern has of course had a lot to say about Powell over the past several months as talk of high indecency fines has caused considerable anxiety among broadcasters of Stern's show. Particularly, it seems that Clear Channel dropped him from its stations soon after such talk began. So this confrontation had been a long time coming, since Stern claims Powell has been unreachable and that the FCC has used racketeering-type tactics to avoid lawsuits. On the call-in show, Stern made such accusations as well as charges of nepotism (Powell is of course Colin's son) and selectivity in fining him and not other similar offenders. The climate during the past four years has been hostile to free speech, as this is an example. I was surprised during the final debate when Bush sought to defend the Patriot Act. As viewers of Fahrenheit 9/11 know, this has been ...

We've lost tons of explosives? This administration is incompetent, though we already knew that. What will it take, people? There is little question that this is the worst president in American history. An independent study (PIPA) recently found, though, that there is quite a difference between what Bush supporters believe to be true and what is in fact true. Perhaps you had heard before that regular viewers of Fox News are more misinformed than viewers of other media outlets and that the more they watch Fox, the more mistaken they are. This new study finds that Bush supporters still believe that Saddam had ties with al Qaida, that there are weapons of mass destruction, that the rest of the world is largely in agreement with our actions in Iraq, and that Bush supports the Kyoto treaty. All of which are incorrect, in case you don't know. I was heartened yesterday, though, to read my local paper's endorsement of Kerry. Only one week to go--will this latest issue bring people a...

I've picked up a trick in discovering where Republicans get their talking points. If they are discussing something, anything, such as problems created by the Bush administration, and they steer the blame to Bill Clinton, they probably get their information from Rush Limbaugh. Limbaugh made his career on his obsession with the Clintons, and he hasn't stopped talking about them since. One conspiracy theory he purports is that the Clintons will not support John Kerry because Hillary would like to run for president in 2008. He might have wanted to let Bill in on this before his stellar speech at the Democratic National Convention, or Hillary herself should have known this before she called Kerry's performance in the last debate "masterful." Besides, I personally wouldn't have any problem with Hillary running for president; she'd make an excellent first female president. This, of course, seems to be about conservatives' fear of strong women. I've notic...

I saw the documentary "Stoked" over the weekend, which follows Mark "Gator" Rogowski from his height of popularity to the rape and murder of a friend of his girlfriend. I remembered hearing something about this, but it occurred around 1990-91. By then I wouldn't have been paying much attention to skateboarding anymore. The film also mentions that Christian Hosoi was in prison on drug charges, and Jeff Phillips killed himself. Tony Hawk has of course fared better, with video games and television appearances. Lance Mountain is in the film quite a bit, as is Steve Caballero. I guess they both still skate. This film might be sort of a companion to "Dogtown and the Z-Boys," which is mostly more positive but also ends by mentioning that one of the prominent skaters wound up in prison (I think also on drug charges). I have found that these films tap into a kind of nostalgia for me--am I going to be susceptible to such things, what with the Pixies reuniting? ...

Can it actually be that this country will elect George Bush (for real this time)? These polls are killing me--day after day, and they generally seem to show Bush on top. My hope is that November 2 will come out quite differently. After all, Jimmy Carter was not re-elected mostly for Iran's taking a couple of hostages, but we now have beheadings every couple of weeks. To talk to people, though, I won't be incredibly surprised if Bush is elected. Is this a dumb country? There's widespread agreement that Kerry-Edwards won every single debate. Kerry is a war hero; his actions during Vietnam are right out of an action movie. Yet Republicans are able to persuade the American public that up is down--Iraq's going well, chicken hawks are good for the military, making war is making peace, a war hero is a coward, and we're doing well economically. This spills over to the state level. Many states, especially my own, are experiencing budget problems (add one more to that previo...

I'm starting this thing, and I don't know the first thing about all of this except I like the concept. I've chosen where I'm coming from here in the spirit of the current times, feeling the importance of political awareness like so many others recently. So I'm an evangelical Christian who would love to get George Bush out of office. There have to be more like me. And now, for a brief anecdote: I e-mailed my pastor recently to ask him not to distribute "voter guides" to our congregants. I noticed a story about this in the news, that the Christian Coalition would be sending those out this week. There's certainly a decidedly right wing slant at my church. This is where I'm coming from--theologically conservative and politically liberal. But the "W04" bumper stickers can be seen in my church parking lot. So he responded that he didn't intend on distributing these but oddly proceeded to say that these seem unbiased to him, unlike politica...