Some thoughts…

#1 - “Ghastly!”

ABC’s Charlie Gibson recently interviewed George H.W. Bush. During the interview the former president commented that he thought the prospect of the Democrats gaining control of one or both houses of Congress in this fall’s election would be “ghastly.”

Really? How much more “ghastly” could it be than what the Republicans in 10 years of congressional power have wrought?

- A federal budget deficit that’s out of control.
- Being bogged down in two wars that, if we are not losing them, we certainly are not winning them.
- An economy that’s only “good” for the rich, but seems to have passed by the rest of us.
- Oil prices skyrocketing.
- Pervasive divisiveness and incivility --- “swift boating,” gay bashing, finger-pointing, Limbaugh / Coulter / O’Reilly / Hannity.
- And arrogantly passing flagrantly unconstitutional legislation (the so-called Detainee’s Act).

Well, if we do re-elect Republican majorities in both house, God help us because we’ll find out just how mush more “ghastly” it can get.

#2 – “Gays shouldn’t serve in Congress?”

Chris Matthews on MSNBC last week interviewed John Laesch, the Democrat who’s running against Dennis Hastert. Several of the questions Matthews had asked revolved around how Hastert was handing the Mark Foley scandal. So, in that context, Matthews dropped in the ambush question: “Some have suggested that gays should not be allowed to serve in Congress. How do you respond to that?’

Laesch gave a reasonable and classically Democratic answer, which was to the effect that all Americans should he free to serve in Congress.

What I wish is that Laesch, and other Democrats for that matter, had done a Bill Clinton on Matthews and blasted him for the totally out of line question that it was! It was blatantly prejudicial. And it suggested a completely fallacious cause and effect relationship. Unfortunately, by providing an answer, Laesch, like too many other Democrats, just validated that it was a legitimate question in the first place.

#3 – Christian teens turned off

According to the New York Times, it seems that recently there was a conference of Christian leaders concerned because teenagers are leaving the church in droves --- supposedly a poll has shown that only five percent of teens identify themselves as fundamentalist Christians.

Of course, the conference blamed all the usually suspects --- the easy availability of drugs and sex, MTV, Hollywood, rock entertainers, secularism.

I’d suggest for their consideration that there may be some other possible causes for why teens being turned off to hard core Christianity. Perhaps it’s because they have seen through the unashamed hypocrisy of:

- A President that professes to be a Christian, and yet espouses torture and war (George Bush).
- A prominent Christian leader suggesting on national television that another country’s leader should be assassinated (Pat Robertson).
- A reportedly good Baptist Church-attending business leader who greedily pillaged his corporate coffers to line his own pockets, but cost thousands of his employees their pensions (Ken Lay).
- Using Jesus’ name to demonize gays.
- Mixing politics and religion (if you don’t dutifully support Republicans, you can’t be a real Christian).