G. Frink's

Was Monday's Congressional failure to approve a meaningful remedy to the looming, global financial catastrophe another harbinger of the end of American global leadership?

Doesn't our economic catastrophe inevitably have spiritual failures at its core?

Yet religion has become so politicized by the power-preoccupied manipulations of the culture warriors that we have have difficulty turning collectively to it for the spiritual wisdom our predicament requires.

Timothy Shriver tried to fight his way past this in his Newsweek column Religion from the Heart by consulting Robert Bellah, 81, Elliott Professor of Sociology Emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley.

Both media and progressive groups swallowed hook, line and sinker Sunday's Alliance Defense Fund anti-Obama stunt.

The Palin/McCain comedy of contradictions was on stage all weekend.

After failing to keep Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin on a leash short enough to silence her, Republican Presidential nominee John McCain tried to retract on Sunday Palin's reversal on Saturday of his Friday debate position on unilateral strikes against terrorists inside Pakistan.

Palin's reversal of McCain came when she was questioned by a Temple University graduate student Saturday while she was buying a pair Philadephia cheesesteaks:

There is a video clip of an October 2005 sermon in which Kenyon pastor Thomas Muthee, while visiting the Wasilla Assembly of God, calls upon God to "invade" several sectors of secular society.

Muthee also blesses then Mayor Sarah Palin's ambitions for higher office -- she was elected governor of Alaska a year later.

As Wake Forest University Divinity School visiting professor Melissa Rogers explains:

Muthee then calls Palin to the front of the sanctuary and prays over and with her, along with others from the congregation. Palin referenced this event in her now famous remarks at the Wasilla Assembly of God in early 2008.

The debate is on.

Yes, tonight's debate between McCain and Obama is on, but I'm referring to the debate over whether Republican Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin should withdraw from the race.

Conservative blogger Rod Dreher [Crunchy Con] may have started it on the right with his assessment of Palin's performance during her Sept. 24 interview with Katie Couric:

Couric's questions are straightforward and responsible. Palin is mediocre, again, regurgitating talking points mechanically, not thinking. Palin's just babbling. She makes George W. Bush sound like Cicero.

Pat Riviere-Seel, whose volume of poetry entitled "The Serial Killer's Daughter" was reviewed here recently, is one of four poets featured on the cover of the current issue of Verve, a western North Carolina magazine for women.

Ms. Riviere-Seel is also the author of No Turning Back Now, part of the New Women's Voices Series from Finishing Line Press.

Gently ridiculed as "Earth shattering news" at a nearby site which has more understanding of these issues than we, Clay Aiken has come out of the so-called "closet."

We mention it because he is a son of North Carolina Southern Baptist nurture and enjoys the ongoing support of nearby Leesville Baptist Church.

Some Alaskans are unhappy over the McCain campaign's decision to hide Gov. Sarah Palin and her family behind campaign spokesman Ed O'Callaghan in what has been dubbed "the abdication of Sarah Palin."

"When did the McCain campaign take over the governor's office?" asked the Anchorage Daily News in a recent editorial.

One of the world's most influential religious conservatives says Republican Presidential nominee John McCain has become a cynical, unprincipled, waffling George Bush retread.

Richard Cizik, chief lobbyist for the 30-million-member National Association of Evangelicals and a Republican, told the Colorado Independent on Monday, "I thought John McCain was a principled person."