Today on Kresta - August 21, 2009

Talking about the "things that matter most" on August 21
Live From the Iowa State Fair With KWKY – Catholic Radio For Des Moines

3:00 – Kresta Comments / Questions from the Live Studio Audience

4:20 – Obama, health care, and religious leaders
With his health reform efforts on the ropes, President Barack Obama is courting the religious community with an unabashedly moral message that played little role in the White House’s earlier arguments for changing America’s health care system. Speaking on a conference call Wednesday evening with religious leaders, Obama also suggested that some critics of his health care proposals were violating the Biblical commandment against lying. “I know there’s been a lot of misinformation in this debate and there are some folks out there who are, frankly, bearing false witness,” Obama said on the call. Obama also insisted the plan would not provide government funding for abortion. We get the facts from Leonard Nelson.

4:40 – “Ponyo” and Hayao Miyazaki
If you have a child (or a nephew, niece, grandchild, etc.) under the age of ten … or an open-minded child of any age … or if you remember childhood well enough to watch films like Bambi and Winnie the Pooh, with five-year-old eyes … there is a movie in theaters you really should see, from a filmmaker whose work you really should know. Those are the words of our film critic Steven Greydanus, and he is here to tell us what – and who – he is talking about.

5:00 – Kresta Comments

5:20 – Souly Walking
Inspired through reading the lives of the saints Jon Leonetti realized that in order to live his Catholic faith to the fullest, he has to give it all. That is why he and a friend chose to walk, over 3,500 miles, asking young people to take on a new way of living, one where they are lost in the love of Jesus Christ. Their walk is over, and the feet are healed. We talk to Jon about the lessons learned, the impact made, and the fruits of the mission.

5:40 – How Bush Quietly Saved a Million African Lives
What if a president, on his own initiative, under no demands from staff or from supporters or opponents, set out to spend an unprecedented amount of money on AIDS in Africa, literally billions of dollars, at a time when the nation could not afford it, citing his faith as a primary motivation and, ultimately, saved more than a million lives? Wouldn’t the story be front-page news, especially in top, liberal newspapers? Wouldn’t it lead on CNN, MSNBC, and the “CBS Evening News?” Might statues be erected to the man in the nation’s more “progressive” cities? What if the president was George W. Bush? Paul Kengor has the facts and the analysis.