Author: kingsjester

64 year old Christian Conservative husband, father, and grandfather who has been writing since April 2010.

The Scott Walker Recall Vote: The DNC’s Revenge

On By kingsjesterIn Politics5 Comments

All America this week will be focused on Wisconsin as Governor Scott Walker faces a Recall Election, engineered by the powers that be in the DNC.

Reuters.com has the story:

Political activists converged on Wisconsin on Sunday to join get-out-the-vote efforts two days before a historic recall election for Republican Governor Scott Walker that is seen as a test for November’s presidential race.

Walker enraged the labor movement last year when he eliminated most collective bargaining rights for public sector unions as part of a push to limit government and slash spending in the politically divided state.

Some observers are calling the June 5 vote the second most important U.S. election of the year.

President Barack Obama easily captured Wisconsin by 14 percentage points in the 2008 election, when he defeated Republican John McCain. Two years later, Republicans in Wisconsin roared back to elect Walker, defeat Democratic U.S. Senator Russ Feingold and take over the state legislature.

Mitt Romney, who has clinched the Republican presidential nomination, has called Walker a “hero,” while Obama has supported Walker’s Democratic challenger, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett.

All over the Midwestern state – known for its dairy farms, factories and the revered Green Bay Packers NFL football team – political professionals and volunteers fanned out to ensure their supporters made it to the polls on Tuesday.

“It’s really about the future of this state,” said Bob Peterson, the president of the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association as he grilled hamburgers on Saturday for volunteers who will try to boost the anti-Walker vote.

Civil Rights activists Reverend Jesse Jackson from Chicago and Al Sharpton from New York, both aligned with the Democratic Party, will be in Milwaukee, the state’s largest city, to try to spur a strong turnout by black voters.

If he is defeated, Walker would become the third state governor recalled from office during his term, after North Dakota’s Lynn Frazier in 1921 and Gray Davis of California in 2003.

Polls show a close race although Walker has held a single-digit lead since the recall date was formally set, and there are almost no undecided voters. The focus is on voter turnout in a state with a history of high voter participation.

Back on 2/20/11, in a post titled “Wisconsin, Obama, and the 10th Admendment”, I reported that:

The truth is, some of the main instigators behind the current protest in Wisconsin over Governor Scott Walker’s proposed budget cuts have been the Democratic Party and their sponsored group named Organizing for America, whose publicity arm operates the  DNC-owned website barackobama.com.

Per David Horowitz’s discoverthenetworks.org:

Organizing for America (OFA) is a project of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). The American public first heard about OFA on January 17, 2009, when President Barack Obama announced that the organization would soon open its doors for business. Two months later, in mid-March, OFA was officially launched.

Basing its operations on the third floor of the DNC’s Capitol Hill headquarters, OFA consists of a vast network of volunteers whose mission is to “let their friends and neighbors know about the President’s plan to invest in America’s future, improve health care and education, create green jobs, reduce our dependence on foreign oil and cut the deficit in half over the next four years.”

A New York Times report describes OFA as “an army of [Obama] supporters talking, sending e-mail and texting to friends and neighbors as they try to mold public opinion.”

From an article titled Fight for our State Workers, written by Mary Hough and posted 2/17/11 on barackobama.com:

UPDATE: For the past two days, thousands of workers have been gathering at the State Capitol in Madison, WI, to defend their rights in the workplace. From nurses to police officers, public sector workers and OFA volunteers have been protesting against proposed legislation to take away workers’ rights to bargain collectively. With a vote on the legislation expected as early as today, volunteers are already gathering at the Capitol this morning. It’s going to be a big day in Madison and you can follow updates throughout the day on the OFA Wisconsin Twitter feed.

Organizing for America is mobilizing on the ground in Wisconsin to defend the rights of public employees from an attempt by the governor to take away their right to organize.

Is Obama’s involvement in the Wisconsin protest a violation of the Tenth Amendment?

According to the Detroit Free Press:

President Barack Obama and his political machine are offering tactical support, eager to repair strained relations with some union leaders upset over his recent overtures to business.

The potent combination has helped fan the huge protests in Wisconsin against a measure that would strip collective bargaining rights from state workers. The alliance also is sending a warning to other states that are considering the same tactic.

…For Obama, stepping into a confrontation with a governor has its risks. The president is in a struggle of his own to tame spending, and siding with unions may cast him as a partisan even as he talks about setting a new tone in Washington.

Ya think, DiNozzo? 

Also, Obama has to keep campaign promises that he made to the Labor Unions.

Therefore, Obama will be standing beside Labor Unions, public and private, as they come together to carry out a $30 million plan to stop anti-labor measures in Wisconsin and 10 other states.

This new Labor “Allied Powers” includes AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka working with leaders such as Teamsters president James Hoffa.

Politics make strange bedfellows. The fact is, they haven’t been on speaking terms for years.

Speaker of the House John Boehner, R-Ohio, thinks that Obama is helping fuel “Greece-style” protests in the United States.

His political organization is colluding with special interest allies across the country to demagogue reform-minded governors who are making the tough choices that the president is avoiding.

So, who is the real power behind the Scott Walker Recall Election?

…Was there ever any doubt?

Is America’s National Reality Show Almost Over?

On By kingsjesterIn Politics4 Comments

Mareen Dowd, Syndicated columnist appearing in the New York times, apparently has lost faith in her “messiah”.

Yesterday, she wrote in her op ed:

…The president who started off with such dazzle now seems incapable of stimulating either the economy or the voters. His campaign is offering Obama 2012 car magnets for a donation of $10; cat collars reading “I Meow for Michelle” for $12; an Obama grill spatula for $40, and discounted hoodies and T-shirts. How the mighty have fallen.

Once glowing, his press is now burning. “To a very real degree, 2008’s candidate of hope stands poised to become 2012’s candidate of fear,” John Heilemann wrote in New York magazine, noting that because Obama feels he can’t run on his record, his campaign will resort to nuking Romney.

In his new book, “A Nation of Wusses,” the Democrat Ed Rendell, the former governor of Pennsylvania, wonders how “the best communicator in campaign history” lost his touch.

The legendary speaker who drew campaign crowds in the tens of thousands and inspired a dispirited nation ended up nonchalantly delegating to a pork-happy Congress, disdaining the bully pulpit, neglecting to do any L.B.J.-style grunt work with Congress and the American public, and ceding control of his narrative.

As president, Obama has never felt the need to explain or sell his signature pieces of legislation — the stimulus and health care bills — or stanch the flow of false information from the other side.

“The administration lost the communications war with disastrous consequences that played out on Election Day 2010,” Rendell writes, and Obama never got credit for the two pieces of legislation where he reached for greatness.

The president had lofty dreams of playing the great convener and conciliator. But at a fund-raiser in Minneapolis, he admitted he’s just another combatant in a capital full of Hatfields and McCoys. No compromises, just nihilism.

If he wins the election, “the fever may break,” he said. “My hope, my expectation, is that after the election, now that it turns out that the goal of beating Obama doesn’t make much sense because I’m not running again, that we can start getting some cooperation again.”

In his new biography, “Barack Obama: The Story,” David Maraniss writes that a roommate of the young Obama compared him to Walker Percy’s protagonist in “The Moviegoer”: an observer of his life, one step removed.

On CNBC on Friday, Romney complained that Obama has “been more focused on his perspective of his historic legislative achievements than he has been focused on getting people back to work.”

A president focused on historic achievements? Imagine that. But in his lame way, Romney got at Obama’s problem: The Moviegoer prefers to float above, at a reserve, in grandiose mists.

As Maraniss recounts, Obama said he liked reading Hemingway because of Papa’s “integrity of grasping for those times, those visions, that are ones of true magnificence and profundity.”

Cook told Maraniss that she thought Obama’s desire to “play out a superhero life” was “a very strong archetype in his personality.”

But superheroes and mythic figures must boldly lead. Obama’s caution — ingrained from a life of being deserted by his father and sometimes his mother, and of being, as he wrote to another girlfriend, “caught without a class, a structure, or tradition to support me” — has restrained him at times.

In some ways, he’s still finding himself, too absorbed to see what’s not working. But the White House is a very hard place to go on a vision quest, especially with a storm brewing.

In a related story…

Per dailymail.co.uk:

Reality TV shows are making increasing numbers of people convinced that they’re the stars of their own, unwanted television programs.

Psychiatrists are treating more people for so-called ‘Truman Show’ delusions — named after the 1998 movie starring Jim Carrey as a man who spends his entire life unwittingly at the center of a fictional world that’s being broadcast to millions of homes.

The startling cases often afflict successful people who develop paranoid fantasies that they’re being filmed at all times and that the world that’s in front of them isn’t real.

Their friends and loves ones are actors. The news they see on TV is made up to control the way they think. The things that happen to them are merely events staged for the amusement of others.

The result can turn disturbing and even violent.

For the past three and one-half years, Americans have felt like they were living in a reality show, sleep-walking through our lives, incredulous at the sight of our once proud nation, slowly being regulated to third world status.

We have had to endure the painful sight of watching our president, the leader of the free world, bow in reverence to tin horn despots, while alienating our friends and embracing our enemies.

We spent the time mired in a national malaise as our friends and relatives, and at times, ourselves, have lost our jobs, due to an economy that can only be described as horrible, with no signs of improving.

The entire Obama Presidency has seemed surreal at times, as if the entire country were stuck in a nightmare of our own creation, unable to wake up.

Hopefully, on November 6th, 2012, American will wake up and vote.

Biochips: Safety or Subjugation?

On By kingsjesterIn Christianity, Entertainment, Politics2 Comments

16 Also it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, (17)so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name.

Revelation 13: 16-17

Are we on our way to having to wear a “mark” for identification?

The New York Daily News has the story.

Would you barcode your baby?

Microchip implants have become standard practice for our pets, but have been a tougher sell when it comes to the idea of putting them in people.

Science fiction author Elizabeth Moon last week rekindled the debate on whether it’s a good idea to “barcode” infants at birth in an interview on a BBC radio program.

“I would insist on every individual having a unique ID permanently attached — a barcode if you will — an implanted chip to provide an easy, fast inexpensive way to identify individuals,” she said on The Forum, a weekly show that features “a global thinking” discussing a “radical, inspiring or controversial idea” for 60 seconds .Moon believes the tools most commonly used for surveillance and identification — like video cameras and DNA testing — are slow, costly and often ineffective.

In her opinion, human barcoding would save a lot of time and money.

The proposal isn’t too far-fetched – it is already technically possible to “barcode” a human – but does it violate our rights to privacy?

Opponents argue that giving up anonymity would cultivate an “Orwellian” society where all citizens can be tracked.

“To have a record of everywhere you go and everything you do would be a frightening thing,” Stanley, senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union, told the Daily News.

He warned of a “check-point society” where everyone carries an internal passport and has to show their papers at every turn, he said.

“Once we let the government and businesses go down the road of nosing around in our lives…we’re going to quickly lose all our privacy,” said Stanley.

There are already, and increasingly, ways to electronically track people. Since 2006, new U.S. passports include radio frequency identification tags (RFID) that store all the information in the passport, plus a digital picture of the owner.

In 2002, an implantable ID chip called VeriChip was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The chip could be implanted in a person’s arm, and when scanned, could pull up a 16 digit ID number containing information about the user.

It was discontinued in 2010 amid concerns about privacy and safety.

Still scientists and engineers have not given up on the idea.

A handful of enterprising companies have stepped into the void left by VeriChip, and are developing ways to integrate technology and man.

Biotech company MicroCHIPS has developed an implantable chip to deliver medicine to people on schedule and without injection. And technology company BIOPTid has patented a noninvasive method of identification called the “human barcode.”

Advocates say electronic verification could help parents or caregivers keep track of children and the elderly. Chips could be used to easily access medical information, and would make going through security points more convenient, reports say.

But there are also concerns about security breaches by hackers. If computers and social networks are already vulnerable to hacking and identify theft, imagine if someone could get access to your personal ID chip?

Stanley cautioned against throwing the baby out with the bathwater each time someone invents a new gadget.

“We can have security, we can have convenience, and we can have privacy,” he said. “We can have our cake and eat it too.”

Back on 11/25/10, SiliconIndia.com made this point about biochip implantation in humans:

When it comes to the use of biochips on humans, it works a little bit differently. The chip is implanted in a way where it is able to bind with your DNA. Many government agencies have been working with biochips which can be used for identification purposes. When we think of this as an invasion of privacy, we should also look at the positive side of the technology. This would be a great use to find missing children, if this technology goes as far as an implant at birth, those who have been kidnapped or missing, can be easily found. This type of implantable chip is being researched by defense departments in India and abroad in hopes to be used for soldiers, to monitor their location and relay health information if the soldier gets wounded in battle. This would be a great way to get medical data relayed of what the doctors may be dealing with before the patient ever gets to the hospital. Not only that, a biochip will make it easier to find that wounded soldier.

But there are certain areas which always lack definite explanations. You can’t value human life and you can limit his identity. It questions our morality when it comes to cloning humans and similarly we find it weird when we get ‘tagged’ by some minute chip. Whatever lies in the future for biochips, its implantation in humans still pricks our conscience.

And why is that?  Simple.  It’s that still small voice inside of us, that Divine Spark that makes us all individuals.  The thought of being tagged like an animal goes against the grain of our human spirits.

It disturbs our souls.

The Miami Cannibal: The Devil Made Him Do It

On By kingsjesterIn Christianity4 Comments

This country has spent the last week lost in a horrible fascination of the actions of a naked cannibal killed by police in Miami.  Now, one person thinks that this face-muncher may have been under a spell.

The Devil, you say.

The local CBS affiliate in Miami reports that

The man at the center of one of Miami’s most horrific crimes, a cannibal attack on the MacArthur Causeway, has left his on-again, off-again girlfriend thinking that Rudy Eugene was drugged unknowingly, or cursed.

Eugene’s girlfriend, who requested CBS4 News not use her name or show her face, said the attacker on the causeway was nothing like the man she knew and loved.

“Rudy Eugene was not no zombie or ‘Miami Zombie’ like they’re saying. He was a human being and that wasn’t him,” she said.

She described him as a “sweet loving gentleman” and a “hard working man” who worked at a car wash and dreamed of owning his own business.

Eugene, police said, ripped the face off 65-year-old Ronald Poppo, a homeless man who encountered Eugene on Saturday next to the Miami Herald building.

A witness described Eugene ripping at Poppo’s face with his mouth and growling at a Miami police officer who ordered him to get off the homeless man. The officer then shot and killed Eugene.

The head of the Miami Fraternal Order of Police, Armando Aguilar, speculated that he may have been high on LSD or “bath salts,” which can cause psychosis as the body overheats.

Eugene did strip off all of his clothes as he walked from Miami Beach to the mainland over the MacArthur Causeway before encountering Poppo and beginning the unprovoked, savage attack.

Eugene’s girlfriend said she believes he was drugged unknowingly. The only other explanation, she said, was supernatural, that someone put a Vodou curse on him. The girlfriend, who unlike Eugene is not Haitian, said she has never believed in Vodou, until now. “I don’t know how else to explain this,” she told CBS4 News partner The Miami Herald.

Toxicology reports on Eugene’s body have not been completed. Results could take between two weeks and two months.

Eugene’s girlfriend said she has no idea what caused the vicious attack but she saw no signs of any violence in the nearly five years they lived together.

“That wasn’t him, that was his body but it wasn’t his spirit. Somebody did this to him,” she said. She described Eugene as religious.

“He loved God he always read the Bible he would give you knowledge on the Bible. Everywhere he went his Bible went. When he left he had his Bible in his hand.” She said Eugene left her home about 5:30 Saturday morning.

She said his last words to her were, “I love you and I’ll be back.”

She never saw him again.A friend of Eugene’s since they were teenagers told The Herald on Wednesday that Eugene had been troubled in recent years.

Joe Aurelus said Eugene told him he wanted to stop smoking pot, and that friends were texting Eugene Bible verses.

“I was just with him two weeks ago,”’ he said. They were at a friend’s house watching a movie and Eugene had a Bible in his hand.

“He was going through a lot with his family,” Aurelus said, and jumping from job to job.

“Rudy was battling the devil.”

A Gallup poll, taken one year ago, showed that 92% of Americans believe in God.

However, only around 7 in 10 believe in the Devil.

(They never met my ex-wife.  She’s his sister.  But, I digress…)

Why is it so difficult for folks to believe in absolute evil?  Time and time again, we’ve seen the works of the Devil right before our eyes:  the mass extermination of the Jews carried out at the World War II Death Camps, Pol Pot and the Kmer Rouge, Charlie Manson and his psychotic “family”, the gassing of his own countrymen by Saddam Hussein, the Oklahoma City Bombing, the Islamic Terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, and other historical atrocities too numerous to mention.

Is it so hard to believe that this cannibal was under some sort of evil influence, like Voodoo?

Voodoo is a religion that was brought to the Western coasts by slaves from Africa. It is believed to have started in Haiti in 1724 as a snake cult that worshipped many spirits pertaining to daily life experiences. The practices were intermingled with many Catholic rituals and saints. It was first brought to the Louisiana area in 1804 by Cuban plantation owners who were displaced by revolution and brought their slaves with them.

Voodoo is spelled several ways: vodun, vaudin, voudoun, vodou, and vaudoux. It is an ancient religion practiced by 80 million people worldwide and is growing in numbers. With voodoo’s countless deities, demonic possessions, animal sacrifices (human sacrifices in the Petro — black magic form of voodoo); voodoo practitioners cannot understand why their religion is so misunderstood.

[Gosh.  I can’t imagine why.]

Voodoo rituals are elaborate, steeped in secret languages, spirit possessed dancing, and special diets eaten by the voodoo priests and priestesses. The ancestral dead are thought to walk among the living during the hooded dances. Touching the dancer during this spirit possessed trance is believed to be dangerous enough to kill the offender.

Talismans are bought and sold as fetishes. These could be statues representing voodoo gods, dried animal heads, or other body parts. They are sold for medicine and for the spiritual powers that these fetishes are believed to hold. The dark side of voodoo is used by participants to summon evil spirits and cast hexing spells upon adversaries.

Perhaps, this animal was under some sort of spell.  Or, perhaps he was just plain evil.

In this time of situational ethics and relative morality, it does, at times, seem like the forces of darkness are closing in around us.

However, if, like me, you’ve read The Book, you know Who wins.

Obama’s Polish Joke

On By kingsjesterIn Politics5 Comments

Did you hear the one about the insufferable president who refused to apologize for an offensive gaffe?

Yahoo News Canada reports:

The White House on Wednesday shrugged off Polish demands to express more than mere ‘regret’ after President Barack Obama mistakenly referred to a Nazi Holocaust site as a “Polish death camp.”

“We regret the misstatement, but that is what it was,” said Obama spokesman Jay Carney, reiterating that the president “misspoke” during a ceremony awarding the highest US civilian honor to late Holocaust hero Jan Karski.

“He was referring to Nazi death camps in German-occupied Poland.”

Poland had earlier insisted that Washington must do more than simply express the “regret” offered by another White House spokesman late on Tuesday, hours after Obama’s use of words deemed offensive by Warsaw.

Obama’s verbal slip overshadowed his posthumous award of the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Karski, a Polish underground officer who provided the Allies with early eyewitness accounts of Nazi genocide against European Jews.

Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Obama’s words had hurt all Poles and he expected more from Washington than just regret.

“I am convinced that our American friends can today allow themselves a stronger reaction than a simple expression of regret from the White House spokesman — a reaction more inclined to eliminate once and for all these kinds of errors,” Tusk told reporters in Warsaw.

“Today, this is a problem for the reputation of the United States,” the prime minister said.

Members of Poland’s Jewish community — including the country’s Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich — said in a statement that: “We expect President Barack Obama to personally correct his words.”

Poland’s President Bronislaw Komorowski said meanwhile he had sent a letter to Obama “counting on (…) cooperation in correcting this unfortunate error” which “I am certain in no way reflects the thoughts or views of our American friend.”

Obama evidently neglected his history studies during that famous Ivy League Education of his:

In 1933 approximately nine million Jews lived in the 21 countries of Europe that would be occupied by Germany during the war. By 1945 two out of every three European Jews had been killed. Although Jews were the primary victims, hundreds of thousands of Roma (Gypsies) and at least 250,000 mentally or physically disabled persons were also victims of Nazi genocide.

As Nazi tyranny spread across Europe from 1933 to 1945, millions of other innocent people were persecuted and murdered. More than three million Soviet prisoners of war were killed because of their nationality. Poles, as well as other Slavs, were targeted for slave labor, and as a result, almost two million perished. Homosexuals and others deemed “anti-social” were also persecuted and often murdered. In addition, thousands of political and religious dissidents such as communists, socialists, trade unionists, and Jehovah’s Witnesses were persecuted for their beliefs and behavior and many of these individuals died as a result of maltreatment.

The concentration camp is most closely associated with the Holocaust and remains an enduring symbol of the Nazi regime. The first camps opened soon after the Nazis took power in January 1933; they continued as a basic part of Nazi rule until May 8, 1945, when the war, and the Nazi regime, ended.

Obama’s remarks were insensitive, at best. The fact is, from 1939 and 1945, almost six million Polish citizens were killed during the Nazi occupation of their country.

More than half of them were Jewish and they, in turn, made up half of the six million European Jews who died during the Holocaust.

Scores were killed in death camps set up by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland, including the most infamous, Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Remember Obama’s speech in Strasbourg in April of 2009?

BBC News reported that

Later, President Obama told an audience in Strasbourg that the US and Europe had allowed the alliance to drift in recent years.

He said the US had been “arrogant” and “dismissive” towards its allies, while there was “insidious” anti-Americanism in Europe. He said these attitudes had to change.

“I’ve come to Europe this week to renew our partnership – one in which America listens and learns from our friends and allies. But where our friends and allies bear their share of the burden,” he said.

How can Europe be expected to respect us with a putz like this as the Leader of the Free World?

And, you know what the worst part of this whole “Presidential gaffe” is?

It took place at the Medal of Freedom Awards where Obama was attempting to honor Jan Karski, the late Polish resistance hero who famously tried to warn the world about the atrocities being committed by Nazis against Jews in the ghettos and death camps of Nazi-occupied Poland during the Second World War.

A presidential apology is more than called for.

However, the “Lightbringer” will not be offering one anytime soon.

After all, he’s always the smartest person in the room.

Israel Hits the “Delete” Button on Iran

On By kingsjesterIn PoliticsLeave a comment

The Islamic loud mouth bully of a country known as Iran, is being brought to its knees…without firing a shot.

Iran on Tuesday said it was a victim of cyberwarfare by Israel and the U.S., the semiofficial Fars news agency reported.

“It’s in the nature of some countries and illegitimate regimes to spread viruses and harm other countries. We hope these viruses dry out,” Ramin Mehmanparast, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, said on Tuesday.

Iran’s computer emergency response team, known as Maher, a branch of the telecommunication ministry, said on Tuesday that it was sharing research information on the virus for the first time ever on its website. Maher posted a link to antivirus software developed by its researchers to remove Flame and offered assistance to any infected organization.

Maher also said Flame was linked to an earlier cyberattack that erased data. In March, Wiper disrupted internal Internet communications at Iran’s oil ministry and stole massive amounts of data.

Flame is the biggest and most high-functioning cyberweapon ever discovered, various cybersecurity experts said. It is comprised of multiple files that are 20 times larger than Stuxnet and carry about 100 times more code than a basic virus, experts said.

The most alarming feature, experts said, is that Flame can be highly versatile, depending on instructions by its controller. The malware can steal data and social-network conversations, take snapshots of computer screens, penetrate across networks, turn on a computer’s microphone to record audio and scan for Bluetooth-active devices.

The cyber espionage activities described by the researchers are cyberspying techniques employed by the U.S., Israel and a number of other countries, cybersecurity specialists said. Cybersecurity researchers said the complexity of Flame’s coding and comprehensiveness of its spy capabilities could suggest it was the work of a government.

Experts said they believe Flame reports back the information to a central command-and-control network that has constantly changed location. Analysts found servers in Germany, Vietnam, Turkey, Italy and elsewhere, but haven’t located the main server.

White House National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden declined to comment on Iranian accusations of U.S. involvement.

Analysts suspected Israel and the U.S. to be behind Stuxnet, but the link hasn’t been confirmed. U.S. officials have declined to comment on Stuxnet’s origins, but former U.S. officials said they regard it as a joint effort between the U.S. and Israel. That virus infected computers in several countries but was written to only sabotage specific systems in Iran, they said.

Stuxnet’s purpose differed considerably from the apparent aim of Flame. Stuxnet was designed to damage computerized control systems running nuclear centrifuges, while Flame appears to have been designed for high-end targeted espionage. Researchers haven’t found evidence of any damage to systems caused by Flame.

Israel has neither confirmed nor denied being involved with Stuxnet.

On Tuesday, Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Ya’Alon hinted that the country may be involved in Flame, saying in an interview with Army Radio, “Anyone who sees the Iranian threat as a significant threat—it’s reasonable [to assume] that he will take various steps, including these, to harm it.”

Wow.  Beam me up, Scotty.   

For the uninformed…

Cyberwarfare is Internet-based conflict involving politically motivated attacks on information and information systems. Cyberwarfare attacks can disable official websites and networks, disrupt or disable essential services, steal or alter classified data, and criple financial systems — among many other possibilities.

According to Jeffrey Carr, author of “Inside Cyber Warfare,” any country can wage cyberwar on any other country, irrespective of resources, because most military forces are network-centric and connected to the Internet, which is not secure. For the same reason, non-governmental groups and individuals could also launch cyberwarfare attacks. Carr likens the Internet’s enabling potential to that of the handgun, which became known as “the great equalizer.”

On August 7, 2011, foxnews.com reported that

Israel has set up a military cyber command to wage a computer war against Iran as senior officers become increasingly concerned that a conventional attack on Tehran’s nuclear sites could end in failure, London’s The Sunday Times reported.

The new cyber command will report directly to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu who has placed the program at the heart of Israel’s defense capability.

“Israel must turn into a global cyber superpower,” he told a meeting of cyber warfare experts recently.

The center, which has been set up under the auspices of military intelligence unit 8200 has already conducted a series of “soft” espionage missions, including hacking into Iran’s version of Facebook and other social networking sites.

The Stuxnet malware virus, which dramatically affected Iran’s nuclear program in 2009 by sabotaging the delicate centrifuges needed to enrich uranium, is widely believed to have been developed by Israeli and American technicians.

In April [2011], Iranian government offices came under attack from a hitherto unknown malware virus to which Tehran officials gave the name Stars. They claimed the damage had been contained but admitted it was the second mysterious virus found since the Stuxnet attack.

“Israel has two principal targets in Iran’s cyberspace,” said a defense source with close knowledge of the cyber war preparations. “The first is its military nuclear program and its military establishment. The second is Iran’s civil infrastructure. Attacking both, we hope, will cripple the entire country’s cyberspace.”

It appears that they’re well on their way.

Mazel tov!

American Leadership in a Dangerous World

On By kingsjesterIn Politics3 Comments

Mitt Romney has issued a warning, concerning keeping our country safe in a dangerous world.

Reuters.com reports:

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney chose Veterans Day to proclaim to the American people his conviction that the world is a dangerous place, and the United States must remain its most formidable military power.

“The world is not safe,” Romney told veterans on Memorial Day. He was joined by Senator John McCain, in a speech to honor the veterans of America’s wars.

The United States now has two paths forward, Romney said. He called one “the pathway to Europe,” suggesting Europe had acquiesced to geopolitical threats. “To shrink our military smaller and smaller to pay for our social needs.”

The other path, Romney said, is “to commit to preserve America as the strongest military in the world, second to none, with no comparable power anywhere in the world.”

Romney, expected to face off against President Barack Obama in November, joined the 2008 Republican presidential nominee in thanking the nation’s veterans.

Romney, who has focused his campaign on the struggling U.S. economy, changed his focus on Monday in his warning about the dangers of the world outside America’s borders, indirectly criticizing Obama’s foreign policies.

“I wish I could tell you that the world is a safe place. It’s not,” Romney said.

Romney ticked off Iran, Pakistan, China and Russia, among other countries, as threats as he transformed his message from economic warnings of the United States becoming like Europe to a military warning that America was becoming weaker.

McCain introduced Romney to the 5,000 people gathered as a “man who I believe is fully qualified to be commander-in-chief.”

“He believes in American exceptionalism,” McCain said. “He believes the 21st Century will also be an American century.”

Quite different from what the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania says about our country, don’t you think?

Well, not according to “The Lightbringer”.

Back on April 12th, foxnews.com reported:

President Obama defended his record on “American exceptionalism” on Monday, saying that his entire career has been a testimony to that core belief.

“It’s worth noting that I first arrived on the national stage with a speech at the Democratic convention that was entirely about American exceptionalism and that my entire career has been a testimony to American exceptionalism,” Obama said at a press conference alongside Mexican president Felipe Calderon and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Obama’s comments come days after GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney said Obama “doesn’t have the same feelings about American exceptionalism that we do.”

Romney’s absolutely correct.

Thoughout his reign as the Leader of the Far Left, masquerading as a Moderate President of the United States, Obama has shown himself to be out of touch with average American thought.

Let’s review a few examples:

He started out his presidency by giving a speech at the University of Cairo, on June 4th, 2009,  an attempt to reach out to the Muslim World, the same people who danced in the streets when 3,000 Americans were massacred on September 1st, 2001.  He said:

…There must be a sustained effort to listen to each other; to learn from each other; to respect one another; and to seek common ground. As the Holy Koran tells us, “Be conscious of God and speak always the truth.” (Applause.) That is what I will try to do today — to speak the truth as best I can, humbled by the task before us, and firm in my belief that the interests we share as human beings are far more powerful than the forces that drive us apart

Now part of this conviction is rooted in my own experience. I’m a Christian, but my father came from a Kenyan family that includes generations of Muslims. As a boy, I spent several years in Indonesia and heard the call of the azaan at the break of dawn and at the fall of dusk. As a young man, I worked in Chicago communities where many found dignity and peace in their Muslim faith.

As a student of history, I also know civilization’s debt to Islam. It was Islam — at places like Al-Azhar — that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment. It was innovation in Muslim communities — (applause) — it was innovation in Muslim communities that developed the order of algebra; our magnetic compass and tools of navigation; our mastery of pens and printing; our understanding of how disease spreads and how it can be healed. Islamic culture has given us majestic arches and soaring spires; timeless poetry and cherished music; elegant calligraphy and places of peaceful contemplation. And throughout history, Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality. (Applause.)

I also know that Islam has always been a part of America’s story. The first nation to recognize my country was Morocco. In signing the Treaty of Tripoli in 1796, our second President, John Adams, wrote, “The United States has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Muslims.” And since our founding, American Muslims have enriched the United States. They have fought in our wars, they have served in our government, they have stood for civil rights, they have started businesses, they have taught at our universities, they’ve excelled in our sports arenas, they’ve won Nobel Prizes, built our tallest building, and lit the Olympic Torch. And when the first Muslim American was recently elected to Congress, he took the oath to defend our Constitution using the same Holy Koran that one of our Founding Fathers — Thomas Jefferson — kept in his personal library. (Applause.)

This was only the beginning of a worldwide apology tour, where he made a very public show of apologizing for our country’s transgressions to every two-bit, tinhorn despot around the globe.

Beginning with the passage of Obamacare, by him and his Congressional minions, holding clandestine meetings, both on Christmas, and in the dark of night, Obama has shown the propensity to do whatever he wants to, in order to further his personal agenda, regardless of the wishes of the people whom he is supposed to be serving.

An example of American Exceptionalis?  Hardly.

More like “The Peter Principal”.

 

 

Memorial Day 2012: Honor Them All

On By kingsjesterIn Christianity, Politics3 Comments

Today is a day of solemn remembrance, during which we honor our fallen heroes.  An unwatched cable news host, Chris Hayes, on an unwatchable cable news channel, MSNBC, has a problem with calling these brave men and women “heroes”:

Thinking today and observing Memorial Day, that’ll be happening tomorrow. Just talked with Lt. Col. Steve Burke [sic, actually Beck], who was a casualty officer with the Marines and had to tell people [inaudible]. Um, I, I, ah, back sorry, um, I think it’s interesting because I think it is very difficult to talk about the war dead and the fallen without invoking valor, without invoking the words “heroes.” Um, and, ah, ah, why do I feel so comfortable [sic] about the word “hero”? I feel comfortable, ah, uncomfortable, about the word because it seems to me that it is so rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war. Um, and, I don’t want to obviously desecrate or disrespect memory of anyone that’s fallen, and obviously there are individual circumstances in which there is genuine, tremendous heroism: hail of gunfire, rescuing fellow soldiers and things like that. But it seems to me that we marshal this word in a way that is problematic. But maybe I’m wrong about that.

Maybe?  Just shuddup, you ungrateful idiot.

Memorial Day, originally called Decoration Day, is a day of remembrance for those who have died in our nation’s service. There are many stories as to its actual beginnings, with over two dozen cities and towns laying claim to being the birthplace of Memorial Day. There is also evidence that organized women’s groups in the South were decorating graves before the end of the Civil War: a hymn published in 1867, “Kneel Where Our Loves are Sleeping” by Nella L. Sweet carried the dedication “To The Ladies of the South who are Decorating the Graves of the Confederate Dead” (Source: Duke University’s Historic American Sheet Music, 1850-1920). While Waterloo N.Y. was officially declared the birthplace of Memorial Day by President Lyndon Johnson in May 1966, it’s difficult to prove conclusively the origins of the day. It is more likely that it had many separate beginnings; each of those towns and every planned or spontaneous gathering of people to honor the war dead in the 1860’s tapped into the general human need to honor our dead, each contributed honorably to the growing movement that culminated in Gen Logan giving his official proclamation in 1868. It is not important who was the very first, what is important is that Memorial Day was established. Memorial Day is not about division. It is about reconciliation; it is about coming together to honor those who gave their all.

Memorial Day was officially proclaimed on 5 May 1868 by General John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, in his General Order No. 11, and was first observed on 30 May 1868, when flowers were placed on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery. The first state to officially recognize the holiday was New York in 1873. By 1890 it was recognized by all of the northern states. The South refused to acknowledge the day, honoring their dead on separate days until after World War I (when the holiday changed from honoring just those who died fighting in the Civil War to honoring Americans who died fighting in any war). It is now celebrated in almost every State on the last Monday in May (passed by Congress with the National Holiday Act of 1971 (P.L. 90 – 363) to ensure a three day weekend for Federal holidays), though several southern states have an additional separate day for honoring the Confederate war dead: January 19 in Texas, April 26 in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and Mississippi; May 10 in South Carolina; and June 3 (Jefferson Davis’ birthday) in Louisiana and Tennessee.

Traditional observance of Memorial day has diminished over the years. Many Americans nowadays have forgotten the meaning and traditions of Memorial Day. At many cemeteries, the graves of the fallen are increasingly ignored, neglected. Most people no longer remember the proper flag etiquette for the day. While there are towns and cities that still hold Memorial Day parades, many have not held a parade in decades. Some people think the day is for honoring any and all dead, and not just those fallen in service to our country.

There are a few notable exceptions. Since the late 50’s on the Thursday before Memorial Day, the 1,200 soldiers of the 3d U.S. Infantry place small American flags at each of the more than 260,000 gravestones at Arlington National Cemetery. They then patrol 24 hours a day during the weekend to ensure that each flag remains standing. In 1951, the Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts of St. Louis began placing flags on the 150,000 graves at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery as an annual Good Turn, a practice that continues to this day. More recently, beginning in 1998, on the Saturday before the observed day for Memorial Day, the Boys Scouts and Girl Scouts place a candle at each of approximately 15,300 grave sites of soldiers buried at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park on Marye’s Heights (the Luminaria Program). And in 2004, Washington D.C. held its first Memorial Day parade in over 60 years.

To help re-educate and remind Americans of the true meaning of Memorial Day, the “National Moment of Remembrance” resolution was passed on Dec 2000 which asks that at 3 p.m. local time, for all Americans “To voluntarily and informally observe in their own way a Moment of remembrance and respect, pausing from whatever they are doing for a moment of silence or listening to ‘Taps.”

For a member of the Main Stream Media to disrepect the fallen in this way, is beyond the pale and unforgivable.

But, unfortunately, not surprising, at all.

Liberals actually do believe in sacrifice…as long as they’re not the ones doing the sacrificing.

I was raised by members of the Greatest Generation.  It is today that we pause to remember their sacrifices at home and abroad.  Not only theirs, but the sacrifices made by our Brightest and Best, and their families, yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

May God bless them all and may He hold them in the hollow of His hand.

What Part of “Freedom of Religion” Does Obama Not Understand?

On By kingsjesterIn Christianity, Politics2 Comments

William Peter Blatty, accomplished author (The Exorcist) is calling Georgetown University out.

Why?

The 1950 Georgetown University Graduate is tired of the secularization of the University, which includes a recent visit by HHS Secretary Kathleen Sibelius, Obamacare contributor and pro-abortion advocate.

On May 5, 2012, in a speech to American bishops, Pope Benedict XVI called on America’s Catholic universities to reaffirm their Catholic identity. The Pope noted the failure of many Catholic universities to comply with Blessed John Paul II’s apostolic constitution Ex corde Ecclesiae. The Pope said that preservation of a university’s Catholic identity “entails much more than the teaching of religion or the mere presence of a chaplaincy on campus.”

For 21 years now. Georgetown University has refused to comply with Ex corde Ecclesiaie (“From The Heart of the Church”), and, therefore, with canon law. And, it seems as if every month GU gives another scandal to the faithful! The most recent is Georgetown’s obtuse invitation to Secretary Sebelius to be a commencement speaker.

Each of these scandals is proof of Georgetown’s non-compliance with Ex corde Ecclesiae and canon law. They are each inconsistent with a Catholic identity, and we all know it. A university in solidarity with the Church would not do these prideful things that do so much harm to our communion.

Georgetown is being dishonest. Together, we need to end that! In very recent years, Georgetown has even created the impression that its Jesuit tradition can stand apart from its Catholic identity. I am told that in on-campus debates, students will divide over favoring either Jesuit or Catholic! After eight years of Jesuit education, – when Jesuits and their reputation were one and the same – I shudder at this deception. The great Jesuit theologian Avery Dulles anticipated and admonished his fellow Jesuit educators over this fomented confusion: “To be Jesuit is merely to be more intensely Catholic,” he said. Of course.

Many believe that to make Georgetown truly Catholic is to turn back the clock hands and somehow limit its very nature as a university, as if the notion of “Catholic” and “university” are new to each other, or inherently at odds. On the contrary, to make Georgetown “Catholic” is to move the clock forward; it is to make the University better than it now is! Of course, there are always those who are afraid of change, – who lack vision. They may need to step aside.

John Paul II exhorted us all to preserve for the Church the highest places of culture – our universities. Generations of alumni have long been seduced to “go along” by dinners, medals, and board seats (I accepted my John Carroll Medal too). We have all been negligent for too long: the laity, the clergy, and the bishops as well.

Blatty is not alone in his righteous indignation over the anti-life Healthcare Monster being imposed upon us by the Obama Administration and their Congressional sycophants.

Foxnews.com reports that:

Some of the most influential Catholic institutions in the country filed suit against the Obama administration Monday over the so-called contraception mandate, in one of the biggest coordinated legal challenges to the rule to date.

Claiming their “fundamental rights hang in the balance,” a total of 43 plaintiffs filed a dozen separate federal lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the requirement. Among the organizations filing were the University of Notre Dame, the Archdiocese of New York and The Catholic University of America.

The groups are objecting to the requirement from the federal health care overhaul that employers provide access to contraceptive care. The Obama administration several months ago softened its position on the mandate, but some religious organizations complained the administration did not go far enough to ensure the rule would not compel them to violate their religious beliefs.

A statement from the University of Notre Dame said the requirement would still call on religious-affiliated groups to “facilitate” coverage “for services that violate the teachings of the Catholic Church.”

“The federal mandate requires Notre Dame and similar religious organizations to provide in their insurance plans abortion-inducing drugs, contraceptives and sterilization procedures, which are contrary to Catholic teaching,” the statement said.

Rev. John Jenkins, the president of Notre Dame, said in a message to the campus that the filing “is about the freedom of a religious organization to live its mission, and its significance goes well beyond any debate about contraceptives.”

The contraception rule does include an exemption for religious organizations — but that exemption does not cover many religious-affiliated organizations like schools and charities. Complaints about the narrowly tailored exemption prompted a stand-off between the Obama administration and religious groups earlier this year. As a compromise, the administration said insurers — and not the religious-affiliated organizations themselves — could be required to offer contraceptive coverage directly.

But many organizations were not satisfied with the plan. John Garvey, president of Catholic University, said in a statement Monday that “such a revision would not solve our moral dilemma.” He argued that the cost of contraceptive coverage would still be “rolled into the cost” of a university insurance policy.

“In the end the university, its employees and its students will be forced to pay for the prescriptions and services we find objectionable,” he said.

University of Notre Dame Law Prof. Richard Garnett said in a statement that the mandate could affect a range of religious institutions, including “schools, health care providers and social welfare agencies.”

On a separate track, officials at a Florida Catholic university decided Monday to drop student health care coverage, becoming the second school this month to make that call. The decision at Ave Maria University was based in part on objections to the contraception rule, but also on projected increased premium costs tied to new rules in the federal health care overhaul.

While I am not Catholic, as a Christian American Conservative, I applaud the stand made by these People of Faith.

For those of you who, like the president, do not understand, the phrase is “Freedom of Religion”.

Not “Freedom from Religion”.

Obama: Choomin’…on a Sunday Afternoon…

On By kingsjesterIn Politics1 Comment

Veteran presidential biographer David Maraniss, whose book about “Bubba” Clinton, First In His Class, is considered the finest recount of the life of young Bubba, now tackles the mysterious young life of the 44th President of the United States in Barack Obama: The Story.

Here are some excerpts: 

A self-selected group of boys at Punahou School who loved basketball and good times called themselves the Choom Gang. Choom is a verb, meaning “to smoke marijuana.”

…As a member of the Choom Gang, Barry Obama was known for starting a few pot-smoking trends. The first was called “TA,” short for “total absorption.” To place this in the physical and political context of another young man who would grow up to be president, TA was the antithesis of Bill Clinton’s claim that as a Rhodes scholar at Oxford he smoked dope but never inhaled.

…Along with TA, Barry popularized the concept of “roof hits”: when they were chooming in the car all the windows had to be rolled up so no smoke blew out and went to waste; when the pot was gone, they tilted their heads back and sucked in the last bit of smoke from the ceiling.

…When you were with Barry and his pals, if you exhaled precious pakalolo (Hawaiian slang for marijuana, meaning “numbing tobacco”) instead of absorbing it fully into your lungs, you were assessed a penalty and your turn was skipped the next time the joint came around. “Wasting good bud smoke was not tolerated,” explained one member of the Choom Gang, Tom Topolinski, the Chinese-looking kid with a Polish name who answered to Topo.

…[Choom Gang member] Mark Bendix’s Volkswagen bus, also known as the Choomwagon. … The other members considered Mark Bendix the glue, he was funny, creative, and uninhibited, with a penchant for Marvel Comics. He also had that VW bus and a house with a pool, a bong, and a Nerf basketball, all enticements for them to slip off midday for a few unauthorized hours of recreation…

…Barry also had a knack for interceptions. When a joint was making the rounds, he often elbowed his way in, out of turn, shouted “Intercepted!,” and took an extra hit. No one seemed to mind.

…Choom Gang members often made their way to Aku Ponds at the end of Manoa Stream, where they slipped past the liliko’i vines and the KAPU (keep out) signs, waded into waist-high cool mountain water, stood near the rock where water rushed overhead, and held up a slipper (what flip-flops are called in Hawaii) to create an air pocket canopy. It was a natural high, they said, stoned or not.

He was a long-haired haole hippie who worked at the Mama …Mia Pizza Parlor not far from Punahou and lived in a dilapidated bus in an abandoned warehouse. … According to Topolinski, Ray the dealer was “freakin’ scary.” Many years later they learned that he had been killed with a ball-peen hammer by a scorned gay lover. But at the time he was useful because of his ability to “score quality weed.”

…In another section of the [senior] yearbook, students were given a block of space to express thanks and define their high school experience. … Nestled below [Obama’s] photographs was one odd line of gratitude: “Thanks Tut, Gramps, Choom Gang, and Ray for all the good times.” … A hippie drug-dealer made his acknowledgments; his own mother did not.

…Their favorite hangout was a place they called Pumping Stations, a lush hideaway off an unmarked, roughly paved road partway up Mount Tantalus. They parked single file on the grassy edge, turned up their stereos playing Aerosmith, Blue Oyster Cult, and Stevie Wonder, lit up some “sweet-sticky Hawaiian buds” and washed it down with “green bottle beer” (the Choom Gang preferred Heineken, Becks, and St. Pauli Girl).

…In the Honolulu of Barry’s teenage years marijuana was flourishing up in the hills, out in the countryside, in covert greenhouses everywhere. It was sold and smoked right there in front of your nose; Maui Wowie, Kauai Electric, Puna Bud, Kona Gold, and other local variations of pakololo were readily available.

On November 21, 2011, whitehouse.gov, President Barack Hussein Obama’s official website, reported the following in an article titled Alternatives to the “War on Drugs:” Obama Drug Policy and Reforming the Criminal Justice System:

Compared to their representation among the U.S. population, African Americans are disproportionately incarcerated for drug offenses. These two groups have consistently higher proportions of inmates in state prison who are drug offenders compared to whites – about 50% higher.

Over the past two months, we have met with African American leaders across the country – in Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, Atlanta and Los Angeles – to listen to what they had to say. We discussed their concerns and ideas, and we outlined the Obama Administration’s approach to drug policy, presenting our view that it is guided by three indisputable facts: Addiction is a disease that can be treated; people can recover from drug addiction; and new interventions are needed to appropriately address substance abuse and drug-related crime. Simply put: We cannot arrest our way out of our Nation’s drug problem.

Addressing drug addiction as a public health issue will help us break the cycle of drug use, crime, and incarceration. And in keeping with a balanced public health and safety approach, the Obama Administration is taking unprecedented actions to restore balance to how we address our Nation’s drug problem and its disproportionate effects on communities of color.

…According to a recent survey, African American parents now consider youth drug use as the top concern for young people, ranking higher than gun related crimes, school violence, or bullying. We look forward continuing leading the Federal government’s collaborations with the African American community to reducing disparities and ensure that we can prevent drug use before it starts and work together to break the cycle of drug use and crime.

So, the Obama Administration concluded that drug use is a serious problem among black youth?  

They should know.