Author: kingsjester

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

Michelle’s Food Censorship – “It’s for the Children”

On By kingsjesterIn Politics4 Comments

First Lady Michelle (ma belle) Obama spoke to a partisan crowd in Philidelphia, yesterday.

Obama propaganda outlet cnn.com reported that

First lady Michelle Obama rallied supporters in this must-win state Wednesday, imploring the energetic crowd to help give her husband a “chance to finish what we started.”

Touting the passage of health care reform, the improving economy and the withdrawal of troops in Iraq as examples or her husband’s achievements in office, Obama told the crowd to ” make sure that people know that all of this – and so much more – is at stake this November.”

“And in the end, it all boils down to one simple question: Will we continue the change we’ve begun and the progress we’ve made, or will we allow everything we’ve fought for to just slip away?” she said.

Predicting a close race, Obama told the crowd her husband “can’t do this alone.”

But, she argued, the president has demonstrated that he will fight for his beliefs.

“When we need a leader to make the hard decisions to keep this country moving forward, you know you can count on my husband, your president, because that is what he has been doing every single day in the Oval Office as President of the United States. “The first lady – fresh off a publicity tour to promote her new book on gardening – will continue campaigning for her husband Thursday with a rally in Virginia and a private fundraiser in Washington, DC.

Busy “little woman”, ain’t she?

Every First Lady has had a pet project.

Eleanor Roosevelt (1933-1945) National policy

Bess Truman (1945-1953) none

Mamie Eisenhower (1953-1961) none

Jackie Kennedy (1961-1963) White House refurbishment

Lady Bird Johnson (1963-1969) Beautification ( + Project Head Start)

Pat Nixon (1969-1974) Volunteerism

Betty Ford (1974-1977) Equal Rights Amendment( + breast cancer awareness)

Rosalynn Carter (1977-1981) Mental Health

Nancy Reagan (1981-1989) Drug Abuse

Barbara Bush (1989-1993) Literacy

Hillary Clinton (1993-2001) National policy

Laura Bush (2001-2009) Education

Michelle Obama (2009- ) Childhood Obesity

Okay, Sesame Street Fans, sing along with me:

One of these things is not like the other.  

One of these things just doesn’t belong.

Moochelle doesn’t only want to control what our children eat.  She wants to control what food our children…and grandchildren see on television.

The problem is, she doesn’t care if she ruins their childhood in the process.

And the out-of-touch Libs in Hollywood are more than happy to do whatever it takes to stay in the Obamas’ good graces.

ABC has the story:

The Walt Disney Co. will drop advertisers from its children’s programming that do not comply with tighter nutrition guidelines instituted by the media and entertainment giant, the company said today.

First lady Michelle Obama appeared with Disney CEO Bob Iger to endorse the move, which was coupled with health-conscious revisions to menus at Disney’s theme parks and resorts.

Obama called the decision a “game changer” for private industry.

“It’s huge,” she said at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., adding, “Just a few years ago if you had told me or any other mom or dad in America that our kids wouldn’t see a single ad for junk food while they watched their favorite cartoons on a major TV network, we wouldn’t have believed you.”

The first lady said Disney had “turned that conventional wisdom on its head,” noting it was the first major media corporation to adopt such a policy. Disney is the parent company of ABC News.

The new guidelines are an expansion of initiatives started by the company in 2006, using voluntary recommendations from the federal government. Iger said the continuing epidemic of childhood obesity in the United States spurred his company to shore up its practices.

“We believe everyone has a role to play in helping the generation of at-risk kids make healthier choices and we’re determined to be part of the solution,” he said. “If everyone does their small part, together we can create huge change without having the government step in to directly regulate or legislate our efforts.”

Roughly one-third of Americans are considered overweight, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. About 17 percent of children are obese, a figure that has almost tripled since 1980. Michelle Obama said children see an estimated $1.6 billion in food and beverage advertising, many for products with high calories. She said she’d seen its effects firsthand with her own daughters.

“The minute you walk down the [grocery] aisle, the kids are singing some jingle, or they’re pulling on your leg begging you, pleading you for whatever they saw on TV,” she said. “And, as a mom, I know how that makes it even harder for us to keep our kids healthy.”

In an interview after his remarks, Iger conceded that his company could take a revenue hit as a result of today’s announcement.

“When I think about Disney’s bottom line, and we think about managing the company, we’re thinking about the long term and not any one quarter or any one year,” he said.

Iger would later add, “The more we behave as better citizens of the world, the more they will admire our company and like our products. This is good for the Disney brand and good for our bottom line on a long-term basis, even if it pinches us a bit in the short term.”

Advertisers in Disney’s television, radio and online properties will have until 2015 to comply with the new guidelines.

I was raised on Fizzies and Jiffy Pop, and at 53, I am within 7 pounds of my weight when I was in college.

Listen, Moochelle…it doesn’t take a village…it doesn’t take a socialist-run Federal Government…it takes a family to raise a child, with the help of those who love them.

Your “pet project” smells like tyranny.

Remembering D-Day

On By kingsjesterIn Christianity, Politics5 Comments

D-Day, also called the Battle of Normandy, was fought on June 6, 1944, between the Allied nations and German forces occupying Western Europe. To this day, 68 years later, it  still remains the largest seaborne invasion in history. Almost three million troops crossed the English Channel from England to Normandy to be used as human cannon fodder in an invasion of occupied France.

The twelve nations who participated in the invasion included Australia, Canada, Belgium, France, Czechoslovakia, Greece, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, the United Kingdom, and, of course. the United States of America.

The codename for the invasion was Operation Overlord. The assault phase was known as Operation Neptune. Operation Neptune began on D-Day (June 6, 1944) and ended on June 30. Operation Overlord also began on D-Day, and ended with the crossing of the River Seine on August 19.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower faced a daunting task in the planning of such a massive invasion. He would have to move his forces 100 miles across the English Channel and storm a heavily fortified coastline. His enemy was the weapon-and-tank-superior German army commanded by the “Desert Fox” Erwin Rommel, one of the most brilliant generals of the war.

Less than 15 percent of the young men called upon to sacrifice their lives for our freedom in the invasion had ever seen combat.

A crossing of the unpredictable and dangerous English Channel had not been attempted since 1688. Once the invading forces set out, there was no turning back. The channel was soon hosting a 5,000-vessel armada that stretched as far as the eye could see, transporting both men and vehicles across the channel to the French beaches. Not to mention, the Allies also launched 4,000 smaller landing craft and more than 11,000 aircraft.

By the time the sun set on June 6, more than 9,000 Allied soldiers were dead or wounded, and more than 100,000 had made it ashore, capturing French coastal villages. Within weeks, supplies were being unloaded at Utah and Omaha beachheads at the rate of more than 20,000 tons per day. By June 11, more than 326,000 troops, 55,000 vehicles, and 105,000 tons of supplies had been landed on the beaches. By June 30, the Allies had established a firm foothold in Normandy. Allied forces crossed the River Seine on August 19.

There has never been an exact count of the sacrifices made on D-Day. Although, it is estimated that more than 425,000 Allied and German troops were killed, wounded, or went missing during the battle. 209,000 of those who lost their lives were Allied forces. In addition to almost 200,000 German troops killed or wounded, the Allies also captured 200,000 soldiers. Captured Germans were sent to American prisoner-of-war camps at the rate of 30,000 per month, from D-Day until Christmas 1944. Between 15,000 and 20,000 French civilians were killed during the battle.

Basically, the invasion of Normandy was a success, due to sheer force of numbers. By July 1944, some one million Allied troops, mostly American, British, and Canadian, were entrenched in Normandy. During the great invasion, the Allies assembled nearly three million men and stored 16 million tons of arms, munitions, and supplies in Britain.

Among the young men who stepped off those boats, in a hail of gunfire, was a fellow named Edward, whom everyone called Ned, from the small town of Helena, Arkansas.  Already in his young life, Ned had been forced to drop out of school in the sixth grade, in order to work at the local movie theatre to help support his mother, brother, and sister faced with the ravages of the Great Depression.

He was a gentle man who loved to laugh and sing, having recorded several 78 rpm records in the do-it-yourself booths of the day. And now, he found himself, a Master Sergeant in an Army Engineering Unit, stepping off a boat into the unknown, watching his comrades being mercilessly gunned down around him.

Ned, along with the rest of his unit who survived the initial assault, would go on to assist in the cleaning out of the Concentration Camps, bearing witness to man’s inhumanity to man.

The horrors he saw had a profound effect on Ned.  One that he would keep to himself for the remainder of his life.  While his children knew that he served with an Engineering Unit in World War II, they did not know the full extent of his service, until they found his medal, honoring his participation in the Invasion of Normany, going through his belongings after he passed away on December 29, 1997.

How do I know so much about Ned?  He was my Daddy.  You see, my love of Christ and, of this country, comes from my Earthly father, 40 years my senior.

I was raised by members of the Greatest Generation.  It is today that we pause to remember their sacrifices at home and abroad. 

May this day also serve as a reminder of the sacrifices made by our Best and Brightest and their families, yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

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

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Recall…

On By kingsjesterIn Politics9 Comments

Obama’s minions in the DNC and the Main Street Media are on the verge of seppuku (hari kari) this morning because

The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.

The Good Guys won.  

Republican Scott Walker is still the Governor of Wisconsin.

Walker led Barrett in the official count 53 percent to 46 percent with 99 percent of the 3,424 precincts reporting. Walker’s lieutenant governor, Rebecca Kleefisch, also was projected to survive her recall election.

The recall effort began when the first-term governor and Republicans in the state legislature rolled back what they considered excesses in the collective bargaining agreements of public-employee unions — an effort to cut Wisconsin’s estimated $3.6 billion budget shortfall.

Wisconsin went for President Obama in 2008, but the recall results give Republicans hope that their presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, can win there in November.

“Governor Walker has demonstrated over the past year what sound fiscal policies can do to turn an economy around, and I believe that in November voters across the country will demonstrate that they want the same in Washington,” Romney said.

Republicans see Walker’s win as evidence voters across the country want their elected officials to keep government living within its means. They said this paves the way for Romney to become the first Republican candidate to carry Wisconsin since Ronald Reagan in 1984.

The outcome Tuesday is also a blow to the labor movement, which poured considerable resources into the failed effort to oust Walker.

Of course, Obama and his Administration were neck-deep in their investment in the Recall attempt, while feverishly attempting to distance themselves publicly.

And now, the ‘Rats appear to be ready to desert Obama’s sinking Ship of State:

“Certainly,” Democratic operative Paul Begala said about Obama owing it to Democrats to come out and support Walker challenger Tom Barrett (D-Wis.). “Of course. And he owed it to Tom Barrett. Barrett is the mayor of Milwaukee. He came out in the primaries, endorsed then-Sen. Obama against Sen. Clinton.”

“He also owes it to himself and to everybody else he’s going to have to deal with. This was a mistake, I have to say. The President should have been out there. I don’t it would have made the difference, okay, let me be clear about that. But, it’s kind of like Thanksgiving at your in-laws. If you go, it doesn’t guarantee it’s going to be fun, but if you don’t go, there is hell to pay. And that’s the situation the president is in,” Begala said.

Ed Schultz of MSNBC reacted to the political massacre in Wisconsin by doing a little “poor loser wish casting” last night:

Ed Schultz, an ardent supporter of unions and the recall of Gov. Scott Walker, reacts to the Wisconsin electorate voting to keep Walker as governor.

“In many respects it’s to be expected, considering how much money was thrown at this race. You know, NBC is calling it for Walker. Okay, I think it’s awful close and there’s a lot of absentee ballots yet that are still out and it’s going to be very, very close down to the wire” MSNBC’s Schultz said.

“Certainly it is not the end and it’s going to be an opportunity for the progressive movement to regroup nationally and understand exactly what they are up against,” a teary-eyed Schultz lamented.

“And this sets the template for the Republicans and tells the right-wing in this country that if they can outfund their opponent they have a real good shot as winning,” Schultz, an enthurasatic supporter of President Barack Obama in 2008 said toward the end of the segment.

Ed Schultz concluded the segment by making a wild assertion. “Scott Walker could very well be indicted in the coming days,” the MSNBC host said.

“So it’s going to be really a fight for the Democrats here in November, no question about it,” Schultz said.

Former Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin put it succintly (and rubbed it in rather well):

“I think that the Democrats there understand that the president’s no-show represents the fact that Obama’s goose is cooked,” former Gov. Sarah Palin (R-Alaska) said on FOX News shortly after Scott Walker was declared winner of the recall election.

“Jay Carney — I can’t wait to see how he spins all this and ignores it, and President Obama himself. They’re going to really try to distance themselves from this despite the fact that they, leading their lapdogs in the leftist media, made this a front page story for how many months? Months and months,” Palin opined.

The victorious Governor Scott Walker summed his victory up by saying:

Tonight, we tell Wisconsin, we tell our country and we tell people all across the globe that voters really do want leaders who stand up and make the tough decisions,” Gov. Scott Walker (R-Wis.) said after he beat a recall attempt.

Walker said that while “bringing our state together will take some time, no doubt about it,” he believes “there is more that unites us than divides us.

Is this overwhelming victory by Gov. Walker and the good people of Wisconsin, a harbinger of what will happen in our country’s National Elections on November 6, 2012?

I pray that it is.

On Wisconsin

On By kingsjesterIn Politics6 Comments

Obama’s main flunky David Axelrod informed reporters on Sunday that an “army of lawyers” will be in the Badger state “to protect” the vote during the recall election.

And, sure enough, Attorney General Eric Holder is sending the troops in:

The Justice Department announced today that it will monitor elections on June 5, 2012, in the following jurisdictions to ensure compliance with the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and other federal voting rights statutes: Alameda, Fresno and Riverside Counties, Calif.; Cibola and Sandoval Counties, N.M.; Shannon County, S.D.; and the city of Milwaukee.

The Voting Rights Act prohibits discrimination in the election process on the basis of race, color or membership in a minority language group. In addition, the act requires certain covered jurisdictions to provide language assistance during the election process. Fresno County, Riverside County and the city of Milwaukee are required to provide assistance in Spanish. Cibola, Sandoval and Shannon Counties are required to provide language assistance to Native American voters. Alameda County is required to provide language assistance to Hispanic, Chinese, Vietnamese and Filipino voters.

Under the Voting Rights Act, the Justice Department is authorized to ask the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to send federal observers to jurisdictions that are certified by the attorney general or by a federal court order. Federal observers will be assigned to monitor polling place activities in Shannon County based on the attorney general’s certification and in Alameda, Riverside and Sandoval Counties based on court orders. The observers will watch and record activities during voting hours at polling locations in these jurisdictions, and Civil Rights Division attorneys will coordinate the federal activities and maintain contact with local election officials.

In addition, Justice Department personnel will monitor polling place activities in Fresno County, Cibola County and the city of Milwaukee. Civil Rights Division attorneys will coordinate federal activities and maintain contact with local election officials.

Why is today’s Recall Election attracting so much attention?  To answer that question, we need to examine what is going on within the state itself.

According to the Wall Street Journal:

Triggered by a backlash against the Republican governor’s move 15 months ago to crimp collective bargaining for the state’s public employees, the recall race has pitted neighbor against neighbor, damaged decades-old friendships, and, in one case, led a woman to drive into her husband when he tried to stop her from voting for Mr. Walker’s opponent in a primary last month.

Wisconsin has long been a purple state with a fluid middle. Its U.S. senators have included both Robert “Fighting Bob” La Follette, the progressive champion of the early 20th Century, and Joseph McCarthy, the fiery anti-Communist senator of the 1940s and 50s. Four of its past eight governors have been Democrats; four have been Republicans. While Wisconsin has voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1988—Barack Obama won in 2008 by 14 percentage points—the 2010 election gave Republicans control of both houses of the state legislature and ushered Mr. Walker into office.

Mr. Walker and his supporters say curbing public union’s collective-bargaining rights is essential to balancing the state budget, lowering property taxes and creating a business-friendly environment. Union members and many Democrats say public-sector unions weren’t the cause of the state’s budget problems and argue that Mr. Walker has used his office to drive an ideological agenda well to the right of what most Wisconsinites want.

Both sides, along with the national political establishment, would see a victory Tuesday as a validation of their position and a harbinger of the public mood heading into November’s presidential election.

This spring, as the recall entered the home stretch, political positions have become so hardened that a Marquette University Law School poll late last month found only one in every 50 likely voters hadn’t decided how to vote. The poll showed Mr. Walker ahead of his Democratic opponent, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, by seven percentage points, within the margin of error. More than one-third of respondents said they had stopped speaking about politics to someone because of disagreements over the recall.

“I don’t have any of them for friends anymore,” Mr. Ertel said of those with whom he might disagree. “It’s just better to ignore them.”

The race has drawn tens of millions of dollars in political donations—much of it from outside Wisconsin—into a state of just 5.7 million people. Much of it has found its way into negative advertisements. In Sheboygan, a Republican-leaning middle-class city of 50,000 on Lake Michigan roughly halfway between Milwaukee and Green Bay, yard signs are ubiquitous and bumper stickers run to the demeaning.

Carol Zoren, a 73-year-old Democrat, sports a bumper sticker on her car that says “Vote Republican Values: Debt, Corruption and Invented War.” A few weeks ago, a man started screaming at her in a parking lot. “He said he was a veteran and he didn’t fight for people like me,” she said. “I told him to buzz off.”

Politicians have tapped into the discord. At a bratfest behind the Sheboygan County Republican headquarters, State Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald, a candidate for the U.S. Senate, told a crowd: “The Democrats will do anything to steal an election; I do believe that.” The comment drew loud applause.

Hence, the ” uninvited oversight” from the Obama White House, while the “Boss”, in true Chicago Politics style, remains as removed from the situation as possible, in order to claim plausible deniability.

Stay tuned.

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!