As a Catholic, I don’t take it kindly when someone proudly prays to God for someone to contract brain cancer and suffer a slow, lingering death. As an American, I find it appalling that someone would pray for that person to be the President of the United States. Yet that’s what Baptist Pastor Steve Anderson of Phoenix, AZ’s Faithful Word Baptist Church did, and he did it right from the pulpit during a sermon at Sunday Mass.
A Phoenix-area pastor has started to draw protesters to his congregation after he delivered a sermon titled, “Why I Hate Barack Obama,” and told his parishioners that he prays for President Obama’s death.
Pastor Steven Anderson stood by his sermon in an interview with MyFOXPhoenix, which reports that the pastor continues to encourage his parishioners to join him in praying for the president’s death.
“I hope that God strikes Barack Obama with brain cancer so he can die like Ted Kennedy and I hope it happens today,” he told MyFOXPhoenix on Sunday. He called his message “spiritual warfare” and said he does not condone killing.
Yeah, and I’m sure God appreciates the distinction. Actually, God was pretty clear with what he thought we should pray regarding our enemies: for their well-being and a change of heart so they weren’t our enemies any more. You’d think someone walking around with a job title of “pastor” would know that.
Anderson’s behavior is disgusting, pure and simple. Like him or hate him, President Obama is the duly elected executive of this country and I might add he’s a fellow American. I think he’s dead wrong, politically, and I sincerely hope his plans for this country are stopped before they do more damage. But that’s no excuse to publicly hope he dies soon. And there’s no excuse at all for wishing a death by cancer on him, most especially as part of a prayer to the Creator.
You’re no man of God, Anderson. I pray you figure that out before it’s too late to do you any good.
IS “TEABAGGER” THE NEW “N-WORD?” No, but when I hear someone use it, I know that nothing they say on the subject is worth taking seriously. Either they’re deliberately using it as a sexual slur, or they’re too ignorant to be worth listening to.
At the town hall meeting held by Representative Jim Moran (D-VA) on August 25in Reston, VA a protestor carried a sign that had a picture of President Obama on it. Fairfax Officer Wesley Cheeks, allegedly a law enforcement officer, decided he didn’t like the sign and threatened the protester with arrest if he didn’t put the sign down. In arguing the point with the protester, Cheeks claimed to be able to “charge [him] with anything [he] like[d]” and, when the protester, uh, protested that, even on school grounds, this “used to be America” Cheeks replied, “it ain’t no more, OK?” Observe:
The howling firestorm of outraged anger that would have followed such an stunt at a Republican event were it an anti-Bush protester told to put down a poster with a picture of Bush on it would have been reported coast-to-coast and wall-to-wall. Someone opposed to Obama at a Democrat’s event? Not so much.
Cheeks is a disgrace and even if such a preposterously stupid comment escaped his lips in the heat of the moment, what does it say about what he thinks of his oath to defend the Constitution is this is the kind of thing simmering beneath his surface? He should be suspended while he undergoes additional training about the law and his duty. His bosses should, publicly and in no uncertain terms, denounce his actions and promise the community that they will see to it no such thing will be repeated by Cheeks or other officers under their command.
Congressman Moran, while not personally responsible for the event, should step up and say something, too. He needs to make clear he doesn’t support such a notion as expressed by the police officer tasked with keeping the law at his events. And if he’s supportive of the idea that citizens’ 1st Amendment rights are somehow less on school property than elsewhere will he commit to never holding any such event at such a venue again?
Now that Senator Ted Kennedy’s path in this life has been laid to rest and the laurels have been cast in his memory, it is time to speak plainly both on matters the Senator was involved in and those he set into motion. In his final days, the Senator engaged in, and urged his Democrat colleagues to assist with, one of the more rank examples of hypocrisy you’re likely to find.
In 2004 when fellow Democrat Senator John Kerry was making his run for the White House, Kennedy urged his fellow Democrats in the Massachusetts legislature to make a change to the state’s law. At that time the law stated that should a representative to Congress – such as Senator Kerry – become unable to fulfill the term of his office, the Governor of Massachusetts would appoint a replacement. That replacement would serve the remainder of the representative’s term whereupon the next election would decide the permanent replacement. The Governor at the time was Mitt Romney, a Republican. Concerned that Romney would appoint a Republican to replace Kerry should Kerry win the 2004 election, Kennedy argued that the vacant seat should be decided by a special election. The voters of Massachusetts (presumably solidly Democrat), not the Governor (a Republican) would decide who got to fill Kerry’s seat.
Well, the legislation passed but Kerry didn’t so Kennedy’s doomsday vision never came to pass. But the state law was changed and remained so. The years passed and Kennedy’s diagnosis was discovered. When it became clear that his cancer would not be treatable, however, Kennedy began to take stock of the situation regarding his own seat. With the Massachusetts Governor’s house now in Democrat hands, he knew he could rely on this Governor to pick a Democrat replacement. Voters, however, can be fickle. And that’s when Kennedy made the suggestion – the impassioned plea, in fact – that the state law be changed back to the way it was.
Any honest, serious person must admit that this is the very definition of hypocrisy. Kennedy’s argument before 2004 was that the people deserved to choose their representation, not have it appointed by the Governor. Suddenly, with the Governor being from the same party as Kennedy that’s no longer a problem?
No. If Massachusetts wants to change their laws back to the way they were, fine. But they should do so only after this vacancy is filled by the special election Kennedy fought so hard to enable. Is it clearly obvious that Kennedy and his supporters wanted the laws changed to benefit themselves and it is equally clear that they want them changed back for the same reason. Any of their arguments offered outside of that reason were just so much hot air and they should be forced to live with that decision now that it’s come home to them.
The vast majority of people with broadband internet connections for their homes these days are using wireless routers to connect their PC’s, Mac’s, and laptops to the ‘Net. While the adoption by the masses of basic security procedures has improved over the last 5 years, the fact is that the online landscape changes dynamically and people need to know about. Where most people didn’t have basic security on their wireless routers turned on 5 years ago, most today appear to have gotten the message. They’ve activated the most basic of the security protocols and are using WEP. There are better ones available, however, since WEP was cracked a few years back. Those new ones are WPA and WPA2.
Computer scientists in Japan say they’ve developed a way to break the WPA encryption system used in wireless routers in about one minute.
The attack gives hackers a way to read encrypted traffic sent between computers and certain types of routers that use the WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) encryption system. The attack was developed by Toshihiro Ohigashi of Hiroshima University and Masakatu Morii of Kobe University, who plan to discuss further details at a technical conference set for Sept. 25 in Hiroshima.
Last November, security researchers first showed how WPA could be broken, but the Japanese researchers have taken the attack to a new level, according to Dragos Ruiu, organizer of the PacSec security conference where the first WPA hack was demonstrated. “They took this stuff which was fairly theoretical and they’ve made it much more practical,” he said.
The previous attack method against WPA took about 15 minutes to bust a wireless key. As the article says, this one takes about a minute, far too quick for the average homeowner to notice. If your router offers WPA2 (and any device that’s certified with the WiFi trademark is required to do so) you should switch over to it. It’s a 2-minute effort on your router and your laptop should be able to re-acquire the network in a minute or so. (Believe it or not, with Vista it might even been less than that.) It’s worth the trouble. You should do it.
Even during tight budgetary times, a growing handful of state governors are proving too wary to accept laptop computers that have shown up at their offices this month, unsolicited.
Officials in West Virginia, Vermont, Wyoming and Washington state have reported receiving between three and five laptops, each over the course of two separate deliveries — but none had ordered any of them.
“They immediately raised a red flag,” said Matt Turner, spokesman for West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin. “No one said, ‘Hey, we got a free gift.”‘
Good for them. This kind of thing has “Trojan horse” – in more than 1 sense – written all over it. I have no idea what’s on those laptops but I’d love to find out. I know of a few dozen people who’d love to get a crack at them.
If I hear more about this and what’s discovered from them, I’ll pass it along. In the meantime if any of you government types receive what appear to be freebies, remember this story and act with caution.
If you haven’t heard about the unintended (?) effects created by the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) you should definitely get up to speed on it. The CPSIA was enacted in the wake of those Chinese-manufactured toys that turned out to have lead content far in excess of that permitted by law. The requirement for testing any – and I do mean any – product to be sold to or for the primary use by children for lead and pthalates whether that product is newly manufactured or being offered for resale has had a devastating effect on small businesses and thrift stores throughout the country. I’d direct you to resources at Hugh Hewitt’s blog, a write-up at Convenant Zone (a Canadian blog but still affected by this law), and Learning Resources, Inc.’s CPSIA – COmments and Observations site to get a feel for it and then go from there.
Today’s post is to draw attention to something raised by Ed Morrissey over at Hot Air. He took note of a news report that says that the US firm who was squarely at the center of the whole problem to begin with – Mattel – has gotten a waiver from having to comply with the independent testing requirement mandated by the CPSIA. Morrissey sums it up:
Mattel had to recall more than 2 million toys from the market after inspectors discovered lead in the imported products. Now they claim that their “firewalled” labs will protect consumers and block out “corporate influence”. Where are the labs that Mattel will use? Mexico, Malaysia, Indonesia, and China — and China is where the dangerous toys originated.
Mattel gets to test its own products. People like Suzi Lang have to pay laboratories to certify their hand-made products contain no lead or phthalates, which she already knows because she handpicks her materials.
So the firm that dropped the oversight ball in the first place is going to rely on labs located in the countries that were responsible for the manufacturing problems from the start to test for the presence of materials that they were already supposed to be testing for to begin with. And the regulatory agency that’s sending agents into the field to harass thrift shop owners in the United States is perfectly fine with Mattel getting away with this?
The law was badly written and that was bad enough. That the agency responsible for enforcing the regulation is now doing this is preposterous. Someones’ heads should roll for this.
The United Nations is recommending that children as young as five receive mandatory sexual education that would teach even pre-kindergarteners about masturbation and topics like gender violence.
The U.N.’s Economic, Social and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) released a 98-page report in June offering a universal lesson plan for kids ranging in age from 5-18, an “informed approach to effective sex, relationships” and HIV education that they say is essential for “all young people.”
The U.N. insists the program is “age appropriate,” but critics say it’s exposing kids to sex far too early, and offers up abstract ideas — like “transphobia” — they might not even understand.
Ludicrous. Any idiot seriously advocating teaching a subject as complex as human sexuality to a child 5 years of age – an age where the kid cannot be expected to possess a set of rhetorical tools nor a sufficient grasp of language, let alone the heavier matters of morality – is unqualified to have a serious discussion with competent adults. And, frankly, I’d be suspicious of their motives and leaning heavily toward considering them a borderline pedophile. The moronic imbeciles responsible for that report should be fired and sent back to whatever country they came from.
If they’re Americans, let them stand forth and own up to this trash, if they think it’s such a good idea, so the rest of their countrymen can take their measure personally.
If this is the kind of recommendation that comes out of the United Nations, then I want no part of their recommendations on anything. Get lost, UN, all of you.
Senator Ted Kennedy died at his home in Massachusetts after fighting brain cancer this past year. We was 77 years old. The family released a statement announcing his passing this morning. The President is actually nearby in Martha’s Vineyard:
President Obama, on vacation in Martha’s Vineyard, said he and first lady Michelle were “heartbroken” to hear of Kennedy’s passing.
“An important chapter in our history has come to an end. Our country has lost a great leader, who picked up the torch of his fallen brothers and became the greatest United States Senator of our time,” Obama said in a statement.
Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid said on Wednesday both the Kennedy family and the Senate have “lost our patriarch.”
There is precious little, politically, that Senator Kennedy and I would find ourselves agreeing upon but there is no arguing he has seen some of the most powerful events in American history from a very front-row seat. I offer my prayers for him and for his family. May they be granted the strength to see this difficult time through.
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