"Prosperity" Churches, and the Recession

Did Christianity Cause the Crash?
America’s mainstream religious denominations used to teach the faithful that they would be rewarded in the afterlife. But over the past generation, a different strain of Christian faith has proliferated—one that promises to make believers rich in the here and now. Known as the prosperity gospel, and claiming tens of millions of adherents, it fosters risk-taking and intense material optimism. It pumped air into the housing bubble. And one year into the worst downturn since the Depression, it's still going strong.

[...] America’s churches always reflect shifts in the broader culture, and Casa del Padre is no exception. The message that Jesus blesses believers with riches first showed up in the postwar years, at a time when Americans began to believe that greater comfort could be accessible to everyone, not just the landed class. But it really took off during the boom years of the 1990s, and has continued to spread ever since. This stitched-together, homegrown theology, known as the prosperity gospel, is not a clearly defined denomination, but a strain of belief that runs through the Pentecostal Church and a surprising number of mainstream evangelical churches, with varying degrees of intensity. In Garay’s church, God is the “Owner of All the Silver and Gold,” and with enough faith, any believer can access the inheritance. Money is not the dull stuff of hourly wages and bank-account statements, but a magical substance that comes as a gift from above. Even in these hard times, it is discouraged, in such churches, to fall into despair about the things you cannot afford. “Instead of saying ‘I’m poor,’ say ‘I’m rich,’” Garay’s wife, Hazael, told me one day. “The word of God will manifest itself in reality.”

Many explanations have been offered for the housing bubble and subsequent crash: interest rates were too low; regulation failed; rising real-estate prices induced a sort of temporary insanity in America’s middle class. But there is one explanation that speaks to a lasting and fundamental shift in American culture—a shift in the American conception of divine Providence and its relationship to wealth.

In his book Something for Nothing, Jackson Lears describes two starkly different manifestations of the American dream, each intertwined with religious faith. The traditional Protestant hero is a self-made man. He is disciplined and hardworking, and believes that his “success comes through careful cultivation of (implicitly Protestant) virtues in cooperation with a Providential plan.” The hero of the second American narrative is a kind of gambling man—a “speculative confidence man,” Lears calls him, who prefers “risky ventures in real estate,” and a more “fluid, mobile democracy.” The self-made man imagines a coherent universe where earthly rewards match merits. The confidence man lives in a culture of chance, with “grace as a kind of spiritual luck, a free gift from God.” The Gilded Age launched the myth of the self-made man, as the Rockefellers and other powerful men in the pews connected their wealth to their own virtue. In these boom-and-crash years, the more reckless alter ego dominates. In his book, Lears quotes a reverend named Jeffrey Black, who sounds remarkably like Garay: “The whole hope of a human being is that somehow, in spite of the things I’ve done wrong, there will be an episode when grace and fate shower down on me and an unearned blessing will come to me—that I’ll be the one.”

I had come to Charlottesville to learn more about this second strain of the American dream—one that’s been ascendant for a generation or more. I wanted to try to piece together the connection between the gospel and today’s economic reality, and to see whether “prosperity” could possibly still seem enticing, or even plausible, in this distinctly unprosperous moment. (Very much so, as it turns out.) Charlottesville may not be the heartland of the prosperity gospel, which is most prevalent in the Sun Belt—where many of the country’s foreclosure hot spots also lie. And Garay preaches an unusually pure version of the gospel. Still, the particulars of both Garay and his congregation are revealing.

Among Latinos the prosperity gospel has been spreading rapidly. In a recent Pew survey, 73 percent of all religious Latinos in the United States agreed with the statement: “God will grant financial success to all believers who have enough faith.” For a generation of poor and striving Latino immigrants, the gospel seems to offer a road map to affluence and modern living. Garay’s church is comprised mostly of first-generation immigrants. More than others I’ve visited, it echoes back a highly distilled, unself-conscious version of the current thinking on what it means to live the American dream.

One other thing makes Garay’s church a compelling case study. From 2001 to 2007, while he was building his church, Garay was also a loan officer at two different mortgage companies. He was hired explicitly to reach out to the city’s growing Latino community, and Latinos, as it happened, were disproportionately likely to take out the sort of risky loans that later led to so many foreclosures. To many of his parishioners, Garay was not just a spiritual adviser, but a financial one as well. [...]

I was skeptical about this article at first. The title alone seemed alarmist. But the article itself is more subtle, and fair. It deals with the "prosperity" churches in particular, and acknowledges the good these churches can do, as well as examining their more... "questionable" or contradictory teachings.

I'm not against prosperity teachings; you have to have a vision of something better in order to transcend whatever adversity you may be facing in life. But even optimism has to be tempered with a healthy dose of pessimism, as a "grounding" influence. Emotions, however fervently felt, need to be balanced with reason. This article points out well how those lines can be blurred sometimes.

I would not say Christians caused the Crash. That's way too simplistic. The crash was caused by too many bad home loans, in which some Christians may have been caught up in. I still hold the LENDERS responsible, AND the people in Congress who pushed to have those bad loans made, despite all the warnings at the time. And I also blame all the bail-outs of banks over the past decade, banks that should have been allowed to fail. Instead, the bail-outs just protected them from the consequences of their irresponsible actions, and just encouraged them to be even more reckless, and to continue making risky loans.

Even now, bailed-out banks are continuing to make loans to people who aren't able to pay them back. Protected from consequences, they've learned nothing. Where is the accountability? Who is more irresponsible, the people who take the loans, or the people who make them, and then expect the taxpayers to bail them out when the loans go bad?

     

Google buys Gizmo: a new phone company?

I first posted about Gizmo back in February of 2007:

Gizmo Project: Call Pope Benedict for Free

Gizmo creator Michael Robertson had some interesting things to say about Gizmo and about telephone service. Well now that Gizmo has been bought by Google, there is talk of a new phone company:

Google poised to become your phone company

(Wired) -- Google is set to become your new phone company, perhaps reducing your phone bill to zilch in the process.

Seriously.

Google has bought Gizmo5, an online phone company that is akin to Skype  but based on open protocols and with a lot fewer users. TechCrunch, which broke the news on Monday, reported that Google spent $30 million on the company.

Google announced the Gizmo acquisition on Thursday afternoon Pacific Time. Gizmo5's founder Michael Robertson, a brash serial entrepreneur, will become an Adviser to Google Voice.

It's a potent recipe -- take Gizmo5's open standards-based online calling system. Add to it the new ability to route calls on Google's massive network of cheap fiber. Toss in Google Voice's free phone number, which will ring your mobile phone, your home phone and your Gizmo5 client on your laptop.

Meanwhile you can use Gizmo5 to make ultracheap outgoing calls to domestic and international phone numbers, and free calls to Skype, Google Talk, Yahoo and AIM users. You could make and receive calls that bypass the per-minute billing on your smartphone.

Then layer on deluxe phone services like free SMS, voicemail transcription, customized call routing, free conference calls and voicemails sent as recordings to your e-mail account, and you have a phone service that competes with Skype, landlines and the Internet telephone offerings from Vonage and cable companies.

That's not just pie in-the-sky dreaming.

Ask longtime VOIP watcher and consultant Andy Abramson, who introduced the idea of integrating Gizmo5 and Grand Central (now Google Voice), long before Google bought either. [...]

I think this is something to watch. It might become something really big, and make big changes in the way phone companies do buisiness.
     

"Sabi", MIA military dog, found in Afghanistan

An American soldier knew Sabi was not a
stray when she responded to commands.
Dog back after a year MIA in Afghanistan

(CNN) -- An Australian special forces dog has been found alive and well more than a year after going missing in action in Afghanistan.

Explosives detection dog Sabi was recovered by a U.S. soldier who found her wandering near an isolated patrol base in the desolate southern province of Oruzgan last week, according to the Australian Government Department of Defense.

John, the U.S. soldier, who was identified only by first name, knew his Australian counterparts were missing an explosive detection dog. He knew immediately that Sabi was not a stray.

"I took the dog and gave it some commands it understood," he said.

When she disappeared, the black Labrador was nearing the end of her second tour of duty in Afghanistan. She went missing in September 2008 when insurgents ambushed a combined Australian, U.S. and Afghan army convoy. Nine Australian soldiers, including Sabi's handler, were wounded during the gunbattle.

Trooper Mark Donaldson, currently in the United Kingdom after meeting Queen Elizabeth, said Sabi's return closed a chapter of their shared history.

"She's the last piece of the puzzle," Donaldson said. "Having Sabi back gives some closure for the handler and the rest of us that served with her in 2008. It's a fantastic morale booster for the guys." [...]

I love happy dog stories. She still needs to be checked out for diseases though, before they will let her return. Most likely she will return. They are planning to award her some canine medals! Follow the link for video.


Also See:

Dogs welcoming home their soldiers


     

Our Satellite Weather Maps for Oregon

These are a few of my favorite things; satellite maps on the Accuweather.com website. I look a the state map most often:

Oregon Radar

Then the larger regional map:

Northwest Radar

Then sometimes, the even larger picture, to see where our weather is coming from, and what it's sending our way:

Infrared North East Pacific Satellite

With all this info at my fingertips, I can make my plans around the weather more reliably than just by going by what the weather forecast says. Most of our weather comes to us off of the ocean, so it really helps to see whats happening out there. Isn't technology wonderful!
     

Mormon Church takes middle path on gay rights

Mormons throw support behind gay-rights cause

It looked like a stunning reversal: the same church that helped defeat gay marriage in California standing with gay-rights activists on an anti-discrimination law in its own backyard.

On Tuesday night, after a series of clandestine meetings between local gay-rights backers and Mormons in Salt Lake City, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced it would support proposed city laws that would prohibit discrimination against gays in housing and employment.

The ordinances passed and history was made: It marked the first time the Salt Lake City-based church had supported gay-rights legislation.

[...]

Michael Otterson, director of public affairs for the Mormon church, said Wednesday that church leaders were able to support the ordinance because it doesn't carve out special rights for gays.

Supporting "basic civil values," Otterson said, does not compromise the church's religious belief that homosexuality is a sin and that same-sex marriage poses a threat to traditional marriage.

"There are going to be gay advocates who don't think we've gone nearly far enough, and people very conservative who think we've gone too far," Otterson said. "The vast majority of people are between those polar extremes and we think that's going to resonate with people on the basis of fair-mindedness."

Harry Knox, director of the religion and faith program at the gay-rights group Human Rights Campaign, said the Mormon church's stand on the Salt Lake City ordinances could help alter the debate over gay rights.

"The church deserves credit, but that credit really comes because people have been pushing for it," Knox said. "It's not something thing they arrived at on their own and out of the goodness of their hearts."

The church's action is the latest sign of a softening among some conservative Christians toward offering some legal protections to gays. [...]

Interesting. Siding with "fair-mindedness", as seen by the "vast majority". Given their position on gay rights, their is a logic to their conclusion. This is a matter where it will be impossible to please everyone, and the middle path often leaves the extremes on both sides angry.
     

A Veteran's Day Salute, in Remembrance

With the recent attack at Fort Hood, our soldiers are very much in our minds this Veteran's Day. I like what Pat said in his post this morning:

"Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted"

I cannot bring myself to write some trite post about today's solemn holy day. I think it's because I experienced all my emotions of gratitude to our warriors during the memorial service at Fort Hood yesterday - especially while I was listening to that soldier singing "Amazing Grace." [...]

He goes on to discuss music, and then posts two videos, from Brahms' "German Requiem".

Music sometimes says more than words. In that spirit, I'd like to express thanks to our veterans by posting this video as a tribute to their service and sacrifice:



Samuel Barber - Adagio for Strings, op.11. Uncut

Original broadcast from the Albert Hall in London September 15 2001. Leonard Slatkin conducts the BBC Orchestra.

Much Heartfelt Thanks to all our Veterans, and our brave men and women in military service presently. You are always in my prayers.
     

South African "missing link" discovered

Scientists: New dinosaur species found in SAfrica

JOHANNESBURG – A newly discovered dinosaur species that roamed the Earth about 200 million years ago may help explain how the creatures evolved into the largest animals on land, scientists in South Africa said Wednesday.

The Aardonyx celestae was a 23-foot- (7-meter-) long small-headed herbivore with a huge barrel of a chest. It walked on its hind legs but also could drop to all fours, and scientists told reporters that could prove to be a missing evolutionary link.

This is a species "that no one has seen before and one that has a very significant position in the family tree of dinosaurs," said Australian paleontologist Adam Yates.

Yates, who is based at the University of the Witwatersrand's Bernard Price Institute for Paleontological Research, led the research with a number of other local and international scientists. [...]

Cool stuff. Follow the link for video.
     

Iran's objectives, and internal political struggle

Here is an interview for CNN with Fareed Zakaria, author and foreign affairs analyst. It starts off about the hikers/hostages, but then Zakaria has some interesting things to say about Iran's internal politics:

Zakaria: No one thinks hikers are spies

[...]

CNN: It's been reported that Ahmadinejad said the U.S. must abandon support for Israel to move ahead on better relations with Iran.

Zakaria: This has been a consistent theme of Ahmadinejad's. We read it too much as an expression of some kind of ideology. What it really is is Ahmadinejad's effort to appropriate, to take over the core central issue of the Arab world -- the Palestinian issue -- and make it his own. Iran is trying to become the dominant power of the Middle East.

It makes it very difficult for Arab countries to be critical of Iran because, on the Arab street, Ahmadinejad is seen as the great upholder of the Palestinian cause. He is trying to keep the Arabs on the defensive by constantly reminding people that he is the great opponent of Israel in the region. It's a very clever political calculation.

CNN: How can the Obama administration negotiate with Iran when it seems their stance on the nuclear issue is constantly shifting?

[...]

It's worth reading the whole thing, it's not very long.



For updates on current events in Iran, see the blog of Iranian ex-pat Azarmehr:

For a democratic secular Iran. For peace and prosperity in the Middle East.
     

Time-traveling bird delivers fateful baguette? TIME magazine "reporting" goes Sci-Fi

Large Hadron Collider: Damaged by a Time-Traveling Bird?

Sometime on Nov. 3, the supercooled magnets in sector 81 of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), outside Geneva, began to dangerously overheat. Scientists rushed to diagnose the problem, since the particle accelerator has to maintain a temperature colder than deep space in order to work. The culprit? "A bit of baguette," says Mike Lamont of the control center of CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, which built and maintains the LHC. Apparently, a passing bird may have dropped the chunk of bread on an electrical substation above the accelerator, causing a power cut. The baguette was removed, power to the cryogenic system was restored and within a few days the magnets returned to their supercool temperatures.

While most scientists would write off the event as a freak accident, two esteemed physicists have formulated a theory that suggests an alternative explanation: perhaps a time-traveling bird was sent from the future to sabotage the experiment. Bech Nielsen of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen and Masao Ninomiya of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kyoto, Japan, have published several papers over the past year arguing that the CERN experiment may be the latest in a series of physics research projects whose purposes are so unacceptable to the universe that they are doomed to fail, subverted by the future.

[...]

In a series of audacious papers, Nielsen and Ninomiya have suggested that setbacks to the LHC occur because of "reverse chronological causation," which is to say, sabotage from the future. The papers suggest that the Higgs boson may be "abhorrent to nature" and the LHC's creation of the Higgs sometime in the future sends ripples backward through time to scupper its own creation. Each time scientists are on the verge of capturing the Higgs, the theory holds, the future intercedes. The theory as to why the universe rejects the creation of Higgs bosons is based on complex mathematics, but, Nielsen tells TIME, "you could explain it [simply] by saying that God, in inverted commas, or nature, hates the Higgs and tries to avoid them."

Many physicists say that Nielsen and Ninomiya's theory, while intellectually interesting, cannot be accurate because the event that the LHC is trying to recreate already happens in nature. Particle collisions of an energy equivalent to those planned in the LHC occur when high-energy cosmic rays collide with the earth's atmosphere. What's more, some scientists believe that the Tevatron accelerator at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (or Fermilab) near Chicago has already created Higgs bosons without incident; the Fermilab scientists are now refining data from their collisions to prove the Higgs' existence.

Nielsen counters that nature might allow a small number of Higgs to be produced by the Tevatron, but would prevent the production of the large number of particles the LHC is anticipated to produce. He also acknowledges that Higgs particles are probably produced in cosmic collisions, but says it's impossible to know whether nature has stopped a great deal of these collisions from happening. "It's possible that God avoids Higgs [particles] only when there are very many of them, but if there are a few, maybe He let's them go," he says. [...]

Um... um. Time-traveling bird saboteurs armed with stale baguettes. Geez, what can I say? There's even more, if you care to read it. News or entertainment? You decide.

To be fair to TIME, I suppose it IS newsworthy that this debate is occurring. I have to wonder, how much researchers like Nielsen and Ninomiya get paid to write such theories. Nice work if you can get it.

     

Ubuntu 9.10 gets mixed reviews. Alternatives?

DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 328, 9 November 2009

[...] Those who followed some of the popular Linux news sites after the release of Ubuntu 9.10 must have been horrified (or, for those belonging to the Ubuntu haters camp, delighted) by the amount of negative media coverage given to Canonical's latest release over the past week. This is how The Register summed up the event in "Early adopters bloodied by Ubuntu's Karmic Koala", a story with over 1,200 comments on Slashdot: "Ubuntu 9.10 is causing outrage and frustration, with early adopters wishing they'd stuck with previous versions of the Linux distro. Blank and flickering screens, failure to recognize hard drives, defaulting to the old 2.6.28 Linux kernel, and failure to get encryption running are taking their toll, as early adopters turn to the web for answers and log fresh bug reports in Ubuntu forums." Similar stories have been told on other web sites, including the distribution's official forums. Is the latest Ubuntu really bad, or is it just the case of a vocal minority making a mountain out of a hill? Please discuss your experiences below. [...]

Follow the link to see the embedded links, to the reviews and the comments.

I've tried Ubuntu 9.10, and found it to be mostly pretty good, although flash player for Youtube had a flickering problem. I usually go with one of the Ubuntu derivatives, Mint Linux, which has IMO a more polished user experience. I'm waiting for the next version of Mint, which should be released soon.

I'm presently using Mint 5, "Elyssa", which is based on Ubuntu's last LTS (long term support) release. I think the LTS releases, supported for four years on the desktop, and seven for the server edition, are the most stable. Ubuntu's next LTS release will be nest April, Ubuntu 10.4. I may wait for it before upgrading.

Another Linux distribution I like and use is PCLinuxOS. It's not based on Ubuntu, but Mandriva, which is a Red Hat derivative. It's been around for a long time and I find it quite reliable.

On an unrelated (but interesting) note, here is a link to some screen shots of
Linux XP, a Linux distribution that is configured to look like Windows XP.

I won't be trying it, it's in "release candidate" status, but I thought the pics were fun to look at. It just goes to show what you can do with Linux. Some people seriously argue that Linux's biggest problem is, that there are too many choices.

We should all have such problems!
     

Soviet Walls, Islamic Walls... May They All Fall

From Berlin to Baghdad
Will the peoples of Islam tear down their walls as the people of Central and Eastern Europe tore down theirs?

[...] A meandering road led from 11/9 to 9/11. The burning grounds of Islam are altogether different than the Communist challenge. There is no Moscow that serves as the seat of Jihadist power. This is a new kind of war and new kind of enemy, a twilight war without front lines.

But we shouldn't be surprised with some of history's repetitions. There are again the appeasers who see these furies of Islam as America's comeuppance, there are those who think we have overreached and that we are riding into storms of our own making. And in the foreign world there are chameleons who feign desire for our friendship while subverting our causes.

Once again, there arises the question in our midst of whether political freedom, broadly conceived, can and ought to be taken to distant lands. In the George W. Bush years, American power and diplomacy gave voice to a belief in freedom's possibilities. A different sentiment animates American practice today.

For the peoples of Islam, the question can be squarely put: Will they tear down their walls in the manner in which the people of Central and Eastern Europe tore down theirs? The people of Islam are thus sorely tested. They will have to show their own fidelity to liberty. [...]

But will they? CAN they? And how can we help?


Related Link:

Will Turkey bring Islam into the 21st century?
     

Maj. Hasan, Ft. Hood, and the painfully obvious: say it, and deal with it, or get out of the way

Dr. Phil and the Fort Hood Killer
His terrorist motive is obvious to everyone but the press and the Army brass.

[...] What is hard to ignore, now, is the growing derangement on all matters involving terrorism and Muslim sensitivities. Its chief symptoms: a palpitating fear of discomfiting facts and a willingness to discard those facts and embrace the richest possible variety of ludicrous theories as to the motives behind an act of Islamic terrorism. All this we have seen before but never in such naked form. The days following the Fort Hood rampage have told us more than we want to know, perhaps, about the depth and reach of this epidemic.

One of the first outbreaks of these fevers, the night of the shootings, featured television's star psychologist, Dr. Phil, who was outraged when fellow panelist and former JAG officer Tom Kenniff observed that he had been listening to a lot of psychobabble and evasions about Maj. Hasan's motives.

A shocked Dr. Phil, appalled that the guest had publicly mentioned Maj. Hasan's Islamic identity, went on to present what was, in essence, the case for Maj. Hasan as victim. Victim of deployment, of the Army, of the stresses of a new kind of terrible war unlike any other we have known. Unlike, can he have meant, the kind endured by those lucky Americans who fought and died at Iwo Jima, say, or the Ardennes?

It was the same case to be presented, in varying forms, by guest psychologists, the media, and a representative or two from the military, for days on end.

The quality and thrust of this argument was best captured by the impassioned Dr. Phil, who asked us to consider, "how far out of touch with reality do you have to be to kill your fellow Americans . . . this is not a well act." And how far out of touch with reality is such a question, one asks in return—not only of Dr. Phil, but of the legions of commentators like him immersed in the labyrinths of motive hunting even as the details of Maj. Hasan's proclivities became ever clearer and more ominous.

To kill your fellow Americans—as many as possible, unarmed and in the most helpless of circumstances, while shouting "Allahu Akbar" (God is great), requires, of course, only murderous hatred—the sort of mindset that regularly eludes the Dr. Phils of our world as the motive for mass murder of this kind. [...]

There are plenty of people who think just like Dr. Phil. If it's not "politically correct", then they don't want to see it. And they don't. Which is how this travesty was allowed to happen at Fort Hood in the first place. Political Correctness may be the death of us all. If we keep on being in denial of the obvious, where will that lead us?

J.R. Dunn at the American Thinker blog has some thoughts on that.

     

Did Iran's Nuke Plans change Russia's mind?

Iran tested advanced nuclear warhead design – secret report
Exclusive: Watchdog fears Tehran has key component to put bombs in missiles

The UN's nuclear watchdog has asked Iran to explain evidence suggesting that Iranian scientists have experimented with an advanced nuclear warhead design, the Guardian has learned.

The very existence of the technology, known as a "two-point implosion" device, is officially secret in both the US and Britain, but according to previously unpublished documentation in a dossier compiled by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iranian scientists may have tested high-explosive components of the design. The development was today described by nuclear experts as "breathtaking" and has added urgency to the effort to find a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear crisis.

The sophisticated technology, once mastered, allows for the production of smaller and simpler warheads than older models. It reduces the diameter of a warhead and makes it easier to put a nuclear warhead on a missile.

Documentation referring to experiments testing a two-point detonation design are part of the evidence of nuclear weaponisation gathered by the IAEA and presented to Iran for its response. [...]

Such warheads could be used on missiles they already have, and would greatly increase their ability to devastate with EMP attacks, without a single bomb hitting the ground.

Perhaps it's no coincidence that Russia is suddenly more supportive of sanctions:

Russia changes tune, may back sanctions on Iran

Russia has spoken out more strongly than ever against Iran, warning that it may consider tougher sanctions against the country should it fail to accept a Western-backed nuclear proposal.

In an interview with the German weekly Der Spiegel on Saturday, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said that, much to his reluctance, he would be forced to sign off on US-led sanctions on Iran.

"I do not want that all this ends up with the adopting of international sanctions because sanctions, as a rule, lead in a complex and dangerous direction," AFP quoted Medvedev as saying. [...]

They are within striking distance. But when you include missiles launched from ships, and EMP attacks as the goal, then most of the worlds populations are within striking distance.
     

FireFox: more vulnerable, or just a bigger target?

Firefox Tops Vulnerability List
New study places Firefox at the top of vulnerability list for for the first half of 2009.

Application security vendor Cenzic today released its security trends report for the first half of 2009 application. In it, Cenzic claims that the Mozilla's Firefox browser led the field of Web browsers in terms of total vulnerabilities.

According to Cenzic, Firefox accounted for 44 percent of all browser vulnerabilities reported in the first half of 2009. In contrast, Apple's Safari had 35 percent of all reported browser vulnerability, Microsoft's Internet Explorer was third at 15 percent and Opera had just six percent share.

The 2009 figures stand in contrast to Cenzic's Q3/Q4 2008 report, where IE accounted for 43 percent of all reported Web browser vulnerabilities and Firefox followed closely at 39 percent.

As to why Firefox's numbers were so high, Cenzic has a few ideas.

"It's a combination of different things," Lars Ewe, CTO of Cenzic, told InternetNews.com. "They've gotten more traction as a browser, which is good for them and the more you get used the more exposure you have. As well a fair amount of the vulnerabilities have come by way of plug-ins."

[...]

Though Firefox had the highest number of vulnerabilities, that doesn't necessarily mean that Firefox users were more vulnerable. [...]

It goes on to explain how the study was done, what they found and what it actually means. Higher usage means more vulnerabilities found more quickly. But how quickly the vulnerabilities are patched also counts toward the browsers overall security. I'm not worried about Firefox, I just find the report interesting.
     

PelosiCare and the Amercian Constitution

What Constitution?

[...] The linked editorial touches on the legal argument with respect to the mandated purchase of insurance. I can’t fully comprehend the the gory details (I’m not a lawyer), but you see the unprecedented nature of the intrusion. Under what other circumstances do you become a criminal just for existing and failing to purchase a mandated item? By way of example, you’re compelled (by your state) to buy car insurance… but you made the choice to buy a car. Obviously you’re compelled to pay taxes…but then, this isn’t a tax; Obama promised not to tax you, so it can’t be a tax.

[...]

My main objection to health control is fear of the life-and-death power that government will ultimately hold over individual citizens, as well as looming national bankruptcy. Our Constitution was designed to protect us from such government overreach and centralization of power.

Precisely. PelosiCare is unconstitutional, AND unsustainable. What is the point, unless you want to ruin out current system of government and economics, and replace them with... something else?

SO ... SOME RANDOM THOUGHTS ABOUT PELOSICARE

[...] Pelosi's bill contains $250 billion dollars in deficit spending ... oh, but wait. They're voting on that separately so that you can't say the deficit spending is part of Pelosi's bill. Are you following this?

You do know that you'll start paying the taxes immediately --- but that you won't start reaping the benefits for another four years or so, don't you? Quite the con there. They say that PelosiCare will only cost $850+ trillion dollars over the first ten years ... but don't tell you will only receive benefits for six out of those ten years. Wait till the next 10 years hits you in the can.

Thus far nobody has explained where in our Constitution it gives the Imperial Federal Government the power to jail someone for a period of five years for failing to purchase a health insurance policy. But what the hell does Nancy Pelosi care about our Constitution, anyway? [...]

Is there hope, as this bill moves to the Senate? I think so. Consider:

Mutiny in Scrutiny?

[...] Greater scrutiny will not help the Democrats' efforts. In truth, their hopes for passage largely hinge on successfully hiding two plain facts from the voters: One, the House Republicans and the Congressional Budget Office have now shown that a bill costing $61 billion can lower Americans' insurance premiums, while bills costing $1.7 trillion cannot (and instead would raise them substantially). Two, the Democrats' plans would be paid for only if they follow through on plans to siphon hundreds of billions of dollars out of already-barely-solvent Medicare, and to do so just in time for the baby boomers' retirement.

Given the magnitude of the challenge of continuing to hide these plain facts from an increasingly attentive citizenry, the Democratic health-care train has a very bumpy ride ahead — as it rolls into the chamber that the American Founders thought from the beginning would ultimately decide our fate: the Senate.

61 billion and lower premiums, versus 1.7 TRILLION and higher premiums? Which one do you think the majority of Americans would prefer?

I live in hope. And intend to do what I can to insure that saner minds in the Senate prevail.

     

How much longer will our Republic last?

How committed is the Obama Administration to supporting Free Speech and upholding the American Constitution? It's awful to even have to ask that, but actions indicate we must:

Caesar Obama

The chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, Rocco Landesman, provoked ridicule when he said last week that "Barack Obama is the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar." He didn't mean that Barack Obama is a literary titan who doth bestride the narrow world like a colossus while petty men like Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Tolstoy walk under his huge legs and peep about to find ourselves dishonourable graves. But what he did mean, while no less fatuous, is also disquieting in its implications: for the first time, the United States of America has a president whose supporters talk about him in the same effusive and worshipful tones usually reserved for the likes of Stalin, Mao, and Kim Jong Il.

[...]

At a time when the Obama Administration is relentlessly demonizing dissenting voices and manifesting a shaky (at best) commitment to the freedom of speech, this is hardly a reassuring message to send. It demonstrates once again this Administration’s utter tone deafness and apparent indifference to genuine concerns about its commitment to core principles of the U.S. Constitution – witness Nancy Pelosi’s incredulous response of “are you serious?” to a questioner who asked her about the Constitutionality of nationalizing health care. Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, has declared her opposition to attempts at the United Nations to criminalize “defamation of religions” – that is, to make it illegal to speak about the motives and goals of Islamic jihad terrorists. Yet the Obama Administration is sending decidedly mixed signals about its commitment to free speech. Several weeks ago the Obama Administration actually co-sponsored an anti-free speech resolution at the United Nations. Approved by the U.N. Human Rights Council on October 2, the resolution, cosponsored by the U.S. and Egypt, calls on states to condemn and criminalize “any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence.”

Yet “incitement” and “hatred” are in the eye of the beholder — or more precisely, in the eye of those who make such determinations. The powerful can decide to silence the powerless by classifying their views as “hate speech.” And now the President of the United States has given his imprimatur to this tyranny. [...]

As our government continues to assume more and more powers and controls that it has been previously denied, and it's members fail to uphold the Constitution they have sworn to honor and defend, we must ask, where is this going, and where will this power-grab stop? WILL it stop?

The Cold War Never Ended

It is now almost twenty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. But did it really end, and did we win it? Look at the situation in Europe today, where many of the former Communist countries in the eastern half of Europe are freer and safer than many of those in the western half of Europe. Instead of an Iron Curtain we now have an Iron Veil of Multiculturalism, and Western Europe is on the wrong side of it this time around. Did we trade the USSR for the EUSSR? If we really "beat" Marxism, how come Marxists and Leftists of all stripes virtually control Western media and academia a generation later, and why does the USA have a Marxist-inspired President Obama? [...]

Marxist ideology never left us. It just goes under different names and uses different methods now. Including "Hope and Change", and an increasingly Imperial US Congress.


Also see:

Dems "Not concerned" about the Constitution?
     

Czech President caves, signs Lisbon Treaty

He was the last hold out, but the Czech President caved in to the pressure being put upon him:

Leviathan Is Born: The Annexation of Europe by Brussels

On November 3rd 2009, at 3 pm local time, the Czech Republic ceased to exist as a sovereign state when Vaclav Klaus, its president, put his signature under the Treaty of Lisbon. The Czech Republic was the last of the 27 member states of the European Union to ratify the treaty which turns the EU into a genuine state to which it members states are subservient.

Klaus had delayed signing the document for as long as he could.

[...]

Now, with Mr. Klaus’s signature, the game has drawn to its close and a treaty, so despised by the people that it was never put to them, has turned 500 million Europeans into citizens of a genuine supranational European State which is empowered to act as a State vis-à-vis other States and its own citizens. The EU will have its own President, Foreign Minister, diplomatic corps and Public Prosecutor. Henceforward, the only remaining sovereign power of any significance in Europe is Russia. Apart from Switzerland, Norway and Iceland, the EU leviathan has a grip on every other nation, whose national parliaments are, in accordance with the Lisbon Treaty, obliged to “contribute actively to the good functioning of the Union,” i.e. further primarily the interests of the new Union, rather than those of their own people.

The new European superstate, however, is not a democracy. It has an elected parliament, but the European Parliament has no legislative powers, nor does it control the EU’s executive bodies. The latter, who also have legislative power overriding national legislation, are made up of “commissioners.” These are appointed by the governments of the member states (although no longer with one commissioner per member state, as was the case so far, but with a total number capped at two-thirds of the number of member states). The EU is basically a cartel, consisting of the 27 governments of the member states, who have concluded that it is easier to pass laws in the secret EU meetings with their colleagues than through their own national parliaments in the glare of public criticism.

[...]

The formal decision about who will become President and High Commissioner will be taken in late November. As the wheeling and dealing – all of it behind closed doors so that the people will not know – continues, it is not certain yet that Herman Van Rompuy will emerge as Europe’s first president. It is, however, not a coincidence that a Belgian seems the most likely candidate. Belgium is a supranational state, constructed by the European powers in 1830 and made up of two different nations, Dutch-speaking Flanders and French-speaking Wallonia. As such, Belgium, whose capital Brussels also happens to be the EU’s capital, serves as a model for the EU in its attempt to build a supranational state out of the continent’s different nations.

Like EU politics, Belgian politics is characterized by a lack of transparency, unaccountability, corporatism and a willingness to bend the democratic rules and legal procedures so as to allow the political establishment to proceed with their own project and secure the survival of a state which is unloved by its citizens but provides the livelihood of the ruling elites. What Vaclav Klaus calls “Europeism” is the application of Belgicism, the doctrine underpinning the Belgian state, on the European level. [...]

Read the whole thing, to see what the Czech President had to say about the end of Czech sovereignty, and what to expect from all of this.


Also see:

Without Opposition: the European Union
     

When Financial Chickens come home to roost

Takuan Seiyo has a long rant.

[...] The Nobel-laureate in economics Gary Becker linked the financial travails of Argentina in the mid-1990s to government spending at more than 30% of GDP. The Swiss economist Peter Bernholz has linked hyperinflation triggers to government deficits exceeding 40% of expenditures. But government spending in Obamerica is 45% of GDP, and its deficit stands at 43.3%. Peronism has acquired a permanent perch in Washington, DC.

But there is more. In a long chain of catastrophic errors and intentional malpractice since the days of Lyndon Johnson, America’s ruling elite of both parties has run up an unpayable debt to its own retirees, to its bondholders, its foreign creditors. Having designed to turn the country into a banana republic demographically, the Club of Crooks and Loons has turned it into a banana republic fiscally too.

[...]

A freefalling dollar cannot help by increasing exports, when you have off-shored your manufacturing, and your main industries are predatory lawsuits, selling shoddy American housing to Salvadorians with faked mortgages, and marketing financial weapons of mass destruction worldwide. And a falling dollar is not a good inducement for the world to keep buying dollar-denominated U.S. debt. The cessation of that buying has such dire consequences to the United States that Chinese strategists have named them “the nuclear option.”

The American people can’t do anything about it either, except mailing tea bags to the crooks and loons who govern them. Their only electoral choice is between the party of demented progressives, and the party of progressive dementia.

[...]

We are ruled by lying clowns, forever trying to postpone the moment of truth. To the next election cycle, next government, next century. They have been destroying the West year by year for 55 years now by mismanaging government finances in order to bribe voters or to buy feel-good, do-good euphoria for their Body Snatcher vanguard. As the deficits grow, productive citizens are taxed up to double the 1/3 ratio of medieval serfs, more money printing and government borrowing is necessary, the value of money erodes and moral hazard gnaws at the foundation.

The government then cooks up “solutions” to the problems it created in the first place through its overspending, incompetence or corruption. The “solutions” camouflage the damage for a while longer and prolong the comforting illusion, just like the frantic “stimulus” to stave off a corrective deflationary depression now -- at a cost of devaluation or hyperinflation later. The “solutions” are often written up in 2000-page bills that nobody reads until their rot crawls out in litigation and 15-figure costs overruns years later.

All such “solutions” just multiply the damage and roll it forward so that the “crack-up boom” (4) boom now but crack up in the future, on somebody else’s watch.

But the future has arrived. It’s piled up all around us in heaps of diversity-enriching primitives from failed cultures bearing European and American passports, or silos full of mad mullahs and NorKor nightmare leprechauns thumbing their noses at the white castrati. It’s in the 24/7 stream of rotten mass culture that the harlots of Nineveh might envy, and in mountains of unnecessary junk purchased with nonexistent money. It’s in the giant vaults full of flimsy dollars worth 2% of their value in 1913, bloated deficits of generations of venal politicians raining borrowed currency onto client voters, and enormous industrial landscapes in China pumping out products that the now-crazed West once made at home and better.

The future is here. It can no longer be rolled over but maybe for a year with respect to Iran, three years with respect to hyperinflation, fifteen years with respect to the reconquest of the West by Muhammad and Montezuma. A delay just long enough for the misruling clowns to cash in their Goldman Sachs stock options, pass veto-proof immunity laws, declare national emergencies, and build for themselves impenetrable bunkers with landing strips in Andorra or Aruba.

[...]

The collapse is by no means over. The Bank for International Settlements estimates the banksters’ total derivative losses at $4.1 trillion. But this is, as such things always are, just a calming nostrum for frayed nerves. In case of a Black Swan event, which such estimates never take under consideration, the $4.1 trillion figure is probably too optimistic by a good-sized fraction of a quadrillion. But what’s a quadrillion or two between friends.

People forget that Adam Smith was not an economist but a moral philosopher. Before he wrote The Wealth of Nations, he had written The Theory of Moral Sentiments. The free market is no place for cutthroats and purse snatchers. [...]

There is a lot more, more financial stuff with links and footnotes... but it's long and rambling, and interspersed with rants about other things.


Related Links:

Has US Currency already "collapsed"?

The euro and the yen have surpassed the dollar as the favored currency by central banks

The Argentina example: are we heading there?

Utopian Socialism and the damage it inflicts

     

Democrats who promised transparency are breaking their own promise to publish the final bill publicly 72 hours before the vote

Pelosi is determined to hammer her bill through before we can even read it:


Democrats and the death of deliberative democracy

The House vote on Speaker Pelosi’s government health care bill is set for Saturday morning. She is scrambling to buy off recalcitrant Democrats on two of very issues that Rep. Joe Wilson and other House Republicans called out the White House for: abortion and illegal immigrant coverage. The wheeling and dealing is taking place behind closed doors. Once again, the Democrats who promised transparency are breaking their own promise to publish the final bill publicly 72 hours before the vote. [...]

The Democrats lied, and transparency died. When the Democrat leaders make promises, you can be sure they will just do whatever they want anyway, once they have power. They believe the rules don't apply to them, which is why they also disregard the Constitution, even though they have sworn to uphold it. It all means nothing to them; the ends justifies the means.

Today they plan to force a flawed and unsustainable healthcare system on us that they have exempted themselves from. Who the Hell do they think they are?

You can see live blogging of today's events here:

Liveblogging: The new Imperial Congress votes on Pelosicare; Update: Female Democrats turn House resolution process into circus; GOP responds; Obama rallies weakened Dems