The coded message in the "Pray for Obama" bumper stickers

I have only had time to read the introduction to David Plouffe's book about the Obama campaign, but his description of the election night brought back the euphoria, and I felt my discouragement and cynicism begin to melt.

Then . . . I logged on to Huffington Post for my news fix and found this: the latest fad promoted by the right-wing religious movement is bumper stickers and T-shirts, extolling people to

"Pray for Obama, Psalm 109.8."

Now that sounds nice, doesn't it? Pray for our president. Until you read Psalm 109.8.

Psalm 109 begins as King David's hymn of praise to God. But then he turns peevish and exorts God to do bad things to his enemies, the "unjust rulers." And verse 8?

"May his days be few; may another take his place of leadership."

And what comes next, verse 9?

"May his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow."

This is serious, folks. Christians issuing a veiled call for the assassination of our president !!!

Frank Shaeffer, who has written a book about the evangelical movement, has this to say about this:

The situation that I find genuinely frightening right now is that you have a ramping up of Biblical language, [reminding people that Obama is foreign, not like us, not a real American]. . . .But now, it turns out, he joins the ranks of the unjust kings of ancient Israel, unjust rulers to which all these Biblical allusions are directed who should be slaughtered, if not by God, then by just men. . . . .

Most of them are not crazy, they're just deluded. But there is a crazy fringe to whom all these little messages that have been pouring out of Fox News, now on a bumper sticker, talking about doing away with Obama, asking God to kill him.

Really, this is trolling for assassins. This is serious business. . . These are no jokes.

Rachel Madow had a discussion of this on her program.

And I am very very scared.

Ralph