Obama in Physical Danger from Crazy Rightwingers
If I were Barack Obama, I wouldn’t be doing many public events.
And if I were Michelle, I’d be demanding that he stay home.
Why?
Because the crazies are out in force.
When the rightwing nuts start carrying signs with Obama as Hitler and the Antichrist, when they start bringing loaded guns to his events, when they start saying things like “Euthanize Obama,” the climate is getting just too ugly.
“Since Mr. Obama took office, the rate of threats against the President has increased 400 per cent from the 3,000 a year or so under President George W. Bush, according to Ronald Kessler, author of In the President's Secret Service,” reports the Telegraph of London.
Obama is facing more than 30 death threats a day, the paper said. And the Secret Service doesn’t have the resources to handle them all.
“We have half the agents we need,” one Secret Service member told Kessler.
Fueling the threats is a resurgent rightwing movement.
The Southern Poverty Law Center just released a study that says the militia movement is growing rapidly.
“All it lacks is a spark,” one ATF agent told the center, adding: “It’s only a matter of time before you see threats and violence."
The militia movement today is not exactly the same as the one that created Timothy McVeigh, however.
“A key difference this time,” says the Southern Poverty Law Center, “is that the federal government — the entity that almost the entire radical right views as its primary enemy — is headed by a black man.” This has “helped to racialize the Patriot movement.”
With Fox News and other rightwing outlets ginning up the Obamaphobia, it is too dangerous for the President of the United States to go out in public in our own country right now.
That is a sad commentary on our democracy.
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Comments
I do indeed have problems - thanks for your concern - and one is how to deal with arrogant leftists who make illogical and insulting replies when they don't have better answers.
In a discussion of raucous town halls you said that conservatives "...would be able to hear the positions of the left if you would allow others to speak--and more importantly, listen." We know the positions of the left. What we don't know are the details of a plan Obama would favor. He's been coy on the details.
Evidence suggests it is the Dems who aren't listening. As for "getting air time" versus listening, it seems to me that the American people are clamoring for details about the health care takeover and the Dems are secretive because poll numbers drop as more details are released.
I have been listening, and I'm feeling better and better these days. It is clear that Obama is losing his Pied Piper appeal and Dems are scrambling for a way to sell their collectivism against staunch opposition from ordinary voters.
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