Releasing former would-be-assassins doesn't help much either. Attempted Ford assassin and Creed's Office punchline Squeaky Fromme is on the loose again, apparently.
Chicken Little, meet Emily Litella. [rquoter]Town halls not resulting in more presidential threats By Sam Youngman Posted: 08/14/09 10:21 AM [ET] There has been no increase in the number of security threats to President Barack Obama despite the contentious town hall meetings taking place around the country, according to the White House. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs also said Friday there has been no change in the security precautions. "We haven't viewed any increase in threats, and there's been no change in any of that," Gibbs said. Earlier this week, at a town hall in Maryland, a man was detained by the Secret Service for carrying a sign that read "Death to Obama." At the president's town hall meeting in New Hampshire on Tuesday, another man was spotted carrying a gun outside the venue. Obama will leave Friday for a four-state Western swing that includes town halls in Montana Friday afternoon and Saturday in Colorado. Gibbs, noting he's "not necessarily in the audience prediction business," declined to say whether the White House is anticipating a tougher reception at the Montana town hall given the state's heavy Republican registration. "I don't doubt that there will be people that will disagree with him," Gibbs said. He added: "I hope by answering concerns, he changes minds." With the healthcare debate heating up, Gibbs cautioned Democrats to be patient, noting that "teeth gnashing is what the Democratic Party has done well ... for the last several decades." Gibbs said that throughout the campaign and the early part of the administration there have been "countless number of occasions" where Democrats and others labeled the Obama team as "idiots, and people thought all hope was lost." Gibbs said healthcare is still "near the beginning of the legislative process, and we still have a long way to go." Republicans have kept a steady barrage of criticism on the Democrats' healthcare plans. Ahead of the president's trip, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele said Americans "aren’t buying" the president's "efforts to repackage his government-run experiment." "The American people are learning more everyday about what the president’s healthcare experiment would do to them, their families and their businesses," Steele said. "Despite what is seen at the president’s manufactured town halls, fewer and fewer Americans are supporting government control of healthcare. Like Old Faithful, the president’s performances simply make for a good show.” The president's town halls will be bracketed by a fair amount of outdoor activity and sight-seeing as he takes his family to Yellowstone National Park and the Grand Canyon before addressing the Veterans of Foreign Wars national conference in Phoenix on Monday. While in Montana Friday, Obama is planning to do some fly-fishing for the first time with a reel that was a recent birthday gift from some friends in the White House.[/rquoter]
Are we still talking about this? Can't we all universally agree that threatening to kill the President, any President, is wrong and should be harshly punished? Seems like there just isn't much to debate.
Ref, I think the debate, at least for a while, or for some of us, is this: is the increasingly hyperbolic and irresponsible rhetoric at part to blame for the increase in death threats? That seemed worth a discussion to a few of us. Very difficult to answer. But equating Obama with a conspiracy-ladden, non-US citizen who "hates white people," and is trying to "destroy America" by making us "socialist" or even "nazis" can't be good for those citizens who already have a tenuous hold on reality. Was there hyperbolic rhetoric about our last president, and the president before him? YES. Did it lead to a 4x increase in death threats? NO. And was it this hyperbolic on network news programs, 1992-2008 (even "commentary" programs, which get more air time anyway)? I would say NO. Overall, I agree with your comment (somewhere, another thread I think) that avoiding MSNBC, CNN and Fox is good for a person's mind and health. I like that and do the same for the most part. I like to read, and I like the "news hour" with Jim Lehrer when I catch it.
I understand. I just cannot tolerate any of that being worth killing the leader of your own country. If he were rounding up a group of people, say fat people, and sending them to forced work camps, then maybe. A healthcare bill? No...not worth it. Even if the healthcare bill were awful, it could be remedied in one election cycle. The process has to go on. The notion of threatening to kill the President is just foreign to me.
Yet it is very American. Ask Abe, James, Bill, and John. Not to mention the unsuccessful attempts on Andy, Teddy, Franklin, Harry, Dick, Gerald, Jimmy, Ronnie, Bill, and George. That's 14 out of 44 that have had attempts on their lives while serving that we know about. Edit: Since FDR, it is 9 out of 13. (I'm not counting Elder Bush's that happened after he left office.)
That's staggering. I've never heard that stat before. You'd think our current odds just aren't that great.
uhhh...wow, never really thought about it...very sad. So pretty much, given these stats and the fact that Obama is African American, then the odds are pretty good that there will be an assassination attempt. Scary.
That is absolutely frightening. I don't think they had that high of a rate of assassination attempts in Rome. My wavering faith in human beings has again been shaken.
But only 1 of the 9 was successful, so we've got that going for us. Edit: And I think only 7 were serious attempts.
