SECRET SERVICE SAYS THE NUMBER OF THREATS AGAINST THE PRESIDENT IS OVERWHELMING
President Barack Obama is the target of more than 30 potential death threats a
day and is being protected by an increasingly over-stretched Secret Service. He is the most threatened President in history.
Since the President took office in 2008, the rate of threats against the president has increased 400% cent. Some threats to the President have been publicized, including the well known alleged plot by white supremacists in Tennessee to rob a gun store, shoot 88 black people, decapitate another 14 and then assassinate the first black president in American history.
Most however, are kept under wraps because the Secret Service fears that revealing details of them would only increase the number of copycat attempts.
According to the U.S. Secret Service agents, their goal is to immediately respond to any direct threat against the president, the first family, the vice president, or visiting heads of state. Agents are then responsible for determining the credibility of the threat.
I received this in my mail this morning and apparently the right want to punch Alan Grayson in the face and has even offered money for someone to do it. Do we really want the republican party of Violence and Hate in control of our Country again? Help Alan Punch back with any amount of donation you can. If you are not able to donate at least share and get the word out that we are NOT going to tolerate the republican threats anymore! See why they are so mad! His speech to Congress yesterday was amazing! ~Mem
They may not have a health plan. Or a jobs plan. Or a peace plan. But they do have a plan.
Here is the Republican plan:
"I'll give $100 to first Rep. who punches smary [sic] idiot Alan Grayson in nose."
That incitement to violence was tweeted yesterday, by Dan Gainor. Who is Dan Gainor? The Vice President of the Media Research Center (MRC). MRC is a right-wing Washington slur tank that glorifies Big Business in its "Business and Media Institute." It is a $6 million lie factory, blessed by Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter.
And in case you missed the point, Gainor later tweeted, "I'd love to see the video."
Why is the D.C. Republican Establishment so angry at me? Because I stood up on the Floor of the House last night, and demanded that the Republicans release unemployment insurance. I demanded that the Republicans stop pushing people out of their homes to live in their cars, and that they stop taking food out of the mouths of children.
I'm not going to give up fighting just because they want to punch me, but I've got a tough race, and I need your help getting the money I need to win. I went on Ed Schultz's show on MSNBC to talk about all this.
This is their response. This is how the right wing does it. They pay people to clean for them, to cook for them, to drive for them, and now:
To punch for them. Or, more specifically, to punch me for them.
We knew they're crazy. It turns out that they're also lazy. Too lazy to throw a punch themselves.
So here they are, inciting violence against our elected officials. Just as they did during the healthcare debate, when many of my Democratic colleagues - and my five-year-old son -- got a death threat.
But they're forgetting something. Something very important.
We punch back. We punch back with our votes, and our voices. And we will be heard.
One day, a Republican operative offers $100 to anyone who'll punch me in the nose.
The next day, I get a death threat.
After Fox News spewed its usual clownish hatred about me yesterday, my office received a call. The caller told our receptionist - a young intern - that "10 people are going to kill the Congressman within 24 hours." We gave the information to the Capitol Police; they are investigating.
Fox. You'd think that they would have learned their lesson after Dr. George Tiller was killed. And they did learn a lesson: a lesson in killing.
And why? Because I told the truth: the truth that by stalling on unemployment insurance, right-wingers revealed themselves to be heartless, selfish wretches, who have been taking food out of the mouths of children.
First threatened assault. Then threatened murder. Do you see how they ratchet up the bullying, and try to cow us?
In his poem "The Second Coming," the Irish poet William Butler Yeats described a time like ours as the "widening gyre." A time when "the centre cannot hold."
A time when "anarchy is loosed upon the world."
A time when "the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity." Up to, and including, death threats on Members of Congress.
But we have to stand up, and we have to fight back. Because what is at stake is . . . everything.
TURNING and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
The right-wing hate speech polluting the debate over health care is generating more and more threats against President Obama, some truly frightening.
CNN anchor Rick Sanchez reports that when President Obama visited Phoenix, Ariz. on August 17, local minister Steven Anderson of the Faithful World Baptist Church, who strongly expresses hatred for Obama in many of his sermons, told his congregation that he wished him dead. In a disturbing twist, it was discovered that Chris Broughton, the man who brought an AR 15 assault rifle to the Phoenix rally where Obama spoke, had attended Anderson's sermon. In a later interview, Broughton said he concurred with his pastor's wish to see Obama "die and go to hell." As many as twelve men were seen walking around the Phoenix Convention Center with guns on that day.
President Obama faces 30 death threats a day, a 400 percent increase from former President Bush, according to Ronald Kessler, a veteran investigative journalist and conservative who recently authored a book about the Secret Service.
Kessler notes that funding cutbacks have already left the first African-American president in U.S. history particularly vulnerable. The book, which alleges that the cash-strapped Secret Service is endangering the president by cutting corners, has sent shockwaves through Washington. "There's no question his life is in danger." "Tomorrow, Obama could be assassinated ... simply because the Secret Service was not doing what it used to do, " said Kessler.
"We have half the number of agents we need, but requests for more agents have fallen on deaf ears at headquarters," a Secret Service agent told Kessler.
"There's a tremendous feeling within the Secret Service that they are risking an assassination," Kessler told Canadian TV.
As CNN's Rick Sanchez said on the air, "This looks serious. This almost looks like this is coming to the point where we are even beyond maybe where this nation was on November 22 of 1963, when JFK was assassinated, when there was also an environment of hate in this country."
As racist attacks increase and protestors continue to bring guns to presidential events, it is strikingly clear that President Obama is vulnerable to harm. Are the Secret Service and FBI doing enough to protect him? Will they confront and investigate those who threaten our president so that they can be prosecuted and jailed?
We cannot allow funding problems to weaken the organizations charged with protecting the life of our nation's president. In 2003, the Secret Service and FBI became part of the Department of Homeland Security and now must compete with 20 other agencies for oversight from their chief, Janet Napolitano. She must use her authority to ensure that the Secret Service and FBI put more agents on the ground to protect President Obama and confront and investigate those who threaten him. It is time for Americans of every stripe to insist that the Secret Service and FBI operate at the highest levels of effectiveness.
Sign your name to this petition so that Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security hears the message loud and clear. And please pass this message on to your friends and colleagues. It is a difficult time in America, and we have to stand up and make sure our president is safe.
"As racist attacks increase and protestors continue to bring guns to presidential events, it is strikingly clear that President Obama is vulnerable to harm. Threats against the president have grown 400 percent, while funding for the agents that must confront and investigate threats against him has significantly decreased. I urge you to do everything in your power to ensure that the FBI and Secret Service expand and fully fund efforts to protect the President of the United States."
Additional message for Secretary Janet Napolitano, Department of Homeland Security
