"Threats Against Obama Drop to Normal Levels"

[Clio the Leo]

I didn't post this when I read it last week because I dont even like to bring up the issue, but I feel it's especially important after the segment on Rachel's show tonight.
(In response to http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=433x5869 )

Posted Monday, November 09, 2009 7:50 AM

Threats Against Obama Drop to Normal Levels
Mark Hosenball

The mass shooting at Fort Hood by an Army doctor with an Islamic background has raised new anxiety about terrorism and threats to government personnel and installations. But the people assigned to protect President Barack Obama say that in recent months, the number of threats against him has decreased significantly. In a book about the U.S. Secret Service published earlier this year, author Ronald Kessler reported that after Obama took office, threats against the president rose by 400 percent from a rate of around 3,000 per year during the tenure of George W. Bush. According to one widely circulated elaboration on Kessler’s reporting published in August by London’s Daily Telegraph, this means that Obama has been facing 30 death threats each day. In March, Secret Service chief Mark Sullivan told a House Appropriations subcommittee that threats to individuals protected by the Secret Service “remain at high levels.”

Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan told NEWSWEEK that those figures are now out of date. According to Donovan, there were “substantial spikes” in the rate of threats the service received against Obama before and after last year’s presidential election, and then again before and after Obama’s inauguration last January. Over succeeding months, however, the rate of threats has dropped substantially, Donovan said—so substantially that while the average number of threats received is running at about the same level as it did during the presidencies of George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, on some recent days the rate of threats received against Obama has actually been lower than the rate during the reigns of Clinton and W.

Donovan said that it was almost unprecedented for the Secret Service to discuss threat levels in such detail, but said the agency is going public because it is concerned that outdated information continues to circulate regarding a tidal wave of Obama-related threats. For his part, Kessler told NEWSWEEK in an e-mail that while “threats go up and down … the 400 percent increase is correct on average” and added that the Secret Service has been “covering up its deficiencies and dissembling to the media in the face of increased threats against the president.”

(more)
http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/declassified/archive/2009/11/09/threats-against-obama-drop-to-normal-levels.aspx

There are always WAY more guns pointed in defense of the President than there are in his direction....

During the campaign when he was meeting with Hillary...


On top of the White House...


At the All Stars Game...


In the motorcade...


And there's always his bullet-proof James Bond clothes...
http://threadforthought.net/2009/01/23/obamas-bullet-proof-suit/



whoops, wrong picture. I meant ....



And the flak jacket he wore at the All Stars game was a nice touch...

Normalbama...


Suddenly thickerbama...



And if you are religiously inclined and need some positive scripture to wipe away the bad she talked about, read Matthew 10:26-31. ;)

[NYC_SKP]

1. You.... you slipped a hunky picture in there. I think you did it on purpose.

:rofl:

[Clio the Leo]

3. My finger slipped! NT

[Gregorian]

2. Damn, we've got one fine looking prez!

[HopeOverFear]

4. "whoops wrong picture"

:rofl:

[RoyGBiv]

5. It's not the threats that bother me ...

... not as much anyway.

The psychotic moron who can't tie their shoelaces contingent has been on a tear since he was elected, fueled forward by Beck and his ilk, which is what, I think, accounts for the previous uptick in threats.

It's those who don't go off loud-mouthing about what they want to do or happen that really concern me, or those who only do it among closely guarded groups. It's like the people I know whom I never for a moment considered racist until this man was sworn in. Suddenly some vile garbage comes floating out when they think there is no one around who would mind.

Thankfully, there are a lot of people around who do mind and who are watching out for this brand of insanity.

As an aside, I attended a conference back in October, and one of our speakers was one of the first female Secret Service protection agents. She was an incredible speaker and told some fascinating stories. They really are trained to be paranoid. She told one story of her working protection for Kennedy's daughter and getting in a car wreck in New York ... that was *her* fault. No one was hurt, of course, but the poor guy who ran into her got the shock of his life when suddenly he was eating pavement with a gun at his head. One of the things the agents are trained to do is look out for situations when they're driving somewhere and being taken down by an accident like this. She quickly figured out what had happened and let the guy go, and it turned into a funny story. The guy apparently wasn't even pissed when he realized who was in the car.

[laughingliberal]

6. I once had a visiting president of a Central America country as a patient on a hospital floor.

She had secret service protection. One agent at her hospital room door 24/7 and five others in an empty room across the hall. One morning I was carrying a tray of coffee cups over to the credenza where we kept coffee service (a VIP unit, you see). I slipped and every one of those secret service agents was at the nurses' station, guns drawn, before those cups hit the ground. Not saying there is 100% guarantee but they're pretty damn good at what they do.

[Clio the Leo]

8. Yep....

.... Barbara Bush visited my high school. Not only were there agents there all over the place BEFORE she got there (in the days previous) ... but when she was there, we had more agents than students. (It was a kind of a small school though.)

And when I worked for the Albert Gore Sr. Manuscript Repository in grad school, our director made the decision not to try to invite then VP Gore to the grand opening because it would have completely shut down the campus.

[euphoria12leo]

22. Remember when President elect Obama

was in Chicago traveling with Secret Service protection and someone cut in front of the vehicle. The Secret Service drew their weapons. They could read the guys lips when he said 'It's Obama'. I would have had to go straight to a laundromat not home. Things like that may occur when guns are pointed at you.

[Cha]

7. Lol! I was

laughing even more bc someone just used that pic in another thread and forum to make a weird point about palin's cover pic on Newsweek being "sexist" and why didn't the news use this one of Obama when they were talking about his issues?



Thanks for the news about the death threats being down and the reasurring photos of the president's protection detail. Friends say the gun production isn't as crazy at the factories, either.

[Clio the Leo]

9. But I'll admit it....

.... *I* was being sexist. :)

[Cha]

10. Yeah, it's definetly

all about the sex in that one. But, I'm not as hung up on that whole sexist angle as some are.

[BrklynLiberal]

11. "Normal Levels" ????!!!!!!!!!!

[chollybocker]

15. Really.

Which means that he has somehow managed to survive the 'plateau' of death threats. And should these numbers fall further, they'll soon be asking: "Where did all those Normal Death Threats get to?"

"Normal" levels. I wish.

[Historic NY]

12. He appeared to be wearing something at Fort Hood under his jacket....

and it wasn't a wife beater. Perhaps a SS precaution.

[RepublicanElephant]

13. despite all the hard work by fox news and limbaugh. nt

[Clio the Leo]

17. And al qaeda...........

..... if you have not read the article, a big chunk of the threats against him have been coming from the ONE enemy that we and Rush have in common.

[RollWithIt]

14. I know you meant this to be uplifting... but honestly, it bothers me overall..

Everytime I see Obama giving a live speech I fear for the guy.

[Clio the Leo]

16. Dont miss the fragrance of the rose because you're so fearful of the thorns. NT

;)

[Peacetrain]

18. Thank you, I listened to Racheal last night and it was worrying

Granted Schaefer (sp?) is a recovering off the cliff type.. and he would see scary things where we did not, because he has been so close to it..

Still, it is good to know, things are settling down.

By the way.. as a happily married woman, can I still say, What a hunk?

[Phx_Dem]

19. Thank God. That the threats have declined to "normal levels" is

a huge relief. Every President gets threats, and it seems like Dems get more, but the level of threats against President Obama was in the very scary range for a long while (according to reports).

[HopeOverFear]

20. Maaaaybe the reason for this is that more people have been reporting

threats to the secret service? I know I've been on the phone with them more than three times since Obama's election. and I'm about to make a phone call right right after I post this...I just found what looks to be a threat type statement on YT underneath this video... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZFd7w9r77A

[Sinti]

21. Thanks for the pics

and especially for the "James Bond clothes" link. It's reassuring. :thumbsup:

I do worry about my president sometimes. I realize he has top-notch security folks, but damn... crazy people out there.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

23. Good to hear, I guess. But I don't think all threats are created equal.

Call me cynical, but I suspect the ones that actually are made against Obama have a bit more credibility to them, so to speak. In other words, I fear that the threats that are made are less of the "idle threat" variety.