Team McCain should include any and all who

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Obama has more threats than other presidents-elect
By EILEEN SULLIVAN, Associated Press Writer Eileen Sullivan, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON � Threats against a new president historically spike right after an election, but from Maine to Idaho law enforcement officials are seeing more against Barack Obama than ever before. The Secret Service would not comment or provide the number of cases they are investigating. But since the Nov. 4 election, law enforcement officials have seen more potentially threatening writings, Internet postings and other activity directed at Obama than has been seen with any past president-elect, said officials aware of the situation who spoke on condition of anonymity because the issue of a president's security is so sensitive.

Earlier this week, the Secret Service looked into the case of a sign posted on a tree in Vay, Idaho, with Obama's name and the offer of a "free public hanging." In North Carolina, civil rights officials complained of threatening racist graffiti targeting Obama found in a tunnel near the North Carolina State University campus.

And in a Maine convenience store, an Associated Press reporter saw a sign inviting customers to join a betting pool on when Obama might fall victim to an assassin. The sign solicited $1 entries into "The Osama Obama Shotgun Pool," saying the money would go to the person picking the date closest to when Obama was attacked. "Let's hope we have a winner," said the sign, since taken down.

In the security world, anything "new" can trigger hostility, said Joseph Funk, a former Secret Service agent-turned security consultant who oversaw a private protection detail for Obama before the Secret Service began guarding the candidate in early 2007.

Obama, of course, will be the country's first black president, and Funk said that new element, not just race itself, is probably responsible for a spike in anti-Obama postings and activity. "Anytime you're going to have something that's new, you're going to have increased chatter," he said.

The Secret Service also has cautioned the public not to assume that any threats against Obama are due to racism.

The service investigates threats in a wide range. There are "stated threats" and equally dangerous or lesser incidents considered of "unusual interest" � such as people motivated by obsessions or infatuations or lower-level gestures such as effigies of a candidate or an elected president. The service has said it does not have the luxury of discounting anything until agents have investigated the potential danger.

Racially tinged graffiti � not necessarily directed at Obama � also has emerged in numerous reports across the nation since Election Day, prompting at least one news conference by a local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Georgia.

A law enforcement official who also spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly said that during the campaign there was a spike in anti-Obama rhetoric on the Internet � "a lot of ranting and raving with no capability, credibility or specificity to it."

� In Denver, a group of men with guns and bulletproof vests made racist threats against Obama and sparked fears of an assassination plot during the Democratic National Convention in August.

� Just before the election, two skinheads in Tennessee were charged with plotting to behead blacks across the country and assassinate Obama while wearing white top hats and tuxedos.

In both cases, authorities determined the men were not capable of carrying out their plots.

In Milwaukee, police officials found a poster of Obama with a bullet going toward his head � discovered on a table in a police station.

Chatter among white supremacists on the Internet has increased throughout the campaign and since Election Day.

One of the most popular white supremacist Web sites got more than 2,000 new members the day after the election, compared with 91 new members on Election Day, according to an AP count. The site, stormfront.org, was temporarily off-line Nov. 5 because of the overwhelming amount of activity it received after Election Day. On Saturday, one Stormfront poster, identified as Dalderian Germanicus, of North Las Vegas, said, "I want the SOB laid out in a box to see how 'messiahs' come to rest. God has abandoned us, this country is doomed."

It is not surprising that a black president would galvanize the white supremacist movement, said Mark Potok, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center, who studies the white supremacy movement.

"The overwhelming flavor of the white supremacist world is a mix of desperation, confusion and hoping that this will somehow turn into a good thing for them," Potok said. He said hate groups have been on the rise in the past seven years because of a common concern about immigration.

It may seem that he's acting a little early, but given the economic state of this country, I don't think that's such a bad thing.

Rhambo is a piece fo work, sending a dead fish (that's what we Italians do) to a pollster he was angry with. But stabbing the table at the Inaugural Dinner in 1992 once for each "traiter" who was now literally dead (his words, not mine) would've been quite the youtube moment.

Love the drivebys & the term they all decided for him: "sharp elbows." Classic drivebys! What part of Bill Clinton turning against him don't people get? Oh, that's right. It's that change.gag thing. That's another reason I rarely read or post on this board. It's a bunch of DailyKos/HuffPost/moveon wannabes.

I post articles here in order to encourage a debate about the articles. In your limited Israel-is-always-right-and-anyone-who-questions-that-is-worthy-of-a-rabid-attack attitude, you can't see that and once again wish to control everything, even how people communicate with each other.

All you want to do is tear down, not build anything. I gave my reasons for posting this article. In those reasons I expressed some skepticism about Hezbollah's sincerity. Instead of offering an intelligent response to those reasons, you once again slammed the door of dialogue and showed that your abilities to communicate are so limited that all you can do is berate and insult. To call me anti-American only highlights your ignorance. I am absolutely pro-American, and I'm very fearful where President Bush is leading us. It's the duty of every American to question what he or she sees as failures or inadequacies in the administration that is in power regardless of party affiliation. I felt the same way during the Clinton administration, and I feel the same way now.

If I were to come on here and say that Hezbollah is rebuilding Lebanon and now the Bush administration wants to compete with them, I would get responses that demand I provide my source, and rightly so. That is the reason I post the entire article itself. I want to gauge if it brings the same questions to the minds of other (repeat once again) LIBERALS as it does to me.

You're free to have your opinion of me, but you come off as pompous and controlling, demanding that everyone bow down and kiss Israel's feet. The mere suggestion that Israel may be even slightly wrong elicits anger and rage from you, and you have shown that repeatedly.

No, you are not obligated to engage in debate with anyone here, but don't whine and complain that you're unable to when someone offers you the opportunity. Your failure to do so when invited only proves how angry and full of rage you are.

For the record, I have never said you were sent to shut down the board. It's laughable to even imagine you have the power to do that. You are no more important or influential than I am or than any other poster on this board is. Get over yourself already.

And, no, I have no idea which sentence of the original article you find disturbing. I personally found several of them disturbing, but I refuse to engage in any guessing games with you.

Am I paranoid? I sure am these days. I'm pro-peace and I'm living in a country run by a President who is trigger happy and who has done nothing but incite the world.

If looking at Israel objectively is anti-Israel according to your definition, then so be it. You said previously on this board that just because Israel didn't bother to send any troops to Iraq didn't mean they're an ally. Please enlighten me. With the BILLIONS of dollars we give Israel every year, along with weapons, we are definitely an ally to Israel. Please explain how Israel is an ally to us. Is it because they grace us with their agreement to take our money and then spy on us? (I could post a number of articles regarding the spying, but since you don't like it when I do that, feel free to Google it on your own.) What have they done for us in return?

I have always believed Israel was the underdog in the Middle East and have always favored them. This is the first time I have ever questioned their actions. We here in America still have freedom of thought and speech, whether you like it or not. You know nothing of me, including how I believe. Your assessment of me is not only wrong, it's absurd and only proves how you interact with people who disagree. I am very relieved that you are not representative of all Israelis, as it gives me a small sense of hope.

I doubt your sincerity in stating that I'm not worth the time to answer, considering all the time you spent doing just that. Another example of your hypocrisy. No doubt you will waste your time once again responding to this with more hatred and insults, only this time I will let you have the last word, since you are now no longer worth the time it takes to respond.

http://www.usflag.org/history/pledgeofallegiance.html

The original Pledge of Allegiance

I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands- one nation indivisible-with liberty and justice for all.

like he hurts. It makes me uncomfortable to watch. Obama has a significantly larger amt of data in his mind (constitutional law professor, etc) to sort through, gather, and assemble before he responds to a question. It is to his favor that he does not immediately yelp out an answer like a trained seal.

Following his loss to George W. Bush in the 2000 South Carolina primary, John McCain did something extraordinary: He confessed to lying about how he felt about the Confederate battle flag, which he actually abhorred. "I broke my promise to always tell the truth," McCain said. Now he has broken that promise so completely that the John McCain of old is unrecognizable. He has become the sort of politician he once despised.

The precise moment of McCain's abasement came, would you believe, not at some news conference or on one of the Sunday shows but on "The View," the daytime TV show created by Barbara Walters. Last week, one of the co-hosts, Joy Behar, took McCain to task for some of the ads his campaign has been running. One deliberately mischaracterized what Barack Obama had said about putting lipstick on a pig -- an Americanism that McCain himself has used. The other asserted that Obama supported teaching sex education to kindergarteners.

"We know that those two ads are untrue," Behar said. "They are lies."

Freeze. Close in on McCain. This was the moment. He has largely been avoiding the press. The Straight Talk Express is now just a brand, an ad slogan like "Home Cooking" or "We Will Not Be Undersold." Until then, it was possible for McCain to say that he had not really known about the ads, that the formulation "I approve this message" was just boilerplate. But he didn't.

"Actually, they are not lies," he said.

Actually, they are.

McCain has turned ugly. His dishonesty would be unacceptable in any politician, but McCain has always set his own bar higher than most. He has contempt for most of his colleagues for that very reason: They lie. He tells the truth. He internalizes the code of the McCains -- his grandfather, his father: both admirals of the shining sea. He serves his country differently, that's all -- but just as honorably. No more, though.

I am one of the journalists accused over the years of being in the tank for McCain. Guilty. Those doing the accusing usually attributed my feelings to McCain being accessible. This is the journalist-as-puppy school of thought: Give us a treat, and we will leap into a politician's lap.

Not so. What impressed me most about McCain was the effect he had on his audiences, particularly young people. When he talked about service to a cause greater than oneself, he struck a chord. He expressed his message in words, but he packaged it in the McCain story -- that man, beaten to a pulp, who chose honor over freedom. This had nothing to do with access. It had to do with integrity.

McCain has soiled all that. His opportunistic and irresponsible choice of Sarah Palin as his political heir -- the person in whose hands he would leave the country -- is a form of personal treason, a betrayal of all he once stood for. Palin, no matter what her other attributes, is shockingly unprepared to become president. McCain knows that. He means to win, which is all right; he means to win at all costs, which is not.

At a forum last week at Columbia University, McCain said, "But right now we have to restore trust and confidence in government." This was always the promise of John McCain, the single best reason to vote for him. America has been cheated on too many times -- the lies of Vietnam and Watergate and Iraq. So many lies. Who believes that in Afghanistan last month, only five civilians were killed by the American military in an airstrike, instead of the approximately 90 claimed by the Afghan government? Not me. I first gave up on the military during Vietnam and then again when it covered up the death of Pat Tillman, the Army Ranger and former NFL player who was killed in 2004 by friendly fire.

McCain was going to fix all that. He was going to look the American people in the eyes and say, not me. I will not lie to you. I am John McCain, son and grandson of admirals. I tell the truth.

But Joy Behar knew better. And so McCain lied about his lying and maybe thinks that if he wins the election, he can -- as he did in South Carolina -- renounce who he was and what he did and resume his old persona. It won't work. Karl Marx got one thing right -- what he said about history repeating itself. Once is tragedy, a second time is farce. John McCain is both.

cohenr@washpost.com

Bush systematically deregulating (savings and loans - Keating 5) and wall street so that the souless corporations can do whatever they want without any limits. they have removed the safety factors built into the system after the great depression. Well, now we have the situation that deregulation brings. As Romney said at this years' repub convention - McCain is going to go at all the regulations on industry with a weed wacker.

Oh and saw on the news that this bailout will affect even the people who do live within their means because it means that the Jones' house that gets foreclosed on will reduce the amount my house is worth and therefore I lose too! Something needs to be done and quick!

It is not fair to simply point out Obama's plans when you do not mention McCain's either. What are McCain's plans? All he seems to do is "knock" Obama. Oh better consider what Palin has to say too, you know McCain is getting no younger or any healthier for that matter.

Team McCain should include any and all who

http://www.usflag.org/history/pledgeofallegiance.html

The original Pledge of Allegiance

I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands- one nation indivisible-with liberty and justice for all.

The Ugly New McCain