Obama's Secret Service Detail: An Omen To Assassination?

Today, I was was terrified at the notion that someone assumed Barrack Obama needed a secret service detail more than any other. Admittedly, Hillary already has one because she was once a first lady, but that there may be something more to this than that he is black is a thought that is hard to avoid.

You have to wonder if Obama himself has the right to screen these agents? Can he somehow test their loyalty? A lie detector test? Psych profile? Personal interview?

We must hearken back to JFK, RFK, MLK Jr, and even JFK Jr to recall a huge, deserving suspicion of the government itself. The mysteries surrounding all of these deaths would make any nervous politician consider early retirement.

The facts that come to mind are that in each case, there should have been excessive caution yet they lost their lives anyway. In the case of JFK: His entire regular secret service detail was replaced that mournful deathday. His supposedly highly trained driver did the opposite of his training and slowed to allow several easy shots for the triangulation team. MLK had been threatened daily yet it is likely his men let their guard down. Most still assume that JFK Jr. simply fell out of the sky onto his mother's beach at Martha's Vineyard only minutes after radioing into the tower. Despite his never having flown without an instructor by his side before and his leg in a cast, we were supposed to believe he chose this day to go it alone behind the wheel, with his wife and sister on board. We are supposed to believe he waited 45 minutes beyond his proposed departure, though all passengers had arrived, for no reason at all.

The biggest question one should consider is, whether or not Obama is feared by the establishment. Do they believe he will stop their flow of blood-money? Do they believe he will open Pandora's box on previous assassinations and corruption? Do they believe he will keep his word and shut them down on all fronts?

If the answers to these questions leaves the "powers that be" scratching their heads, could even the most loyal Secret Service team stop them from breaking our hearts by taking yet another bright star's life? We are in an era of unparalleled corruption in government and in the private sector which seems to control everything we hold dear. Frankly, suspicions could go in either direction. If Obama makes it to an election, would not some suspect he is in someone's protection other than the Secret Service? If he dies, will it be a result of his naivety and a driven evil deeper than anyone remembers or knows.

I can say this: If Obama falls prey to an assassin's bullet, I feel sorry for anyone standing in the way of angry mobs seeking redress. Few have considered that violence in America today is at least partially a form of slow revolution. If Obama were killed, what could possibly stop the explosion of anger that would ensue?

America's Official List of Assassinations -- We're Number One! We're Number One! Does not include disappearances or conveniently mysterious deaths:

Joseph Smith, Jr. , (1844), Mormon leader
Hyrum Smith, (1844), Mormon leader, killed along with Joseph
Abraham Lincoln, (1865), President of the United States
Thomas Hindman, (1868), Confederate General
James Hinds, (1868), U.S. Congressman killed by members of the Ku Klux Klan
James Garfield, (1881), President of the United States
David Hennessey, (1890), Police Chief of New Orleans
Carter Harrison, Sr., (1893), Mayor of Chicago
William Goebel, (1900), Governor of Kentucky
William McKinley, (1901), President of the United States
Frank Steunenberg, (1905), former governor of Idaho
Don Mellett, (1926), newspaper editor and campaigner against organized crime
Anton Cermak, (1933), mayor of Chicago
Huey P. Long, (1935), Louisiana senator and former governor
Carlo Tresca, (1943), anarchist organizer
Curtis Chillingworth, (1955), a Florida judge
John F. Kennedy, (1963), President of the United States
Lee Harvey Oswald, (1963), assassin of Kennedy
Medgar Evers, (1963), U.S. civil rights activist
Malcolm X, (1965), black Muslim leader, killed in a Manhattan banquet room after giving a speech
George Lincoln Rockwell, (1967), founder of the American Nazi Party
Martin Luther King Jr., (1968), U.S. civil rights activist
Robert F. Kennedy, (1968), Presidential candidate and John F. Kennedy's younger brother, shot in Los Angeles
Fred Hampton, (1969), Deputy Chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party
Dan Mitrione, (1970), FBI agent and torture expert, killed by the guerrilla movement Tupamaros
Orlando Letelier, (1976), Chilean ambassador to the United States under the administration of Salvador Allende
Harvey Milk, (1978), gay rights campaigner and city supervisor of San Francisco, California
George Moscone, (1978), Mayor of San Francisco.
John Wood, (1979), first US federal judge killed in the twentieth century
Alan Berg, (1984), radio talk-show host, killed by Neo-nazis
Chiang Nan, (1984), Taiwanese-American writer, allegedly killed by Kuomintang agents
Alex Odeh, (1985), Arab anti-discrimination group leader, killed when bomb exploded in his Santa Ana, California office
Alejandro González Malavé, (1986), famous undercover policeman, in Bayamón, Puerto Rico

Military Misreports Head Injury As "Personality Disorder"

A 107 mm rocket hit two feet from Specialist Jon Town's head in Ramadi, Iraq. His injuries included rocket shrapnel deep in his neck and head, leaving him partially deaf and with memory loss. Town was declared unfit for combat.

But instead of sending Town to a medical board, doctors at Fort Carson, Colorado declared Town's injuries the result of a "personality disorder". As a result, he will not receive disability or medical benefits.

Recent investigations have shown that Army doctors have often ruled injured soldiers to have "pre-existing conditions" that therefore disqualify them for benefits - even for injuries clearly sustained in combat.

The recent wave of intentional misreporting of statistics that the Bush administration and the war machine find embarrassing, expensive or "unpatriotic" has created an environment of legitimate mistrust of the entire military apparatus. Veterans are being deliberately misdiagnosed to cut off all benefits and thus save money. More importantly, if this practice undermines the legitimacy of recruitment efforts or the deserved loyalty of soldiers, the US could suffer irreparable harm to the essential spirit and of our defense structure.

Much like the boy who cried, "wolf", our failure to re-establish integrity and honor may result in a generation of cynical citizens, and deservingly so, but detrimental nonetheless.

More on the subject at www.thenation.com

"Terrorist Sympathizers" - The New Traitors?

Photo-NPR/AFP/Getty Images - Nicholas Kamm

Yesterday in Washington, thousands of Christians marched against the war in front of the Whitehouse. More than 200 were arrested and fined, not for violence, but for standing instead of walking on the sidewalk.

If anyone thinks there is a liberal bias in American news reporting, take a second look, and a third... First of all, as Stephen Colbert likes to say, "Truth has a liberal bias". The big problem is, who is telling the real truth? Nobody on your cable dial.

Since it has become apparent that Fox "News" is winning the profits war and has for years with their conscious punditry for the right wing. In the documentary, "Outfoxed" ex-producers, writers and even some possibly still at work in the organization, outline a clear effort to play cheerleader for the Republican party, and to attack Dems, no matter what they do. Led by Britt Hume, Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity, they make no pretense of offering equal time to liberals while claiming in every other sentence, to be "fair and balanced."

Though nothing at CNN comes close to their blatant ignorance of the objectivity standards taught in every journalism school and heralded throughout US history, Fox is not the only one now as MSNBC tries to outfox fox by hiring Tucker Carlson (yes, the bowtie guy) and Chuck Scarborough to give them free reign to tell "terrorist sympathizers" and "leftists" to "shut up!" It's in this pervasive and accepted usage of the previous terms, "terrorist sympathizers" and "leftists" to describe anyone who disagrees with the war, that we find Fox has won, no matter how up popular the war becomes. Bottom line: it's more profitable, as advertisers are among the super rich that benefit from war.

As a professor of Critical Thinking, I teach students to convert editorialized/emotional terms to what they really are. In this case, "anti-Iraq war advocates" and "Democrats and moderates" should objectively replace the value laden, pejorative labels that are consistently used in every major media source, including CNN. True, CNN still is heads above the rest for their professionalism after they cleaned house of Carlson and shows like "Crossfire" which never offered an objective voice; however, even CNN barrels ahead with sensational conformism in their vocabulary.

Some may say they are simply unaware they are doing it, but anyone who actually went to Journalism School knows otherwise, and writers/producers of conscience are shaking their heads at every turn while the promotion departments and accountants apparently call the shots on editorial content and official terminology.

Outfoxed-Interviews 49mins


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