The man behind Trump Junior's meetup with the Russians is now in fear for his life. Update:

Courtesy of Fox News:  

Goldstone, a PR man for recording artists who set up the meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian attorney who promised dirt on Hillary Clinton, reportedly fears for his own safety. The 57-year-old British flack is globetrotting with his much-younger companion, and posting photos from around the world on social media to “hide in plain sight,” according to reports. 

Photos posted online since the trip began last month in London haveshown them in Venice, Croatia, Montenegro and Greece. Goldstone is currently believed to be aboard a ship in the Mediterranean, with his lover and business partner David Wilson.

He fears that if he turns up dead, it will be no accident, The Express reported, citing a longtime colleague. Goldstone’s strategy, according to Geoff Baker, also a British publicist, is to avoid New York and Russia and let everyone know where he is all the time. 

“I believe the reason he's being so blatantly transparent about his whereabouts is that, if anything does happen to him - like a car crash or being stabbed by a poison-tipped umbrella - everyone will know his death was no accident,' Baker told the newspaper.

I think this is smart, especially since everybody knows how Putin deals with inconvenient witnesses.

Especially considering the fact that Peter W. Smith, the GOP operative who reached out to the Russians for those Hillary emails, died in rather suspicious circumstances.

I think this Goldstone guy ought to seek witness protection and then start singing like a canary to the Feds.

Update: For those getting an "Access Denied" message from that Fox News link, here is essentially the same story from The Express.

The daughter of Ronald Reagan speaks out about Donald Trump's careless language.

Courtesy of ABC News: 

In a Facebook post directed at the Republican presidential candidate, President Ronald Reagan's daughter blasted Donald's Trump's "glib and horrifying comment" on the Second Amendment. 

"I am the daughter of a man who was shot by someone who got his inspiration from a movie," the post by Patti Davis begins, referring to the 1981 assassination attempt on Reagan by John Hinckley Jr.

Remember this is the daughter of Saint Ronnie.

And even though she is seen by many as a liberal I am sure that her words hit home for a lot of the older more establishment Republicans still struggling with the decision of whether to support Donald Trump or not in the general.

And if that were not enough to sway them, there is also this piece in the Dallas Observer comparing the mood of the country to the one that existed in Texas when JFK was shot.

Donald Trump thinks he can incite violence and then deflect criticism by saying that he was just kidding or being sarcastic, but once a bullet fires from a gun to take a life there are is simply no taking that back.

Ted Cruz claims that on his first day in office he will rip up the Iran nuclear deal and if they do not bend to his will then assassinate the leader of their country.

Courtesy of Alternet:  

At Friday morning's rightwing panderfest, also known as the "Value Voters Summit", Texas Senator Ted Cruz set the tone early by calling the President a Communist, mocking recently lame-ducked Speaker of the House John Boehner, and threatening to kill Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. 

 “If you vote for Hillary you are voting for Iran to acquire nuclear weapons,” the Senator said according to The Dallas Morning News. “If you vote for me, under no circumstances will Iran be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons. And If the Ayatollah doesn’t understand that, we may have to help introduce him to his 72 virgins.”

Cruz also made this "joke" about the President:  “Media all across the world are reporting on this historic meeting of the world’s most powerful communist – and the president of China,” Cruz "quipped" according the Dallas Morning News.

You know I have spent years working to control my temper, and to not act out physically when pissed off at somebody, but if I were to actually be in the same room as Ted Cruz it would literally take everything I have not to punch him so hard in the face that it would leave bruises on his descendants. 

This man is the most repulsive little turd that I have seen in some time, with not one redeeming characteristic that I can find.

I would compare him to a snake, but I would feel badly for doing that to snakes.

Did Senate Republicans celebrate the assassination of President Lincoln?

150 years ago today, the first Republican President, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. America is forever indebted. pic.twitter.com/vhIE1k20e7

— Senate Republicans (@Senate_GOPs) April 15, 2015

So are they indebted because Lincoln was shot?

Does that mean they are indebted to John Wilkes Booth?

So confusing.

It's Wednesday so time for more Bill O'Reilly lies.

Okay you all can stop digging for lies now.

In his 2012 best-selling non-fiction book Killing Kennedy, O'Reilly writes on page 300 that as a "reporter knocked on the door of de Mohrenschildt's daughter's home, he heard the shotgun blast that marked the suicide of the Russian ... that reporter's name is Bill O'Reilly."

 Guess what, yep you're right, this never happened.

More courtesy of Media Matters:

George de Mohrenschildt was a Russian emigre who befriended Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald and testified before the Warren Commission investigating the Kennedy assassination. On March 29, 1977, the same day he was contacted by the House Select Committee on Assassinations, he committed suicide at his daughter's home in Florida. At the time, O'Reilly was a reporter for Dallas' WFAA-TV who regularly reported on stories related to the Kennedy assassination. 

O'Reilly has bizarrely inserted himself into de Mohrenschildt's story, claiming in books and on Fox News that he was outside the house seeking to interview de Mohrenschiltd at the time of his death. O'Reilly is under heavy criticism and scrutiny for his false claims about his 1982 Falklands War reporting. 

O'Reilly's implausible tale was first flagged by Jefferson Morley in a 2013 post for his website JFKFacts.org. Morley has worked as an editor for The Washington Post, Salon.com, and Arms Control Today, and is a visiting professor at the University of California, Washington Center. 

New interviews with former O'Reilly colleagues who say he wasn't in Florida on the day of de Mohrenschildt's suicide and documents obtained by Media Matters bolster Morley's reporting.

Wait. so O'Reilly just made that entire incident up? Shocked, that's what I am, shocked!

So now, much like the Brian Williams incident, we are seeing a "journalist" who constantly puts himself into the story, in order to aggrandize himself. 

Here is more from Mediaite: 

In a series of audio tapes made by investigator Gaeton Fonzi, who Morley identified as O’Reilly’s “most reliable source on the JFK story,” O’Reilly can be heard saying he is going to travel from his office in Texas to Florida to look into the suicide after it happened. So there is no way he could have heard the “shotgun blast” with his own ears. 

“O’Reilly’s utterances prove that he was not knocking on George Mohrenschildt’s doorstep as he now melodramatically claims,” Morley wrote. “The truth is more prosaic. O’Reilly got a tip on a hot story, worked his sources to confirm it, and rushed to the scene. In making up this story for Killing Kennedy, he slighted the truth of his own professionalism.”

Media Matters has now launched a petition to "Hold Bill O'Reilly Accountable." Which I think all of us should sign.

And it is important that we continue to hold Billo's feet to the fire becasue there are a lot of people now trying to give O'Reilly a pass either because some of these incidents were in the past, or because it is well known that Bill O'Reilly is full of shit.

And that is kind of the problem.

You see the Right can go viciously attack the mainstream media whenever they get even the tiniest fact wrong, but if their side gets shit wrong, and they do that almost every single day, they simply shrug their shoulders and go "Well it's Fox News, what did you expect?"

That double standard only exists because WE let it.

So let's stop doing that shall we?

Just more proof that CNN is becoming Fox News lite.

Courtesy of Mediaite:  

A CNN chyron covering the turmoils of the Navy SEAL who claims to have shot Osama bin Laden accidentally made the typo we all thought was no more after the terrorist leader died.

You know I am sure that this is nothing more than an accident, and that the folks at CNN certainly did not mean to suggest that a Navy Seal had killed the President of the United States. But still....don't they have editors and proof readers?

Suggesting that the President should be assassinated on Facebook. Just things that Ammosexuals do.

Courtesy of Libraland:

This is what the Second Amendment was not created for: Assassinating the President of the United States or even joking about it. 

Kathy Perkins, founder of Moms With Guns, shared this article on Facebook, and added, “Where is an assasin when you need one?” [sic] in reference to Obama.

You know I was wondering who would be gullible enough to buy into the idea that Rick Perry's  border control playacting was doing anything except making hm look like an idiot.

And I think this woman just provided ample evidence as to why intelligent people realize that not EVERYBODY should have access to a firearm.

Hey do you remember that Christian Militia guy that was raising a reward for the murder or capture of President Obama? Yeah well he is still at it.

You may remember Everest Wilhelmsen from a post I did at the end of last month:

 Well since then his plans have become even more specific:

Another member posted a "member list" which conveniently lists all of the individuals who have signed on to be part of this force, from all over the country.

So the question I have is WHY is this guy still allowed to be running free, essentially orchestrating the assassination of our President?

By now the Secret Service HAVE to know this guy exists.

So is he so insignificant that they simply cannot be bothered?

Or is he, whether he knows it or not, helping to flush out other enemies of the state, so that the Federal government can gather their names and keep an eye on them as well?

I kind of think the latter.

How about you?

Christian American Patriot Militia leader offers reward (A paltry one at that) for the capture of President Obama, dead or alive.

So this Everest Wilhelmsen guy has a blog on which he has called for the capture of the President, and apparently he is not concerned in what condition he is delivered to him either.

To demonstrate his seriousness, he has listed not only the amount being offered, but a list of names of those who contributed to the bounty.

This courtesy of Freakout Nation:

The total REWARD is now $4,302.00 

To increase the REWARD click on “Pledge” seen in blue above. Then click on “Edit” in the upper right hand corner, add your name and the amount you are pledging. Finally, scroll down and “Save” the document. ______________________________________________________ 

I hereby acknowledge that Obama is NOT the President of the United States, but a foreign and domestic enemy who has usurped the Office of President during a time of war, that this makes him a spy and that he is is levying war on the United States. I therefore pledge the amount I have put next to my name as a REWARD FOR THE CAPTURE OF OBAMA, DEAD OR ALIVE. My pledge will be given to the person or persons who capture Barack Hussein Obama II and permanently remove him from the White House and Washington DC. 

I also acknowledge with my pledge that this REWARD is in accordance with my Natural God Given Right to defend myself, my family, the Constitution of the United States, and our posterity, as accounted for in the United States Declaration of Independence and supported by the 2nd Amendment of the United States Constitution. 

Everest Wilhelmsen — $100.00 
Michael Taylor — $100.00 
Ernie Shaw — $100.00 
Beth Owens — $100.00 
James R. (Jim) Mines — $100.00 
Valerie Denny — $300.00 
Mark Kenny — $100.00 
Cliff Rideout — $50.00 
Dale Shackelford — $200.00 
DeAnna DeMarco — $100.00 
Randy Couch — $50.00 
Liam Clayton — $500.00 
Mike Staples — $1,302.00 
Tess Gardner — $100.00 
Tammy Wagner — $100.00 
Brian Derkacz — $200.00 and My Complete Loyalty (Unless I’m the one who collects the reward.) 
Jason Mullins — $500.00 
Candido J. Colon — $300.00

Okay I don't which move is the more ignorant, asking somebody to kidnap or kill the President of the United States for so little money, or listing the names of every moron ignorant enough to  donate to the cause?

Later over at Freakout Nation somebody asked him the logical question: 

“I’m sorry, but… is this a contract for a hit???”

To which Mr. "I'm totally not a birther, except of course I am" replied: 

No, it is not a contract for a hit. It is an act of self-defense against a person who is ineligible to assume the Office of President and is threatening to murder and imprison American citizens without charges and without due process. Every American citizen has the Natural God Given Right to defend himself/herself, family, the United States, and our posterity from Obama.

You see so it is NOT actually a  contract for the murder of the President of the United States, it is more like a group of people paying somebody else to "stand their ground" in self defense against the fact that the President is soon going to start murdering American citizens in their sleep.

Nothing nutty, or COMPLETELY illegal, about that.

Gee I wonder if the Secret Service will see it that way?

P.S. I spared you much of the insanity that this lunatic posted over at his blog, because that kind of crazy can really have long term side effects. However if you really want to see it for yourself just click the link to his blog at the top and take a trip down the rabbit hole.

JFK's speech warning us about the Right Wing that a bullet kept him from delivering 50 years ago. Update!

This is an excerpt from the speech that John F. Kennedy had prepared to deliver in Dallas, the breeding ground for the Tea Party of today, but was struck down by an assassin's bullet before he could speak its words out loud:  

In a world of complex and continuing problems, in a world full of frustrations and irritations, America's leadership must be guided by the lights of learning and reason -- or else those who confuse rhetoric with reality and the plausible with the possible will gain the popular ascendancy with their seemingly swift and simple solutions to every world problem. 

There will always be dissident voices heard in the land, expressing opposition without alternative, finding fault but never favor, perceiving gloom on every side and seeking influence without responsibility. Those voices are inevitable. 

But today other voices are heard in the land -- voices preaching doctrines wholly unrelated to reality, wholly unsuited to the sixties, doctrines which apparently assume that words will suffice without weapons, that vituperation is as good as victory and that peace is a sign of weakness. At a time when the national debt is steadily being reduced in terms of its burden on our economy, they see that debt as the single greatest threat to our security. At a time when we are steadily reducing the number of Federal employees serving every thousand citizens, they fear those supposed hordes of civil servants far more than the actual hordes of opposing armies. 

We cannot expect that everyone, to use the phrase of a decade ago, will "talk sense to the American people." But we can hope that fewer people will listen to nonsense. And the notion that this Nation is headed for defeat through deficit, or that strength is but a matter of slogans, is nothing but just plain nonsense.

Clearly that is a speech which could be delivered today, and its meaning would not be lost. In fact today a speech like that may be needed more than ever. 

That speech could be talking about Rush Lumbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and just about ANY of those who fear monger over at Fox News or on Right Wing radio.

It could also be addressing the Teabaggers who enter politics simply to sabotage from within.

In fact Tom Brokaw remembered the reaction from the conservatives of the time to the news of JFK's death, and related it on MSNBC on Friday: 

Recounting his experiences from that day, he said that the reaction to JFK’s assassination, “mostly in conservative states,” was encapsulated by his interaction with one man who expressed satisfaction over the president’s killing. 

“This was unusual but it was not unheard of,” Brokaw told the MSNBC hosts, prefacing a conservative’s reaction to JFK’s killing. “As I came running out of the announce booth, the chief engineer, with whom I didn’t get along very well – he’s a really curmudgeonly guy, old, kind of a gnarly guy – said ‘What happened?’” 

“‘Kennedy was shot,’” Brokaw recalled telling the engineer. “He said, ‘About time somebody shot that SOB’” 

“That was heard in other places, mostly in conservative states,” Brokaw concluded. “That was reflecting his real feeling for him and they had to peel me away from him.”

Are there any among us who do not believe that the reaction to news of President Obama's assassination would not be virtually identical among the Right Wing of today?

We need to remember as we document and discuss the sabotage and obstructionism practiced by the conservatives of today, that if they feel backed into a corner there is no telling to what lengths they will go to survive.

(H/T to Rolling Stone.)

Update: Well right on cue here come the Teabaggers to help me make my point.

Courtesy of Raw Story:

An apparent threat made against President Barack Obama’s life posted on Facebook has caught the attention of the Secret Service. 

Agents declined to comment on the post, which has been removed but was preserved in screen captures by Social News Daily, made Tuesday by Everest Wilhelmen, leader of the Christian American Patriots Militia. 

“We now have authority to shoot Obama, i.e., to kill him,” Wilhelmsen posted on his Facebook page. “His willful violations and alienation of our Constitution, constant disregard for our peaceful protests and corruption of all the three branches of government, (i.e., rogue and illegitimate government), reveal the dictator that he is. Obama and his co-conspirators disrespect our Constitution (constitutional rule of law) and abuse the American people.” 

The post was made the same day as a gathering of right-wing cranks, conspiracy theorists and gun advocates met at a park across from the White House demanding that Obama voluntarily leave office.

When the Right Wing cannot get their way through elections, or political maneuverings, then their only fallback is to start the killing.

And this is why we want stronger gun control laws in this country. As far as I am concerned nobody who posts something like this should be able to even touch a weapon for the rest of their life. And that goes for the little one between their legs as well, no sense in letting these idiots procreate.

Bill Maher believes that President Obama keeps his policies "centrist" due to fear of assassination.

What follows is part of a conversation between Maher and Chris Matthews on the Overtime portion of last Friday's Real Time. The transcript is courtesy of Real Clear Politics:

BILL MAHER: It seems like the people like that, Kennedy, they just seem to always, at the end of the day, somehow get cut out of the picture -- violently, or otherwise -- and maybe that is why Barack Obama is a little more of a centrist than we want him to be. 

CHRIS MATTHEWS: You think that? 

MAHER: Well, I think he knows that if he goes a little too far to the left -- 

MATTHEWS: Really? 

MAHER: Well, yeah. 

MATTHEWS: I'm just really curious that you think that. 

MAHER: Well, if I were Barack -- 

MATTHEWS: That's an extraordinary statement. 

MAHER: What? You don't think -- 

MATTHEWS: I'm just saying that's an extraordinary statement. I'm amazed -- I'm impressed you think that. 

MAHER: Think what? 

MATTHEWS: That his policies are driven by fear of assassination. 

MAHER: Well, not by fear of assassination. 

JAMES GLASSMAN: Is that what you said? 

MATTHEWS: Then by what? 

MAHER: Well, I'm saying that yeah -- 

MATTHEWS: I thought you just said that. 

MAHER: I didn't say it in those words. 

MATTHEWS: Well, I would try and clarify. 

MAHER: Well, I'm saying that, yeah, I think that's something that probably [Obama] thinks about at night, yeah. Wouldn't you? 

MATTHEWS: That he has to change his policies for that reason? 

MAHER: No! But I think that he is a centrist. I think people saw him as what they wanted to see him. They saw a liberal, and he was never really that much of a liberal. And to call him a socialist, is completely -- 

CAROL ROTH, CNBC: I don't think that anybody who is in the center or at the right would think that he is a centrist. You might think that, but everybody else doesn't think that. 

MAHER: I don't think that is an insult to say to somebody that he may modulate his policies because he is afraid of all the hate that he sees. 

MATTHEWS: He probably gets reports constantly about threats, though. That must unnerve him. 

Now you might dismiss this as simply Maher being provocative, except there was also this recent post from Andrew Sullivan:

I’ve been doing some reading about John Kennedy, and what I find startling, and even surprising, is how absolutely Wanted_for_treasonconsistent and unchanged the ideology of the extreme American right has been over the past fifty years, from father to son and now, presumably, on to son from father again. The real analogue to today’s unhinged right wing in America is yesterday’s unhinged right wing in America. This really is your grandfather’s right, if not, to be sure, your grandfather’s Republican Party. … 

Reading through the literature on the hysterias of 1963, the continuity of beliefs is plain: Now, as then, there is said to be a conspiracy in the highest places to end American Constitutional rule and replace it with a Marxist dictatorship, evidenced by a plan in which your family doctor will be replaced by a federal bureaucrat—mostly for unnamable purposes, but somehow involving the gleeful killing off of the aged. There is also the conviction, in both eras, that only a handful of Congressmen and polemicists (then mostly in newspapers; now on TV) stand between honest Americans and the apocalypse, and that the man presiding over that plan is not just a dupe but personally depraved, an active collaborator with our enemies, a secret something or other, and any necessary means to bring about the end of his reign are justified and appropriate. And fifty years ago, as today, groups with these beliefs, far from being banished to the fringe of political life, were closely entangled and intertwined with Senators and Congressmen and right-wing multi-millionaires.

A famous handbill circulated on November 21, 1963 In Dallas, Texas. One day before the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Yes I would love to dismiss what Bill Maher says as mere hyperbole, but just this week we have seen protesters fighting with police right outside the White House while claiming that our President is illegitimate, a Muslim, and a danger to our country.

 Yes I would like to dismiss the words of Bill Maher. I just can't.

Do you know what it takes to render Jon Stewart speechless? Malala Yousafzai does.

I have seen Jon Stewart riff with the best, and it seems he always has a snappy comeback.

But not this time, this time he knew that he was in the presence of a very special human being.

 Just in case this video gets pulled, you can still find the interview here.

Beloved mayor of Alaska town is almost assassinated. Fortunately he still has eight lives left.

Courtesy of CNN: 

He's a beloved mayor, who's held the top office in Talkeetna, Alaska, for 16 years. So imagine the townfolks' shock when he was attacked. 

Brutally mauled. 

By a dog. 

Oh, did we mention, this mayor's a cat? 

Mayor Stubbs, a yellow tabby with more responsibility than your average cat, survived -- but is in bad shape. 

A punctured lung. A fractured sternum. A 5-inch gash on his side. 

Doctors took out a chest tube Tuesday, and he was breathing on his own for the first time since the weekend attack. 

"It's a shame," said Ashley Kearns, who works at a pizza shop in the small town about 110 miles north of Anchorage. "He's the mayor, it's not a joke. I know it's ridiculous, but the town is run really well."

Well that is just horrible and I hope Mayor Stubbs makes a full recovery. (I might suggest that his first order of business when he returns to office is to make it illegal to be a dog in Talkeetna.)

I would also like to point out how unfair it is that such an easygoing, and universally beloved mayor has been attacked in such a brutal fashion.

I mean Sarah Palin was the mayor of Wasilla for six years and nobody tried to maul her!

The same goes for Anchorage's current mayor Dan Sullivan. He is despised by at least half of the citizens yet his sternum remains fracture free!

Now don't get me wrong I am not suggesting that anybody SHOULD do such a thing, I am simply pointing out how it always seems to be the innocent who suffer up here in Alaska while the guilty remain living high on the hog. (No offense to hogs.)

New South Wales Police issue warning that 3D printed guns may explode when fired.

Courtesy of Tech World: 

New South Wales Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione today issued a warning on the potential for 3D printed guns to be used in serious crimes in the state. 

The NSW Police revealed that the force has created and tested two 3D-printed firearms. The police used the Liberator pistol blueprints produced by US-firm Defense Distributed. The original plans for the gun were downloaded more than 100,000 times before the company pulled them from its site under pressure from the US State Department. 

Police believe that despite this, the files are still circulating. 

The commissioner said that a Liberator pistol had experienced a catastrophic misfire during testing. The failure would have been capable of seriously injuring the person using the firearm, the police chief said. 

One of the motivations for holding today's press conference was to warn of danger to the user if someone attempts to print, assemble and fire a Liberator out of curiosity. 

As with other firearms, possession of a Liberator is prohibited unless the owner has an appropriate licence. It's an "offence to make one, possess one, use one," Scipione said. 

"Not only are they illegal, they are enormously dangerous," Scipione said.

The Commissioner went on to say that they had managed to get one of these guns to work properly and they would indeed prove lethal if fired at a human being, which meant that the gun poses a danger to both the one using the weapons but also anybody at whom the weapon is pointed.

They are also completely untraceable, impervious to metal detectors. and have changed the debate about guns in a fundamental and frightening manner.

Despite the dangers of the weapon disintegrating when used it will no doubt be downloaded, printed, and assembled thousands of times in the nest year or so,

This version of the gun does not appear to have much use as a method for self defense as it only holds and fires one bullet at a time. However its viability as a weapon for use in assassinations is chilling.

Personally I think it is only a matter of time before we see the first attempt to take out a political leader or high ranking official with one of these guns. My only hope is that it fails for them as spectacularly as it did for the South Wales police department.

New advocacy group uses Ronald Reagan's own words in advertisement to support background checks for gun owners. Right Wing heads to explode in 3..2..1

Oh man! You know this is going to piss off the conservatives like nobody's business!

I love it!

Police officer fired for reporting that police assigned to protect President were making threats against his life.

Courtesy of Raw Story:  

A Richmond police officer who reported fellow cops for allegedly threatening President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama has been fired from his job on the force. 

WTVR on Wednesday confirmed that the officer, who did not wish to be named, had been called to police headquarters where he was terminated on Tuesday. 

The officer blew the whistle on a 20-year department veteran and other members of the Richmond force after they made inappropriate comments while providing protection to the president and first lady. 

“There was an officer providing exterior security to the president on that day on the phone with the supervisor,” the whistleblower explained to WTVR last May. “The supervisor said to that particular officer, ‘you’re down there right? So, you can take a couple of shots, you might have to kill yourself, but you can take a couple of shots.’” 

He said that the supervisor made those comments to a sharpshooter on the day of the president’s visit to Richmond. 

And “another officer in the background started talking and he said, ‘yeah, somebody should plant a bomb underneath the stage while they’re on there and blow it up,’” the source said. 

Inappropriate remarks were also made about Michelle Obama. 

“Nobody wants to see her anyway — unless she gets undressed or get [sic] naked,” an officer allegedly said. 

On Wednesday, the whistleblower told WTVR that he had been fired for violating department policy by doing an interview with the station. 

Virginia employment attorney Thomas Robert pointed out that the officer should have been protected under the First Amendment because he was “speaking about a matter of public concern as a citizen.” 

WTF? How is this guy not considered a hero and given a commendation for exposing officers making terrorist threats against our President?

And I don't give a shit if they were saying those things in jest or not, when a person makes jokes about a bomb on a plane they find themselves detained, and getting grilled by Homeland Security. I would think that making even casual remarks about harming the President, especially a President who receives as many death threats as this one, would be considered extremely serious and the person that brought them to the attention of the authorities should expect to have his job protected.

Man attempts to kill political leader in Bulgaria with gun, is subdued and beaten by unarmed crowd. Gun - 0, crowd - 1.

(Warning video is fairly graphic.) Courtesy of HuffPo:  

A gunman reportedly attempted to assassinate the leader of Bulgaria's Turkish ethnic party during a televised conference on Saturday. The leader of Bulgaria’s Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) party, Ahmed Dogan, was assaulted by a gunman while on stage at the National Palace of Culture (NDK) in Sofia, according to the Sofia Globe. 

The assailant, 25-year-old Oktai Enimehmedov, climbed onstage and held a gun to Dogan's head, but the gun reportedly got stuck and was unable to shoot.

In the video it looks like just about everybody in the room takes their turn kicking and punching this asshole.  That may seem brutal, but compared to what this guy tried to do he got off easy of you ask me.

In America he probably would have been shot full of holes and a number of innocent bystanders would have been killed or wounded as well. I think I prefer Bulgaria's method.

Barack Obama the most "threatened President in history." Secret Service says number of threats "overwhelming." Update!

Courtesy of Causes.com:  

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. 

The Secret Service says that many of those who make such threats are mentally ill, and it is the goal of the Secret Service to find them help. It can be "sobering," they said, when agents show up at their door. 

According to the Secret Service, the president is the most threatened person in the U.S., regardless of political party. 

The President is not made aware of all threats against him, however, because as the Secret Service says, "the sheer number would be overwhelming and, frankly, distracting."

You know I think most of us already know this is probably true but seeing it in print is pretty  frightening.

I have worried about this President ever since the day he was inaugurated in 2009, and I don't think I will stop until he leaves office in 2017.

And THIS is the environment in which he is expected to function while  leading this nation and creating policies for the betterment of his fellow Americans. Many of who would no doubt take to the streets in celebration, if in fact an assassin's bullet were to find its mark.

By the way, as if I needed one, this just give me ANOTHER reason to despise Sarah Palin and the Pandora's box of hatred and racism that she helped to open up in 2004.

Update: Salon reports that the racism is being passed along to the younger generation:  

Using racist language to call for the president’s assassination is shocking on its own, but even more notable is the large number of children — high school students and recent grads — who appear on this Tumblr. A typical post: “If that coon takes my gun ill turn him into Bin Laden and blow his damn brains out!” 

This is Colten Chandler, a cherubic-looking student attending Mayville–Portland High School in North Dakota. Sean Spratt, another high school student: “Well Atleast I got to see my brothers friends [Halloween] costume it will still be my favorite! A Obama mask with a noose around his neck. Had me rollin.” Even after a few sobering tweets from others about the permanence of the Web, Secret Service, his school being contacted, etc., he repeated the tweet. Taken in aggregate, there seems to be very little idea that racism is wrong.

It’s useful to recall the obsolete theory of spontaneous generation, whereby scientists once believed living organisms could spring forth without an antecedent from other living organisms, e.g., maggots magically burst from rotting meat. The maggots didn’t magically appear, microbiology tells us they came from the flies buzzing around the carrion. Similarly, the junior racists didn’t come up with this on their own, the infection is contracted from adults and metastasizes in the presence of Fox News and in the voice of Rush Limbaugh. It’s a cultural sickness exemplified in Megan Beyer, a kewpie-faced girl in Cypress Texas who adoringly writes that her dad, whom she no doubt loves, is quitting his job and dedicating his life to assassinating the president. Chuck Marchese, a 2011 high school graduate, eloquently requests on Twitter, “SOMEBODY ANYBODY PLEASE SHOOT THAT N—– NOW!!!!!” while his father grouses via text, “At least the snow is still white in this country” — the son proudly declaring, “And people wonder where I get it from!” They shouldn’t wonder. 

Overall our younger generation is more tolerant, less racist, and more progressive than their parents, but in certain places, especially in the deep south, racism, and even violent imagery directed at African Americans, is not only tolerated but encouraged.

It is if the Civil War still rages on to this day for many of these people, and the idea of a black face in the White House angers them to their very bones, as if hatred were part of their genetic code.

Tennessee Representative forwards crazy Obama conspiracy e-mail about faked assassination.

Courtesy of The Tennessean:

State Rep. Kelly Keisling, a first-term lawmaker from Byrdstown, passed along a conspiracy theory email to constituents this week and rapidly reaped the sort of political firestorm that only the Internet can deliver. 

Through an aide using his email account at the state legislature, Keisling shared an online article that alleges President Barack Obama is planning to fake his assassination as part of a plan to impose martial law. Sketchy theories like this abound in the days before a presidential election, but Keisling apparently took it seriously enough to sound the alarm. 

“God help us, if ANYONE stoops to this level!” reads a portion of the message that appeared to be written by someone other than Keisling but presumably expressed a sentiment he shared. “As I was reading this article I kept thinking that the more we are aware that something like this is remotely possible, the better off we are to recognize it and fend it off…” 

A recipient took umbrage with the message and sent it along to the Huffington Post, which wrote about it Tuesday. This morning the story was being distributed widely and it was, of course, the top news item around about Kelly Keisling.

Wow! Just how batshit crazy are these Republicans? And how would this even work? Was their martial law imposed after the Kennedy assassination?

Well fortunately this wingnut quickly apologized. (I'm guessing he kind of had to, don'tcha think?)

“Earlier this week, I forwarded an email from my legislative office that should not have been sent out. The message was inappropriate for distribution. I regret the error and pledge to be more cautious regarding the information distributed from my office in the future.”

You know the Bush administration lied to the country about WMD's in order to start an illegal war, tapped the phones of citizen's and lied about it, and sent prisoners of war to be tortured in other countries while covering their ass by redefining what "torture" meant, and THESE idiots said nothing.  But put a man in office with too much pigment in his skin and suddenly they are seeing communists around every corner, sharia law taking over the justice system, and now a fake assassination attempt in order to impose martial law.

Go figure.

Secret Service to investigate DC cop's "joke" about shooting the First Lady.

Courtesy of Yahoo News:  

A Washington, D.C., police officer has been removed from his unit and placed on administrative duty over remarks he allegedly made about first lady Michelle Obama—but the Secret Service is downplaying the controversy, msnbc.com reports. 

The officer, who worked as a motorcycle escort for White House officials, "allegedly said he would shoot the first lady and then used his phone to retrieve a picture of the firearm he said he would use," according to the Washington Post. 

Officials familiar with the situation say that it was a bad joke made by someone who should have known better, according to msnbc.com. 

"Pump the brakes on this one," a Secret Service official told NBC, saying the agency is not concerned that the remark made by the officer constitutes any kind of actual threat. 

"We're aware of it and taking the appropriate steps," an official for the Secret Service told msnbc.com.

While I seriously doubt that this officer was serious about shooting Mrs. Obama, I think most Americans are going to be pretty serious about getting this POS off of the streets. The Secret Service may think it reasonable to "pump the brakes this one" but personally I think the guy needs to go through a serious investigation, after which he needs to lose his damn job. The people of Washington DC deserve better police officers enforcing their laws.

Besides who in the hell thinks making jokes about assassinations are funny?

And it might have been ONE thing if he were talking about the President, and that is certainly bad enough, but he was talking about Michelle Obama! There is NOBODY in this country as beloved as Michelle "freaking" Obama!