Bill Bennett on assassinations

[Ron Ecker]

The other night on CNN, there was some discussion about whether Obama is in danger, given all the anger and hatred going around. Bill Bennett reminded everyone that RFK was killed by a disgruntled Palestinian, and JFK was killed by a Communist. In other words, only lone nuts do these things, there couldn't possibly be any organized effort to get Obama. (Certainly not any Republicans!)

Bill is so wise and avuncular, this should put all our minds at ease, not only about Obama but about who killed JFK.

Edited October 4, 2009 by Ron Ecker

[Robert Howard]

The other night on CNN, there was some discussion about whether Obama is in danger, given all the anger and hatred going around. Bill Bennett reminded everyone that RFK was killed by a disgruntled Palestinian, and JFK was killed by a Communist. In other words, only lone nuts do these things, there couldn't possibly be any organized effort to get Obama. (Certainly not any Republicans!)

Bill is so wise and avuncular, this should put all our minds at ease, not only about Obama but about who killed JFK.

I have been very concerned about the hate mongering on the right. One website known for extreme rightwing commentary, Newsmax.com, went so far within the last week that a contributor to the site, John L Perry polled its viewership as to whether President Obama would be assassinated, and speculated as to whether the military might orchestrate a coup to rid the nation of "the Obama problem."

I would go as far to say that the Republican Party is taking similar, if not an identical political position regarding characterization of the current Democratic President Obama as a Socialist, Marxist "threat to our form of government" as the Republican Party in 1963 was characterizing John F. Kennedy.

For those unfamiliar with that time in American history, there were a host of negative comments in no particular order by

Richard Nixon, George Bush "muster the courage to do something about Cuba," and Barry Goldwater.

Adding to the chorus of hatred, were the Minutemen, the John Birch Society, the American Nazi Party and the Ku Klux Klan.

Exacerbating the current situation in my view, were the speculative comments regarding the government "death squads," which were ostensibly ready to move into action in the event that an Obama Health Plan was placed into legislation. The allegation, some would say "fact," that the Republican Party is, in effect "in bed" with the insurance industry, to do any and everything to make certain an Obama Health Care Bill is not passed into legislation is not an idle speculation to many Americans, including myself. One placard sighted at one those lovely "town hall meetings," read

"Death to Obamacare along with Kennedy," with the not so subtle reference to the late Senator Edward Kennedy.

That one placard, is so foreign to any type of spirit of bi-partisanship as to epitomize the phrase "new highs in lowness."

Apparently the Republican Party feels quite at home with this form of "shouting fire in the movie theater."

There has been quite some attention given to the fact that since two staggering defeats suffered by the Republican Party, the mid-term elections in 2006, and the last presidential election in which President Obama became President, little has been offered by the so-called "Party of Lincoln" in the area of "new ideas," at least as far as has been disseminated in public.

What has been a constant though has been an elevated shrillness of fear mongering that must make the Cheney's and Palin's of the Republican Party sleep well these days.

If something were to happen in the realm of political violence, I would tend to agree that it would no doubt be attributed to a "lone-nut figure."

And perhaps that says more about the politico-cultural realm we all live in, in this year of 2009 than anything else that can be said.

Edited October 4, 2009 by Robert Howard

[Ron Ecker]

For those unfamiliar with that time in American history, there were a host of negative comments in no particular order by

Richard Nixon, George Bush "muster the courage to do something about Cuba," and Barry Goldwater.

Adding to the chorus of hatred, were the Minutemen, the John Birch Society, the American Nazi Party and the Ku Klux Klan.

At that time I didn't follow politics or world affairs much, even though I was a college student. I had developed such an idealistic disgust for the human condition that I would simply skip anything about politics in the newspapers. So I made this simple-minded assumption that most Americans basically liked our young president. Why wouldn't they? When the news broke that JFK was dead, I'll never forget one of my classmates saying, "I'm glad they shot the son of a bitch." Due to my self-imposed ignorance, I had no comprehension of why anyone would say such a thing.

Today, as a senior citizen, I find myself developing the same kind of attitude I had as a college student. I'm about ready to say to hell with it all.

Apparently the Republican Party feels quite at home with this form of "shouting fire in the movie theater."

Hatred lies beneath the surface almost anywhere you look, in what may seem the unlikeliest places. My elderly mother once told a ladyfriend of hers that she wouldn't be surprised if someone shot Obama. Her friend replied, "Well, he's got to go sometime."

[Robert Howard]

For those unfamiliar with that time in American history, there were a host of negative comments in no particular order by

Richard Nixon, George Bush "muster the courage to do something about Cuba," and Barry Goldwater.

Adding to the chorus of hatred, were the Minutemen, the John Birch Society, the American Nazi Party and the Ku Klux Klan.

At that time I didn't follow politics or world affairs much, even though I was a college student. I had developed such an idealistic disgust for the human condition that I would simply skip anything about politics in the newspapers. So I made this simple-minded assumption that most Americans basically liked our young president. Why wouldn't they? When the news broke that JFK was dead, I'll never forget one of my classmates saying, "I'm glad they shot the son of a bitch." Due to my self-imposed ignorance, I had no comprehension of why anyone would say such a thing.

Today, as a senior citizen, I find myself developing the same kind of attitude I had as a college student. I'm about ready to say to hell with it all.

Apparently the Republican Party feels quite at home with this form of "shouting fire in the movie theater."

Hatred lies beneath the surface almost anywhere you look, in what may seem the unlikeliest places. My elderly mother once told a ladyfriend of hers that she wouldn't be surprised if someone shot Obama. Her friend replied, "Well, he's got to go sometime."

At least you have the satisfaction of knowing that you have contributed to a greater knowledge of the assassination your articles are cutting edge, myself and others have relied on them as an impeccable source for research purposes.

[Christopher Hall]

At least no one has done an Obama version of this:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0853096/#Scene_1

And I hope that no one ever does.

[Guest Tom Scully]

If you read nothing else in this post, read .pdf page 15 of this January 22, 2009 intelligence assessment:

http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/dangerro...r-scenarios.pdf

The description on the page is of a possible scenario projected for 15 years from now, but the elements it describes are all in place now, including Xe, nee Blackwater.:

...encroach on the security functions traditionally provided by state law enforcement, as multinational

corporations increasingly opt to rely on private military contractors to protect their assets and employees worldwide.....

Maybe if we voted in our own best interests to elect representatives who would reorganize massive spending on military/intelligence and an entrenched medical/pharmaceutical "presence", we could rechannel the money currently diverted to a small corporatist oligarchy to instead solve many of the problems detailed on that page. We could become, (shudder....) more like France and Denmark in terms of more balanced import export, healtcare and wealth distribution, and upward mobility potential.

JFK broke out of the "circle of protection", and after that, he did not last long. He shook up the corporatist stranglehold that Eisenhower had warned about in his MIC speech, and in the end, the folks in control of "the property party with two right wings, one democrat and one republican," became indistinguishable as to who ordered, planned and carried out JFK's assassination, and who stymied the investigation and ultimately covered for the assassins.

Obama is much more pragmatic than JFK was; he'll stay in the circle. As far to the right in it's political orientation as the intelligence community has always been, they are competent enough to frame what has been and will go on as in the quote in this piece, today.

Corporatism is fascism "lite". Fascism has historically resided on the extreme right of the political spectrum. JFk made the fatal mistake of moving from center right to no further than the center of the political spectrum. Upton Sinclair described fascism as "capitalism plus murder".

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/12/...eudalism-today/

Brainstorming Future American Neo-Feudalism Today

By: emptywheel Sunday December 20, 2009 6:41 am

See if this sounds familiar to you:

…governments and global elites pursue short-term economic gain above all else. Their aggressive focus on growth, efficient markets, and robust trade eventually causes financial volatility as a result of poorly organized uncoordinated responses to crises in global health, environmental change, and other international issues. The global economic system appears robust and successfully promotes prosperity, but this type of globalization has a dark side: trafficking of illicit goods, human rights violations, and a widening gap between rich and poor. Health and environmental disasters—some sudden and others slow-burning—frequently overwhelm domestic agencies, which are increasingly understaffed. Climate change becomes an acute concern, exacerbating resource scarcities and damaging coastal urban centers.

While it’s not an exact match, it sounds pretty close to what I was talking about in my post on health care as a significant step towards neo-feudalism, or Glenn Greenwald’s must-read piece on corporatism.

The piece is from an Office of Director of National Intelligence Scenario developed

(links to article linking to URL displayed at the top of this post.) for the Quadrennial Intelligence Community Review. It is, ODNI seems to think, just one possible future–a future it places in 2025, 15 years away–though not the most likely one.

I raise it because Congress’ failure to pass health care reform that actually promises health care, and its upcoming failure to pass climate change legislation that actually fixes climate change (which was one of the things preventing Copenhagen from being more successful) show that key elements of this scenario are already in place. The reason Mary Landrieu and Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson (though Landrieu is the only one who will consistently admit this) refuse to pass legislation that will introduce competition in the health insurance industry is because they want to ensure that the health care industry remains at its 16% of the economy, if not grows. ...

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_gr...tism/index.html

The underlying divisions in the healthcare debate

By Glenn Greenwald

....It's certainly true that health care opponents on the left want more a expansive plan while opponents on the right want the opposite. But the objections over the mandate are largely identical -- it's a coerced gift to the private health insurance industry that underwrites the Democratic Party. The same was true over opposition to the bailout, objections to lobbying influence over Washington, and most of all, the growing anger that Washington serves the interests of financial elites at the expense of the working class.

Whether you call it "a government takeover of the private sector" or a "private sector takeover of government," it's the same thing: a merger of government power and corporate interests which benefits both of the merged entities (the party in power and the corporations) at everyone else's expense. ...

...Even if one grants the arguments made by proponents of the health care bill about increased coverage, what the bill does is reinforces and bolsters a radically corrupt and flawed insurance model and an even more corrupt and destructive model of "governing." It is a major step forward for the corporatist model, even a new innovation in propping it up. How one weighs those benefits and costs -- both in the health care debate and with regard to many of Obama's other policies -- depends largely upon how devoted one is to undermining and weakening this corporatist framework (as opposed to exploiting it for political gain and some policy aims). ...

Edited December 20, 2009 by Tom Scully

[David Andrews]

Would danger to Obama be used to remove more civil liberties?...

[Mark Knight]

Would danger to Obama be used to remove more civil liberties?...

Why not? PATRIOT Act I and II did, so why wouldn't this be used as another "opportunity" by the fascists/neocons?

[David Andrews]

Would danger to Obama be used to remove more civil liberties?...

Why not? PATRIOT Act I and II did, so why wouldn't this be used as another "opportunity" by the fascists/neocons?

It's kind of like playing "What's My Line?" with Dorothy Kilgallen, innit?