Secret Service Wants to Know Who Posted Poll on Facebook Asking ‘Should Obama Be Killed?’ Amid Continuing High Spike in Death Threats Against the President; Meanwhile, Columnist at Right-Wing Magazine Predicts a ‘Seven Days in May’-Style Coup d’Etat to Overthrow Obama and Establish a Military Junta

(Posted 5:00 a.m. EDT Thursday, October 1, 2009)

By SKEETER SANDERS

The Internet has long been the “Wild Wild West” when it comes to political discourse. But what transpired online this week has triggered a firestorm of outrage — and an investigation by the Secret Service.

The social networking site Facebook on Monday pulled a third-party application that allows users to create polls after a site member built a poll asking if President Obama should be killed.

Disclosure of the poll has prompted the Secret Service, the agency assigned to protect the president, to launch an investigation.

Meanwhile, the right-wing online magazine Newsmax posted an incendiary column on Tuesday that predicts a military coup against the president — a real-life version of a scenario chillingly dramatized more than 40 years ago in the motion picture “Seven Days in May,” which hit the theaters when Lyndon Johnson was president.

Newsmax quickly pulled the column from its Web site — but not before the media watchdog site MediaMatters.org captured a copy of the column and posted it on its own Web site.

Taken together, these developments are the strongest signs yet that there are people on the Far Right who have become completely unglued by the reality of America having a black man as president and commander-in-chief of the armed forces and they are plunging headlong into outright paranoia by launching an increasingly hysterical campaign of hatred against Obama.

Such hysteria would easily be dismissed as the rantings of crackpots — except that it has reached such a fever pitch among a significant portion of the American populace, it is rapidly creating a dangerous climate that can lead to an outbreak of the kind of devastating political violence this country has not seen in almost half a century.

BLOGGER BLOWS WHISTLE ON POLL, ALERTS SECRET SERVICE

The online Facebook poll asked readers “Should Obama be Killed?” — accompanied by a mock book cover featuring a photograph of the president with his name printed in the Cyrillic alphabet used in Russian and other Slavic languages, an apparent play on a widespread belief among many of Obama’s right-wing opponents that he is a Soviet-style communist.

Facebook readers were asked to answer “yes,” “no” “maybe” or “if he cuts my health care.” The poll, which was posted on Saturday, was flagged on Sunday by a blogger at The Political Carnival Web site who uses the online pseudonym GottaLaff. GottaLaff snapped a “screen grab” — an online copy of the poll — and posted it on the Carnival site.

“Okay, that’s it, I’ve had it,” wrote the blogger, whose real identity is a closely-guarded secret but is a California woman, according to her profile.  “The hate speech, the threats have gotten completely out of hand. And those who have incited viewers and listeners — and you know who you are, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, etc. — are responsible for a good part of this horrific activity.

“No, it is not ‘grassroots,’ not even close,” GottaLaff continued. “It is a sick, terrifying, dangerous movement toward violence and the worst kind of civil unrest.”

GottaLaff contacted the Secret Service and urged her readers to do the same. On Monday, she reported that the Secret Service had called her back “to thank me for my screen grab of the poll, and said without it, they wouldn’t have been able to address the matter.”

FACEBOOK PULLS POLL OFFLINE AT SECRET SERVICE’S REQUEST

In an interview Wednesday with CNN, Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt said the Secret Service informed the social-networking site of the poll on Monday and asked to have it taken down.

Facebook allows third-party developers to create applications — such as polls and quizzes — which are then made available to Facebook users, who use the applications to create specific content. Users may choose to make their content available to the general population of Facebook or limit it only to their friends.

In the case of the “Kill Obama” poll, case, according to Schnitt, the user made the poll asking whether Obama should be killed available to the general public. The application “was immediately suspended while the inappropriate content could be removed by the developer and until such time as the developer institutes better procedures to monitor their user-generated content,”Schnitt said.

The Facebook spokesman credited GottaLaff and other users of the social network with alerting the site about the poll. “As is usually the case, our vigilant users reported it to us first,” he said. By the time the Secret Service contacted Facebook, “it had already been removed, and we let them know,” Schnitt continued.

DEATH POLL AMID HUGE SPIKE IN ANTI-OBAMA THREATS

Disclosure of the “Kill Obama” poll is only the latest development in an unprecedented spike in death threats against the president that has stretched the Secret Service to the limit of its ability to protect Obama and his family in the more than nine months since he took office.

As reported in August, the rate of threats against the president has soared by 400 percent from the 3,000 reported threats a year or so under former President George W. Bush, according to author Ronald Kessler.

In his book, In the President’s Secret Service, Kessler reports that some threats to Obama already have been publicized, including an alleged plot by white supremacists in Tennessee late last year to rob a gun store, shoot 88 black people, decapitate another 14 and then assassinate the first black president in American history.

Most threats, however, are kept under wraps because the Secret Service fears that revealing details of them would only increase the number of copycat attempts. Although most threats are not credible, each one has to be investigated meticulously.

NEWSMAX COLUMNIST PREDICTS MILITARY COUP AGAINST OBAMA

In a column that touched off an Internet firestorm, Newsmax columnist John Perry wrote that “There is a remote, although gaining, possibility [that] America’s military will intervene as a last resort to resolve the ‘Obama problem.’ Don’t dismiss it as unrealistic.”

What did Perry mean by the “Obama Problem?” He calls it “Obama’s exponentially accelerating agenda for ‘fundamental change’ toward a Marxist state.” In other words, Obama is a communist and setting the country on a path toward Soviet-style communism — a path that Perry predicts many in the military will not tolerate.

“Officers swear to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” Perry writes. “Unlike enlisted personnel, they do not swear to ‘obey the orders of the president of the United States.’

Perry continues: “Top military officers can see the Constitution they are sworn to defend being trampled as American institutions and enterprises are nationalized. They can see that Americans are increasingly alarmed that this nation, under President Barack Obama, may not even be recognizable as America by the 2012 election, in which he will surely seek continuation in office.

“They can see that the economy – ravaged by deficits, taxes, unemployment, and impending inflation – is financially reliant on foreign lender governments,” Perry writes. “They can see this president waging undeclared war on the intelligence community, without whose rigorous and independent functions the armed services are rendered blind in an ever-more hostile world overseas and at home.”

“They can see the dismantling of defenses against missiles targeted at this nation by avowed enemies, even as America’s troop strength is allowed to sag,” Perry goes on. “They can see the horror of major warfare erupting simultaneously in two, and possibly three, far-flung theaters before America can react in time. They can see the nation’s safety and their own military establishments and honor placed in jeopardy as never before.”

Perry cautions that “America isn’t the Third World. If a military coup does occur here, it will be civilized. That it has never happened doesn’t mean it won’t.”

NEWSMAX YANKS COLUMN WITHIN 24 HOURS AFTER COMPLAINTS

Twenty-four hours after it posted Perry’s column, Newsmax pulled it. The direct link to Perry’s column instead defaults to the right-wing outlet’s home page. But not before MediaMatters grabbed a screenshot of Perry’s column and posted it on its own Web site as a PDF document.

Newsmax makes no reference to the controversial column on its home page — neither an explanation of why it was pulled nor an apology for its content. But in a statement sent to MediaMatters, a Newsmax spokesperson said that in writing about a possible military coup, Perry “clearly stated that he was not advocating such a scenario but simply describing one.”

The spokesperson said that Newsmax pulled the Perry column “after several reader complaints.” The spokesman said the site “wanted to insure that this article was not misinterpreted.”

The spokesman went on to say that Newsmax “strongly believes in the principles of Constitutional government and would never advocate or insinuate any suggestion of an activity that would undermine our democracy or democratic institutions.”

The spokesman insisted that Perry, who served as a political appointee in the Carter administration,  “has no official relationship with Newsmax other than as an unpaid blogger.”

A SCARY SCENARIO REMINISCENT OF 1964 COLD WAR MELODRAMA

The coup that Perry outlined in his column is eerily reminiscent of one of Hollywood’s most gripping political thrillers, “Seven Days in May,” a 1964 Cold War melodrama that starred Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster about a U.S. Army colonel (Douglas) who discovers that a four-star Air Force general (Lancaster), was plotting a coup to overthrow the president and establish a military junta after the president reached a nuclear-disarmament treaty with the Soviet Union.

After warning the president of the plot, the colonel — in spite of his own opposition to the treaty — had just seven days to head off the complex and elaborately planned coup.

The upshot: The president in the film was named Jordan Lyman (played by Frederic March) — an anagram of the real-life President Lyndon Johnson, who made nuclear disarmament with the Soviets a major plank in his successful campaign to win a full four-year term in 1964 after succeeding the assassinated President John F. Kennedy the year before.

The general in the movie was portrayed as a right-wing “superpatriot,” who, in a direct face-to-face confrontation with the commander-in-chief in the Oval Office, accused the president of leading the country to a disastrous surrender to the Soviets through the treaty he reached with Moscow.

For some of those old enough to have lived through the Cold War, “Seven Days in May” was a far more serious melodrama than the two other major Cold War films that also came out in 1964, “Dr. Strangelove” and “Fail-Safe,” both of which dealt directly with the nightmare scenario of a direct military confrontation between the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R.

The Cold War’s been over for 20 years. But the possibility of a military takeover of the U.S. remains a scary thought.

# # #

Copyright 2009, Skeeter Sanders. All rights reserved.

The Republicans may – just may – be about to be hoisted on their own petard on health care – courtesy of none other than the conservative Blue Dog Democrats in the US Senate.

Even though yesterday’s defeat in the Senate Finance Committee of a public insurance option (which would conceivably provide the cost containment and management necessary to make the expected personal insurance mandate workable) was entirely expected, it was still a blow to reformers’ morale – which is no insignificant thing. With Rahm Emanuel now working organized labor to whittle away the most significant of the remaining institutional resistance to a watered-down bill, it’s hard to imagine that the Obama White House will use its own political muscle to be sure such an option is in the final bill – and right now, its likely its inclusion rises and falls on their commitment.

So what’s left? The nebulous notion of co-ops has been roundly trashed as meaningless or even unworkable. The idea of “triggers” is, of course, ludicrous on its face. Obviously the reason this whole debate was “triggered” is because of a whole sale systemic crisis in the American health care system. What meaningful “trigger” could possibly be created, unless it were one that could fire retroactively… say, 30 years?

But the new “compromise” hubbub emerging from one beseiged Senate Blue Dog Finance Committeeperson – Tom Carper – and similar ideas from Sen. Maria Cantwell, (also on the Finance Committee) could not only be game changers, they could represent an apocalyptic scenario for the Republican Party, depending on how they develop.

Carper’s idea is to give states the option of creating their own competitive option to the private insurance market. Now, tiny states like Vermont with only half a million people could never generate enough of a pool to meaningfully impact costs by negotiating with pharamaceutical companies and the like. This is the same problem that dooms the much ballyhooed co-ops. But if states could be allowed such a buy-in option collectively, that would potentially be a very different story.

What could follow then, is health care reform for some, not all. If Blue States can collectivize their efforts to negotiate prices and impact the market, it won’t take long for enough of a critical mass to form that they have a comparable effect to a full-on public option. Lowly states like Vermont will be very much in the game if their efforts pool with those of New York and California.

Projecting forward, its easy to see what would happen quickly.

This blue-state pool would not simply reap the social and financial benefits of an improved health care system, they would do so at the expense of the red states, as insurance companies could see opportunities to recoup lost profits in those states without a seat at the table. Business, suffering under the burden of health care costs escalating with no end in sight, will find blue states with their cost controlling regimes far more appealing than the red states languishing under the slightly tweaked old system.

And of course, red state voters will start wondering why they don’t deserve the same health care options that the blue staters receive.

All of this could well trigger electoral catastrophe in Republican-dominant states in short order.

And the irony is, of course, that such a scenario is even a possibility because Republicans could not be bothered to come to the policy negotiating table in good faith.

There are a lot of ifs here, and its very early to tell, but should a Carper plan with all these elements emerge, it could be unstoppable. Carper emerged as a key impediment to a robust public option, and his involvement could not only insure majority support, it could take the filibuster talk off the table, as even if there are remaining Dems inclined to join Republicans to prevent an up or down vote, they’ll have very little cover left within their caucus to do so.

Ideas can die in Washington as quickly as their born, but this one – if it does survive, and if it can accommodate the idea of allowing states to pool their efforts – may not only bring actual reform to the health care system, it could become an electoral clusterbomb dropped into the very heart of the Republican Party.

Hard to imagine how many Democrats would want to filibuster that.

Today’s Washington Post announced that Galbraith “Is Fired in Clash Over Addressing Afghan Vote Fraud”.

When Peter Galbraith was considering a run for Governor in Vermont in 2008, many critics wondered if he would have any name recognition with Vermonters and if he would be able to articulate and stand up for issues critical to all Vermonters.  At the time Galbraith seemed so – well – academic.  In 2008, GMD had a post entitled “Galbraith leads Pollina in WCAX poll”. http://greenmountaindaily.com/…

Galbraith gave up a possible run for Governor in order to accept the position of Ambassador to Afghanistan and use his diplomatic skills to help stabilize Afghanistan’s political frontier.  A resident of Townshend, Galbraith, is a former ambassador to Croatia.  In 1995 Galbraith was instrumental in creating the 1995 Erdut agreement, which the war between Serbia and Croatia.  

Most recently, according to the Washington Post,

Galbraith had pushed the U.N. special representative in Kabul, former Norwegian diplomat Kai Eide, to forcefully address the claims of fraud, and the disagreement culminated in Galbraith’s abrupt departure from Afghanistan this month.

“I think there was massive fraud in the elections — no doubt about that,” said Galbraith, who is now in the United States. “It undermines the credibility of the election process. I took seriously the mandate to support free, fair and transparent elections.”

Galbraith is showing himself not to be a pushover to hidden agendas and determined to fight for open government with “free, fair and transparent elections”.  Wish he would have been monitoring the US 2000 presidential election.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s office issued a statement Wednesday saying he had decided to end Galbraith’s appointment as Eide’s deputy to serve the “best interest of the mission.”

In an interview, Galbraith said his dismissal sent a bad signal about the United Nations’ commitment to fair elections.

Galbraith ongoing dispute with former Norwegian diplomat Kai Eide, the U.N.’s special representative in Kabul had been rocking diplomatic circles for weeks and allegedly causing U.N. staff members to take sides.

According to the Post and citing a reliable source who spoke upon the condition of anonymity,

“Peter was championing the values that the U.N. stands for here, and almost all of us supported him.

Last month, my son, Eric Gundersen, (developmetseed.org) spent several days in Afghanistan working with the computer infrastructure created to count votes.  Voter fraud or not, in my opinion, the country is a mess.  Several suicide bombings took place while Eric was in Kabul, and even in the center of Kabul, everyone wore bullet proof vests, helmets and rode with armed guards if they went outside in public, just traveling to the airport for example.  How does one even contemplate fair elections in a decisive country filled with armed camps?

Finally according to the Post,

Karzai and his major challenger, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, have called for the election review process to be carried out fully and have said they would respect the results.

Abdullah, who has accused Karzai’s government of orchestrating “massive state fraud” in the election, said Wednesday that it would be “unfortunate” if Galbraith’s removal was due to his push for a “vigorous look” at the allegations of electoral fraud.

Galbraith’s political future is anyone’s guess, but he has stood up for what I consider to be traditional Vermont values in showing that honesty, integrity, openness, and government transparency matter more than political muscle, ego, and vested financial interests.  Sounds like Obama should consider giving him an appointment to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The whole story at the Washington Post may be found here:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/…

Earlier this month, our Republican State Auditor Tom Salmon said

Not surprisingling for someone being told by the right people that he’s gubentorial material, the RIGHT PEOPLE’s well handled auditor took back his statement.  In the Saint Albans Messenger, our Republican Auditor said:

I made the suggestion that the consequences of further inaction could be cutting the maximum benefit from $427 per month down to $300 per month to make the fund solvent. While this would not be my choice or the choice of most other public officials, this could be one of the outcomes if legislative leaders continue down the path they are on.

There are a couple of things happening here.  

First, the Republican Auditor, in the space of a few days, forgot that he advocated cutting workers insurance benefits and remembered (despite the written and recorded accounts of his testimony), and claimed instead that he was not an advocate of this insane policy.  At GMD, we are glad that our Republican Auditor has at least forgotten what he said last week and has remembered an approach that is far less ridiculous.

Second, Apparently one of the “right people” responsible for pulling his strings whacked him on the nose for that comment.  His reactionary handlers don’t necessarily oppose his position, they are just opposed to their puppet jetisoning his stupid filter along with his former party identification.

Mr. Salmon’s flip-flopping and backtracking is not the big problem. What is troubling is the total failure of Mr. Salmon, since he became a Republican-American, to understand the policy basics of unemployment insurance benefits.

At the outset, our Republican-American Auditor

   The good worthy keeps talking about “businesses” footing the bill.

   The fact is, unemployment insurance is paid by workers’ labor.  It is a built-in cost of employment, it is reflected in worker’s wages and it is the workers’ toil that generates the revenue to fund the INSURANCE in the first place.  This is “insurance” not welfare.  These workers have already paid for this benefit.

   The unemployed are the very people who paid for their unemployment insurance with their labor.  The unemployed are the ones who originally paid the unemployment insurance “premiums.” Had the dollars generated by workers’ productivity not been available to their employers for UI premiums, the employers would have otherwise been able to pay their workers higher wages and/or the employers could have had more people on the payroll in the first place.  UI insurance is not a “business tax,” it is a wage tax AND it is one that has ALREADY BEEN PAID!

   Cutting the insurance benefits that workers have already paid for and earned, after the fact, is like a health insurance company slashing your reimbursements after you have paid your premiums for years and are now suddenly sick and need to go to the hospital.

   Salmon’s argument shows a complete lack of understanding of the underlying economics and basic contractual philosophy underpinning the entire program

UPDATE: Mark Johnson reports that Dubie is running for Governor, and will make that announcement shortly has dribbled that announcement out via email, rather than making a public statement.

Last week, GMD asked its readers what Brian “Light Flight” Dubie would do this week.

Well, in few hours, he is going to announce that he is < < drum roll < > running for Governor.

For those of you are interested, this is the result of last week’s non-scientific what’s.on.your.mind poll, which GMD put up when we also reported that Light Flight would be announcing this week:

The totally non-scientific poll asked, in light of the pressure he was receiving from GOP leaders to run, whether Light Flight Dubie will —

33.33%   Succumb to the pressure to run



26.67%   Give an announcement speech that lacks enthusiasm



13.33%   Give Tom Salmon a bouquet of flowers and skip town (TIE)

13.3%    Keep the money and not run (TIE)

6.7%      Succumb to the pressure to NOT run (TIE)

6.7%      Bow out but look really relived while doing it (TIE)

So with various rationals, the vote came down 60-40 on the side of a gubernatorial run.  

Well, in a few hours, we’ll know for sure whether GOP leaders have talked Light Flight into running for, what will be for him, a classic Republican economy & Jim Douglas employment plan, i.e., a job requiring (1) significantly more hours of work that comes with (2) significantly less pay.  

Stay tuned.

Imagine that we heard today that school costs have skyrocketed and property taxes would rise next year by 11%.  The good people of the State of Vermont would be outraged.

And yet when we heard this week that the major insurers are increasing their premiums by that rate we hear nothing.

There are reasons why there is no scream of protest.  Most people do not write a check for their full medical coverage.  Some one else pays, typically their employer or the government.

Most don’t want to rock that boat.  Most don’t even know what the real cost of their coverage is.  Most don’t make the connection that this is money they could be receiving in pay.

We’re not going to get real health care reform until people have to start writing their own checks for their coverage.  Then, instead of the property tax check being the largest one that many write, it will be overtaken by that nasty health care one.

PJ

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09…

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

There is no more “we” in American politics at a time when “we” can only manage, let alone fix, our huge problems if there is a collective “we” at work.

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From Open Left:

…a source on the Hill confirms to me the Senate HELP and Senate Finance committees will be merged by an informal, behind the scenes process involving the four major players in the Senate: Tom Harkin (Chair of HELP), Max Baucus (Chair of Finance), Harry Reid (Majority Leader), and the White House. Together, these four will meet and decide what sort of bill to send to the Senate floor for debate and amendments.

During this process, we can guarantee that Harkin will push for a HELP or Schumer-like public option to be sent the floor, while Baucus will push for no public option to be in the bill at all. Given his recent statements, the best bet is that Reid will probably push against a public option too, and instead favor either triggers (which he has called a good idea) or co-ops (which seems to be the sort of public option he likes best). With two against and one in favor, this means that the only way a public option ends up in the bill that is sent to the Senate floor will be if the fourth major player, the White House, demands it.[…] if [the White House] allows a health care bill to go to the floor without a public option, it is pretty unlikely that a public option will pass as part of health care reform. Here is why:

• Amendments won’t work. There simply is not any good chance of adding a public option to the Senate bill through floor amendments, because the 60-vote process will be in effect for floor amendments. While we might have 60 votes for cloture on a health care bill that includes a public option, we do not have 60 votes for a public option all by itself.
• Conference committee (almost certainly) won’t work. Even if the House passes a public option, which they are highly likely to do, do not expect them to overpower the Senate in conference committee. This is because the Senate will already have voted down adding a public option via amendment, and the White House will have already demonstrated that it isn’t going to demand the public option in the final bill. It wil be difficult to convince them to change their mind by the conference committee.

The Obama-is-always-blameless crowd will no longer be able to hang the blame for disappointment completely on Congress. Real reform is on the edge of failure, but has not yet failed. If Obama wants the public option in a final bill, it will happen. If he doesn’t, it won’t.

It’s now that simple.

(Note: Tim Wolfe already delivered this message in the comments in a much more concise fashion.)

We stomp off and take our toys home now, we own this defeat.

There are still good guys and bad guys in the health care battle (and I’m just talking about the Ds here – the Rs no longer matter – they are a given), and this is no time to back off. We always knew we would lose this round.

Nothing has changed – unless we let it. Here’s Harkin stating unequivocally that there will be a public option. Sure he’s just one guy, and its not like he’s magic – but he’s got the right attitude.

Let’s back him up, not leave him hanging out to dry.

Cross-posted from Rational Resistance:

LOS ANGELES — In a surprising move arranged by prosecutors in Los Angeles and Washington, the authorities in Switzerland arrested the film director Roman Polanski late Saturday as he arrived at the Zurich airport, paving the way for his possible extradition to the United States in connection with a 32-year-old sex case.

You've heard the news, right? Thirty-two years after he drugged and raped a 13-year-old girl, pleaded guilty to the crime, and then skipped out rather than face sentencing, Roman Polanski has been arrested in Switzerland where he faces possible extradition to the United States.

The remarkable thing is how many people seem sympathetic to Polanski and willing to blame his 13-year-old victim.

Here is a summary of the victim's grand jury testimony:

Roman Polanski instructed her to get into a jacuzzi naked, refused to take her home when she begged to go, began kissing her even though she said no and asked him to stop; performed cunnilingus on her as she said no and asked him to stop; put his penis in her vagina as she said no and asked him to stop; asked if he could penetrate her anally, to which she replied, “No,” then went ahead and did it anyway, until he had an orgasm.

This testimony was the basis of the indictment, and the basis of the plea of guilty that Polanski agreed to, and of the conviction that the court then entered based on the guilty plea.

Polanski's defense seems to be that he didn't think he was going to be treated fairly by the trial judge, so he was apparently justified in fleeing the jurisdiction and spending the next three decades enjoying his career as a film director and the great wealth and acclaim that career bought him.

No. There is no doubt that there was misconduct involving the trial judge, but the defendant has options in such a case. If the court issues a sentence beyond the range of the plea agreement, the defendant can withdraw the plea and go to trial. It's not unusual. Or, if the defendant believes the judge has engaged in misconduct, the defendant can seek to have the judge removed and go before an impartial judge. What he doesn't get to do is decide that since he doesn't think he's going to like the sentence he will just exempt himself from the legal process.

We know the victim wants this dropped, but it's not her call. A criminal charge is brought by the state on behalf of the people, not the victim. The people are entitled to see that the laws are not violated, that crimes do not go unpunished. This would seem to be especially true in the case of child rape.