Facebook's Obama assassination poll more than a sick joke

There was one thing even more disturbing than that 730 respondents would put finger to keypad to answer the Facebook poll question "Should Obama be killed." That's that if the poll -- apparently put up, says Facebook, by an independent person using an add-on application -- hadn't been quickly yanked hundreds, maybe thousands, more might have dignified the bizarre and murderous question with an answer. 

One can only shudder at just what the answers of more than a few respondents may have been. The Secret Service says it's investigating. But here's the problem, in fact there are several problems. The agency may be understaffed and under resourced at least that was what it said in its 2010 budget request report back in May. The service promptly denied its own report. But at the very least Obama's virtual non-stop appearance schedule would tax the resources of any protective and enforcement agency.

The agency has said almost nothing about just what and where its investigations have taken it when questions, and there have been lots of them, arise about the avalanche of threats against Obama. The service gave this writer this response in response to repeated queries made last month about the prayer for Obama's death uttered very publicly and more than once by Phoenix pastor Steven Anderson. "We take these threats very seriously and rest assured that it and other threats are under investigation." The good reverend was unmoved by it all and repeated his Obama death wish threat again.

Then there's the angry, hyper-paranoid climate that drives the threats to mountainous heights. The same day that the Facebook poll surfaced in quick succession were also reports that some parents at a New Jersey school raged against school kids singing a pro Obama ditty, a poll claimed that Americans are angrier than ever, and since it's a Republican poll and claim, we don't need much imagination to guess whom the presumed target of the anger and frustration is. A scandal plagued, clownish, but still wildly popular Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi mocked Obama and Michelle Obama at the G-20 dinner with a tasteless joke about Obama's skin color and then tossed in a gross sexual innuendo about the First Lady. There's yet another viral campaign with a picture of Obama on a stamp with the dig that it should be licked, and finally there's the vintage Obama Joker caricature with another macabre touch up making the email and website rounds. Keep in mind these are just the reported anti-Obama digs and insults.

This danger flags about Obama have flown high from the moment that he announced he would seek the presidency in February 2007. He had the dubious distinction of being the earliest presidential contender to be assigned Secret Service protection on the campaign trail. This didn't ease the jitters over his safety. Mississippi Congressman Bennie Thompson fired off a letter to Secret Service officials practically demanding that the Secret Service provide all the resources and personnel it could to insure Obama and the other presidential candidates safety. Thompson heard the whispers and nervous questions from his constituents about Obama's safety.

As the showdown with John McCain heated up in the general election in 2008, the flood of crank, crackpot, and screwball threats that promised murder and mayhem toward Obama continued to pour in. This prompted the Secret Service to tighten security and take even more elaborate measures to insure his safety. This seemed to offer assurance that the government was doing everything humanly possible to insure his safety. This was especially important given the deep doubt and even paranoid suspicion that some blacks have that shadowy government agencies were complicit in the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr, and the fervent belief of millions of other Americans that the CIA or other shadowy government agencies were deeply complicit in the killing, if not outright murder of JFK.

Any other time and with any other president, the Facebook poll might be shrugged off as a sick joke. But this is not another time and another president. He's one who has been the butt of every dig, insult, and knock sick minds could conjure up. This prompted Bill Clinton to publicly charge that Obama is the target of the same vast right wing conspiracy that Hillary railed at as targeting him during his presidential day. This is what makes the Facebook poll more than a sick joke.