I am an old man, I remember the euphoria and love for the Kennedy's and the tragedies that followed

[Drew Richards]

and as we get closer to this election I can honestly say that I am getting bouts of Profound FEAR for our Presidents safety every time I see him in public forums.

With the death's/murders of the Kennedy's It does not matter what you believe occurred or how it occurred anymore...

(I still tear up when I think of the loss)

What does matter is that we have lost Presidents before, ones that loved this Country profoundly and understood that it is the PEOPLE that make the Country, Not the Wealthy, not the Corporations, not even the Government body...it's THE PEOPLE.

Here we are again, but this time, many of the usual culprits/suspects are under the spot light, so they use propaganda to whip up a hate frenzy of surrogates that encompasses so very many people of this country; that there could possibly be a lone gunman anywhere that believes he will be a hero if he assassinates our President.

I ask all of you to stop, and just for a moment, to yourself, and to any deity you may believe in, to repeat after to me.

(deity) Hear my Prayer,
Please protect the president from all harm in these trying times,
From enemies foreign and domestic,
and help us all to be better people,
to our family,
to our friends,
to our enemies,
and to ourselves,

(End of prayer)

Thanks,

I feel better.

[jody]

1. Senator John F Kennedy gave the commencement address when I graduated from college, 1957. nt

[bemildred]

2. Yeah, I worry about it too. nt

[elfin]

3. Same here

I have feared for him and his since Day One, due to living through the previous tragedy when I was in college.

Now my fears are at red alert level due both to my experience and the unbelievably widespread inflamed ignorance by Fox and Drudge and their ilk, and the easy access to horrific weapons via relaxed regulations and the net.

The armed crazies and racists are encouraged ( even subliminally) by media and their favorite web sites.

Holding my breath here until Nov. 7, when I will have a bit of relief if all goes well, and then resume my worries until 2016,

[graham4anything]

4. Amen

for JFK RFK MLK John Lennon Allard Lowenstein Harvey Milk and any and all others.

perhaps the saddest song ever recorded
What the world needs now/Abraham Martin and John by Tom Clay
(with spliced in news and bits of speeches by Bobby and Teddy)

(tissues advised)

[1monster]

20. This was played on the radio constantly in 1971. 1968 was the year when hope died...

Thank you for posting. (It brought things back a little to clearly.)

[Sekhmets Daughter]

22. Yes, I think you're right

Losing Bobby Kennedy broke my heart...losing MLK, Jr. broke my faith in America.

[Sekhmets Daughter]

21. Thank you so much

for posting this.

[jwirr]

5. Here too. So far it seems that our Secret Service is doing a good job.

[cleduc]

7. Barack Obama faces 30 death threats a day, stretching US Secret Service

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/barackobama/5967942/Barack-Obama-faces-30-death-threats-a-day-stretching-US-Secret-Service.html

Since Mr Obama took office, the rate of threats against the president has increased 400 per cent from the 3,000 a year or so under President George W. Bush, according to Ronald Kessler, author of In the President's Secret Service.
...
"We have half the number of agents we need, but requests for more agents have fallen on deaf ears at headquarters," a Secret Service agent told Kessler. "Headquarters' mentality has always been, 'You can complete the mission with what you have. You're a U.S.S.S. agent'."
...
The Secret Service has increasingly cut corners after it was absorbed by the new Homeland Security Department under Mr Bush. Kessler said that when Mr Biden threw the first pitch at the first Baltimore Orioles game of the 2009 season, the Secret Service did not screen any of the more than 40,000 fans, stunning his agents and the local Secret Service field office.

It's a frightening situation.

A bunch of that is due to the right wing rhetoric.

When I was a kid, I liked to read biographies about great people. After reading a lot of them, I wondered what it would be like to observe one of them while they were still alive as all the individuals I'd read about had passed except Churchill who was in his 90s and out of public view. Then I read my Dad's books on JFK and thought I was all set to watch a great man while he was still alive ... he was shot within the year. I latched onto RFK and had become an admirer of MLK's efforts and you know the story. Vietnam. Watergate. And that series of events knocked the steam out of my interest in politics. But the assassinations were by far the most painful for me.

Jimmy Carter rekindled my interest some. John Lennon's assassination had a similar effect on me. He was one of my favorite people of all time. And my interest in politics waned again.

And then after many years passed, along came Barack who really reignited and inspired me.

I've been worried about Obama since before his election. I reported three of those threats to the Secret Service on the same individual and they did a fine job.

Have you ever tried to imagine what it would be like to get up in town halls and rallies, exposed in front of thousands of people, knowing there are thousands of wacky people out there who want you dead? And knowing that although they've caught a bunch of them in the act, those who are supposed to protect you are understaffed and overwhelmed? Yet this man can shut that all out and speak beautifully and relaxed with such conviction and compassion - focused on doing the people's business and giving it his all. To me, that's a demonstration of real inner strength and courage that is rarely acknowledged.

Meanwhile, those who claim to be "real Americans" disparage this man putting his life on the line as a communist anti-American Muslim n-word- or whatever. It's sickening. And it irresponsibly increases the risk of some nut taking his life.

I wish Barack Obama the best and hope he is allowed to finish what he's started. After being disappointed with assassinations so many times before, I'd like to see one great man that appealed to me survive and complete his work.

[Tumbulu]

8. Wow, what a wonderful response!

You have it spot on.

I worry about him and pray for his whole family every day.

I share your hope about seeing him complete his work.

He inspires me not to give up and to keep at mine.

[SheilaT]

10. How do you screen 40,000 people going into a baseball stadium?

Other than maybe having them pass through metal detectors.

JFK said more than once, that a truly determined person could assassinate him, and he was right. If our presidents are going to go out in public at all, they are taking certain risks. I don't want them living inside a bubble. It was bad enough that during the Bush years protesters couldn't get within a couple of blocks of him. Perhaps they justified some of that in the name of safety, I don't know.

Also keep in mind that more an more people are getting concealed carry permits, open carry is more and more allowed, and someone who wants to get and carry a gun for the purpose of harming any public official probably isn't going to care much about the laws anyway.

[Gal Friday]

25. Why are the guns so easy to buy?

Because we're perpetually scared, as Michael Moore demonstrated in Bowling For Columbine.

[SalviaBlue]

6. Amen

[Tumbulu]

9. Beautiful prayer; I share your worries

and hope that he can be protected.

[broiles]

11. I saw JFK the day before;

RFK just a couple of weeks before; and MLK too. I will not go the see the President.

[zeemike]

12. I remember it well too.

I was 20 years old when he was murdered.
And what young people may not know is that the same kind of hate we see now against Obama we saw then against JFK...and for the same reason sort of....I can count the number of times I heard people call JFK a nigger lover....and I could recount many terrible things I heard back then living in the south.
I have said it before and I still think it is true....racism did not go away, it just went underground...and underground it is more dangerous than in the open.
I join you in that prayer.

[ancianita]

13. George Carlin's belief about humans...

I remember America's assassination days. I was twelve. Watched the live on-the-air shooting of L. H. Oswald and the Kennedy funeral. The whole country was crying. The haters kept their mouths shut.
These days, we have more guns and more money to pay off any number of assassins, for any number of individual, institutional or ideological reasons. I'm praying with you, bra. Been praying to whatever's out there for the last four years.

[lumpy]

14. My God, those were the really tough times losing our men who really made

a difference in our lives. We can hope never again to feel such heartache. I felt that heartache again just watching the video.

[Brigid]

15. Amen.

Last November-- and I'm sure it will happen again this year--someone started a thread asking where we were when JFK was assassinated. One DUer vividly described coming home--from school I guess--to find his mother collapsed on the couch, crying. When he asked her what was wrong, all she could do was point to the TV, where the terrible news was, by then, all over the place. If anything happens to Obama--God forbid! -- that will be me.

[magical thyme]

19. I was 10 years old.

They called our teacher, Mrs. Kennedy, to come down to the office. We all sat in the classroom, looking at each other, wondering what was going on.

When she returned she was rubbing her eyes and crying. And then she told us our President had been shot.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

16. I'm of the opinion the puppetmasters decided the first black president will be fine.

He's not going to be a "one term failure" either. They want the first one to be a success and leave office as a beloved figure to become an elder statesman.

[pnwest]

29. that is such an opposite opinion, what makes

you so hopeful? Please elucidate, gimme something to hang on to, cause I fall in with the worried ones!

[Spitfire of ATJ]

30. If it's true what Carlin says and the elections are all an illusion to make us,...

....think we have a choice then that means we have puppetmasters actually running the show and the LAST thing they need is the chaos that would occur as a result of the assassination of the first black president. For one thing, the people would reject the right wing for what they did and everything they stand for. It's not like the days of Martin Luther King Jr. when a large number of white people actually cheered at the news of his assassination. Let's face it, the whole Right/Left divide has been part of the show and if the half of America that is apathetic looks up from their celebrity trivia/reality TV and actually takes part then it's game over.

[defacto7]

17. I hear you....

I feel the same concern for his safety. I also express the sentiments of your prayer in my heart. I also would add that those who are in charge of his safety keep in mind their solemn oath and to not be become distracted by those who would seek to undermine the authority and will of the people.

[NBachers]

18. Yes, I've had the same fear, and I can't shake it

I lived through those days myself. I join you in your prayer.

[lib2DaBone]

23. Kennedy wanted to go against the Federal Reserve.....

and take back control of our country...

They put a bullet in his head...

[Kennah]

24. Not that I think the Secret Service was derelict in any way in 1963 ...

... but I suspect their training, resources, intelligence gathering, etc. have increased significantly over the last 5 decades.

[Le Taz Hot]

26. I was with you right up to the time

that you wanted me to talk to the invisible man.

But I agree with your main point. I'm sure it's the racism factor but reich wingers seem to have lost their collective minds. Faux, Rush, Hannity, Beck, et al whip them up into a frenzy and all it takes is one batshit crazy mutha with a rifle.

[Drew Richards]

32. I did not specify any deity I said in whatever you believe in...you could have just as easily have

said it to yourself as a hope for the future.

They are good words no matter how they are read, thought or spoken.

[graham4anything]

27. the law of unintended consequences (IMHO) will help keep our President safe

the law of unintended consequences

I apply this in hindsight, seeing what happened after the tragedy of 1963, in what great things happeneed, that quite honestly, I do not feel would have happened any time soon.

And it is because of this, that I think these horrid events will not happen again.(especially if the events were professional and not single person, but I don't mean to get into conspiracy or conspiracy theories).

LBJ became president. And LBJ(and I am a big LBJ fan, and don't want to argue the war on this thread) used his capital he had from the nation and both sides, and got changes that instantly made this country better.

I am talking about the civil rights/ voting rights laws signed by LBJ and all the progressive movement forward that occured

JFK and RFK talked about things, dreamed about things, and part of the reason JFK is immortal forever is that he / they were not here long enough to be the one who got the change done and therefore not blamed for not getting the change done.

And because JFK wanted his brother to follow him at some point as President, and perhaps also wanted his younger brother Teddy to do so, I am not very sure JFK himself would have gotten those bills passed, or had the ability to get them passed not wanting to expend capital knowing RFK would have to get elected

At the end of the day, in events NOT forseen, LBJ did get them passed.

And I think that in the coming decades, that was a lesson learned.

So that now we have character asssasssinations and attempts to belittle a President on the left (like they did to Jimmy Carter and have from day one done to President Obama), but that horrid event won't happen professionally.

And I do not believe a joe average can do this anymore.

I trust secret service and others because now everyone is on the alert for something
(and I don't trust sorry, those now 2 old white hair men peddling the book about protecting JFK and Jackie as both Jackie and JFK are not here to dispute it.)

(and who knows, were Teddy's tires shot out? It achieved the same result didn't it, but again, don't want to delve in CT's.)But Teddy lived long enough and remained to become the #1 senator of all time, and was able to see his #1 want, health care reform finally move forward.

So I think President Obama will nobly serve his 8 years, and in history be seen as perhaps the #3 or #4 President of all time on the list, and his accomplishments will go forward by the next president45 who will continue that move forward to seal those accomplishments in place forever.

And as he is so young, I don't know if we all will be around to see airports and monuments named after him as it may be 50 to 75 years down the road before that happens, (the longer the better) but his profile on Mount Rushmore would not be surprising to me as will some major tribute on the national mall. (where a weekend ago, I visited and saw for the first time and was deeply impressed with both the FDR and MLK tributes there.(and with how many people there were wearing something showing Our President, button/hat/shirt and how not one person in my view cared about his opponent enough to do the same.100%).

If one thinks this post should not be on a public board, I will listen and self-delete it.

BTW-
speaking of President FDR-
I was stunned with a few quotes that were engraved in his huge tribute in DC.
It is amazing how similiar FDR and Barack Obama were in their words


In these days of difficulty, we Americans everywhere must and shall choose a path of social justice...
The path of faith, the path of hope, and the path of love toward our fellow man."

Among American citizens, there should be no forgotten men, and no forgotten races."

"I never forget that I live in a house owned by all the American people and that I have been given their trust."

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much;
It is whether we provide enough for those who have too little."

and a quote not on his memorial that he said-
Nobody will ever deprive the American people of the right to vote except the American people themselves and the only way they could do this is by not voting.

[BarbaRosa]

28. Abraham, Martin and John

&feature=fvwrel

[CrispyQ]

31. If they win, they will feel their hate has been validated & they will be dangerous.

If they lose, they will feel they must validate their hate & they will be even more dangerous.