Toleration of Veiled Threats Against the Life of the President-Elect?

Never Again!

I have had a crush on Sarah Palin. It developed as a result of watching too many You-Tubes of her campaigning when my computer's sound system was inexplicably dysfunctional. I thought she was so cute, fresh, titillating, and foxy. I was forewarned when I read that she sent shivers up Rich Lowrey's legs. As soon as I recovered my sound and heard what she was saying, my fascination was over.

I don't think Saracuda represents a danger to our democracy. That's because I think her 15 days of fame infamy are over. Only in the best, most fortuitous of circumstances will she head the GOP presidential ticket in 2012. In all likelihood she'll prefer the state house in Juneau. She's a backcountry folksy girl challenged with a large family that is not in synch with maintaining a second Senatorial home in D.C.

I'm much more concerned with the influence she has unleashed in her once in-a-lifetime cameo appearance as an attack dog appendage to the McCain campaign. By repeatedly conjuring up sinister myths about our President-Elect's past (palling around with terrorists), the incendiary residue of Palinism will be with us for some time. According to the London Telegraph, it's already been reported that,

The Secret Service warned the Obama family in mid October that they had seen a dramatic increase in the number of threats against the Democratic candidate, coinciding with Mrs Palin's attacks.

Michelle Obama, the future First Lady, was so upset that she turned to her friend and campaign adviser Valerie Jarrett and said: "Why would they try to make people hate us?"

Forgive me, but I've been around the block for a few decades in this country. Loose lips yakking about presidents and presidential candidates fellow-travelling with America's sworn enemies can wake up sleeping mad and rabid dogs. It's not too long ago for my feeble mind to recall the rage of the American Reich wing against John F. Kennedy. In those days, it was the neo-McCarthyist John Birch Society's campaign to pillory JFK for signing the Test Ban Treaty negotiated with Nikita Khrushchev. Long before his fateful trip to Texas in November 45 years ago, the highways and byways in Texas were festooned with JFK=Treason signs. On the day of JFK's visit in Dallas, the city was flooded with these handbills. The atmosphere was incendiary. It was so pronounced, that before JFK's assassin was identified, 90% of Americans were sure the right wing was responsible.

Political assassination saps the resources of political leadership in a Democracy. Exhibit the decimation of the Progressive movement occasioned by the assassinations of Rev Martin Luther King, Jr., and Senator Robert F. Kennedy.

All talk of assassination of any American political leader gets zero tolerance from me. It's the equivalent of shouting "FIRE" in a crowded theater.

Thus, this morning when I saw this advertisement at CaféPress,

I was outraged. I cannot describe my feelings tonight when I see that the ad is still posted.