The fear around Obama

Well said, Rod.

I have no affection for the Clintons, and I've lost all my respect for President Bush, but they deserve a lot of credit and respect for putting themselves and their families in danger because of their public service.

Sometimes when I hear about what the Bush twins, or Chelsea Clinton, are doing, I genuinely feel concerned. It wouldn't be that hard for some nutcase or some terrorist to strike at them. I'm so glad that nothing like that has happened.

On a larger scale, I work near a statehouse, the meeting place for the general assembly in the capital of my state. It's amazing to me how easy it would be for someone with a grudge to cause tremendous damage. There's nominal security, and anyone who wanted to could probably enter with a firearm, or a suicide vest. Frankly, it wouldn't be that hard for someone to do what Timothy McVeigh did in Oklahoma. Imagine if someone wishing to do America, or some specific politician, harm, realized how easy it was. They don't need to use airplanes. America is very unprotected.

What a depressing thought to begin the week. Thanks, Rod!

I assume it was a decision between letting most everybody in before Barack started speaking, or screening everyone and having Barack speak to an auditorium that was 1/3 full.

I arrived about 11 a.m., and was directed to the end of the line, which by then was at the very top (rooftop) level of the parking garage. It took us about 1-1/2 hours to get to the doors, because my camera shows that I took pictures/video of Barack entering the stadium about 1:13 p.m., and I got to a seat less than 10 minutes before he made his entrance.

I, too, was very surprised that they just let us in , cameras, bags, purses, bulky clothes and all - with not one bit of searching or scanning. It pleasantly reminded me of the old days when you could attend events like these without feeling like you were at the airport in Frankfort, Germany.

It was probably an unwise decision to forego security measures, but it was nice.

Funny you should include Hillary. It's fairly well-known here in Beltway-land that more than one White House Secret Service agent had to "take one for the president" during the previous administration; seems the first 'lady' threw household items at him on a fairly regular basis.

The 9/11 attacks brought us together as a country

Interesting that you should say that. It seems to me that it brought us together for a little while -- pretty much until the president's "they did it because they hate freedom" speech. After that those of us who wanted to consider any more complex causes were called unpatriotic America-haters. Not much togetherness after that.

Mrs. Pringle

Someone needs to be fired on Obama's campaign staff for so pressuring the Secret Service.

Given all the threats out there, his safety comes before TV visuals, and even the (understandable) frustration of his supporters.

Foreigners have had a lot of trouble understanding the American reaction to 9/11, but that's because they don't grasp what it's like to grow up in a country whose soil has not been attacked by foreigners since 1812. Wellllll, not exactly--there was, of course, Pearl Harbor, and a couple of other bombings of US soil at roughly the same time. And of course, Southerners had the experience of invasion and then some, and have been a very different culture from the rest of us as a result. But we all--even Southerners, I suspect--felt we were, and deserved to be, immune to the miscellaneous warfare that afflicts the rest of the world, until 9/11. By the standards of the rest of the world, we were damn lucky to have been un-bombed for as long as we were. Welcome to the human condition.

Those of a certain age may have seen enumerated the "spooky" parallels between those two ill-starred presidents, Lincoln and Kennedy, first disclosed to me, aged around 9, by a talismanic engraved Jack-looks-at-Abe penny back in the deep and ancient mists of Nixontime, shrouded in the sort of secrecy that only a plastic gumball-machine capsule affords for a quarter and a turn of the crank, e.g.,

"Lincoln's assassin shot him from a theater and fled to a warehouse.

"Kennedy's assassin shot him from a warehouse and fled to a theater.

"Lincoln's secretary, Kennedy, warned him not to got to the theatre.

"Kennedy's secretary, Lincoln, warned him not to go to Dallas.

"Booth and Oswald were assassinated before their trials," &c.

- though old reliable Snopes tells the pennywise credulous as always to swallow a chill pill*,

snopes.com/history/american/lincoln-kennedy.asp

*[Including this waggish snip:

"A month before Lincoln was assassinated he was in Monroe, Maryland.
A month before Kennedy was assassinated he was in Marilyn Monroe.

This is a latter-day addition to the list and nothing more than a bit of salacious humor. Even as a humorous coincidence it fails the test, as Marilyn Monroe died well over a year before Kennedy's assassination."]

I found the hitherto buried parallels elsewhere even more flesh-goosing, as supplied eight years ago this month by Jason Morrison over at The Shrubbery, viz.:

New Lincoln-Kennedy Similarities Uncovered!

by Jason Morrison

theshrubbery.com/0200/lincoln.html

"Everyone's heard of the eerie similarities between presidents Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy. Some are obvious and trivial like both having seven letters in their last names and being over 6 feet tall. Some are downright creepy like Lincoln getting shot at Ford's Theatre while Kennedy was shot in a Ford product, a Lincoln limousine. But the master list, with nearly 104 listings, leaves these key parallels out:

* Everyone knows Kennedy pledged to put a man on the moon before the end of the 1960s. Few people realize, however, that Lincoln pledged to put a man on the moon before the end of the 1860's, except with a steam-powered space ship he designed himself.
* Lincoln's father was a pioneer who built his own log cabin; Kennedy's father was a racketeer who built his own financial empire.
* Lincoln was famous for his trademark beard and Kennedy was known to have the ability to grow a beard.
* John and Abraham are both names from the Bible, even though the two were born 100 years apart!
* Lincoln was a wrestler in school and Kennedy was a wrestler in the WWF.
* Both were elected president by a majority of the voters-in the same country!
* Some people were concerned about electing Kennedy because they feared he would be pressured by the Pope. Some people were concerned about electing Lincoln because they feared his spine would be pressured by the weight of his massive body.
* Lincoln was elected in 1860 and Kennedy in 1960-both years with four digits.
* Kennedy was once apprehended in the Lincoln memorial, trying to steal all the gold buried in Lincoln's head.
* Kennedy once said Lincoln was "an inspiration." Lincoln once said Kennedy was "the nicest future-man I've ever met."
* Kennedy slept in the Lincoln bedroom, and Lincoln slept in the Lincoln bedroom.
* Lincoln fought the confederates and Kennedy fought the communists, both start with a 'C' and have the same number of letters."

Call Ripley - And cue Twilight Zone theme!

Lahti's Hear Me Now, Believe Me Never!

bam -

I have a feeling the offending comment(s) was/were removed by Rod, who's usually, given time to catch his breath, fairly Argus-eyed in policing his beat the better to bust skulls when lowlifes come round seeking a rumble. Once in a while during my decade selling books and music in Borders stores, a customer would by his behavior befoul what he mistook for a commons, in the mistaken belief that he was in a "public" place and entitled to do pretty much as he pleased. Ascending levels of the old vaudeville yank-pole came in orders to leave, a gathering storm of intimidating united-front solidarity, a la the close of Tod Browning's FREAKS (minus daggers), of office-emerging managers and beefier staffers (men too!) providing the encircling hint, then, worst case, dispatch of lawn-forcement.

Compared to retail melodrama thus, deletion of cretinous comments as this blog witnesses anon and again, is Ralph Kramden's "mere bag of shells..."

[lucky we didn't say anything about the dirty *knife*...]

"...like suicides where the person chops his own head off with an axe." - The Watcher

Even tougher to pull off (as it were) than the proverbial "pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps". Just *try* the latter sometime - not so easy after all, eh, Horatio?

I used to hear that Abe Lincoln was born in the log cabin he helped his dad build...

Gilbert & Sullivan have it covered:

And so we straight let out on bail
A convict from the county jail,
Whose head was next
On some pretext
Condemned to be mown off,
And made him Headsman, for we said,
"Who's next to be decapited
Cannot cut off another's head
Until he's cut his own off,
His own off, his own off,
Until he's cut his own off."

Mrs. Pringle

Thanks, Scott! Yes, after I posted my response, I realized that perhaps Rod had deleted a slimey comment!

My apologies, then, to Mark Shea.