Where do these people come from ...

... and why do they gravitate to the Right?

Obama Faces More Personal Threats Than Other Presidents-Elect

WASHINGTON —

Threats against a new president historically spike right after an election, but from Maine to Idaho law enforcement officials are seeing more against Barack Obama than ever before. The Secret Service would not comment or provide the number of cases they are investigating. But since the Nov. 4 election, law enforcement officials have seen more potentially threatening writings, Internet postings and other activity directed at Obama than has been seen with any past president-elect, said officials aware of the situation who spoke on condition of anonymity because the issue of a president's security is so sensitive.

Earlier this week, the Secret Service looked into the case of a sign posted on a tree in Vay, Idaho, with Obama's name and the offer of a "free public hanging." In North Carolina, civil rights officials complained of threatening racist graffiti targeting Obama found in a tunnel near the North Carolina State University campus.

And in a Maine convenience store, an Associated Press reporter saw a sign inviting customers to join a betting pool on when Obama might fall victim to an assassin. The sign solicited $1 entries into "The Osama Obama Shotgun Pool," saying the money would go to the person picking the date closest to when Obama was attacked. "Let's hope we have a winner," said the sign, since taken down.

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My comment: Where do these people come from? I've consciously witnesses national elections in the United States since Stevenson ran against Eisenhower (even as a child I favored the liberal Stevenson over the conservative Eisenhower). Even in the darkest days of Nixon and the terrible days of the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago (I lived in Chicago at the time) I have never heard a liberal friend suggest it would be a good idea to do physical harm to a president. (There may have been some, but I've never run across any.)

Even Bill Ayers, the refamoused leader of the Weather Underground, the "terrorist" President-elect Obama was supposed to have "palled around with", will quickly and rightly point out that their violence was targeted at buildings with efforts to avoid doing harm to human beings.

During the run up to this most recent election I watched news channels almost 24 hours a day. I witnessed speeches by McCain and Obama, Biden and Palen ... in some cases where TV news only presented sound bites from a particular speech, I looked for the entire speech on-line ... because the news is more than sound bites. What I observed, particularly in Palen's speeches was a pandering to the nut-base. Though there wasn't an explicit call to arms or a direct suggestion that people do violence to others who held a different view point, there certainly was a tacit approval of the audience cries of "kill him", "off with his head" and "traitor".

On the other hand, at Obama rallys when the mention of Palen or McCain elicited "boos", the response from the podium was a civilized, "you don't need to boo, you just need to vote."

The difference in tone was striking.

I don't mean to say that everyone who is conservative is out for blood or that no one on the right is house broken but it seems telling to me that the most intelligent and respected Republican conservatives ... from Colin Powell to Christopher Hitchens, from Andrew Sullivan to Christopher Buckley ... endorsed Obama and expressed dismay and shame at the tactics of their former allies on the Right. They were saying, in effect, that they felt they had more in common with the opinions expressed by the Obamaa campaign than they did with many of their own party members ... even though they admittedly disagreed with some of the details.

What ever happened to the bomb-throwing anarchist on the Left? I haven't heard much about them since the 60s ... and even then, they went to great pains to only do property damage and avoid casualties. The Liberal Left has lost many elections since the 60s but they've neither burned crosses nor issues death threats.

Now this election is over and we have cross burnings, hangings in effigy and a run on gun stores. Where do these people come from and why do they seem to gravitate to the Right?