Item #1: 
A classified ad which ran yesterday in a Pennsylvania newspaper -– which appears to call for the assassination for President Obama -– was pulled today.

The ad, which ran in the classified section of The Warren Times Observer, connects Mr. Obama, the first African-American president, with four previous presidents who have been assassinated and reads, “May Obama follow in the steps of Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy!”

Today, the newspaper issued an apology, calling it an “errant classified personal ad.”

“The ad representative didn’t make the connection among the four other presidents mentioned and mistakenly allowed the ad to run,” the newspaper’s statement says. “The Times Observer apologizes for the oversight.”

Item #2: 
Accused of holding views on the fringe of American culture, Drake acknowledged: “It is a fringe point of view, and I take that as a badge of honor. I am on the fringe.”  […]
Asked if there are others for whom Drake is praying “imprecatory prayer,” Drake hesitated before answering that there are several. “The usurper that is in the White House is one, B. Hussein Obama,” he said.  Later in the interview, Colmes returned to Drake’s answer to make sure he heard him right.  “Are you praying for his death?” Colmes asked.  “Yes,” Drake replied. “So you’re praying for the death of the president of the United States?” “Yes.
Drake apparently feels that he is giving Obama fair warning.  “If he does not turn to God and does not turn his life around, I am asking God to enforce imprecatory prayers that are throughout the Scripture that would cause him death, that’s correct.”

Item #3:

A Canadian group that monitors radio broadcast standards described a supposedly comedic skit about assassinating President Obama a “disturbing, wounding, abusive racial comment.”

In a public chastisement of the French-language Radio-Canada Monday, the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council said the on-air skit, which included the line that Obama would be easy to kill because he stands out against the White House, was far from funny.

“The panel finds nothing redeeming in the allegedly comedic notion that an American president should be shot, still less that this would be easier to achieve because of the color of the president’s skin,” the council said in its decision.

Item #4: 

A man who told a Utah bank manager he is “on a mission to kill” President Obama is being hunted by the Secret Service. An arrest warrant was issued for Daniel James Murray, who has at least 8 registered firearms, Friday.

Murray made the assassination threat after withdrawing almost $13,000 from his savings account at the First National Bank in St. George, Utah on May 27. “We are on a mission to kill the President of the United States,” he told the bank manager after the withdrawal.

The incident first began on May 19 when Murray used an $85,000 check to open the savings account. “With all this mess going on under President Obama with banks and the economy, I’m sure if citizens happen to lose their money, they will rise up and we could see killing and deaths,” he said.

Murray came back 8 days later to withdraw $12,698 from his account but didn’t have the proper identification. The bank manager allowed the transaction. Murray demanded bills no larger than $50. It was then that he threatened to assassinate the president and left the bank.

It seems that the Israeli Settlers, and the far-right contingent of Israeli citizens and Israeli supporters who support the ongoing settlements, are mad that Obama’s Cairo speech threw them under the bus.  This is fine.  This is the Israeli population that needs to (figuratively speaking) have their desires thrown under the bus.

The other up-shot pot-shot regarding Obama and the Israeli government is it’s one more element in some frictious relations between Obama and the Netanyahu government — and thus there’s this suggestion:  “Is Obama trying to overthrow Bibi?”  Weirdly enough, clearly not as immersed, knowledged, or pondering those issues as Goldberg is, I couldn’t shake that thought — but, as likely, Obama’s policy is as much working past Netanyahu to whatever degree possible.

Of course, the other government Obama’s speech seemed to have suggestions of “overthrowing” is Iran’s government.  The American right’s drum-beating of an “Apology Tour”, peaking against America — by which they just as often mean apologizing for Bush as opposed to America — gets its due with Obama’s mention of the Overthrow of the Shah.  The American government has “apologized” for that already, attempts to push through thaws in the relationships — via a couple of passive-voice press releases. 

There is a better than even chance that the voters in Iran, from off of the state-controlled list of candidates, are about to give him the boot.  We may no longer have Ahmadinejad to kick around anymore.  Which does make perfect sense.  Ahmadinejad’s rise was largely a reaction to Bush’s “Axis of Evil” rhetoric, and Ahmadinejad doesn’t have Bush to kick around anymore.  But, the shot at two shots of the bow against Ahmadinejad — one against Holocuast Denialism:

Around the world, the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries, and anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust.  Tomorrow, I will visit Buchenwald, which was part of a network of camps where Jews were enslaved, tortured, shot and gassed to death by the Third Reich.  Six million Jews were killed — more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today.  Denying that fact is baseless, it is ignorant, and it is hateful.  Threatening Israel with destruction — or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews — is deeply wrong, and only serves to evoke in the minds of Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve.

And, perhaps just as broadly to the Muslim World, there is this, sloping off of the Holocaust Denial in parts and its own ball of wax in other aspects:

I am aware that some question or justify the events of 9/11. But let us be clear: al Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 people on that day. The victims were innocent men, women and children from America and many other nations who had done nothing to harm anybody. And yet Al Qaeda chose to ruthlessly murder these people, claimed credit for the attack, and even now states their determination to kill on a massive scale. They have affiliates in many countries and are trying to expand their reach. These are not opinions to be debated; these are facts to be dealt with.

Or, perhaps that bit of conspiratorialism can be directed to, as much as anything else American, 9/11 Truth Movement.  Where it will be received with the same sort of thing seen in the title of this Bill Clinton Bohemian Grove youtube clip.

Then again, it’s sort of notable that these two comments blast up against this Obama comment.:

And I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.

But these negative steoretypes of the Middle East believing these conspiracy theories exists for a reason.

I notice a pretty disturbing trend amongst Liberals, the latest example seen in a Matt Davis Portland Mercury piece about a conservative conference.  It’s an ease with which the semi-innocuous is conflated with the disturbed.   The effect reminds me of the post 9/11 Ari Fleisher statement after a Bill Maher statement, “There are reminders to all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do, and this is not a time for remarks like that; there never is.”

For most of it, everything is fine with this article.  We note Lars Larson’s feeling of White Victimhood in the wake of  Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination.  Grover Norquist’s concerns of the regulatory state are noted.  The backers of the tea-parties are called “infamous” as opposed to what I’d figure — “silly” — Reagan is worshipped, Al Gore is denounced; global warming is denied.  The teenage activist is carted out as a sign of the future.

And then the last two paragraphs.

Three days later, on June 1, Lindsey Roeder, the wife of a man suspected of fatally shooting an abortion doctor in Kansas over the weekend, told the Associated Press that his family life began unraveling when he got involved with anti-government groups.

“The anti-tax stuff came first,” she reportedly said. “And then it grew and grew.”

Huh.  This point is left dangling there, and Matt Davis is left making the point more explicit on KPOJ this morning.  Yes: off of the margins of this rhetoric, and coming out of the quarter billion population of America, we’ll get built your Tiller murderer.

But the chances that someone from this conservative flab is going to shoot someone in the coming years is… what exactly?  Notable is that the topic of Abortion isn’t even mentioned as a focus at the convention itself — but then again, this anti-tax stuff is just a gateway drug for the Abortion Terrorism.  (Which, given the tribal nature of politics where we kind of end up a bit more bifrocated with like-minded people than strictly desirable, Tax Revolts do end up cluttered with Abortion Restrictions.)

I can only assume there’s a cultural clash I have here: Matt Davis comes from the nation that will not allow Michael Savage an entry.

Okay.  I’m having a little problem with this one.

The film tries very hard to make the case that outing is a moral act. Sometimes a gay politician’s hypocrisy runs so deep, it is difficult to argue with that. Yet the film never really addresses, in any meaningful way, whether closeted Democrats also deserve to be outed. Mike Rogers claims that “90 percent” of closeted gay politicians are Republicans, and it’s easy to understand why the GOP fosters such a culture. But there certainly are Democratic political figures who have long been rumored to be gay or lesbian: Janet Napolitano and Janet Reno, for example. By leaving them out of the story, Rogers and Outrage’s filmmaker, Kirby Dick, present an incomplete portrait of what they call the national media “conspiracy” to hide the true sexual identities of closeted gay politicians. For if Charlie Crist and Larry Craig benefited from mainstream media silence on their sexuality, so did Reno and Napolitano. But the film doesn’t really explore how the closet might affect ambitious political women, or Democrats, differently from the way it affects ambitious political men and Republicans. (Notably, Condi Rice is absent from Outrage. Was it simply too difficult to find evidence to back up claims that she is a lesbian?)

You know who’s also supposed to be gay?
Hillary Clinton.  Recirculated in that weirdly forgotten Ed Klein anti-Hillary Clinton book.

Also, I might add, that whatever rumor that Condelleza Rice is gay is offset by the rumor that she had an affair with George W Bush.  No, really — it circulated on one or two or three of the sub – National Enquirer tabloids.  The same one that is now reporting that Barack Obama has had a gay affair.

It’s also interesting that Janet Reno and Janet Napolitano are plucked out there.  They occupy roughly the same space in the mind of swarths of right-wing politicians — Waco for Reno, the DHS Report for Napolitano.  I suppose they set off some gaydar for peoples who care much.  Though, Napolitano hasn’t had enough of a national profile to get into the tabloids.  I suspect if we look back, Reno did.  The question we have before us now is — will Napolitano be played by a man on Saturday Night Live, as Reno was?

Why are they gay?  Dana Goldstein seems a sexist trope.  Anyway, the female politicians are deemed gay because they’ve wielded power and  because of their lack of child birth.  Frankly.  Find me an image of Reno, Rice, or Napolitano with some life-partner or other, and they’ll still probably fall short of Larry Craigism.

Hell.  Larry Craig falls a tad short of Larry Craigism.  But only a tad.

It’s never too early to start contemplating the Republican Primary campaign for 2012!

Well, actually it is.  But never mind, let’s roll my second “2012 Republican Presidential Candidate Cattle Call” listing of who’s up, who’s down, and who’s sideways as the candidates all line up and jockey in order to lead the currently embattled Republican Party to victory against Cheese – Eating Surrender Monkey* and chronic Tele-prompter reader Barack “Barry” Obama.

The hard data we have to work with from since last time — polling shows a Statistical Three-Way Tie between Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, and Mitt Romney.  Newt Gingrich trails.  Jeb Bush is proferred for reasons not quite clear.  Tim Pawlenty is not proferred up as a name.  Nor is Bobby Jindal.  Nor is John Ensign.  Nor is Ron Paul.  The list is thus useless.

Bare in mind that at a similar point in the 1948 race, Henry Wallace was the Democratic favorite — before joining the Communist Party as the head of the third Progressive Party, and that at a similar point in the 2004 race, Joseph Lieberman was the Democratic favorite, before joining himself as the head of the Joseph Lieberman Party.

#1:  Mitt Romney.  I still think he is the choice by default.  He’s been making a lot of speeches calling Barack Obama a poopy-head and all the rest.  Interesting to note, this exercise of absurdity — the idea that Barack Obama should put Mitt Romney in as head of GM.  Assuming the worst, that Obama is sold on Mitt Romney — is a neoliberal of the highest order who goes for Mitt Romney’s Union – Busting ways in restructuring GM, and assuming that he thinks Romney would do a terrific job in a political vacuum — the political vacuum is pierced by the fact that Romney fancies himself President and would much use his position for some good amount of political grand-standing, which pretty well undermines his job.  Bad idea.  Also one of those Silly ideas that shows people have too much time on their hand — similar to this hypothetical match-up scenario asking if Michael Dukakis might have won the 2008 presidential election.

#2:  Ron Paul.  Hey.  A vast swarth of votes is his if he wants it.  And maybe, just maybe, the necessary political realignment due to the interloping hooligans known as the “Free Staters” will give him the boost he needs to win the New Hampshire primary!

#3:  Sarah Palin.  She may want to not run for re-election in Alaska.  This is the problem with our political system:  it encourages politicians to avoid having a job lest they leave a record to scrutinize.
Also noted here, in purely crass political terms, the Islamic Fundamentalist who shot the army recruiter proferred Palin an easy out in addressing the Tiller murderer — a little from section a and a little from section b comes out a bit tidier.
And on the pop cultural front, Hustler has released, with a quasi-safe video clip on youtube, a new porn film by the title “Obama is Nailin’ Palin”.  So you’ve got that.

#4:  Mike Huckabee.  No.  Really.  Don’t laugh.  Why, he’s currently in a three-way tie with Palin and Romney!  I’m sure his speech at the Iowa Association of Business and Industry’s annual meeting in Okoboji on June 10 will go down in the anals of History.

#5.  A tie.  It’s John Ensign, Newt Gingrich, Haley Barbour, and Bobby Jindal.  There may or may not be much to say about any of them, except that they’re all kind of mysteriously swarming into the state of Iowa.

I always wonder about Iowa.  Do Iowans want to be continually swarmed by greasy politicians, at all hours of the night, at all days of the year, for about three straight years?  What percentage of their economy is based on campaign flutterings?  Is this Iowa’s fate? 

Regarding Newt Gingrich — a sign of his viability as Presidential timber — his twitters are considered newsworthy.  Regarding John Ensign — do you quite believe this copy?

“I think he’s a rising star in the conservative movement and I can’t wait to introduce him to Iowa,” said Tim Albrecht, an organizer for the American Future Fund, an Iowa-based conservative advocacy group.  Albrecht, a former staffer for Romney during his presidential run, said Iowa is the perfect place for potential candidates to hone their message. Romney visited Iowa repeatedly before declaring his candidacy, then held events in the state almost weekly in the months leading to the caucuses.  “You can’t find a more fertile soil in America to begin growing the new conservative movement,” Albrecht said.

Does anybody desire to see a ticking off of what everyone else is doing in Iowa?

#9: Another tie.  Mark Sanford, Tim Pawlenty.  It’s not that either one of them are any more or less forminable than the entry for #5.  It’s just that neither of them are in Iowa right now.  Of the two, I’d give the edge in Presidential racing to Pawlenty.  He’s quitting his job — Sanford seems to be sticking to a job, and that’s going to end up killing his chances.  (Though it may be better if he did opt out of his job.)

* Due to historical problems with that insult, the word “monkey” is sort of null and void for this particular President.  I regret the error.

‘Twas a matter of only a week or two ago when we were entreated with new polling data that Americans considered themselves “Pro-Life” moreso than “Pro-Choice”.  This is one of those matters that has so much static noise in it that there is not too much to say about it.

So George Tiller is Assassinated.  And the nation affirms itself as, indeed, Pro-Life.  We’re all against that Murder.  Except, I suppose, we’re really only a mouse-quick away from finding people who aren’t.  And we’re only a Randal Terry press conference from finding people who aren’t particularly, (the “aren’t” is qualified with the “particularly”).

Go back further, a couple summers ago.  The movie Juno inspires some anti-abortion activists, evangelical Jim Wallis, to pull for the “Juno Option”, based on the scenario in the good not great movie.  Part of the “Common Cause ” we all kind of sort of agree with, unless we don’t, and which the shooter quite clearly doesn’t.  It is cited as a reason to back off Bristol Palin’s pregnancy won’t detract, and probably help, with Evangelical voters to the McCain / Palin ticket — Choose Life, and what, are you rooting for her to grab an Abortion?

Come November of 2008, the good people of Arkansas voted to ban the unmarried from adopting, by way of making sure homosexuals don’t adopt.  It’s worth noting that this was a vote against the, quote-in-quote”Juno Option”, wherein the pregnant teenager ends with giving her child up to the now divorced woman (always wanted a child, as against the man who had a mid-life crisis and didn’t much want to go in for parenting).  And so the complications of real life scenario for a movie, slide right past the good intentions of your Jim Wallises — who, granted, would not take part in supporting such a measure, and would settle for making sure the Democratic Party Platform plank on Abortion stresses the viability of Adopting and what a shame it is Abortion.

I have long grown weary of this semi-rhetorical question to assess logic — a question which I’ve seen posed in ways unlike “Damon Linker” in a way that suggests a certain level of respect for the extremists as against the wussy “pro-life” encampment who “apparently don’t have the courage of their convciction”.  I’ve never been quite sure where this rhetorical question is supposed to lead — to settle internal inconsistencies one way or the other, and am slightly chagrined that the NR blog post gets favorable links while this Will Saletin slate article is deplored a tad — though lays as bare as that other one the “Don’t quite mean it” for the boldness of “is murder”, or if so, um, “War is not the Answer“.