A Republican State Legislator in Tennessee emailed constituents warning of a “fake” assassination plot by the Obama administration so Obama can declare martial law and refuse to hold this year’s elections. Seriously.
A Republican member of the Tennessee state legislature emailed constituents Tuesday morning with a rumor circulating in conservative circles that President Barack Obama is planning to stage a fake assassination attempt in an effort to stop the 2012 election from happening.
Rep. Kelly Keisling (R-Byrdstown) sent an email from his state email account to constituents containing a rumor that Obama and the Department of Homeland Security are planning a series of events that could lead to the imposition of “martial law” and delay the election. Among the events hypothesized in the email is a staged assassination attempt on the president that would lead to civil unrest in urban areas and martial law.
You ever wonder why your right wing, Fox News loving, Tea Party joining friends and relatives are so crazy when it comes to Obama, why they call him a dictator, why they think he’s out to steal their guns and other “unspecified” freedoms? Well, this is one reason. Emails from GOP elected officials like this one.
Back in the day, only the John Birchers and the KKK were this nuts. Since the nomination of Palin, this is your new Republican Party, from top to bottom. You know, the one that controls the House of Representatives, and many governorships and state legislatures. It’s enough to make you wish Dubya and Cheney were still the face of the Elephant party.
I didn’t see this from any Democratic leaders but there were rumors about George W. doing the same thing in 2008.
I guess the difference is that Democratic leaders aren’t stupid enough to buy into it and send a mass email to their constituents.
That’s because most of today’s Democratic “leaders” would have been Rockefeller Republicans 30 years ago. Whether that is the corrupting influence of whoring themselves out for campaign cash, you can decide.
Well now, that’s off-topic and gratuitious.
Seemed to me, as I recall, that the folks who would have made those claims about Bush the Lesser were also ones who got much of their info from Alex Jones’ various websites. Just sayin’.
I heard it from a lot of liberal friends outside of that circle.
I’ve developed a reputation in my non-blogging life of being very unkind to conspiracy theorists, so it is very conceivable that there are folks who I knew who identified as Democratic who held such views but who simply refused to say anything in front of me, or who chose to exclude me from their mass email lists.
I was thinking Democratic Underground ca. 2003. But yes, it was from fringe loonies, not from actual elected officials.
A lot of us were afraid Bush was going to pull something like that. Of course, Bush gave us reason to be concerned. So much of his administration was “extra-constitutional.” Cheney went so far as to declare the vice presidency outside the constitution. Then he shot a guy in the face and the guy apologized to him. So it’s not surprising a lot of us felt like we were somewhere in the Twilight Zone.
What has Obama done to justify such fears other than the unforgivable transgression of being black.
The gentleman needs a gentle visit from the Secret Service to ask him what he knows and who told him. This, unfortunately, would be the perfect sucker punch for a real assassination attempt. Take him seriously and see if he backs down.
Absolutely. This appears to be copied from the rumor floated by the extreme right after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, that Rabin had “staged” an assassination attempt against himself to win sympathy and discredit the religious right, which “attempt” then got out of hand. I link to just one such example, and in doing so I have to emphasize that it is unmitigated bullshit from beginning to end. There are plenty of people who believe it and promulgate it, but I am quite sure that those who originally made it up knew perfectly well that it is not true.
http://www.freeman.org/m_online/dec99/winston.htm
And so too for the disinformation specialists that concocted this latest rumor. We need to know who they are. So, yes, the Secret Service ought to do its job.
Sorry, the money quote comes quite far down, this is what I wanted to call to your attention:
“There has always been suspicion that this was intended to be merely an unsuccessful assassination attempt in order to elevate the flagging prospects of Rabin’s reelection. But, something went wrong – not by accident, but by intent. Rabin had become disenchanted with the Olso Peace Process initiated by Peres, possibly in cooperation with foreign interests (U.S., E.U., U.N., et al), denials notwithstanding. A dead Rabin with Peres as his automatic successor, would allow Oslo to continue. Oslo was the main overriding objective of Peres and Clinton. Would the death of one man stand in the way of a regional plan, supported by economic interests in the U.S. and Europe? I don’t think so. The subsequent government explanation and the follow-on investigation were so deliberately botched that no thinking person could accept the published results.”
And I’m just shocked, shocked, that Rep. Kelly Keisling (R-Byrdstown) is an old white guy! Shocked, I tell you!
I don’t think it’s very funny, actually. Somebody is sowing disinformation, big time.
The guy is probably just amazed the crazies who vote for him haven’t tried an attempt already, knows that if they do it is more likely to happen closer to the election, and wants to pre-emptively misinform the populace about what such an assassination attempt means.
Yes, that’s basically it, but such a scenario could have much wider implications.
Let’s put it like this. Certain factions of extreme right-wing crazies believe that Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination was the result of a fake “assassination” attempt staged to gain sympathy for him, that went awry. The same crazies are associating that story with the Obama rumor. So I don’t see anything funny about this and I hope Mr. Keisling will be hearing from the U.S. Secret Service shortly.
Wow! This is bigger than the birth certificate scandal.
From the Big Book Of Republican Fairy Tales: Iraqi WMDs, Death Panels and Obama assassination attempts.
Miss you yet? Actually, no.
You? You mean, like . . . the worst president ever? No!
The conservatives have always been this nuts.
But back in the day Bill Buckley made a much more respectable front than Sarah Palin ever could.
He made a great show of rejecting the Birchers.
What a fraud that was.