And it wasn’t all that funny the first time.
And what better way to ensure we keep doing that? By egging us on. If they could get us to go into another country, we’d be stretched thinner, have more people pissed off at us, and be spending even more money. Cause your enemy to overextend himself and you can knock him over with a feather at your leasure.
One other thing I just thought of, is if you’re guarding Obama and he gets killed, your name will come out during the investigation, and quite possibly your photograph. There’s going to be an awful lot of people who’re going to want to see you dead. So, not only are you going to be worrying about the President’s ass getting shot, but yours as well (and being shuttled off into the Witness Relocation Program is no guarantee of safety, either).
I was gonna pop in and say radar too. I’ve seen some Military Channel program showing a system that I believe has seen limited deployment in Iraq as a counter-sniper device. It shows a rough bearing to where the bullet came from.
Personally, though, I doubt that some kind of snap up shields would be in place to stop the first bullet fired. It seems more likely they would be deployed at the first indication someone hostile has a gun. Maybe at a code shouted by an SS agent, maybe after a first shot to prevent additional hits. I think most presidential assassinations may have failed if the attackers weren’t able to get off multiple shots, or if leter shots were interdicted. Except for Lincoln. Kennedy probably would have survived if screens had popped up after the first shot. I don’t think Reagan was hit with the first shot, so he might not have been hit at all if things popped out after the first shot. But he was on his feet on the move, and I doubt that kind of protection would have been available in that situation.
Gonna be more common. I remember during the Clinton era, how the conservaporn ‘we’re heading towards commufascism’ alarmist fiction writers would talk about how the SS was under the president’s control and they had secret tanks and so on.
Hell, he might nuke them too if they got too close when he’s hunting quails.
I still can’t get over that one…
No ONE will hurt Bush, not as long as Vader is waiting in the wings.
It’s like I tell my neighbor…I’m of firm belief that Obama will be assassinated if he’s elected. To me, it’s a pretty sure thing simply because there are so many rasicts in the world. It’s sad, really.
Don’t get me wrong, I agree with the “Fuck you” to all of them, but I still think Obama has a very good chance of being assassinated (or at least having a lot more attempts happening) because there’s already a lot of attempts on the white ones. This one is black. So it’s like the anger and disgust by some people is higher and wider spread.
Shoot, a fella could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff.
In the movie Vantage Point, the president has a double who goes to a public speech for him.
Ok, yes I know it’s a movie, but I really wonder if they actually use doubles for the president. It seems like a wise option, and if they do it’s unlikely to be widely known.
Maybe I should just start an actual thread on the subject.
We might be overthinking this whole idea. The barrier doesn’t have to be automatic. It could be something that’s manually triggered with a remote, if one of the Secret Service guards sees someone rushing the stage with a handgun. Not much good against snipers, but aside from Kennedy, most of the presidential assassination attempts in our nation’s history have been made with handguns, not rifles.
Or, it might be triggered by the sound of the gunshot, but with the expectation that it probably won’t stop the first bullet, but can provide cover from any follow up shots. Again, not an ideal safeguard, but still helpful if the first shot doesn’t prove fatal.
I would personally doubt that a double would be allowed to give a speech, just because any bullshit that spills out of the Pres’s mouth becomes policy that the administration has to support and defend. I would also doubt that they would use a double to stand, wave and travel while the real Pres goes somewhere else. It just seems we would have heard claims about the Pres being two places at once, and journalists would be running around trying to track down how this happened. But that’s IMO, of course I have no actual knowledge.
Yup, see my post #63.
That series works by having a series of microphones and detecting when the sound hits each of them, from that you can get a decent idea of where the sound originated. It won’t go into affect until after the first round whizzes by.
As far as assassination, what’s always scared me is an inside job. At an outdoor appearance, there are so many armed men running around - dozens of secret service agents, snipers on the rooftops, military with rifles - all it takes is for one of them to be either a dedicated sleeper agent or just nutty.
http://www.shotspotter.com/. Similar concept.
On the positive side, they give out free shot glasses at trade shows. On the negative side, their salesman is one of the most obnoxious little twerps I’ve ever met.
-Joe
I’m usually not an alarmist, but I’m starting to be concerned about this too. He’s the most charismatic public figure we’ve seen for a long time, and charismatic public figures seem to be targets of choice.
I ran across a couple of message boards while debunking another crazy Obama e-mail yesterday, and I was amazed at the open hate out there, the stuff people say without being called out on it.