Secret Service strained to protect Obama.

[U-said-it]

An internal congressional report questioning the ability of the Secret Service to continue fulfilling its duties was leaked to the Boston Globe. The report says the Secret Service is strained by a drastic increase in threats to President Obama, coupled with deep budget cuts. Some are speculating that the agency may need to relinquish all or part of its roles in protecting the country's financial machinery in order to focus resources on the protection of the president and other high-profile leaders.

...

Talking Points Memo noted that Ronald Kessler, the author of a recently released book on the Secret Service's protection of U.S. presidents, recently said that threats against President Obama are up 400 percent from the number of threats levied against former President George W. Bush, while the size of the agency's staff has only increased by 5.3 percent.

-Full Article-

This news is a bit old, I know. But... it makes me wonder why people have claimed that it's no different than what other Presidents have gone through. It seems to me that the reason is quite clear, Racism.

None of that Democrats are just as bad, or Obama is just as bad as Bush crap would really explain this.

After all Obama didn't lead the country into a recession, or start multiple wars. And even with a much higher approval ratings average, he still gets 4 time the amount of death threats...

[BlueCrab]

I don't believe for a minute that its all about Racism. I'm sure there's some influence that it plays, but I think the major influence is certain members of the "media" and even some members of Congress that feel that its a good thing to drive a wedge between people in this country. The Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity type of people are the ones that I feel are really to blame for this kind of crap -- criticizing every little thing that the President does and never ceasing in their fear-mongering.

Why can't everyone just get along and try to come to common grounds with one another? This crap didn't happen with Clinton, and it didn't even really happen with GW Bush either.

[Code-Red]

No, US, it is your racism. I can smell it from up here.

- Canada

[Chilly Willy]

Actually, with 9-11 and paranoia, "death threats" has a much different meaning now than ten years ago. I'd bet anything that 99% of the "death threats" sent to Obama would have just been called "angry letters" a decade ago. People have gotten so paranoid lately that we see school kids arrested for writing stories where a fictitious character kills his classmates. When I was in high school, we called that "creative writing" - now it's called "death threats".

[Ex-Cyber]

I think it's more a broader sense among conservatives that Obama is "not one of us", which can be any combination of things like: not a Republican, not conservative, not anti-abortion, not anti-immigration, not pro-gun, not a believer in American exceptionalism, not white, not Christian, not suburban/rural, and ultimately (often literally) not American. This sense of group identity/loyalty is generally much more important to conservatives than it is to liberals, which is one of the reasons that you generally see more Democrats than Republicans breaking ranks.

This crap didn't happen with Clinton, and it didn't even really happen with GW Bush either.

I think it did happen with Clinton, but it wasn't quite as brazen or as personal as it is with Obama. Plenty of people were circulating the Clinton Body Count document and similar bullshit 10-15 years ago, and a lot of the current anti-Obama/anti-government rhetoric currently being tossed around is basically recycled from the Clinton years. Even though it's nominally anti-government, its expression tends to be anti-liberal and anti-Democrat in practice.