Will Obama use force to hold onto power?

An article in American Thinker speculates that President Obama will stage a military coup if he is not reelected. The proof of this is mainly the amount of ammunition that non-military governmental organizations such as Social Security and NOAA have recently purchased. The rest of it comes from the call over the last three years to suspend elections or the rule of law for a period of time due to the national financial emergency so that Obama and (the Democrats in) Congress can fix the country.

Should we start worrying?

No.

It turns out that large governmental organizations have their own security forces (i.e. guards) who burn up a lot of ammunition at the qualifying range. That is where most of the ammunition is going.

There is also a catch-22 about the type of ammunition used. Hollow-point rounds are commonly used by police because they are less likely to pierce walls and hurt innocents. Full jacket rounds are required for the military by international law because the wounds they create are more survivable. If an agency buys hollow-point rounds it is seen as sinister because they are more lethal. If jacketed rounds are bought then it is sinister because they are "military-style" rounds.

But none of this answers the question, "Who will be firing these rounds?" Does anyone seriously think that guards armed with handguns are going to take over the country?

Any real coup would require the assistance of the military. They are the ones with the big guns and they are not big supporters of the President. At one point Obama had to relieve the general in charge of Afghanistan after it got out that he allowed his staff to be openly contemptuous of the President. I can't see the military supporting an overthrow of the Constitution for this president.

With the exception of Thomas Friedman who is enamored with Chinese-style dictatorship, most of the calls for Obama to take personal charge of the government faded as soon as it became clear that he is just another politicians instead of a Jedi Knight or a Worker in Light. Other calls to scale back our level of democracy have fallen flat.

A little historic perspective will help evaluate the Obama/coup fears. George H. W. Bush once used the term "new world order". He meant a world in which powerful countries could not invade and absorb weaker neighbors as Iraq tried to do with. Many people felt that this was a code for an expanded UN government.

During the Clinton years there were persistent rumors that black helicopters were circling the major US cities. At a signal from President Clinton, they were going to land and disgorge UN troops who would conduct house-to-house searches to disarm the citizenry. The US would then become ruled by the UN.

The Left was just as susceptible to these theories. The mildest of these was that the Republicans had taken control of all of the machines used to tabulate elections and used these to give themselves an edge. The wilder theories insisted that George W. Bush had already instituted a fascist government and would never surrender control to a Democrat when Bush's term ended.

When his time comes, either in January of 1213 or 1217, Obama will peacefully relinquish power. He will do it with poor grace but he will do it. He doesn't really have a choice.