Happy Bastille Day to those who celebrate. –lambert
Where are all the butterflies this summer? Their absence is telling us something important Guardian
These Are the Best U.S. National Parks—and They’re Not Even That Crowded WSJ
Climate
‘It’s good news’: Scientists suspect history about to be made in China Sydney Morning Herald
Extreme weather halts container traffic at Cape of Good Hope Container News
Climate change and shareholder value: Evidence from textual analysis and Trump’s unexpected victory Journal of Business Research. “Firms exposed to climate change saw a reduction in shareholder wealth after Trump’s election.”
Montana’s High Court Considers a Constitutional Right to a Stable Climate Inside Climate News
The predicament of climate scientists on the road to a super tropical Earth Arctic News
Syndemics
Eminem slams people who refuse to wear masks in new song with Kid Cudi CNN
US COVID-19 activity rising steadily Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy
NYC COVID cases up 250% in 2 months — and this variant’s harder to duck Gothamist
China?
Trump rally shooting: Chinese online retailers quick off the mark with souvenir T-shirts and How the Trump Pennsylvania rally shooting looked from China South China Morning Post
‘Opportune’ timing: Why the Philippines is filing a seabed bid in the South China Sea, and the likely outcome Channel News Asia
Myanmar
The Difference Between Chinese and Western Peace Efforts in Myanmar The Irrawaddy
Buddhist Pacifists at War JSTOR Daily
Africa
‘We are the Church’: Kenyan tax protesters take on Christian leaders BBC
Syraqistan
Road to Redemption: Israel Seized 26 Percent of Gaza. Now, Jewish Settlers See Their Chance Haaretz
Israeli strike targets the Hamas military commander and kills at least 90 in southern Gaza AP
Revealed: America’s Secret Special Forces Flights to Israel from UK Base on Cyprus Declassified UK
Footage Shows Palestinian Militia Take Out Israeli Merkava Tank at Zero Range Military Watch
European Disunion
NATO’s bad boys: Turkey and Hungary play their own game Politico
Dear Old Blighty
The Election Where Nothing Changed Craig Murray
First Covid inquiry report to set out ‘appalling failures’ during pandemic Guardian
New Not-So-Cold War
NATO Is Helping Ukraine to Fight—but Not to Win Foreign Policy
Ukrainian Men Desperate to Escape War Are Drowning as They Flee WSJ
Ukraine’s F-16 Ambitions Snarled by Language Barrier, Runways and Parts Bloomberg
Zelenskyy asks US governors to cooperate with Ukrainian oblasts Ukrainska Pravda
* * * NATO SUMMIT: Collectively Losing Their Minds Joe Lauria, Consortium News
Russia threatens European capitals over US missile deployment Ukrainska Pravda
‘The Great Game’ versus ‘Evening with Vladimir Solovyov’: Russian talk shows today Glibert Doctorow
We need a rational discussion about the Russian threat Responsible Statecraft
* * * Russia increases income taxes for the wealthy to help fund Ukraine offensive France24
US announces new pact to boost shipbuilding, Arctic fleet The Hill
2024
I have a round-up on the Trump assassination coming later, so if you run across any informative, evidence-heavy links, do feel free to live them in comments. Thanks! –lambert
Trump is SHOT in the side of the head and left with blood strewn across his face in horrifying assassination attempt Daily Mail. Commentary:
DONALD TRUMP RELEASES STATEMENT ON TRUTH SOCIAL!
His immediate reaction saved his life. This man was trained to WIN.
GOD BLESS AMERICA! 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/m4buN1i7FK
— Naomi Seibt (@SeibtNaomi) July 14, 2024
Playbook: Shots fired at Trump Politico
OnPolitics: Assassination attempt on Trump USA Today
Thomas Matthew Crooks ID’d as gunman who shot Trump during Pa. rally NY Post
* * * Biden backers risk deluding their party into defeat LA Times
Washingtonology and Bidenism Abroad New Left Review
Should Biden take a cognitive test? Here’s what it would — and wouldn’t — tell us LA Times
* * * Can Biden run out the clock? Politico
Why There is No Ballot Access Problem for the Ohio Democratic Party Presidential Ticket Ballot Access News. Commentary:
Is the DNC still planning an early, virtual vote of the delegates, weeks before the convention, to officially designate the nominees?
OH moved it's filing date to after the convention, so what would the purpose be of an early nominating vote?— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) July 12, 2024
The Supremes
Supreme Court Chevron Decision Explained: Why It Matters Teen Vogue
Police State Watch
Protests Erupt in Utica After Brutal Police Killing of 13-Year-Old Refugee Unicorn Riot
Digital Watch
Crooks Steal Phone, SMS Records for Nearly All AT&T Customers Krebs and Security
Google can totally explain why Chromium browsers quietly tell only its websites about your CPU, GPU usage The Register
Net neutrality rules reinstatement temporarily halted by US appeals court Reuters
Zeitgeist Watch
Dr. Ruth Westheimer, America’s diminutive and pioneering sex therapist, dies at 96 AP
Healthcare
The Emergence of Protein Organ Clocks Eric Topol, Ground Truths
Class Warfare
Dollar General to Pay $12 Million to Settle Alleged U.S. Store Safety Violations WSJ
The Symbolic Professions Are Super WEIRD Symbolic Capital(ism)
Harley Will Ride or Die With the Graybeards WSJ
Antidote du jour (Kpjas):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
here is the video of the Trump chaos, with no commentary. 2min, 46 sec. length https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9-j3KLSA4ak
all happened in less than 10 secs. and if your are not on social media, it’s lit up with what happened from 0:10 to 1:30, the post-shooting visuals.
Media coverage just flipped away, and it may be only briefly, from the Democratic party shenanigans to remove or replace somehow Biden on their national ticket for POTUS. Not the 34 convictions. And the RNC convention starts this week.
Joe Biden may still stand a chance to win, but anyone replacing him now would be on a fools errand as they have to swallow the harsh truth of facts on the ground, today until November.
I hate to assign work, but do we have anything from a site like C-Span?
PBS do? Pretty good coverage. Live mic throughout the incident.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RgEu4Lzcts
Full event – https://www.c-span.org/video/?536813-1/president-donald-trump-campaigns-butler-pa
Featured clip – https://www.c-span.org/video/?c5123735/shots-fired-trump-rally
From looking at that second clip, I have the impression that all those SS agents were wearing body armour. I wonder if Trump was? With that white shirt on, it was hard to tell as he is bulky at the best of times.
to stop a rifle bullet, you need a lot of body ***plating**, (which would be obvious to a normie)
…not just something like a patrol cop’s vest.
No but there’s this:
https://apnews.com/live/election-biden-trump-campaign-updates-07-13-2024
Very disheartening event, and a disheartening set of circumstances leading up to it (polarizing “nation/democracy at stake” rhetoric on both sides and possibly widespread impairment of executive function in the population due to COVID sequelae).
The thought occurs that this is not a great time (in the progress of the pandemic) to be seeking medical attention. I have heard that the White House has become somewhat scrupulous about trying to reduce reinfection risk for POTUS. Perhaps the Secret Service will insist that all medical personnel attending DJT will be properly equipped with effective PPE.
Working link for “We need a rational discussion about the Russian threat” article at-
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/russia-threat/
Russia was never a threat until the west launched the Ukrainians at Russia and tore up the nuke treaties so that nuclear-tipped missiles could be stationed in Europe. If they have become our enemies, it is because we made them that way. They are doing the same to China and now the west is shocked that China and Russia are now rock solid allies and won’t listen to our threats anymore.
Thanks, fixed!
Putin was incredibly pro-West (somehow I can’t stop thinking about the way Russia still seems to revolve around the old Slavophile vs Westernizer discourse), to the point he repeatedly made some critical errors because he naively thought he could trust their word (the Soviets were very poor at the whole deception business, whereas the West has some centuries of broken treaties and bad faith to fall back upon). The fact that the US political elite managed to force Putin’s hand with a war declaration speaks more to their utter incompetence than about any internal movement inside Russia.
Clinton stopped considering Putin’s request to join NATO.
Even then the US “establishment” was going for all of Eurasia!
Clinton brought in Talbot and Nuland in 1993!
US empire’s march eastward!
https://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/05/opinion/a-fateful-error.html
February 5, 1997
A Fateful Error
By George F. Kennan
In late 1996, the impression was allowed, or caused, to become prevalent that it had been somehow and somewhere decided to expand NATO up to Russia’s borders. This despite the fact that no formal decision can be made before the alliance’s next summit meeting, in June.
The timing of this revelation — coinciding with the Presidential election and the pursuant changes in responsible personalities in Washington — did not make it easy for the outsider to know how or where to insert a modest word of comment. Nor did the assurance given to the public that the decision, however preliminary, was irrevocable encourage outside opinion.
But something of the highest importance is at stake here. And perhaps it is not too late to advance a view that, I believe, is not only mine alone but is shared by a number of others with extensive and in most instances more recent experience in Russian matters. The view, bluntly stated, is that expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era.
Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking. And, last but not least, it might make it much more difficult, if not impossible, to secure the Russian Duma’s ratification of the Start II agreement and to achieve further reductions of nuclear weaponry.
It is, of course, unfortunate that Russia should be confronted with such a challenge at a time when its executive power is in a state of high uncertainty and near-paralysis. And it is doubly unfortunate considering the total lack of any necessity for this move. Why, with all the hopeful possibilities engendered by the end of the cold war, should East-West relations become centered on the question of who would be allied with whom and, by implication, against whom in some fanciful, totally unforeseeable and most improbable future military conflict?
I am aware, of course, that NATO is conducting talks with the Russian authorities in hopes of making the idea of expansion tolerable and palatable to Russia. One can, in the existing circumstances, only wish these efforts success. But anyone who gives serious attention to the Russian press cannot fail to note that neither the public nor the Government is waiting for the proposed expansion to occur before reacting to it.
Russians are little impressed with American assurances that it reflects no hostile intentions…
Thank you.
I would suggest that Kennan lost influence in the US as Truman became a war president reneging on any semblance of the Morgenthau protocols to honor Russian/USSR desires for Germany/West Europe never again do a Napoleon or Hitler.
Kennan had advocated a diplomatic “cold war” not a military industry complex business plan.
Back to a State Dept intent on being the war dept.
Trump Shooting
Brian Berletic has some very interesting observations regarding Trump shooting. He starts with basic Secret Service procedure would never allow a flag to fly next to a candidate’s head who is under protection, because that provides a would be sniper information on wind direction and strength to be compensated for a direct hit. He covers examples of how it’s been confirmed government agencies like FBI sponsor terrorist events, bombings, shoots, and why they do. He closes by asking to consider what might be the purpose of sponsoring a shooting like this, who benefits?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6-z0PqTKeU&t=8s
Incompetence often looks the same as malice.(understaffed Secret Service detail plus local authorities who are absolutely not regularly-trained for counter-sniper tactics)
One junior high drone afcionado would have caught the shooter, who would be caught on the roof.
Given how RFK *still* has no Sec. Service detail, I can concede there is malice at the head of DHS/White House.
Shooting visuals = biggest GOP turnout for a looong time….particularly among the lapsed “I hate them both”, “lower-case c” conservatives.-‐-aka one plank of the Bernie core. in my opinion
‘Given how RFK *still* has no Sec. Service detail’
I couldn’t believe what you just wrote but when I checked, found it to be true. From 3 days ago-
https://www.newsweek.com/rfk-jr-continues-seek-secret-service-protection-threats-detailed-foia-response-1915057
Are they trying for a trifecta of assassinated Kennedys?
Are they trying for a trifecta of assassinated Kennedys? I’d wager yes indeed. We are living “Game of Thrones”.
Apparently the T campaign has been asking for beefed up Secret Service protection at his rallies. Requests have been denied by B’s DHS head A. Mayorkas. (Even if the Dems win this fall it’s time for Mayorkas to go, imo, for his many failures.)
BBC reporter interviewed a man who saw the sniper moving on the roof, the response to his warning was inadequate!
No, it appears a counter-sniper was trying to line-up a shot on the shooter: the warnings were not ignored.
https://x.com/coladoggxxx/status/1812285847921910241
That’s a good point about the presence of that flag, What I want to know is why those other building were uncovered by the SS detail. The counter-sniper fire shows two shooters. So why wasn’t one of them on the roof top that that sniper was on. That Crook character probably couldn’t believe his luck when he saw that that roof top was clear with nobody guarding them.
not enough bodies in the Sec. Service detail. those two police snipers are regularly trained to take out hostage takers, not do active counter-sniper work. two totally different beasts.
Given how seemingly no one (of any polticial persuasion) accepts that negligence/incompetence looks just like malice….some on the Left are going to keep thinkingt was staged/a psy-op with a teleprompter
If Trump was shot dead yesterday, we would be at 1860 Fort Sumter levels of crisis.
Good thing that the perp did not ponder that a 78 y.o. shot in the chest (multiple times) would likely bleed out in the car ride to the hospital and/or die after hours of intensive surgery,. perp. had to plan his shooting just like the movies!
Just like the movies–exactly. One doesn’t have to blame Biden’s “bullseye” remark (made to some donors) or Trump as Hitler on the cover of New Republic since young men shooting people to make themselves posthumously famous is a common enough event these days.
But there’s little doubt that lots on the Dem side wanted him dead and have said so. Tarentino’s Dirty Rotten Basterds is their level of self identification. If you could kill Hitler wouldn’t you? It’s all just a movie after all.
Not that Trump’s bizarre costume party rallies don’t also seem unserious with thousands of non Americans dying overseas at the whim of our leaders. Obama’s flip remark-“turns out I’m very good at killling people”–sums us up. Time for a change of heart at the top.
You’ll shoot your ear out, kid.
All I really heard at Biden’s comeback presser @ NATO was a neo-Joseph Goebbels pressing for Total War, except for that one bit where he greatly raised his voice in talking about children killed by bullets, the horror.
He could in no way, shape or form, compare little bullets to 155mm bullets.
“Live by the sword, die by the sword”
What praetorians!
Turley already has his talking points teed up (he has a new book) but he’s not wrong.
https://jonathanturley.org/2024/07/14/the-attempted-assassination-of-trump-is-not-nearly-as-surprising-as-it-should-be/
People like Maddow are utterly irresponsible in their rhetoric and their only defense is that the Republicans have never been shy about ad hominem either with 1990s Gingrich accusing the Dems for the nation’s crime and any bad event. But even Gingrich was not as unhinged as Maddow or Hillary’s Russiagate and now the supposedly respectable media are all too willing to pile on. They must be worried to be so extreme. Some might go so far as to say that the DEI movement is a desperate attempt by these overprivileged to seem virtuous.
Lots of examples of loose dem lips in that piece.
Pretty interesting coming out of the mouths of those who relentlessly characterize Trump’s call to his J6 supporters to “peacefully and patriotically” march on the capitol as a call for violent insurrection, government overthrow, and destruction of “democracy.”
It’s being “reported” this morning that the biden campaign has pulled some of its ads down. Hmm…wonder what they were about and why they’re suddenly unacceptable.
It seem like that they don’t even make perps the way they used to. The guy that tried to assasinate Fico fired mulitple shots while standing next to him.
Sorry, your last para sounds like giving instructions. Maybe it was satire and I missed the joke.
How did he know the roof was empty before he climbed up with a rifle? Given the proximity to the arena etc it would not have been unreasonable to assume there would be a cop on the roof.
Sounds like a ‘conspiracy theory’, like the ones that seem to become fact with alarming regularity recently.
I linked to a video yesterday which shows that from the ground you could see the roof itself without having to climb it. So all he had to do was walk by to see that there was nobody there, grab his gear and then climb it-
https://x.com/sentdefender/status/1812268165209928124
An aerial view on map makes it obvious that entire compound should have been secured. It’s freaking adjacent! With a view and an angle.
Guy witnessed the shooter climbing up to building roof to position, tried to warn police and secret service. X-twtr
https://x.com/EndWokeness/status/1812273630702952543
The Secret Service anti sniper operation utterly failed in front of the entire world!
We must find the reason!
Lot of claims made about B’s supposed dog whistle in a speech last week. I think B was just doing his usual wtf speechifying. Note to B’s handlers: take the phrase “put the bullseye on Trump” out of B’s speeches. Ya know ? / ;)
I will watch the Berletic video, but I stopped watching him a while back when he drifted away from strictly technical analysis and into analysis where he used political/ideological arguments, that I felt he did not really understand (or maybe chose not to due to his own biases).
I will say this. No way was the shooter antifa, as I have seen claimed repeatedly. Not sure of Berletic touches on this, but they shooter had a shirt with a US flag on the sleeve, and no-way would an anti-fascist ever touch a US flag, unless they were in the process of desecrating it. I also will try to post links, hopefully successfully using explicit instructions that Lambert was kind enough to provide me with. The first one shows a screenshot of voter registration data, which could have been doctored, I suppose, but it did not show any signs of editing to my eye. This shows that Crooks was registered as a Republican (also fits with the flag on the shirt).
Voter registration screenshot sourced from Twitter
I could not figure out how to put the second link into the previous post, so here is the second link which is to video of the counter-sniper team that killed the shooter. They would not have seen him until he popped his head over the roof line, but they appear to have been alerted and were looking for the shooter, and instinctively ducked when incoming fire occurred. They looked like they were quickly getting back to sighting on their target, but the video cuts out before they send the actual shot. I have also since watched Berletic’s video. He is misunderstanding a couple of things. The people that saw the shooter climbing the roof were not part of the spectator crowd- they were OUTSIDE the perimeter of the venue basically having something like a tailgate party, and were thus behind the building roof the shooter was climbing, and had a different vantage than the counter sniper team, who again, would not have seen the shooter until he popped over the roof line, and he would have presented a very small target cross section- likely only his head and shoulders. I’m personally kind of stunned that security did not have a drone up for aerial coverage, given how cheap drones are.
Counter sniper team video sourced from Twitter
Indeed!
I’ll venture to say that ‘Lot Cop’ in the parking lot @ Wal*Mart is a more effective system than the secret service had deployed yesterday.
Well- I owe everyone an apology. It seems the identification of the shooter – supposedly by law enforcement when I read the name, was incorrect. I guess it’s time to sit back and let the dust clear a bit more.
The shooter was NOT Crooks who shares a video of himself very much still alive
This gives us at least 3 separate, independent data points of (at best) utter and total incompetence on the part of the SS 1. The flag 2. The unsecured roof 3. Ignoring warning from bystanders
At some point, it becomes too much incompetence to swallow.
Is it just me, or is today’s antidote a totally transparent creature in front of a totally transparent background?
Can’t you see it? It’s plain and clear. It’s a polar bear hiding behind a snow bank in the middle of a snow storm.
It’s an extraordinarily cute kitten. Now, anyhow.
This would appear to be a NC first, an “anti-Cheshire kitten.”
I didn’t watch closely; did the facial expression appear first?
Schrödinger’s cast?
If only there was a famous reference for a cat which is both there and not there
I guess it’s not super important but has anyone seen official confirmation that Trump was struck by a bullet? If yes he is very lucky. Some interwebs are saying the bullet actually hit Trump’s teleprompter and sent shattered glass flying and that’s what injured Trump. It would explain since things but for now it’s just rumor. Either way, I’m glad Trump is ok despite politics.
Watch an uncut video of the scene….that (imo) is clearly the reaction of a man who got shot.
and the mic picked up everything, except the sound of shattering teleprompter. Hospital made a statement asto Trump’s wound.
and here is a picture taken by a photog. journalist ofthe 1st bullet missing trump’s head with the contrail of the bullet caught in the frame…
Trump literally is alive due tothe random statistical nature of a bullet in flight and the randomness of the wind/weather conditions.
https://x.com/HarazGhanbari/status/1812280749745410196
There is video on twitter of Trump taken from behind. It shows that he was partially presenting his profile to the shooter, but at the moment of the trigger being pulled Trump turns his head more directly towards his right ( &the gunman)
That results in the bullet grazing only the side of his head/ear.
https://x.com/search?q=trump%20video%20from%20behind%20POV&src=typed_query&f=top
Ha. I was just thinking about Frederick Forsyth’s book “The Day of the Jackal” where an assassin is hired to kill Charles De Gaulle. De Gaulle is at a parade and the assassin readies his shot. Just as he has his headshot lined up and is pulling his trigger, De Gaulle snaps his head forward to kiss the soldier on each cheek causing the exploding bullet, to the assassin’s disbelief, to miss by inches-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_of_the_Jackal
Ken Klippenstein saying it was potentially a shard(s) of glass (that was hit by bullet(s).
Ah, the downplaying begins. / ;)
I guess “potentially” is doing a lot of work for me (and Klip) there, but not intending to downplay anything. Trump said bullet, maybe it was just that, maybe it was both
I’ve heard multiple people on CBS making that same assertion but I have yet to see any footage or images of a damaged teleprompter — they all look completely intact.
Wildfire: We’ve Already Normalized Assassination
>> It wasn’t long before a part of me was saying, “It was just an assassination attempt.”
>> Everyone keeps talking about our mental health crisis, but they want to blame phones. They don’t want to admit that feeling sad, angry, lost, hopeless, or abandoned is a healthy, appropriate emotion given the current state of things. Those aren’t economically productive emotions.
Nippersdad:
>> You give Obama and Pelosi far too little credit for having legalized and normalized all of Bush’s depredations. He could have been an object lesson, but instead he was made the norm.
‘Normalized’ today is dependent upon what is absent, the Uncomformity, unburdened by what has been. In absentia.
Turns out it is in fact true that what comes around goes around. When spooks get used to the political expediency of assassination in the Third World, it then becomes a consideration to use at home as well: the genie is well out of the bottle now.
It’s been out of the bottle longer than you suggest, think of all the assassinations that occurred in the sixties, including Fred Hampton. Most of those killings seemed to target liberal politicians, or leftist individuals. It would be somewhat of a change if the killings become nonpartisan. And I don’t think that spooks were behind yesterday’s events. As of this moment, I believe that the individual shooter acted alone, and in a way that professional assassins do not. As to candidates receiving increased federal security through the civil service, that’s another question. But if someone has the ability, and the intent to murder someone, then no person is completely safe. And if the murderer has no hesitation to spare the lives of those close to the target, then that safety is that much reduced. Not to be gross, really, but if the perpetrator had used something much more lethal, like a bomb, the outcome would certainly have been worse.
Bombs are unreliable as an assassination method. See Hitler/Von Stauffenberg as one famous example.
My dad was 17 when Reinhard Heydrich was assassinated by bomb in Prague…
“Everyone keeps talking about our mental health crisis, but they want to blame phones. They don’t want to admit that feeling sad, angry, lost, hopeless, or abandoned is a healthy, appropriate emotion given the current state of things. Those aren’t economically productive emotions.”
It’s all about being unburdened by what has been. :) :)
Hard to achieve mental health when you live in a mentally sick society.
I couldn’t resist the dig at K.H.
At the distance Trump was shot the wind wasn’t a factor. Too many people write about things without knowledge about what they write. I make this statement as a hunter for over 60 years. If it were 300 or more yards the wind would be a factor. His security people need to be fired.
There’s still confusion on the location of the shooter vs Trump’s position. I keep hearing news commentators and bloggers saying the shot was ‘several hundred meters’ when it’s about 150 or even less.
They are making the same mistake I did and assumed Trump was between the two covered stands in the Butler Farm Show arena. Trump was actually speaking in-front of three red barns closer to the shooter.
The shooter appears to have been on a one story warehouse with yellow metal siding where he was shot dead. There’s a distinct white eave and ventilation fan seen on the twitter video and photographs of the supposed dead shooter’s body so it can be geolocated. If Trump had been standing between the two covered stands, it would of been a 300 meter / 1,000 foot shot from the warehouse.
So yeah. The shooter was actually pretty close. The security failure is spectacular. How hard of a shot would that be with a scoped rifle? Of course we don’t know if it was scoped.
Seeing this discussed on ABC this morning, their news reporter Rachel Scott ( I think that’s right ) says the shooter was roughly 400 feet from where Trump was speaking. So a serious lapse in securing a perimeter. And she was like everyone else attending, hunker down and get low to the ground.
I have heard a second Secret Service agent interview this morning. And he commented about the apparent failure, his response was instructive. The goal is to reduce, limit and mitigate the risks; eliminating all risk is the perfect or deal target but conceivably humans can fail.
I refuse to believe that neither the secret service nor local law enforcement have ever heard of drones.
They could probably have borrowed a couple from a local real estate agent.
I was thinking about that today and could guess at the answer. So at the briefing between the Secret Service and local law enforcement, somebody asks how many drones will be flying. The Secret Service says none as they do not have the budget for it. One of the cops probably said that their brother had a drone that he could borrow for the day. But then the Secret Service nixes that idea right away. When asked why, they said that it might fall on somebody’s head and they are not insured for something like that in case it happens. You can bet that it would be something stupid like that.
They could have borrowed a drone from the guy who did an estimate for me on installing solar panels on my house, and his office address is a mail box #.
Pre 9/11, W came to Sequoia NP in 2001, and they pretty much shut down the NP for a day in his dog & pony show appearance, the highlight of which was walking up to the top of Moro Rock, here, have a look.
https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/05/images/20010530-1.html
So in the days before his visit, secret service agents startled a trail crew about 2 miles away from Moro Rock. that’s how diligent they were in preparation for the President’s visit.
Our runners-up, North Cascades, Wash., and Sequoia & Kings Canyon, Calif., scored high for plenty of diversions and small crowds—though you can access both, unlike our winner, easily by car. In North Cascades, around 400 miles of hiking routes lead up glaciated peaks and to electric-blue lakes, while at Sequoia & Kings Canyon, campers can choose from 1,213 sites, including dreamy spots near the Giant Forest shaded by mighty ponderosa pines.
These Are the Best U.S. National Parks—and They’re Not Even That Crowded WSJ
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I’m overly biased being on the front porch of the back of beyond, but SEKI is one hellova National Park in that its almost all backcountry, ya gotta walk.
Tourists dutifully do the things they do in the 1% of the NP that 99% of them frequent-such as going to the Sherman Tree, but they seem to never visit any of the thousands of other Brobdingnagians in their midst. My favorite looking Sequoia in the Giant Forest is named Chief Sequoyah and is only a few hundred yards away from the Sherman Tree and gets almost no visitation.
Until AirBnB et al showed up a decade ago, Three Rivers was an interesting entrance town to a NP compared to most all others, in that we didn’t really try all that hard for the tourist $, no fast food, no IMAX theater, really no nothing compared to the monstrosities you’ll see in entrance towns to Grand Canyon, Smoky Mountain, Zion, etc. To put things in perspective, the only fast food place ever here was a Subway that lasted a few years and then went out of biz.
Blech…not throwing cold water on the article itself or the great outdoors. I’m still planning a few visits in the coming years to see the places I’ve not been, like Yosemite or the like; several are ones you mention often, like Sequoia. I’ve heard that Yellowstone can be a kind of dull experience, comparative to other choices.
I will however toss a cold bucket of high quality H2O on the “Moneyball” approach being applied analytically to measure the National Parks. Thanks a lot, Michael Lewis!
By all means go to Yosemite NP, it makes quite a spectacle out of itself!
We went last year in early June after an epic winter and I was mesmerized by the sheer quantities of H20, water, water everywhere, resplendent columns of white free falling, amazing.
Timing is important, its often 100 degrees in Yosemite Valley in the heat of the summer when there’s a gazillion tourists gawking up at ho-hum waterfalls, compared to what they were a few months earlier.
One thing that makes Yosemite NP an interesting place, is the idea you can ride a bike all over Yosemite Valley, as its kinda flat.
And whatever you do, don’t miss going to the Ahwahnee for a meal, or at least a snappy cocktail drank out on the patio with a gobsmacking view.
I think it’s the grande dame of parkitecture~
The parks are really supposed to be about conservation with entertainment value secondary. Before Yosemite became a national park the valley had been taken over by ersatz hucksters with rustic tourist hotels, sheep farms etc.It became an national park in order to save it.
So it’s the idea of a national park that matters. I’ve been to a lot of them and some are a lot more worth visiting than others.
Love your ringing endorsement Wuk! But, if memory serves, is there still an automobile welcoming committee made up of marmots at King’s?
Reason I ask: I was feeding squirrels back of my office until one chewed the fuel line of La Boss’ big a$$ truck. Ouch.
Marmot Cong have been active this summer, with 4 confirmed cartalities in the 2 trailhead parking lots in Mineral King Valley, requiring a tow back down the 25 miles and 698 significant turns on Mineral King road.
Marms like to stand up while sitting on their arse on top of a boulder, and I could swear I saw a couple of them high-fiving one another after a successful hit & waddle mission.
Of marmots, airborne pathogens, face masks and other PPE: Manchurian Plague Wikipedia
Had a transcendent backpacking trip to Mineral King many years ago. You don’t exaggerate; if anything, you understate the majesty and remoteness of the place.
One inch difference and trump would be dead. I’m not a fan of the man/his politics but this horrifying. I’m glad he’s ok.
Tump saying it’s incredible that this could happen is mind boggling. Every day when I drop my daughter off at elementary school, I hope she comes home alive. This is the US. Unless you love guns, violence, poor healthcare, subpar education (I can go on)…if you have the means, get out.
Watching an interview just completed with a former Secret Service agent, he called it much the same way as you suggest. I don’t immediately recall the instances of people paying unexpected visits to the White House during the Obama terms, but this agent said it finally curtailed with increased barriers and raising the fences. One would think a current or former President has the best service and security detail imaginable,with the possible exception to be those who travel annually to Davos or a comparable locale for global confabs by super rich execs and the like.
I get antsy when flying, honestly, and grow wary of fellow drivers on simple trips to get food and groceries. It’s like an Autobahn mentality is beginning to grow with fervor, at least near me in the southeastern US.
Get out and go to where? If you have the wealth to leave, America is the place to be.
Well, Canada would be my first choice. Better healthcare, fewer guns (used to kill other humans at least), better healthcare. All my humble opinion of course.
A very small town somewhere in Europe would be my second choice. The food alone will extend your lifespan. The food in the US is horrible.
If you talk about politics in Canada, don’t use the banking system.
My Calgarian cousins all have TDS, pretty bad.
New Zealand would be my choice of places to abscond to, were I not in love with my surroundings as it were in nature’s realm.
It comes with a heavy duty housing bubble that looks beyond toppy, and when it busts out, wow-the carnage asada possibilities.
That said, what a place, its as if Tahiti ran into volcanoes en route to Ireland and then cross Cook Strait to the Swiss Alps and then eventually the fjords of Norway, all in a country the size of Colorado.
One time when we were there a few months, my wife and I had a contest to find the first disagreeable Kiwi in our midst, and it took 5 weeks to find him, really great people.
Never been but have heard great things.
Elderly parents and in laws, tenured university position (my partner) and general difficulty in uprooting the family (we have 10 year old who is just getting back in the swing of things socially after COVID interruptions) deems it impossible for now. I do feel blessed to live in MA (high cost of living but many benefits….). We keep our social interactions to a minimum and enjoy nature as much as we can. A new golden retriever puppy is in our imminent future as well. A dog is the antidote to many of our societal ills.
Isn’t that the truth! (Blondie being one hellova exception)
My buddy from Tucson shows up today with Dusty the Adventure Dog, who everybody he ever meets falls in love with him (there have been 37 unsolicited offers to take him off my friend’s hands, i’m # 1 on the long list, so there’s hope) and is the best ambassador, get rid of Blinken and put Dusty in there!
His shock is justified. This kind of thing doesn’t happen in this country to people in his financial and influence strata.
Ah good point
Re: Russian tax raise for wealthy. No wonder they hate Putin so much.
„The changes are aimed at building a fair and balanced tax system,” Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said when the proposed changes were laid out in May.
He said the extra funds would bolster Russia’s “economic well-being” and go towards a series of public investment projects.“
Here is the real reason. It has nothing to do with the Ukraine. The Russian government is planning on… hold on to your hats now, Westerners, because you haven‘t heard this phrase in a long time… making life better for people in Russia.
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/73986
He actually promised to raise taxes for the filthy rich in his “campaign speech” in February. That and other “old school social democratic” social security related changes. I wasn’t going to hold my breath waiting for those to happen, but here we are.
Is it ok if I, a USian, gaze over yonder and feel a bit envious of the leadership?
Yup.
Putin & Xi both appeared to have studied the prewar years of The New Deal, which deliberately and over a decade made the US “the arsenal of democracy”, and as close to an actual democracy as it’s ever been.
Wasted time on Romance languages in my misspent youth, too late now!
Romance languages are an OK preparation for Russian and having German is useful too. Russian uses a lot of prepositional prefixes and inflects with suffixes but that actually makes Russian vocab relatively straightforward to guess/ generate if you can learn the root words, as does its general Indo-Europeanness.
A strong grasp of conjugation and declension in a language with minimal use of pronouns is helpful, such as Latin.
Russian is pronounced as it is “written” (with certain rules about letter sounds in different positions and stresses, which are not written in daily life but are in language teaching).
A surprising amount of Russian vocab is imported from English, French and German so with a grasp of the prefixes, roots and grammar, you can get quite far quite quickly.
Notorious tarpits are the verbs of motion (all those prefixes plus all those roots and in all the tenses) and IIRC some adjectival forms crossed with relative pronouns.
Chinese is totally different. Very little to hang it onto for an Indo-European speaker. The fluid and minimalist grammar is your friend, the vocab and tonal pronunciation is your enemy.
The Penguin Russian Course is an excellent old school small book of materials and exercises to teach yourself Russian, if you have Indo-European foreign language chops.
Be warned, the book is deceptively small and looks lightweight in every sense but it us a mighty instructional time if you read it properly. Buckle up!
https://www.amazon.com/New-Penguin-Russian-Course-Beginners/dp/0140120416
There is no doubt about it, Putin is incredibly talented, combining seemingly limitless energy with a cold clear mind. Its relatively easy by reading the Kremlin english website to see how he spends his time. 90% is on internal economic and social issues, providing the direction for many initiatives to , as you say. make life better for people in the whole of Russia with particular emphasis on the less wealthy areas.
But he still has time to coral the whole of Eurasia to start acting together in their own interests.
He is the antithesis of the caricature painted by most western politicians and the media. That is not to say he doesn’t carry a big stick which can and often is used to support what he believes is in the best interests of his country.
So, the shooting pretty much guarantees what seemed to be cemented, which is to say, that Trump is going to win. The difference is that I cannot fathom any candidate (even a no-starter like Sanders) that can beat him anymore, whereas before I suspect outside Clinton and Biden pretty much any half-decent candidate would have a chance of beating him (by pure rejection factor if nothing else). If this was really spook-directed, this was a terrible political miscalculation (even if it had actually killed him).
Assumes spook direction and motivation, if any, would have any currently recognizable sense or goal behind it.
US spooks, as noted by many with immediate past experience, are dominated by the “action” part of the letter agencies — the intel collection and analysis part is sidelined and also perverted by the bias toward chaos-generating “activism,” since careful honest analysts are driven out by the preferences and demands of the violent ones, “shaping the intelligence [and kinetic activity] to fit the policy.”
Would speculate that if spook-driven, it’s not a “political miscalculation” any more than the many attempts to kill Castro or at least get his beard to fall out. Just another example of turning up the FUD generator to 11.
And how many Americans have any reason to believe whatever Narrative emerges from the fog of shite generated by the people who feel just fine about admitting proudly to lying, cheating, stealing and killing, all on the path to “We will know our program of disinformation is complete when nothing the American public believes is true”?
“Extreme weather halts container traffic at Cape of Good Hope”
I guess that all those shipping companies are seeing what it was like in the days before the Suez Canal was built. Or when it was was closed due to war from 1967 to 1975. Shipping must be getting more expensive with all these delays. People forget that the Cape of Good Hope was originally named the Cape of Storms.
Have we data about the effects of the Yemeni blockade on consumer costs? Shipping costs are pretty clearly massively up, but when does this start to get felt by the general populace, if it hasn’t already?
Trump narrowly avoided being killed by a gun, does this change his attitude towards the 2nd Amendment or is it just more of the same with him, catering to evangs & gun nuts, often in the guise of the same person?
Well, once he gets back into office he’ll have legal immunity to do whatever, so at that point amendment or not is merely a formality. I suspect his take (if there is such a thing) is 2nd Amendment to his friends and allies, no guns for his enemies.
Doesn’t that mean B now has legal immunity to do whatever he wants? Wonder what B might want? wink, wink, nudge, nudge… / ;)
(And no, the SC did not give open freedom to any president to just do whatever they want while in office.)
I remember one comedy film where the President was explaining to another character that as President that you get to order three murders – but if you do not use them in office, you lose them.
Pre-code movie plug…
Gabriel Over The White House is an interesting film from 1933, where an auto accident turns a corrupt & easily bribeable President into something else…
Stars Walter Huston~
After Reagan was shot, didn’t he come out in support of the 2nd Amendment? I guess that, if so, he did not want to cross the NRA.
Not sure…
The most interesting thing I remember about the day Reagan was shot, was the rather wild gyrations in the spot price of all that glitters as his condition was unknown and I want to say it went up $125 an oz, and by the time he was out of the woods the spot price was about the same as the day before~
His Press Secretary James Brady getting shot, was more indicative of pre turn of the century USA, the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act was really the last effort to stop gun mayhem, and then the ‘Originalists’ in the Supremes did their thing and all guns did was win every battle legally against them, an army of 1.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brady_Handgun_Violence_Prevention_Act
I am a casual gun owner: long guns only for hunting or shooting paper targets.
Last night notched by perspective toward 2d amendment.
The secret service failed, we need to protect ourselves in the last resort.
Stop Biden’s whispering!
I’d say he’ll remain firmly in the the-only-way-to-stop-a-bad-guy-with-a-gun-is-a-good-guy-with-a-gun camp.
Under current circumstances, I think it’s a perspective held by more than just “evangs & gun nuts.”
I think you’re right.
The left went out and got armed and dangerous alright, and i’ll hazard a guess in a place I know best, and speculate that the majority of guns purchased in LA the past decade have either been fired a few times or not at all, the nearest free shooting range being many hours away by driving, and handfuls of expensive indoor shooting ranges are here and there, too.
It’d be tantamount to somebody buying a car and never learning how to drive, and just leaving it in the garage until an emergency happens.
The Second Amendment is, as it should be, sacrosanct. I sympathize with those who would like serious firearms to be banned but I’m glad to be living in gun country despite the danger. I believe it makes violent people think twice before car-jacking us and, more importantly, keeps the authorities from easily imposing draconian repressive measures on us which many in positions of power would like to do.
Butterflies. We always leave some parsley plants for the swallowtails. They have always come, eat, lay eggs, hatch out. Until this year and none so far. zero. nada. zed.
I’ve seen only one Monarch and one Swallowtail (Tiger) all year. Both were attracted to a substantial cluster of Echinacea in bloom. My backyard is overrun with Milkweed, which is a great nectar source as well as Monarch host plant, but I’ve seen no butterflies or caterpillars on that so far this year (and many fewer Milkweed beetles than in prior years).
The Cabbage White butterflies still seem to be doing fine.
ive been overrun, as usual, by all the mud butterflies…several species that like to hang out in the pathways where the sprinklers and driplines leave mud.
also lots of those yellow and black swallowtails.
havent seen monarchs or viceroys in years…and we used to be in their path on their way to mexican cloud forests.
Plenty of swallowtails at my folks’ house in VT this summer.
Went many many years without seeing a monarch, then started spotting them again a few years ago. Saw caterpillars and adults in MA, then later saw them in my neighborhood in ME, and then last year in my own back yard. Encouraging! So far this year though, no monarch sitings yet.
WEIRD: Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Deluded.
That is worthy of Paul Harvey! (RIP)
“Trump rally shooting: Chinese online retailers quick off the mark with souvenir T-shirts”
The Top Gun vibe with those bars under that image are not bad. In the old days, that image would make the front covers of magazines like “Time” or maybe “Life.” These days? I am not sure if any main stream publisher will use it on their covers. But without doubt, it is now iconic and will quickly enter American mythos. Scrolling through YouTube, I have seen it used a coupla times already.
I was thinking up a great story about Li Harvey something or another, when initially the shooter was identified as being Chinese.
Not something like Wun Wing Im?
I saw this interview with Mike Benz yesterday after watching a shorter version the day before. He worked for a number of years at the State Department and has some very interesting things to say about how things work in that bubble. Winston Marshall, the interviewer, says this of the nearly 2 hour 24 minute piece: “What is the real history of US foreign policy that they’re not telling us? We look at the Ukraine war and the role the US played in the 2014 Maidan Coup. Are we on the verge of World War 3? What are the establishment doing to snuff out the populist movement which threatens it? All this and much more.
It is divided at the bottom into about 12 sections with headings for finding specific topics. Mike Benz interview.
Thanks for this link.
South Floridians see surge in COVID-19: “It just blew up”
Wash your hands? They’ve learned nothing.
here is a weird twist….can this possibly be true?
“…Special Agent Kevin Rojek, the FBI officer in charge, said Crooks had been identified using DNA as he was not carrying any ID on him….”
How would the FBI have his DNA on file, accessible at will within 24 hours?
from http://dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13632783/donald-trump-gunman-revealed-registered-republican.html
Technology has improved. In the old days they’d have found his passport on the ground. ;)
Browsing the stories about him and even though he was named at least six hours ago there’s very little info online about him. Usually by this time a shooter’s full online history (social media and forum posts) have found their way into the news stories. Nothing on him. Just voter registration, high school graduation, and a donation to Act Blue. Maybe the only 20 year old in the country to not have an online trail?
It’s still early on so not gonna go full tinfoil hat yet but curious why so little has come out about this guy yet.
The FBI likes entrapment stories.
https://www.cair.com/blog/fbi-entrapment-harms-vulnerable-muslims/
There have been a number of mass murders as of late, and i’ve noticed the main stream media has really downplayed them, in particular to the usual pablum of detailing the assassin’s past, glorifying them in the process.
But those gunned down were just average Joe’s & Jane’s, not the candidate for the Presidency.
I can’t verify this but I saw a tweet that showed his name spiked in Google search history at 5 a.m. yesterday morning.
There’s a lot of photoshopped crap going around right now, but still..
23andMe? Some of the other geneology
collections companies? By now, they
probably have about enough data to
easily narrow down most DNA samples
to a very narrow handful of people,
maybe even to one, if this guy had no
male siblings, even if no immediate
family members ever submitted a
sample.
Arrest with DNA swab, 23andme, etc…I don’t think it is a stretch these days to think they have access to many people’s DNA profile, or at least part of it. If I am in error I hope to be corrected.
correct…
but a 23andMe sweep would only yield a cousin/parent…. unless we have the one 20 y.o. who loves genealogy and submitted a sample, lol. (of course with political assassins, we are dealing with outliers in every respect)
12 hours on a weekend in July to get a sample, sweep 23andMe…and confirm the perp. wowsers!
Another cottage theory-making industry (catering to all political persuasions) has just been born!
Louis,
It’s likely to return several matches
of people that are at a genetic
distance of second and third cousins,
both maternal and paternal families.
If accurate genealogy is available, …
how many people have that same
genetic distance to each of the
group of hits as you do?
The whole thing with DNA sampling
and databases is a frightening
betrayal of the future, in my view.
By submitting a sample, people
potentially endanger themselves
and their own descendants, but also
all of their relatives and their
descendants, as long as the data
submitted exists.
Then again, I sort of think that the
precautionary principle is a good idea,
so what do I know? Maybe people will
change for the better, and the future
will be a utopia forever, and the data
will never be misused for any reason.
Millions got swabbed several years ago “testing” for covid. I never did, but I think they were asked for their name, rank and serial number to tag the results.
When I flew for only my 4th time domestically since 9/11 last month, they take a head photo of you before you go through security.
“Footage Shows Palestinian Militia Take Out Israeli Merkava Tank at Zero Range”
I’ve seen this happening a coupla times now. Though I have never been in the military, aren’t infantry supposed to support tanks so that this does not happen? That tanks and infantry support each other as a part of a team? Could it be that Hamas snipers and IEDs are keeping the infantry back forcing tanks to go in alone? Still, that was a gutsy move by those Hamas guys.
Electronic Intifata has been noting the absence of infantry cover for tanks from the start. Of course, if they were around they could get picked off by snipers or friendly fire, since IOF demonstrated that they have zero fire control.
The IOF has shown itself to be a complete disgrace as a ground fighting unit. They can loot homes and brutalize/kill civilians and that’s it. The resistance has noted their crimes and incompetence for future actions.
Reactive armor prohibits dismounted infantry near the tanks. Those explosive plates throw off all kinds of shrapnel when they are hit.
That was the case almost 4 decades ago, when yours truly was learning the fine art of mechanized infantry (heavy weapons company) of an armored brigade.
The thing with modern tanks is that they tend to have active protection systems that are extremely dangerous to close infantry when they do go off. So it’s possible that IDF has trained their troops to stay clear of these behemots to both prevent accidental blue-on-blue and also giving the tank more freedom of movement in restricted space – as in not having to care whom they roll over.
A good rule of thumb is not to take your tanks to an urban environment, if you care about them at all.
Speculation on the eventual VP selection by Trump in the coming days, quite likely at the convention or shortly thereafter, just grew exponentially. I still moderate on the choice being between North Dakota governor Burgum or the junior senator from South Carolina, Tim Scott. Rubio doesn’t help you much outside of Florida, to be honest.
The office may be nothing more than a warm bucket of spit or other fluids, but it’s important to get a good choice this year I think.
There was just a handful of prisoners in the Bastille that day, 235 years ago.
A book I enjoyed was Days of the French Revolution by Christopher Hibbert. A great primer for those that don’t really know much about how the deal went down.
> The Science Behind the Emotions in Inside Out 2 Kottke.org
from the linked source article:
>> [Psychologist] Paul Ekman studied six emotions: anger, sadness, fear, disgust, joy — which is Inside Out — and then surprise, which didn’t make Inside Out.
Ekman: Reflections on Inside Out 2
Ekman was a consultant on the first Inside Out movie.
His book 1975: Unmasking the Face: A Guide to Recognizing Emotions from Facial Clues was published in 1975. But he wasn’t named a Time 100 most influential people until 2009. This was the year his book Telling Lies was re-released, and he was a consultant on the series Lie To Me (2009..2011).
His rise came with the shift from understanding emotions cross-culturally, to the use of microexpressions in detecting untruth. However,
>> After testing a total of 20,000 people from all walks of life, he found only 50 people who had the ability to spot deception without any formal training. These naturals are also known as “Truth Wizards”
No hope for the common man. Brandolini’s Law was formulated in 2013, and in 2016 Trump Gish Galloped his way into the White House and Oxford Dictionaries declared “Post-truth” the word of the year.
The first Inside Out movie was released in 2015. There is an arc, the attempt to disprove untruth in real time failed, and a focus on understanding and handling one’s internal state taking precedent. One the one hand, this is deep wisdom, the calmness to accept what one can’t change. On the other hand, it’s hard to distinguish from assigning agency where there is none. This is a technique used from voting interests to Yves’ Tax On Time.
This has complex outcomes. Once is a diffractioning of individualism in identity politics (LGBTQ+ not Trans?). Another is the advancement from Upton Sinclair to Gleichshaltlutng. As the man said:
>> The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.
“NATO’s bad boys: Turkey and Hungary play their own game”
I’m surprised that they did not include Slovakia’s Robert Fico into this mix. But Politico has their own agenda and that is protecting Project Ukraine. But here is the thing. The Ukraine is floundering – sinking actually. And most of the leaders of NATO like Macron, Starmer, Scholz have tied themselves to the masts and are determined to go down with this ship if it sinks – and taking their own countries with them. Not only that, but these leaders are also demanding that every other leader ties themselves to the masts as well to prove their loyalty or some such. The ones that disagree such as Orban, Erdogan and Fico are actually realists and are not besotted ideologues. They can see the writing on the wall and are trying to protect their own countries from the wreckage that will ensue after Project Ukraine collapses. They know that sooner or later there will have to be negotiations with the Russian Federation but Orban’s ‘shuttle diplomacy’ has proven that those other leaders are refusing to consider such a thing. They would prefer to keep their delusions alive, probably because Project Ukraine is so lucrative for them.
Axelrod:
The answer is in the Politico link above:
https://archive.ph/YOQbM
Can Biden run out the clock?
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/13/us/politics/donald-trump-rally-shooting-2024-campaign.html
July 13, 2024
Amid the Mayhem, Trump Pumped His Fist and Revealed His Instincts
A bloodied Donald J. Trump made Secret Service agents wait while he expressed his defiance. The moment epitomized his visceral connection with his supporters, and his mastery of the modern media age.
By Shawn McCreesh
Donald J. Trump was back on his feet. He had just been shot at, his white shirt was undone and his red hat was no longer on his head. Blood streaked across his face as riflemen patrolled the perimeter of the stage. A pack of Secret Service agents pressed their bodies against his. “We’ve got to move, we’ve got to move,” one pleaded.
“Wait, wait, wait, wait,” the former president instructed, his voice a harried — but startlingly clear — command. Reluctantly, they halted. He peered out into the crowd.
And then his arm reached toward the sky, and he began punching the air.
The crowd started to chant — “U-S-A! U-S-A!” — as the agents inched Mr. Trump toward the stairs. When they reached the top step, they paused once more, so Mr. Trump could lift his arm a little higher, and pump his fist a little faster. The crowd roared a little louder.
It’s difficult to imagine a moment that more fully epitomizes Mr. Trump’s visceral connection with his supporters, and his mastery of the modern media age.
Mr. Trump would not leave the stage without signaling to his fans that he was OK — even as some were still wailing in fear. And he did not just wave or nod, he raised his fist in defiance above his bloodied face — making an image history will not forget…
The photo op was just amazing, shades of the Iwo Jima flagraisers, that is if one of them had a raised fist while moving old glory into place.
The upside down American flag plays in perfectly into the tableau, too.
Trump had the presence of mind to make that fist-pump after nearly being shot, and one must note that this was pretty quick-thinking on his part– many of us might have kept kissing the dirt or ran like hell after this.
A headshot was the smart shot to take, especially under this scenario.
I wore body armor concealed under my shirt for years as part of the job. The logic behind that is that if your assailant sees the body armor they’ll likely aim for the head instead. And it is pretty well-known (at least, I thought it was) that many high-profile political figures wear body armor during public appearances.
After the first shot, after the first few bangs, a shooter will no longer have a stationary target, so does it not make sense to aim for a clearly unprotected area that offers good odds for a kill-shot while you have the opportunity to do so? Sure, the torso is of greater-mass, offers better odds of a hit, but good is a bullet that is slowed, stopped, by armor?
I am damn glad Trump wasn’t killed. The tension and threats of violence just skyrocketed, but his death (especially like that) would guarantee violence, “revenge.”
A fragile state we’re in, all the same.
The Proud Tower, by Barbara Tuchman could well be called The Assassination Bureau, as so many world leaders were dispatched from 1890 to 1914.
Comics industry creatives at Marvel, DC Comics, and IDW Publishing express regret that Trump assassination attempt didn’t succeed?
https://fandompulse.substack.com/p/mark-waid-and-heather-antos-cheer
“NATO Is Helping Ukraine to Fight—but Not to Win”
Foreign Policy is wagging their finger at the western powers for not supporting Zelensky enough but maybe they should wake up and smell the coffee. At the NATO summit in Washington, Zelensky was making no friends as he was constantly demanding money and weapons. But those countries have already wrecked their budget by giving untold billions to the Ukraine and their own populace is starting to scream about the money shortfalls. As for weapons, most countries have emptied their armouries to send them to the Ukraine and have no more to send. As it is, it will take years if not decades to replenish those stocks.