As of this moment, we still don’t know what motivated the gunman who opened fire at the ex-president’s rally last night. But within minutes of the incident, Republican politicians rushed every microphone and social media platform in sight to blame Democrats.
Via WaPo, here’s a sample of the rhetoric from two of the obsequious dopes who are competing to become Trump’s running mate:
“The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs,” [Senator J.D.] Vance wrote. “That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”
Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), another Trump ally, shared a similar sentiment. “Let’s be clear: This was an assassination attempt aided and abetted by the radical Left and corporate media incessantly calling Trump a threat to democracy, fascists, or worse,” he wrote on social media.
Scott Jennings, CNN analyst who used to be a Mitch McConnell aide, got all emotional about the issue during last evening’s coverage, accusing Democrats of creating an atmosphere of political violence that made the apparent assassination attempt inevitable.
This self-serving bilge was served up without a trace of self-awareness, as is typical of the GOP tribe’s “every accusation is a confession” pattern, the party whose innocent victim said this before the 2016 election:
The Post threw together a both sides-ish editorial last night:
In this moment, we have to recognize that we have all been touched by toxic politics — regardless of our beliefs or where we fall on an ideological spectrum.
Can this, then, be a moment to pause and rediscover our better selves? To hear our inner voices, as clearly as we heard those shots? Americans, what do we want to be?
It’s not up to politicians, or editorial pages.
The responsibility is ours, as neighbors and citizens.
Maybe the editorial writers should have waited for the cold light of dawn because yes, it goddamn well is up to politicians, who should not incite gun nut goobers to commit violence against political rivals or gin up a mob to attack the U.S. Capitol when they lose an election.
And it’s up to editorial pages to call them out when they do, not with mealy-mouthed editorials that imply that both sides bear equal responsibility but with clarity about who exactly has normalized political violence: Donald Trump and the hard-right MAGA cult.
Joe Biden and Democrats have correctly identified the threat Trump and his toxic movement pose to American democracy. I hope this incident doesn’t cause them to back off from telling that truth in the months to come.
That would be a grave disservice to the country, where only one party, Republicans, incite violence for political gain and ensure we’re ass-deep in guns so any random, rage-filled loon can act on his impulse.
Open thread.
pajaro
Joe Biden and Democrats also oppose the public availability of weapons of war. The gun should not have been in the shooters hand, because, like every other “advanced” nation, AR-15’s should not be legal to own.
Eolirin
I’m reposting this for greater visibility, and because I’m going to be continually pissed off by people doing this:
We really need to stop pretending that improving mental health care will help with gun violence. It will help at the margins with suicide deaths. Though much less than just making it really hard to get guns.
Most completed suicides are from people do not have a history of mental health conditions. The numbers are even more stark when it comes to violence against others.
Rage, hate, fear and despair are normal human emotions. You don’t need to be mentally ill to have them. You don’t need to be mentally ill to experience them to an extreme that can lead to violence or self harm. You just need means, intensity, and enough of a cultural permission structure to go to that as a way of processing those feelings.
And that’s what’s normally happening. Even paranoid schizophrenics and people deep in psychosis are less likely to engage in violence than radicalized young white men who are pissed off that they have no job prospects and women don’t want to sleep with them, and a set of cultural norms telling them that violence is the only acceptable way for men to express pain.
The young white men are not mentally ill by any measure. This is not an issue in need of medical treatment. It’s a cultural problem that needs cultural fixes. And an access problem that needs to be resolved.
Chief Oshkosh
I think we should be demanding that Trump apologize to Paul Pelosi, you know, now that Trump deeply and profoundly understands the outcome of calling for and then joking about violence.
Couldn’t hurt.
SiubhanDuinne
Yeah. My RWNJ brother sent me a text which read, in full:
My response was six words long, in full:
Trivia Man
To quite every republican after every school shooting, “too soon! Dont make it political!”
Chris
The fact that anyone can say “radical Left” and “corporate media” in the same sentence and lumped together without a thought speaks volumes for how unhinged this country’s view of politics is. We’re practically all the way back to Hitler’s premise that communism and capitalism are the same thing because they’re both pawns of Teh J00z.
Almost Retired
The mayor of Slippery Rock Pennsylvania just helpfully explained on MSNBC that the assassination attempt was the inevitable result of leftist scare-mongering about theocracy and dictatorship.
And the eyewitness interviews are more frustrating than usual because…of course…they’re with the sort of person who would spend hours in the hot Summer sun to hear Trump’s vindictive gibberish. Can’t pie someone on TV (yet….are you listening MSNBC?), but there’s always the remote!
Eyeroller
@SiubhanDuinne: I presume that has been met with silence.
Trivia Man
There is a quite from TCFG himself responding to a mass shooting (a day after it happened) “Move on!”
Chris
@Almost Retired:
Too bad he wasn’t the mayor of Slippery Slope, Pennsylvania, that would really have been on the nose.
gene108
I think a lot of political media coverage in this country stems from the fact that non-Hispanic white men are always treated as Very Serious People.
People running news rooms are white men.
The biggest group of voters supporting the Republican Party are white men.
Threats to white men are given priority over other groups.
Since white men are the core of the Republican Party, threats to the Republican Party are threats to the interests of white men, which includes most people running newsrooms.
WaterGirl
@SiubhanDuinne: Good for you.
Martin
When you promise retribution and bloodshed as a political candidate, with the American people as a target, perhaps we should not be shocked when the American people feel targeted and fight back. That seems pretty rational to me.
karen gail
I fully expect that in the next few days there will be record sales of guns and ammunition as people arm themselves so that they will be protected from radical left.
So far Biden has been accused of ordering assignation of Trump (wouldn’t that fall under immunity? and if he did wouldn’t he use SEAL team rather than 20 year old male republican?) Some have called Trump a martyr, I thought martyr’s died for beliefs. Meanwhile, tee shirts with fist in air picture have gone on sale.
Rather than call for gun control, I expect a call to violence from Trump; he must be avenged!
SiubhanDuinne
@Eyeroller:
So far, yes indeed.
Kay
It was dumb to make it partisan. People would have been sympathetic if they resisted the impulse to own the libs – now it’s just more screeching to add to the din.
No self control.
kindness
I fear this won’t be the last assassination attempt we’ll see this election cycle. I also fear Republican statements made since this happened only will ramp that up and it’ll be directed our way. Buckle your seat belts boys & girls. This is gonna be a bumpy ride.
Hunter Gathers
20 year old radicalized white male wearing a t-shirt from a gun fetish You Tube channel.
This is gonna get weird.
The afterlife in Beetlejuice weird.
Eolirin
@karen gail: That’s what’s going to be so dangerous about this, plus a consolidation of his base of support, which was wavering to some degree given the amount of people voting for Nikki Haley.
This is just completely bad in all of the ways possible.
Unless he goes full coward and starts hiding all the time and not doing rallies anymore.
Tony Jay
Registered Republican?
Fan of the very Hard Radical Right?
I fail to see how this is a Democratic problem. This is 100% Red On Red violence. Democratic initiatives would have made this less likely, but Republicans have incited and invited it at every turn.
Can’t control your own supporters, Don? Maybe Joe should step in and do it for you.
UncleEbeneezer
@SiubhanDuinne:
Chief Oshkosh
@Hunter Gathers:
FTFY
Almost Retired
@Chris: Ha! Two other observations. When the aerial view of the “crime scene” is shown, you can determine the footprint of the rally by the folding chairs and the hastily discarded placards. And unless there were thousands of people standing in the background who were meticulous about taking out their trash, this rally was not very large.
Secondly, almost every time a witness is asked, they acknowledge that Butler was not their first Trump rally. So my take away is that this is some evidence that the base is not growing much past these authoritarian dead heads making the greatest hits circuit. At least I hope that’s true.
Another Scott
I think it’s important to remember that this is a really big country. 330-ish million people. There’s a huge distribution of thoughts and beliefs and triggers and motivations and fears and wishes and all the rest.
One guy injuring a presidential candidate will only change the election if enough voters decide to let it.
Too many monsters on the other side are looking for anything that can improve their guys’ chances of winning. We know this – it’s what they do. They will attempt to take advantage. It’s what they do.
There will be a flood of other things that they will attempt to use to take advantage. We have to remain focused. 113 days until election day, and many of us will be voting weeks before then.
Eyes on the prizes.
Hang in there, everyone.
Cheers,
Scott.
WereBear
I think these young white male Trump fans feel like they’re facing extinction. They know only one way to be. And they feel like the world is telling them they can’t be that.
This traps them in some sort of psychotic spiral. Which at least offers like-minded company.
The light bulb must want to be changed.
SiubhanDuinne
@WaterGirl:
I was really tempted to point out how TCFFG mocked and cheered the assassination attempt on Paul Pelosi, or quote Alex Jones saying on his radio show that a TCFFG assassination would be “so much better for us and so much worse for them” because of the opportunity for retaliatory violence. But I decided to keep it simple.
Eolirin
@Tony Jay: We all know it doesn’t matter what the truth is, it matters what the spin is. That’s not how anyone’s going to talk about it in the media and if the drum beat becomes this is the Dem’s fault then it’s going to hurt us even more electorally.
I’m not sure the media is gonna go along with it, as more information comes out on the shooter, they’ll probably just drop the whole thing, but the expected people are pushing the expected line.
TheronWare
@SiubhanDuinne: Oh those pesky facts!
Eyeroller
@Eolirin: Who is pushing back? Somebody needs to, and fast.
Edit: Some Guy suggests:
Senate Dems should take one of their assorted gun control bills off the shelf, rename it something like “Trump Assassination Prevention Act,” and force Rs to do a talking filibuster to block it
Of course these are the same Senate Dems who were allegedly crying at a meeting because Biden wouldn’t step down.
Another Scott
@Almost Retired: +1
Trump is weaker than when he was in office. He has less support. January 6 woke a lot of his previous supporters up – they took down their signs and banners in my area, etc.
It doesn’t mean the election won’t be closer than it should be. It will be closer than it should be. We have to do the work to create the future we want.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
SiubhanDuinne
@UncleEbeneezer:
Wow, thanks. I hadn’t heard those anecdotes, though they surprise me not in the least. Useful if I ever feel like throwing every morsel of Trumpian violent rhetoric at my brother or anyone, so I’m tucking that excerpt away in my files for reference.
lowtechcyclist
@Almost Retired:
Dear Mr. Mayor: I guess it isn’t ‘scare-mongering’ when people on your side make plans to institute theocracy and dictatorship.
karen gail
@Eolirin: Okay, I get that young white men are not mentally ill; but countless studies have shown that many men don’t start to mentally mature until mid 30’s. Which is why military wants them young enough to train, why militia groups and cults find they are easy to brainwash. They can be brainwashed via the internet in the comfort of their parent’s basements while wallowing in self-pity and testosterone poisoning.
And Trump is a prime example of what happens when a white male never mentally or emotionally matures; his preaching of violence supports the idiotic belief that white men are “special” and rules or laws don’t apply.
I am not sure just what is needed or can be done to counter this in a society that makes white men a special category.
Jackie
@Eyeroller:
I read JD Vance and MTG babble nonsense they posted last night – before the shooter was ID’d GQP.
Now that that info is known, I’m going to watch a bit of FAUX to see how they try “reasoning” that bit of info.
I won’t watch much – but curiosity needs satisfying LOL.
UncleEbeneezer
@Eyeroller: Second-Amendment Solution Act: Repeals the Second Amendment
WereBear
Perhaps this crisis can show the younglings how good government is supposed to work. And we have a fine team. Which is one of Biden’s Admin strengths.
Know what you are voting FOR, which is part of what we fear. In a yin yang way.
Assuming a spherical cow voter, who is paying attention because now it’s scary and violent, what am I to think that a member of their own party tried to kill the presumptive nominee of that party?
karen gail
I just read a comment to article about shooting; that if it had been only white males on secret service detail this wouldn’t have happened. That females and non whites have weakened the secret service; no one replied to that commentor that it didn’t stop Kennedy’s death.
Tony Jay
@Eolirin:
Bad people put in positions where they can do bad things will do those bad things because they are bad people.
Not a reason to just shrug and accept it.
Imagine a couple of days ago someone had suggested the scenario where a Hard Right Republican voter angered by Trump’s backtracking on Project 25 took a shot at him and the GOP/Media Alliance went balls to the wall on Political Martyr coverage before the truth came out.
I think there’d be more rubbing of hands than rending of garments taking place. This is a major opportunity for Biden and Co to push for stronger gun laws and an enforced downturn in MAGA calls for political violence that Stench and the Party of Hench have no viable line to argue against.
Preemptive surrender to lies is never the best idea. Make the wankers bleed for the blood they’ve spilled.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@SiubhanDuinne:
Good reply and
What the fuck is your dumbass brother talking about,
Lincoln was by a Democrat
Garfield was by a Republican
McKinley was by an Anarchist
Kennedy was by an Anti-Communist-Communist
UncleEbeneezer
@karen gail: Keep centering/electing PoC, women, LGBTQ People, etc. That’s about all we can do. It will take time. White (Male) Supremacy is very resistant. But it is slowly dying and under threat. That’s why the pushback is so nasty.
WaterGirl
@SiubhanDuinne: Smart not to give him an ala carte menu to choose from – you went with one stark fact and it’s just sitting there in the full sun.
Great decision. I’m sure the alternative would have been more gratifying in the moment!
Eyeroller
@Jackie: My guess is that it will never be mentioned.
WereBear
@karen gail: They could have posted a Girl Scout with binocs and a radio and this wouldn’t have happened at all.
TBone
Fuck the Nation immediately set about lionizing Dotard. My TV is now broken for the duration.
TBone
@WereBear: 😆
mrmoshpotato
What’s in the video clip? Is it the orange shitstain saying he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue?
Elizabelle
Have we ever heard precisely what trump’s injury was? I’m sure it pleases him to think it was a bullet, but isn’t it more likely it was flying glass? Did anyone who is more likely to be honest have anything to say about the exact injury?
Scout211
The playbook for Republicans in this era of politics is attack and smear the Democrats with their own worst policies, words and actions. It’s been going on for decades.
If we spend too much time attacking them for attacking us (and the media gleefully quoting them word for word) the Democrats’ own message gets lost in the pointing of fingers. They know it works so they will never stop. The attention on them is what they want in order to attack before they get attacked.
It is my hope that we keep moving forward and spend less time pointing out what they have said or done, because that helps shine that spotlight on their words. IMHO, we have far too much work to do to spend time and energy fretting over their usual playbook.
That’s what I am going to do. Move forward, do the work and get Biden-Harris re-elected. YMMV
Kay
Great. Throw still more money at Homeland Security/Secret Service who couldn’t even keep intruders out of the White House during Obama’s presidency.
Homeland Security is a bloated, useless mess. Handing them more money to waste isn’t going to help.
The hundred or so police at the shooters home are pure waste. He’s dead. The event they were paid to prevent already happened – they failed, again. Now all we’re doing is paying tens of police overtime to stand around. It’s pure play acting, security theatre. How many could they possibly need to search that house and canvass the neighborhood? Why are we paying the rest weekend overtime?
Starfish
The worst work in this genre is truly this article titled “We Are All MAGA Now.”
sdhays
I just remembered that the Republican Governor of Texas literally pardoned a convicted political murderer.
Where’s the other fucking side of that?
Elizabelle
Biden called Trump last night. It would be fascinating to have heard that call.
UncleEbeneezer
Shannen Doherty has died at 53 from breast cancer :(
B1naryS3rf
It was a natural that they’d DARVO the concept of stochastic terrorism back on us.
Gabby Giffords and Palin’s threats leading up to it
Paul Pelosi with Nancy targeted – endless violent talk about her over decades
Trump violent rhetoric supercut
Don’t let them slide from their bullshit.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@TBone: Ah, the invertible cycle of media dick sucking on Trump has begun.
Martin
@WereBear:
Trump doesn’t want to pay for security, even if it’s in the hassle and inconvenience of his fans. Willing to bet Secret Service got tired of fighting the campaign’s insistence on having rallies in insecure places.
TBone
@Starfish: jesus. fucking. christ.
SiubhanDuinne
@WaterGirl:
This is why the good lord in his infinite wisdom invented the “delete” key :-)
rk
I can see Trump completely losing his mind (or whatever is left of it) over this. He’s all about grievences. Now it’ll all be about being shot. He’ll be even more insufferable. I cannot see him talking about anything else. It’ll be interesting to see how such a bully and coward deals with the shock.
lowtechcyclist
This, on both counts.
The fuckers have been talking up “Second Amendment solutions” for years. They’re the ones who harassed and threatened public health workers from the early days of the pandemic in 2020, who did the same with election workers that November, who did more of the same with school board members and school district officials over pandemic-related school closures and mask requirements, and then kept that going with all the ‘groomer’ bullshit over everything from LGBTQ tolerance to anti-bullying measures…the list goes on. They’re brownshirts, pure and simple. They think that if they can’t get their way at the ballot box, they’ll do their best to drive the winners out in fear of their lives. And that’s just the local stuff.
And this is all coming from the right. Oh sure, they may be able to come up with a few isolated examples of someone to the left of center saying something that, if you look at it just right, might be seen as threatening. But that’s as much as they can come up with. The other 99.99% of it is all theirs.
different-church-lady
NEWSPAPER EDITORIAL BOARDS: “We have no obligation to improve society, but you should pay attention to our views anyway.”
Another Scott
@Elizabelle: I’m no expert, but it looks to me like the bullet clipped his ear and grazed his right cheek.
HTH!
[eta:] There’s a set of 3 pictures from a FTFNYT photographer showing the line of the bullet in the air, him touching his ear, blood on his hand, etc.
Cheers,
Scott.
TBone
@sdhays: and Dotard pardoned soldiers responsible for massacres. Soldiers already convicted of war crimes.
https://www.politico.com/news/2019/11/15/trump-pardon-war-crimes-071244
Eyeroller
@Scout211: IMHO we should immediately start talking about the plague of gun violence, enabled by Republicans and a corrupt Supreme Court.
oldster
Thanks, Betty.
No one should be assassinating anyone, but the fact is that Trump is a fascist and an enemy of democracy. His presence in American political life is the fault of his followers, not Democrats.
That some deranged kid tried to shoot him, for whatever reasons, does not change who he is and why he is dangerous.
Indeed, nothing has changed: we still have to beat him at the ballot box, just like yesterday.
WereBear
Mike Pence was afraid of his own security team on January 6th?
OGLiberal
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: And we all know that, today, Lincoln would be a Dem and Booth, a Republican.
Steeplejack
@SiubhanDuinne:
Excellent response!
TBone
@WereBear: yessirree
Suzanne
I agree wholeheartedly.
I want to note that this young man seems to have come from a pretty middle-class upbringing. I’m sure we’ll find out more about him. But this is a thing that I find really concerning….. people who seem to have many good opportunities for a functional life nevertheless seem to fall into radicalization.
TBone
@different-church-lady: 🤡 (not you – the offenders)
Martin
@WereBear: No, he trusted his personal team. He didn’t trust the event team who his personal agent appeared to warn Pence to not listen to.
WereBear
@TBone: It’s the Republicans who are the Deep State.
different-church-lady
“We’re aggressively trying to convince people not to vote for guy who cultivates a society of violence and hate” somehow = “Both parties are the same” in the brain-addled media mind.
Elizabelle
I think letting Republicans turn this into a wank fest might be another eye-opener for voters on how the MSM has been completely captured by its owners, who favor Republicans. By Republicans for Republicans.
Suzanne
@Elizabelle: It looks like it was a bullet. A NYT photographer caught a photo of it zooming toward his ear. Gift link.
WereBear
@Martin: So there are factions. In the civil services.
MinuteMan
That last line is belied by the media campaign to remove the democratically nominated Democratic candidate. Ironic and hypocritical at the same time.
TBone
@WereBear: I wouldn’t trust one for any reason. Nada. Zip. Zilch.
Do not turn your back on ’em for any reason.
A lesson I learned the hard way.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Leto said yesterday almost immediately after this happened that there’s no room for both-siderism in this…which was almost immediately followed by Lester Holt at NBC doing exactly that. And as you put it, in the cold, grey light of dawn, the Usual Media Suspects are following suit.
I get the fact that we’ll always have a batshit, insane group of voters in this country, aka The Crazification Factor. I also sorta get that the CF Factor has been running on steroids since Obama was elected and Hair Furor entered the political scene which has resulted in an increase in the base % of the CF. We can fight back against that politically despite the tilted playing field at times.
But it’s sad we’re seeing a media environment that simply won’t call out such a basic feature of fascism: normalized political violence. That’s a tough one to combat and I fear no amount of unsubscribing from outlets like FTFNYT or stop listening/donating to Totebagger Radio will fundamentally alter that landscape.
TBone
@Elizabelle: my fervent hope
TBone
@Martin: he didn’t get in the car.
Another Scott
@Another Scott:
Of course, Melon broke easily zooming in on pictures there.
Here’s the 3 pictures on Nitter where one can properly enlarge it and see the line of the bullet in the air.
Cheers,
Scott.
ArchTeryx
@WereBear: Yes. Somehow, the dullard knew Trump had compromised his security team and they were trying to lead him straight to his death, so he refused to fall into the trap. Probably the smartest move he’d made his entire white-bread life.
lowtechcyclist
@WereBear:
They’re right! While there are certainly young white female Trump fans, there’s still way fewer of them than there are of the young white male Trump fans.
Hence incels: a whole bunch of the poor dudes can’t find anyone like-minded to reproduce with. Can’t get a clearer signal than that, that the world is telling them they can’t be that, and that they’re facing extinction.
SiubhanDuinne
@rk:
I assume you know that there is already a t-shirt sporting the “Defiant Trump Raises Defiant Fist in Air Defiantly” photo. As they said over at Digby’s place, what took so long?
different-church-lady
Tragedy is when someone in my own party goes crackers and tries to take out my candidate.
Comedy is when someone runs down a lefty with their car and my candidate says there’s good people on both sides.
WereBear
Not even the fictional Bob the Nailer could graze someone’s ear reliably.
This was the Trump gold plated toilet style in security, in action.
Did he train those SS agents to do what they did?
To make him look like Stalin giving his last breath?
Princess
@Kay: Yeah, squishy independents would have loved that. They’d all have flocked back to him.
zhena gogolia
@MinuteMan: YEAH WHAT BULLSHIT
TBone
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: 👍 I threw up in my mouth. Had to brush my teeth twice.
when has it ever stopped is my question!
different-church-lady
“In order to heal the divisions of the country, Joe Biden must stop trying to win re-election.”
NYTs OpEd page, just wait for it.
TBone
@different-church-lady: FUCK!
You are SO not wrong!
Starfish posting We Are All MAGA Now sealed it, now the onward march to the MSM.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Lincoln almost certainly, and the hard left would be upset with him because of his instinctive moderate positions.
My impression of Booth is he is what we would consider a contrarian, so he would be against what ever party the rest of his family was for.
Chris
@WereBear:
I think it’s more than that: young wingnuts have grown up entirely within the Fox News Cinematic Universe, it doesn’t even occur to them that any other “normal” exists, and it’s fucked them up in unimaginable ways.
I always hear people say the problem of conservatism is old white people and if enough of them die we’ll be better off. May be true for society in general, but at least within wingnuttia, that’s not at all what I see. I’ve met my wingnut uncle. I’ve met my wingnut cousins. Don’t get me wrong, the uncle says and believes terrible things all the time, but the difference is still night and day. You can tell which of them at least remembers an age when they didn’t have the option of “every time you’re upset because the world isn’t the way you want it to be, switch to a news channel that tells you it’s all the fault of the Communist Muslims who run the world through DEI initiatives and affirmative action,” and which of them has never interacted with the world any other way.
Starfish
@Eolirin: The young white men are at the age that a lot of people have their FIRST episode of mania in Bipolar I. “According to the DSM-5, the average age for the first episode of mania in bipolar I is 18 years old.” (I didn’t check the DSM-5 for this, but it didn’t seem out of line.) “The incidence of DSM-IV bipolar I disorder (BP I), first manic episode peaked in early adult life (16.38/100,000 population per year in the 21-25 years band.” https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15997605/
At minimum, the age of purchasing the type of weapons should be raised to 25 to be beyond the age when people have their first full blown episode of mania.
We should quit pretending that in gun violence, all these male suicides don’t count. Women make more suicide attempts, but men are more successful because of guns.
TBone
I’m done with anything analyzing MAGAts. They were not breast fed. That’s it. Full stop.
different-church-lady
@TBone: Like I said last night: “If you think you’ve already seen someone say the stupidest thing possible on the internet, prepare yourself.”
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@lowtechcyclist:
It’s instructive to look at the rise of the Nazis. In the 20s, yup, we see the brownshirts and an attempt by them to normalize political violence. But in the 30s, one of their most important allies were the conservative elite who essentially allied with them because they both distrusted the political left.
Younger people who flocked to the party in the 30s were generally from a different, somewhat higher, class background than the original thugs from the 20s. The shooter in this case would seemingly fit that profile. The Nazis were obviously masters of propaganda, thus had a target audience to radicalize. As Chris says in #95, we have a similar generation similarly radicalized from the Fox News Cinematic Universe (a great term), aka Faux “News”.
Again, some of the historical echoes are eerie and scary without reading too much exact-following-the-Nazi-history into them.
Bill Arnold
@pajaro:
The GOP and its allies have worked many years to make AR-15 class guns “America’s gun”. The shooter was an American.
The GOP and their allies own this shooting.
Kay
@Princess:
None of them can ever just shut up – they all have to immediately jump in with a “take”.
Imagine how good a “we must denounce violence and come together!” would have sounded. But JD Vance and some idiot CNN pundit needed to own the libs. I’m glad. The “unity” approach would have been bullshit anyway (although it would have worked). This is more honest.
WereBear
@Chris: Trump Youth Corp
sdhays
@MinuteMan: Well, it’s true that it’s not up to editorial pages because the only thing they seem to be good for is campfire kindling.
I wonder who the FTFNYT is going to fire over “making” them print that too-late editorial calling for Trump to drop out.
Eyeroller
@Kay: Trump himself, or more likely somebody writing for him, immediately put out a call for “resilience” and “unity.” Unity against what? Republican gun policies? I’d be in favor of that. Oh, maybe they mean “let’s not bicker and argue over who killed who”
SFAW
@Kay:
That Vance and Tim Scott were not immediately smote by lightning from “on high” is Example # 1,287,341 of proof that there is no such thing as a Just God.
If I believed in Heaven and Hell, I would console myself in the knowledge that they’d end up in Hell
different-church-lady
@Eyeroller:
Against Democrats, silly.
Juju.
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: All of those were angry white men, including the one who tried to kill Reagan. The two people who tried to kill Ford were an angry white woman and a white woman Manson follower.
rk
@SiubhanDuinne:
Oh, of course he’s going to be made into a brave superhero. I fully expect to see a juxtaposition of Trump jesus and superhero with bleeding ear pic. But I’m just curious to see how the man himself is going to handle it. I cannot see him being able to deal with it in any rational way. Will he be able to talk about anything else? Focus on anything else? I just don’t see it.
The thing which really surprised me though was the raised fist. The most unlike Trump thing I’ve seen so far. I never expected even an ounce of bravery.
Lapassionara
Here are some random thoughts I posted in the thread below.
is PA an open carry state? If so, is there a federal law that would make an exception for campaign events?
some say they noticed him and pointed him out to law enforcement. Since he was a local, do you suppose LE thought he was one of the “good ones”?
what would make a 20 year old do something that would lead to certain death? Suicide by cop?
Martin
@WereBear: There always are. The rules on civil servants doesn’t prevent any of them from being captured by personalities, but it does make sure that the majority cannot be. So you should always have the majority accountable to the citizenry who can resist/fight those who are captured internally. That’s pretty normal. Good institutions have lots of independent layers to serve as resources to help with this.
In the case of Jan 6, Trumps SS team was captured by him, and Pence’s by Pence. That’s fine. The problem was the event team responsible for securing the Capitol for Pence’s presence appeared to be captured by Trump, or at least were suspected to be captured by Trump by Pence’s team. That’s a really big problem.
But most civil service infrastructures aren’t designed or equipped for an overt capture campaign. Project 2025 should trigger an institution-wide effort to prepare civil servants to resist these efforts, reinforce their oaths and responsibility to the citizenry, shoring up inspector general efforts, information siloing, reporting channels, etc. I suspect that’s not happening, though.
Chris
@Kay:
DHS always struck me as a stupid idea to begin with that then failed to be implemented on its own terms.
On the one hand, there was no need to federate all these law enforcement agencies that were previously under different departments into one big central State Security. There’s a reason these agencies were under different departments: they had different jobs relating to different things.
On the other hand, if you HAVE decided to consolidate all the policing functions in the federal government into one big group… But then that group somehow excludes the FBI, which for a hundred years has been the eight hundred pound gorilla in the room when it comes to law enforcement… Then what the fuck was even the point? Reminds me of the old Star Wars novels where there was a Bounty Hunters Guild, but since Boba Fett wasn’t a member, no one took it seriously.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@rk:
But nobody’s reported on his underwear/pants. I’m guessing he had an “accident” when this happened.
SiubhanDuinne
@rk:
I’m just counting the days until Jon McNaughton
releasesunleashes his painting of the event //Kay
The lavishly funded massive security agency of Homeland Security/Secret Service should be able to manage to spot a 20 year old shooter on a roof, but then again they allowed an attack on the Capitol itself, so maybe not.
Michael Bersin
The comments in Rep. Mark Alford’s (r) [former Kansas City Faux affiliate morning show newsreader] social media page are a cesspool.
Mark Alford’s (r) America
WaterGirl
@SiubhanDuinne: Has your DELETE key worn out yet?
sdhays
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Oh, come on. Don’t be ridiculous.
His diaper was full before he stepped on the stage.
Juju.
@Another Scott: I looked at those pictures and I didn’t see a bullet. Am I missing something?
WereBear
@Martin: agreed on both counts
Martin
@Juju.: It’s a streak on the first frame.
UncleEbeneezer
@different-church-lady: Let’s consider this option…– way too many BJ commenters
Kay
@Chris:
This was after the White House was breached. And after they failed to stop an intruder who ran across the White House lawn. And then all lied about it.
gene108
@WereBear:
I have had a major depressive episode where I became actively psychotic.
These troubled white men are not psychotic. The internet allows people’s beliefs to fall into echo chambers and get amplified.
That’s all this is. People looking for some connection to resolve a perceived problem and get met with right-wing radical, maybe violent, advice.
Tony Jay
Well, the Narrative is in full panicked “OMG he’s one of ours, flood the zone!” mode, right now. So I’m going to duck out to watch England get Alcaraz’d in Berlin, and come back when screenshots of the shooter throwing stiff arm salutes and calling Stench a ‘Deep State Sell-out” start befuddling the Botox-stiffened faces of the punditocracy.
This will only go well for the forces of chaos if it’s allowed to.
WaterGirl
If someone wanted to donate to Four Directions Wisconsin – and move it off the perfect $13,131.31 number – that would be most appreciated. Otherwise, with that perfect number sitting there, I’m not sure anyone wants to disturb it!
Kudos to the person who got us to that perfect number, though! It’s a thing of beauty.
Eyeroller
@Lapassionara: Most of Pennsylvania is open carry, according to Mr. Google. And he wasn’t that local, he was from something like 35 miles away. But security should have noticed that building with an obvious line of sight. You can still be ordered away–or shot–if you are deemed a threat to somebody under SS protection even if open carry is legal.
Where are people finding recent pictures of the shooter? The only pictures I’ve found are a high-school yearbook picture where he looks like a 12-year-old, and a picture of LE standing over his body. Of course I also don’t want to wade through all the pictures of Trump.
SiubhanDuinne
@WaterGirl:
Hah!! Very nearly!
Bill Arnold
@lowtechcyclist:
Written plans, and recorded public rhetoric.
West of the Rockies
I’ve been avoiding hot-take hell and will until the dust settles. Especially from TV and radio.
I will say they I anticipate Trump will take a thing that could create some general sympathy and support, and turn it into a grievance-fest, further alienating more people than it draws in (especially if it produces further violence against Democrats).
Juju.
@Martin: Thanks. I guess I did miss it completely.
Jeffro
Nothing about the shooting changes Dobbs.
Nothing about the shooting alters Project 2025‘s goals.
Nothing about the shooting takes away from President Biden’s many, many 1st-term accomplishments.
Nothing about the shooting alters the composition of our current SCOTUS.
So…let’s push back hard on the right’s nonsense and false equivalency, and remind them (with example after unfortunate examples) that MAGA = violence.
Lapassionara
@Eyeroller: Thanks. There was a purported photo of him on Twitter, but it was later ruled to be a fake.
35 miles doesn’t seem so far to me, but maybe it is far in that part of PA.
Bill Arnold
Just noting this because it is being discussed, re Trump as a literal avatar/head of the Beast in (Christian) Revelations 13:14. Emphasis mine.
(More a bit later on the first beast with a head wound.)
WereBear
@gene108: Sorry, should have said “deluded.”
cain
@Elizabelle: let’s hope it leads to more subscriptions being cancelled and honestly stop watching CNN and MSNBC. Nobody deserves the loyalty.
My parents are all solid MSNBC watchers and are very married to a lot of the commentators. Of course they also think David Brooks is a thoughtful columnist. Lol
jimmiraybob
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: “… a contrarian, so he would be against what ever party the rest of his family was for.”
This certainly could explain why a 20-year old white kid, a registered republican, might steal his daddy’s AR-15 to make an assassination attempt.
Every bit as valid a speculation as he might have thought that he could get American Revolution 2.0 off the ground to make daddy proud.
Jeffro
Exactly.
He was going to be abhorrent at the RNC even before this happened; he’s quite likely to get completely carried away with his MAGA Messiah-ness now.
His hard core supporters will swoon while everyone else raises an eyebrow and/or slowly backs away.
Soprano2
@Kay: I agree, but they can’t help themselves because it’s how they see the world. I said in another thread that for a normal person this would make them more humble and glad to be alive, but since TCFG is a huge narcissist he’ll be more insufferable then ever, convinced he’s invincible.
West of the Rockies
@Chief Oshkosh:
Any informed word yet on why a rightwinger would want to take out his own hero?
cain
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Luckily we have a great economy and low joblessness. Otherwise propaganda would have been more effective. Germany was under crushing economic crisis thanks to the treaty of Versailles.
Eyeroller
@Lapassionara: The distance would mean that the Butler PD, assuming they were there, would not have recognized him as a local, and the SS certainly would not have. Plus nobody saw him until he was climbing up the building.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@cain:
Not to mention the incredibly weak central government without at least our record (however imperfect it might be) of democratic, institutional norms going back a long time.
I shudder to think how modern applications of the Nazi propaganda model would work if things were as you describe.
jimmiraybob
@West of the Rockies: “…Trump will take a thing that could create some general sympathy and support, and turn it into a grievance-fest, …”
It’s far beyond grievance. The Trump/MAGA machine is and has been stoking rage and hatred against the devils and vermin that are enemies of America and “real Americans.” You absolutely know that the far right militias have been waiting for just the right moment.
Ksmiami
@Kay: yep. I’m glad though. The party differences are stark
cain
@Eyeroller: Trump will not play by the media playbook where they expect him to do a call for unity. He is going to lean in on the threats and is going to blame the Democrats. He is going to further try to separate and isolate us. We are the ‘other’.
The only silver lining is that the Joe is old has left the media and now even the political calculations have changed with this event.
But now the entire party is under the lens. You can bet the media will do false equivalency.
wjca
What I find concerning is that it apparently was his father who, a couple months ago, went out and bought the AR-15. In other words, the gun fetish atmosphere was not something isolated to the shooter.
Jackie
@karen gail:
That’s interesting. I just heard that TCFG’s SS detail is HANDPICKED by the former president.
I don’t know if that’s true, but if so, I’d love to hear the reactions/rationales to that.
Ksmiami
@cain: actually this theory been historically revised. Germany’s economy was recovering and the Versailles reparations weren’t that bad. However, Nazis used the war losses as a key grievance point.
cain
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
I don’t think what Trump did was odd. It’s what a narcissist would have done. His brain is wired for adulation and so he knew at that moment he was a true star of the show and so he rode to the moment and did a triumphant gesture knowing it would be captured by phones and the media.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Please, Jesus was merely crucified, not to say Jesus didn’t get his hair mussed up, but this is an ear injury we are talking about. I am sure the MSM will be along to tell us all how that is a thousand times worse.
jonas
@cain: Hyperinflation and the burden of war reparations were mostly past by the early 30’s and the Nazis had actually suffered some serious electoral setbacks in the meantime. It was the Great Depression that swept them back into power.
rk
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
I had to Google Jon McNaughton. Good grief! He has to be in it for fleecing the gullible. No way this guy’s serious.
Miki
@cain: Yep. That’s what I think, too. Bravery had nothing to do with it. But it is kind of amazing how close to automatic the gesture was.
Jackie
@Eyeroller: So far, (watching The Fox Sunday Show) the discussions have been tempered. The RNC Chairman was on and actually mentioned the shooter’s political affiliation, so there’s that.
We know behind closed doors the GQP is PISSED that he wasn’t a Dem. Fk’d up all their plans to blame Biden.
Jay C
@Ksmiami:
This: economic conditions in Germany in 1932 were pretty bad (like everywhere in the “developed” world), but they had (IIRC) pretty much dealt with the reparations issue – via loans from their nominal “creditors” – and the main issue fueling the rise of the Nazis was the fear that Communism might take advantage of the economic woes.
Martin
@cain: I wouldn’t assume those positive are working as you think. Just because people have jobs doesn’t mean those jobs are sufficient to help them secure their future. Housing prices and depending on region scarcity are real problems even where jobs are available. The rental market has found their software tools that let them extract maximum rent so many of the wage gains are just getting dumped back into landlords because landlords know that people will pay anything to avoid homelessness. Transportation costs are out of control. Just finding a job is a nightmare due to application spam and AI screening.
Sure there are jobs, but we’ve made being young pretty fucking miserable. There’s a massive generational wealth transfer from young to old. We refuse to address guns and climate change. Abortion laws disproportionately impact young people. They have pretty good reason to be depressed and angry.
rikyrah
@pajaro:
Thank you.
Democrats would have made it impossible for his shooter to get his weapon of death.
Plain and simple
Barry
@ArchTeryx: “Yes. Somehow, the dullard knew Trump had compromised his security team and they were trying to lead him straight to his death, so he refused to fall into the trap. Probably the smartest move he’d made his entire white-bread life.”
IIRC, pence said that he realized that they could have been ordered to take him ‘somewhere’ and to hold him.
jonas
@cain: He did the same thing after returning to the WH after almost dying of Covid. Whether it’s Covid, cholesterol, or the assassin’s bullet, the guy does have a knack for cheating death, I’ll give him that.
DougL
@gene108: this combined with big money explains nearly the entirety of our politics:
Eyeroller
@wjca: His hometown is a very white, and according to Suzanne a very Republican, suburb/exurb. No surprise at all.
I wonder whether “looked like a 12-year-old at age 18” was part of the problem. He was a big fan of some guns-and-explosives YouTube channel which apparently also counts Donald Trump Jr. as a fan. He won an award in high school for math and science but did not go to college; he was living at home and working in the kitchen of a nearby nursing home. Sounds like the profile of a guy who would be easy prey for the likes of Andrew Tate and Nick Fuentes. The big question is why did he attack Trump in particular. If he was a Fuentes fan the most likely answer is that Fuentes has been dissing Trump recently for “being controlled by Jews.”
rikyrah
@SiubhanDuinne:
👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾
Eyeroller
@jonas: He also was very theatrical about his return to the WH after Covid. He has that instinct for sure.
SiubhanDuinne
@Eyeroller:
@WaterGirl:
Props to my brother — big props! He texted me back, apologised sincerely, and admitted he had simply assumed the shooter was a Democrat!
I’m kind of in shock.
jonas
The ranks of the SS, like most LEA’s, are full of with RWNJs. A lot of them loved Trump and probably lined up for the opportunity to spend the last couple of years following him around on golf courses.
Martin
@wjca: This is western PA. Everyone owns a gun including the Democrats. They close the schools for the first day of hunting season.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@jimmiraybob: While Jr stole daddy’s midlife crises is an interesting detail. I was referring to Edwin Booth, John Wilkes Booth’s older and much more famous brother, was a friend of Lincoln’s, and the Booth family vaporized John from their families’ collective memory after the assassination.
cain
@Ksmiami: huh interesting. Plausible.
Princess
We’ve all heard so many stories since 2016 that this or that republican elected dude hates and fears Trump but doesn’t dare say so publicly because he’s afraid of the consequences. Sure, some of that is fear of being shunned at the country club. But I think a lot of them are scared of someone like this guy – a further right young man with a gun taking them out. In their hearts, they know this is what happened yesterday (irony that it was Trump he attacked). I don’t expect it has made his future VP too scared to join the ticket, but it should. They created a bunch of radical right armed and unregulated militia and they don’t control it at all.
Eyeroller
@Martin: Nobody needs an AR to hunt deer.
cain
@Martin: preach.
I agree that the numbers show a false reality.
Not sure how to compare with post WW1 Germany and here.
Regardless, I think we are going to go through some things and hopefully propaganda will not sway folks.
Kay
@Martin:
My youngest, who is 21, thinks it’s climate change. That they all on some deep level know there’s this existential threat already upon us. It made me so sad when he said it because it rings true to me.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Ksmiami: I thought was things were recovering in part because the US forced the UK and France to lighten up on the reparations, then the Great Depression hit, the German Government’s reaction was Austerity while using what money it had to pay off the reparations and that’s when things went nuts.
cain
@jonas: well he is saving up for something grand. I rather see him sad, depressed, and in prison mixing with the general population.
wjca
What kind of a hunter uses an AR-15 for hunting?
(Spoiler Alert: a really, really pathetically bad one.) EDT Eyeroller got there first
Eyeroller
@Princess: Oh hey, turns out that five months ago Alex Jones and his guest Ivan Raiklin were talking about how great it would be if somebody assassinated Trump because it would lead to retaliatory assassinations, including of Joe Biden. Hmm, I wonder why an apparently radicalized young man might shoot at Trump. If we knew what his media diet was, we might have a better picture.
cain
@SiubhanDuinne: maybe he needs to look at the party with fresh eyes then.
Chris
@cain:
Honestly, I’ve thought for a while that we may want to revise how critical a role economics was in the rise of fascism.
If you can somehow beam up an original Brownshirt from 1933 to the present, and ask him what he’s so mad about, I’ll bet you the first thing he says won’t have a thing to do with the Depression. Or even the war. It’ll be some absolute gibberish about how they barely recognize their country anymore because the Jews who run it have turned all these gay jazz club owners loose who are corrupting the nation with their black American music. (Only they wouldn’t use the words “Jew,” “gay,” “black,” or “American.”)
cain
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: sounds like what Germany did to Greece some years ago
Jackie
@Jackie: LOL! Attempted assassination by a Republican doesn’t satisfy the MAGA’s appetite for revenge this morning. Faux has returned to Biden’s not fit to be President discussions.
Bill Arnold
@Another Scott:
If that’s the vapor trail from a .223, it does not appear to be the same projectile that hit his ear. He was (well, appeared to be) reacting in that first picture, and reaction time is min 150-200ms; in that time a 223 would move like 500+ feet.
Multiple shots were fired at him/his general direction. (The kid was a bad shot, apparently.)
The turn of his head immediate prior was … interesting.
Princess
@Kay: I believe your son is completely correct, based on a few decades of teaching the younger end of that age group. Everything they do is haunted by the prospect of climate collapse, famine, war… Getting a job, buying a house, having a family..
Martin
@Eyeroller: I agree, but owning guns is part of the culture of western PA. Just is.
wjca
Biden, if nobody else, is probably safe. The last thing the RWNJs want to see is a President Harris.
jonas
@wjca: 30-30s and shotguns are for hunting. AR-15s (when not being used in attempted assassinations and mass shootings) are expensive penis lengtheners, nothing more.
cain
@Chris: it’s possible. The great depression here did not lead to full blown fascism. Although right wing elements were certainly in operation.
cain
@Princess: they need vote harder for sane politicians who aren’t linked to industry.
cain
@wjca: unless they want to take out Harris first thinking that Biden won’t last long. The Republicans could also delay seating a VP.
Jackie
@SiubhanDuinne: The entire MAGA world is in shock that one of their own is responsible for the attempted death of their Orange god.
Huge kudos to your brother for manning up and apologizing!👍🏻
I’m waiting for the “he was a Never trumper” aka RINO excuses to begin.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Chris: How about “Those fools in France want to partition Germany so that monster Stalin can gobble us up one micro state and murder us all”? Those Brownshirts grew up being taught they were the modern Spartans, the natural warriors of Europe, faithfully following their Warrior Kings from victory to victory over the effete Westerners, and the Savages to the East, Plug “decadent Jazz music” into that context.
Bill Arnold
@WereBear:
Yeah, the Secret Service continues to be infested with Trump cultists. The ones guarding convicted felon Trump are almost certainlyprobably selected for their loyalty to/compatibility with him, with competence a secondary or tertiary consideration.
Martin
@Kay: Yeah, we’re destroying our kids’ future and don’t care because it gives good returns to our 401ks. Democrats care a little more, but not much, really.
Bill Arnold
@Another Scott:
No, though it’s harder. In a browser, right-click or equivalent on image, then open image in a new tab.
JerseyBeard
@cain: If you haven’t listened to Rachel Maddow’s “Ultra” podcast you should. You may revise your conclusion about fascism in America during/after the depression.
jayne
@Martin: You have an extremely valid point here. While I would argue that Biden’s economic policies have already provided positive and tangible benefits to those who are very poor, elderly and/or disabled, and also that he is clearly working on a long-game strategy to provide real relief for the rest of the working/middle-class, anyone who’s living above the poverty line but young and/or poor enough to be stressed out about it is not having a good time right now. Jobs are plentiful, yes. Full-time jobs with decent benefits that pay enough for you to make rent within a reasonable commute of that job are… decidedly less plentiful. Food is expensive. Housing is expensive. Transportation, medicine, utilities are expensive. Even the “poor people” stores like Walmart and Target are starting to price people out, but they sure have lots of jobs open if you want to work 25 hours a week for $9/hour.
All of which is just a long-winded prelude to this: The Biden Administration should rightfully tout their specific accomplishments that have made the US safer and more affordable for vulnerable people. But claims of a generically improved economy are going to backfire with large segments of the population that should otherwise be Blue-leaning because they’re not seeing any short-term relief and it’s hard to be excited about what’s waiting down the line when you’re eating store-brand peanut butter on the “on sale because it expired” bread and are still drowning in debt.
WaterGirl
@SiubhanDuinne: I am in shock, too, once removed!!!
Knock me over with a feather.
UncleEbeneezer
@Chris: Thank you. Class-Not-Race/Gender/etc., has always been such a simplistic worldview that it is deeply dumb. Especially since so many Fascist Chuds have often shown that they are willing to LOSE $/jobs/etc., to get their bigoted freak on. Of course they want $ and power along with their bigotry, but framings that suggest it’s all/ONLY about wealth and capital are ignoring a shitload of evidence that the latter is just as important.
karen gail
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: According to family stories you are correct about Booth; my great grandmother said he was disowned and forbidden from seeking help from relatives. At one time there were three big family farms of Booths and he was told he wasn’t welcome at any of them. When I first read about Lincoln I asked uncle who would have been a peer about John Wilkes and he told me that he had been disowned for his behavior and it had nothing to do with him being an actor.
Mai Naem mobile
Mediate has the last hot mic moments from TFG as he’s being taken away and he’s asking to put his shoes back on. He says it three times. Guess he’s worried somebody will figure out he’s got heels in his shoes. Such a weirdo.
Soprano2
@Eyeroller: I saw that and immediately thought “he didn’t write that, his staff did”. It was in regular type and coherent complete sentences, not his style at all.
I hope people can see the contrast that Democrats reacted like normal human beings and Republicans ran to the cameras to blame Democrats before they knew anything about the shooter.
jonas
@Chris: It was a combination of the lingering “Dolchstosslegende” from the first WW (including treaty obligations that prevented Germany from re-arming, exercising sovereignty over the Rhineland, etc.) and economic issues. Although in the US the onset of the Great Depression is most closely associated with the stock market crash of 29, what really triggered the worldwide depression was the collapse of the Austrian Creditanstalt bank in 1931, which was associated with the Rothschild family and gave further purchase to conspiracy theories about the Jewish manipulation of the global economy. All this paved the way for the Nazis to bounce back from the electoral wilderness they had been in for the previous couple of years and get Hitler appointed chancellor.
apocalipstick
@Chris: Jonah Goldberg on line 1.
SiubhanDuinne
@Jackie:
I agree. I thanked him and told him I really admire his willingness and ability to apologise and say “I was wrong.” Truth be told, he’s better at it than I am. Gives me a glimmer of hope that at some point our fragile relationship can be mended.
Eyeroller
@jonas: I’m not a hunter at all but I’ve read that a weapon like an AR pulverizes the meat, because that’s what it was designed to do. Of course if you are not interested in the meat and only want to cut off the head and mount it, maybe it makes the kill easier?
jimmiraybob
@Eyeroller: “…Alex Jones and his guest Ivan Raiklin were talking about how great it would be if somebody assassinated Trump because it would lead to retaliatory assassinations …”
I was skeptical so I did some sleuthing and found the IW video dated February 2, 2024. Not gonna post a link but it’s out there.
Soprano2
@Kay: Carol Lennoig wrote a book about the many, many problems of the Secret Service a few years ago. I hope she’s being called today to appear on TV to talk about that. I agree that this was a total failure by the agents that TCFG himself picked to protect him.
Bill Arnold
@rk:
It was not a fist. It was a “show fist”. If he hit anything solid with that “fist”, his hand would suffer damage. Trump has managed to be convicted of 34 felonies in his late 70s, while never in his life learning (and remembering) how to make a fist.
How to Make a Fist (wikiHow)
kalakal
@SiubhanDuinne:
wow! I would be in shock too if I were you
jonas
He was mostly a vicious racist who thought slavery was the cornerstone of right order in the world and hated Lincoln with the heat of a million suns for defeating the Confederacy and freeing the slaves.
SiubhanDuinne
@cain:
Baby steps. I’m not going to push that today.
Eyeroller
@jimmiraybob: If the name Ivan Raiklin sounds familiar, he’s the guy who has compiled the list of names of people he wants to put before tribunals and presumably execute.
Soprano2
@cain: This is my take too. He has a canny understanding of this kind of thing. He was making a picture for his supporters to share and lionize.
Soprano2
@Eyeroller: Oh wow, that could explain it.
jimmiraybob
@Eyeroller: I hadn’t heard of him before.
suzanne
@Lapassionara: Butler isn’t that far from where he lived. Maybe a 45-50 minute drive? Butler is pretty rural, but the southern part of Butler County is kind of turning into Pittsburgh exurbs.
Kay
@Soprano2:
To just continue to say that this is about funding and pour more of it down that bottomless pit is bad government.
Bring in some outside entity to evaluate why they cannot seem to do their jobs before they get a dime more in increased funding.
When the intruder made it across the lawn, targeting Obama and his family, they blamed their police dogs. There’s no accountability at all.
This is truly bipartisan. We keep throwing more and more money at these police agencies. Has it ever worked? We just have hundreds of people standing around after the damage is already done. Go home! Get off the clock! It’s too late!
The fact that they have a vehement Right wing nut contingent in their ranks doesn’t make me want to pay them O/T either. I’m not paying for their stupid We Love Trump meetings. They can do that on their own time.
cain
@Mai Naem mobile:
More like he doesn’t want to show that he’s short. He depends on the shoes to look tall. Everything is performative with him.
Eyeroller
@Martin: I think some people here are overthinking this a lot. Reports from his high-school classmates were that he wore weird clothes, was constantly bullied, and ate lunch alone. I already noted that he looked like a 12-year-old at age 18. So it is looking like what we have here is an incel, very likely with undiagnosed and certainly untreated depression. Possibly suicidal. Was smart and not poor but seemed to have no ambition and worked as a kitchen assistant at a nursing home. Sucked into a YouTube channel that featured guns and explosives–where do you think it likely the recommendation algorithm would take him from there? Nick Fuentes and Alex Jones, I’d bet. He wasn’t thinking about next year, much less 30 years from now.
jonas
@Eyeroller: That’s pretty much right — 223 high velocity rounds are meant just to tear up a target, not deliver a precision hit such as you want if you’re deer hunting or something. The last thing you want in your game meat is a bunch of lead fragments and (unless you’re a sadistic asshole) for the animal to suffer.
Martin
@jayne: My warning to people who want to tout Biden’s economic numbers is that only works if the good numbers match people’s sense of economic security.
What the economic numbers don’t capture, because they aren’t designed to, is how much of Americans wealth is being transferred to landlords, to automakers, and to other segments of the economy that have captured consumers. All of that counts as GDP, but it’s not GDP that serves as an investment in the future, just as wealth transfer from the citizenry. And I don’t see any evidence that Democrats are ready to engage with this.
tam1MI
@West of the Rockies: I am placing my money on, “He wanted to be famous”.
cain
@Eyeroller:
I’m really interested to see what Trumps does after this. I know it will be grievance but I’m curious if he will go an anti-gun rhetoric – probably only if he knows he will get adulation for it.
Everything is about adulation.
Jackie
@jonas: My response was regarding those who say the SS is weakened by allowing women and POC in their ranks. I pointed out any POC – including women on TCFG’s SS detail were personally selected by him.
He could have chosen an all white male detail, but apparently he didn’t.🤷🏼♀️
Jackie
@SiubhanDuinne: ♥️🤞🏻
cain
@tam1MI:
Great, so now we have an escalation from being famous by being a school shooter to now promoting themselves to shooting the president or a presidential candidate.
Martin
@Jackie: We already know that Trump bullies the SS away from doing their job. We have that from congressional testimony from the Jan 6 commission.
kalakal
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Reperations were halted in 1930 due to the great depression. The reperations were altered again and again during the 20s nearly always in the Germans favour. The hardliners were the French, in part because they needed the money to pay off their war debt to the US who insisted on full repayment. By the mid 1920s the Weimar Republic was doing pretty well due in large part to US, UK, and French loans, the bulk being US. In 1929 the US called in all foreign loans and the economy collapsed. By 1933 unemployment was 33%.
Soprano2
@Kay: Oh I completely agree, this isn’t about money at all. There do need to be real serious Congressional hearings and investigations into this, it’s a huge failure. I don’t look for the House efforts to be serious, it’ll be nutball stuff about Biden’s SS wanting TCFG dead. I’m surprised the R’s haven’t started talking about that already.
Bill Arnold
@Eyeroller:
I know a deer hunter that uses an AR16 class rifle. Not well (wingnut) but he uses it. As you say, not a good deer rifle, but in some circles, if one has a weapon, it might as well be American’s Gun.
Chief Oshkosh
@West of the Rockies:
None that I’ve seen, just the info that he was a registered Republican and people pointing out that when Hair Witless tried to deny knowledge of Project 2025, a lot of the Q crowd got very upset.
Does anyone know if the one-story builder the shooter chose happens to house a pizza parlor and has a basement?
cain
We have had a lot of discussions about this – and I know that despite a upper middle class income – my dollars aren’t going as far as I have and I’m just super lucky to have come in as a wage earner in the late 90s when it was still possible to buy a house at a decent target.
Wages have not kept up with the cost of living. My wife earning 60k would barely make ends meet at this point. Education is going to suffer badly even if it wasn’t a political football at the moment.
Even building new homes is not going to help because equity firms keep buying them. We need to have a serious conversation about policy and stop this wealth transfer. Joe needs to start thinking about breaking up companies and building more equitable competition.
cain
@kalakal: Typical that we would fuck up the world and ourselves and took a war to get us out of it where casualties were in the millions.
Chief Oshkosh
@rikyrah:
To add to that, and to echo another writer here, a judiciary that wasn’t in the tank for Trump would have made it impossible for the shooter to have such an easy target because a functioning judiciary would’ve already presided over at least one federal case that would’ve seen Trump at least under house imprisonment.
Harrison Wesley
The shooter was (you may choose more than one):
(a) A Democrat in Republican clothing
(b) A pacifist in Second Amendment clothing
(c) A woke DEI antifa hater of American values
(d) A Black Bloc hater of the human race
(e) The Scarlet Pimpernel
(f) The liberator ordered by the voices from his toaster oven to usher in the Protozoan Empire by sacrificing the Anointed One and spilling Its orange contents
Jackie
Latest update:
Bill Arnold
@Bill Arnold:
Sheesh typo. AR-15 class rifle.
.223
Renie
@Kay: Both my kids in their 30s have already made some life direction choices based on climate change. One wants no children.
Miss Bianca
@SiubhanDuinne: See, me, with my brother, I’d be all like, “Why the *hell* would you jump to that conclusion,” but, you know what? Honestly, better just to take the win – *without* giving in to the temptation of saying, “that’s mighty white of you!”
Chris
@Harrison Wesley:
Did the Scarlet Pimpernel ever shoot people or did he just skewer them with a sword like a proper aristocrat?
tam1MI
@cain: Great, so now we have an escalation from being famous by being a school shooter to now promoting themselves to shooting the president or a presidential candidate.
I was alive in the 1960s, came of age in the 1980s. I know about Arthur Bremer and Mark David Chapman. Sadly, getting famous by shooting someone famous is far older than getting famous by shooting up a school.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@cain:
Booman’s been saying this for years and as a policy goal, yeah, it’s something Dems across the board have been unwilling to do or even try.
And it just gets worse. The Krogers/Albertson merger was approved. Sure, here in CO it means they have to divest of around 90 Safeway stores but the mere approval of the merger goes against what we should be doing.
Martin
@cain: Nothing wrong with non-market rate housing. That can be government owned or non-profit owned.
Harrison Wesley
@Chris: Times change…..
sdhays
@Eyeroller: Trump is going to have to get in line for damages that piece of 💩 owes people for inciting violence against them.
Bill Arnold
@Kay:
The “The Guardian” has a lot of flaws, e.g. their anti-trans stance, but they did pioneer the use of “global heating”, which is more accurate and blunt than “climate change”. The physics involved was first described in the 1890s, and is basically the earth’s surface retaining more of the sun’s heat due to greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere.
rikyrah
So, the father bought the weapon of death, and the son just brought it from home.😒
Gvg
@Martin: My impression is that California is not typical. It is one extreme. Young people in other states are not so locked out of home ownership. Now California has so many advantages that I don’t blame a lot of people for not wanting to move, but that is why the housing is so high compared to salaries. Some of them need to consider moving.
Every state is a different economy. And the politics matter too these days.
The other thing is that things change. Whatever the interest rates are and real estate market is like, just a few years can make a huge difference. In my lifetime, things have looked bad for years several times, then, something changed. And for several years it would be a good real estate market. Conditions just do not stay the same, for a very large number of reasons, so they should not give up.
Jackie
@Bill Arnold: But global heating doesn’t explain the severe deadly winter storms the world has been dealing with these recent past years…*
*Total GQP snark.
Citizen Alan
@rk: That is what makes me think that there is something fishy about this whole thing. I simply cannot believe that Donald Trump, seconds after being shot at, would have the presence of mind to both wave his fist defiantly to the crowd and also demand that he take his shoes with him so that he won’t be seen without shoe lifts.
wjca
More accurate. But subject to generating argument every time the changing climate results in unusually colder than normal weather is some local area. Which it does from time to time. I, for one, can recall hearing exactly those arguments.
That, IIRC, is why the change from “global warming” to “climate change”
Tony Jay
@Eyeroller:
This.
I know I’m banging on about this, but what we have here is what it looks like when a Republican civil-war goes hot.
The next step is to cement that in the public narrative by ensuring every Democrat and not-Nazi Never Trumper out there absolutely hammers the truth that Republican rhetoric has grown so extreme it’s brought political violence to the doorsteps of America by making their own shitshow of a standard bearer a target. So it’s now incumbent upon Trump – not Biden – to speak out against violent rhetoric from the Right and its normalisation in the public sphere.
This is a Republican problem. They have to solve it. In full view of the world’s attention and with no patience for any attempts to nitpick. There’s a Convention season coming up and then an Election, it is absolutely incumbent upon Republicans at every level to condemn the fire breathers in their ranks and put a stop to routine hate speech.
They won’t do any of this, of course. They can’t, not unless they want to trigger even more anti-RINO violence, but that’s their problem too.
Make Them Own This.
Let Them Choke On It.
Now, back to the Football.
Elizabelle
Biden scheduled to speak to the nation at 1:30.
Martin
@Gvg: It’s not national, but blue states with decent urban areas seem to be most problematic. Washington, Colorado also have affordability problems. Basically where the better jobs are.
In about ¾ of the country people spend more on their cars than their homes, which is a whole other problem, and a fairly new one. People can afford homes, but they can’t afford to get to work.
3Sice
The Stoner pattern rifle (AR10/AR15) can be chambered to a wide variety of calibers of varying utility and lethality.
I assume All-American spree shooters are using .223 Winchester, which is widely available OTC.
scribbler
@jayne: Thank you for this. It’s the reality for many of the younger people I know too. They are struggling just to keep their heads above water.
ETA: Yes, many of them are in more expensive urban areas, with extremely expensive housing, and generally higher prices for everything.
Martin
@wjca: Global warming is accurate globally. Climate change is accurate locally.
A less stable jet stream can make your local climate colder. An atmosphere that can hold more water can lead to a lot more rain or a lot less rain, depending. A warmer ocean can make the ocean currents weaker bringing more cold weather, stronger storms.
Chief Oshkosh
@cain:
Which is what his administration is trying to do. They’ve also preemptively stopped some consolidations, such as the JetBlue/Spirit deal.
apocalipstick
@Suzanne: We have a friend who is, in fact, quite wealthy. He worked for Rural Development for 30 years, drew a good government salary, enjoyed federal health insurance, and used his placement to purchase several rental properties, financed in part by his healthy inheritance, courtesy of parents who worked in a defense plant.
He spends his days building AK-47s in his basement.
Skepticat
@Elizabelle: I’ve read that it was glass from his teleprompter, but his talking about “feeling the bullet” will blow anything else out of the water.
Tony G
I’m not too bright, but I anticipated this bullshit the moment I heard about this. The only reason why I don’t suspect a false-flag operation is that Trump got a minor injury. Most likely the kid is just nuts.
lgerard
@rk:
No doubt that this is going to lead to a flare up of his bone spurs
wjca
You know that. And I know that. But labels are for the low information folks. And locally is where they focus.
Cacti
Fuck the comPost.
Republicans have spent the last decade ramping up eliminationist rhetoric. This is a one side issue.
BarcaChicago
@Jeffro: Agree. This seems obvious to me.
Tony G
@pajaro: A young man in my extended family who is a “powerful gun aficionado” used to have as his Facebook profile photo a picture of himself with a dead deer and an AR-15. My immediate reaction was “Are you really so incompetent as a hunter that you need to fire 30 rounds in 90 seconds to hit the damn deer?”.
Burnspbesq
It’s odd that the party that to some extent says the Bible has all the answers can’t seem to find the totally appropriate verse for today:
”As ye sow, so shall ye reap.”
Tony G
@Skepticat: Broken glass sounds like the most likely cause of the injury. I know NOTHING about guns, but somehow I think that a bullet hitting your ear would cause a more serious injury.
Chris
@apocalipstick:
Having studied this in undergrad during the height of the war on terror era, one of the things they beat into you is that terrorists on average are not poor. Osama Bin Laden was an heir to a dynasty that owned the biggest construction company in the world. Ayman Al Zawahiri was a medical doctor from a solidly middle class family. Carlos the Jackal was the son of a lawyer. The OAS were drawn from the senior officers and elite paratroopers of the French Army. And so forth. None of these people were starving peasants storming the castle.
Martin
@Chief Oshkosh: But they aren’t focusing in the areas that directly impact people. Breaking up companies in discretionary spending areas has limited help. You have to focus on the core spending areas, which they haven’t been doing. And their remedies are garbage. Breaking up companies that form natural monopolies don’t solve the problem – you have to have a more direct regulatory responsibility by government. For instance, why are carriers allowed to own their own networks and force consumers to only their network, vs having a single national network that must lease to any comer, and have limits on how much of the network that the carriers can own. That would dramatically lower costs and diversify ownership, and allow for new carriers to set up because they wouldn’t need to build a national network of their own. It would provide a structural remedy, but government regulators aren’t open to the idea because rent-seeking is the very core of the current economy and the feds, including dems, don’t see that as something in need of changing. That’s all the junk fees situation is, and we’re leaning toward disclosure of the rent-seeking fees, not a change to the markets to eliminate them.
gsherscher
@SiubhanDuinne: Pennsylvania is a closed primary state.
It’s very possible the young shooter was registered Republican to
mess with their primary elections. Let’s not crow until the possibility that he was really a fevered Democrat has been closed.
Martin
@Tony G: Large, non-consensual ear-piercing. All of the skin in your outer ear is pretty useless. It’d hurt, but that’s about it.
apocalipstick
@Eyeroller: AR is quite bad as a hunting tool.
apocalipstick
@Bill Arnold: I wonder if this is like the famous ‘photo’ of the 9/11 plane from the WTC observation deck.
Jess
@Kay:
I think so too. Even though they won’t admit it. There is an apocalyptic mood hanging over the world, and the more people try to deny it, the more the suppressed fear and desperation comes out sideways. We all know there will be major changes in the coming decades, whether or not we make them voluntarily. And the fact that we humans brought this on ourselves makes it hard to come together and be optimistic about the future of our race.
I’m taking action and doing all I can, which is helping with my own feelings of desperation, but I have also developed a deep hatred of humanity and kinda think we should all be wiped of the face of the earth. I’m trying to rise above this feeling, but it’s there.
BTW, anyone else feeling this way should read Kim Stanley Robinson’s book, “The Ministry for the Future.” It’s amazing, inspiring, informative, and a good read.
apocalipstick
@Eyeroller: No, the AR is just a shitty tool for hunting.
Chief Oshkosh
@Martin: Hm. I don’t know that I consider airline travel any more of a discretionary spending industry than cable/TV/non-basic internet (which I’m guessing is what you mean in discussing carriers/networks). I’ll grant that internet access is core spending, but basic access is pretty cheap.
True core spending areas (for me) are food, housing, basic transportation, and education. Cable/high-end internet access and how and what content they deliver isn’t core to me. But then, I grew up largely without TV and don’t watch much now.
FWIW, I think Biden has been better than other Democrats and all Republicans on these areas, but sure, a lot more needs to be done. Maybe Biden should add you to his administration in his second term. You’ve got my vote! :)
Jess
@Eyeroller:
I could see how they might think MAGA would be benefitted more by having Trump as a martyr than as a decaying orange blob of shit. So many younger and smarter Orcs ready to seize the standard and charge forward to avenge his holy name.
Chris Johnson
@West of the Rockies: That is very easy.
Trump is, or was, disowning Project 2025 for electoral purposes. I’ve seen video of an elderly woman distraught that the party did not even let her anti-abortion group in the room for writing the platform, or some such thing: point being, wingnut upset because the party machine is insistent on trying for the moderates rather than going with the holy rollers.
For this kid it’s even easier than that. He’s one of the brownshirts, one of the stochastic terrorists being groomed to flip out. Word was he got bullied, looked young, odds are he’s been subjected to all the ‘Andrew Tate’, ‘Sneako’ style right wing misogyny and drowned in it. Those people make money by bullying kids like this, telling them they will never mate and that women are brainless animals to be enslaved.
This is very common. Before Vaush flipped out and went doomer, he did many videos on the subject. There are many leftists who’ve reported on this. It’s treated as cringe behavior by the very young men who fall for it, and mockery ensues.
Meanwhile, the right wing groomers are suggesting that, when Project 2025 comes, it won’t stop there, and the correct thing is to strip women of the vote and assign them as sex slaves to all the young men. Very creepy, actually happening, especially with ‘groypers’ and their like, or from Tate and his ilk.
And so, this kid is totally brainwashed, and because he’s a ginormous creep AND still looks about 12 and thus is nowhere near resolving his crap in any sense, he learns that Trump is backing away from Project 2025. Trump is betraying the plan. Maybe Nick Fuentes tells him Trump is controlled by the Jews (this had literally been happening from Fuentes, recently).
Bottom line is, the kid flips. He’s depending entirely on Trump as a savior for doing a lot of horrible stuff. And then Trump betrays him. And so the kid has a personal vendetta against Trump, because Trump betrayed the big plan (which was Project 2025, and more).
It’s really not hard to understand. You have to be aware of what groypers, Proud Boys etc. are, and you have to be aware they demand Trump continues to act and talk crazy. They won’t stand for moderation, they’ll treat it as a betrayal, because they’re steeped in conspiracy bubbles and way the hell far away from anything like reality. They’re groomed to be that way on purpose. They’re soldiers.
Chief Oshkosh
@Burnspbesq:
Perfect.
Old School
Biden just spoke. No new information.
He said he would speak again tonight from the Oval Office.
Elizabelle
@Old School: thank you
Eyeroller
Latest information is that the Thomas Crooks who donated $15 to ActBlue is a 69-year-old Democrat from the same county who just happens to have the same first and last name as the shooter. Surprise!
Though my guess is that the shooter registered and (probably) voted Republican because that’s what Mom and Dad do.
I do not believe the kid even really knew anything about Project 2025. He was almost certainly watching groyper and Alex Jones videos. They are down on Trump for various reasons that are not directly related to Project 2025, but are much more conspiratorial.
Chris Johnson
@SiubhanDuinne: I think it’s important at times like this to be able to suggest that the shooter was not a ‘real Republican’.
That would be true. The kid was some kind of fanatic, trying to attack the Republican nominee, very likely on the grounds that Trump failed to support radical aims.
The regular Republicans are trained to cover for the fanatics, but they’ve got to be uncomfortable with them. Some split from the party over it, some tried to use Haley in a power struggle: they fall in line, but are they happy about it? Not a chance.
Call the kid ‘not a real Republican’. A groyper or something. Groyper is good, the kid’s that exact demographic and the head Groyper was claiming Trump was controlled by Jews. You’re not going to find many real Republicans claiming Trump was controlled by Jews. They’ve got a fringe element and this is a great opportunity to drive a wedge and split off that fringe element, which is already trying to murder their main guy.
Jess
@Citizen Alan: It makes sense if you consider that *all* he thinks about is his image/performance. It’s probably the first thing that popped into his head (since the bullet didn’t). It’s easy to focus on that when nothing else matters.
OGLiberal
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Edwin Booth saved Robert Lincoln’s life after Robert fell off a train platform and onto the tracks in Jersey City.
West of the Rockies
@Chris Johnson:
I don’t know much about that weirdo misogynistic, gun-nut culture. Sounds like a miserable mindset and a horrible way to move through life.
Jess
@wjca: Weirdly, the change was pushed by Republicans as well, for political reasons: https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/02/world/global-warming-climate-change-language-scn/index.html
Geminid
@tam1MI: We’ve been in this era since Jack Kennedy was assasinated. That’s going on 61 years. But it’s been almost 40 years since Reagan was shot, so it seems new.
Chris Johnson
@West of the Rockies: It absolutely is! But the kids getting bullied in this way will pay money to the leaders who insist that they can tell the kids how to dominate women etc etc etc.
See: pretty much everything about Andrew Tate. Understand it’s really young but mostly pubescent boys who buy into his shit. He ropes them in before puberty, and then when they go crazy with puberty, Tate is there to tell them how to dominate women. It’s a type of bullying-people scam that just happens to do horrible, horrible things to the personalities of the victims as they pay money to the bully.
RaflW
Only Democrats have to behave like grownups, part XIIIDXLVII.
George
@Jess:
It is possible that Trump was simply returning the raised fist gesture of people in the crowd. I saw a photograph that showed people in the crowd behind him with the raised fists. It might be an error to think that the gesture was something he originated in that moment, rather than something he happened to mimic, the same way someone might wave back at someone who is waving. I’m just speculating, but all we see is the photograph of him without much context of where he happened to be looking at the moment the photograph was taken.
Another Scott
@Bill Arnold: I mean doing the Ctrl-+ stuff in a browser. Normal sites it enlarges the text and the images. Twitter (and a few other places) will enlarge the text, but it refuses to enlarge the images. It’s annoying.
Cheers,
Scott.
Eyeroller
People who actually know about guns, help me out. Sounds like the shooter didn’t get off many rounds before a sniper took him out. It also sounds like he didn’t have much training and the gun was new. We talk about banning assault rifles and I’m all for that, but would a high-powered scoped “conventional” rifle be just as effective or more so, if you have a specific target and are not just randomly shooting into a crowd, which seems to be what most mass shooters do. But I would assume those are a lot more expensive?
Another Scott
@Juju.: In the first picture, there’s a faint thin line to the right of his head. People are calling that the path of the bullet through the air.
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
Geminid
@Chris Johnson: This is not a very numerous group and I bet a lot of them do not vote, so it may not be a very consequential split.
There could be a more substantial wedge issue on the opposite side of the party, and that would be over Ukraine and NATO. I think some Republicans and conservative Independents will defect over Trump’s Isolationism. They were a large component of Nickie Haley backing, and not all of them are “coming home” to the Republican Party. There may not be a lot of them but they are otherwise reliable voters and Trump can’t afford to lose many of these.
Eyeroller
@Another Scott: Unless you have special ultra-high-speed detectors I think what you’re generally seeing in pictures is the shock wave. Bullets are supersonic in flight, about Mach 3. Maybe modern CCDs can pick them up.
It’s pretty remarkable that Trump got winged just enough to show a bloody streak but not enough for a deep wound. Very lucky. But apparently it’s a rather small and light bullet? (assuming a .223). So a glancing blow may indeed not do much damage.
Eyeroller
@Geminid: You keep saying that but there’s no sign of it happening yet. I wish it would.
jayne
@Gvg: It’s not isolated to California. The East Coast North of the Carolinas is in the same boat. You can afford a house if you live 2 hours away from the job that pays for it, have no other major debt and excellent credit. You can afford rent with less, but still not on the median salary unless you’re willing to cram 7 people into a 2-bedroom apartment or commute for an hour+ each way. Housing is cheaper in the South and Midwest, but salaries are correspondingly lower so the problem only looks better on paper. Added to that, not a lot of people are interested in moving to many of those areas, which are experiencing a marked brain-drain these days (aka, many people in the STEM sectors who can move to Blue States are doing so) due to many young professionals deciding they’ll take poverty over a state government that’s actively or passively trying to kill them. Unfortunately, this not only makes things more desperate for vulnerable people who can’t or won’t leave, but it further drives up cost of living in the areas they’re moving to.
And yes, there are quite a few good-paying jobs open in the Deep South in particular right now that aren’t getting any takers. It’s almost as if something is making those particular “affordable” states undesirable to live and work in.
eversor
@Eyeroller:
Vet and avid hunter here. The AR-15 platform and .556 is shit. This is not a percision item. For accuracy you’re looking at .308 or .338 items and they are often bolt actions. It’s not just vastly more accurate it’s far more lethal.
The thing about the AR .556 issue is it’s easy. It spews out death fast, easy to use, almost no recoil, and effective. But it’s not a distance percision weapon/tool. Which is why it’s not used (normally) by snipers or to hunt. Where you sort of want to hit what you want to hit and make damn sure it’s dead and not have to follow up.
FWIW I have a rifle for .338 and it’s a bolt action. I do not miss. It never takes a second try. I shoot Bambi! Bambi is good eating and makes for great food sharing! This is an over 2000 dollar monster of a weapon and I love it. Paid for itself several times over.
Again also a vet. If I wanna reach out and touch ya with this you are vastly more fucked than you would be vs an AR-15. But it’s not an effective item for mass casualities. It’s a percision rifle.
I also have a breach loading shotgun for shooting Donald Duck. Ducks are also good eating! It’s vastly more effective at that task than an AR could ever hope to be.
I’ll take some pictures of the food I cook off my next kill. It’s great stuff. And I sort of enjoy the killing, cleaning, and sharing of it. Seems less fake than “meat that comes wraped in plastic” to me. I also fish and have a small garden on my porch. I like being close to my food. I’m an animal and it makes me happy. The growing of things to eat and the stalking and killing of things to eat is perfectly natural and I embrace it.
I’d also note we (me and friends) don’t waste stuff. So if you want a deer skin blanket/rug or some bones to scrimshaw I’ve got you covered. For those who don’t know what scrimshaw is welcome! Sit down! Learn! It’s the carving of art onto bones. You can make almost anything for anything! I make pipes and knife handles. It makes me happy. One of my friends owns a forge and we are teaming up to make a straight razor with bone handle for another friend. AWESOME!!!!!
Geminid
@Eyeroller: You may not be looking in the right places. There is a lot of criticism of Trump among Republican Ukraine Hawks. They may not be a majority within the party, but their strength was reflected in the long-delayed vote for Biden’s military aid package, when at least 40% of House Republicans caucus voted in favor. More importantly, they helped force a vote that the Speaker wanted to delay indefinitely.
Now, the Congressional Ukraine Hawks led by McConnell in the Senate and McCaul in the House are without exception riding the Trump train. That doesn’t necessarily mean they all hope he wins but at this point, breaking with Trump would be a career ender.
And they may fear that if Trump doesn’t win their party is gonna explode afterwards and they could be right. Of course this is short term thinking, but there’s a lot of that going around these days among Republican electeds.
Rank-and-file Ukraine Hawks have different calculations to make and may see the matter differently. They can see that a President Trump will sell Ukraine out and do everything he can to cripple Nato. There will be Congressional resistance, but after 2026 it will come only from the Democratic side because Trump will use the 2026 primaries to run the Republican Ukraine Hawks out of Congress.
Trump’s type of Isolationism is a real threat to the nation. I’ve seen Republicans warn of this this, and they also warn that it is a real danger to their party because Trump could really fuck things up overseas and leave the party holding the bag.
So this is something I watch, even though I cannot present much more data than that Haley got a consistent 20% even though she was not an especially compelling candidate, and that some polling indicates roughly half of her voters said they would not vote for Trump.
There is also a singularly dangerous element of Trump’s Isolationism, and that is his obeisance to Vladimir Putin. I hope Democrsts push that issue hard because it amplifies what I think is the biggest wedge issue for potential Republican voters this year, and that is Trump’s character.
Ksmiami
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Germany was in better shape than a lot of it’s European counterparts
Bill Arnold
@jayne:
When I was regularly getting recruiter cold calls, I would firmly tell the recruiter “not interested in a job in [state X]” if it was anywhere in the deep south.
Ksmiami
@Jess: I identified this early- it’s hotter and less predictable for humans- this planet is becoming more hostile to the biosphere including us. And people are reacting in turn. The next 50 years might be some of the worst times we can imagine, or AI will yield huge dividends.
karen gail
@eversor: From family of vets and hunters; most use bolt action. The amount of ridicule heaped on someone who takes more than one shot to kill Bambi or Bulwinkle is deep.
What I find interesting is that today you are a “prepper” if you can, freeze, dry and store 2 years worth of food in basement or cellar; when I learned from grandmothers it was simply a way of life. Part of it was the lack of mass produced produce, part of it was the cost of out of state fruit and part of it was continuation of family recipes and traditions.
Ksmiami
@Tony Jay: they did this. It’s on the Republican Party to fix it
Manyakitty
@SiubhanDuinne: holy shit! That’s astonishing!
Manyakitty
@Eyeroller: unsurprising
Tony Jay
@Ksmiami:
Absolutely.
Liminal Owl
@SiubhanDuinne: Wow! Big props to your brother, and even more to you for presenting info in a way he could absorb.
evodevo
@Bill Arnold: Not only that – it appeared from the photo that the trajectory of that particular bullet wasn’t in line with his ear…it was much too low to have impacted the side of his head. Unless the position and angle of the pic are deceiving… the guy fired several rounds, maybe the one in the pic went elsewhere..
evodevo
@Eyeroller: The neighbor’s grown kids brought one over to play with one weekend before hunting season, and were firing it off. Neighbor said it was so inaccurate you would hit everything BUT the deer. The AR’s were designed as combat weapons where you were firing wildly in a particular direction at multiple targets, and just trying to lay down a covering fire. If you are hunting, you want to be good enough to kill with a single shot from a 30-06 or something, not scare off every deer in a mile radius…AK’s are penis extensions in civilian life.
Subsole
@Jackie:
Buck gets you seven it’ll be “false flag”.
Or just flat silence.
Subsole
@karen gail:
Yeah. That’s why I’m wondering if this is going to have the legs some folks think it will.
These folks can’t go to their mother’s funeral without spitting on the pallbearers. Guaranteed to get the most obnoxious, crybully shits imaginable.
The question is can the network media spin it for them fast and hard enough.
OGLiberal
@karen gail: Definitely not because he was an actor – almost the entire family were actors. While he was good they were all better and I think that made him very resentful.