Is it time for a Donald Trump pinball machine? The obvious backglass:
One mode would be to try to prevent Thomas Matthew Crooks from being able to bring his drone, rangefinder, rifle, ammo, ladder, etc. to the assassination site and, if those challenges weren’t met, stop him before he could fire off shots.
My favorite mode would be one in which Trump has to hit targets within the game to keep migrants from eating cats and dogs. The backglass would show something kind of like the following glass:
There would be an E. Jean Carroll mode in which the octogenarian has to be dodged in various environments (department store, courthouse, etc.).
There would be a Stormy Daniels mode, of course, with courtroom illustrations:
A “Build the Wall” mode would have the player try to make shots to extend and repair the Mexico–United States border wall while low-skill migrants attempted to stream across the border (the mode would be won if the player managed to get the wall extended to a full 1,954 milers).
I’m not sure how an Apprentice mode or real estate development mode would work.
An Election 2024 mode would surprise the player by starting off easy as a senile Joe Biden was trivially defeated only to be replaced by a Godzilla-sized Kamala Harris who could be killed only by first defeating more than 100 media allies who trumpeted her high levels of “joy” and inspired leadership.
My direct exposure to politicians on TV is minimal because I don’t watch TV or cable TV news. From skimming print media, such as the New York Times, and statements from Kamala Harris, I had the impression that Donald Trump’s brain had gone at least “half Biden” and possibly “full Biden” (“Never go Full Biden” being the conventional wisdom). Recently I saw some video on X of a 30-minute block of the man whom we are informed is (1) senile, and simultaneously (2) the world’s biggest threat to democracy.
Separately, Kamala Harris and the New York Times are now telling us to believe that Detroit is a center of “excellence”:
There is no “fact checking” from this hard-hitting independent investigative newspaper regarding the politician’s claim that Detroit is a magnet for excellent Americans.
What does the market say? Here’s a house for sale in Detroit right now on Zillow… for $4,250. This includes three lots, so the actual price of being surrounded by “excellence” is less than $1,500 per lot:
We were supposed to believe that Joe Biden was a paragon of mental acuity (NBC, Feb 2024, interviewing the Secretary of Open Borders: Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas offered a similar defense, calling Biden “sharp.” “The most difficult part about a meeting with President Biden is preparing for it because he is sharp, intensely probing and detail-oriented and focused,” Mayorkas told “Meet the Press.”). Now we’re supposed to believe that Donald Trump is feeble-minded (but also capable enough to burn down the Reichstag on January 21, 2025) and that Detroit is jammed with the “excellent”.
Separately, has anyone seen anything from a leader within the Party of Science congratulating Elon Musk on what seems like a tremendous step forward for actual science? (I disagree with Mr. Musk regarding the merits of humans living on Mars, but it is valuable to be able to send heavy robot payloads into space and the Starship makes NASA’s ($40 billion in 2024 dollars?) SLS look pathetic.) If Democrats love to Follow the Science why aren’t they more jazzed up about Starship today than about Donald Trump’s agenda (the above tweet from Kamala Harris was sent just a few hours after the Starship booster was caught).
Nobody will remember Joe Biden or Kamala Harris in 100 years because they achieved absolutely nothing. But every child will know Elon Musk the Rocket catcher. Congratulations Elon.
(While trying to avoid extradition, Kim Dotcom manages to tweet his support for Hamas: regarding the “Gaza genocide” (exacerbated by simultaneous rapid population growth); accusing Israel of “indiscriminate mass murder”; a confident “proof” that Israel “Netanyahu can’t defeat Hamas in a ground battle” (Nov 19, 2023; maybe he was correct since Palestinians remain enthusiastic about continuing their war against Israel).)
Today, another American apparently took Joe Biden and Kamala Harris at their respective words and tried to save our democracy with a rifle. Kamala Harris says “I am glad [the danger to our democracy] is safe”:
I have been briefed on reports of gunshots fired near former President Trump and his property in Florida, and I am glad he is safe. Violence has no place in America.
The Day of the Jackal is a famous 1971 novel about a rifle expert who tries to kill Charles de Gaulle (he needn’t have bothered, presumably, since France would soon destroy itself via low-skill immigration).
*** spoiler alert: stop here if you’re planning to read the book or watch the movie; otherwise scroll below the cover ***
Wikipedia: “… hire a professional mercenary from outside the organisation … the Jackal’s exhaustive preparations for the forthcoming project. … he commissions a master gunsmith to build him a special suppressed sniper rifle of extreme slimness with a small supply of mercury-tipped explosive bullets. … his first shot misses by a fraction of an inch when the President unexpectedly leans forward to kiss the cheeks of the veteran he is honouring”
What would be the appropriate title for a book about the $3 billion/year U.S. Secret Service attempting to protect Donald Trump from a teenage assassin in 2024? The book would focus on Kimberly Cheatle and other senior bureaucrats establishing sloped roof policies and then keeping their jobs until a fat retirement pension begins to flow. How about The Day of the Jackasses?
Google Gemini’s image generator is back (some cognitive decline issues?):
ChatGPT:
Looks like book jacket designers will still have jobs for a while…
Related… a friend asked an aviation group if anyone wanted to donate items for a non-profit org auction. My response: “I will donate a year of protection from the $3 billion/year Secret Service. Also, a concrete bunker in which to hide during that year.”
In Why do the non-Deplorables deplore the Trump shooting? I highlighted the apparent contradiction between saying that Donald Trump will end American democracy and also that one is praying for Donald Trump’s long life and good health.
“Schiff Calls on Biden to Drop Out of Presidential Race” (NYT, July 17) quotes the person who is 99% likely to win the California Senate race (since he/she/ze/they already won the Democrat nomination and California is controlled by one party):
Representative Adam Schiff of California said on Wednesday that President Biden should end his campaign, restarting a drip of opposition within the Democratic Party that had paused after the attempted assassination of former President Donald J. Trump over the weekend.
Mr. Biden “has been one of the most consequential presidents in our nation’s history, and his lifetime of service as a senator, a vice president and now as president has made our country better,” Mr. Schiff, who is running for Senate, said in a statement to The Los Angeles Times. But, he said, “A second Trump presidency will undermine the very foundation of our democracy, and I have serious concerns about whether the president can defeat Donald Trump in November.”
Let’s ignore the curious situation of the party elites, who were in daily contact with Joe Biden, telling the peasants to vote for Biden just a few months ago and now saying that the will of those who voted in the Democrat primaries should be disregarded. I want to focus on the “undermine the very foundation of our democracy” statement. I think that’s pretty much the same allegation as “Trump will end American democracy” since, once undermined, democracy must necessarily topple.
Why wouldn’t this statement by Mx. Schiff, if believed, justify violence against Donald Trump? Schiff presents Americans with a choice between potentially becoming slaves/subjects (no more democracy) and eliminating the identified cause of future slavery.
Separately, here’s Mx. Schiff, a few days earlier, wishing that the person who will “undermine the very foundation of our democracy” recovers swiftly:
We must join together in condemning this horrific attack, in praying for the innocent life lost and the grieving families, and in wishing a swift recovery to those injured, including President Trump.
Separately, it looks as though Democrats will do a COVID-safe “virtual roll call” for the formal nomination of Biden as their candidate in November 2024 (see below). That’s certainly consistent with their support for lockdowns and public school closures!
We’ve been getting some details about the face-off between the arch criminal below and the $3 billion/year Secret Service.
Wikipedia says that the building from which Thomas Matthew Crooks shot at Mr. Trump was identified as an ideal location for an assassin, that police snipers were sitting inside the building eating donuts and drinking coffee rather than risk falling off a mostly-flat roof, that law enforcement ignored the crowd’s attempts to warn them of Mr. Crooks’s activities, and that Crooks’s use of a rangefinder wasn’t considered sufficiently suspicious for anyone to take action. The state of knowledge as of July 16, 2024:
According to WPXI, Crooks was photographed twice by security officers prior to the shooting. Prior to 5:45 p.m. EDT, a police officer saw Crooks on the ground and reported him, with a photograph, as a suspicious person. An officer searched for Crooks but did not find him. Multiple local law enforcement officers identified Crooks and believed that he might have been acting suspiciously near the event’s magnetometers; they expressed their suspicions over the radio, and their radio communications were available to the Secret Service.[38] At 5:45 p.m., a member of the Beaver County Emergency Services Unit (ESU) tactical team saw Crooks on a roof, notified other security services, and photographed Crooks.[47] According to Forbes, in one of the two cases of Crooks being photographed, the police officer who photographed Crooks saw him “‘scoping out’ the roof and carrying a range finder”.[43] Reports indicated that several bystanders also witnessed a man carrying a rifle on the rooftop and alerted the police about him nearly a minute and a half before shots were fired at Trump.[48][49] A Butler Township police officer attempted to climb to the roof of the building in search of Crooks, hoisted by another officer. Crooks spotted the officer while the officer’s hands were clinging to the edge of the roof and aimed his rifle at the officer, at which point the officer let go, falling 8 feet (2.4 m) to the ground and severely injuring his ankle. Crooks undertook the assassination attempt immediately following the confrontation with the officer.
My question for today is “Suppose that the Secret Service and local law enforcement actually wanted a random kid to be able to shoot and kill Donald Trump. What would they have done differently?” Short of actually handing out rifles, scopes, and ammo, how would it have been possible for the Secret Service and police to facilitate what young Mr. Crooks was trying to do?
U.S. intelligence agencies were tracking what they considered a potential Iranian assassination plot against former President Donald J. Trump in the weeks before a gunman opened fire last weekend, several officials said on Tuesday, but they added that they did not believe the threat was related to the shooting that wounded Mr. Trump.
The intelligence had prompted the Secret Service to enhance security for the former president before his outdoor campaign rally in Butler, Pa., on Saturday, officials said. Yet whatever additional measures were taken did not stop a 20-year-old local man from clambering on top of a nearby warehouse roof to shoot at Mr. Trump, grazing his right ear and coming close to killing him.
American progressives now agree with Iran on both (a) Palestine, and (b) the importance of getting rid of Donald Trump?
Separately, at least according to Joe Biden and/or his minders, here are some of the threats that Mr. Crooks came close to eliminating:
If getting shot is part of a “narrative” then “be the author of your own story” seems like either pretty good or truly terrible advice, depending on whether being shot is a required part of any narrative.
Separately, let’s have another look, courtesy of the New York Post, at the threat to a single human that overwhelmed the Biden administration’s $3 billion/year Secret Service:
I’m in a chat group with a few Deplorables, a couple of whom are gun nuts. I’ve been trying to get some of my software expert witness work done before EAA AirVenture (“Oshkosh”) and thus was in the middle of a real-time work session when the Trump shooting occurred. I ]wasn’t paying close attention to the chat group, for which I get alerts, or the news, for which I don’t get alerts. During a short break in the work, during which I scanned the gun nuts’ exchange, I responded with the following:
I haven’t checked the news, but let me guess: all of the people who said that Donald Trump would end our democracy (i.e., destroy the U.S. as we know it), kill Americans who identify as “pregnant people” by denying them abortion care, kill Americans by refusing to order masks, school closures, and lockdowns next time a respiratory virus comes through, etc. are now saying that it is reprehensible that someone would try to preserve American democracy and American lives by killing the one big threat to both.
As soon as work was done, I checked Twitter. I refreshed my memory by sampling some Democrat thought-leadership… According to “the big guy”, we could “lose everything”, including our democracy, if anyone votes for Donald Trump:
Trump poses many threats to our country: The right to choose, civil rights, voting rights, and America’s standing in the world.
But the greatest threat he poses is to our democracy.
Also, from June 28 (screen shot in case this gets memory-holed):
How does Joe Biden feel about the failure of the rifleman to neutralize the dire/genuine threat to our democracy that he identified and, therefore, the continued realistic possibility that we will soon “lose everything”? Joe Biden is “grateful” and “praying for [Donald Trump]” (i.e., praying that Americans continue to be threatened):
I have been briefed on the shooting at Donald Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania.
I’m grateful to hear that he’s safe and doing well. I’m praying for him and his family and for all those who were at the rally, as we await further information.
Let’s check the New York Times. “Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy?” (NYT, December 16, 2016) answers the question in the affirmative. Here’s the worst part:
There are signs that Mr. Trump seeks to diminish the news media’s traditional role by using Twitter, video messages and public rallies to circumvent the White House press corps and communicate directly with voters…
Also, Trump would seek to imprison the political opposition:
An even more basic norm under threat today is the idea of legitimate opposition. … Governments throughout history have used the claim that their opponents are disloyal or criminal or a threat to the nation’s way of life to justify acts of authoritarianism.
The idea of legitimate opposition has been entrenched in the United States since the early 19th century, disrupted only by the Civil War. That may now be changing, however, as right-wing extremists increasingly question the legitimacy of their liberal rivals. …
Such extremism, once confined to the political fringes, has now moved into the mainstream. … Mr. Trump’s campaign centered on the claim that Hillary Clinton was a criminal who should be in jail; and “Lock her up!” was chanted at the Republican National Convention. In other words, leading Republicans — including the president-elect — endorsed the view that the Democratic candidate was not a legitimate rival.
Did the newspaper of record’s opinion change over the intervening 8 years? No. Just two days ago, the NYT said that Trump was “Dangerous in Word, Deed, and Action”:
The clear thinkers at the NYT have been warning us for at least 8 years about the dangers of Donald Trump being anywhere near the levers of power. What do they now say? “The Attack on Donald Trump Is Antithetical to America”:
It is a mercy that Donald Trump was not seriously injured by gunfire at an evening campaign rally … We hope that Mr. Trump recovers quickly and fully.
They want the person whom they said would end American democracy to “recover quickly and fully”? They don’t at least hope he’ll be incapacitated through November 5, 2024?
Given all of the above, I rate my prediction in the chat group exchange as TRUE.
Readers: Have you found any examples of a righteous person admitting that there is at least an apparent logical contradiction between his/her/zir/their previous vilification and expressed fear of Donald Trump and current expressed hope that Donald Trump be preserved from any future harm?
(Personally, I do hope that our fellow Palm Beach County taxpayer Donald Trump recovers completely. And I have to say that I’m impressed by his apparent sangfroid. How many among us can say that our courage has been tested with an actual shooting? But my well-wishing isn’t a logical contradiction because I did not previously express an opinion that Mr. Trump was dangerous, a threat, or likely to end American democracy. (I did say that I preferred both Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis as candidates, but not that I expected or demanded everyone else in America to agree with me.))
Related:
Mar-a-Lago and the Palm Event (from March 2024; “The most hated man in America appeared midway through the event to welcome the guests, praise the organization, praise the musical and theatrical talent, etc. Donald Trump was gracious and did not mention politics nor did he talk about himself. He had no teleprompter.”)
Update: Let’s also check out Kamala Harris. Last month, “[Donald Trump] is a threat to our democracy and our fundamental freedoms.”
Donald Trump has vowed that he will be a dictator on “day one.”
This evening, “praying for Donald Trump” and “relieved” that the pathway to dictatorship for the U.S. is still available:
I have been briefed on the shooting at former President Trump’s event in Pennsylvania.
Doug and I are relieved that he is not seriously injured. We are praying for him, his family, and all those who have been injured and impacted by this senseless shooting.
But when people draw parallels between Donald Trump’s 2024 candidacy and Hitler’s progression from fringe figure to Great Dictator, we aren’t joking. Those of us who hope to preserve our democratic institutions need to underscore the resemblance before we enter the twilight of American democracy.
Thankfully, Donald Trump is reported to be “fine” after an apparent attempt on his life
(They’re happy that the person they called Hitler With a Golf Cart Instead of a Volkswagen is hale and hearty.)
The New Republic should get an award for clarity. I’m going to leave this “Trump = Hitler” cover as a placeholder to see if the progressive magazine comes up with a paired “We’re sorry that the latter-day Claus von Stauffenberg did not kill Hitler” story:
We chose the cover image, based on a well-known 1932 Hitler campaign poster, for a precise reason: that anyone transported back to 1932 Germany could very, very easily have explained away Herr Hitler’s excesses and been persuaded that his critics were going overboard. After all, he spent 1932 campaigning, negotiating, doing interviews—being a mostly normal politician. But he and his people vowed all along that they would use the tools of democracy to destroy it, and it was only after he was given power that Germany saw his movement’s full face.
I will have a lot more respect for The New Republic if they say that they’re sad the modern Claus von Stauffenberg wasn’t more successful than the original Claus von Stauffenberg.
After the despicable attempt to kill Trump, a reporter who writes regularly about political violence explains how deeply unprepared we are for the terrible escalation that may now be coming. … At the time of this recording, we know little about the attempt to assassinate Donald Trump. He was hit in the ear, but thankfully doesn’t appear seriously injured.
It’s “despicable” to kill a person whom they said was a defrosted Hitler and they are thankful that Hitler wasn’t seriously injured. I sampled the podcast and the main issue, it seems, is violence perpetrated by Republicans. So just maybe the magazine’s position can be considered consistent with the Hitler cover. They’re thankful that Trump wasn’t more seriously injured because a serious injury would be more likely to result in violence against noble Democrats, not because they they want Trump to be alive and well. And the shooter was “despicable” because his action could have resulted in violence against noble/precious Democrats.
“If you begin with criticism, then you go to protest, then you go to impeachment, now you go to indictment and none of them work. What’s next? Graph it out, man. We’re speeding towards assassination, obviously. … They have decided — permanent Washington, both parties have decided — that there’s something about Trump that’s so threatening to them, they just can’t have him,” Carlson said in the interview, which was posted online Wednesday.
In far-right and conspiratorial circles, Trump has long been presented as the target of a vast plot orchestrated in part by Washington’s “deep state” as well as the Democratic establishment and the news media. The former president has embraced this worldview, referring to himself as a “victim” and the center of a “witch hunt.”
NBC reassured readers that this theory was “presented without evidence” and only someone gullible enough to believe a conspiracy theory would consider the possibility of an attack on literal Hitler.
The New York Post shows us the threat with which the $3 billion/year Secret Service was confronted:
Is it fair to say that the Biden administration’s Secret Service is at least as effective as the Biden administration’s Department of Homeland Security, responsible for securing the border?
An immigrant physician friend, simply based on videos that she watched in 2020, diagnosed Joe Biden with dementia four years ago and referred to him as “the senile puppet” long before the New York Times editorial board noticed that anything was wrong. Democrats now believe that Joe Biden’s cognitive abilities are insufficient to handle the job of U.S. President. Democrats also hate Donald Trump and there are at least some Republicans who prefer Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley to Mr. Trump.
I wonder if these groups could get together and do a quickie amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would impose a mandatory retirement age of 67 (the current Social Security full retirement age for those born after 1960) on the job. We need three-fourths of the states to ratify such an amendment and then both the Republicans and Democrats would have to nominate younger politicians for the November election.
