Here’s Kamala Harris, a few days ago, referencing Hitler and warning of “unchecked and extreme power” that could soon be wielded by the hated dictator Donald Trump:
Imagine Donald Trump with no guardrails. If reelected, he will claim unchecked and extreme power. pic.twitter.com/QUhb9M2CQ9
(Notice that the person who calls everyone opposed to her a “Nazi” has chosen to wear a brown shirt.)
Is there a way to combine the above warning with Kamala Harris’s worrisome poll numbers in such a way that it isn’t a call for Donald Trump’s assassination? Americans are too stupid/deplorable to save themselves from Nouveau Hitler via the electoral process, according to some polls, which means it will fall to latter-day replacements for General Friedrich Olbricht, Major General Henning von Tresckow, General Carl-Heinrich Rudolf Wilhelm von Stülpnagel, and Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg. Assuming that there is a Nakba on November 5, will it be Pete Buttigieg, fresh back at his/her/zir/their desk from maternity leave, who leaves a briefcase under a conference table at a Trump transition meeting? Who could suspect a smiling friendly Mayor Pete?
Separately, I encountered Donald Trump, fresh from a shift at McDonald’s, and a Secret Service agent, at a neighbor’s house last Saturday night:
I don’t have the patience to watch a three-hour video, but I did glance at the Joe Rogan-Donald Trump discussion:
It looks uncomfortable to have to keep one’s head in the same position for three hours. Why aren’t both guys wearing lav mics so that they can move around, sit back comfortably, etc.?
Readers: If you watched the three-hour video what did you learn from it? (I wouldn’t trust a highlights reel due to the likelihood of either pro- or anti-Trump bias.)
Related… a 1992 appearance by Donald Trump on the David Letterman show. There seems to be a ceremonial mic on Letterman’s desk, but I’m assuming that both speakers are wearing lav mics and those are the primary sources for what we hear on the soundtrack. If the technology was good enough 32 years ago, why not today?
Here’s a Saturday Night Live broadcast in which both speakers are wearing lav mics:
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:
