Jinnistan wrote:

"I didn't talk to Biden.  I didn't want to talk to him.  My husband was a devout Republican and he would not have wanted me to talk to him."

Well, that makes me grieve a little less. Thank you. 

Jinnistan wrote:

So when we see all of the cheering at the RNC rally about "God's hand" which protected Trump, the "Lion", and Tim Scott try to turn this miracle into a joyous revival, maybe we should ask why "God alone" decided to not protect a random family man who was truly courageously trying to protect his family.  Maybe "God" is the wrong force involved here.
 

How fitting that she would describe him as a "devout" Republican. It underscores the notion that the party has become a cult. 

I really don't understand this bullshit about why these media corporations have been pulling shows as a response to the assassination attempt.  Paramount pulled all of the Daily Show appearances in Milwakee this week (they'll still air in New York starting tonight), and MSNBC decided to pre-empt Morning Joe Monday morning, which they later explained was due to preventing anyone on that show from saying something controversial or embarrassing.  Which is confusing to me.  Sure, Joe Scarborough can be described as a Republican "never-Trumper", but did anyone actually think he would come out and applaud the assassination?  Scarborough, appearing this morning, is apparently pretty hot about it, saying he'll quit the next time MSNBC tries to pull that shit.  It is pretty insulting on its face.

NBC News has been handling the whole situation very awkwardly.  I saw on Meet The Press where host Kristin Welker opened the show with a "We find ourselves in a whole new reality".  No.  It's the same fucking reality.  Because that's how reality works.  What's she saying is that NBC must be intending to dramatically alter their presentation of reality - much like they did almost 20 years ago when they pivoted from a fully supportive propoganda arm of the Iraq invasion to then acting like they were some kind of Liberal/Progressive organization.  Why?  Because Chris Matthews got that "thrill" up his leg when he heard Obama speak?

And clearly, Biden's sclerotic performance aside, Lester Holt in that interview definitely seemed to be presenting Biden's and the Democratic criticism of Donald Trump as being absolutely complicit in his assassination.  In that respect, it makes sense why they would want to pull any overt Trump critics off the air, because they clearly don't understand the distinction between criticism and incitement to violence, or maybe they're just more willing to feed into the MAGA presumptions of persecution.  Maybe like that anonymous senior Democrat congressman I linked in an above post, NBC News has simply made their piece with a second Trump administration and they're trying to avoid any smoke from his soon to be politicized Justice Department.  I dunno.  It's simply a continuing trend of our American news media conforming to the absolute most superficial audience perceptions that they've been engaged in for a generation now.
 

Jinnistan wrote:

Rampop II wrote:

Well, that makes me grieve a little less. Thank you.

You missed the point I was saying.  No one deserves to be dehumanized.  Everyone deserves grief in the face of unwarranted tragedy, even the stupid and hateful.

I didn't miss the point. I'm just a bad bad boy and I'm rotten to the core. 

Jinnistan wrote:

Jon Stewart, in the clip you just posted:

He’s a reminder that in those moments of crisis, there are helpers, and we can all make a choice to try to be one of those people.

Don't be an asshole about it.
 

You're right without a doubt, ok that was some ill–timed callousness. I swear I am not dancing on any graves. I wept for the Comperatore family, and I don't mean metaphorically, I mean I literally heaved real tears at several points over those first few days. It's not only the most heartbreaking part of the tragedy, it's a quintessential heartbreaker. A firefighter, dedicated to risking his life to save others, courageously shields his family from flying bullets and takes a fatal shot right in the head for them. His wife and daughters have to live the rest of their lives with that gruesome memory and with that loss. It flies in the face of every value we hold precious. I wept for them several times. 
So when the news came when it did, after what, two whole days of restless sleep, anxiety, cynicism and grief, and we learned that he was such an uncompromising instrument of the very divisiveness that brought us to this point, I swear it didn't change my attitude about it being a senseless unjustifiable tragedy one bit. But my capacity for grief was feeling pretty tapped out at that point and somewhere in there the "of course, but maybe" factor allowed my nervous system to offload just a little bit of that pain, or at least transfer it. Not all of it, just maybe 10%. That's what I meant by grieve "less," but not cease to grieve, nor justify, nor celebrate, absolutely not.
Nevertheless, yeah, still an asshole thing to say. Over the line. Mea culpa.

OK, y'all, time to stop the presses as the plot thickens once again, because there's some indication this kid Crooks also planned to assassinate a lot of other political figures across the political spectrum:

Shooter had photos of Trump, Biden, and other officials on his phone, AP sources say

Investigators searching Thomas Matthew Crooks’ devices have also found that the shooter looked up the dates for the Democratic National Convention as well as Trump’s appearances, according to the people who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition on anonymity to discuss details of the ongoing probe.

So this opens up a whole other area of speculation nobody seems to have contemplated, including that the motive might have been accelerationist, or a desire to "watch the world burn," or a "kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out" solution to government dysfunction. Or "Both candidates suck so I'll reset the clock, and as long as I'm at it..."

It probably blows my Mini–Hinkley hypothesis, in which the kid turns out to be a Stormy Daniels fan.
 

Last edited by Rampop II (7/20/2024 5:41 pm)

Jinnistan wrote:

Now the reports are that Trump wasn't shot, but that the shooter hit one of his teleprompters and Trump was cut with a flying piece of broken glass shard.
 

After two weeks of nearly every mainstream outlet using the words "Trump says he was shot in the ear," they're finally thawing to the bullet/shrapnel question now that they have somebody to blame it on; they can just say the FBI said it. And let the FBI take the heat (along with the Democrats) for throwing shade on MAGA's Divine Miracle. 
 

Last edited by Rampop II (7/25/2024 10:15 pm)

Jinnistan wrote:

I personally don't see why it matters.  It's not like it's proof of a false flag or anything.  They probably just want to try to make it like he was Teddy Roosevelt or something.

Rampop II wrote:

Not that it makes much of a difference. I mean........ why split hairs? [rimshot]

And we can continue to see Republicans taking an almost personal offense at the FBI for not knowing whether Trump's ear was hit by a bullet or schrapnel, and we have that connoisseur of rugged masculinity, Laandsay Graaham, providing the Freudian slip in the logic, as he wrote in a letter to Christopher Wray: "It is clear to everyone that President Trump survived an assassination attempt by millimeters...."  Yes it is, Landsay, and whether or not Trump was hit by a bullet or a piece of schrapnel does not change that fact.  But it's interesting why he would assume it would.  How in the lizard Republican brain, this somehow emasculates Trump's powerful defiance of fate.  I do think this is more of a reptilian reflex than a mere shameless attempt at Deep State scare-mongering, but sometimes these days we end up with happy rhymes.
 

I'd say the post-assassination afterglow has faded.
 

Close Trump allies have described this as the rockiest period of Mr. Trump’s campaign — and easily the worst since a late 2022 spree in which he mused about terminating parts of the Constitution and dined at Mar-a-Lago with a white supremacist and an outspoken antisemite...

The people around Mr. Trump see a candidate knocked off his bearings, nothing like the man who reclined serenely on July 15 as he watched as thousands of delegates cheered him on the first night of the Republican National Convention. Then, Mr. Trump, his ear bandaged, was a living martyr after the assassination attempt two days before. Inside the Milwaukee arena, the Democrats had already been defeated; the only thing left to wonder about was the margin of Mr. Trump’s victory...

Another said Mr. Trump described himself as “angry,” because “they” — unspecified adversaries that the attendee took to mean Democrats — had first tried to bankrupt him and then to kill him.

Indeed, Mr. Trump has often been in a foul mood the past few weeks. He has ranted about Ms. Harris. He has called her “nasty,” on “Fox & Friends,” and a “bitch,” repeatedly, in private, according to two people who heard the remark on different occasions.

His quickness to anger has left him susceptible to manipulation, even among close allies....

In an angry phone call to a Times reporter on Friday afternoon, Mr. Trump denied that he was making any changes to his team, saying he was “thrilled” with his top advisers, Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, and asking why he would even want to make such a change.

(In the same call, Mr. Trump threatened to sue The Times over a story about his description in Thursday’s news conference of a near-death experience on a helicopter ride with Willie Brown, the former California politician. Mr. Brown denied ever having flown on a helicopter with Mr. Trump.)

And now for a little conspiracy theory of my own.  Here's a small piece from the middle of the article:
 

Mr. Trump dismissed out of hand donors’ suggestions that he replace Mr. Vance on the ticket. But Mr. Trump privately asked his advisers whether they had known about Mr. Vance’s comments about childless women before Mr. Trump chose him.

As you may have heard, the Trump campaign is claiming to have gotten hacked by the Iranian regime, and someone named "Robert" leaked several private campaign documents including a 200 page "dossier" of "potential vulnerabilities" about JD Vance that was compiled during his vetting process.  I have no information to counter that claim.  But I do find it to be a very intriguing possibility that "Robert" may be a Trump insider who leaked this document of potentially embarrassing information on JD Vance as a way of pushing Trump into calling a mulligan and replacing Vance on the ticket - he would likely use a 'tit-for-tat' excuse due to the Kamala-Joe switcheroo.  Intriguing, but again no evidence.

But that's not the only JD Vance related leak either.  Back in 2022, Trump had publicly claimed at a Hertiage Goundation speech that the soon-to-be-released Project 2025 was "going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do", until people started finding out about it and now he says he has no knowledge of any of it whatsoever.  As Trump has been trying to distance himself from Project 2025, the Heritage author of the plan, Kevin Roberts, agreed to delay the release of his upcoming book - Dawn's Early Light - until after the election so as to avoid having its contents, which would undoubtedly be unpopular to all but the most dedicated of the Christian Nationalist base, scare off too many moderate conservatives.  (The title is a dual allusion, obviously to the national athem but also to Jesus, the "morning star" in Revelation.)  Turns out that JD Vance also happened to write the forward section of this book, making any further talk of plausible deniability moot.  But the real damage was that someone (maybe a mistake, who knows?) briefly posted the galley proof of the book online, so now any attempt at obfuscation is also futile.  Kevin Roberts has become slightly notorious following a quote last month where he warned that the ensuing second American revolution will be "bloodless if the left allows it to be", and Vance takes this tact a bit further by saying that now is the "time to circle the wagons and load the muskets" and refers to Roberts' ideas as an "essential weapon".  (The book also featured a cover picture of a flaming match and the subtitle of "burning down Washington", although this has since been removed.)

And on the religious tip, although Vance never specifically endorses the idea of Christian Nationalism, he at least asserts its ethos of Christian privilege - which is itself a reflection of hostility to the Constitution's "establishment clause" - by praising the book for "articulating a fundamentally Christian view of culture and economics: recognizing that virtue and material progress go hand in hand".  Because Jesus was all about promoting the virtues of "material progress" like....giving all of your possessions to the poor.  {"If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven" - Matt. 19:21;  "Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven" - Matt. 19:23;  "And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life.  But many that are first shall be last; and the last shall be first." - Matt. 19:29-30)

These bitches are going to burn all right.

Jinnistan wrote:

Like a dare, Trump has given the media another chance to recognize the deadly incendiary nature of this lie and maybe treat it like the scandal that it is, but who knows, we'll see.  (Ftr, that tweet includes a slight variation of a quote by white supremacist Steve Sailer.  Probably not a coincidence!)

We probably shouldn't be surprised that the mainstream corporate media has chosen to completely ignore this story as well.  Watching the Sunday morning news shows, not a single mention of the fact that one of the major Trump campaign social media accounts tweeted a highly racist meme (which as far as I can tell is still up).  Instead, they seemed far more concerned about the details of Tim Walz's military record, and all of the other petty stuff prioritized for them by the Trump team.




More literate Americans have to find the outrage to these stories elsewhere, as a reminder that this kind of behavior is indeed abhorrent.  But television news has made their peace with the fact that racism remains a powerful motivator for American voters in 2024 and god forbid if we alienate our viewers with moral integrity.  Everyone knows that racism is at the heart of Trump's strategy against Kamala Harris.  Maybe briefly some hoped that somehow he would not fall into temptation, the way they endlessly have hoped throughout his political career that perhaps deep inside his tenderly broiled brisket that Trump is capable of somehow being a human being.  Yet, despite Trump's questioning Harris' ethnicity or needing to best the crowd size of Martin Luther King, so few in the television news media are willing to call him a demonstrable and consistent racist.  Because that's equivalent of calling his supporters de fact racists, and racists like things like Civil War, so best not look them in the eye. avoid sudden movements or disturb them unnecessarily.

But such moral abdication does come at a cost.  The legitimization of racist provocation is the obvious peril.  The gaslighting that scoffs at us that what Trump is up to isn't actually racist provocation is another.  The preservation of journalistic clarity is probably a lost cause at this point, but it doesn't help.  Instead, they keep lying to themselves: "Will Trump win over the Black vote?"  He doesn't want them.  Or more accurately, he only wants those willing to accept their subservience.  Trump did not go to the NABJ to court or win over Black voters.  He went there to show off to his base how little regard he has for them.  As JD Vance said, he went to show strength to a "hostile audience".  And these news pundits just sit in awe, in self-denial of such shameless racism, trying to assure themselves that it must not be exactly what it looks like.  "I'm entitled to personal insults", Trump says, much as Nancy Mace is entitled to address black women "any way that I want to".  After all, who do these people think they are?

Mark Follman at Mother Jones addresses how the coward media has simply decided to forfeit the discussion of Trump's racist immigration rhetoric:

Shortly after Trump’s speech in Atlanta, I talked to a longtime threat assessment source with expertise in counterterrorism and far-right extremist groups. His response was blunt when I noted that no major media focused their coverage on Trump’s inflammatory language, almost as if all that rhetoric was just business as usual.

“There’s nothing normal about any of this,” the source said. “We have the First Amendment and he can say whatever he wants, that’s our democracy. But it really disturbs me how politicians in his party won’t stand up and say one word against it now. The country really needs that. We’ve already seen where this goes and it can easily go there again.”

....

Most news media are no longer paying any of this much attention. But that carries risk of the public forgetting about the violence that has already occurred. More broadly, shouldn’t we be asking: What else might follow when the leader of a major political movement smears a population as a menace to public health and safety and even national survival?

I'll go further and ask, "How long until we start seeing the calculated ignorance of mainstream media as complicit?

Likewise, watching the Sunday morning shows this morning, we saw a lot of questioning of Tim Walz' record, of Kamala Harris' economic plan.  They have no qualms at all to definitively (if erroneously) declare the premise of her policy as false.  Because Kamala Harris, and her voters, are not dangerous people.  These shows then can't as easily point out that everything Trump has been saying, in regards to immigrants being prisoners and insane patients sent here to destroy our country on behalf of a complicit deep state plot, is bat-shit lunacy, because the people who believe this are dangerous people who might just shoot up an El Paso Wal-Mart or a Buffalo supermarket or a South Carolina church.  But it's still necessary for someone, of ostensibly objective position in mainstream news, to say out loud to the American people that in no reality are foreign prisons and asylums being emptying out across our borders, if any of these newspeople wish to retain any privilege to weigh in on matters of fact going forward.