"How often are our opinions formed by ‘feeling’ and ‘it must be...’ rather than fact and logic? ...
I decided to stay as close as I could to facts and verifiable information. I rarely will ‘spitball’, or use conjecture … based on what we can now and find, we can reconstruct what happened, and, almost more importantly, what did NOT happen. This narrows down the possibilities. … A single contradicting point of evidence is enough to falsify a whole theory … I prefer to stick with facts. Bit by bit, more news is coming out. Any theory you had must be able to incorporate those new facts. Perhaps they refute your ideas, perhaps they support them. When we talk, and debate, let’s be mindful of how we think, what tricks our minds play, and focus on facts.”
. . .
Amen. I've used a similar approach when trying to figure out the “truth” about subjects in the past (e.g Pat Tillman, Emmett Till). I like looking at the “ground truth” and use physical evidence to try to figure things out.
Your posts about “what happened” (probably) during the Trump shooting are the most sensible I've seen thus far. I've been dismayed by the amount of baseless speculation out there about the shooting. And, mildly surprised, that many news outlets with big budgets still haven't figured out the most basic facts of this case like the location of the shooter. I appreciate your work, and look forward to reading more (and taking a look at your archives) … Now, it's time to listen to Trump's speech at the RNC.
" Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". I hate that cliche. I think about the Sherlock Holmes story, "The Case of the Dog Barking in the Night" [? I think].
Watson – "But Holmes, the dog did not bark."
Holmes – "Precisely the point, my dear Watson." It was a watch dog. It should have barked. WHY DID THE DOG NOT BARK?
The problem is the FBI and USSS are going to bury as much as they can, which is a lot. What proof do I have? None, just pattern recognition. Nonetheless, I trust my instincts more than their narratives.
There is in my experience another facet of this. Even when you provide the evidence they demand, evidence that took days, weeks or much longer to gather and many hours to read, most discount it in 30 seconds. Those that spend a little more time find intersecting ways to refute it; “the author is a Christian” remains my favorite.
One other point. It may be that to say that Trump was protected by the “B team” is not correct. I have read somewhere that agents were brought in from other agencies to fill out his detail, such as it was. It may be that the individuals there that day never drilled together, were not an actual team.
As it seems that you believe, I am of similar mind when I see the female agent crouching down behind T, someone higher up in the chain of command put her in a position she was not qualified for, and that put her life and the lives of others in danger. Those agent’s lives are every bit in as much danger as Trump’s. However, that was not my first reaction to seeing those photos and later videos. My first reaction was, “What the hell!?”,with unstated blame towards her and others on the detail.
Opps, accidentally sent before I was finished. If it turns out that the failures seen in this incident were intentional, then those agents were set up to fail, and they were also allowed to be casualties.
We keep learning just how horrendous the mistakes were that were made that day. Indeed, not just a 'B Team' of other USSS agents, but apparently from other departments within DHS.
Just as those agents were set up to fail, we were set up to hate and accuse those agents and those on the field 'making the mistakes' or 'not doing what they were supposed to be doing'. Who remains out of sight? Those responsible, giving the orders, setting it all up. There are too many problems, of too serious a nature, to dismiss as 'we all make mistakes'. Not the USSS. Not this severely. Not that many all at once. Not this strongly against their own rules and procedures.
It is getting harder and harder to believe that this was not a government set up. Regardless, this will not be the last attempt on his life. If they cannot execute home on stage, broadcast live, they’ll shoot his plane down, or blow up a whole neighborhood in a city as his motorcade passes through.
I just subscribed to your Substack yesterday, Arn, because I was impressed by the argument based on the angle of the bullet strike that clipped Trump’s ear. Where it had to have come from based on the precise angle it had to have made given exactly where Trump was standing.
Maybe I’m carrying your argument a bit farther than it was stated in your article. When I saw the video of the strike I focused on Trump sharply turning his head just a hair more to his right at barely a fraction of a second before the first of three pops were heard and his right hand jerked up to his ear [I assumed the pops were distant gun shots but, soon after, I was convinced by the analysis of a man who claimed military experience that in fact the pops were the sound of the passing “sonic boom” of supersonic bullets]. It made, and still makes, sense to me that that unpredictable change of head angle was made almost simultaneous with the shooter pulling the trigger.
I just this morning measured with a small ruler the distance between the outer fold of my ear and my skin-covered skull. It’s about ten millimetres at most. If Trump had not twitched his head more to his right at that moment the bullet would have opened a trench along the side of his skull. And it was a supersonic bullet, high speed even after flying 130 metres, high energy.
An experienced trauma surgeon commented on the controversy surrounding the alleged Las Vegas Massacre in an email to Paul Craig Roberts. He said that a high speed, high power rifle bullet when it impacts delivers enormous kinetic energy to the point of impact all out of proportion to the size of the bullet. It is in fact the trauma of this impact on bone or flesh, be it only a leg wound, that causes many wounded people to die. So I reason that the bullet passed through the top of Trump’s ear without touching anything else on the side of his head. Had it ripped through the outer layer of his skull would that trauma have blown his skull apart? Seems reasonable to me that it would have done just that.
Enough! I do this sort of thinking in the morning! I almost can’t hold my horses!
Bottom line:
It doesn’t matter precisely where the shooter was or even who the shooter was. It only matters that he was there on that roof with a rifle in position and could not possibly have arrived there without high level authoritative complicity.
It’s not intellectually difficult to arrive at this conclusion [and how many times has that been true? From JFK to the USS Liberty to 9/11 and on and on!] it’s just emotionally difficult to go where the evidence leads and accept the terrible conclusion.
I sympathize. I spent years to overcome my prejudices – and seas and tsunamis of propaganda disinformation – as I found out more about November 22, 1963. Now I’m the beneficiary of 60 years off and on of hard fought self education. I almost can’t imagine not knowing the things I know and knowing the falsity of many other things.
I’m 77 and I’d have to try to count up how many lone, nut, unmotivated shooters I’ve heard about since Lee Oswald was murdered in order to shut his mouth. I saw Jack Ruby shoot Lee Oswald. I was 17 years old. I saw it on my parents TV in our living room as we all watched it because it was broadcast live, continent-wide. The camera angle could not have been better if a director had arranged it. That’s a fact worth considering all by itself, isn’t it?
"How often are our opinions formed by ‘feeling’ and ‘it must be...’ rather than fact and logic? ...
I decided to stay as close as I could to facts and verifiable information. I rarely will ‘spitball’, or use conjecture … based on what we can now and find, we can reconstruct what happened, and, almost more importantly, what did NOT happen. This narrows down the possibilities. … A single contradicting point of evidence is enough to falsify a whole theory … I prefer to stick with facts. Bit by bit, more news is coming out. Any theory you had must be able to incorporate those new facts. Perhaps they refute your ideas, perhaps they support them. When we talk, and debate, let’s be mindful of how we think, what tricks our minds play, and focus on facts.”
. . .
Amen. I've used a similar approach when trying to figure out the “truth” about subjects in the past (e.g Pat Tillman, Emmett Till). I like looking at the “ground truth” and use physical evidence to try to figure things out.
Your posts about “what happened” (probably) during the Trump shooting are the most sensible I've seen thus far. I've been dismayed by the amount of baseless speculation out there about the shooting. And, mildly surprised, that many news outlets with big budgets still haven't figured out the most basic facts of this case like the location of the shooter. I appreciate your work, and look forward to reading more (and taking a look at your archives) … Now, it's time to listen to Trump's speech at the RNC.
" Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". I hate that cliche. I think about the Sherlock Holmes story, "The Case of the Dog Barking in the Night" [? I think].
Watson – "But Holmes, the dog did not bark."
Holmes – "Precisely the point, my dear Watson." It was a watch dog. It should have barked. WHY DID THE DOG NOT BARK?
The problem is the FBI and USSS are going to bury as much as they can, which is a lot. What proof do I have? None, just pattern recognition. Nonetheless, I trust my instincts more than their narratives.
There is in my experience another facet of this. Even when you provide the evidence they demand, evidence that took days, weeks or much longer to gather and many hours to read, most discount it in 30 seconds. Those that spend a little more time find intersecting ways to refute it; “the author is a Christian” remains my favorite.
One other point. It may be that to say that Trump was protected by the “B team” is not correct. I have read somewhere that agents were brought in from other agencies to fill out his detail, such as it was. It may be that the individuals there that day never drilled together, were not an actual team.
As it seems that you believe, I am of similar mind when I see the female agent crouching down behind T, someone higher up in the chain of command put her in a position she was not qualified for, and that put her life and the lives of others in danger. Those agent’s lives are every bit in as much danger as Trump’s. However, that was not my first reaction to seeing those photos and later videos. My first reaction was, “What the hell!?”,with unstated blame towards her and others on the detail.
Opps, accidentally sent before I was finished. If it turns out that the failures seen in this incident were intentional, then those agents were set up to fail, and they were also allowed to be casualties.
Absolutely.
They were set up to fail.
We keep learning just how horrendous the mistakes were that were made that day. Indeed, not just a 'B Team' of other USSS agents, but apparently from other departments within DHS.
Just as those agents were set up to fail, we were set up to hate and accuse those agents and those on the field 'making the mistakes' or 'not doing what they were supposed to be doing'. Who remains out of sight? Those responsible, giving the orders, setting it all up. There are too many problems, of too serious a nature, to dismiss as 'we all make mistakes'. Not the USSS. Not this severely. Not that many all at once. Not this strongly against their own rules and procedures.
It is getting harder and harder to believe that this was not a government set up. Regardless, this will not be the last attempt on his life. If they cannot execute home on stage, broadcast live, they’ll shoot his plane down, or blow up a whole neighborhood in a city as his motorcade passes through.
I just subscribed to your Substack yesterday, Arn, because I was impressed by the argument based on the angle of the bullet strike that clipped Trump’s ear. Where it had to have come from based on the precise angle it had to have made given exactly where Trump was standing.
Maybe I’m carrying your argument a bit farther than it was stated in your article. When I saw the video of the strike I focused on Trump sharply turning his head just a hair more to his right at barely a fraction of a second before the first of three pops were heard and his right hand jerked up to his ear [I assumed the pops were distant gun shots but, soon after, I was convinced by the analysis of a man who claimed military experience that in fact the pops were the sound of the passing “sonic boom” of supersonic bullets]. It made, and still makes, sense to me that that unpredictable change of head angle was made almost simultaneous with the shooter pulling the trigger.
I just this morning measured with a small ruler the distance between the outer fold of my ear and my skin-covered skull. It’s about ten millimetres at most. If Trump had not twitched his head more to his right at that moment the bullet would have opened a trench along the side of his skull. And it was a supersonic bullet, high speed even after flying 130 metres, high energy.
An experienced trauma surgeon commented on the controversy surrounding the alleged Las Vegas Massacre in an email to Paul Craig Roberts. He said that a high speed, high power rifle bullet when it impacts delivers enormous kinetic energy to the point of impact all out of proportion to the size of the bullet. It is in fact the trauma of this impact on bone or flesh, be it only a leg wound, that causes many wounded people to die. So I reason that the bullet passed through the top of Trump’s ear without touching anything else on the side of his head. Had it ripped through the outer layer of his skull would that trauma have blown his skull apart? Seems reasonable to me that it would have done just that.
Enough! I do this sort of thinking in the morning! I almost can’t hold my horses!
Bottom line:
It doesn’t matter precisely where the shooter was or even who the shooter was. It only matters that he was there on that roof with a rifle in position and could not possibly have arrived there without high level authoritative complicity.
It’s not intellectually difficult to arrive at this conclusion [and how many times has that been true? From JFK to the USS Liberty to 9/11 and on and on!] it’s just emotionally difficult to go where the evidence leads and accept the terrible conclusion.
I sympathize. I spent years to overcome my prejudices – and seas and tsunamis of propaganda disinformation – as I found out more about November 22, 1963. Now I’m the beneficiary of 60 years off and on of hard fought self education. I almost can’t imagine not knowing the things I know and knowing the falsity of many other things.
I’m 77 and I’d have to try to count up how many lone, nut, unmotivated shooters I’ve heard about since Lee Oswald was murdered in order to shut his mouth. I saw Jack Ruby shoot Lee Oswald. I was 17 years old. I saw it on my parents TV in our living room as we all watched it because it was broadcast live, continent-wide. The camera angle could not have been better if a director had arranged it. That’s a fact worth considering all by itself, isn’t it?