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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   5531 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 3, 2025

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Those seem like pretty plausible numbers. I agree that he’s definitely not in the bottom 6% of health. He’s not even close on weight; he’s like 60th, 70th percentile. So not the highest risk for cardiovascular. And I expect screening to rule out all sorts of possible stealth risks.

I wonder what the actuarial tables look like for sudden death. I don’t know how I’d search for that.

Assassination risk is a whole different ball game. He’s probably more hated that any president since…Nixon? But that’s only loosely coupled with actual assasssination attempts. It’s also not a good predictor of defensive measures. Makes me a little curious if the government cuts involve cleaning house for the Secret Service…

Makes me a little curious if the government cuts involve cleaning house for the Secret Service…

I would sincerely hope so. It keeps getting glossed over in these discussions, but I still haven't seen anything remotely like an adequate explanation of the events surrounding the Butler assassination attempt, and barring some extremely rigorous explanations or an ironclad paper trail detailing how the Secret Service has been an elaborate bluff all along, "the secret service intentionally attempted to allow an assassination of a presidential candidate" seems to me the the most likely explanation.

I’d put money against it being intentional. You’d need 1) a conspiracy in the SS which 2) acts once and only once and 3) gets lots of people fired but not charged with treason.

No, I think they probably hit a common failure mode in project management. It’s easy to skimp on testing scenarios which are rare, even if they’re really critical. Presidential assassins are rare, and FPOTUS assassins even more so. I would bet they got complacent and didn’t do the kind of training or testing they’d need to actually secure the site.

I’ve seen some pictures of Trump’s detail lately and they definitely look like real secret service agents, unlike the motley crew from last summer.

Humans make errors. Occam's razor is our friend here--no need to go the conspiratorial route when evidence doesn't exist for it.

citing occams razor in the domain of politics is foolish when being pretending to be retarded is the ultimate way to get plausible deniability.

According to some video and media reports, the Secret Service counter-sniper on a nearby rooftop was aiming at the shooter, perhaps before he took some or all of his shots.

“The counter sniper appears to be looking through his scope as if he's scanning for something. … And then, when the shots are fired, takes out the shooter from his position almost immediately,” said Miller, the NYPD’s deputy commissioner of Intelligence & Counterterrorism until 2022. “So we have to fill in those gaps. What happened during those seconds? What were the communications? What did he see through the scope, and did he act at his first opportunity? And we'll learn that later.”

I'm still waiting. The evidence as I understand it is that the Secret Service sniper had the assassin in his sights and not only allowed him to fire multiple shots, but only fired after a non-sniper engaged the assassin and disabled his rifle.

He thought the guy could very well be a local cop -- how stupid would he feel if the headline was "trigger happy SS agent brains local cop during Trump speech". Career ending.

That is because that building was supposed to be under the care of the local police, it was actually their headquarters.

It was not clear who that person was until shots were fired. And communications were sorted out.

Don't attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity/ineptitude.

Don't attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity/ineptitude.

That's terrible advice when there's lots of malice around (like there is now).

Huh. I thought the rifle was destroyed by one of the sniper’s shots.

This is one of those things which SHOULD have continued to get public attention, but has been swept under the rug since November, if not earlier.

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