Did they ever get to the bottom of the motivation behind that guy who conducted a mass shooting of attendees at the music festival in Las Vegas from 7-8 years ago? That was a really odd one.
Really weird one. Just a regular guy, in a relationship and well-known in Vegas, who seemingly spent months preparing for the event. Nothing that really stood out in his background at all.
It’s being claimed rally goers spotted Thomas Crooks TWENTY FIVE MINUTES before he shot. They called out to police. Police did nothing. There is video of it
Either this is the greatest failure by anything ever anywhere since Creation, or some faction of the cops was involved
It seems pretty bloody obvious to me, and he wasn't exactly subtle.
At the very least Trump should have delayed /got off the stage until it was checked out.
It's worth remembering it's only by a real fluke, and an inch or so, that he isn't dead.
No one warned Trump for HALF AN HOUR
This looks increasingly like - at the least - some kind of co-ordinated attempt on Trump’s life, if only by utter negligence. They wanted him dead
Cock-up is far far more likely than conspiracy.
It’s almost always so.
It’s a massive cockup not to have delayed the event though, if they knew there was someone suspicious with a rangefinder and a packback in the close vicinity of the venue and only 150yds from the stage.
The inquiry is going to be all the different groups of police blaming each other. Apparently six different LEAs involved, plus local private security. The FBI will be pleased to be the lead agency running the investigation, that way they’re least likely to have to take any of the blame.
One can well imagine someone of means stepping forward to fund a class action lawsuit on behalf of the victims, although the fundraisers for them are already well into the millions of dollars.
Weird-looking people with assault rifles are the core Trump demographic. You can't shut down a whole event just because you see one of them, it would be like evacuating the LibDem Party Conference if you saw someone wearing sandals.
Ha ha I’ll give you that.
In the early days of Trump rallies, they actually had to keep making a point of telling everyone to leave their guns at home, as everyone gets searched on the way in (by local security, supervised by the USSS).
The problem here, was that the area where the shooter was seen was outside the official perimeter, but still close enough to get a good view, so there were a lot of people hanging around that area rather than actually going in to the event.
Lying on the roof of the building I think was the big give away which was spotted by dozens well in advance and is on film.
And people might well be recalling the G8 in 2008, when the Secret Service nearly opened fire on local police snipers who had taken position on a rooftop under their control without informing the Secret Service. Apparently.
Which might lead to the following sort of conversation:
"There's a gunman on that roof!" SS: "Is that under the local (whatever PD control?" "Yes." SS: "Okay, it's one of theirs. Don't fire."
Which is stupid but understandable. You can make it less stupid with:
"There's a gunman on that roof!" "Is that under the local (whatever PD control?" "Should be." "Okay, contact them and ask them if it's one of their." Then the usual comms and organisational snafus occur.
Such as: SS; "Do you have anyone on top of building X?" Agency A: "Which building's that?" SS: "The one at the corner of Y and Z." Agency A: "Ah, the book depository. No, that's Agency B's area." SS hangs up and calls Agency B Agency B: "Sure, that's our building. I don't think we have anyone up there, but that's Bill's area. I'll just get him..."
And the minutes roll by....
Edit: I would hope their processes were better than that. But however good the SS's processes, many of these small local PDs won't have the same experience or institutional knowledge.
Thousands of pupils will have ‘nowhere to go’ if tax on private education goes ahead
Thousands of Jewish students will have “nowhere to go” if the Government goes ahead with plans to tax private education, a charity has warned.
A charity that supports Jewish independent schools said Sir Keir Starmer’s VAT raid and plans to remove business rate exemptions would force many to close.
Separately, lawyers have said that Labour’s private education tax plans risk illegally discriminating against independent faith schools.
Lord Pannick, a leading human rights lawyer, told The Telegraph that making private schools subject to VAT was likely to breach the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
It’s being claimed rally goers spotted Thomas Crooks TWENTY FIVE MINUTES before he shot. They called out to police. Police did nothing. There is video of it
Either this is the greatest failure by anything ever anywhere since Creation, or some faction of the cops was involved
It seems pretty bloody obvious to me, and he wasn't exactly subtle.
At the very least Trump should have delayed /got off the stage until it was checked out.
It's worth remembering it's only by a real fluke, and an inch or so, that he isn't dead.
No one warned Trump for HALF AN HOUR
This looks increasingly like - at the least - some kind of co-ordinated attempt on Trump’s life, if only by utter negligence. They wanted him dead
Cock-up is far far more likely than conspiracy.
It’s almost always so.
It’s a massive cockup not to have delayed the event though, if they knew there was someone suspicious with a rangefinder and a packback in the close vicinity of the venue and only 150yds from the stage.
The inquiry is going to be all the different groups of police blaming each other. Apparently six different LEAs involved, plus local private security. The FBI will be pleased to be the lead agency running the investigation, that way they’re least likely to have to take any of the blame.
One can well imagine someone of means stepping forward to fund a class action lawsuit on behalf of the victims, although the fundraisers for them are already well into the millions of dollars.
Weird-looking people with assault rifles are the core Trump demographic. You can't shut down a whole event just because you see one of them, it would be like evacuating the LibDem Party Conference if you saw someone wearing sandals.
Ha ha I’ll give you that.
In the early days of Trump rallies, they actually had to keep making a point of telling everyone to leave their guns at home, as everyone gets searched on the way in (by local security, supervised by the USSS).
The problem here, was that the area where the shooter was seen was outside the official perimeter, but still close enough to get a good view, so there were a lot of people hanging around that area rather than actually going in to the event.
If gun culture, Trump style, worked then there would be no need for his supporters to leave their guns at home when they go to a rally, they could ensure their safety by all bringing them along, making sure some randomer doesn't shoot them.
That's poor from the Times. That's reportable donations - the headline is wrong, and they don't even make a decent attempt to clarify in the article.
Every adult in Scotland could have donated £10,000 to the SNP in the final week and you wouldn't know.
They do, I've not copied the full article, from the article.
The reportable figure for a single donation for the last four weeks up to polling day is £11,180.
I think some quarters dead people have donated more to the SNP, through legacies, than living people.
Wasn’t there a couple who won £100m on the lottery and gave a substantial percentage to the SNP or various independence campaigns?
Colin Weir, who with his wife, Christina, were SNP activists when they won 161m on the Euromillions Jackpot (incidentally the largest lottery winners ever recorded in the UK), they made "very substantial" donations to the SNP, but stopped in, I think, 2017, and Colin Weir died in 2019.
One of the problems that the SNP has is that making donations to a party in substantial legal jeopardy is not exactly ideal, so even independence supporters hesitate to pay money to the party. The SNP is in a very bad way, and this has certainly dragged down overall support for independence too. So as Politicos noted the total donations from live donors was only about £50K.
What attracted Scots to the idea of independence was efficient, professional government administration, especially versus the Tory fiasco at Westminster and Whitehall. The USP of Scottish efficiency has definitively torpedoed, so a large number of voters are disillusioned and depressed at the whole thing. I don´t think the SNP can recover. Whether something else emerges, a Scottish version of RefUk, maybe, remains an open question, but for the time being Labour are back ruling the roost, which to be honest I find just as depressing as the SNP dominance.
It’s being claimed rally goers spotted Thomas Crooks TWENTY FIVE MINUTES before he shot. They called out to police. Police did nothing. There is video of it
Either this is the greatest failure by anything ever anywhere since Creation, or some faction of the cops was involved
It seems pretty bloody obvious to me, and he wasn't exactly subtle.
At the very least Trump should have delayed /got off the stage until it was checked out.
It's worth remembering it's only by a real fluke, and an inch or so, that he isn't dead.
No one warned Trump for HALF AN HOUR
This looks increasingly like - at the least - some kind of co-ordinated attempt on Trump’s life, if only by utter negligence. They wanted him dead
Cock-up is far far more likely than conspiracy.
There are a zillion people wandering around these events who the secret service takes an interest in.
The fact that they had a good look at this guy just shows that they were doing their job. Even if he was wandering around with a firearm that would be completely legal in the state & the security services wouldn’t have been able to stop him!
The outrageous failure (it seems to me) was to fail to secure the rooftop: It seems that the building had been handed over to the local PD & they failed to secure the building? I doubt Trump’s USSS detail will make that mistake again.
In fairness to @leon on this one (although I still think he is wrong generally and specifically on his conspiracies) there was close up film of him on the roof by people with phones well before the shooting and lots of people understandably getting agitated about the fact that he was lying up there and getting the police who were to put it mildly somewhat relaxed about it.
As you say it seems to be that the local police were handling this area (looking at the uniforms) and not doing it well because they didn't react appropriately for the circumstances.
True, but local police would be expecting snipers on various rooftops, from both the Secret Service and the police, and perhaps this explains a lack of concern.
Or the police might have reported the crowd suspicions back to the station and left it to them to call someone in Washington. Officer Dibble would not have a radio hotline to the Secret Service. In Britain a common feature of reports into terrorist outrages and other large incidents is the difficulty of inter-agency communication. Each service is on its own network with its own reporting structure, following its own protocols. I expect it is the same there.
The policeman was slowly strolling over to the guy. I suspect the difference is that the specialists think 'sniper' where he is dealing with lots harmless idiots everyday and probably thinks it is someone hoping to get a better view and is going over there to find out what is going on and to tell him to get the f*** down.
Thousands of pupils will have ‘nowhere to go’ if tax on private education goes ahead
Thousands of Jewish students will have “nowhere to go” if the Government goes ahead with plans to tax private education, a charity has warned.
A charity that supports Jewish independent schools said Sir Keir Starmer’s VAT raid and plans to remove business rate exemptions would force many to close.
Separately, lawyers have said that Labour’s private education tax plans risk illegally discriminating against independent faith schools.
Lord Pannick, a leading human rights lawyer, told The Telegraph that making private schools subject to VAT was likely to breach the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
It’s being claimed rally goers spotted Thomas Crooks TWENTY FIVE MINUTES before he shot. They called out to police. Police did nothing. There is video of it
Either this is the greatest failure by anything ever anywhere since Creation, or some faction of the cops was involved
It seems pretty bloody obvious to me, and he wasn't exactly subtle.
At the very least Trump should have delayed /got off the stage until it was checked out.
It's worth remembering it's only by a real fluke, and an inch or so, that he isn't dead.
No one warned Trump for HALF AN HOUR
This looks increasingly like - at the least - some kind of co-ordinated attempt on Trump’s life, if only by utter negligence. They wanted him dead
Cock-up is far far more likely than conspiracy.
There are a zillion people wandering around these events who the secret service takes an interest in.
The fact that they had a good look at this guy just shows that they were doing their job. Even if he was wandering around with a firearm that would be completely legal in the state & the security services wouldn’t have been able to stop him!
The outrageous failure (it seems to me) was to fail to secure the rooftop: It seems that the building had been handed over to the local PD & they failed to secure the building? I doubt Trump’s USSS detail will make that mistake again.
In fairness to @leon on this one (although I still think he is wrong generally and specifically on his conspiracies) there was close up film of him on the roof by people with phones well before the shooting and lots of people understandably getting agitated about the fact that he was lying up there and getting the police who were to put it mildly somewhat relaxed about it.
As you say it seems to be that the local police were handling this area (looking at the uniforms) and not doing it well because they didn't react appropriately for the circumstances.
True, but local police would be expecting snipers on various rooftops, from both the Secret Service and the police, and perhaps this explains a lack of concern.
Or the police might have reported the crowd suspicions back to the station and left it to them to call someone in Washington. Officer Dibble would not have a radio hotline to the Secret Service. In Britain a common feature of reports into terrorist outrages and other large incidents is the difficulty of inter-agency communication. Each service is on its own network with its own reporting structure, following its own protocols. I expect it is the same there.
A few months back I listened to a podcast that said there were thousands of law enforcement agencies in the USA. In fact, there are 18,000 (and more including wider definitions of police), ranging in size from a handful of people to thousands. You are going to get a massive variation in competence, knowledge and training in those organisations.
It’s being claimed rally goers spotted Thomas Crooks TWENTY FIVE MINUTES before he shot. They called out to police. Police did nothing. There is video of it
Either this is the greatest failure by anything ever anywhere since Creation, or some faction of the cops was involved
It seems pretty bloody obvious to me, and he wasn't exactly subtle.
At the very least Trump should have delayed /got off the stage until it was checked out.
It's worth remembering it's only by a real fluke, and an inch or so, that he isn't dead.
No one warned Trump for HALF AN HOUR
This looks increasingly like - at the least - some kind of co-ordinated attempt on Trump’s life, if only by utter negligence. They wanted him dead
Cock-up is far far more likely than conspiracy.
It’s almost always so.
It’s a massive cockup not to have delayed the event though, if they knew there was someone suspicious with a rangefinder and a packback in the close vicinity of the venue and only 150yds from the stage.
The inquiry is going to be all the different groups of police blaming each other. Apparently six different LEAs involved, plus local private security. The FBI will be pleased to be the lead agency running the investigation, that way they’re least likely to have to take any of the blame.
One can well imagine someone of means stepping forward to fund a class action lawsuit on behalf of the victims, although the fundraisers for them are already well into the millions of dollars.
Weird-looking people with assault rifles are the core Trump demographic. You can't shut down a whole event just because you see one of them, it would be like evacuating the LibDem Party Conference if you saw someone wearing sandals.
Ha ha I’ll give you that.
In the early days of Trump rallies, they actually had to keep making a point of telling everyone to leave their guns at home, as everyone gets searched on the way in (by local security, supervised by the USSS).
The problem here, was that the area where the shooter was seen was outside the official perimeter, but still close enough to get a good view, so there were a lot of people hanging around that area rather than actually going in to the event.
Lying on the roof of the building I think was the big give away which was spotted by dozens well in advance and is on film.
And people might well be recalling the G8 in 2008, when the Secret Service nearly opened fire on local police snipers who had taken position on a rooftop under their control without informing the Secret Service. Apparently.
Which might lead to the following sort of conversation:
"There's a gunman on that roof!" SS: "Is that under the local (whatever PD control?" "Yes." SS: "Okay, it's one of theirs. Don't fire."
Which is stupid but understandable. You can make it less stupid with:
"There's a gunman on that roof!" "Is that under the local (whatever PD control?" "Should be." "Okay, contact them and ask them if it's one of their." Then the usual comms and organisational snafus occur.
Such as: SS; "Do you have anyone on top of building X?" Agency A: "Which building's that?" SS: "The one at the corner of Y and Z." Agency A: "Ah, the book depository. No, that's Agency B's area." SS hangs up and calls Agency B Agency B: "Sure, that's our building. I don't think we have anyone up there, but that's Bill's area. I'll just get him..."
And the minutes roll by....
Edit: I would hope their processes were better than that. But however good the SS's processes, many of these small local PDs won't have the same experience or institutional knowledge.
Yup, as has been discussed over the past couple of days. It will almost certainly come down to inter-agency communication failures, with Trump’s USSS close protection team being unaware of the severity of the complaints made to people who looked like the local beat cops.
There’s no way we’re seeing any more outdoor rallies, unless the USSS can put hundreds of people on it to the exclusion of every other agency within a mile’s radius.
It’ll be theatres and exhibition halls for the rest of the campaign, where the USSS know they can totally contain the space.
Thousands of pupils will have ‘nowhere to go’ if tax on private education goes ahead
Thousands of Jewish students will have “nowhere to go” if the Government goes ahead with plans to tax private education, a charity has warned.
A charity that supports Jewish independent schools said Sir Keir Starmer’s VAT raid and plans to remove business rate exemptions would force many to close.
Separately, lawyers have said that Labour’s private education tax plans risk illegally discriminating against independent faith schools.
Lord Pannick, a leading human rights lawyer, told The Telegraph that making private schools subject to VAT was likely to breach the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
I am sure Lord Pannick will find someone to instruct him to seek a declaration that VAT on school fees breaches the ECHR. It very obviously doesn't. Just as having to pay income tax limits choices for everyone by taking money away doesn't breach ECHR. A right to education is not the same as a right to go to Eton.
It’s being claimed rally goers spotted Thomas Crooks TWENTY FIVE MINUTES before he shot. They called out to police. Police did nothing. There is video of it
Either this is the greatest failure by anything ever anywhere since Creation, or some faction of the cops was involved
It seems pretty bloody obvious to me, and he wasn't exactly subtle.
At the very least Trump should have delayed /got off the stage until it was checked out.
It's worth remembering it's only by a real fluke, and an inch or so, that he isn't dead.
No one warned Trump for HALF AN HOUR
This looks increasingly like - at the least - some kind of co-ordinated attempt on Trump’s life, if only by utter negligence. They wanted him dead
Cock-up is far far more likely than conspiracy.
It’s almost always so.
It’s a massive cockup not to have delayed the event though, if they knew there was someone suspicious with a rangefinder and a packback in the close vicinity of the venue and only 150yds from the stage.
The inquiry is going to be all the different groups of police blaming each other. Apparently six different LEAs involved, plus local private security. The FBI will be pleased to be the lead agency running the investigation, that way they’re least likely to have to take any of the blame.
One can well imagine someone of means stepping forward to fund a class action lawsuit on behalf of the victims, although the fundraisers for them are already well into the millions of dollars.
Weird-looking people with assault rifles are the core Trump demographic. You can't shut down a whole event just because you see one of them, it would be like evacuating the LibDem Party Conference if you saw someone wearing sandals.
Ha ha I’ll give you that.
In the early days of Trump rallies, they actually had to keep making a point of telling everyone to leave their guns at home, as everyone gets searched on the way in (by local security, supervised by the USSS).
The problem here, was that the area where the shooter was seen was outside the official perimeter, but still close enough to get a good view, so there were a lot of people hanging around that area rather than actually going in to the event.
Lying on the roof of the building I think was the big give away which was spotted by dozens well in advance and is on film.
And people might well be recalling the G8 in 2008, when the Secret Service nearly opened fire on local police snipers who had taken position on a rooftop under their control without informing the Secret Service. Apparently.
Which might lead to the following sort of conversation:
"There's a gunman on that roof!" SS: "Is that under the local (whatever PD control?" "Yes." SS: "Okay, it's one of theirs. Don't fire."
Which is stupid but understandable. You can make it less stupid with:
"There's a gunman on that roof!" "Is that under the local (whatever PD control?" "Should be." "Okay, contact them and ask them if it's one of their." Then the usual comms and organisational snafus occur.
Such as: SS; "Do you have anyone on top of building X?" Agency A: "Which building's that?" SS: "The one at the corner of Y and Z." Agency A: "Ah, the book depository. No, that's Agency B's area." SS hangs up and calls Agency B Agency B: "Sure, that's our building. I don't think we have anyone up there, but that's Bill's area. I'll just get him..."
And the minutes roll by....
Edit: I would hope their processes were better than that. But however good the SS's processes, many of these small local PDs won't have the same experience or institutional knowledge.
There's quite a lot in that - the USA has 18,000 police agencies, of which 15000+ are local police forces of one sort or another - quite a number perhaps run by a 2024 version of Sheriff Roscoe P Coltrane, with a machine gun and a de-militarised armoured car.
I'm more interested in the background of this character. As far as anyone is aware so far, he seems weirdly normal. If he has strong political opinions he has kept them to himself (which is unusual in the internet age). He doesn't appear to be down any rabbit holes which have yet been unearthed. Nothing in his backstory suggests he's stupid or insane.
I'm all for the lone nutter angle. It explains many things. But for a lone nutter he appears unusually balanced and socially well adjusted.
It’s being claimed rally goers spotted Thomas Crooks TWENTY FIVE MINUTES before he shot. They called out to police. Police did nothing. There is video of it
Either this is the greatest failure by anything ever anywhere since Creation, or some faction of the cops was involved
It seems pretty bloody obvious to me, and he wasn't exactly subtle.
At the very least Trump should have delayed /got off the stage until it was checked out.
It's worth remembering it's only by a real fluke, and an inch or so, that he isn't dead.
No one warned Trump for HALF AN HOUR
This looks increasingly like - at the least - some kind of co-ordinated attempt on Trump’s life, if only by utter negligence. They wanted him dead
Cock-up is far far more likely than conspiracy.
It’s almost always so.
It’s a massive cockup not to have delayed the event though, if they knew there was someone suspicious with a rangefinder and a packback in the close vicinity of the venue and only 150yds from the stage.
The inquiry is going to be all the different groups of police blaming each other. Apparently six different LEAs involved, plus local private security. The FBI will be pleased to be the lead agency running the investigation, that way they’re least likely to have to take any of the blame.
One can well imagine someone of means stepping forward to fund a class action lawsuit on behalf of the victims, although the fundraisers for them are already well into the millions of dollars.
Weird-looking people with assault rifles are the core Trump demographic. You can't shut down a whole event just because you see one of them, it would be like evacuating the LibDem Party Conference if you saw someone wearing sandals.
Ha ha I’ll give you that.
In the early days of Trump rallies, they actually had to keep making a point of telling everyone to leave their guns at home, as everyone gets searched on the way in (by local security, supervised by the USSS).
The problem here, was that the area where the shooter was seen was outside the official perimeter, but still close enough to get a good view, so there were a lot of people hanging around that area rather than actually going in to the event.
If gun culture, Trump style, worked then there would be no need for his supporters to leave their guns at home when they go to a rally, they could ensure their safety by all bringing them along, making sure some randomer doesn't shoot them.
There's a confused set of ideas here.
The US Secret Service have very different ideas about guns, to the average Trump rally attendee! In USSS world, *they* are the only ones allowed the guns.
Thousands of pupils will have ‘nowhere to go’ if tax on private education goes ahead
Thousands of Jewish students will have “nowhere to go” if the Government goes ahead with plans to tax private education, a charity has warned.
A charity that supports Jewish independent schools said Sir Keir Starmer’s VAT raid and plans to remove business rate exemptions would force many to close.
Separately, lawyers have said that Labour’s private education tax plans risk illegally discriminating against independent faith schools.
Lord Pannick, a leading human rights lawyer, told The Telegraph that making private schools subject to VAT was likely to breach the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
Lord Pannick can see some decent fees for fighting a hopeless cause...
Which fees, BTW, are subject to VAT.
If Lord Pannick (who is, on the whole, a very good thing) wanted a real breach of ECHR to argue about it would be the depriving most ordinary people of access to redress in court because of the law's prohibitive costs.
It’s being claimed rally goers spotted Thomas Crooks TWENTY FIVE MINUTES before he shot. They called out to police. Police did nothing. There is video of it
Either this is the greatest failure by anything ever anywhere since Creation, or some faction of the cops was involved
It seems pretty bloody obvious to me, and he wasn't exactly subtle.
At the very least Trump should have delayed /got off the stage until it was checked out.
It's worth remembering it's only by a real fluke, and an inch or so, that he isn't dead.
No one warned Trump for HALF AN HOUR
This looks increasingly like - at the least - some kind of co-ordinated attempt on Trump’s life, if only by utter negligence. They wanted him dead
Isn’t another likely explanation that the Secret Service had given up warning Trump about the security risks at his rallies because he always ignores them? His reaction after being shot shows that he’s not willing to listen to security advice if it gets in the way of his political image. It’s still a massive failure of course but if you’ve got into the mindset that all of these rallies are dangerous and the principle doesn’t care then it’s easy to see how you might be less thorough.
Maybe. But I cannot get my head around all these cops KNOWING there’s a likely (definite?) shooter on the roof - and failing to warn Trump when they had loads of time
That doesn’t even need a conspiracy. That merely requires one or two people to be - shall we say - not entirely averse to the idea of Trump being eliminated from the election
And we know that an awful lot of people desire that
I'm more interested in the background of this character. As far as anyone is aware so far, he seems weirdly normal. If he has strong political opinions he has kept them to himself (which is unusual in the internet age). He doesn't appear to be down any rabbit holes which have yet been unearthed. Nothing in his backstory suggests he's stupid or insane.
I'm all for the lone nutter angle. It explains many things. But for a lone nutter he appears unusually balanced and socially well adjusted.
It’s being claimed rally goers spotted Thomas Crooks TWENTY FIVE MINUTES before he shot. They called out to police. Police did nothing. There is video of it
Either this is the greatest failure by anything ever anywhere since Creation, or some faction of the cops was involved
It seems pretty bloody obvious to me, and he wasn't exactly subtle.
At the very least Trump should have delayed /got off the stage until it was checked out.
It's worth remembering it's only by a real fluke, and an inch or so, that he isn't dead.
No one warned Trump for HALF AN HOUR
This looks increasingly like - at the least - some kind of co-ordinated attempt on Trump’s life, if only by utter negligence. They wanted him dead
Cock-up is far far more likely than conspiracy.
There are a zillion people wandering around these events who the secret service takes an interest in.
The fact that they had a good look at this guy just shows that they were doing their job. Even if he was wandering around with a firearm that would be completely legal in the state & the security services wouldn’t have been able to stop him!
The outrageous failure (it seems to me) was to fail to secure the rooftop: It seems that the building had been handed over to the local PD & they failed to secure the building? I doubt Trump’s USSS detail will make that mistake again.
In fairness to @leon on this one (although I still think he is wrong generally and specifically on his conspiracies) there was close up film of him on the roof by people with phones well before the shooting and lots of people understandably getting agitated about the fact that he was lying up there and getting the police who were to put it mildly somewhat relaxed about it.
As you say it seems to be that the local police were handling this area (looking at the uniforms) and not doing it well because they didn't react appropriately for the circumstances.
The only “conspiracies” I’ve pushed on here are
1. Lab leak. And I was right
And
2. Biden is senile and they’re hiding it. And I was right
And
3. Nordstream was not done by Putin. It was America or an American proxy. And I was right
Thousands of pupils will have ‘nowhere to go’ if tax on private education goes ahead
Thousands of Jewish students will have “nowhere to go” if the Government goes ahead with plans to tax private education, a charity has warned.
A charity that supports Jewish independent schools said Sir Keir Starmer’s VAT raid and plans to remove business rate exemptions would force many to close.
Separately, lawyers have said that Labour’s private education tax plans risk illegally discriminating against independent faith schools.
Lord Pannick, a leading human rights lawyer, told The Telegraph that making private schools subject to VAT was likely to breach the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
I don't have a view on Vat on private schools, but that argument is just weird because that is just tax policy. if that had already been the case would they have been complaining it was against their human rights? What about current taxes they pay? Is that against their human rights?
It is a change in tax policy of removing a benefit these schools have, which one might argue shouldn't happen, but it isn't against ones human rights. It is the removal of a concession.
I'm more interested in the background of this character. As far as anyone is aware so far, he seems weirdly normal. If he has strong political opinions he has kept them to himself (which is unusual in the internet age). He doesn't appear to be down any rabbit holes which have yet been unearthed. Nothing in his backstory suggests he's stupid or insane.
I'm all for the lone nutter angle. It explains many things. But for a lone nutter he appears unusually balanced and socially well adjusted.
Of course, there may be more to come out.
He fits the profile of the typical US mass shooter, as much as there is one: he’s male.
It’s being claimed rally goers spotted Thomas Crooks TWENTY FIVE MINUTES before he shot. They called out to police. Police did nothing. There is video of it
Either this is the greatest failure by anything ever anywhere since Creation, or some faction of the cops was involved
It seems pretty bloody obvious to me, and he wasn't exactly subtle.
At the very least Trump should have delayed /got off the stage until it was checked out.
It's worth remembering it's only by a real fluke, and an inch or so, that he isn't dead.
No one warned Trump for HALF AN HOUR
This looks increasingly like - at the least - some kind of co-ordinated attempt on Trump’s life, if only by utter negligence. They wanted him dead
Cock-up is far far more likely than conspiracy.
It’s almost always so.
It’s a massive cockup not to have delayed the event though, if they knew there was someone suspicious with a rangefinder and a packback in the close vicinity of the venue and only 150yds from the stage.
The inquiry is going to be all the different groups of police blaming each other. Apparently six different LEAs involved, plus local private security. The FBI will be pleased to be the lead agency running the investigation, that way they’re least likely to have to take any of the blame.
One can well imagine someone of means stepping forward to fund a class action lawsuit on behalf of the victims, although the fundraisers for them are already well into the millions of dollars.
Weird-looking people with assault rifles are the core Trump demographic. You can't shut down a whole event just because you see one of them, it would be like evacuating the LibDem Party Conference if you saw someone wearing sandals.
Ha ha I’ll give you that.
In the early days of Trump rallies, they actually had to keep making a point of telling everyone to leave their guns at home, as everyone gets searched on the way in (by local security, supervised by the USSS).
The problem here, was that the area where the shooter was seen was outside the official perimeter, but still close enough to get a good view, so there were a lot of people hanging around that area rather than actually going in to the event.
Lying on the roof of the building I think was the big give away which was spotted by dozens well in advance and is on film.
And people might well be recalling the G8 in 2008, when the Secret Service nearly opened fire on local police snipers who had taken position on a rooftop under their control without informing the Secret Service. Apparently.
Which might lead to the following sort of conversation:
"There's a gunman on that roof!" SS: "Is that under the local (whatever PD control?" "Yes." SS: "Okay, it's one of theirs. Don't fire."
Which is stupid but understandable. You can make it less stupid with:
"There's a gunman on that roof!" "Is that under the local (whatever PD control?" "Should be." "Okay, contact them and ask them if it's one of their." Then the usual comms and organisational snafus occur.
Such as: SS; "Do you have anyone on top of building X?" Agency A: "Which building's that?" SS: "The one at the corner of Y and Z." Agency A: "Ah, the book depository. No, that's Agency B's area." SS hangs up and calls Agency B Agency B: "Sure, that's our building. I don't think we have anyone up there, but that's Bill's area. I'll just get him..."
And the minutes roll by....
Edit: I would hope their processes were better than that. But however good the SS's processes, many of these small local PDs won't have the same experience or institutional knowledge.
It is nice to have a sensible discussion guessing what cockup occurred rather than the Lizards did it.
Did they ever get to the bottom of the motivation behind that guy who conducted a mass shooting of attendees at the music festival in Las Vegas from 7-8 years ago? That was a really odd one.
Really weird one. Just a regular guy, in a relationship and well-known in Vegas, who seemingly spent months preparing for the event. Nothing that really stood out in his background at all.
Yes that one. I mean I know some people really hate country music, but seems a tad extreme.
It’s being claimed rally goers spotted Thomas Crooks TWENTY FIVE MINUTES before he shot. They called out to police. Police did nothing. There is video of it
Either this is the greatest failure by anything ever anywhere since Creation, or some faction of the cops was involved
It seems pretty bloody obvious to me, and he wasn't exactly subtle.
At the very least Trump should have delayed /got off the stage until it was checked out.
It's worth remembering it's only by a real fluke, and an inch or so, that he isn't dead.
No one warned Trump for HALF AN HOUR
This looks increasingly like - at the least - some kind of co-ordinated attempt on Trump’s life, if only by utter negligence. They wanted him dead
Cock-up is far far more likely than conspiracy.
It’s almost always so.
It’s a massive cockup not to have delayed the event though, if they knew there was someone suspicious with a rangefinder and a packback in the close vicinity of the venue and only 150yds from the stage.
The inquiry is going to be all the different groups of police blaming each other. Apparently six different LEAs involved, plus local private security. The FBI will be pleased to be the lead agency running the investigation, that way they’re least likely to have to take any of the blame.
One can well imagine someone of means stepping forward to fund a class action lawsuit on behalf of the victims, although the fundraisers for them are already well into the millions of dollars.
Weird-looking people with assault rifles are the core Trump demographic. You can't shut down a whole event just because you see one of them, it would be like evacuating the LibDem Party Conference if you saw someone wearing sandals.
Ha ha I’ll give you that.
In the early days of Trump rallies, they actually had to keep making a point of telling everyone to leave their guns at home, as everyone gets searched on the way in (by local security, supervised by the USSS).
The problem here, was that the area where the shooter was seen was outside the official perimeter, but still close enough to get a good view, so there were a lot of people hanging around that area rather than actually going in to the event.
Lying on the roof of the building I think was the big give away which was spotted by dozens well in advance and is on film.
And people might well be recalling the G8 in 2008, when the Secret Service nearly opened fire on local police snipers who had taken position on a rooftop under their control without informing the Secret Service. Apparently.
Which might lead to the following sort of conversation:
"There's a gunman on that roof!" SS: "Is that under the local (whatever PD control?" "Yes." SS: "Okay, it's one of theirs. Don't fire."
Which is stupid but understandable. You can make it less stupid with:
"There's a gunman on that roof!" "Is that under the local (whatever PD control?" "Should be." "Okay, contact them and ask them if it's one of their." Then the usual comms and organisational snafus occur.
Such as: SS; "Do you have anyone on top of building X?" Agency A: "Which building's that?" SS: "The one at the corner of Y and Z." Agency A: "Ah, the book depository. No, that's Agency B's area." SS hangs up and calls Agency B Agency B: "Sure, that's our building. I don't think we have anyone up there, but that's Bill's area. I'll just get him..."
And the minutes roll by....
Edit: I would hope their processes were better than that. But however good the SS's processes, many of these small local PDs won't have the same experience or institutional knowledge.
Yup, as has been discussed over the past couple of days. It will almost certainly come down to inter-agency communication failures, with Trump’s USSS close protection team being unaware of the severity of the complaints made to people who looked like the local beat cops.
There’s no way we’re seeing any more outdoor rallies, unless the USSS can put hundreds of people on it to the exclusion of every other agency within a mile’s radius.
It’ll be theatres and exhibition halls for the rest of the campaign, where the USSS know they can totally contain the space.
I don't know that theatres have that good a reputation when it comes to presidential assassinations...
Scotland and Welsh governments seem to have seen the shit show of unstable Tory government and gone you know what we fancy a bit of that. How long as Gething been in charge. If it wasn't for the GE, he surely would have been giving Truss a run for her money.
It’s being claimed rally goers spotted Thomas Crooks TWENTY FIVE MINUTES before he shot. They called out to police. Police did nothing. There is video of it
Either this is the greatest failure by anything ever anywhere since Creation, or some faction of the cops was involved
It seems pretty bloody obvious to me, and he wasn't exactly subtle.
At the very least Trump should have delayed /got off the stage until it was checked out.
It's worth remembering it's only by a real fluke, and an inch or so, that he isn't dead.
No one warned Trump for HALF AN HOUR
This looks increasingly like - at the least - some kind of co-ordinated attempt on Trump’s life, if only by utter negligence. They wanted him dead
Cock-up is far far more likely than conspiracy.
There are a zillion people wandering around these events who the secret service takes an interest in.
The fact that they had a good look at this guy just shows that they were doing their job. Even if he was wandering around with a firearm that would be completely legal in the state & the security services wouldn’t have been able to stop him!
The outrageous failure (it seems to me) was to fail to secure the rooftop: It seems that the building had been handed over to the local PD & they failed to secure the building? I doubt Trump’s USSS detail will make that mistake again.
In fairness to @leon on this one (although I still think he is wrong generally and specifically on his conspiracies) there was close up film of him on the roof by people with phones well before the shooting and lots of people understandably getting agitated about the fact that he was lying up there and getting the police who were to put it mildly somewhat relaxed about it.
As you say it seems to be that the local police were handling this area (looking at the uniforms) and not doing it well because they didn't react appropriately for the circumstances.
The only “conspiracies” I’ve pushed on here are
1. Lab leak. And I was right
And
2. Biden is senile and they’re hiding it. And I was right
And
3. Nordstream was not done by Putin. It was America or an American proxy. And I was right
You were not right on Lableak or Nordstream. You think you were, but they have not been proven.
As an aside, didn't you once state that Anders Breivik used one of your books as sad inspiration for his atrocity? Apols. if not the case.
It’s being claimed rally goers spotted Thomas Crooks TWENTY FIVE MINUTES before he shot. They called out to police. Police did nothing. There is video of it
I'm more interested in the background of this character. As far as anyone is aware so far, he seems weirdly normal. If he has strong political opinions he has kept them to himself (which is unusual in the internet age). He doesn't appear to be down any rabbit holes which have yet been unearthed. Nothing in his backstory suggests he's stupid or insane.
I'm all for the lone nutter angle. It explains many things. But for a lone nutter he appears unusually balanced and socially well adjusted.
Of course, there may be more to come out.
He seems to have found a remarkably effective vantage point outside the Federal security cordon. That strongly suggests prior surveillance, either by him or someone else, and prior knowledge of the divided police operation. How did the ladder get there?
Scotland and Welsh governments seem to have seen the shit show of unstable Tory government and gone you know what we fancy a bit of that. How long as Gething been in charge. If it wasn't for the GE, he surely would have been giving Truss a run for her money.
It’s being claimed rally goers spotted Thomas Crooks TWENTY FIVE MINUTES before he shot. They called out to police. Police did nothing. There is video of it
Either this is the greatest failure by anything ever anywhere since Creation, or some faction of the cops was involved
It seems pretty bloody obvious to me, and he wasn't exactly subtle.
At the very least Trump should have delayed /got off the stage until it was checked out.
It's worth remembering it's only by a real fluke, and an inch or so, that he isn't dead.
No one warned Trump for HALF AN HOUR
This looks increasingly like - at the least - some kind of co-ordinated attempt on Trump’s life, if only by utter negligence. They wanted him dead
Cock-up is far far more likely than conspiracy.
There are a zillion people wandering around these events who the secret service takes an interest in.
The fact that they had a good look at this guy just shows that they were doing their job. Even if he was wandering around with a firearm that would be completely legal in the state & the security services wouldn’t have been able to stop him!
The outrageous failure (it seems to me) was to fail to secure the rooftop: It seems that the building had been handed over to the local PD & they failed to secure the building? I doubt Trump’s USSS detail will make that mistake again.
In fairness to @leon on this one (although I still think he is wrong generally and specifically on his conspiracies) there was close up film of him on the roof by people with phones well before the shooting and lots of people understandably getting agitated about the fact that he was lying up there and getting the police who were to put it mildly somewhat relaxed about it.
As you say it seems to be that the local police were handling this area (looking at the uniforms) and not doing it well because they didn't react appropriately for the circumstances.
The only “conspiracies” I’ve pushed on here are
1. Lab leak. And I was right
And
2. Biden is senile and they’re hiding it. And I was right
And
3. Nordstream was not done by Putin. It was America or an American proxy. And I was right
You were not right on Lableak or Nordstream. You think you were, but they have not been proven.
As an aside, didn't you once state that Anders Breivik used one of your books as sad inspiration for his atrocity? Apols. if not the case.
Thousands of pupils will have ‘nowhere to go’ if tax on private education goes ahead
Thousands of Jewish students will have “nowhere to go” if the Government goes ahead with plans to tax private education, a charity has warned.
A charity that supports Jewish independent schools said Sir Keir Starmer’s VAT raid and plans to remove business rate exemptions would force many to close.
Separately, lawyers have said that Labour’s private education tax plans risk illegally discriminating against independent faith schools.
Lord Pannick, a leading human rights lawyer, told The Telegraph that making private schools subject to VAT was likely to breach the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
I don't have a view on Vat on private schools, but that argument is just weird because that is just tax policy. if that had already been the case would they have been complaining it was against their human rights? What about current taxes they pay? Is that against their human rights?
It is a change in tax policy of removing a benefit these schools have, which one might argue shouldn't happen, but it isn't against ones human rights. It is the removal of a concession.
If they have any sense they'll challenge the differentiation between primary/secondary and tertiary education. Especially tertiary orgs that offer 'summer schools' and similar to the under 18s.
You can basically “appear” to speak really good French by knowing about 60 words, having an OK accent, but doing an incredible amount of gesturing and shrugging
It’s being claimed rally goers spotted Thomas Crooks TWENTY FIVE MINUTES before he shot. They called out to police. Police did nothing. There is video of it
Either this is the greatest failure by anything ever anywhere since Creation, or some faction of the cops was involved
It seems pretty bloody obvious to me, and he wasn't exactly subtle.
At the very least Trump should have delayed /got off the stage until it was checked out.
It's worth remembering it's only by a real fluke, and an inch or so, that he isn't dead.
No one warned Trump for HALF AN HOUR
This looks increasingly like - at the least - some kind of co-ordinated attempt on Trump’s life, if only by utter negligence. They wanted him dead
Cock-up is far far more likely than conspiracy.
There are a zillion people wandering around these events who the secret service takes an interest in.
The fact that they had a good look at this guy just shows that they were doing their job. Even if he was wandering around with a firearm that would be completely legal in the state & the security services wouldn’t have been able to stop him!
The outrageous failure (it seems to me) was to fail to secure the rooftop: It seems that the building had been handed over to the local PD & they failed to secure the building? I doubt Trump’s USSS detail will make that mistake again.
In fairness to @leon on this one (although I still think he is wrong generally and specifically on his conspiracies) there was close up film of him on the roof by people with phones well before the shooting and lots of people understandably getting agitated about the fact that he was lying up there and getting the police who were to put it mildly somewhat relaxed about it.
As you say it seems to be that the local police were handling this area (looking at the uniforms) and not doing it well because they didn't react appropriately for the circumstances.
True, but local police would be expecting snipers on various rooftops, from both the Secret Service and the police, and perhaps this explains a lack of concern.
Or the police might have reported the crowd suspicions back to the station and left it to them to call someone in Washington. Officer Dibble would not have a radio hotline to the Secret Service. In Britain a common feature of reports into terrorist outrages and other large incidents is the difficulty of inter-agency communication. Each service is on its own network with its own reporting structure, following its own protocols. I expect it is the same there.
A few months back I listened to a podcast that said there were thousands of law enforcement agencies in the USA. In fact, there are 18,000 (and more including wider definitions of police), ranging in size from a handful of people to thousands. You are going to get a massive variation in competence, knowledge and training in those organisations.
It's incredible, and farcical.
Police agencies known to have been at the Trump rally. There will undoubtedly be more.
1. US Secret Service. In overall charge, primarily tasked with the safety of the President. 2. Department of Homeland Security. Parent organisation to USSS, provides agents to supplement high-level at large events. 3. Federal Bureau of Investigations. Counter-terrorism and crowd surveillance looking for known suspects. 4. Pennsylvania State Police. Law enforcement, highway traffic management, crowd surveillance, CID etc. 5. Butler County Sheriff. Local law enforcement, traffic management. 6. Butler Township. Local officers under the town’s mayor. 7. Private security agency. Crowd control, crowd searches.
Thousands of pupils will have ‘nowhere to go’ if tax on private education goes ahead
Thousands of Jewish students will have “nowhere to go” if the Government goes ahead with plans to tax private education, a charity has warned.
A charity that supports Jewish independent schools said Sir Keir Starmer’s VAT raid and plans to remove business rate exemptions would force many to close.
Separately, lawyers have said that Labour’s private education tax plans risk illegally discriminating against independent faith schools.
Lord Pannick, a leading human rights lawyer, told The Telegraph that making private schools subject to VAT was likely to breach the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
I don't have a view on Vat on private schools, but that argument is just weird because that is just tax policy. if that had already been the case would they have been complaining it was against their human rights? What about current taxes they pay? Is that against their human rights?
It is a change in tax policy of removing a benefit these schools have, which one might argue shouldn't happen, but it isn't against ones human rights. It is the removal of a concession.
What about Islamic schools, DT? Is VAT also discriminatory against those? I see that they also think that pupils exiting the private sector can only do so if there is a place in an outstanding state school for them.
It’s being claimed rally goers spotted Thomas Crooks TWENTY FIVE MINUTES before he shot. They called out to police. Police did nothing. There is video of it
Either this is the greatest failure by anything ever anywhere since Creation, or some faction of the cops was involved
It seems pretty bloody obvious to me, and he wasn't exactly subtle.
At the very least Trump should have delayed /got off the stage until it was checked out.
It's worth remembering it's only by a real fluke, and an inch or so, that he isn't dead.
No one warned Trump for HALF AN HOUR
This looks increasingly like - at the least - some kind of co-ordinated attempt on Trump’s life, if only by utter negligence. They wanted him dead
Cock-up is far far more likely than conspiracy.
There are a zillion people wandering around these events who the secret service takes an interest in.
The fact that they had a good look at this guy just shows that they were doing their job. Even if he was wandering around with a firearm that would be completely legal in the state & the security services wouldn’t have been able to stop him!
The outrageous failure (it seems to me) was to fail to secure the rooftop: It seems that the building had been handed over to the local PD & they failed to secure the building? I doubt Trump’s USSS detail will make that mistake again.
In fairness to @leon on this one (although I still think he is wrong generally and specifically on his conspiracies) there was close up film of him on the roof by people with phones well before the shooting and lots of people understandably getting agitated about the fact that he was lying up there and getting the police who were to put it mildly somewhat relaxed about it.
As you say it seems to be that the local police were handling this area (looking at the uniforms) and not doing it well because they didn't react appropriately for the circumstances.
The only “conspiracies” I’ve pushed on here are
1. Lab leak. And I was right
And
2. Biden is senile and they’re hiding it. And I was right
And
3. Nordstream was not done by Putin. It was America or an American proxy. And I was right
You were not right on Lableak or Nordstream. You think you were, but they have not been proven.
As an aside, didn't you once state that Anders Breivik used one of your books as sad inspiration for his atrocity? Apols. if not the case.
He's been proven wrong on lab leak. On Nord Stream, the jury is still out, but most people think it was either Russia or a Ukrainian group. About the only people pushing the idea it was the US are the Russians. PB has far too many useful idiots repeating Putin's propaganda.
It’s being claimed rally goers spotted Thomas Crooks TWENTY FIVE MINUTES before he shot. They called out to police. Police did nothing. There is video of it
I'm more interested in the background of this character. As far as anyone is aware so far, he seems weirdly normal. If he has strong political opinions he has kept them to himself (which is unusual in the internet age). He doesn't appear to be down any rabbit holes which have yet been unearthed. Nothing in his backstory suggests he's stupid or insane.
I'm all for the lone nutter angle. It explains many things. But for a lone nutter he appears unusually balanced and socially well adjusted.
Of course, there may be more to come out.
He seems to have found a remarkably effective vantage point outside the Federal security cordon. That strongly suggests prior surveillance, either by him or someone else, and prior knowledge of the divided police operation. How did the ladder get there?
Again. that's the sort of thing that happens. Someone (local police, SS, whoever) check the roof days before, and know they might have to come back. So they leave the ladder there.
There may well have been collusion at whatever level - even (say) one of the local police knew the lad, and the lad asked if he could watch the rally from a better viewpoint. I doubt it, but that sort of thing does occasionally happen. It'd be interesting to know how much he knew of local police procedures.
As as aside: in parts of Cambridge, and London and elsewhere, you get these black plastic tabs on manholes. They're security tags. The security services check manholes for explosives or other threats a few days before a visit by a dignitary, then put the tabs on to show they've been checked. Then, just before the visit, the tags are checked. If one is broken, the manhole is checked again.
Now, we're all intelligent people, and we can probably think of outline ways we could, if we had malign intent, avoid or subvert that system. Our thoughts may not work, because there might be other processes in place we don't know about. But a little knowledge of a system goes a long way to breaking it.
It’s being claimed rally goers spotted Thomas Crooks TWENTY FIVE MINUTES before he shot. They called out to police. Police did nothing. There is video of it
Either this is the greatest failure by anything ever anywhere since Creation, or some faction of the cops was involved
It seems pretty bloody obvious to me, and he wasn't exactly subtle.
At the very least Trump should have delayed /got off the stage until it was checked out.
It's worth remembering it's only by a real fluke, and an inch or so, that he isn't dead.
No one warned Trump for HALF AN HOUR
This looks increasingly like - at the least - some kind of co-ordinated attempt on Trump’s life, if only by utter negligence. They wanted him dead
Cock-up is far far more likely than conspiracy.
There are a zillion people wandering around these events who the secret service takes an interest in.
The fact that they had a good look at this guy just shows that they were doing their job. Even if he was wandering around with a firearm that would be completely legal in the state & the security services wouldn’t have been able to stop him!
The outrageous failure (it seems to me) was to fail to secure the rooftop: It seems that the building had been handed over to the local PD & they failed to secure the building? I doubt Trump’s USSS detail will make that mistake again.
In fairness to @leon on this one (although I still think he is wrong generally and specifically on his conspiracies) there was close up film of him on the roof by people with phones well before the shooting and lots of people understandably getting agitated about the fact that he was lying up there and getting the police who were to put it mildly somewhat relaxed about it.
As you say it seems to be that the local police were handling this area (looking at the uniforms) and not doing it well because they didn't react appropriately for the circumstances.
True, but local police would be expecting snipers on various rooftops, from both the Secret Service and the police, and perhaps this explains a lack of concern.
Or the police might have reported the crowd suspicions back to the station and left it to them to call someone in Washington. Officer Dibble would not have a radio hotline to the Secret Service. In Britain a common feature of reports into terrorist outrages and other large incidents is the difficulty of inter-agency communication. Each service is on its own network with its own reporting structure, following its own protocols. I expect it is the same there.
A few months back I listened to a podcast that said there were thousands of law enforcement agencies in the USA. In fact, there are 18,000 (and more including wider definitions of police), ranging in size from a handful of people to thousands. You are going to get a massive variation in competence, knowledge and training in those organisations.
It's incredible, and farcical.
Police agencies known to have been at the Trump rally. There will undoubtedly be more.
1. US Secret Service. In overall charge, primarily tasked with the safety of the President. 2. Department of Homeland Security. Parent organisation to USSS, provides agents to supplement high-level at large events. 3. Federal Bureau of Investigations. Counter-terrorism and crowd surveillance looking for known suspects. 4. Pennsylvania State Police. Law enforcement, highway traffic management, crowd surveillance, CID etc. 5. Butler County Sheriff. Local law enforcement, traffic management. 6. Butler Township. Local officers under the town’s mayor. 7. Private security agency. Crowd control, crowd searches.
That's a little worse than I expected. I wonder if they were all on the same comms network, so messages can get out quickly (e.g. "Does anyone have anybody on that roof?"), or if they were on different systems.
Even if they were on the same comms network, there might have been rules to avoid it becoming too noisy with irrelevant chatter. And that in itself ha led to difficulties in the past: what is irrelevant?
It’s being claimed rally goers spotted Thomas Crooks TWENTY FIVE MINUTES before he shot. They called out to police. Police did nothing. There is video of it
Either this is the greatest failure by anything ever anywhere since Creation, or some faction of the cops was involved
It seems pretty bloody obvious to me, and he wasn't exactly subtle.
At the very least Trump should have delayed /got off the stage until it was checked out.
It's worth remembering it's only by a real fluke, and an inch or so, that he isn't dead.
No one warned Trump for HALF AN HOUR
This looks increasingly like - at the least - some kind of co-ordinated attempt on Trump’s life, if only by utter negligence. They wanted him dead
Cock-up is far far more likely than conspiracy.
There are a zillion people wandering around these events who the secret service takes an interest in.
The fact that they had a good look at this guy just shows that they were doing their job. Even if he was wandering around with a firearm that would be completely legal in the state & the security services wouldn’t have been able to stop him!
The outrageous failure (it seems to me) was to fail to secure the rooftop: It seems that the building had been handed over to the local PD & they failed to secure the building? I doubt Trump’s USSS detail will make that mistake again.
In fairness to @leon on this one (although I still think he is wrong generally and specifically on his conspiracies) there was close up film of him on the roof by people with phones well before the shooting and lots of people understandably getting agitated about the fact that he was lying up there and getting the police who were to put it mildly somewhat relaxed about it.
As you say it seems to be that the local police were handling this area (looking at the uniforms) and not doing it well because they didn't react appropriately for the circumstances.
The only “conspiracies” I’ve pushed on here are
1. Lab leak. And I was right
And
2. Biden is senile and they’re hiding it. And I was right
And
3. Nordstream was not done by Putin. It was America or an American proxy. And I was right
You were not right on Lableak or Nordstream. You think you were, but they have not been proven.
As an aside, didn't you once state that Anders Breivik used one of your books as sad inspiration for his atrocity? Apols. if not the case.
He's been proven wrong on lab leak. On Nord Stream, the jury is still out, but most people think it was either Russia or a Ukrainian group. About the only people pushing the idea it was the US are the Russians. PB has far too many useful idiots repeating Putin's propaganda.
I find it quite alarming that a monumental fuckwit like you teaches UK undergrads
The New York Times
“Why the Pandemic Probably Started in a Lab, in 5 Key Points”
I wonder how many more take the extra holiday or perks in kind to avoid being dragged into it. This should be a dead simple thing to fix and long term would more than likely raise more tax / increase productivity.
It’s being claimed rally goers spotted Thomas Crooks TWENTY FIVE MINUTES before he shot. They called out to police. Police did nothing. There is video of it
Either this is the greatest failure by anything ever anywhere since Creation, or some faction of the cops was involved
It seems pretty bloody obvious to me, and he wasn't exactly subtle.
At the very least Trump should have delayed /got off the stage until it was checked out.
It's worth remembering it's only by a real fluke, and an inch or so, that he isn't dead.
No one warned Trump for HALF AN HOUR
This looks increasingly like - at the least - some kind of co-ordinated attempt on Trump’s life, if only by utter negligence. They wanted him dead
Cock-up is far far more likely than conspiracy.
There are a zillion people wandering around these events who the secret service takes an interest in.
The fact that they had a good look at this guy just shows that they were doing their job. Even if he was wandering around with a firearm that would be completely legal in the state & the security services wouldn’t have been able to stop him!
The outrageous failure (it seems to me) was to fail to secure the rooftop: It seems that the building had been handed over to the local PD & they failed to secure the building? I doubt Trump’s USSS detail will make that mistake again.
In fairness to @leon on this one (although I still think he is wrong generally and specifically on his conspiracies) there was close up film of him on the roof by people with phones well before the shooting and lots of people understandably getting agitated about the fact that he was lying up there and getting the police who were to put it mildly somewhat relaxed about it.
As you say it seems to be that the local police were handling this area (looking at the uniforms) and not doing it well because they didn't react appropriately for the circumstances.
The only “conspiracies” I’ve pushed on here are
1. Lab leak. And I was right
And
2. Biden is senile and they’re hiding it. And I was right
And
3. Nordstream was not done by Putin. It was America or an American proxy. And I was right
You were not right on Lableak or Nordstream. You think you were, but they have not been proven.
As an aside, didn't you once state that Anders Breivik used one of your books as sad inspiration for his atrocity? Apols. if not the case.
He's been proven wrong on lab leak. On Nord Stream, the jury is still out, but most people think it was either Russia or a Ukrainian group. About the only people pushing the idea it was the US are the Russians. PB has far too many useful idiots repeating Putin's propaganda.
I find it quite alarming that a monumental fuckwit like you teaches UK undergrads
The New York Times
“Why the Pandemic Probably Started in a Lab, in 5 Key Points”
It’s being claimed rally goers spotted Thomas Crooks TWENTY FIVE MINUTES before he shot. They called out to police. Police did nothing. There is video of it
Either this is the greatest failure by anything ever anywhere since Creation, or some faction of the cops was involved
It seems pretty bloody obvious to me, and he wasn't exactly subtle.
At the very least Trump should have delayed /got off the stage until it was checked out.
It's worth remembering it's only by a real fluke, and an inch or so, that he isn't dead.
No one warned Trump for HALF AN HOUR
This looks increasingly like - at the least - some kind of co-ordinated attempt on Trump’s life, if only by utter negligence. They wanted him dead
Cock-up is far far more likely than conspiracy.
There are a zillion people wandering around these events who the secret service takes an interest in.
The fact that they had a good look at this guy just shows that they were doing their job. Even if he was wandering around with a firearm that would be completely legal in the state & the security services wouldn’t have been able to stop him!
The outrageous failure (it seems to me) was to fail to secure the rooftop: It seems that the building had been handed over to the local PD & they failed to secure the building? I doubt Trump’s USSS detail will make that mistake again.
In fairness to @leon on this one (although I still think he is wrong generally and specifically on his conspiracies) there was close up film of him on the roof by people with phones well before the shooting and lots of people understandably getting agitated about the fact that he was lying up there and getting the police who were to put it mildly somewhat relaxed about it.
As you say it seems to be that the local police were handling this area (looking at the uniforms) and not doing it well because they didn't react appropriately for the circumstances.
The only “conspiracies” I’ve pushed on here are
1. Lab leak. And I was right
And
2. Biden is senile and they’re hiding it. And I was right
And
3. Nordstream was not done by Putin. It was America or an American proxy. And I was right
You were not right on Lableak or Nordstream. You think you were, but they have not been proven.
As an aside, didn't you once state that Anders Breivik used one of your books as sad inspiration for his atrocity? Apols. if not the case.
Ahahahahaha
I'd be intrigued to know your answer to my Breivik question.
"The Commons Speaker has said “we are at war” over the future of democracy and “must never give in to others who don’t believe in our values”. Sir Lindsay Hoyle revealed that he had written to Donald Trump after he was shot at during a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday to express concern at the “attack on democracy”. He told Times Radio: “The first thing I wanted to do was express my worries and concerns in sending a letter to the former president ... to say, look, we are at war. “We believe in the democratic process. We must never give in to the others who don’t believe in our values.”"
Mass resignations from Vaughan Gething cabinet. But don't worry... He will replace them all with sex pests...
What's their beef with Gething? I haven't been following Welsh politics closely.
This dates back to VG election. This was by an electoral college with VG being heavily supported by unions and his challenger Jeremy Miles receiving majority backing from MSs. A case of Unionist Labour vs Welsh Labour.
There were well-founded accusations of vote rigging by Unison - and then it came to light that VG had received large cash donation from a dodgy environmental Company.
This resulted in a VONC which VG lost but refused to resign.
It’s being claimed rally goers spotted Thomas Crooks TWENTY FIVE MINUTES before he shot. They called out to police. Police did nothing. There is video of it
Either this is the greatest failure by anything ever anywhere since Creation, or some faction of the cops was involved
It seems pretty bloody obvious to me, and he wasn't exactly subtle.
At the very least Trump should have delayed /got off the stage until it was checked out.
It's worth remembering it's only by a real fluke, and an inch or so, that he isn't dead.
No one warned Trump for HALF AN HOUR
This looks increasingly like - at the least - some kind of co-ordinated attempt on Trump’s life, if only by utter negligence. They wanted him dead
Cock-up is far far more likely than conspiracy.
There are a zillion people wandering around these events who the secret service takes an interest in.
The fact that they had a good look at this guy just shows that they were doing their job. Even if he was wandering around with a firearm that would be completely legal in the state & the security services wouldn’t have been able to stop him!
The outrageous failure (it seems to me) was to fail to secure the rooftop: It seems that the building had been handed over to the local PD & they failed to secure the building? I doubt Trump’s USSS detail will make that mistake again.
In fairness to @leon on this one (although I still think he is wrong generally and specifically on his conspiracies) there was close up film of him on the roof by people with phones well before the shooting and lots of people understandably getting agitated about the fact that he was lying up there and getting the police who were to put it mildly somewhat relaxed about it.
As you say it seems to be that the local police were handling this area (looking at the uniforms) and not doing it well because they didn't react appropriately for the circumstances.
The only “conspiracies” I’ve pushed on here are
1. Lab leak. And I was right
And
2. Biden is senile and they’re hiding it. And I was right
And
3. Nordstream was not done by Putin. It was America or an American proxy. And I was right
You were not right on Lableak or Nordstream. You think you were, but they have not been proven.
As an aside, didn't you once state that Anders Breivik used one of your books as sad inspiration for his atrocity? Apols. if not the case.
He's been proven wrong on lab leak. On Nord Stream, the jury is still out, but most people think it was either Russia or a Ukrainian group. About the only people pushing the idea it was the US are the Russians. PB has far too many useful idiots repeating Putin's propaganda.
I find it quite alarming that a monumental fuckwit like you teaches UK undergrads
The New York Times
“Why the Pandemic Probably Started in a Lab, in 5 Key Points”
" “Lose everything,” is how one Democrat described a polling memo Greenberg sent to Biden’s inner circle in recent days."
"[Greenberg] analyzing internal polling he asserts shows the president’s position continues to deteriorate because Americans overwhelmingly do not see him as up to serving four more years."
On nordstream I’ve just found this incredible video
@bondegezou off of pb: “no one believes America blew up Nordstream. Russia did it.”
President Biden: “if Russian tanks and troops cross the Ukraine border, there will no longer be a Nordstream 2. We will bring an end to it”
That’s the President of the USA right there. Telling you what happened. You either have to be mentally ill or severely retarded not to understand what happened to Nordstream. The president TOLD YOU
As we are dealing with @bondegezou I suspect some weird lefty mania and severely restricted IQ
That article doesn't really explain what their underlying problem with Gething is, but I'll see what else there is around.
It all started when he took money from a dodgy donor, refused to return it and then lost a vote of no confidence, to which be basically went I don't give a stuff. He then sacked a minister over leaking information to the media which during the pandemic showed Mr Gething telling ministers that he was deleting texts from their group chat.
If this had been Westminster the media spotlight on these stories would have had him deposed ages ago.
It’s being claimed rally goers spotted Thomas Crooks TWENTY FIVE MINUTES before he shot. They called out to police. Police did nothing. There is video of it
Either this is the greatest failure by anything ever anywhere since Creation, or some faction of the cops was involved
It seems pretty bloody obvious to me, and he wasn't exactly subtle.
At the very least Trump should have delayed /got off the stage until it was checked out.
It's worth remembering it's only by a real fluke, and an inch or so, that he isn't dead.
No one warned Trump for HALF AN HOUR
This looks increasingly like - at the least - some kind of co-ordinated attempt on Trump’s life, if only by utter negligence. They wanted him dead
Cock-up is far far more likely than conspiracy.
There are a zillion people wandering around these events who the secret service takes an interest in.
The fact that they had a good look at this guy just shows that they were doing their job. Even if he was wandering around with a firearm that would be completely legal in the state & the security services wouldn’t have been able to stop him!
The outrageous failure (it seems to me) was to fail to secure the rooftop: It seems that the building had been handed over to the local PD & they failed to secure the building? I doubt Trump’s USSS detail will make that mistake again.
In fairness to @leon on this one (although I still think he is wrong generally and specifically on his conspiracies) there was close up film of him on the roof by people with phones well before the shooting and lots of people understandably getting agitated about the fact that he was lying up there and getting the police who were to put it mildly somewhat relaxed about it.
As you say it seems to be that the local police were handling this area (looking at the uniforms) and not doing it well because they didn't react appropriately for the circumstances.
The only “conspiracies” I’ve pushed on here are
1. Lab leak. And I was right
And
2. Biden is senile and they’re hiding it. And I was right
And
3. Nordstream was not done by Putin. It was America or an American proxy. And I was right
You were not right on Lableak or Nordstream. You think you were, but they have not been proven.
As an aside, didn't you once state that Anders Breivik used one of your books as sad inspiration for his atrocity? Apols. if not the case.
He's been proven wrong on lab leak. On Nord Stream, the jury is still out, but most people think it was either Russia or a Ukrainian group. About the only people pushing the idea it was the US are the Russians. PB has far too many useful idiots repeating Putin's propaganda.
I find it quite alarming that a monumental fuckwit like you teaches UK undergrads
The New York Times
“Why the Pandemic Probably Started in a Lab, in 5 Key Points”
I wonder how many more take the extra holiday or perks in kind to avoid being dragged into it. This should be a dead simple thing to fix and long term would more than likely raise more tax / increase productivity.
That's known around here - I switch client last year when it was going to impact me. Various others on here will comment about the various ways that they've seen people avoid it.
And the £100,000 limit is worse as suddenly you end up with childcare costs which the state otherwise pays for...
It’s being claimed rally goers spotted Thomas Crooks TWENTY FIVE MINUTES before he shot. They called out to police. Police did nothing. There is video of it
Either this is the greatest failure by anything ever anywhere since Creation, or some faction of the cops was involved
It seems pretty bloody obvious to me, and he wasn't exactly subtle.
At the very least Trump should have delayed /got off the stage until it was checked out.
It's worth remembering it's only by a real fluke, and an inch or so, that he isn't dead.
No one warned Trump for HALF AN HOUR
This looks increasingly like - at the least - some kind of co-ordinated attempt on Trump’s life, if only by utter negligence. They wanted him dead
Cock-up is far far more likely than conspiracy.
There are a zillion people wandering around these events who the secret service takes an interest in.
The fact that they had a good look at this guy just shows that they were doing their job. Even if he was wandering around with a firearm that would be completely legal in the state & the security services wouldn’t have been able to stop him!
The outrageous failure (it seems to me) was to fail to secure the rooftop: It seems that the building had been handed over to the local PD & they failed to secure the building? I doubt Trump’s USSS detail will make that mistake again.
In fairness to @leon on this one (although I still think he is wrong generally and specifically on his conspiracies) there was close up film of him on the roof by people with phones well before the shooting and lots of people understandably getting agitated about the fact that he was lying up there and getting the police who were to put it mildly somewhat relaxed about it.
As you say it seems to be that the local police were handling this area (looking at the uniforms) and not doing it well because they didn't react appropriately for the circumstances.
True, but local police would be expecting snipers on various rooftops, from both the Secret Service and the police, and perhaps this explains a lack of concern.
Or the police might have reported the crowd suspicions back to the station and left it to them to call someone in Washington. Officer Dibble would not have a radio hotline to the Secret Service. In Britain a common feature of reports into terrorist outrages and other large incidents is the difficulty of inter-agency communication. Each service is on its own network with its own reporting structure, following its own protocols. I expect it is the same there.
A few months back I listened to a podcast that said there were thousands of law enforcement agencies in the USA. In fact, there are 18,000 (and more including wider definitions of police), ranging in size from a handful of people to thousands. You are going to get a massive variation in competence, knowledge and training in those organisations.
It's incredible, and farcical.
Police agencies known to have been at the Trump rally. There will undoubtedly be more.
1. US Secret Service. In overall charge, primarily tasked with the safety of the President. 2. Department of Homeland Security. Parent organisation to USSS, provides agents to supplement high-level at large events. 3. Federal Bureau of Investigations. Counter-terrorism and crowd surveillance looking for known suspects. 4. Pennsylvania State Police. Law enforcement, highway traffic management, crowd surveillance, CID etc. 5. Butler County Sheriff. Local law enforcement, traffic management. 6. Butler Township. Local officers under the town’s mayor. 7. Private security agency. Crowd control, crowd searches.
That's a little worse than I expected. I wonder if they were all on the same comms network, so messages can get out quickly (e.g. "Does anyone have anybody on that roof?"), or if they were on different systems.
Even if they were on the same comms network, there might have been rules to avoid it becoming too noisy with irrelevant chatter. And that in itself ha led to difficulties in the past: what is irrelevant?
The county sheriff’s office has confirmed that a local township officer confronted the shooter on the rooftop, and backed down when he had the gun pointed in his face. He radioed whoever he would radio, but the shots started only a few seconds later. The snipers that took him out were, as suspected, from USSS.
" “Lose everything,” is how one Democrat described a polling memo Greenberg sent to Biden’s inner circle in recent days."
"[Greenberg] analyzing internal polling he asserts shows the president’s position continues to deteriorate because Americans overwhelmingly do not see him as up to serving four more years."
Hadn't heard that crackers accusation from Trump's VP pick until now.
Ironic, given Labour lost half a dozen seats to Gaza-fixated types.
Ironically, Vance was talking in the context of nuclear proliferation which is going to be on steroids after Trump is elected. I cannot see Poland not trying very hard to develop nukes when/if US abandons europe to its fate with Russia. Likewise Baltics.
The lesson from Ukraine is don't give up your nuke weapons.
The problem they had was that they never had control of them any more than we had control of the cruise missiles at Greenham Common USAF base.
On nordstream I’ve just found this incredible video
@bondegezou off of pb: “no one believes America blew up Nordstream. Russia did it.”
President Biden: “if Russian tanks and troops cross the Ukraine border, there will no longer be a Nordstream 2. We will bring an end to it”
That’s the President of the USA right there. Telling you what happened. You either have to be mentally ill or severely retarded not to understand what happened to Nordstream. The president TOLD YOU
As we are dealing with @bondegezou I suspect some weird lefty mania and severely restricted IQ
It’s being claimed rally goers spotted Thomas Crooks TWENTY FIVE MINUTES before he shot. They called out to police. Police did nothing. There is video of it
Either this is the greatest failure by anything ever anywhere since Creation, or some faction of the cops was involved
It seems pretty bloody obvious to me, and he wasn't exactly subtle.
At the very least Trump should have delayed /got off the stage until it was checked out.
It's worth remembering it's only by a real fluke, and an inch or so, that he isn't dead.
No one warned Trump for HALF AN HOUR
This looks increasingly like - at the least - some kind of co-ordinated attempt on Trump’s life, if only by utter negligence. They wanted him dead
Cock-up is far far more likely than conspiracy.
There are a zillion people wandering around these events who the secret service takes an interest in.
The fact that they had a good look at this guy just shows that they were doing their job. Even if he was wandering around with a firearm that would be completely legal in the state & the security services wouldn’t have been able to stop him!
The outrageous failure (it seems to me) was to fail to secure the rooftop: It seems that the building had been handed over to the local PD & they failed to secure the building? I doubt Trump’s USSS detail will make that mistake again.
In fairness to @leon on this one (although I still think he is wrong generally and specifically on his conspiracies) there was close up film of him on the roof by people with phones well before the shooting and lots of people understandably getting agitated about the fact that he was lying up there and getting the police who were to put it mildly somewhat relaxed about it.
As you say it seems to be that the local police were handling this area (looking at the uniforms) and not doing it well because they didn't react appropriately for the circumstances.
The only “conspiracies” I’ve pushed on here are
1. Lab leak. And I was right
And
2. Biden is senile and they’re hiding it. And I was right
And
3. Nordstream was not done by Putin. It was America or an American proxy. And I was right
You were not right on Lableak or Nordstream. You think you were, but they have not been proven.
As an aside, didn't you once state that Anders Breivik used one of your books as sad inspiration for his atrocity? Apols. if not the case.
He's been proven wrong on lab leak. On Nord Stream, the jury is still out, but most people think it was either Russia or a Ukrainian group. About the only people pushing the idea it was the US are the Russians. PB has far too many useful idiots repeating Putin's propaganda.
I find it quite alarming that a monumental fuckwit like you teaches UK undergrads
The New York Times
“Why the Pandemic Probably Started in a Lab, in 5 Key Points”
I'm flabberghasted an author with a self-proclaimed high IQ does not understand the meaning of the word 'probably'.
More to the point, how could bondgezou not realise that an article in a newspaper written by someone who'd published a book claiming her thesis right at the start of the pandemic didn't trump all the scientific literature?
I mean, surely the biggest lesson from the pandemic was that mainstream newspapers knew much better than scientists.
I wonder how many more take the extra holiday or perks in kind to avoid being dragged into it. This should be a dead simple thing to fix and long term would more than likely raise more tax / increase productivity.
The 70%+ tax on more than £50k earnings (due to child benefit withdrawal) taught me the benefits of pension additional voluntary contributions.
It’s being claimed rally goers spotted Thomas Crooks TWENTY FIVE MINUTES before he shot. They called out to police. Police did nothing. There is video of it
Either this is the greatest failure by anything ever anywhere since Creation, or some faction of the cops was involved
It seems pretty bloody obvious to me, and he wasn't exactly subtle.
At the very least Trump should have delayed /got off the stage until it was checked out.
It's worth remembering it's only by a real fluke, and an inch or so, that he isn't dead.
No one warned Trump for HALF AN HOUR
This looks increasingly like - at the least - some kind of co-ordinated attempt on Trump’s life, if only by utter negligence. They wanted him dead
Cock-up is far far more likely than conspiracy.
There are a zillion people wandering around these events who the secret service takes an interest in.
The fact that they had a good look at this guy just shows that they were doing their job. Even if he was wandering around with a firearm that would be completely legal in the state & the security services wouldn’t have been able to stop him!
The outrageous failure (it seems to me) was to fail to secure the rooftop: It seems that the building had been handed over to the local PD & they failed to secure the building? I doubt Trump’s USSS detail will make that mistake again.
In fairness to @leon on this one (although I still think he is wrong generally and specifically on his conspiracies) there was close up film of him on the roof by people with phones well before the shooting and lots of people understandably getting agitated about the fact that he was lying up there and getting the police who were to put it mildly somewhat relaxed about it.
As you say it seems to be that the local police were handling this area (looking at the uniforms) and not doing it well because they didn't react appropriately for the circumstances.
The only “conspiracies” I’ve pushed on here are
1. Lab leak. And I was right
And
2. Biden is senile and they’re hiding it. And I was right
And
3. Nordstream was not done by Putin. It was America or an American proxy. And I was right
You were not right on Lableak or Nordstream. You think you were, but they have not been proven.
As an aside, didn't you once state that Anders Breivik used one of your books as sad inspiration for his atrocity? Apols. if not the case.
He's been proven wrong on lab leak. On Nord Stream, the jury is still out, but most people think it was either Russia or a Ukrainian group. About the only people pushing the idea it was the US are the Russians. PB has far too many useful idiots repeating Putin's propaganda.
I find it quite alarming that a monumental fuckwit like you teaches UK undergrads
The New York Times
“Why the Pandemic Probably Started in a Lab, in 5 Key Points”
I'm flabberghasted an author with a self-proclaimed high IQ does not understand the meaning of the word 'probably'.
More to the point, how could bondgezou not realise that an article in a newspaper written by someone who'd published a book claiming her thesis right at the start of the pandemic didn't trump all the scientific literature?
I mean, surely the biggest lesson from the pandemic was that mainstream newspapers knew much better than scientists.
There is no consensus in the scientific literature.
It’s being claimed rally goers spotted Thomas Crooks TWENTY FIVE MINUTES before he shot. They called out to police. Police did nothing. There is video of it
Either this is the greatest failure by anything ever anywhere since Creation, or some faction of the cops was involved
It seems pretty bloody obvious to me, and he wasn't exactly subtle.
At the very least Trump should have delayed /got off the stage until it was checked out.
It's worth remembering it's only by a real fluke, and an inch or so, that he isn't dead.
No one warned Trump for HALF AN HOUR
This looks increasingly like - at the least - some kind of co-ordinated attempt on Trump’s life, if only by utter negligence. They wanted him dead
Cock-up is far far more likely than conspiracy.
There are a zillion people wandering around these events who the secret service takes an interest in.
The fact that they had a good look at this guy just shows that they were doing their job. Even if he was wandering around with a firearm that would be completely legal in the state & the security services wouldn’t have been able to stop him!
The outrageous failure (it seems to me) was to fail to secure the rooftop: It seems that the building had been handed over to the local PD & they failed to secure the building? I doubt Trump’s USSS detail will make that mistake again.
In fairness to @leon on this one (although I still think he is wrong generally and specifically on his conspiracies) there was close up film of him on the roof by people with phones well before the shooting and lots of people understandably getting agitated about the fact that he was lying up there and getting the police who were to put it mildly somewhat relaxed about it.
As you say it seems to be that the local police were handling this area (looking at the uniforms) and not doing it well because they didn't react appropriately for the circumstances.
The only “conspiracies” I’ve pushed on here are
1. Lab leak. And I was right
And
2. Biden is senile and they’re hiding it. And I was right
And
3. Nordstream was not done by Putin. It was America or an American proxy. And I was right
You were not right on Lableak or Nordstream. You think you were, but they have not been proven.
As an aside, didn't you once state that Anders Breivik used one of your books as sad inspiration for his atrocity? Apols. if not the case.
He's been proven wrong on lab leak. On Nord Stream, the jury is still out, but most people think it was either Russia or a Ukrainian group. About the only people pushing the idea it was the US are the Russians. PB has far too many useful idiots repeating Putin's propaganda.
I find it quite alarming that a monumental fuckwit like you teaches UK undergrads
The New York Times
“Why the Pandemic Probably Started in a Lab, in 5 Key Points”
I'm flabberghasted an author with a self-proclaimed high IQ does not understand the meaning of the word 'probably'.
More to the point, how could bondgezou not realise that an article in a newspaper written by someone who'd published a book claiming her thesis right at the start of the pandemic didn't trump all the scientific literature?
I mean, surely the biggest lesson from the pandemic was that mainstream newspapers knew much better than scientists.
There is no consensus in the scientific literature.
Especially as it seems the two most prevalent theories are "lab leak" and "wet market" and as far as I can work out they are not mutually exclusive.
I'm more interested in the background of this character. As far as anyone is aware so far, he seems weirdly normal. If he has strong political opinions he has kept them to himself (which is unusual in the internet age). He doesn't appear to be down any rabbit holes which have yet been unearthed. Nothing in his backstory suggests he's stupid or insane.
I'm all for the lone nutter angle. It explains many things. But for a lone nutter he appears unusually balanced and socially well adjusted.
Of course, there may be more to come out.
He seems to have found a remarkably effective vantage point outside the Federal security cordon. That strongly suggests prior surveillance, either by him or someone else, and prior knowledge of the divided police operation. How did the ladder get there?
Whether that was the ladder used on the day I don’t know. But it does suggest that going for Trump was a pre-planned operation, not a spur of the moment thing.
Scotland and Welsh governments seem to have seen the shit show of unstable Tory government and gone you know what we fancy a bit of that. How long as Gething been in charge. If it wasn't for the GE, he surely would have been giving Truss a run for her money.
I think this is symptomatic of the very short-termist thinking and lack of proper due diligence that goes into assessing leadership candidates now. It feels like people are elevated who are not experienced enough and/or do not possess the necessary skills to do the role. It is one of the reasons why Starmer is quite refreshing because whatever your criticisms of him he is a new PM that has (a) come to power through an election and (b) appears to have the preparation and temperament for the role (no matter how much you can disagree with how he does it).
Four Welsh government ministers resign demanding Gething goes
How Gething has defied demands to go after he lost a vonc is arrogance and just wrong
How about Lord Falconer?
@MisterBedfordshire nice revival of the joke. You don't seem to have been here long enough to know it or are you posting under a different name or are you a long time lurker previously? I tried looking you up to see when you had joined, but noticed you had blocked that. Can I also ask why? I notice several people do and I have never understood why as it doesn't seem to give any privacy benefits. Am I missing something? I hope not. (Panic starting to set in now)
Good to see a defence review as a priority for the new Government.
We spend £66 billion on defence and there needs to be clarity we are getting if not value for money then a commitment money isn't being wasted. I know there have been huge issues with, for example, defence procurement.
The review also needs to see where additional funding should be allocated (cyber security?) and a realistic evaluation of our defence commitments which may involve the mercy killing of more than one sacred cow.
That said, I do sometimes think the "threat" is over stated and that helps the lobbying of the military-industrial complex. Given the Russian Army hasn't so far reached Kharkiv, I'm far from convinced they could reach Paris - this isn't the 100 armoured division behemoth two hours drive from the Rhine of yesteryear (and that was considerbaly overstated to the benefit of the military and defence sectors).
That's not to say the "threat" doesn't exist and we know it's more about protecting the digital infrastructure from attack. IF the US chooses to disengage from Europe and concentrate on the Pacific and China (and that's been on the cards for 30 years or more), the Europeans as a whole have to take a more co-ordinated approach to defence and that will presumably be led by Poland, Germany, the UK and France. Whether we transition from NATO to ETO or something else over time I'm not sure but irrespective of whether we want to be part of Europe politically and economically, we can't avoid our proximity geographically.
“ Thomas Matthew Crooks, the 20-year-old gunman who attempted to assassinate former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, was spotted on the roof 26 minutes before the shooting occurred.
The FBI has confirmed that Crooks was seen by law enforcement members from the Allegheny County Police Department on the roof of a building with a clear sightline to the former president.
Despite being alerted to his presence, authorities failed to confront him, allowing him to remain hidden for nearly 30 minutes before he opened fire on Trump and the crowd.
The shocking new allegations have raised questions about how Crooks was able to evade detection and carry out the attack, which left Trump wounded and a member of the crowd dead.
A sniper even took a picture of the suspect with a rangefinder and radioed to the command post before the Trump assassination attempt, CBS reports.
Crooks was on local police and Secret Service's radar for nearly a half hour before the shooting attempt, but he kept "disappearing" before he climbed on the roof.
"Crooks disappeared again and then came back a THIRD time with a backpack," CBS reported. "The snipers called in with information that he had a backpack and said he was walking towards the back of the building."
It gets crazier. The New York Post reports local police were INSIDE the building that Thomas Crooks climbed on top of. The building was carved out of the Secret Service security perimeter and delegated to local police despite it being a "well-known high priority vulnerability.”
Before the shooting, a police officer actually confronted Crooks, who had a rifle. The police officer scrambled back down the ladder, allowing the shooter to fire at least five rounds at the former president.
No one had warned Trump.”
Not that hard dear. Have you ever met a small town American cop? They are inept and dumb.
That’s disappointing but understandable. I mean he’s got a better record than most recent managers but keeps getting abuse from the pissed up fans on vox pops who are arrogant enough to think they’d have a prayer of doing better.
Whoever follows Southgate has a tough gig. World cup 2026 has what looks like will be trivially easy group stages but then there are 5 rounds of matches to sort the winner. I'm not sure the draw will be as kind as it was at the Euros for us - and other nations ex Spain and Argentina are bound to get out of their relative recent slumps.
It’s being claimed rally goers spotted Thomas Crooks TWENTY FIVE MINUTES before he shot. They called out to police. Police did nothing. There is video of it
Either this is the greatest failure by anything ever anywhere since Creation, or some faction of the cops was involved
It seems pretty bloody obvious to me, and he wasn't exactly subtle.
At the very least Trump should have delayed /got off the stage until it was checked out.
It's worth remembering it's only by a real fluke, and an inch or so, that he isn't dead.
No one warned Trump for HALF AN HOUR
This looks increasingly like - at the least - some kind of co-ordinated attempt on Trump’s life, if only by utter negligence. They wanted him dead
Cock-up is far far more likely than conspiracy.
It’s almost always so.
It’s a massive cockup not to have delayed the event though, if they knew there was someone suspicious with a rangefinder and a packback in the close vicinity of the venue and only 150yds from the stage.
The inquiry is going to be all the different groups of police blaming each other. Apparently six different LEAs involved, plus local private security. The FBI will be pleased to be the lead agency running the investigation, that way they’re least likely to have to take any of the blame.
One can well imagine someone of means stepping forward to fund a class action lawsuit on behalf of the victims, although the fundraisers for them are already well into the millions of dollars.
Weird-looking people with assault rifles are the core Trump demographic. You can't shut down a whole event just because you see one of them, it would be like evacuating the LibDem Party Conference if you saw someone wearing sandals.
Ha ha I’ll give you that.
In the early days of Trump rallies, they actually had to keep making a point of telling everyone to leave their guns at home, as everyone gets searched on the way in (by local security, supervised by the USSS).
The problem here, was that the area where the shooter was seen was outside the official perimeter, but still close enough to get a good view, so there were a lot of people hanging around that area rather than actually going in to the event.
Lying on the roof of the building I think was the big give away which was spotted by dozens well in advance and is on film.
And people might well be recalling the G8 in 2008, when the Secret Service nearly opened fire on local police snipers who had taken position on a rooftop under their control without informing the Secret Service. Apparently.
Which might lead to the following sort of conversation:
"There's a gunman on that roof!" SS: "Is that under the local (whatever PD control?" "Yes." SS: "Okay, it's one of theirs. Don't fire."
Which is stupid but understandable. You can make it less stupid with:
"There's a gunman on that roof!" "Is that under the local (whatever PD control?" "Should be." "Okay, contact them and ask them if it's one of their." Then the usual comms and organisational snafus occur.
Such as: SS; "Do you have anyone on top of building X?" Agency A: "Which building's that?" SS: "The one at the corner of Y and Z." Agency A: "Ah, the book depository. No, that's Agency B's area." SS hangs up and calls Agency B Agency B: "Sure, that's our building. I don't think we have anyone up there, but that's Bill's area. I'll just get him..."
And the minutes roll by....
Edit: I would hope their processes were better than that. But however good the SS's processes, many of these small local PDs won't have the same experience or institutional knowledge.
There's quite a lot in that - the USA has 18,000 police agencies, of which 15000+ are local police forces of one sort or another - quite a number perhaps run by a 2024 version of Sheriff Roscoe P Coltrane, with a machine gun and a de-militarised armoured car.
I was going to point out their use of armoured tracked vehicles but checked my facts, despite being on PB, and Sheriff Coltrane apparently had to turn in his M113 some years back.
It’s being claimed rally goers spotted Thomas Crooks TWENTY FIVE MINUTES before he shot. They called out to police. Police did nothing. There is video of it
Either this is the greatest failure by anything ever anywhere since Creation, or some faction of the cops was involved
It seems pretty bloody obvious to me, and he wasn't exactly subtle.
At the very least Trump should have delayed /got off the stage until it was checked out.
It's worth remembering it's only by a real fluke, and an inch or so, that he isn't dead.
No one warned Trump for HALF AN HOUR
This looks increasingly like - at the least - some kind of co-ordinated attempt on Trump’s life, if only by utter negligence. They wanted him dead
Cock-up is far far more likely than conspiracy.
It’s almost always so.
It’s a massive cockup not to have delayed the event though, if they knew there was someone suspicious with a rangefinder and a packback in the close vicinity of the venue and only 150yds from the stage.
The inquiry is going to be all the different groups of police blaming each other. Apparently six different LEAs involved, plus local private security. The FBI will be pleased to be the lead agency running the investigation, that way they’re least likely to have to take any of the blame.
One can well imagine someone of means stepping forward to fund a class action lawsuit on behalf of the victims, although the fundraisers for them are already well into the millions of dollars.
Weird-looking people with assault rifles are the core Trump demographic. You can't shut down a whole event just because you see one of them, it would be like evacuating the LibDem Party Conference if you saw someone wearing sandals.
Ha ha I’ll give you that.
In the early days of Trump rallies, they actually had to keep making a point of telling everyone to leave their guns at home, as everyone gets searched on the way in (by local security, supervised by the USSS).
The problem here, was that the area where the shooter was seen was outside the official perimeter, but still close enough to get a good view, so there were a lot of people hanging around that area rather than actually going in to the event.
Lying on the roof of the building I think was the big give away which was spotted by dozens well in advance and is on film.
And people might well be recalling the G8 in 2008, when the Secret Service nearly opened fire on local police snipers who had taken position on a rooftop under their control without informing the Secret Service. Apparently.
Which might lead to the following sort of conversation:
"There's a gunman on that roof!" SS: "Is that under the local (whatever PD control?" "Yes." SS: "Okay, it's one of theirs. Don't fire."
Which is stupid but understandable. You can make it less stupid with:
"There's a gunman on that roof!" "Is that under the local (whatever PD control?" "Should be." "Okay, contact them and ask them if it's one of their." Then the usual comms and organisational snafus occur.
Such as: SS; "Do you have anyone on top of building X?" Agency A: "Which building's that?" SS: "The one at the corner of Y and Z." Agency A: "Ah, the book depository. No, that's Agency B's area." SS hangs up and calls Agency B Agency B: "Sure, that's our building. I don't think we have anyone up there, but that's Bill's area. I'll just get him..."
And the minutes roll by....
Edit: I would hope their processes were better than that. But however good the SS's processes, many of these small local PDs won't have the same experience or institutional knowledge.
There's quite a lot in that - the USA has 18,000 police agencies, of which 15000+ are local police forces of one sort or another - quite a number perhaps run by a 2024 version of Sheriff Roscoe P Coltrane, with a machine gun and a de-militarised armoured car.
I was going to point out their use of armoured tracked vehicles but checked my facts, despite being on PB, and Sheriff Coltrane apparently had to turn in his M113 some years back.
Comments
Really weird one. Just a regular guy, in a relationship and well-known in Vegas, who seemingly spent months preparing for the event. Nothing that really stood out in his background at all.
Which might lead to the following sort of conversation:
"There's a gunman on that roof!"
SS: "Is that under the local (whatever PD control?"
"Yes."
SS: "Okay, it's one of theirs. Don't fire."
Which is stupid but understandable. You can make it less stupid with:
"There's a gunman on that roof!"
"Is that under the local (whatever PD control?"
"Should be."
"Okay, contact them and ask them if it's one of their."
Then the usual comms and organisational snafus occur.
Such as:
SS; "Do you have anyone on top of building X?"
Agency A: "Which building's that?"
SS: "The one at the corner of Y and Z."
Agency A: "Ah, the book depository. No, that's Agency B's area."
SS hangs up and calls Agency B
Agency B: "Sure, that's our building. I don't think we have anyone up there, but that's Bill's area. I'll just get him..."
And the minutes roll by....
Edit: I would hope their processes were better than that. But however good the SS's processes, many of these small local PDs won't have the same experience or institutional knowledge.
Labour’s tax raid could ‘decimate’ Jewish schools
Thousands of pupils will have ‘nowhere to go’ if tax on private education goes ahead
Thousands of Jewish students will have “nowhere to go” if the Government goes ahead with plans to tax private education, a charity has warned.
A charity that supports Jewish independent schools said Sir Keir Starmer’s VAT raid and plans to remove business rate exemptions would force many to close.
Separately, lawyers have said that Labour’s private education tax plans risk illegally discriminating against independent faith schools.
Lord Pannick, a leading human rights lawyer, told The Telegraph that making private schools subject to VAT was likely to breach the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/tax/labour-private-vat-raid-decimate-jewish-schools/
There's a confused set of ideas here.
One of the problems that the SNP has is that making donations to a party in substantial legal jeopardy is not exactly ideal, so even independence supporters hesitate to pay money to the party. The SNP is in a very bad way, and this has certainly dragged down overall support for independence too. So as Politicos noted the total donations from live donors was only about £50K.
What attracted Scots to the idea of independence was efficient, professional government administration, especially versus the Tory fiasco at Westminster and Whitehall. The USP of Scottish efficiency has definitively torpedoed, so a large number of voters are disillusioned and depressed at the whole thing. I don´t think the SNP can recover. Whether something else emerges, a Scottish version of RefUk, maybe, remains an open question, but for the time being Labour are back ruling the roost, which to be honest I find just as depressing as the SNP dominance.
It's incredible, and farcical.
There’s no way we’re seeing any more outdoor rallies, unless the USSS can put hundreds of people on it to the exclusion of every other agency within a mile’s radius.
It’ll be theatres and exhibition halls for the rest of the campaign, where the USSS know they can totally contain the space.
How Gething has defied demands to go after he lost a vonc is arrogance and just wrong
I'm all for the lone nutter angle. It explains many things. But for a lone nutter he appears unusually balanced and socially well adjusted.
Of course, there may be more to come out.
If Lord Pannick (who is, on the whole, a very good thing) wanted a real breach of ECHR to argue about it would be the depriving most ordinary people of access to redress in court because of the law's prohibitive costs.
That doesn’t even need a conspiracy. That merely requires one or two people to be - shall we say - not entirely averse to the idea of Trump being eliminated from the election
And we know that an awful lot of people desire that
The Welsh are revolting
1. Lab leak. And I was right
And
2. Biden is senile and they’re hiding it. And I was right
And
3. Nordstream was not done by Putin. It was America or an American proxy. And I was right
It is a change in tax policy of removing a benefit these schools have, which one might argue shouldn't happen, but it isn't against ones human rights. It is the removal of a concession.
Mark Drakeford must serve again as First Minister.
When the Lizards do, do it though, will we know?
Scotland’s The National apologises for ‘crossing a line’ in front page insulting England
Editor says sorry for ‘leaning into lazy stereotypes’ with widely criticised headline portraying Rodri booting red-faced English fat man
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2024/07/15/scotland-the-national-apologise-headline-insulting-england/
As an aside, didn't you once state that Anders Breivik used one of your books as sad inspiration for his atrocity? Apols. if not the case.
To be fair to Drakeford he had a terrible time over past couple of years with his wife dying and his son being sent back to jail.
https://x.com/shippersunbound/status/1812935842010144817?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
1. US Secret Service. In overall charge, primarily tasked with the safety of the President.
2. Department of Homeland Security. Parent organisation to USSS, provides agents to supplement high-level at large events.
3. Federal Bureau of Investigations. Counter-terrorism and crowd surveillance looking for known suspects.
4. Pennsylvania State Police. Law enforcement, highway traffic management, crowd surveillance, CID etc.
5. Butler County Sheriff. Local law enforcement, traffic management.
6. Butler Township. Local officers under the town’s mayor.
7. Private security agency. Crowd control, crowd searches.
I see that they also think that pupils exiting the private sector can only do so if there is a place in an outstanding state school for them.
There may well have been collusion at whatever level - even (say) one of the local police knew the lad, and the lad asked if he could watch the rally from a better viewpoint. I doubt it, but that sort of thing does occasionally happen. It'd be interesting to know how much he knew of local police procedures.
As as aside: in parts of Cambridge, and London and elsewhere, you get these black plastic tabs on manholes. They're security tags. The security services check manholes for explosives or other threats a few days before a visit by a dignitary, then put the tabs on to show they've been checked. Then, just before the visit, the tags are checked. If one is broken, the manhole is checked again.
Now, we're all intelligent people, and we can probably think of outline ways we could, if we had malign intent, avoid or subvert that system. Our thoughts may not work, because there might be other processes in place we don't know about. But a little knowledge of a system goes a long way to breaking it.
Even if they were on the same comms network, there might have been rules to avoid it becoming too noisy with irrelevant chatter. And that in itself ha led to difficulties in the past: what is irrelevant?
The New York Times
“Why the Pandemic Probably Started in a Lab, in 5 Key Points”
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/06/03/opinion/covid-lab-leak.html
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/tax/half-million-britons-caught-60pc-tax-trap/
I wonder how many more take the extra holiday or perks in kind to avoid being dragged into it. This should be a dead simple thing to fix and long term would more than likely raise more tax / increase productivity.
(The editor of the National is a woman)
https://x.com/skynews/status/1813138175784620434?s=46
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/07/15/abuse-mps-candidates-election-home-secretary-yvette-cooper/
I can't imagine Bercow writing to Trump in this way.
There were well-founded accusations of vote rigging by Unison - and then it came to light that VG had received large cash donation from a dodgy environmental Company.
This resulted in a VONC which VG lost but refused to resign.
Keeping up?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cleyl8ln66et
“Lose everything,” is how one Democrat described a polling memo Greenberg sent to Biden’s inner circle in recent days."
"[Greenberg] analyzing internal polling he asserts shows the president’s position continues to deteriorate because Americans overwhelmingly do not see him as up to serving four more years."
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/07/15/politics/private-efforts-biden-step-aside/index.html
@bondegezou off of pb: “no one believes America blew up Nordstream. Russia did it.”
President Biden: “if Russian tanks and troops cross the Ukraine border, there will no longer be a Nordstream 2. We will bring an end to it”
That’s the President of the USA right there. Telling you what happened. You either have to be mentally ill or severely retarded not to understand what happened to Nordstream. The president TOLD YOU
As we are dealing with @bondegezou I suspect some weird lefty mania and severely restricted IQ
Here’s the video. He actually says it out loud
https://x.com/_emergent_/status/1811965400554344860?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw
If this had been Westminster the media spotlight on these stories would have had him deposed ages ago.
(And that's a good point. I can blame any mistakes I make on the fact I have been dead for 198 years...)
And the £100,000 limit is worse as suddenly you end up with childcare costs which the state otherwise pays for...
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/butler-county-sheriff-confirms-officer-confronted-shooter-before-attempted-trump-assassination/ar-BB1q1XBR
It’s worth noting that the town of Butler has a population of around 12,000 people, and there were 15,000 tickets sold for the rally.
Hardly a prospect to look forward to.
(Apologies to those fortunates who had managed to forget that he used to be Prime Minister.)
https://x.com/adrianmasters84/status/1813137957529813208?s=46
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/11/11/nordstream-bombing-ukraine-chervinsky/
Since been locked up by Green T-Shirt for having a big gob.
I mean, surely the biggest lesson from the pandemic was that mainstream newspapers knew much better than scientists.
Whether that was the ladder used on the day I don’t know. But it does suggest that going for Trump was a pre-planned operation, not a spur of the moment thing.
President Biden: “if Russian tanks and troops cross the Ukraine border, there will no longer be a Nordstream 2. We will bring an end to it”
@bondegezou: “Russia blew up Nordstream!”
@bondegezou, you have no idea how much joy I get from your crushing stupidity, day after day. Please never change
Good to see a defence review as a priority for the new Government.
We spend £66 billion on defence and there needs to be clarity we are getting if not value for money then a commitment money isn't being wasted. I know there have been huge issues with, for example, defence procurement.
The review also needs to see where additional funding should be allocated (cyber security?) and a realistic evaluation of our defence commitments which may involve the mercy killing of more than one sacred cow.
That said, I do sometimes think the "threat" is over stated and that helps the lobbying of the military-industrial complex. Given the Russian Army hasn't so far reached Kharkiv, I'm far from convinced they could reach Paris - this isn't the 100 armoured division behemoth two hours drive from the Rhine of yesteryear (and that was considerbaly overstated to the benefit of the military and defence sectors).
That's not to say the "threat" doesn't exist and we know it's more about protecting the digital infrastructure from attack. IF the US chooses to disengage from Europe and concentrate on the Pacific and China (and that's been on the cards for 30 years or more), the Europeans as a whole have to take a more co-ordinated approach to defence and that will presumably be led by Poland, Germany, the UK and France. Whether we transition from NATO to ETO or something else over time I'm not sure but irrespective of whether we want to be part of Europe politically and economically, we can't avoid our proximity geographically.
https://x.com/margommartin/status/1813034920878518553
Why would you ever use someone who’s 5’3” 150lb, to do close protection on a guy who’s 6’3” 250lb?
https://tankandafvnews.com/2015/11/28/police-m113-gallery/
Though with the current designs of wheeled AFVs I'm not sure it makes much difference whether the municipal AFV is a track or an armoured car.