Hulk Hogan is a character played by a gentleman named Terry Gene Bollea, but it is the character speaking on stage. The theatre is now part of the nonfiction, for better or for worse. At least in professional wrestling, violence is performance rather than actual assassination attempts. Look out for Bernie Sanders with that steel chair.
Full Circle
Readers will recall that I’ve often suggested that Trump learned political rhetoric from his time with the World Wrestling Federation (later “Entertainment”). Just read the mean tweets in the voice and with the beats of Hulk Hogan, I’d advise; then they won’t seem scary, but will be recognizable as the theatre that they are.
The Hand of God
Author Lincoln Brown is having similar thoughts to the ones that have been troubling me. The piece is raw and painful, questing after the justice of things like this.
But what about Corey Comperatore, a loving and devoted husband, father, and public servant? Was it God's plan for him to die?For every person who is saved from cancer by the power of prayer, there are thousands for whom those prayers are never answered. When we were in Cambodia, I witnessed more than the horrific effects of human trafficking. We visited some of the Killing Fields....
I understand: my best friend is dying of stage four cancer at a very young age. I watched my father die too, and he was a brave and faithful man, one who saved lives, a firefighter, a volunteer.
We are told that death has been conquered, and therefore perhaps it is of no real concern. That's hard to accept as people who have to die, and who have seen the effect of death on those we love. Yet, like Jules in the movie, I think you can't help but acknowledge the miracle. I don't understand it, but I can't deny it.
Fear
I have been to war three times. I’ve been mortared, rocketed, machine-gunned and shot at with Kalashnikovs. I once stood a bear off its kill to force him to let us pass on a trail. I ride motorcycles almost every day.
The clear footstep of God is the scariest thing I have ever seen.
When my grandmother was buried, child me asked why anyone would fear God, as the scripture said. I know now. God getting involved is terrifying.
People say to pray for the nation. I’m not the sort to say things like that. But I am praying.
Spam
Gringo alerted me that a comment of his had disappeared. I checked the spam folder of the blog, and found that many of our comments have been automatically assigned to that by Google -- including some of mine! I have restored all the ones I recognize (except Greg's, who really is spam and should go bother someone else). If you notice a comment disappearing, ping me and I'll fix it.
This is getting annoying, Google. The whole purpose of Blogger, when it was new, was to serve as a host for free speech. Go **** yourselves. Having money doesn't make you right. We'll say what we want, one way or another.
Always loved Sarah Isgur
She tweets: "MSNBC’s bewildering coverage of the RNC this week is further proof that the left leaves elite universities and institutions with no clue about what conservatives believe or why. Whereas conservative students leave college being able to speak fluent liberal."
Good Lord
Conspiracy theories and all that, but it's actually worse if this really was the product of extensive, institutional failure. It'd be better if there was a plot! This indicates the complete failure of all of our institutions... er, as did the Afghanistan situation, the "pier" to Gaza, the border situation, oh good gracious. The whole thing needs to be torn down and replaced, or not replaced where it's not helpful.
More Glorious Behavior
So undercover cops need to drink to keep their cover. However:
The Pagan's MC are accusing the cops of excessive force, false imprisonment, and malicious prosecution after a confrontation in a bar suddenly degenerated into violence caused by cops who had been drinking for hours.
Maybe all this secret police stuff is not befitting of a free society.
Corporate Interactions
I had a meeting today with a team led by a former SFOD-D operator and Silver Star awardee. He opened by questioning whether I would be able to make our upcoming in-person meeting from “prison,” and then asserting that “you look like you’re ready to murder somebody.”
I responded, “Every day all day,” which he loved. However, I had to circle back with the team to explain some cultural differences between their world and the world of the American infantry.
Pulp Fiction
It’s hard to avoid Jules’ conclusion. The way the film was portrayed out of sequence masks that Jules’ conversion also saves his life. His faith does.
It’s terrifying to think that God would take the side of so flawed a vessel; or to think that God would be so directly involved in human affairs at all. It’s obvious why Vincent rejects the idea. To do otherwise is to admit the existence of a far greater power.
Then This Happened...
...at the Republican Convention in Milwaukee, per @DanScavino via @cdrsalamander (I don't seem able to post X videos):
https://x.com/DanScavino/status/1813067403703820757
BZ, indeed.
Eric Hines
Safety first
I held off on posting this, because it referred to an ABC News interview I couldn't at first find in the original, and I feared it must be satire or a hoax. At the 1:50 mark in this ABC News interview with the Director of the Secret Service, Kimberly Cheatle, she explains that the roof from which a young man shot former President Trump on Saturday was not manned by law enforcement because the sloped roof was considered too dangerous for security personnel.Honestly, I'm still wondering if it could be a clever fake. Could she really have said this on camera? Perhaps next she could reconsider whether live ammunition should be issued to SS personnel. Someone could put an eye out with one of those things.I wish I could still post images here, to show a comparison between the roof Crooks shot from and the roof the counter-sniper shot from after Crooks opened fire. Both look to be about 3 in 12 slope.
Couldn't agree more
I'm a big believer in price signals and a big doubter on erasing them.
Cities have used rent control for decades as a way to keep renters from experiencing the price signals of bad policies enacted by local and state politicians, and it's been a disaster without escape all along.Prices are the balance between supply and demand.You can lower demand by creating alternatives. You can raise supply by removing obstacles to the natural tendency for supply to flow in wherever prices are rising. But a sure way to crash supply is to react to high prices by capping them in order to pander to voters who are deserting you in droves. It's an especially unsavory form of pandering when the price shocks your voters are experiencing result from your own boneheaded economic policy, but President Unity likely couldn't have understood economic principles even in what passed for his cognitive prime."Affordable" housing is meaningless if it's unavailable at the state-mandated price, just like "affordable" healthcare.
Hillbilly for (V) President
I have not read Vance's book nor followed his career, so I don't have a highly informed opinion on his selection as Trump's VP nominee. In the spirit of all the recent talk about 'representation' and 'feeling seen,' it is kind of nice to see someone who will self-appellate as an Appalachian on a major ticket.
That doesn't make him a good choice, of course. Probably many of you have better information about that.
Were I advising Donald Trump, I would have suggested to him that he make a self-defensive nomination of somebody so crazy that any future assassins would think twice about taking a shot at Trump himself. All public information makes this shooter look like a loner, but Dad29's original remarks that led us to talk about assassination before the attempt happened was about Deep State concerns on Trump prompting them to take a shot at him. "Did the CIA kill JFK?" was a question a lot of people asked for many years. Similar people might wonder about a young man with no obvious connections, possessed of the perfect demographics to offend no protected group, getting to an unprotected rooftop with a short clear shot that he was allowed to take before being immediately killed so he couldn't talk.
I'm not saying that it was a conspiracy. That would be paranoid. I'm just saying that a Presidential candidate might pick a VP whose personality made a strong argument against anyone taking another shot. He might also want to hire some private professionals to bolster his government-provided security, which would be prudent rather than paranoid given how badly the USSS performed in this case.
Experimental Photo Editing
Yesterday’s ride back from the Games was hot and hazy, so the photographs of long distance shots were blurry at the horizon. Normally I wouldn’t heavily edit photos, but I found that by lowering the light level and boosting the saturation I could restore the outer line of vision. They look different from the way they looked to the naked eyes, but you can get the longer ranges. 
Jack Smith isn't special
Judge Cannon has dismissed the Florida documents case on the ground, as set forth in Justice Thomas's recent concurring opinion, that Jack Smith's appointment as special counsel was unconstitutional.
Heroes and Volunteers
The WSJ:
A volunteer firefighter died saving his family from the shots fired by Trump’s would-be assassin.
Here is their major citation, which unlike the Journal is not behind a paywall.
The Grandfather Games
Grandfather Mountain
The Parade of Tartans
An Impromptu Mead Hall
Mead Horns
My wife has discovered that she likes the mead that I brew here at the Hall. So, I bought her as a present the central horn today at the Games. It’s more her size than the big ones, and also more elegant as befits her.
GoFundMe for grieving Butler families
I saw the link last night and contributed when it was up to only about $85K of its $1MM goal. Today it's pushing $2MM.
Maybe not the effect they're hoping for
From Salena Zito, who was on the podium:
Earlier that afternoon, before the shooting that left two people dead including the gunman, I asked an 11-year-old: “Is this your first Trump rally?”
“Yeah,” he smiled, “but it’s not going to be my last.”
New lows in "journalism"
From The American Conservative:
Caution is in order when such shocking news breaks quickly. But the immediate response from some of the nation’s most biggest news outlets wasn’t cautious; it was unserious. An early Washington Post headline already subject to ridicule on Twitter by 6:33 p.m. declared “Trump taken away after loud noises at rally.” Minutes earlier, a CNN headline had announced, “Secret Service rushes Trump off stage after he falls at rally.” Reason magazine’s Billy Binion tweeted that “using cautious phrasing before all the information is known is good, actually.” Yes, it is, but “loud noises” and “Trump…falls at rally” plumb depths of journalistic malpractice unfathomed even by such earlier CNN and Washington Post absurdities as “Fiery but mostly peaceful protests” and “austere religious scholar.” The “cautious” way to report the story would be to refer to “apparent” or “possible” shots or an assassination attempt. Many phrases could have been appropriate, but not “loud noises” or “falls at rally.”