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I think the thing that offends me most about Donald Trump is that, in the end, he is just crude. He's like the guy at the party who sits around and all he does is tell dirty jokes. After a while, you begin to realize that that's all he's got. You can't sit around and talk to him about history or geography or philosophy. You don't have to be "refined" or "hoity toity", bu there's gotta be more than just dirty jokes. It's adolescent and crude. Steve Thomas

Yet when ACTUAL experts such as Zavada deliver slam-dunk proof that the film has not been altered to the absurd degree claimed by people here, you refuse to accept his conclusions.

Right. The fact that people take this seriously is IN MY OPINION a major detriment to actual study of the assassination.

I had the pleasure of seeing An Evening w the Grateful Dead in the spring of 1971 in a theatre w fabulous acoustics. Jerry played a 90 minute set on pedal steel with New Riders of the Purple Sage to open. It was all killer pedal steel on some great tunes that nobody had heard from their first album that hadn't been released that it still one of my favorites. Then the Dead (w Pigpen - Hart - other keyboards) played an incredible 2 hour or so set w another lot of songs & covers that hadn't been released after which Garcia strode up to the mic and said - 'We're gonna take a 20 minute break and then come back for the second set'.

Joe, Yes, of course there is a great deal of socialism in America. Thanks primarily due to Democrats. But socialism is a dirty word for Republicans. A lot of Republicans are still trying to get rid of well established, successful, and popular socialist programs like social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. And now add to that Obamacare. If Bernie Sanders were to run for president, his self-proclaimed position as a socialist would be used against him big time by the Republicans. A lot of swing voters would be influenced by that negativity. A lot of people who like Social Security and Medicare are unaware that these are socialist programs. I'm astonished that you are unaware of American bias against socialism. Maybe you should live in a red state for a while. In 2019, 59% of Americans said they had a unfavorable view of socialism.

From Kevin Drum yesterday-- a fellow liberal, Biden supporter... (Drum used to post a daily column at Mother Jones.) It sounds like something serious happened to Joe Biden's cabeza this year. The press and Joe Biden – Kevin Drum (jabberwocking.com) The press and Joe Biden Kevin Drum July 4, 2024 – 2:58 pm Has the press been covering for Joe Biden over the past few months? Until now I've considered this to be little more than typical Fox News nonsense, but I'm beginning to wonder. Here is Olivia Nuzzi: The whole story has much, much more. Nuzzi says she's been hearing questions about Biden's mental state since January, always sort of whispered and always anonymous: As Nuzzi acknowledges, she's been skeptical of Biden's stamina for years, and is hardly a Biden family favorite. Still, there's no reason to believe she's making this up. I've known older relatives who have shown some slippage over the years and it's genuinely hard to know if it's really gotten bad enough that something needs to be done. A misstep here or there might mean they're declining or it might just be a misstep here or there. How bad do they have to get before you have The Conversation? How often do the missteps have to occur? Anyone who's dealt with this—and that's a lot of us—knows this is hard. But it sure sounds as though Biden's debate performance has finally given everyone permission to say what they've been thinking for the past half year or so: Yeah, it's bad. Someone needs to have The Conversation. But no one has.

I'm not a big fan of 538, but I am a fan of data visualisations. Anyway - here's a set of interesting plots comparing Biden's approval, disapproval and net approval ratings to those of presidents from Truman to Trump at this stage of their term -- scroll to bottom of page to view. Approval ratings comparisons In all 3 categories Biden's ratings are closest to: * Trump * Bush the elder * Carter * Ford (weird because of his short term) * Truman (but Harry has a huge step up at the end) 4 of 5 lost and the other was Give 'em Hell Harry Truman This does not bode well..

Welcome back DJ!

Greg... please help us understand how this depiction of the "original" film - spliced 6 times leaving 7 pieces with only 1 6'3" section with images - can possibly be an "unaltered, out of the camera original". Thx. Doug Horne is not hypothetical Greg, and should be considered "expert"... with his anthology open to any review you'd like. You sound like Gary Mack, insisting if the data does not comes from a government agency's committee, it's not valid when in fact the opposite is usually true. How again are these 7 pieces of film to be considered NOT altered from what should have been a full Side B of uninterrupted film AND there is no "0183" perforated in any part of this film, only on a copy? Really Greg, how much spoon feeding does any one person need anyway? You ain't gonna learn what you don't wanna know my friend. You want the gov't to publicly state the Z film has been altered - or all bets are off? Really? Here's the impossible head turn @Jeremy Bojczuk mentions for which experiments have been done and have found this to be physically impossible. What's impossible is meeting your need for a "peer-reviewed journal" with anyone willing to actually say what the rest of us know. The extensive proof of not only alteration "change or cause to change in character or composition, typically in a comparatively small but significant way." but changes which were not comparatively small such as the removal of the slowdown/stop and the removal of scores of frames at the Elm/Houston corner Ask yourself about POSITION A, Greg. And why the FBI included it as a location the limo passed over. Then reconcile that position with Z133 and the Queen Mary. It has become too old and convenient to demand peer-review when that's exactly what we do here with people far more knowledgeable about the event than most anyone anywhere else. And maybe answer a question no one wants to address... After a film is received in DC by SS Chief Rowley late Friday night early Sat morning sent by Max Phillips, WHERE DOES IT GO? And where then is Zapruder's "best copy" from day 1? Any reason the quality of the film just seconds before is so bad compared to the extant film with it being said about the original how vibrant and colorful compared to copies. The rest of the film's images (non-assassination) aren't even close to what we are shown as the original. Really Greg, how many times must be gone over anyway?

The debate shocked all of us. We were hoping to put the 'Biden's too old' mantra to rest. That didn't happen. And it probably won't ever be put to rest... But the facts remain. Between the Supreme Court's rulings in the last week and the moves to continue to remove abortion rights, and even contraception, Project 2025, all which are huge news in the U.S., swing voters and the younger among us are realizing that there is no choice. The election will be a referendum on Trump and I daresay it almost doesn't matter who is the Democrates nominee, the vote will be about saving our democracy and eliminating crazy. Leave Joe Biden where he is. Too much chaos and confusion otherwise.

False for reasons specified repeatedly. It appears that it's time to man up to a reading comprehension deficiency. Courses might be available in English as a first language.

Excellent point Chuck. Thanks for your input. I've added it to the list and credited it to you.

Excellent point Pete. Thanks for your input. I've added it to the list and credited it to you.

Matt - isn't the issue here President Biden's appeal to * independent voters * young voters * the 10% or so that are polling for RFKjr * etc... and * not whether the Biden administration is doing a good job? If younger voters are one of the keys and it's their future that is at stake - wouldn't it behoove the Democratic Party to nominate a candidate that would better appeal to them? Somebody younger than 82, energetic, charismatic with some new ideas? I don't think the vote for who we tell you to vote for or Else!!! is guaranteed to work - no matter how awful the or Else!!! is. Same for the other segments of the voters needed to win in swing states. I don't believe a Dr's examination will undo the damage that was done at the debate.

Roger Odisio writes: There's no reason to assume that "using only the original film for the boards would suffice." Why should "Johnson and the CIA" have assumed that a first-generation copy would not have contained enough detail to determine the number and direction of the shots? Since the only version of the film within hundreds of miles of Washington on the Saturday afternoon was the Secret Service's first-day copy, a copy was all they had access to. Until Roger provides actual evidence (i.e. not speculation) that the original was sent to Washington, or that "Johnson and the CIA" or any of their minions believed that only an original film would do, there is no good reason to believe that the film at NPIC was anything other than the Secret Service's first-day copy. Roger is implying that "the planners", a term which seems to be synonymous with "Johnson and the CIA", had intended as part of their pre-assassination plan to blame the assassination on a lone-nut patsy. But if the blame-it-on-a-lone-gunman-patsy element was decided in advance, it made no sense to have JFK eliminated in public by multiple gunmen, in front of hundreds of people who might capture images which contradicted the lone-gunman story. For the same reason, it made no sense to try to alter any of the films or photographs, because there could have been any number of other films or photographs in existence which might have exposed the alteration. If, on the other hand, the blame-it-on-a-lone-gunman-patsy element was only decided after the event, on the Saturday afternoon once news of Oswald's arrest reached Washington (Roger mentions "the message from the White House Situation Room a few hours after the murder"), the people who made that decision cannot have been the people who instigated a public assassination using more than one gunman. It isn't credible that the same people would have been happy for spectators to capture evidence of multiple gunmen, only to change their minds when someone gets arrested in Dallas less than an hour and a half after the assassination. In both of these scenarios, there would have been no reason to alter the Zapruder film, or indeed any of the other films and photographs. That's why no good evidence exists that any such alteration happened.

Sandy Larsen writes: I wasn't attacking Sandy; I was merely illustrating that Sandy's claim ("We need no further evidence to prove that the film has been altered") uses a definition of 'proof' that most people would not agree with. Sandy uses 'proof' in the sense that most people would use the word 'evidence': a statement or observation that is consistent with a particular proposition. For example, Sandy's head-wound witnesses and the apparent anomalies in the Zapruder film are consistent with the proposition that the film has been altered in some way; and the apparent anomalies in the moon-landings photographs are consistent with the proposition that the moon-landings photographs are not photographs of actual moon landings. But most people would define proof as something stronger than that: a statement or observation that can only reasonably be interpreted in one way. If, as appears to be the case, those witnesses and anomalies have reasonable alternative explanations, they don't constitute proof as most people would understand the term. While I'm in a boring pedantic mood, I'll also deal with something Sandy wrote earlier: It isn't up to "critics of the theory to prove it wrong." Critics are given the opportunity to show that a proposition has, for whatever reason, insufficient explanatory power. But no-one is obliged to prove anything wrong. It's always up to the claimant to demonstrate to their peers that their claim is justified. Until the claim is actively accepted by those peers, it remains in its default state: merely a claim. A proposition that is put forward for criticism is usually called a hypothesis rather than a theory. Only when a hypothesis is widely accepted (by the claimants' peers) to have acquired strong confirmation, does it become a theory; for example, the germ theory of disease, or the theory of evolution by natural selection. In the case of claimed anomalies in the Zapruder film, the relevant peers would be experts in film technology, not hopeful non-experts on web forums. Sorry about that. None of the specific claims of alteration to the Zapruder film (or the forgery of the moon-landings photos) have got beyond the hypothesis stage, and many have been demonstrated to be false, often because they are based on imperfections which are present in a poor-quality copy but not present in better-quality copies.

It's never a good sign when those that are supposed to report the news... become the news.

Real good thread on the current media pile-on:

ok, I think I understand; what I'm getting there is that Biden is making a joke about how they have to shut down the roads now for him when he travels. Which does indeed piss off people that want to use those roads. So they reference that when they want him to get moving. I took it as an old man joke.

Ok, Quoting speeches, is not "hate" either. It's part of objective reporting. I'll point out that he tailed off and ended in a mutter, because I'm so hateful? Biden: Biden also made a confusing reference to presidential road closures: “I used to think when I was a senator, there were always congestion on the highways. There’s no congestion anymore. None. We got on the highway, there’s no congestion. And so — the way they get me to stop talking, they’ll say, ‘We just shut down all the roads. Mr. President, you’re gonna lose all the votes if you don’t get in,’ but anyway.”

I'm saying CNN hates Biden and doesn't show things that make him look good. I thought he looked good in this. You don't. That's fine. 2 differing opinions.

Are you ever going to own your post and answer why you posted it? 4th time, and last time. What was your and Jeff's purpose? Read it again. You posted it! What were you trying to say?

That's fine. He's 81. He's 81, and as long as he is judged cognitively fine by a doctor via an examination, I'm fine with him. I wish everyone would cut to the chase and make that happen. I couldn't care less how old he is. As long as he continues to do a good job.