Ben himself has concluded that the Socialists, since they're NOT the MSM, might be a reliable source:

Who was who in Trump’s Willard Hotel “war room”? - World Socialist Web Site (wsws.org)

Here's a source about as reputable as those cited by Mr. Koch:

Why Was Michael Flynn Meeting Roger Stone at the Willard Hotel One Day Before the Capitol Attack? (substack.com)

20 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

W.---

This is a rather weak reply. 

Trump's tweet ---"Be there. It will be wild"---is proof there was a covert cabal planning an insurrection? 

"Trump was the mastermind of the entire seditious debacle."----W. 

The idea of Trump as a "mastermind" of anything brings a quick guffaw, but....

If you really posit this, do you contend that Trump co-opted the Capitol Police, and arranged for them to have only a few hundred of the 3,500-officer force on duty that day, and for the Commander of Civil Disturbances Unit to be at home making meatloaf? 

Clearly, the 1/6 committee posited there was be an investigation into the Willard hotel meeting...and then the story fizzles out. 

Try googling "Willard hotel Jan. 6 cabal meeting" or variations thereof. The stories fizzle out with the Jan. 6 committee (and mostly allied M$M'ers) making dark foreboding comments...and then nothing.

So what happened inside the Willard hotel meeting? Were specific orders generated for Oath Keepers, Proud Boys and Mr. Buffalo Horns? Do you have any evidence at all, or just speculation and suspicions?

Try putting your JFKA hat on. If such weak evidence was mounted against LHO, would you believe him guilty of the JFKA? 

Try putting on your 9/11 hat: The 9/11 committee (and FBI chief Robert Mueller) said the hijackers acted alone, no real ties to anybody, including Saudi Arabia and certainly not the US government. You believe that story line? 

I contend there are parallels in the WC, the 9/11 Commission and the 1/6 Committee: These were not investigations by objective parties, and there was no active smart aggressive well-funded defense counsel in all three forums.

IMHO: The three committees/commissions generated politically expeditious narratives. 

But hey...what would you expect from political bodies?

Just a point that MAY help your search: The Willard Hotel meeting was on January FIFTH, not the 6th.

Carry on.

On 11/14/2022 at 6:17 PM, Chris Barnard said:

Hi Mark, sounds tight there. Was it one of the states contested by the Republicans? I seem to remember the court hearings being somewhere else. 
 

Isn’t one of the strong arguments that there should be uniformity across all states? 
 

 

Article I, Section 4, Clause 1 of the US Constitution gave the right to set election rules to the states: 

"The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators."

The language is slightly confusing and seems a bit contradictory. It states that the state legislatures make the rules, BUT that Congress can pass a law overruling the state laws. That allowed for the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, the Nineteenth Amendment, and several Voting Rights Acts of Congress to override some of the state laws.

However, with the most recent Supreme Court justices being "strict originalists," no one wants to propose a law standardizing all election laws for fear that the current majority might use that "originalist" interpretation to strike down any such standardization as unconstitutional, as it would be deviating from the "original intent" of the authors of the Constitution.

IMHO, standardized election laws would be an extension of the "equal protection" clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. But I'm not a lawyer, so my opinion only carries the weight of a single citizen.

A person I follow on twitter is a member of the Lakota Sioux tribe of Native Americans. He complains that in some instances, Native Americans living on the reservations must travel as far as 200 miles one way to their nearest polling location to vote. I believe that his complaint is valid, as most of us in America travel less than 1/8 that distance to vote. But because each state makes their own election laws, that "problem" is perfectly legal in the states where it occurs. IMHO, that;s another argument for uniform election laws nationwide.

9 hours ago, Chris Barnard said:

 Perhaps I am splitting hairs to ask how you have bi-partisan overseers in a country that is almost entirely partisan? Even if seeking from abroad, they have exposure to news and almost everybody now is sported into two tribes.

Just so you understand me; this isn’t me singling out your process in Indiana, who may or may not got it as good possible. Electoral fraud does occur in the US, the question is to what extent?!

 

 

I acknowledge that nearly every voting-age citizen here is partisan. By stating that the election commissions and the trained poll workers are "bipartisan," I mean that there is an equal number of registered republicans and registered Democrats. Bi = two, and the two major parties are represented evenly. So there can be no Republican skullduggery OR Democrat skullduggery, as each party is observing the election and polling place activities of the other. Of course, the total population of my county is around 30,000, not several million, so "massive" voter fraud is impossible here. And dead people can't vote here unless someone can forge the decedent's signature convincingly...which isn't very likely.

On 11/12/2022 at 7:51 PM, Chris Barnard said:

I think they should, because digital is manipulable. I’ll say it again, and this applies to every election; the question isn’t whether there were fraudulent votes, it’s a question of to what extent? 

Now, I have no idea how elections are handled where you live. Here in southern Indiana, USA, before we go to the polls, we must have a valid government-issued ID, with signature, in order to register to vote. We must leave a copy of our signature on file to be compared with our signature on Election Day. And our bipartisan poll workers not only keep an eye on one another, but they hand the voter a PAPER ballot. The voter goes to a booth, makes his/her selection on the paper ballot, and then enters the paper ballot into a machine which reads the selections made on the ballot and tallies them [the tally is not displayed at the voting site], 

For absentee ballots, once again they are paper ballots just like the ones used at the polling site. The envelope in which the ballot is returned to the county clerk's office is initialed by poll workers before it is sent to the voter. Any ballot envelopes without the required initials are considered suspect and are not "automatically" counted. Also, the voter must sign the envelope before it is returned, and that signature is compared with the signature on file for that voter BEFORE the ballot is fed into the machine that tallies the votes by a certified poll worker. THIS is why it takes so long to process absentee ballots, as each is manually checked Again, the bipartisan, trained, and certified poll workers don't do this alone. They keep an eye on one another to ensure that no shenanigans occur by members of either party.

And early voting is handled exactly like an absentee ballot...which, for all intents and purposes, it is.

So I hardly see how electronic manipulation can occur, since these voting machines that tally the local ballots are NOT connected to the internet, and they are tested by the bipartisan county election commission prior to any voting to ensure that the votes are properly tallied. Perhaps in other jurisdictions, the election commissions are not bipartisan, though I see no reason for that to occur and EVERY reason for that NOT to occur. Perhaps in other jurisdictions, their voting is completely electronic, but without a paper ballot there can be no paper trail in the event a recount is necessary.

To you, perhaps our methods of voting here are "quaint." But there is adequate security, there are bipartisan election commissions and trained, certified, and bipartisan poll workers to ensure that no irregularities occur. If there is an extremely close race, one party or the other may request either a recanvass, in which the paper ballots are recounted by the machines, or a recount, in which a bipartisan election commission, with witnesses from both candidates, perform a hand recount. [I was a designated witness at a hand recount for a county office a few years back.] 

If a voter shows up at the wrong polling place for their voting precinct on election day, they are directed to the proper polling place. If they insist on voting at the wrong polling place, they cast what is called a "provisional" ballot, which is not tallied until and unless it is confirmed that the voter didn't also vote at another polling place. And those provisional ballots are secured by the bipartisan election officials at the polling sites until they are taken in locked boxes to the county clerk's office to be verified before being tallied.

The system here, while slightly cumbersome, has worked for years, and continues to work. If all localities in the US used a similar system [which I suspect they do], the chances for voter fraud become quite miniscule.

The unemployment rate is at its lowest rate in the past 50 years. Under the Biden administration. How does that make him and the Democrats "anti-worker?"

Republicans, in their zeal top repeal anything that even appears to be a government regulation of business, want to get rid of OSHA. How does that make Republicans "pro-worker?"

Sounds like "doublespeak" to me. Especially when recent indictments, and lack thereof, show that "some people are more equal than others."

OOOOOH, interest rates are UP! But they're still less than the mortgage rate I got when I financed my first home in 1994, or when I refinanced in 2004. [First time was under Bill Clinton, second time was under George W. Bush...one Democrat and one Republican, in case you failed to notice.]

DAMN that "evil" Biden! [That's sarcasm, in case you missed it.]

9 hours ago, Steve Thomas said:

Trump and Elon Musk are dangerous narcissists tailored to 2022 America

by Robert Reich November 8, 2022

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/nov/08/trump-and-elon-musk-are-dangerous-narcissists-tailored-to-2022-america

 

"Beware. The last time the world gave in to megalomaniacs it did not end well.

The robber barons of the Gilded Age – men like William (“the public be damned”) Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie and John D Rockefeller – siphoned off so much of the nation’s wealth that the rest of the nation had to go deep into debt to maintain their standard of living and overall demand for the goods and services the nation produced.

When that debt bubble burst in 1929, the world got a Great Depression. And that depression paved the way for Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler, who created the worst threats to freedom and democracy the modern world had ever witnessed, and the most deaths.

We are much safer when economic and political power is widely diffused. We are better off when people like Musk and Trump cannot gain such untrammeled wealth and influence.

We all do better when fewer Americans feel so helpless and insecure that they’re drawn to reprehensible bullies who parade across the public stage as if possessing admirable qualities."

Steve Thomas

Exactly.

Welcome to America in 2022:

Ohio man fatally shoots neighbor ‘because he thought he was a Democrat’ - Raw Story - Celebrating 18 Years of Independent Journalism

Exactly what I've been talking about.

I don't have a Biden-Harris sign. I never have had one.

I am familiar with Tannerite, although I've never felt the need to employ it.

I have spoken to local law enforcement. The local police chief knows the head of the senior citizen center and knows that he is a 7th degree black belt in Taequan doe who owns several military-style firearms. But the police chief doesn't believe he'd actually follow through on any of the actions he mentioned.  I also made a report online to the regional office of the FBI. So I have done my duty. If something sets this guy off and he goes all Rambo on someone or some group, I suppose it would be similar to what Hosty allegedly said when Oswald was arrested: "We knew about him, but we didn't think he'd do something like this.
 

As I said, I also own firearms. Many, if not most, do in rural America. But I hope that I never have to use them to defend my home against an attack by fellow Americans who follow a different political philosophy than I.

DVP, I must commend you on finding a way to call those who disagree with your conclusions NOT "reasonable" [twice] or "sensible."  By not mentioning anyone by name, you avoid being called out for an ad hominem attack. But your intentions are quite transparent.

I'm both a moderator and an administrator, but I won't sanction you at this point. Instead, I'll let your words speak for themselves, and if another mod or admin chooses to act, it will be up to them to handle at their discretion. I'll simply let your words serve as witnesses to your intent.

Ben, I agree that, while Hughes may not have done anything wrong, the investigation -- and we're talking about the shooting of the President of the United States here -- was much less than thorough.

I understand that's your point. Hughes may have been as pure as the driven snow, but because the investigation was less than thorough, we cannot be 100% certain. And you would think that when the victim of the crime was the POTUS, that no nook or cranny should have been overlooked and no stone left unturned. Unfortunately, that simply didn't happen.

A couple of months back I posted about the head of the local senior citizens center saying on consecutive days that VP Kamala Harris deserves that "someone should put a bullet right between her eyes," and the next day talking about President Biden, "I could take him out at 100 yards, and he'd never see it coming." Out where I live in rural America, many people own firearms [myself included]. But locally, the political rhetoric is so bad that I won't place any political campaign signs on my property because I don't want some redneck in a red hat sending bullets through my windows and my walls.

My neighbor HAS placed some political signs in his yard. But they're at the far end of his property, 100 yards from his house. I don't think Ben, Chris, or Matt Koch realize the level of borderline vigilantism going on here in America. It might only take one little thing to set them off. And while I can't speak for the rest of America, my little 10-acre plot of America has been in the family for 80 years, and I really don't want to leave in a hail of bullets simply because I backed the "wrong" candidate, in someone's eyes. And I don't feel the same level of vigilantism coming from those who back Biden. The only flag I fly here on the farm is an American flag, because I hold America dearer than any politician. My allegiance is to my country, not to any single man or political party.

Your neighborhood may be different. I'm betting that the residents of Thailand, Mexico, or whatever offshore haven Chris is residing in really don't get that worked up over American elections. But around here, there seem to be quite a few who would mirror the actions of the Oath Keepers or the Proud Boys, if they could be like the KKK and not reveal their identities to their church congregations and their employers.

Ben, 

I believe that your conclusion that Connally was hit at around Z-295 is consistent with what Connally said. I believe it was James Gordon who did a mock-up which showed the bullet that struck Connally made a tangential strike on the 5th (going by memory here) rib, bending the rib bone to the breaking point, rather than passing through the rib and sending rib fragments throughout Connally's lung. Like you, I believe Connally's movements at Z-224/225 show him reacting to the SOUND of a gunshot, likely the first shot which missed him. Until he's hit at around Z-295, Connally's trying to see what's happening behind him. Any forward movement of Connally might logically be a response to the limo slowing as Greer involuntarily takes his right foot off the accelerator to also turn to his right in an attempt to see what's going on behind him.

And the angle at which Connally is struck at Z-295 or thereabouts is more consistent with a shot from the southWEST window of the TSBD...STRONGLY suggesting a second shooter which the Z-313 hit on JFK would confirm.

I have not yet found the ballistics for the WCC ammo allegedly used in the JFK assassination. But I did find statistics for the Norma cartridges:

"The Norma factory load for the 6.5x52 is loaded with a 156 grain Alaska bullet at a muzzle velocity (MV) of 2428 fps and muzzle energy of 2043 ft. lbs. At 200 yards the figures are 1926 fps and 1286 ft. lbs." -- from 6.5x52 Carcano (chuckhawks.com)

Muzzle energy is 2043 ft lbs.

For comparison purposes, a 1-ounce 12 gauge Foster rifled shotgun slug has a muzzle energy of 2363 ft. lbs.

A 30.06 with a 150-gr bullet has a muzzle energy of 2820 ft. lbs., while one with a 220-gr bullet can achieve a muzzle energy of 3036 ft lb. (.30-06 Springfield - Wikipedia)

I honestly don't believe ANY of these, fired with the end of the barrel OUTSIDE the window of the TSBD, would shake the whole building.

Mark your calendars, because dates like today are rare.

I am in agreement with DVP. 

I believe that Geneva Hines wasn't as precise with her language as she could have been. The lights on the phones were out, which meant no one was using the phones at the moment she is describing.

A standard phone line carries 48 volts current [I was remembering 47 volts, but online sources corrected my misperception]. In a 1, 2, 3, or 4-line configuration as seen in 1963, there was no power source required from the building in which the phone was installed. When the phones go "dead" from no incoming or outgoing calls, there are no lights...on the phones themselves.

The Warren Commission was probably the worst investigative body ever at asking follow-up questions which might clarify any confusing testimony. But had they done so with Geneva Hines, I'd bet that the result would have been that DVP's assessment is correct. I'm about 99.9% convinced that "the lights went out" is one more rabbit hole that does nothing to determine the truth of what happened on 11/22/1963.

4 hours ago, Bill Brown said:

 

I disagree.  From the sniper's nest window, the target (the limo) would be moving away from the shooter in almost a straight line.  The target is getting smaller with each passing second but is moving away from the shooter in (pretty much) a straight line.

 

From the west end, the target (the limo) is moving much more drastically from left to right, as opposed to moving away in a straight line.  This left to right movement of the target makes for a much tougher shot, for sure.

 

As a deer hunter and a right-handed shooter, I disagree. It's much harder for me to hit a target [deer, in my case] moving away in a straight line than it is to hit one moving from left to right. In fact, left to right is a preferred because trajectory [bullet rise/drop] is less of a factor than when shooting a target moving away in a straight line. Left to right reduces the effect of swerving by the target [deer or vehicle].

Your mileage may vary but left to right is my preferred shot at a moving target.

2 hours ago, Matthew Koch said:

You guys sound like Lisa Pease today:
 

Do we have a source for the "Where's Nancy?!?" 
 

Ben, we have a source. The 911 operator heard him say it, according to the reports I read.

Far-right extremists plotting to attack the energy sector as gas prices finally start to drop: report - Raw Story - Celebrating 18 Years of Independent Journalism

Actually, as I figure it, the turn from Houston to Elm was a 135-degree angle, changing the direction of travel of the limo from north to southwest, more or less. 

MUCH more difficult for the driver to execute than a simple 90-degree angle.

I once worked in a plant that had a "catering truck" come by. We called it the "roach coach." While our morning break was "scheduled" from 10:15 to 10:30 am, the truth was, once the "roach coach" hit the lot, our break began. If the "roach coach" came at 10:05 or 10:10, that's when break started, still ending at 10:30 am.

The truck that serviced our location had hot sandwiches and coffee/hot chocolate in the rear, and the right side had prepackaged cold sandwiches, salads, cold sodas, and other cold items. The left side had chips and other items that didn't require a particular temperature.

So perhaps Oswald bought some fruit from the "roach coach." That would explain him saying he had some fruit for lunch...a banana, an apple, whatever. So maybe his "lunch" in the bag he brought in Frazier's car was a sandwich. Who knows? I know that when I was working this job with the "roach coach," I was about Oswald's age. Some days, even when I brought a lunch from home, I'd check out the "roach coach" to see if maybe he had something I'd rather have than what I brought. 

But I think we've established that Bonnie Ray Williams bought his chicken sandwich from the "roach coach," and left it on either the first floor or second floor while he was working on the crew laying plywood flooring on the 6th floor. That would logically mean that Williams left the 6th floor to retrieve his lunch from where it was stashed on the lower floors, and then returned to the 6th floor.

So why did Jarman and the others from the floor-laying crew NOT return to the 6th floor, as Williams did? Why did they go to the 5th floor? That doesn't quite add up, in my view. Perhaps more people than Williams knew more about the 6th floor than they ever let on.

Speaking of Irish heritage, my mother was a Turley. My 6th great-grandfather was John Turley II, born in 1670 in Newry, County Down, Ireland. My 18th great-grandfather on my mother's side was Robert I the Bruce [Roibert a Briuis], King of Scots (1274-1329). [He also shows up on my father's side of the family as my second great-uncle's great-uncle's wife's 11th grandfather.] Mom had always said that we were of Scotch-Irish ancestry, but she only knew that she was told that as a child. [So I became the amateur genealogist to track it down.]

I do know that now and again I like some whisky, while other times I prefer whiskey. And when I drink, I'd much rather sing than fight.

Russian state-funded media director calls for Ukrainian children to be burned or drowned - Raw Story - Celebrating 18 Years of Independent Journalism

At this point, you may have noticed that several posts on this thread have been hidden. The ones that were hidden were the ones that had overtly political statements which led to several ad hominem attacks. Our administrators decided to hide these posts because we prefer to wield a scalpel than a sledgehammer when it comes to keeping threads on-topic. Off-topic posts that are attempts at humor are generally viewed differently than off-topic posts that divert the thread and cause breaches of forum decorum. 

If you have pro-Trump or anti-Trump posts you wish to make [or any overtly partisan political posts], there are other threads designed for that purpose. Please take those posts to those threads. Overall, we have a good group here. As an administrator, I'm not going to publicly flog anyone here about any past posts, as that is usually counterproductive. Instead, let's work a little harder at eliminating the ad hominem attacks, and confine the posts about current politics to their designated areas.

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