Bill Fite

If you sort data, you get plots like this. In person votes counted first then mail-in & absentee ballots was the sorting used, no? BTW - the same vertical jump is shown earlier in the plot where the red line jumps up vertically.

Has anyone else read In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin? It's a history of the American Ambassador to Germany's family in the 1930s by Eric Larson. It recounts the riots in the streets between the brown shirts and the socialists in the years 1933-1937 while William Dodd a professor of history at the University of Chicago was ambassador, his dealings with the German govt, helping American victims of poopoo violence in the streets & his daughter's romantic involvement with both the head of the Gestapo and a Russian spy. It's hard not to see some parallels to today with two groups facing off in demonstrations although there hasn't been the same level of violence between them.

this

Speaking as someone who * took French (a much easier to learn language than Russian) in High School and College passing all courses with a C or better grade - 4 years in total * is married to a French speaker * worked in France w French companies for 5 years * was exposed to the French language living in France for 13 years & more importantly while raising a child bilingually learning more French by osmosis over the last 20 years It seems to me that you are totally overestimating the level of conversational understanding that a US serviceman could achieve in 2 years of training at age 19 or over (languages are best learned before the age of 9). The extensive vocabulary, knowledge of local idioms and accents, and understanding of any slang adds to the difficulty. Also the difficulty of learning Russian specifically, with its Cyrillic alphabet and difficult pronunciations makes it a lot more difficult than French, Italian, Spanish, etc. I find it difficult to believe that it could be done. Should be easy enough to prove tho -- just find a graduate of a military language school in a 2 year period that speaks Russian fluently, can read Russian language papers & magazines and has a great vocabulary covering military, technical, slang & local accents and variations. Got one? -- I'm willing to be convinced.

For all practical purposes, Obama was an outsider in the 2008 primaries running against the chosen inevitable nominee.

Ok -- thanks for that. I'm under the impression that the FBI test subjects NAA turned out positive from the above site:

No -- the paraffin test from his cheek, chemical spectroscopy and NAA tests on the paraffin were all negative. Evidence for not firing a rifle.... leading to the FBI 7 agent NAA test firings ... their NAA tests on their paraffin samples were all were positive. The issue here is whether or not a false negative result for GSR has a high probability. From what I've read it doesn't although I've never found ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Separately, the false positives are on the hand paraffin. The NAA on the paraffin from his hands was positive which could have been a result of working with the print in the books, or just handling a handgun (which we know he did). The NAA on the paraffin tests from his hands could have been false positives. The internal WC memo summarizing the FBI NAA results stated something to the effect that at best all they could say was that LHO had handled a handgun that day. Here's a link that discusses it: http://22november1963.org.uk/jfk-assassination-neutron-activation-analysis

I think people look at this the wrong way by looking at false positive rates. It may be more interesting to look at false negative rates of tests for GSR. As I understand it: LHO's paraffin test results were negative for the presence of gunshot residue. The FBI then ran chemical spectroscopy tests, a more sensitive test, on the paraffin which were also negative for the presence of GSR. The FBI then took the paraffin, sent it to Oak Ridge Labs for Neutron Activation Analysis tests, an even more sensitive test. Again the results were negative. At this point, the probability that LHO fired a rifle is very low. So, the FBI had 7 agents shoot the (or another) MC rifle. Paraffin casts were taken and sent to Oak Ridge for NAA to discredit the test. However, all 7 tests were positive for GSR. The end result is that if we knew the false negative rate for NAA tests for GSR you would have estimates for the probabilities that LHO fired or did not fire a rifle. Note: This is a completely different statistical analysis from the discredited NAA on the composition of the bullets. In that case there is a statistical variance (spread) on the proportions of the chemical composition of the bullets. That variance makes it impossible to determine whether fragments are from the same bullet as composition proportions not only vary widely from bullet to bullet but within samples from the same bullet. Here, the test is only whether GSR chemicals are present or absent. If I remember correctly, the NAA is sensitive enough that washing your face and hands would not affect the test and that in fact NAA on paraffin from LHO's hands was positive for GSR indicating that he may have handled a pistol -- however, this could be due to contamination from handling the books and cartons, etc. as discussed above in the false positive case. In summary, the tests are evidence that LHO did not fire a rifle. This is discussed in Head Shot: the Science Behind the JFK Assassination by G Paul Chambers.

Lots of luck with that. Russian is probably one of the hardest languages for an adult to learn. A serviceman of age 19+ is well beyond the age where it's easy to learn another language which is anytime less than 9 years old.

Could it be the signal for HALT for the driver to react to?

Yep... and there's no bus driver, passenger or passer-by who noticed him and recognized him on TV a week or two later (Nov 22-24) that I am aware of.

Thanks.... surely the ever-vigilant Ruth Paine or Marina would have noticed Oswald's 3-5 hour absence from the house since he would have had to walk or take the bus.

Aside: That's a long way from Ruth Paine's house - 6.9 miles - to go shoot.

I agree. I had been waiting quite a while for the US to release the mortality stats covering the CV pandemic. The best estimate for total CV related deaths would be the difference between the observed deaths and the expected (average) deaths over the time frame. CV can cause death directly or indirectly by using health-care resources like ICUs. The results are not good: source: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/08/12/us/covid-deaths-us.html "Across the United States, at least 200,000 more people have died than usual since March, according to a New York Times analysis of estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This is about 60,000 higher than the number of deaths that have been directly linked to the coronavirus." (Very good plots by region and state at link) Additionally, I run a plot from time to time to check the US death rate per million population with some other countries for comparison. The data is from https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus. There is no excuse for the USA's performance.

If you really wanted the experiment(s) to be accurate shouldn't requirements include but not be limited to something like: * test shooters would have to be ex Marines with roughly LHO's rifle range scores * test shooters should only have fired a rifle since leaving the marines in roughly the same time frames LHO is absolutely known to have practiced * test shooters get 1 attempt of 3 shots to make it a more accurate test.

Yes, I agree w you... sorry. I was just trying to say that LHO was not a professional assassin so would have had lower probability of success as you said.

Yeah..... we're not talking about an anti-Castro Cuban trained to assassinate Fidel, or a mafia hit man, or an assassin for hire from Marseille, or a military trained assassin, etc. but a hypothesized guy with a junk weapon and no experience or training other than Marine basic training (assumption). So, I agree his probability was probably lower, but the above is a conservative estimate w/o that assumption. btw - the prob(success) on the deformed bullets should have been total successes, likewise on the prob(failure) .... sorry about that.

Maybe this should be looked at in terms of probability models. If we take a simple Bayesian coin-tossing model we could start from the unbiased position that the odds are 50:50 on making the shot in the allotted time. This is modeled as 1 Success and 1 Failure. The probability of success = 1 / (1+1) = 0.5. If I am understanding correctly: Taking the results of the experiment described above and starting with S=1 & F=1 we would get probability of success = (3+1) / (3 + 34 + 1 + 1) = 0.1025 or about a 10% chance of success. However, that only looks at one of the experiments that have been run. For the lone nut hypothesis to be true all would have to occur so the probabilities of success have to be multiplied together to get the probability of lone nut success. Another experimental result that is known is shown in the WC exhibit of MC bullets fired into goat carcasses and human cadaver wrists. I believe there were 3 shown all of which were deformed. So following the same logic as above prob(success) = 1 + 0 bullets tested that were not deformed prob failure = 1 + 3 bullets that were deformed prob of success = 1 / 5 = 0.2 So after just those 2 experiments the probability of a lone assassin is now prob(make shot = success) * prob(bullet will not be deformed) = 0.0205 or 1 in 50 successes The list of other evidence that could be estimated by experiments might include but not be limited to: * how many times in a number of trials an object (for example a watermelon) suspended from above by strings or below by a spring goes back in the direction of the shooter when shot by a MC rifle & ammo. * how many times in a shot from the angles between the TSBD window & JFK exits the side of the skull instead of the right front face * other experiments Another experimental result that could be included is the Neutron Activation Analysis on the paraffin test from LHO's cheek. The paraffin test was negative for gunpowder residues. So the FBI went to the next step and ran a chemical spectroscopy test. It was also negative. The FBI then sent it off to Oak Ridge Labs for NAA. It turned out negative again. (Note this is a test for any presence and not to be confused with the test for distribution of chemicals that failed to show statistical significance that the bullet fragments all came from the same bullet batch) The FBI then had 7 agents fire the MC rifle, took their paraffin tests and had NAA tests done. All 7 were positive for gunpowder chemicals. So that would be a prob(lone nut) = 1 / (1+1+7) = 0.1111 again factoring in the 1:1 50:50 starting probability. Multiplying that by the previous result gives approximately a 0.002 probability of a lone assassin passing all 3 tests successfully. Of course any evidence that would make the hypothesis of a loan assassin impossible would reduce the final probability to 0. Back and to the left and the larger bullet fragments being in the back of the skull and smaller in the front in the autopsy x-rays accomplish this for some based on the law of conservation of momentum.

I had some emergency training years ago -- airplane crashes / flight attendant training. We were told that until the crash landing one would not know what people would do in such a stressful situation: * positive panic - move to help others and save as many as possible * freeze - self explanatory * negative panic - panic and get in the way, possibly negatively panicking others. I have no idea if this is valid or not.... but that is what they told us.

Interesting video. Just as "experiments can prove a theory" they can also disprove one as the video demonstrates.

So did Jimmy Buffet

Oh... sorry - that was from:

I started reading about the murder of JFK leading up to its 50th anniversary. Like the account in the Dallas Morning News of the man who tried to warn the motorcade just before it reached Dealey Plaza and was tackled by the Secret Service, this was the other item I read that most surprised me. It refers to the morning of the 22nd in Ft Worth outside the hotel when JFK addressed the crowds. Has anyone ever run across any other information concerning / corroborating this?

I was living in Denver when the huge forest fire south of the city struck. I got up the morning it hit not knowing what it was and thought that the orange hazy sky was an indication that the world was ending. Strangely I didn't feel fear, just curiosity. Hope it rains.

I think this is it, it was one of the most surprising things I've read when I started reading books on the murder of JFK. "The Dallas Morning News reported that a man had run alongside Kennedy’s limousine a few minutes before the assassination, shouting a warning before being tackled by Secret Service agents from the followup car to Vice President Johnson’s vehicle, three car lengths behind the president." McBride, Joseph. Into the Nightmare: My Search for the Killers of President John F. Kennedy and Officer J. D. Tippit (p. 524). Hightower Press. Kindle Edition.