I see a lot of outlets claiming that the FBI identified him, but I don’t see any actual statements from the FBI themselves (beyond a statement asking for more information from the public). Skimming through the various articles with his name and I can’t find any links to an actual source either. I might have missed a video somewhere.
It could be that the name is correct, and this guy was baiting journalists into showing his picture and lying about his real name.
Looks like Thomas Matthews Crooks is not the right guy
Edit 2: but there are a lot of images/videos of the wrong guy going around.
He posted a video saying “you’ve got the wrong guy” but looks like he’s been talking to lawyers and decided to make his whole account private now".
http://youtube.com/shorts/DM9SVbojbl4
https://x.com/ValorMG/status/1812357749784936512
Edit: Maybe? It could be that the name is correct, but the guy you see in the video is definitely not him.
Plus an image of some blood on the bleacher from a live stream that kept running:
One of the attendees in the bleachers was hit:
https://imgur.com/a/V0SyhKE
News is also saying that 2 are dead: https://news.sky.com/story/shots-fired-at-donald-trump-rally-as-former-president-rushed-off-stage-13177651
Butler County District attorney told the Associated Press (AP) that a shooter was dead and that a rally attendee had also been killed.
This doesn’t sound like it was staged.
Out of curiousity, what would happen to the funds if we did have a wealthy replacement?
Would the donors be refunded a percentage of the money they donated to the Biden campaign? I doubt that money would be locked up and become unusable.
Agreed. Traditionally, “gaslighting” is specific to cases where a manipulator tries to convince the other person that they are crazy over time. The end goal is to make the other person doubt their reality so much that they will only rely on the manipulator. Basically, it’s a conscious attempt to brainwash someone.
This comes from a story where a “husband secretly dims and brightens the indoor gas-powered lighting but insists his wife is imagining it, making her think she is going insane.” All so that he can steal from her. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting#cite_note-8
Unfortunately many today misuse this term to mean something closer to the definition of “lying” or when someone is trying hard to influence you…
AI can be very useful, the problem here is humans trusting it to be accurate all the time.
In this case it should be used to narrow down results, but even then the police need to do their job. They need to do an actual investigation to gather evidence that they have the right person before even attempting to make am arrest.
Even removing AI from the picture entirely doesn’t solve this problem. Just look at wrongful arrests that have been made simply because a wanted criminal has the exact same name as someone else.
In most cases, it’s a slam dunk win unless things went really wrong. (say a pandemic)
I think people are severely overestimating how much of an impact being an incumbent actually has with the final results. In smaller elections this definitely has a big impact, but in the entirety of the US history we’ve only had 27 presidents run for reelection, and 9 of them have lost.
That’s a ~67% win rate for incumbent presidents, which isn’t terrible, but isn’t great either, and with a terrible sample size.
I’d rather have “star” or “approval” voting, but I’ll take ranked choice voting over what we’ve currently got.
I think the consequences will be different for every case and based on what was done.
This ruling is a major step forward so that cases can actually be brought against corrupt politicians who are abusing their power in this way.
In this case, Sylvia was falsely accused, arrested, and then the charges were dropped a day later.
That’s different when compared to Trump where he went through the court system and was found guilty on all counts.
Link to the court’s opinion, if anyone is interested in reading through it:
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/22-1025_1a72.pdf
So, roughly a radius of ~415 Miles (667km).
Civil asset forfeiture in the U.S.
We’re supposed to be “innocent until proven guilty” but they get around this by saying that they’re essentially accusing the money (or car/home or whatever) of being used for crime. Then they confiscate it and the only way to get it back is to go to court and prove that your money is innocent.
The fact that cash/possessions can be taken away from you at anytime by federal agents (or by police in almost every State) without having to follow it up with any sort of case to prove that a crime occurred is ridiculous. And on top of that you can’t get the money back that you spent on attorney fees, so it’s pointless to spend money on an attorney if what was taken was less than a few thousand dollars.
Most people don’t know that this can happen or don’t seem to care enough because, “it would never happen to me, right?”
For anyone curious what exactly those ties were:
Balmaseda previously served as an intern in the office of Rubio […] and worked as an organiser for DeSantis’s 2018 campaign for governor.
Is this the same guy that’s recorded on those robocalls who’s always asking for donations?
A balance between capitalism and socialism is what most countries are already using and has worked for a long time.
Communism is the one that only works in theory and anywhere it has been tried has quickly led to dictatorships or else it has fallen apart.
Edit: what most countries are using (not every country)
Communism wouldn’t fix much, and it would only be a temporary fix. It doesn’t work well at a larger scale which is why every country that has tried it has either fallen apart or turned into a dictatorship.
We’re better off finding the proper balance between capitalism and socialism until someone comes up with a better system that actually works.
Personally I’m more of a fan of Approval Voting since it’s effective and the easiest to explain/implement.
Otherwise STAR voting is really good. Lastly I would take RCV since that is at least better than what we currently have.
Video of him on the roof just before everything went down (video blurs out the shooter during/after death):
https://x.com/sentdefender/status/1812339055603978440
You can hear people yelling, “He’s got a gun!” seconds before the shooting happens.
Another angle of people yelling “He’s got a gun” (shaky cameraman, good for audio only): https://x.com/BNONews/status/1812327502028669328
Another witness that was also trying to point out the shooter to the authorities: https://x.com/BNONews/status/1812311392675914015