Slow News Month

Not much happening in the news lately.

Oh yeah, the attempt on the life of Donald Trump, almost forgot about that one.

So what did I learn from that?

Well first of all it's been a good opportunity to think about a few things regarding one of the great passions of my life, photography. 

You may have had the chance to see the amazing photograph of the exPOTUS shortly before he was grazed by a bullet, with the track of another bullet whizzing by him to his left (our right). We know this isn't the bullet about to hit him because the shooter was to his right (our left), meaning the bullet in the photograph had already passed him. In the amount of time it took to make the exposure, what we call the shutter speed, the bullet travelled a bit of a distance, meaning that it was not frozen still in the photograph, but rather was recorded as a blur, from its location at the beginning of the exposure, to its location at the end, and all points in between.

From looking at the photograph, I'd estimate the bullet covered about two feet during the exposure. Given that, one could presumably estimate the rate of speed per second of the bullet by multiplying those two feet, by the denominator (the bottom number) of the exposure time which is measured in fractions of a second. 

According to the photographer, Doug Mills of the New York Times, the photograph was shot at 1/8000 of a second. So multiplying two feet by 8000 gives us a velocity of 16,000 feet per second, about three miles. 

I wasn't up on the subject of bullet speeds before seeing the photograph, but that seemed way too fast. I looked it up and indeed it is. A bullet from the type of weapon used in the assassination attempt typically travels in the vicinity of 3,200 feet per second. 

So what gives, altered photograph? fake news? conspiracy?

Actually, there is quite a logical explanation for the distance bullet covered to appear greater in the photograph than it actually was. It has to do with the type of shutter on the camera that Mills used. The shutter is the part of a camera that opens up to allow light coming from the lens to fall upon the light sensitive material, be it film or in Mills' case, a digital sensor., that records the image  The shutters found on most modern cameras are known as focal plane shutters. Unlike leaf shutters which open from the center, focal plane shutters open from the side. They consist of two curtains, a leading curtain that opens up a window between the lens and the light sensitive material to make the exposure, and a trailing curtain traveling in the same direction that closes to end the exposure. After the picture is taken, the shutter has to be "cocked" to return the two curtains back to their original location before the exposure was made, so the process can be repeated. 

With slower shutter speeds, usually below 1/200 of a second, there is a gap of time when the entire "window" is open and the whole digital sensor (or piece of film) is exposed to light. Above those speeds however, the trailing curtain begins to end the exposure before the leading curtain is completely open, meaning there is never a time when the entire image is exposed at once. The faster the exposure, the smaller the gap of time there is between the opening of the leading curtain and the closing of the trailing curtain. 

By the time you get to 1/8000 of a second, the fastest exposure you'll generally find. the gap between the two curtains is very small, meaning only a very small slit of the image is exposed at any given time during the exposure.

Now the amount of time it takes for the two curtains to make their complete journey is usually quick enough to stop most motion like race cars, but not bullets*. Assuming the speed of the bullet was around 3,200 fps, in 1/8000 sec, the bullet would travel approximately 3 inches. Which means that if the shutter were moving in the opposite direction as the bullet (imagine yourself in a moving car observing another car traveling in the opposite direction) , there would have been a very small window of time for the bullet to reveal itself in front of the camera during the exposure and the resulting image would have seemingly compressed the trail of the bullet to less than the actual 3" covered by the bullet in 1/8000 second. Conversely, if the bullet and the shutter are traveling in the same direction (now imagine observing a car moving the same direction as your car but at a different speed), as appears to be the case here, there is more time than 1/8000 sec to track the bullet's trajectory. Therefore, we have the appearance of more distance covered during the exposure. 

Moral of the story, photographs lie, or at the very least, mislead.

I already knew that part.

Something I also already knew about photography is this: a well-made still photograph is vastly superior at capturing an important moment than a comparably well-made a moving image. I understood this long before I was able to express it, back when I was a child looking at the great weekly magazines of my childhood such as Life and Time. 

Think of the iconic photograph of the late Wille Mays with his back to home plate catching a fly ball off the bat of Vik Wirtz in the 1954 World Series. In that photograph, we can contemplate everything from the ball about to be caught, to the position Mays is in relation to where the ball is coming from, to the reaction of the fans in the stands, many of whose vision of the play was blocked by the peculiar architecture of the old Polo Grounds. The moving image of that catch is remarkable as well in its own right but as it exists in little over the blink of an eye, it mainly serves to help put the still image, forever frozen in time in our memory, into context. 

The same is true for the most memorable photograph of the Trump assassination attempt, one of several of a bloodied Trump pumping his fist to the crowd after members of the Sevret Service helped him back onto his feet, after literally pushing him out of his shoes to get him out of the line of fire. 

The one that stands out of all of them was made by AP photographer Evan Vucci. 

Here's a link to the AP page that features the photograph along with the story.

Dare I say, this is about as close to perfection as a press photograph can come. it is a shoe-in for a Pulitzer Prize.

Its composition is somewhat reminiscent of one of the most famous press photographs ever made, the Joe Rosenthal photograph of the raising of the American flag on the island of Iwo Jima during World War II. 

Here is an interesting video that gives a little background of that photograph. So you can compare the difference between still and moving images of the same event, the video includes a short film of the flag raising made by a Marine Corps photographer standing beside Rosenthal. The video also refutes the common misconception that the photograph was staged.  

Like Rosenthal's photograph, the American flag is prominently featured in Vucci's picture, flapping in the breeze at the top of the frame. But in Vucci's image, the flag is mere window dressing as Trump himself replaces Old Glory as the object to which all the action is centered upon. In his photograph, four Seret Service agents, three men and one woman are caught in the middle of propping the bloodied Trump up, each one well defined in a distinct pose as they attempt to shield the former president from exposure to any other would-be assassins. If that weren't enough, they were also struggling with Trump in the attempt to haul him off the stage, while he defiantly pumped his fist to the crown admonishing them to "fight."

The photograph became an instant icon, expect to see it again and again through November as team Trump will use it to promote their man's alleged courage in the face of death.

Regardless of your opinion of Donald Trump, I haven't been afraid to share mine, you can't deny the man has more than his share of chutzpah, having the presence of mind to pump his fist to the crowd after being shot, while an average Joe like me would have crawled away to safety like a snake in the grass.

Or maybe it was just too perfect?  

I have to admit having been a little skeptical as I followed the event in real time on the radio while driving home from grocery shopping that Saturday afternoon. My first thoughts after hearing that he pumped his fist at the crowd after being shot was that this was all a setup. I later discounted my own little conspiracy theory after I learned that other people at the event actually did get shot, one of whom died.  

But not everybody gave up their theories.

The funny thing about conspiracy theories is they always portray the narrative of the people who promote them. In this case, I didn't hear any Democrats claim that Joe Biden tried to have Trump assassinated and I didn't hear any Republicans claim it was all a setup by Trump and his minions.

Just for fun playing the devil's advocate, if we could for a moment put the moral implications aside, let's examine the likelihood of a conspiracy, shall we? First of all, assuming this was a conspiracy put in motion by one of the political parties, who would have had the greater motivation to carry out an assassination attempt on Donald Trump, the Democrats or the Republicans? 

Well, it seems to me the Democrats had everything to lose and absolutely nothing to gain by snuffing out Trump. As we have witnessed again and again, adversity that befalls the exPOTUS, including the myriad of impeachments, indictments and felony convictions against him, only works in his favor. After the failed assassination attempt, Trump was greeted at the RNC in Milwaukee, just days after the shooting, with religious fervor as many claimed him to have been personally saved by God himself. Using that logic, apparently God didn't care about the retired fireman who was killed by the would-be assassin's bullet, not to mention the children killed in the school attack in Uvalde, TX, or the thousands of people who die from senseless violence every day in this country. 

If the shooting were not bad enough for the Democrats, had Trump been seriously injured or killed, it would have been worse, as his status as a martyr figure among the faithful would have been unstoppable. Heck, even a dead Trump might have won the November election against an increasingly frail Joe Biden.

Fortunately, that didn't happen, and Trump had his moment of glory in Milwaukee as God's chosen one.

So, as the assassination attempt clearly worked in Trump's favor, it's obvious the Republicans had far greater motivation to carry it out than the Democrats. 

But did they? 

Of course not. 

Let's just use some common sense.

It was a real shooter using real bullets who really killed and maimed people. The shooter was a 20-year-old who didn't make his high school shooting club because of his bad aim. And he was using a weapon more suited for taking out a nest of enemy combatants or a classroom of third graders than for picking off a target one and a half football fields away.

I don't know about you but if I were going to sign off on a fake assassination attempt against myself and have someone shoot in my direction, this wouldn't be the guy I'd pick to carry it out.

I think what impressed me the most about this whole unfortunate event, is how vulnerable we all are to conspiracy theories. "How could this happen?" was the question I heard most in the media, social and otherwise, and in real life. 

My answer to that question is "how could this not have happened sooner?" In my 65 years on this planet, I've witnessed countless acts of violence carried out in this country, starting with the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The names of the assassins of the sixties are forever etched into the memories of anyone who lived through those particularly violent years. Many of us however have forgotten the would-be political assassins who were less competent in carrying out the task at hand.

But I haven't. These are names I didn't have to look up: Arthur Bremer, Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, Sara Jane Moore and John Hinkley Jr. all of whom attempted to kill either presidents or presidential candidates in the seventies and eighties.

I don't remember the names of other would-be assassins such as the ones who more recently tried to kill Congress members Gabby Giffords and Steve Scalise, but political violence is no stranger to this country, nor has it ever been.

I suppose we haven't witnessed close encounters with assassination attempts on presidents in the last several decades simply because Secret Service protection has been beefed up significantly, which made the attempt on the life of Trump lead to more questions about who was involved. 

But seriously folks, the Secret Service participating in a conspiracy to kill a presidential candidate? I simply don't buy it.

Let's face it, even at the highest level mistakes happen and given the political climate in this country at the moment, it should come as no surprise at all that someone would seize on the opportunity to take out a former, current or possibly future president.

If we're willing to accept that people are willing on their own to commit heinous and senseless crimes like massacring children as they attend school, why should it be so hard to understand someone on their own attempting to kill a politician? 

This unfortunately is nothing new, we live in a violent world and a violent country.

Anyway, despite the terrible tragedy that fell upon Corey Comperatore and his family, I'm happy Donald Trump lived to see another day.

Other than that, not much happened this month.

Oh wait...

*The well known photographs made by Dr. Harold Edgerton and others that capture bullets in mid flight were made possible not through the use of fast shutters, but strobe light, the duration of which can be much shorter than 1/8000 of a second. 

Job Number One

An analyst before the debate said the president had to win the first three minutes or else he'd lose the entire debate. Then the debate started and from my perspective, Joe Biden lost the first thirty seconds. 

Then it got worse. 

Yes, Biden lost the debate, but it would be a stretch of the imagination, a huge one, to say that Donald Trump won. With Trump, especially last Thursday night, fact checkers would have had a much easier time enumerating the things he said that were facts. I watched the entire debate and for the life of me, I still can't think of anything Trump said that was remotely true.

Never mind the verbal stumbles and the occasional losses of train of thought, Joe Biden lost the debate because last week Donald Trump handed him talking points on a silver platter that he failed to take advantage of. 

Warning, here comes another sports analogy:

In ice hockey, when a team has a two-man advantage, that is to say when two players on the opposing team are sent to the penalty box at the same time, it's usually a pivotal moment in the game. If the team with the advantage fails to score during that opportunity, they often lose the game.

Using that analogy, Joe Biden had a two-man advantage for at least half the debate.  

At times he appeared even to have a three-man advantage, something not possible in hockey, yet he failed to score. 

The subject of abortion was Biden's greatest missed opportunity. Unbelievably, Trump once again brought up one of his most egregious lies ever, perhaps even worse that his claim that he would have won the 2020 election were it not for voter fraud. Regarding late term abortions he said this:

(Doctors) will take the life of a child in the eighth month, the ninth month and even after birth.

I find it understandable that people would be particularly sensitive to abortions that take place late in a pregnancy when the unborn child has developed beyond a certain point and in our time, might even be viable outside of the womb. 

But using late term abortions to sum up the "pro-life" argument is a logical fallacy, a classic example of the "Strawman", that is, basing an argument upon exaggerated and faulty assumptions. Trump's assumptions here were doozies, not only faulty, but outrageous and shameless, something we've all come to expect from the man.

First of all, everyone agrees that willfully taking the life of a child after birth is nothing short of murder, which has never been legal anywhere in this country. Suggesting otherwise as Trump has done now for at least eight years, needs to be called out for the bullshit it is, unequivocally. 

Biden didn't do that. 

Beyond Trump's reprehensible claim of obstetricians willfully murdering babies outside of the womb, late term abortions need to be addressed for what they really are. These are not cases as Trump suggests of capricious women deciding late in their pregnancy that they can't be bothered with giving birth. 

The most eloquent words I've heard about the subject were spoken by current Secretary of Transportation and former presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg:

Let’s put ourselves in shoes of a woman in the situation, if it is that late in your pregnancy that means almost by definition, you have been expecting to carry it to term, we are talking about women who have perhaps chosen a name, women who have purchased a crib, families that get most devastating medical news of their lifetime, something about health or the life of the mother that forces them to make an impossible choice.

It would have been nice if Biden could have responded to Trump's stupid, uninformed comment with one tenth of that eloquence. But instead, we got crickets. He even pivoted mid-response from one of the Democrats' most powerful issues this year to one of their least, immigration.

Yes, it was a terrible performance, one perhaps for the ages. Immediately after the debate, one of the TV commentators said that he loved Joe Biden, that Joe Biden was his mentor, but that Joe Biden needed to step down, he's simply not up to perhaps the most difficult job in the world. 

One word immediately came to mind:

Fuck.

But I've had a week to think about it. Quite honestly, I am a little pissed at Biden because I do remember him saying four years ago that he intended to be a transition president and as he would be 81 in 2024, wouldn't intend to seek a second term. Had he lived up to those words, we wouldn't be in this situation today. Of course, the situation could have been worse with another candidate, who knows.

By any reasonable standard, Joe Biden has been a good president. Yes, inflation is still a problem; we're all feeling the pain myself included, especially at the gas pump and the checkout counter of the supermarket. And yes, this is also a terrible time if you want to buy a home for the first time. But the fact of the matter is that's the way of economics, we've been here before and were it not for the selective memory and/or historical amnesia of many Republicans, they'd see it as it is. It's also true as I pointed out in a recent post that the extremely dire warnings made by economists four years ago of an imminent recession did not come true. 

I have to laugh hysterically because if Trump were president now with the current state of the economy, you wouldn't be able to shut him up about how the stock market continues to shatter records, how we're producing fossil fuels in record amounts, and how we have at the moment, the strongest economy of practically every nation in the world. Which reminds me of a line from Bill Clinton, "if you want to live like a Republican, vote Democrat."

Biden has also had to face numerous challenges, especially two major wars that threaten to destabilize the world. The current president has remained steadfast in the American tradition of supporting our longtime allies, democracies that are facing existential threats from totalitarian regimes. In contrast, Trump has shown nothing but admiration for those totalitarian regimes, especially those in North Korea, China and Russia.  

And Biden has addressed the issue nearest and dearest to the hearts of the right, namely immigration, by working on a bipartisan bill to stem the tide of immigrants crossing the southern border. That bill was quashed by Trump who insisted the Republicans kill it in order to prevent the Democrats from having another issue they could campaign on against him.

 

By contrast, Trump had few challenges during his first three years in office. He inherited a strong and growing economy from his predecessor, much of which he erroneously took credit for himself. There were also few international incidents for which he also, without any credible evidence, continues to take credit.

In the final year of his term, he had one tremendous challenge that had he done even a slightly credible job of addressing, that is, no better than a C-, he would have won reelection in 2020 handily. Instead of bringing the country together as any good leader does during a time of crisis, Trump used COVID to further divide the country, this time over the proper response to a pandemic, resulting in the United States having one of the highest rates of mortality from the disease of any nation in the world. It shouldn't come as a surprise that Trump supporters died of COVID at a disproportionately high rate.

Yet even that doesn't seem to dissuade his supporters. 

Nor does the fact that he attempted to wage an insurrection in order to overturn a free and fair election. If you disagree with that last part, show me the evidence, not just theories. 

Is Trump the existential threat to our democracy that many people insist? Well I happen to believe that beyond having been a terrible president, he is a threat and has no business of ever setting foot in the White House again.

Naturally in my opinion, it's job number one to beat him in the election in November. Biden's performance last week certainly didn't help in that matter.  

So in that vein, where do we go from here? If Biden should decide to step down, I would support and respect that. But then what? To me the natural replacement for him on the Democratic ticket would be his vice president. Personally, I would vote for Kamala Harris in a heartbeat, in fact I was kind of rooting for her to win the Democratic nomination in 2020. But truth be told as I pointed out in another post, I'd vote for my cat in a heartbeat over Donald Trump. 

But I'm not sure if Harris could beat Trump in the electoral college in November, since many people seem to despise her as they did Hillary Clinton. As an aside, it dawned on me the other day that their hatred of these two women is perhaps not prejudice against strong women as I once thought. Could it rather be a prejudice against smart women? Margorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert are both strong women who get a lot of support from the Right. But certainly no one ever accused them of being smart. 

One thing's for sure, I'd sure love to see Kamala Harris debate Donald Trump. Trump would never let that happen though, even he's not that foolish. 

The polls today show that a Democratic candidate other than Biden would do well against Trump. Unfortunately, "Democratic candidate other than Biden" is not going to be a choice on the ballot in November. And I'm afraid that if the Democrats were to go above Kamala Harris's head and select someone other than her for their candidate, that would lead to a lot of hard feelings, with good reason. 

I also think that the Democrats forcing Biden out would be a terrible idea as he is the candidate who was elected by the people, including me, who voted in the Democratic primaries. 

To me the only credible options for the Democrats going forward are for Biden to voluntarily step down, turning over the reins to his vice president, or Biden remaining the Democratic candidate. 

Both options are fraught with risk but frankly I don't see any other option.

Which means for the first time in a long time, the Democrats are going to have to get their act together and unify themselves in unequivocally getting behind their ticket in November. That means if Biden remains the guy, to assure the public that he can do the job and if by some chance he can't, he has a very capable vice president who can easily fill the shoes. 

If Harris is the woman, again, to a person the Democrats will have to get behind her full speed ahead.

In either case the Democrats, and by that I mean every single one of them, will need to be on the same page doing a full court press (how's that for a mixed metaphor?) to show the country the difference between their party and the other one.  

On the bright side, I believe this week, the largely Trump-picked Supreme Court handed the Democrats a tremendous gift in ruling that a president has complete immunity in his or her official acts while in office. Why do I believe it's a gift to the Democrats? 

Remember that the Supreme Court ruling goes both ways. As Joe Biden is the current president, he could now do all sorts of things including enacting an executive order banning convicted felons (have anyone particular in mind?) from running for president. Heck while we're at it, he could even, thanks to the Supreme Court, take out a contract on his chief political opponent with likely impunity. True he might get impeached by the Republican House but likely won't get convicted by the Democratic led Senate.

By not doing any of that, he's showing the nation that he means business by not wanting to be king or dictator, which six members of the Court seem to have said is his right. 

Assuming these things won't happen, the Democrats will be able to rightfully say that Republicans,  including an obviously biased Republican leaning Supreme Court, not the Democrats, want to increase the powers of the president in ways never imagined in the Constitution. Combined with the 2025 Project, the work of the Heritage Foundation which is effectively the planform of the Republican Party in the upcoming election, the Democrats can rightfully argue that they are the party committed to preserving and protecting the Democratic Republic that has served this nation well for the last 248 years, while the Republicans in what they are calling a "new American revolution" are looking to overthrow all that and return this country to the monarchy it rejected on this day, July 4, 1776, or worse, introduce a type of government that no one in their right mind ever imagined for this country. 

Between that and the Dobbs ruling which overthrew the federal government's protection of a woman's right to choose her own healthcare, the Democrats will have a lot to work with in terms of convincing the American people that they are the party that looks out for the rights of the people and the fights for the preservation of the democracy we have enjoyed for nearly 250 years. 

Of course, all bets are off if the Democrats drop the ball and lose sight of the big picture by letting their personal grievances take precedence and refusing to compromise their more extreme positions. 

I understand that it may not be the best of choices this year, but there couldn't be a more clear choice.

It's a 50/50 chance at best the Democrats and their voters will come together to do that but if they do, I'll bet my firstborn the Democrats will win in a landslide this November, no matter who leads their ticket.

Happy Independence Day, fellow Americans.

Let's not fuck it all up.