It's now looking more complex, like multiple people were involved in the shooting, I'm not surprised that the rapid fire conclusion wasn't the whole story.
It makes me wonder just how hard they have looked for the right person, .............. a bird in the hand ....................!
This story is starting to quack, the RedTrump administration will probably want a quick fire death penalty and close the case!
I'm reading today that the RedTrump administration is claiming a DNA match for the shooter, just 48hrs after obtaining the samples.
This is CSI Hollywood like precision and efficiency, but my understanding this is also Hollywood fantasy.
Just a month or two back I watched a recent BBC documentary(circa 2025) on crime and modern forensics, that doco reports that even the cutting edge forensic methods still take a few weeks to deliver a definitive result. It's not like TV.
Yet today, less than 48hrs after obtaining samples, we have RedTrump and JD Vance admin claiming definitive DNA match is reported by FBI Director Patel from a dilute sample, that is DNA from fingerprints or body moisture off an incidental surface like a towel or handle.
Ignoring whether they have the right person or not, I'm inclined to believe the BBC version of DNA analysis timelines.
There are different types of analysis, and growing a sample is not the same as matching a sample, and matching a sample the first time is not the same as confirming a match, etc., etc.. Analogously, it can be thought of as solving a seriously tough and importantly unique jigsaw puzzle for the first time, but once it's been done it becomes easier and faster to repeat. Maybe @DJC can give us some insight.
So is this yet another example of the public being misled?
Some might think the issue is trivial, or inconsequential, but to me it is the heart of the debate about truth in government.
Perth and Adelaide fans believe there's a huge Victorian bias in the AFL.
I don't think there is a systematic bias for or against any one specific club, but the problem is the inconsistent way the rules are applied. If there is favouritism it's probably subconscious.
But I don't think anybody can claim the judiciaries are consistent, and I think that is all fans really want, the judiciary should be fundamentally consistent at least in it's own frame of reference.
Well maybe we can take some solace out of the fact that it is not just the AFL Judiciary that is bogus and / or corrupt.
But as a Storm fan it's hard to swallow. Earlier in the season players were warned and being pinged for hip drop tackles, a hip drop tackle is when you tackle from behind or the side and drop your body weight onto the back of an opponents lower leg. It is considered very dangerous, it wrecks knees and ankles, and it happened twice against Storm players at the weekend. Both incidents were not even penalised and were cleared by the post match judiciary. No wonder Bellamy went feral post match, I can't blame him, as if by accident it just happened to be two of Storms prime movers in Munster and Coates who were the victims.
Then yesterday, Broncos star Reece Walsh blatantly and deliberately headbutts an opponent, is sin binned on the spot, and yet post match is cleared by the NRL judiciary.
The couple of weeks before, the Bulldogs captain Crichton rakes the eyes of Storm player Papenhuyzen, an event caught on video and reported, and is cleared to play. Some might say karma got even in that case, Crichton was injured the final against Storm last Friday night and is now apparently likely out for the season barring a miracle recovery.
In the last few weeks the Storm have had Solomona and Grant both suspended for what was effectively accidental high contact, Solomona is basically out for the season from opponents throwing themselves at Solomona's 6ft high shoulder to claiming a high contact penalty. The last event for which Solomona received a three week suspension wasn't even penalised by the on field referee, for good reason, the opponent was dropping his knees in the tackle, which is the NRL equivalent of ducking into a tackle.
I don't mind this if the rules are applied uniformly, and the same applies to the AFL, but it's clear that is not the case.
I fear Australia is going down the same track, as we become increasingly influenced by media-driven one-liners and cheap-shot journalists who no longer report news, only their agenda-laden opinions.
I'm not so pessimistic, I think the extremists are still clearly in the minority pretty much everywhere globally, it's the media representation that is unbalanced.
The problem is the inaction of the silent majority, it needs to vote with it's wallet, it is the only thing that modern media understand. Stop advertising on their platforms, stop buying what they peddle, and the executives will get the message.
I suspect that’s a fairly common characterisation of most school shooters.
Retrospectively what we know regarding the politics of most if not all of the various recent political assassination events, the claims by MAGA of some sort of leftist conspiracy to persecute MAGA is almost 100% incorrect. It's much closer to be the exact opposite, in that it appears many are disavowed right wing extremists who have turned on the group they previously felt aligned to.
I think the key word here is extreme, it appears that even for the hard right or left these individuals are beyond the norm.
But this is what my signature states, it's always been that way!
From the latest reports I think you have gone too early now lol.
From what I've read so far MAGA have f0rked up the early claims regarding transgender, et al., and rather than admitting a mistake they are now just going harder repeating the unsupported claims. There is already a bunch of published and obviously fake videos, manifestos, doctored photographs, etc., etc.. It's a repeat of the MAGA Birther conspiracy tactics, when you are wrong double down in spite of the glaring evidence to the contrary!
Other actors in this debate, like the NRA, seem to be actively and deliberately muddying the waters, it's truly bizarre behaviour.
There is no high ground on either side of this debate, both sides are equally wrong and that is the primary take away point.
The MAGA crew went the earlier crow on the latest assassin, claiming trans, claiming leftie, etc., etc., and it turns out he is another fundamentalist Christian gun nut and the exact opposite of what MAGA claim, he's basically one of their own, yet another one!
No wonder RedTrump has gone relatively quiet, but can you make sense of the various war cries?
Is someone in the hard right lunitocracy betting that the biggest losers in a civil war will be the minorities?
RedTrump's MAGA disciples killed a bloke who was just doing his job, someone who wasn't even expressing a political position, all he was doing was attending his place of employment!
The problem is an issue of perception, everyone is influenced by what they see and hear, you think you can escape the influence but you cannot!
Even when you know about it, the exposure still changes the decisions you make, the perspective you take and your conclusions. It's why science and engineering use double blind testing.
The numbers never lie, it's the perceptions and conclusions the people get wrong.
Before people take a side in this debate, do not forget RedTrump pardoned blokes who beat someone to death at the Whitehouse, someone who wasn't much more than a concierge by US Public facility standards.
If you want to point blame, there it is right there and it is unequivocal, normalised violence by RedTrump.
RedTrump is that dumb he thinks it's only going to happen in one direction.
It happens here to, perhaps not to the same extreme, but for example volunteers at the Shrine of Remembrance being bashed by protestors. Luckily when that happened nobody died, but here the perpetrators didn't get pardoned by the politicians.
I’m sorry for your experiences Thry but they are alien to me. I know the world is becoming more forked but it doesn’t really touch my life.
I don't think that basic crime is fundamentally worse than before, it's just the perception of worse comes from being bombarded with so many replicated or fake versions. If people are heavily involved in social media, they can still live largely oblivious to these effects, it is a choice.
Petty crime might be on the rise, driven by drug related issues, but it's not a new phenomenon. Crooks have always patrolled building sites and pinched stuff like tradies tools, the motivations were largely the same, debt, addiction, greed, etc., etc., it's just that it wasn't reported.
Thry is right though. People were mushrooms previously - kept in the dark.
I don't think it's right to claim we were kept in the dark, it's just that the structures weren't in place to report this stuff, there was no network.
I worked for the newspapers for almost 15 years, News Ltd, Fairfax, etc., despite being massive organisations with thousands of employees they typically had just a couple of court reporters covering all of what would now be routinely reported via social media. They probably reported on just two or three stories a day selected by an editor as the most valid or relevant.
Like @DJC, I have a number of relatives working in law, bureaucracy and politics, I'm not sure the real traditional physical crime has changed all that much, but the fake coverage is clearly different and that influences society. The valid / invalid filter no longer exists.
The modern equivalent of court reporters are not reporters, they are nothing more than bloggers publishing for clicks, and everything that is valid or invalid gets published in some form often with AI scripted commentary. The media use an A/B system, posting multiple variants until one becomes dominant to get promoted to the front page / lead. It's the same system the big search engines use to keep you hooked on platforms like Youtube or Instagram.
It's horrendous version of politics that the USA is moving towards, and a tragedy for a young man with a young family.
But it is a cycle the USA has been through before. so I think it is inevitable someone will have another crack at RedTrump at some stage. Being caught or killed won't be a deterrent to people motivated to do this type of crime, you have to work to remove the motivation.
It's piss weak leadership in the USA that leads to this stuff, much like the piss-weak leadership in Victoria leading to all those machete attacks and tobacco store war.
When a moron like RedTrump incites violence with his rhetoric it's not unilateral, he basically lifts the lid on chaos, from radicals and opportunists! Being on the left or right, red or blue, is utterly irrelevant.
The sad thing is this distracts from abhorrent global behaviours from foreign states, and as such you could be excused for thinking that today's event as a target of opportunity might even be a false flag. We can't know, but the worry is the perpetrator escaped too easily from a venue already swarming with authorities.
