More Gloating

 NBC News is showing Trump with 50.9% of popular vote.  Just to irritate leftists whining about electoral college unfairness.

Why Did Trump Win?

 The Left is going to blame Harris being a weak candidate (so why did they pick her?); Trump's use of mind control rays; media bias in his favor; America is a racist, misogynist nation (especially all those black and Hispanic men who voted for Trump).

The possibility that confusing and mutilating children horrified most Americans; Drag Show Library Hour; terrifyingly transgender officials; a collapsing weconomy from inflation and loss of jobs; subsidies to billionaires that injured most Americans; weaponization of the legal system like a Third World nation; suppressing free speech that exposed a corrupt influence purchasing scheme by the First Pervert, Hunter.  None of those could explain why they lost.

Are You Seeing This Yet?

I have not been out of the house yet.  I was led to believe that after Trump was elected:

1. Women would be stopped by police and asked for documentation about their most recent period.

2. Those stylish red hoods would be mandatory. 

3. Journalists would be rounded up and jailed.

4. Non-Christians would be shunned and removed from all jobs.

5. Witches would be burned at the stake.

Stock Market Flying

Dow Jones 30 Industrials up 1300 points or 3%.  This will be a very good day.  I am reminded of Krugman's warning about the collapse of the stock market if Trump won in 2016 

Tesla is up 14% today.

UPDATE: Dow now up 1500 points (3.57%).  I hope Democrats who are a $100,000 dollars richer in their IRAs and 401ks feel appropriately guilt-ridden about it.

Happy Day!

We had dinner with my daughter last night.  She was explaining that she loves election day because of all the data and how various scenarios are on dependent on the data.  My wife stares at her and says, "You really are your father's daughter."  She took that as a compliment. 

I suppose the Democrats could still insist this was widespread election fraud,  assassinate Trump, declare martial law, announce that Trump is really one of those aliens from Men in Black, and ask us to look into the device to make us forget.  But with a Republican majority in the Senate, there are going to be a lot more originalist federal judges on the bench these next few years.  Expect a lot more whining about the tyranny of the judicial branch.

J6 Recap

 Someone expressed skepticism of the J6 as Reichstag fire narrative.  So I wnt through a varuiety of souces, many on the left.

2/19/21 National Public Radio:

The U.S. Capitol Police has suspended six officers with pay for their actions on Jan. 6, when a pro-Trump mob attacked the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to stop the certification of President Biden's Electoral College victory, according to a department statement....


The department "has been actively reviewing video and other open source materials of some USCP officers and officials that appear to be in violation of Department regulations and policies," she said on Jan. 11.

Videos from the day of the attack appear to show some officers escorting rioters inside the building. In one video, USCP officers can be seen opening barricades allowing the mob to enter the Capitol complex without resistance.

6/6/23 Just The News:

A door on the West side of the U.S. Capitol was left open and mostly unguarded for key moments during the Jan. 6 riot, allowing more than 300 people to enter the building unimpeded even as officers fought valiantly to keep protesters out of other sections of the official home of Congress, according to police security footage obtained by Just the News.

The footage -- which confirms concerns first raised by Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., two years ago -- shows an episode in a narrow hallway in the middle of the Capitol that began around 2:30p.m. on Jan. 6, 2021 right after the first breaches were reported elsewhere in the landmark building.

Capitol Police officers usher a few intruders already inside the building through the non-public Upper West Terrace hallway and toward a fire evacuation door, which is clearly marked by a sign declaring it was an emergency exit, the footage shows.

"Emergency exit only," the sign reads, instructing evacuees to "push until alarm sounds" and the "doors will unlock in 10 seconds." After one person exits, the doors appear to open from inside as 309 individuals pass through it over a period of less than 20 minutes from the outside.

Capitol Police officers, who didn't have riot gear or helmets, eventually made their way to the unlocked Upper West Terrace doors but did not block the entrance and more rioters continued to flow into the building, according to the footage reviewed by Just the News and released for publication by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and the GOP-led House Administration Committee. 

This might be just incompetence, but it suggests many rioters believed they were welcome.

3/7/23 New York Post:

Newly revealed surveillance footage from Jan. 6, 2021, shows two Capitol Police officers escorting Jacob Chansley, the behorned so-called “QAnon Shaman” who has come to symbolize the riot, through the halls of the Capitol and to the very door of the US Senate.

The footage aired on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show Monday night shows the officers closely following Chansley as he wanders the corridors of the Capitol, bare-chested and wearing face paint and a luxuriant fur hat with Viking horns.

“Virtually every moment of his time inside the Capitol was caught on tape,” says Carlson, who was granted exclusive access by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to 40,000 hours of surveillance footage from that day inside and around the Capitol, which has never been seen before by the public.

“The tapes show the Capitol Police never stopped Jacob Chansley. They helped him. They acted as his tour guides.”...

At one point, the officers are seen walking Chansley past seven other police officers milling around outside the Senate chamber, who barely give him a second look.

Then they escort him to various entrances of the chamber that appear to be locked. Eventually, they help him open a door, and he enters the chamber.

4/7/22 Associated Press:

[Judge] McFadden said it was reasonable for Martin to believe that outnumbered police officers allowed him and others to enter the Capitol through the Rotunda doors on Jan. 6, 2021. The judge also said Martin’s actions were “about as minimal and non-serious” as anyone who was at the Capitol that day.

Martin is the third Capitol riot defendant whose case has been resolved by a trial. He is the first of the three to be acquitted of all charges that he faced. The first two Capitol riot trials ended with convictions, although McFadden acquitted one of those defendants of a disorderly conduct charge after a bench trial last month.

 7/14/22 Just the News:

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) accused U.S. Capitol Police officers of "opening the doors wide open" for Jan. 6 rioters and said anyone who works in the Capitol is "not safe."

"There were actual officers working with this, and we never got to the bottom of that," Ocasio-Cortez said while clapping her hands for emphasis while discussing the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. "We never got any answers about that and to this day, we're supposed to pretend that this never happened?"

She told reporter Pablo Manríquez of Latino Rebels on Wednesday, "I have no idea what happened to the people on the inside who were very clearly sympathetic with what was going on and opening the doors wide open for that and we're– I'm supposed to sit here and pretend like none of that ever happened."

4/13/21 New York Times:

Capitol Police Told to Hold Back on Riot Response on Jan. 6, Report Finds

Despite being tipped that “Congress itself is the target” on Jan. 6, Capitol Police were ordered not to use their most powerful crowd-control weapons, according to a scathing new watchdog report. 

Did Trump's speech cause the riot?  

1/13/21 USA Today:

President Donald Trump was still in the midst of an incendiary speech outside the White House last Wednesday when some of his supporters began milling around the front of the U.S. Capitol a mile and a half away.

More followed in waves, their ranks soon multiplying into an angry crowd of thousands who felled the temporary perimeter fencing as if it were made of toothpicks and charged toward the marbled facade. 

If enflamed watchers joined, they had a half hour walk at least to join a riot well under way by 2:00 PM.

Here is one of the videos that suggests Capitol Police were neither fighting nor fearful:

1/7/21 Time:

Some observers noted that law enforcement had apparently ignored the seriousness of the threat of domestic far-right extremists, as they’ve done for years. Others suggested that police were perhaps complicit with the insurrectionists, many of whom express pro-police beliefs. Lawmakers have called for multiple investigations into the security failures.

One video appears to show a Capitol Police officer taking selfies with the rioters. Another featured several officers removing metal barriers to let the mob freely pass toward the Capitol. In yet another video, an officer appeared to hold a door open so a handful of rioters, apparently allowing them to exit the Capitol building without being arrested or charged.

From 3/29/23 [U.K.] Guardian (a leftist paper):

An FBI informant who marched to the US Capitol with fellow Proud Boys on January 6 testified on Wednesday that he did not know of any plans for the far-right extremist group to invade the building and didn’t think they inspired violence that day....

The informant said he believed he would not get into trouble with the FBI for something “minor” like breaking a window, as long as it could be seen as an “act of self-preservation” in a confrontation with antifascist activists.

I am not sure who Richochet is, but the claim in damning if true.  9/26/24 Richochet:

In testimony today before the House Select Committee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz stated that he has been gathering information for a report and may about to release more precise information on whether the FBI paid individuals to wreak havoc on January 6th, so Democrats and the incoming Biden-Harris administration and the media could immediately lay the blame on the purported insurrection at Donald Trump. 

7/22/22 Kansas City Star:

The FBI was working with an informant inside the Kansas City Proud Boys chapter in 2020 who warned the agency about the potential for violence on Jan. 6, 2021, according to records a far-right website says it received from a whistleblower. That informant, a “second-degree” Proud Boy, breached the Capitol along with other members that day, sending text messages to a handler as the insurrection was underway, the records show.

I am not sure how seriouisly to take World Socialist Web Site, but 4/12/23:

Federal prosecutors have already disclosed that there were at least eight FBI informants within the Proud Boys prior to January 6. One of those informants, a member of the Kansas City Proud Boys chapter, texted his FBI handlers on December 21 that the January 6 rally “should be a concern.”

In his filing last week, Roots claimed, “at least two law enforcement agencies each outnumbered the FBI in terms of running undercover agencies, informants, and CHSs on Jan. 6.

“First, the DC Metro Police had at least 13 undercover plain-clothes agents. ... Next, there appear to have been some 19 CHSs on Jan. 6 belong to an agency called HIS [sic]…

There are, of course, vast numbers of websites attempting to refute these claims, but at a minimum when such a range of news organizations report stuff like this, the conventional wisdom about J6 needs careful examination. 

Why Does This Sound Like a Subplot From The Expanse?

A discussion of rejuvenating Mars' magnetic field to help it hold atmosphere includes this warning:

'Hypothetically, one of the ways to keep or rather bring back the atmosphere on Mars would be to create an artificial magnetic field around the planet. Measurements show that covering the equator of mars with a band of superconductor will form a field like that of earth and thus could save mars from the solar winds.

'This method has, however very high impracticalities owing to enormous power requirements and hazards. The power supply necessary to produce such a magnetic field would be enormous and more so, a cut in supply to the superconducting band would result in dangerous levels of energy being expelled in the form of X-rays.

"Such a failure mode is extreme enough that it would probably render most of the solar system lifeless, hence this technique for atmospheric conservation is expensive and impractical."