First, the obvious: it's a miracle that the Capitol invaders never came face to face with Members of Congress or VP Pence. Only a combination of coincidence, timing, quick thinking (especially by Officer Goodman) and luck prevented a hostage situation or worse.
If a staffer in the Senate Parliamentarian's office hadn't rescued the Electoral Vote envelopes from Senate chamber before it was taken, the invaders would probably have destroyed them, and the Joint Session might not have reconvened that night. today.com/news/woman-pic…
Mayor Bowser, BLM leaders and basically everyone urged against a counter-protest on January 5 or 6 in D.C. and people listened. A major anti-Trump gathering would have led to street clashes with thousands of heavily-armed MAGA supporters. wtop.com/local/2021/01/…
Remember, too, that bombs were planted at RNC and DNC. They didn't explode, perhaps due to a timing fault. Insane luck again.
The shooting could have started for real. It would only have taken one tanked-up MAGA rioter, one scared Capitol Police officer, for the scene outside the Capitol to turn into a full-on firefight. I'm still surprised only one person was shot that day.
Trump could have called explicitly for his supporters to rise up. A single tweet at 3pm on January 6 could have triggered a civil war. He must have considered it as he watched the rioters on the TV and ignored Senators as they begged him for help.
Some of these scenarios end with the Joint Session unable to reconvene on Jan 6, something Trump desperately wanted. While the Capitol was still being attacked, Trump and Rudi Giuliani called Senators begging them to delay the Session for a day or two. edition.cnn.com/2021/01/08/pol…
Some of the scenarios end with troops restoring order in D.C. and perhaps the use of the Insurrection Act or other powers that would essentially give Trump direct military control over the District for a few days.
If Trump had personal military control of D.C. on the evening of January 6, ostensibly to 'defend the Capitol', do we really think he'd have allowed the Joint Session to meet that evening? With Flynn, Powell etc in his ear urging him to use martial law to overturn the election?
There was no path on January 6 that ended with a bloodless, lawful protest at the Capitol. That was off the table. Given what *could* have happened, America really got lucky that day. Full article here:
Israel is to ease its quarantine rules for Covid. Vaccinated or recovered people will have to take a PCR test immediately and isolate until a negative result. They're then asked to avoid "crowded places" for leisure and entertainment purposes for 10 days.
Until now, vaxxed people were exempt from exposure isolation... except for from Omicron. But with Omicron now likely the dominant variant, in reality thousands of vaxxed people were in 14 day quarantine (shortened to 7 days with a neg test on day 7).
I am sympathetic to shortening exposure quarantines or replacing them with rapid testing. But Israel's new policy doesn't make much sense. Day 1 is too early to expect a positive PCR from Omicron. And the 'crowded places' rule is unenforceable.
It starts with the Problem of Trump. "This guy looks like a narcissistic moron but he's a billionaire President so he must be a genius 4d chess player". Trump's
MAGA base thought of him as a cool, calm calculating man with a plan who never loses.
Yeah. I know.
Remember covfefe, a not-at-all mysterious typo that hardcore Trumpers said was a secret Arabic message or some other code?
The UKHSA's Omicron daily overviews are clearly confusing a lot of people. Even my mum said she'd heard people saying there were only 10-15k Omicron cases a day in the UK This isn't correct, though.
The UK doesn't do genetic sequencing EVERY positive test. They don't have the capacity. They do a lot, which is how they can report 16k confirmed Omicron cases in a day, but they didn't sequence the majority of positive tests.
Luckily, Omicron usually causes a particular result in PCR testing, "S-Gene Target Failure". Delta doesn't do this. So SGTF cases are a good way proxy to keep an eye on Omicron.
Just dug around this. JPost.press was registered 11 days ago and uses Zoho to handle its email traffic. If you go to the website, it redirects through to the REAL Jpost.com. But....
There is an A record IP for Jpost.press — 204.12.216.126 which is a dedicated IP in Kansas City, Missouri. That IP is associated with the name Luo Shiqi, a local academic, but that doesn't suggest her involvement in anything shady.
Put 204.12.216.126 in your browser and you'll be redirected but not to the Jerusalem Post this time. Nope, you'll get the Dubai-based Khaleej Times instead. So are they being targeted in the same way the JPost are?
Israel's committee of experts voted tonight to recommend a FOURTH dose of Pfizer's vaccine to over-60s, immunocompromised people and healthcare workers, from 4 months after the third dose.
I admit I'm not sure about a fourth vaccine dose so soon after the third. I assume the idea is to pump up antibody titres to get through Omicron.
The committee voted against a fourth-dose booster for the rest of the population at this point.
A year on, after a bunch of investigations, and I still don't feel like I have a satisfactory answer for how the FBI, Secret Service and local Law Enforcement missed what was going on.
The Capitol Riot as it happened was in no way the worst case scenario for Jan 6. The rioters could have captured Congressmen. They could have destroyed the EV envelopes, buying Trump his delay. They could have started shooting. Trump could have tweeted them to keep attacking.