What's to say? Here's the shooting victim.. Waiting for the inevitable investigation is probably more respectful than using the death for point scoring.

https://twitter.com/shawncole76/status/1347193326592798721

- GFY

You DO know I collect these right? ;-)

Is Donald Trump still playing '4D Chess'?

Asking for a friend.

Big protest in DC on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!

Well, I never would have predicted that outcome.

Said nobody, ever.

As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

- HL Mencken.

Great quote Phil, but I would never call Trump a moron, too many of his actions are by design. Neither does he represent the inner soul of his people because more than 50% of voters voted for the other guy and it wasn’t exactly a close run thing.
But if you change one word (President to Prime Minister) then perhaps...

AK there is no country that isn't either more grown up or more regimented that has done better than the UK. Boris' biggest flaw (apart from his private life) is his speaking style. He writes better than he speaks, by far. Not wanting to be too heavy handed is a British thing and makes Boris dither. Force loses as many supporters in this country as it gains, so he's partly justified. We the public are quietly and sometimes no so quietly stuborn. There is some benefit to being optimistic and setting goals but the price is apparent failure. Remember test and trace was only ever supposed to be at the very start of a pandemic. It was the scientists plan, not Boris'. To then get a massive test and trace system up and running is/was nigh on impossible. We weren't supposed to have masks, is it Boris' fault for the first decision or the about face?

There is little corellation between the Republicans and the Tories. Apart from a positive attitude towards capitalism and a support but not always achievent to reduce big government, we don't share much in common. We're nowhere near as religious, we aren't anti abortion, we support the NHS (albeit wish it was more efficient) and many (sadly) support cutting CO2.

Brexiteers aren't like Trump rioters either. We were denied their victory strenuously for 3.5 years * and didn't riot like this. There were far more marches and violence by the actual losers. Brexit wasn't like Trump's fake victory, it was a real and repeated one that was genuinely thwarted by people who were voted in on multiple occassions to both respect the referendum and its result.

* Not to mention the 40+ years we were denied any vote on how the EU changed from the promised common market to the middle slopes of an EU superstate.

Most politicians are less intelligent than they should be. Their talent is getting elected and brushing off the slings and arrows of the public, the media and the opposition. In that Boris is a blooming genius. What happened to the Liberal Democrat smart party? And its clear speaking, fault free leader?

I don't like Boris. I wince at his flubs and waffle. I sigh at the massive mistakes in what has been done but I also recognise that a pandemic is a wicked problem. It is a problem so difficult that Brown, Blair, Sturgeon, Salmond, and all the politicians in our out of government since decided to just let a pandemic do its thing. A half a million dead (of all ages) was deemed acceptable. That was the 'smart' option. Aren't you glad Boris is an idiot?

tomo, Western police have been veering towards non resistance to mobs. The UK especially, but it shows a path to theoretically much more dangerous terrorists. Though the guns and reason for the guns * would make MAGA supporters almost as dangerous as any other threat. I don't think the police should take the knee to people breaking the law, no matter what colour the rioters. Ironically the Trump mob may be convicted to a long sentence due to Trump's new law to deal with BLM rioters.

* Their conviction that they need guns to protect themselves from a rabid government. Nobody ever properly discussed what a government could do to legitimately push a good citizen over the edge. Trump supporters weren't justified in their actions. Trump lost 48 to 52... a ratio that should mean something to any self respecting Brexiteer.

David Ignatius at the Washington Post offers this analysis of went wrong with Wednesday’s security operation in DC – but pins the blame squarely with Republicans:

The FBI underestimated the number of protesters, predicting a maximum of 20,000, which turned out to be less than half the number who showed up. The Capitol Police didn’t stand their ground at the perimeter or at the Capitol itself. The mayor was slow to request additional troops from the D.C. National Guard. The acting attorney general was similarly tardy in ordering elite FBI units into the Capitol. And the Pentagon brass worried more about avoiding politicization of the military than about stopping an insurrection.

But as we look for who to blame in this catastrophe, let’s focus on the real culprits: President Trump, who incited the rioters and urged them toward the Capitol; the 13 Republican senators and 138 House members who challenged President-elect Joe Biden’s victory and egged on the insurgents; and the smug, self-appointed patriots who trashed the people’s house. Trump should face legal action for fomenting this riot. The members who risked the lives of their colleagues by encouraging the fanatics should be censured. The insurgents who ransacked the Capitol should be arrested and prosecuted.

He ultimately casts it as a defeat for the MAGA mob:

Trump’s ragtag army of sedition has lost big. Their narrative of victimization has turned upside down; their claims of election fraud have been demonstrated to be false. Biden’s election has been certified, and leading Republicans such as vice president Pence and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell have finally broken from Trump.

(Excerpt in the Guardian, original paywalled here).

(As a point of detail the Capitol Police is a Federal agency, it answers to Congress, not the Mayor)

Notwithstanding what various YouTube lawyers may have claimed, Trump's end was sealed when his legal challenges came to naught and the State electors cast their votes on December 14th. He will be lucky to escape a second impeachment, maybe as soon as a week today and worse than that - he is banned from Facebook.

He's not a moron, more of a narcissistic sociopath. However, faced with a swathe of his senior advisors jumping ship, he has now made a small move towards reality, belatedly condemning the violence and conceding that he will be moving out a week on Wednesday. This has not gone down well in the Parler channels and other places where the diehard MAGA cap and Qanon loyalists congregate:

He says it’s going to be wild and when it gets wild he calls it a heinous attack and middle-fingers to his supporters he told to be there.”

Come on guys, what did you expect? This is a man who has betrayed everyone who ever trusted him. It's just your turn. Though there is some Gallows humour out there as well. ;-)

I pointed out earlier that Capitol Police is a Federal Agency and as I understand it their statutory bosses are Pelosi and McConnell.

The crowd management provisions emplaced were simply woefully inadequate (for a polite summer tea party even, let alone 20,000) and Chief Sund must have known that (and one wonders if he's got the Admiral Kimmel part) - Mayor Muriel sent her cops out to barricade MAGAs in their hotels and maybe held a few crowd squads back to catch the crowd after the events inside the Capitol.

Frankly - Trump should've anticipated trouble and insisted on an increased law enforcement presence - that was a yuge fail.

CIA goon Ignatius? - ah, one of Steph Halper's chums... so to use a Clarkyism ... puhlease.... and the presumption on legal analysis? ... since you don't know what the actual practicing litigators said because you haven't watched any content - well yeah... whatever you say .... Who's going to replace Donald in your affections in two weeks time?

@TinyCO2
you are dead right about the temerity in law enforcement - it's also a crisis of competence that I've seen from quite close up with a procession of pompous and frankly dim senior officers parading through two local forces over the last 20 years spouting the sort of formulaic buzzword laden management-speak normally reserved for local government or NHS management - one of them getting promoted way, way out of his depth to head Border Force and failing so badly that he was there one day and gone the next...

As far as the protesters in DC are concerned - it'll be interesting to see who the gun toters were and where they were caught - they had ample warning that guns were banned. As for the rest - we'll see... The actual violence I've seen video of (outside the insane shooting of the woman at the door) looked quite tame. I attended two anti-NF riots in the 1970s with a motley bunch of lefties and saw worse.... The authorities hammered any NF opposition (or trapped bystanders) in the vicinity with huge (at the time) fines and left the NF largely alone as I recall.

Policing large events requires v.careful planning + flexible tactics with clear headed operational control - boxes that seem to be very rarely ticked by 21st Century bureaucrats. When it's done well nobody notices....

Is Nancy Pelosi some kind of geriatric bunny boiler?

Capitol Police -

c'mon in folks!

What will the Twitter President do when he can no longer tweet?

Not usually a fan of Schadenfreude, however in this case I am prepared to make an exception. Heh.

Ramzan Kadyrov is still on Twitter - no blue tick - booo!

Impeached for a second time, banned from social media. It was always going to end like this, or some variant thereof. What is flabbergasting is the number of people, and we are talking millions, who could not see what was right in front of them.

So it goes.

Facebook & Twitter:
“We did not interfere with the election.”

Facebook & Twitter:
“We’re banning President Trump”

Storming the Capitol

It was Trump who attempted to interfere with the election, leaning on the Georgia Secretary of State to 'find' him some votes (behind the filing cabinet?), to give just one example. The result was effectively finalised in mid-December but Trump continued to lie to his supporters, falsely claiming he won and that there was a chance the result would be overturned. There never was, but the morons believed him and they probably still do. Read the statement from Twitter.

A Trump supporter was shot dead while storming a doorway, one officer has died after his skull was crushed with a fire extinguisher, another was body-slammed over some railings into a crowd, there's graphic footage of a bloodied officer screaming while being crushed Hillsborough-style. A noose was erected for Vice President Pence, who was in the building with his family. Etc., etc. In all five people died.

A majority of Americans now think Trump should be removed from office, and two thirds hold him responsible for the fatal insurrection.

It is unlikely the move to impeach will gain the necessary two-thirds Senate majority; its real purpose is to hold Trump accountable. Allowing a President to foment a deadly riot without facing any consequences would establish a really, really bad precedent….

Websters defines insurrection as an act or instance of revolting against civil authority or an established government. Violently vandalising the Capitol would seem to qualify.

Five people lost their lives. It was fatal.

Fomenting acts of insurrection is really not what presidents are elected to do. Some of us saw this coming.