WHO IS DENVER RIGGLEMAN?

On 60 Minutes last night Bill Whitaker interviewed Denver Riggleman, who was a technical adviser for the House Select Committee investigating the 6January2021 attack on the Capitol. He was in charge of making sense of digital clues, and using more than 2,000 text messages provided to the committee by President Donald Trump's Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, he deciphered a roadmap to an attempted coup. Said Riggleman:

The "a-ha" moment for him came when his team discovered the White House switchboard connected a call to a Capitol rioter's phone on January 6, 2021.

Riggleman is not your ordinary staff member, for he served one term representing Virginia in the U.S. House, and is a Republican, or maybe today was.

He was a member of the House Freedom Caucus.
He lost his bid for re-election in 2020, even though he was endorsed by Trump.
Previously he served in the U.S. Air Force for 15 years, and was an intelligence officer.
While he has been called a Big Foot scholar, he said that no one is dumb enough to think this is real.
When he was in the House, he was the only member of the Republican party to speak on the floor against QAnon.
He thinks the Republican party in Virginia is broken.

With all that background and baggage, he was hired on 6August2021 to serve as a senior staffer for the House January 6 committee. He left that position in April of 2022 to help the people of Ukraine in their war against Russia.

He was interviewed by CNN's Anderson Cooper on 2June2022, and was criticized for discussing the work of this House special committee. Notwithstanding, he went on 60 Minutes with what Riggleman said was irrefutable proof of a plot to overturn the November 2020 presidential election. Not sure why this second appearance has made such an impact, for he essentially said the same thing nearly four months ago. Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was intimately involved in these text messages. One line of fear was that the Supreme Court was thus also a partner in the coup. In short, Riggleman's initial bemusement about what was happening turned to horror.

In any case, the Select Committee staff since the departure of Riggleman ran down more leads, and this whole story will be presented at Noon EDT on Wednesday. Ginni Thomas will not be interviewed for this hearing, but that link will in time be an important part of the attempt. She was in the crowd surrounding the Capitol on January 6, but left before the attack. The Committee has email correspondence involving G. Thomas with Donald Trump, John Eastman and Mark Meadows in the planning and promotion of that event.

Well, Ian is finally a hurricane, and will rapidly intensify into a Category 3, strike western Cuba early Tuesday morning, strengthen further to a Category 4, and weaken a bit to now strike the Florida panhandle.

However, for the past week I've been hinting that there could be a fork in the road as shown here:

However, at this time there is no hint of a leftish turn towards New Orleans. Ian is a large storm, with a diameter of around 500 miles.

HONOLULU TO SEATTLE

The story of the day is Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4 at 145 MPH, with a track that has moved further south and the eye projected to make landfall just south of Sarasota. Good news for Tampa, which is 73 miles north. Milton will crash into Florida as a Category 4, and is huge, so a lot of problems can still be expected in Tampa Bay with storm surge. If the eye had crossed into the state just north of Tampa, the damage would have been catastrophic. Milton is a fast-moving storm, currently at 17 MPH, so as bad as the rainfall will be over Florida, again, a blessing. The eye will make landfall around 10PM EDT today, and will move into the Atlantic Ocean north of Palm Bay Thursday morning. My first trip to Seattle was in June of 1962 just after I graduated from Stanford University. Caught a bus. Was called the Century 21 Exposition . Also the Seattle World's Fair. 10 million joined me on a six-month run. My first. These a...

OSAKA EXPO: Day One

Well, the day finally came for us to go to the Osaka Expo. We were told ahead of time that the long walks would be fearful, giant lines will need to be tolerated just to get into the Expo, with those ocean breezes, it would really be cold, and so forth. Maybe it was pure luck, but we avoided all the above warnings We had a grand day, and are looking forward to Sunday, our second day at the Expo. So come along for an enjoyable ride. Our hotel is adjacent to the Tennoji Station, a very large one with several lines. We upgraded our Suica card and caught the Misosuji red line towards Umeda. Transferred to the Chuo green line at the Hommachi Station. This Osaka Metro train took us to the Yumeshima Station at the Expo site. It was a very large mob leaving the train and heading to the entrance. Took only a few minutes to get to the entrance. This mob was multiplied by at least a factor of ten of those already waiting to enter. However...

WHY YOU SHOULD CONVERT TO A JAPANESE HIGH TECH TOILET

Did you know that Oktoberfest in Germany is mostly in September? The very first day of Oktoberfest 2021 was supposed to be today, September 18, extending into October 3. Well, as in 2020, Oktoberfest was cancelled. So why is it called by that month when it is held mostly in September? The first celebration in 1810 was in October. Did you also know that Oktoberfest is held only in Munich? These days seven million drink more than a liter ( about three typical cans ) of beer each, costing around $11. Except for my wife and I when we followed the crowd to board the S-Bahn to the fairgrounds near Old Town. It was drizzling a bit. We bought a large pretzel outside of a typical barn where beer is served. We did not know that you needed to get this inside the hall. So no one came to serve us beer. After a while we decided to have lunch, and the restaurant we settled on only served wine. Thus, we might have been the ...

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