Today is Veterans Day, and with so much going on in the news, it would be tragic for it to be overshadowed or overlooked. Today is about something far more important than politics. It’s about the men and women who make it possible for us to enjoy the freedom of having elections and the Constitutional right to protest and seek redress when we think our government isn’t doing right by us.

Memorial Day in May is to honor veterans who gave their lives in defense of America. But Veterans Day is to honor all veterans, living or dead, past and present.

It began as Armistice Day, declared by President Woodrow Wilson in 1919, to commemorate the end of World War I. In 1945, World War II veteran Raymond Weeks of Birmingham, Alabama, began a personal crusade to expand Armistice Day into a state holiday honoring all veterans. In 1953, an Emporia, Kansas, shoe store owner named Al King launched a campaign to make it a national holiday. Just one year later, in 1954, he succeeded. It helped that the President was a retired army general from Kansas named Dwight Eisenhower.

Not only is today Veterans Day, but yesterday was the 247th birthday of the United States Marine Corps. It commemorates the day in 1775 when the Second Continental Congress established the Continental Marines to serve in the war against Great Britain. After the Revolutionary War ended, the Marines were disestablished for a time until President John Adams reestablished the Marines as we know the Corps now, on July 11, 1789. But November 10th, 1775, is still considered the birth of the US Marines.

So if you see someone in uniform, this is a great day to say “Thank you” for protecting America’s freedom. Then again, any day is a great day to do that.

At this writing, the announced total for Republicans winning congressional seats is 211, compared to Democrats’ 198. We need 218 to take the majority, and it looks as though we’re finally headed for the home stretch.

If (when!) we cross that line, one of the best things about this for the country, aside from our taking control of the purse strings, will be the disbanding of current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s January 6^th Kangaroo Kommittee and their phony-baloney “investigation.” This was never a serious attempt to find out what went wrong that day. It was contrived as a way to wound Trump so seriously that he couldn’t run again, and also to tar conservatives –- yes, those of us who didn’t even attend the rally, let alone riot –- as threats to (here it comes) “our democracy.”

We know now that the Democrats had a stake in ensuring that Trump’s rally spun out of control –- the "insurrection" was essential to their whole political strategy –- and so were deeply involved behind the scenes, seemingly to facilitate this, with ridiculously lax security and much more. No, that’s not in any way to excuse Trump supporters who allowed themselves to be swept up in violent behavior, whether from their own leaders or outside forces. And, no, this discussion is not conspiracy theory; there’s quite a lot of evidence to fuel suspicions against the FBI. In fact, even THE NEW YORK TIMES went with a story that acknowledges the FBI’s months-long infiltration of the Oath Keepers, though their editors chose to run on Election Day (of all days), while we were busy voting and/or watching states like Arizona not count ballots. The surprising headline: “Informant Likely to Testify as Defense Witness in Oath Keepers Sedition Trial.”

Federal prosecutors, curiously, rested their case the previous week without calling McWhirter. They also didn’t call any of the other cooperating witnesses, including three members of Oath Keepers who have pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy charges. Maybe they thought that, this being a jury trial in a Washington DC courtroom, they don’t have to put on much of a case. Recall that Michael Sussmann’s attorneys rested without putting on a defense for him at all, and he walked. What do these cases have in common? DC jury.

But now, like something out of a movie, the tables are turned, and McWhirter is actually a defense witness. As the NYT reported, “Mr. McWhirter, 40 and a former sheriff’s deputy in Montana, was expected to appear at the trial on Tuesday as a witness for Mr. Rhodes –- an unusual move that suggests Mr. Rhodes’ lawyers believe he has information that could help their case.”

Unfortunately, McWhirter wasn’t able to testify that day. According to his lawyers, he had to be taken off his flight to Washington because he’d had a heart attack. The attorneys still want him to testify, but it wasn’t known at press time for the NYT story what his condition was or when he might be able to do that. Presiding Judge Amit P. Mehta said it might be possible for him to testify remotely by video.

A former member of Oath Keepers did testify for the prosecution. Abdullah Rasheed, a Marine Corps vet from West Virginia, said that two days after the 2020 election was called for Biden, Rhodes had held a video meeting with other members to talk about bringing weapons to the “Stop The Steal” rally and encouraging others to “fight.” He testified that he was so disturbed by this that he recorded the conversation and contacted the FBI. He said it “sounded like we were going to war with the United States government.”

This must be the basis for the charge of seditious conspiracy. But did they actually take and use weapons, or just get fired up and discuss it on their call? Clips of the recording were played for the jury, and Rhodes did say some pretty wild things, such as (I’m giving you the NYT paraphrase here) that he’d welcome violence by antifa groups because that would give President Trump an excuse to invoke the Insurrection Act and call on militias like his own to quell the chaos.

(Aside: when I hear that “clips” of the recording were played, I’m put in mind of the selectively-edited video “evidence” they played in Pelosi’s sham J6 hearings. They should have played the whole thing.)

So, how eager was the FBI to get information from Rasheed and try to head off any violence by Oath Keepers? Not very, it seems. They didn’t get back in touch with him until March 2021, two months AFTER the riot. Rasheed also tried to warn other law enforcement agencies such as the Capitol Police, writing to them that Rhodes was “a friggin’ wacko that the Oath Keepers would be better without.”

Did the Capitol Police follow up with him? Reading between the lines of the NYT story, apparently not.

This is their earlier account of testimony for the prosecution.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/06/us/politics/oath-keepers-jan-6-trial.html

And here’s the update that dropped this week on Election Day.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/08/us/politics/oath-keepers-trial-january-6.html

Rhodes himself testified on Monday, saying that even though members of Oath Keepers entered the Capitol, he hadn’t given an order to. He also said he had nothing to do with an armed “quick reaction force” that was set up in a Virginia hotel room.

This story was mostly ignored on Election Day, but J6 investigator Julie Kelly has been paying rapt attention to the coverage of the trial. In a series of tweets, she said, “While everyone fixated on election, NYT reports on existence of high-level “Oath Keeper” who actually was an FBI informant months before Jan. 6. The informant served as the Oath Keepers’ vice president but was secretly reporting to the FBI about the group’s activities in the weeks and months leading up to the Capitol attack. At least 5 informants involved in Oath Keepers. DOJ wanted info on those assets kept from jury.”

(And from us, I assume.)

Kelly added, “I am a broken record on this score: Nearly everything on Jan. 6 can be traced to Whitmer fednapping. You know who else was #2 in the imaginary “militia” group in Whitmer cape? The lead informant, Dan Chappel. See a pattern?”

https://twitchy.com/samj-3930/2022/11/10/julie-kelly-shares-j6-bombshell-we-all-missed-while-watching-the-election-how-conveeenient/

Nick Arama at REDSTATE has more, including information that sheds light on FBI infiltration of the Proud Boys. And he asks the very questions about the FBI that we’ve been asking.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/11/10/bombshell-about-those-fbi-informants-concerning-jan-6-n657255

We don’t put anything past the FBI any more. And that brings us full circle to my original point: that control of Congress will finally allow us to have REAL hearings, to ask the right questions and finally nail down what really happened to advance the January 6 riot. I wouldn’t be surprised by anything we find out.