3 G

Guilty, Guilty, Guilty:  A Minnesota jury found former police officer Derek Chauvin guilty on all counts for the killing of George Floyd.  The verdicts are significant and precedent setting, but among the things that remain haunting are:  that absent the cell phone video provided by a young witness the initial intentionally innocuous police statement that “a man died after a medical incident during police interaction” would have stood leaving Chauvin on the job; that so many, especially people of color, were convinced that Chauvin would walk or at most be found guilty of only the least serious charge despite all the damning evidence presented in court; that Daunte Wright, the motorist who was “accidentally” shot to death rather than “just” tasered over a minor traffic infraction last week by another Minneapolis area policeperson hasn’t even been buried yet; that others continue to die and get hurt in similar circumstances; and that despite the verdicts George Floyd will forever be dead over a suspicious $20 bill.  In lieu of doing anything productive while the jury was deliberating, GOP leadership spent their time railing against and trying to sanction outspoken California Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters for her weekend remark that racial justice demonstrators should “get more confrontational” in the event that the jury were to find Chauvin not guilty of all or some of the charges against him.  Count me among those who believe Waters’ remarks were inflammatory and inappropriate, but it’s not like Congressional Republicans have any moral standing especially since they still enthusiastically pray to that king of unfortunate utterances, the Former Guy; the majority of them refused to validate the presidential election results right after January’s insurrection; they wink at Margie Q and Louis Gomer’s white supremacy antics; think Colorado gun nut Lauren Boebert’s use of weapons of mass killing as her Zoom background is just fine; and remain largely silent about those inconvenient allegations against Panhandle Putz Matt Gaetz.  The party, that former President George W Bush called "isolationist, protectionist and, to a certain extent, nativist” yesterday needs to get its own house before taking on Waters.  By the way, that vote to sanction Waters was ultimately blocked by a vote along party lines.  Waters didn’t apologize for her remarks but did express regret for putting her colleagues in the position of having to defend her at their own peril and by peril she’s talking the fight to hold the House in the 2022 midterms because even if, or maybe because, Kevin McCarthy and his band of GQP misfits continue to follow the nativist handbook, their odds of taking back the House remain frighteningly high given all those voter suppression bills passing through state legislators and the specter of even more gerrymandered redistricting.     

Viral News: Though the Former Guy continues to talk about his great affinity for Putin while teasing that he’ll be running again, things Russian continue to deteriorate.  Our Ambassador is on his way home for consultations but probably really because the Russians “suggested” he should leave, Vlad is having dissidents rounded up, a warning to protestors that taking to the streets will have consequences, political opponent Alexei Navalny is reportedly close to death and way too many Russian forces are poised on the Ukrainian border.  On the coronavirus front, in the US everyone 16 and over can now get a vaccine subject to appointment availability but as hard as it is to believe for those who spent sleepless nights in front of their computer screens hitting the refresh button to get one of those once almost impossible to obtain shot slots, there are now too many pockets of the country where appointment slots remain unfilled due to a combination of shot wariness, logistical impediments and outright anti-vax attitudes helped along by anti vaxxers like one time feminist heroine/current conspiracy theorist Naomi Wolf among others. Overseas, India where somewhere in the neighborhood of 270,000 new COVID cases, up from 11,000, are now being diagnosed daily is experiencing an unprecedented COVID wave.  That’s tragic for India and for the rest of us, because people are dying and the virus and its variants know no boundaries. While we’re still waiting for the FDA and CDC to unpause J & J’s one shot vaccine, something they are expected to do on Friday, the European Union’s drug regulator said that the shot is good to go with a warning of potential rare side effects since its benefits outweigh its risks.

564,813

270,030,795 doses distributed

213,388,238 shots in arms