https://youtu.be/O67fmgACCh0

Leading the crowd at a rally for L. Lin Wood’s campaign to be chair of the South Carolina Republican Party–because what Republican doesn’t want a paranoid grifter who believes in multiple debunked conspiracy theories leading the cause–disgraced former general Mike Flynn attempted to lead the crowd in the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag, but forgot the words.

“I pledge allegiance to the flag,” Flynn recited, “of the United States of America, indivisible…” before fading into silence.  The people who frequently carry Confederate flags at their rallies apparently knew it better than Flynn.

Flynn, however, had no problem reciting the QAnon loyalty oath, if you recall.

NBC News projects two Republicans will take the top spots in the “jungle” primary for an open seat in the US House of Representative, with Susan Wright seeking to retain the seat her husband was elected to before dying of the coronavirus before taking office.

While Democrat Jana Lynne Sanchez was battling Republican state legislator Jake Ellzey for the second position, NBC News projects Ellzey’s lead is insurmountable for Sanchez, putting two Republicans in the top spots for the Texas 6th Congressional District.

Democrats had an uphill struggle to pick up the seat, given that Republicans have held the seat since 1983.

I’m glad you posted a selfie.
Pathetic you walk around in that state everyday.
It’s probably because your head is so big from all the praise and donations you get from Dems and Democrat activists in the media.
You and I only see eye to eye when you are standing in front of me. https://t.co/wKI3Ov3gGC

— Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸 (@mtgreenee) May 2, 2021

TMZ: “Ben Crump, attorney for George Floyd’s family, says Derek Chauvin has no chance to successfully appeal his guilty verdict… and it’s all because of what at least one juror is saying about the murder trial. Crump tells TMZ… Juror #52, Brandon Mitchell, shed a lot of light on the Chauvin deliberations and, in the process, ‘completely obliterates’ any argument the defense is planning to make about outside public opinions swaying the jury. You’ll recall, Chauvin’s defense attorney, Eric Nelson, asked Judge Cahill for a mistrial because Rep. Maxine Waters had encouraged folks to ‘get more confrontational’ while protesting if Chauvin wasn’t found guilty.”

“Nelson felt that her remarks might pressure the jury to return a guilty verdict, but Judge Cahill wouldn’t bite – and now, Crump says Brandon confirms that didn’t happen. He told Gayle King this week… he and his fellow jurors felt no outside pressure to reach a guilty verdict, and reached their decision based on the facts presented in court. Crump says Brandon’s comments will play a big factor when and if an appeal is filed.”

“With Republicans hungry to cultivate their next generation of national leaders, it is not a Capitol Hill comer or a veteran battleground-state politician who is stirring interest by fusing Trumpism with a down-home conservatism spin. It is the first-term governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem, a rancher who delights in sharing images of herself shooting pheasants and riding horses. Ms. Noem began drawing wider attention last year for cozying up to President Donald J. Trump – so much so that she inspired suspicion that she was angling to replace Mike Pence on the 2020 ticket – and hosting him at a July 4 Mount Rushmore event where she gave him a model of the monument with his face included. Her defiance of coronavirus restrictions and her eagerness to project a rugged Great Plainswoman image helped her come in second in a 2024 straw poll of far-right conservatives looking for candidates if Mr. Trump doesn’t run again.”

“But her approach to politics has sometimes made for rocky relations with her base. Late last month, she got herself into a showdown with the Republican-controlled State Legislature over her veto of a bill barring transgender girls from school sports. And as some party leaders were pressing her to resolve that fight, she prompted eye-rolling at home by inserting herself in an unrelated skirmish – over Lil Nas X’s ‘Satan Shoes.’ ‘We are in a fight for the soul of our nation,’ she wrote on Twitter, picking a fight with the rapper over his endorsement of $1,000 sneakers featuring a pentagram and, ostensibly, a drop of blood. If Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is widely seen as the brash heir apparent to Mr. Trump, and senators like Josh Hawley and Tom Cotton are attempting to put a more ideological frame on Trumpism, Ms. Noem is trying to cement her place as the only female Trump ally echoing the former president’s trigger-the-left approach among the upper tiers of potential 2024 candidates” – New York Times.

AZGOP Chairwoman @kellliwardaz gives a quick weekend update on the forensic audit: What got us here and what's to come. #FinishTheAudit #ElectionIntegrity pic.twitter.com/JDEVdm9YxV

— Republican Party of Arizona (@AZGOP) May 2, 2021

“Fury over aborted plans for a European soccer Super League boiled over on Sunday when protestors broke into Manchester United’s home stadium, Old Trafford, just hours before the team was due to face Liverpool in the English Premier League. The afternoon had begun with thousands of fans gathering outside – as other supporters had done recently at Arsenal, Liverpool, Chelsea and Tottenham – but took a chaotic turn as several hundred broke through security and barriers and reached the Old Trafford pitch. The target of their anger was the club’s owners, the Florida-based Glazer family, which had signed up Manchester United last month to join a breakaway Super League of elite clubs that fans saw as nothing more than a power play by greedy billionaires. Though the project collapsed in just 48 hours, the fiasco has re-ignited 16 years of animosity directed at the United owners” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“Hundreds of fans appeared to break into Old Trafford with little resistance as they overwhelmed the security contingent a little more than two hours before the scheduled 4:30 p.m. match. Fans have not been allowed at Premier League matches this season because of the pandemic, and security on the scene appeared to be light. The protestors quickly reached the playing field inside the 76,000-seat stadium, where they set off flares and chanted for the Glazer family to sell off the club. One person could be seen making off with a corner flag. ‘Love United, Hate Glazer,’ read one popular sign among the protestors. ‘Apology not accepted,’ read another.”

Washington Post: “Nearly six months after Trump lost to Biden, rejection of the 2020 election results – dubbed the ‘Big Lie’ by many Democrats – has increasingly become an unofficial litmus test for acceptance in the Republican Party. In January, 147 GOP lawmakers – eight senators and 139 House members – voted in support of objections to the election results, and since then, Republicans from Congress to statehouses to local party organizations have fervently embraced the falsehood. In Washington, normally chatty senators scramble to skirt the question, and internal feuding over who is to blame for the Jan. 6 insurrection has riven the House Republican leadership, with tensions between House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the No. 3 House Republican, spilling into public view. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) is facing a Trump-aligned primary challenger in her 2022 race, inspired by her call for Trump to resign after the Jan. 6 attack and her later vote to convict him over his role in inciting the insurrection.”

“Local officials, too, are facing censure and threats – in states from Iowa to Michigan to Missouri – for publicly accepting the election results. And in Arizona’s largest county, a hand recount of 2.1 million votes cast in November is underway by Republicans who dispute the results, in yet another effort to overturn the results of the November contest. The issue also could reverberate through the 2022 midterms and the 2024 election, with Trump already slamming Republicans who did not resist the election results. For Republicans, fealty to the falsehood could pull the party further to the right during the primaries, providing challenges during the general election when wooing more moderate voters is crucial. And for Democrats, the continued existence of the claim threatens to undermine Biden’s agenda. ‘It is not just about the Donald Trump persona,’ said Jennifer Palmieri, who served as White House communications director under President Barack Obama. ‘Trump is also a proxy in a culture war that’s about whose side are you on, and the people that buy into QAnon and other conspiracy theories are always looking for ways to discern whose side you’re really on.'”

“President Joe Biden completes his first hundred days in office with a country that is more optimistic about the coming year, according to a new ABC News/Ipsos poll. Nearly two-thirds of Americans (64%) are optimistic about the direction of the country in the poll, which was conducted by Ipsos in partnership with ABC News using Ipsos’ KnowledgePanel.”

“The last time the country came close to that level of optimism about the coming year was in December 2006, when 61% said they were optimistic about where the country was headed, according to previous ABC News/Washington Post polls. Shortly before the 2016 election catapulted Donald Trump to the Oval Office, only 42% of Americans were optimistic about the future, compared to 52% who were pessimistic. But there are some warning lights flashing for the White House. Biden is betting on a lofty agenda to maintain momentum and set up Democrats for success in next year’s midterms, while the GOP is hoping that voters perceive an overreach and the president’s policies become an electoral anchor” – ABC News.

Politico: “Lin Wood played a starring role in Georgia’s GOP civil war after the 2020 elections. Now the pro-Trump lawyer is taking his roadshow to South Carolina, where he’s campaigning as a ‘chaos’ candidate to lead the state Republican Party. Wood, who transformed from a top Atlanta trial lawyer to a leading election conspiracy theorist in November, moved to South Carolina in February. Then the firebrand lawyer shocked the political establishment in one of the GOP’s most important state parties by mounting an unexpectedly strong challenge to the incumbent chairman, Drew McKissick. The outcome has out-sized implications because of South Carolina’s role in GOP presidential primaries – the state hosts the first primary in the South, and almost always votes for the eventual Republican nominee. It’s emblematic of broader divisions between longtime GOP members and those brought into the Republican fold by Donald Trump, who remains the party’s center of gravity.”

“Trump has already endorsed McKissick, who went so far as to cancel the 2020 presidential primary in the state when the president ran for reelection. But in Wood’s telling, it was he who carried the true Trump mantle by fighting to overturn election results in Georgia while McKissick did too little to add his voice to the ‘Stop the Steal’ movement. An adherent of the QAnon conspiracy theory, Wood contends Trump won the election in a landslide and is still president. Speaking without notes in a style that blends the skills of a preacher and an accomplished trial lawyer, Wood – who first gained fame as the attorney for the family of JonBenét Ramsey and also for Richard Jewell, who was wrongly accused of the Atlanta Olympics bombing – has built a candidacy around his support of Trump, whom Wood said he supported in 2016 because he thought chaos was good for the country. ‘We need some chaos in the Republican Party in South Carolina. Somebody needs to shake it up,’ Wood said Tuesday in the city of Aiken to applause and laughter. ‘So here I am, Mr. Shaker.'”

https://youtu.be/cszJqu6kQpw

Even though Fox News itself has distanced itself from the conservative talking point that President Joe Biden’s proposed policies would not ban the production or consumption of beef, Fox News host Jeanine Pirro apparently never got the memo.

Doctors in India are warning of new variants of the coronavirus that are springing up around the country, saying that they could “possibly evade immune response” from natural antibodies or vaccines, Reuters reports.

India has experienced a sudden and serious surge of new coronavirus infection, which scientists investigating whether a new variant dubbed b.1.617 being the cause of the rapid spread.  At this point, the World Health Organization has not labeled the so-called “Indian variant” a “variant of concern,” meaning that it hasn’t yet been proven to spread more quickly or cause more severe symptoms.  However, the WHO has modeled the spread of the virus adaptation and determined that it could potentially spread at a higher rate than the New York, British, Brazilian or South African variants.

“We are seeing some mutation coming up in some samples that could possibly evade immune responses,” said Shahid Jameel, chair of the scientific advisory group of INSACOG and a top Indian virologist.  “Unless you culture those viruses and test them in the lab, you can’t say for sure. At this point, there is no reason to believe that they are expanding or if they can be dangerous, but we flagged it so that we keep our eye on the ball.”

“Saturday is election day in the special election to replace the late U.S. Rep. Ron Wright, R-Arlington. The polls closed at 7 p.m. Central time,” the Texas Tribune reports. “Twenty-three candidates are on the ballot, meaning a runoff is highly likely. As long as no one receives a majority of the vote, the top two candidates will face off in a runoff for the seat. Two big questions loom in the race: Will any Democrats make the runoff in the longtime GOP-held seat? And what impact will Donald Trump’s late endorsement have?”

https://youtu.be/2ZIj2WpLj94

Senator Ted Cruz (R-Quintana Roo), a noted snoozer during Congressional addresses by the President, claimed on Fox News that corporate “wokeness”–businesses supporting voting rights and racial justice issues–are ruining the United States.

On the corporate-owned cable news network, Cruz claimed that it’s particularly a problem with “corporate media or big business,” a former benefactor of GOP largess.

The seaweed farmers of Maine are expecting a record harvest this spring as the first few months of the year have yielded more prosperous crops, a product that has come into vogue as people started to eat healthier during the coronavirus pandemic, ABC News reports.

“We’re looking at somewhere between 800,000 and 850,000 pounds of kelp. It’s a lot,” said Jesse Baines, marketing director for Atlantic Sea Farms. “Every once in a while we shake our heads and say — this is a lot.”

Kelp is used in everything from smoothie mixes to seaweed salads.  When dried, it’s used as a wrap for sushi.  Harvesting seaweed is in the North Atlantic is done in the first half of the year.  Baines said his company is prepared to process every bit collected this year, and the company is trying to develop a seaweed that can be harvested year-round.

“After weeks of tension over a build-up of Russian troops close to Ukraine’s border, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu has ordered a number of units in the area back to their bases,” the BBC reports.  “The EU estimated that more than 100,000 Russian soldiers had amassed near the border as well as in Crimea, which was seized and annexed by Russia in 2014. Speaking in Crimea, Mr Shoigu said units on exercise would return to base. The aims of the “snap checks” had been achieved, he added. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who earlier challenged Russian President Vladimir Putin to meet him in the conflict zone, welcomed the decision to “de-escalate” tensions at the border.”

Saying that former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin exhibited “particular cruelty” in his murder of George Floyd, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison submitted a recommendation to the court asking for the harshest available sentence for Chauvin.

The Washington Post reports that Ellison submitted a 26-page brief to the Hennepin County court pushing for a long sentence for Chauvin, who was convicted of murder and homicide charges by a jury after kneeling on Floyd’s back and neck for more than nine minutes.

https://youtu.be/h3Y38Vu2svM

“… at the bullshit factory also known as Fox News …”

President Biden and other Democratic leaders are signalling that they’re willing to negotiate specifics of $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan, providing for concessions or breaking the entire package into smaller bills, the Washington Post reports.

The Administration and Congressional Democrats hope that their openness to discussions will attract the support of Congressional Republicans, which would allow Biden to demonstrate is willingness to work with members from the other side of the aisle.  Republicans in the Senate have presented a counter proposal costing about one-quarter the Biden plan.

A bipartisan group of Senators have been meeting to discuss possible compromise measures, adopting the mantra “slow, steady and piecemeal” to demonstrate their willingness to work together. 

“In the past year, have you found yourself under stress? Have you ever wished for help coping? Imagine if, throughout the pandemic, you’d had a virtual therapist powered by an artificial intelligence (AI) system, an entity that empathized with you and gradually got to know your moods and behaviors. Therapy is just one area where we think an AI system that can recognize and interpret emotions could offer great benefits to people,” reports IEEE Spectrum.

A team from Microsoft’s Human Understanding and Empathy group is working to incorporate emotional intelligence into Artificial Intelligence software. Why? With emotional intelligence, our future robot overlords will be better able to tell when a human is on the verge of physical collapse, or may be preparing to attack his robot keepers. “The effort to produce emotionally intelligent AI builds on work in psychology, neuroscience, human-computer interaction, linguistics, electrical engineering, and machine learning.”