Reuters: “India reported the world’s highest daily tally of coronavirus infections for a second day on Friday, surpassing 330,000 new cases, as it struggles with a health system overwhelmed by patients and plagued by accidents. Deaths in the past 24 hours also jumped to a record 2,263, the health ministry said, while officials across northern and western India, including the capital, New Delhi, warned most hospitals were full and running out of oxygen.”

“The surge in cases came as a fire in a hospital in a suburb of Mumbai treating COVID-19 patients killed 13 people, the latest accident to hit a facility crowded with virus sufferers. On Wednesday, 22 patients died at a public hospital in the western state of Maharashtra when their oxygen supply ran out due to a leaking tank, after at least nine more died in a hospital fire last month in the state’s capital of Mumbai. ‘It is grim. It is grave … there is an extreme shortage of ICU beds,’ T.S. Singh Deo, health minister of the eastern state of Chhattisgarh, told Reuters. ‘We’ll need to be very careful in the rural areas. If it spreads there, then it will be out of control.’ Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose government has been criticised for relaxing virus curbs too soon, met chief ministers of the worst-affected states, including the capital Delhi, Maharashtra and Modi’s home state of Gujarat, to discuss the crisis.”

On the same day Contra Costa County Sheriff Deputy Andrew Hall was charged with manslaughter and assault for shooting and killing an unarmed Filipino man during a slow speed pursuit last year, authorities released video of Hall shooting a Black man during a confrontation last month.

Yes, you read that right:  a deputy charged with manslaughter from a shooting last year was still armed and on patrol when he shot and killed another man last month.

Hall was charged with firing nine shots through the windshield of a vehicle driven, at low speed, by 33-year-old Laudemar Arboleda in an incident last year.  Hall jumped out of his police car as Arboleda navigated slowly toward an intersection with other police cars following him.  Hall then walked up to Arboleda’s vehicle and fired nine shots directly into the windshield of the vehicle. 

https://youtu.be/gfeOYJ22VcU

During a House committee hearing today on why the federal government needs to continue with billions of dollars in subsidies for fossil fuel companies–which have tens of billions of dollars in profits each year–New Mexico Republican Congresswoman Yvette Herrell said that without those subsidies, the American public wouldn’t have vital supplies like…. pantyhose.

WNBC: “Another New York man was arrested for his role in the siege at the U.S. Capitol back in January, after law enforcement learned that he talked about storming the Capitol on social media and a dating app, according to prosecutors. Robert Chapman, from the Putnam County town of Carmel, was arrested Thursday by the FBI in connection with the events of Jan. 6 in Washington, D.C., prosecutors said. He was charged with trespassing and disorderly conduct on restricted government property. The FBI was provided information regarding Chapman’s social media posts in the days following Jan. 6 in which he is pictured in Statuary Hall in the Capitol. He also told a woman he had matched with on the dating app Bumble that ‘I did storm the capitol’ and that he ‘made it all the way into Statuary Hall,’ court papers allege.”

“In addition to the Bumble communication, the FBI was informed about a Facebook post in which another person shared a photo of Chapman seemingly inside the Capitol, captioning it ‘My Dear friend and Brostar Robert made it in the Capitol building at the protest yesterday ….Woo Hooooooooo!!!!’ In the comments, a man with the username ‘Robert Erick’ – whom officials believe to be Chapman – wrote in response to others, ‘these are your peers? colleagues? they are a bunch of little bitch trolls. keyboard warriors who don’t do a fucking thing,’ according to court papers. In other posts from before and the day of the siege on the Capitol, that same public Facebook profile Robert Erick posted that he was leaving New York City, ‘the rotten apple. Gonna go down to the District of Criminality to Enjoy some much deserved entertainment.’ The following day, he posted that he was ‘INSIDE THE CRAPITOL!!!,’ posting photos posing inside the building. A review of bodycam footage from the Metropolitan Police Department also revealed video of Chapman in Statuary Hall. He was previously arrested in New York in 2017, according to the New York State Police Department; it was not immediately clear what he was charged with at that time, but state police were able to work with federal officials to identify Chapman.”

https://twitter.com/BloggingOtter/status/1385289318038712321

Seriously, just listen to this video. This guy is totally out of his fucking mind, and this is the guy that police departments are paying to give officer training seminars.

New Hampshire Union-Leader: “It’s a boy! An explosion that rattled homes within a 20-mile radius Tuesday night is being blamed on a gender reveal celebration at a Kingston quarry that police say involved more than a pound of Tannerite and blue chalk. Many residents in communities across southern New Hampshire and northern Massachusetts reported hearing the explosion just after 7 p.m. No injuries were reported in the quarry at Torromeo Industries on Dorre Road. Kingston Police Chief Donald Briggs Jr. said police are looking for those involved.”

“‘Obviously, depending on the amount (of explosives) they were using, it could be extremely dangerous,’ Briggs said Wednesday. Gender reveal party accidents – some deadly – have made headlines as they’ve grown in popularity among expectant parents over the past decade. Last year, a device from a gender reveal celebration sparked a massive wildfire in California that resulted in a firefighter’s death. In February, a New York man died after the device he was creating to reveal the gender of his baby exploded. His brother also was hurt. His death came two weeks after a man attending a gender reveal party in Michigan was killed when he was hit by shrapnel from a cannon. Two pilots died in March when their plane crashed into the Caribbean Sea during a stunt they were performing for a gender reveal. In Kingston, police found a container filled with chalk and Tannerite at the quarry. Blue powder covered the ground. Tannerite is a combination explosive used to make homemade targets. It is sold as two separate components that must be mixed by the user.”

Mike Pence, Donald Trump’s hand-picked choice to lead the federal government’s effort to address the coronavirus pandemic, took a nine day ski vacation to Vail, Colorado in December as the nation reached record daily case numbers.

According to the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), the jaunt cost American taxpayers more than three-quarters of a million dollars.  The $757,527.85 price tag paid for, among other things, 77 rental cars including those for 48 Secret Service agents, as well as $270,000 for rooms at the Marriott Vail Resort and $80,000 for room at the Four Seasons.

The report does not note who traveled with Pence, although Mother Pence was reported by news outlets as accompanying her husband.  Pence was the head of the White House Coronavirus Task Force.  The only notable action taken by the task force was to override the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and allow cruise ships to sail out of Florida starting in November.  There are no records of the task force meeting after Trump lost the November election.

Rantt Media: “The founder of the PAC operating the Women for Trump project has been fined by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) for failure to file quarterly reporting. Payment of the fine is delinquent and may be referred to the U.S. Department of Treasury for collection. Amy Kremer, treasurer and founder of Women Vote Smart, the PAC operating her Women for Trump project, has been assessed a fine in the amount of $6,541 for non-filing, according to a letter sent by the FEC to Kremer on February 18, 2021. Payment of the fine, which was due within 30 days of Kremer receiving the letter, has not been made. The FEC issued five warning letters for ‘Notice of Failure to File’ to Kremer in her capacity as treasurer of the Women Vote Smart PAC.”

“The first warning letter from the Commission was sent to Kremer in May last year, as Rantt Media first discovered. A spokesperson for the FEC confirmed to Rantt Media that they see no payment made from Kremer to remedy this fee: ‘When a committee pays an Administrative Fine, the case file is updated to reflect a payment made. For this case, I do not see the indication that a payment has been made… If a committee fails to pay a fine, the Commission may transfer the case to the U.S. Department of the Treasury for collection.'”

Russia has reportedly starting to draw down the amount of troops and equipment it had amassed along its border with Ukraine in an apparent attempt to ease tensions in the area, NBC News reports.

Over the past few weeks, Russia had moved troops, equipment, armor and aircraft to the area along the border with Ukraine, with Moscow saying they were there for military exercises.  Russia had also issued preliminary “overflight” warnings for commercial aircraft transiting the airspace.

The build-up, estimated to be 100,000 personnel, became so alarming that Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky made a broadcast to the citizens of Ukraine saying the nation was not seeking war, but they would “fight to the last man” to defend their country.

President Joe Biden and other Western nations were reportedly conducting behind-the-scenes talks to formulate a response of Russia increased aggression in the region.  They also undertook back-door diplomacy to warn Russian Vladimir Putin to stand-down Russian troops and to reassure Ukraine of support.

We pay Jim Jordan $174,000 a year to troll on social media and get himself on TV.

— Jeff Sites for Congress (@Sites4Congress) April 22, 2021

We know nothing about Jeff Sites except he’s running against that demented, spandex-wearing freak who calls himself a Congressman. That merits a full endorsement. Jeff Sites for Congress.

An astonishing 22.8 million Americans watched the reading of the guilty verdicts for former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in the murder of George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man on whose neck Chauvin kneeled for more than nine minutes, the Associated Press reports.

The size of the audience demonstrates the high level of attention the trial’s outcome drew across the country.  It ranks as the largest  audience for a non-sporting event in the last twelve months.  The only two non-sporting events in 2020 with larger audiences were the finale of The Masked Singer on February 2nd with 27.4 million viewers and The Oscars on February 9th with 24.3 million viewers.

According to Nielsen, CNN led the coverage more than four million viewers.  ABC, Fox News Channel, MSNBC, NBC and CBS all had at least 3 million people watching.  Even non-news station ESPN broadcast the verdicts live, although that viewership was not included in the available audience numbers.

With all GOP eyes toward appearances, Republicans have chosen the only Black member of their entire Senate caucus to deliver the response to President Joe Biden’s address to the joint session of Congress April 28th, CNN reports.

Tim Scott, one of three Black Republicans in all of Congress, was hand picked to deliver the national rebuttal, which given that Scott is one of the few Black Republicans in Congress, will likely greatly stress how the GOP thinks Black people should not like Joe Biden.

“Senator Tim Scott is not just one of the strongest leaders in our Senate Republican Conference. He is one of the most inspiring and unifying leaders in our nation,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a statement.

On Thursday morning, North Carolina deputies, tasked with serving a warrant on Andrew Brown, Jr., a 42-year-old Black man from Elizabeth City, shot at the car Brown was driving as Brown fled the scene, killing him, CBS News reports.

Witnesses report the car, being towed away from the scene, had its back window shot out and multiple gunshots apparent on it.  There is no information available on why the warrant was issued, but Brown had been arrested for non-violent drug possession crimes in the past.  He had one conviction for drug possession on his record.

A neighbor who witnesses the shooting reported that Brown was driving away from the scene and was not a threat to deputies as they continued to fire at his fleeing vehicle.  She said that Brown’s car veered and hit a tree.  When deputies opened the driver’s side door, Brown was slumped over the steering wheel. 

Politico reports that Ronna Romney McDaniel, the niece of Senator Mitt Romney and the chair of the Republican National Committee, is considering entering the primary race for the right to challenge Michigan’s Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

Meeting with about 140 people at an RNC closed-door meeting in Dallas this week, McDaniel appeared upset when she discussed her two children being unable to return to in-person education this year.  A resident of Michigan, McDaniel apparently blames Whitmer for the spread of the coronavirus, which happened under the administration of Donald Trump in the White House.

McDaniel said she’s considered running to oppose Whitmer, who has been the target of white nationalist right-wing extremists stoked by political rhetoric from Republicans.  While she heads the RNC, McDaniel has no experience in government affairs, has never worked for a government agency and has never held public elected office.

By a vote of 94-1, the United States Senate passed a bill designed to fight hate crimes against Asians and Asian-Americans, prompted by an increase in such crimes since the spread of the coronavirus, CBS News reports.  The one vote opposing passage came from Missouri Republican Josh Hawley.

The overwhelming bipartisan support (excluding Hawley) for the measure was a strong signal to the Asian-American/Pacific Islander (AAPI) community that the spate of attacks will be confronted by both local and federal law enforcement efforts, and makes the attackers subject to federal hate-crimes prosecutions.  The bill also establishes an office within the Justice Department which will concentrate on hate crimes against the AAPI community.

AAPI peoples have been targets since early in the coronavirus pandemic as ignorant, typically Trump-supporting, individuals blames Asians in the US for spreading the coronavirus.  Donald Trump himself stokes such animosity by referring to the coronavirus as “the China virus.”

Editor’s note:  I really didn’t want to do a story about this, not because Tucker Carlson isn’t a homophobe, but because we already know how morally reprehensible Carlson is, and a couple lines in a 30-year-old college yearbook doesn’t do more to prove his bigotry than his words on every night of his television program.  It’s like running a story about Trump defrauding a contractor while building a casino.  But the story is getting legs, so have at it, Zeroes.  [Video and yearbook photo appear after the fold].

Fox News host (and man who perpetually looks like he’s seeing his reflection in a mirror for the first time) Tucker Carlson boasted that he belonged to two college organizations honoring notoriously homophobic and racist people, images of his yearbook entry show.

Carlson, a 1991 graduate of Trinity College, a prissy “sub-Ivy” liberal arts college in Connecticut where he studied history after attending two boarding schools, wrote in his senior year yearbook profile that he was a member of the “Dan White Society” and the “Jesse Helms Foundation” on campus.

Unlikely to feel the gnat bite of a conservative boycott because it brews beers with flavor, Guinness Brewery is teaming up with Black community members in Maryland to create a series of craft brews that evoke signature flavors from Black culture, the Baltimore Sun reports.

At its Open Gate Brewery in the Baltimore suburb of Halethorpe, Maryland–its only brewhouse outside Ireland–Guinness has worked with amateur brewers, chefs and beer enthusiasts from the Black community to create brews with flavors and scents familiar to Black families.

“It actually does taste like a sweet potato pie,” said Courtney Holden, a Black beer enthusiast who helped create “See Us,” a brown ale infused with the flavors of sweet potato, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice and a whisper of vanilla. “It tastes like the hug from a aunt you haven’t seen in a long time.”

https://youtu.be/TQDMXtbgSSc

Along a party-line 216-208 vote, the House of Representatives passed HR 51, bill that would start the process of making the District of Columbia a state.