We Remember

Congressman Clyde's Congressional Tours!

Before we roll tape, a little note, and I direct this to the Repugs.  And by "Repugs", I don't mean fair, reasonable, decent, salt-of-the-earth conservatives, of which group I know and respect a fair number.  I'm talking about the ones who are racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, classist or anti-Semitic.  The ones who see the world changing (finally!) and are railing in fear and rage because they think they're being muscled out or losing something.  The ones who are Q or Q Adjacent, falling for Facebook trolls, personality politics and/or The Big Lie.  You know what?  Y'all just dug yourselves a hole.  Y'all just took a collective selfie and showed it to the rest of us saying, "This is who we are, and we're loud and proud!"  

Yeah, we see you.  And hear you.  And believe you the first time.  And when you say you don't want a commission to investigate the events of 1/6/20, we get you.  And since we know there were commissions to investigate the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the assassination of JFK, 9/11, etc., we know what your not wanting one for the events at the Capitol means.  You know your own are responsible.  That's right.  Because if y'all really thought Antifa or BLM were behind the awful events of that day, your @$$e$ wouldn't be able to pony up fast enough to create a commission to investigate every nook and cranny, would they?  Damn skippy.

11 years ago, I wrote a post on my other blog, Soup 2 Nutz where I talked about some common mistakes that I feel many of us make in regards to the care and feeding of our republic.  Many are still making them.  Will we get a clue in time?

Roll tape:

More Saturday Cartoons

 

Mind In The Machine

In our previous post, Prescient, Melissa Pedersen and I complained about the lack of critical thinking, the dumbing down of our society, and the damage we believe the rise of social media has done to our culture.  Here is an article that explains how to regain our critical thinking skills, and I think it's so important, I have reproduced it here:

Bobby Azarian Ph.D.

Mind In The Machine

To Fight Misinformation, We Must Think Like Scientists

Logical reasoning and theory testing can protect against fake news.

Posted December 31, 2020 |  Reviewed by Devon Frye

Fake news is running rampant, but blaming social media sites like Facebook for not filtering it out doesn’t address the larger issue at hand. Bogus news isn’t the real problem, because that's always going to be out there. The problem is that we undervalue the type of critical thinking needed to spot it. We shouldn’t expect a social media site to tell us what is and is not real. We are bombarded with nonsense on a daily basis, and navigating through it is a life skill we must learn. We can’t expect others to do it for us.

A lack of critical thinking and skepticism creates problems beyond politics. It makes us vulnerable to scams and pyramid schemes as well as phony products like weight-loss drugs and “miracle cures” that are really only as effective as placebos. It leads us to ignore existential threats like global warming and perpetuates harmful conspiracy theories such as the idea that vaccines cause autism.

If there’s overwhelming evidence for something and you don’t believe it, you aren’t being a skeptic; you are living in denial. Being skeptical means demanding evidence, not ignoring it.

In this new age of social media, our news is no longer being filtered through major media outlets that (ideally) have teams of meticulous and principled fact-checkers. As a result, empiricism is more important than ever. We all must be trained to navigate through false information, and we can do that by thinking like scientists.

We must be empiricists, not ideologues.

Our ideologies can blind us and bias our behavior. For that reason, we should all be empiricists, not ideologues. Empiricists form their beliefs and opinions about the world based on facts and observation; ideologues, by definition, are uncompromising, dogmatic, and committed to specific principles. They are therefore unlikely to change their views based on new evidence. By self-identifying first and foremost as empiricists, we commit ourselves to a worldview that is shaped by reality.

Unfortunately, we often don’t feel compelled to check the accuracy of something that already aligns with our ideals and worldview. This is bad practice. We must continue to demand evidence—even when the claims in question come from the side that shares our beliefs and values.

A recent Buzzfeed News analysis of Facebook activity found that while 38 percent of news shared on popular right-leaning Facebook pages was false, so was 19 percent of the news shared on popular liberal Facebook pages. Given that liberals have also been known to peddle pseudoscience and ignore facts, as can be seen by the anti-vaxxer movement and the success of homeopathic remedies, this should be no surprise.

But how do we all become empiricists without training? Scientists and researchers are trained to sniff out untruths, but you don’t need to be a scientist to do what scientists do.

We must create tests.

When scientists want to understand how reality works, they devise experiments to test their questions. If they want to know if a specific treatment works—for example, if a certain diet makes people healthier, or if a particular medicine is effective—they design a study that will determine whether or not a hypothesis is true. If the hypothesis is supported, it becomes the reigning explanation while it continues to be tested further. This is an ongoing process that should continue until almost no uncertainty remains.

Derren Brown, a famous British magician and mentalist (think David Blaine, but more focused on mental tricks) is an expert at appearing to have psychic abilities. He is also a skeptic who exposes those who try to claim they have them for real. In an interview with prominent evolutionary biologist and outspoken skeptic Richard Dawkins, Brown describes a simple test that he has suggested to non-empiricists in the past.

“I think it feels unfashionable to talk to people about the importance of evidence, of testing things,” Derren said to Dawkins. “A friend of mine, who’s a psychic, told me she puts crystals in her plants and they grow better. So I said, well you’ve got loads of plants—have you ever put two in the same window? Maybe just put crystals in one and not the other?”

This anecdote illustrates just how easy it can be to start testing your beliefs.

It is also important to teach children to demand evidence and think critically from an early age. A few months ago on "The Late Late Show with James Corden," astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson told a wonderful story about the way he and his wife gave their child a lesson in critical thinking.

After their daughter lost a tooth, they told her that they heard if you put a tooth under your pillow, the tooth fairy visits. That night the little girl did just that, and Tyson swapped the tooth for money while she slept. The next morning, after their daughter had shown them her gift, they asked her a question that prompted her to think skeptically. “How do you know it was the tooth fairy?” they asked, to which the daughter replied, “Oh no, I don’t know, I just know that there’s money here.”

With her curiosity stirred, their daughter began setting traps for the fairy—for example, foil on the floor to hear when it arrived—and when those didn’t work, she and her equally suspicious schoolmates thought of a test. The next one to lose a tooth would put it under their pillow—without telling their parents.

The next day, when the tooth did not turn into money, the children worked out that their parents were the perpetrators of the hoax. This doesn’t mean that you should crush all the magical beliefs that children have—it only means that you should teach them to question. As adults, we must do the same to set a good example. When something sounds outlandish or simply incredible, we must investigate. Without conducting our tests in controlled settings, it can be difficult to make any definite conclusions. But these steps will still likely help us identify many bogus claims without stepping foot inside a lab.

We must encourage others to be empiricists.

It is often said that we should let people believe whatever they want as long as they aren’t hurting others. “Ignorance is bliss,” as some say. However, we can no longer ignore the fact that when people don’t think critically, it actually harms others. When candidates who peddle false information get elected into office, they are more likely to also ignore crucial evidence when making decisions or policy. Do we want the person making decisions concerning climate change to be someone who ignores all the data that’s been carefully collected by scientists? That’s a recipe for catastrophe.

We must therefore encourage our friends to think critically and to test things. When they make claims or decisions that ignore the evidence, they should be confronted. We speak up when someone we love has an addiction or some chronic bad habit. We should feel a similar moral obligation.

Lastly, we all must demand that our celebrities, influencers, and politicians also think critically and refrain from making claims that ignore evidence. Spreading lies and misinformation to millions of people can have some serious real-world effects. Conservative or liberal, there’s just no excuse for it. Consistency is crucial.

Scientific advances come from critical thinking and curiosity. Science is also successful because it is self-correcting. When new evidence doesn’t support our previous conclusions, they must be abandoned and replaced by evidence-based assertions. Good science is also consistent in its methods, so that opinions and biases do not get in the way of logic and measurement. We do not get to pick and choose which rules to follow. Instilling these principles in society will bring about progress.

Fool, If You Think It's Over...

For those who (still!) think Covid is no worse than the flu...

For those who think the only metric by which to measure the bad results of this virus is death, and the mortality rate is "low", so, you know, no biggie!  Or that the only people dying or getting long-Covid are elderly or people with pre-existing conditions...

And those who don't want to wear masks...or get vaxxed (freedom, or free-dumb?)

Or those who are tired of Covid, think enough people are vaxxed now, it's safe, and are just kinda letting their guard slip...

These two articles are for you:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-lungs-scarring-smokers-lungs/

Covid Lungs Worse Than Smokers' Lungs

A Texas trauma surgeon says it's rare that X-rays from any of her COVID-19 patients come back without dense scarring. Dr. Brittany Bankhead-Kendall tweeted, "Post-COVID lungs look worse than any type of terrible smoker's lung we've ever seen. And they collapse. And they clot off. And the shortness of breath lingers on... & on... & on."

"Everyone's just so worried about the mortality thing and that's terrible and it's awful," she told CBS Dallas-Fort Worth. "But man, for all the survivors and the people who have tested positive this is — it's going to be a problem."

Bankhead-Kendall, an assistant professor of surgery with Texas Tech University, in Lubbock, has treated thousands of patients since the pandemic began in March (2020).

She says patients who've had COVID-19 symptoms show a severe chest X-ray every time, and those who were asymptomatic show a severe chest X-ray 70% to 80% of the time.

"There are still people who say 'I'm fine. I don't have any issues,' and you pull up their chest X-ray and they absolutely have a bad chest X-ray," she said.

In X-ray photos of a normal lung, a smoker's lung and a COVID-19 lung that Bankhead-Kendall shared with CBS Dallas, the healthy lungs are clean with a lot of black, which is mainly air. In the smoker's lung, white lines are indicative of scarring and congestion, while the COVID lung is filled with white.

"You'll either see a lot of that white, dense scarring or you'll see it throughout the entire lung. Even if you're not feeling problems now, the fact that that's on your chest X-ray — it sure is indicative of you possibly having problems later on," she said.

Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease expert and senior scholar at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, told CBSN that some patients with severe COVID-19 could feel the impact for years to come.

"When someone recovers from pneumonia, whether it's a bacterial pneumonia or a viral pneumonia, it's going to take some time for their chest X-rays to improve. Chest X-rays lag your clinical improvement. So you may be better, but your chest X-ray still looks bad," he said. "And we know that people with COVID-19 can get severe pneumonia, and some of that pneumonia will lead to damage to the lungs that will take time to heal. And some of it may be permanent."

He said the potential long-term health consequences are another reason people should take warnings about the disease seriously. 

"It's not something you can blow off. This isn't something you want to have. Because even if you survive, you still may be left with some severe complications that make it very hard for you to go back to your baseline functioning."

Bankhead-Kendall said it's important that if you're experiencing shortness of breath after your COVID-19 goes away, you stay in touch with your primary care doctor.

She also points out, "There is no long-term implication of a vaccine that could ever be as bad as the long-term implications of COVID."

First published on January 14, 2021 / 8:08 AM

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/in-depth/coronavirus-long-term-effects/art-20490351

COVID-19 (coronavirus): Long-term effects

COVID-19 symptoms can sometimes persist for months. The virus can damage the lungs, heart and brain, which increases the risk of long-term health problems.

By Mayo Clinic Staff

Most people who have coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) recover completely within a few weeks. But some people — even those who had mild versions of the disease — continue to experience symptoms after their initial recovery.

These people sometimes describe themselves as "long haulers" and the conditions have been called post-COVID-19 syndrome or "long COVID-19." These health issues are sometimes called post-COVID-19 conditions. They're generally considered to be effects of COVID-19 that persist for more than four weeks after you've been diagnosed with the COVID-19 virus.

Older people and people with many serious medical conditions are the most likely to experience lingering COVID-19 symptoms, but even young, otherwise healthy people can feel unwell for weeks to months after infection. Common signs and symptoms that linger over time include:

Fatigue

Shortness of breath or difficulty breathing

Cough

Joint pain

Chest pain

Memory, concentration or sleep problems

Muscle pain or headache

Fast or pounding heartbeat

Loss of smell or taste

Depression or anxiety

Fever

Dizziness when you stand

Worsened symptoms after physical or mental activities

Organ damage caused by COVID-19

Although COVID-19 is seen as a disease that primarily affects the lungs, it can damage many other organs as well. This organ damage may increase the risk of long-term health problems. Organs that may be affected by COVID-19 include:

Heart. Imaging tests taken months after recovery from COVID-19 have shown lasting damage to the heart muscle, even in people who experienced only mild COVID-19 symptoms. This may increase the risk of heart failure or other heart complications in the future.

Lungs. The type of pneumonia often associated with COVID-19 can cause long-standing damage to the tiny air sacs (alveoli) in the lungs. The resulting scar tissue can lead to long-term breathing problems.

Brain. Even in young people, COVID-19 can cause strokes, seizures and Guillain-Barre syndrome — a condition that causes temporary paralysis. COVID-19 may also increase the risk of developing Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease.

Some adults and children experience multisystem inflammatory syndrome after they have had COVID-19. In this condition, some organs and tissues become severely inflamed.

Blood clots and blood vessel problems. COVID-19 can make blood cells more likely to clump up and form clots. While large clots can cause heart attacks and strokes, much of the heart damage caused by COVID-19 is believed to stem from very small clots that block tiny blood vessels (capillaries) in the heart muscle.

Other parts of the body affected by blood clots include the lungs, legs, liver and kidneys. COVID-19 can also weaken blood vessels and cause them to leak, which contributes to potentially long-lasting problems with the liver and kidneys.

Problems with mood and fatigue. People who have severe symptoms of COVID-19 often have to be treated in a hospital's intensive care unit, with mechanical assistance such as ventilators to breathe. Simply surviving this experience can make a person more likely to later develop post-traumatic stress syndrome, depression and anxiety.

Because it's difficult to predict long-term outcomes from the new COVID-19 virus, scientists are looking at the long-term effects seen in related viruses, such as the virus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).

Many people who have recovered from SARS have gone on to develop chronic fatigue syndrome, a complex disorder characterized by extreme fatigue that worsens with physical or mental activity, but doesn't improve with rest. The same may be true for people who have had COVID-19.

Many long-term COVID-19 effects still unknown. Much is still unknown about how COVID-19 will affect people over time, but research is ongoing. Researchers recommend that doctors closely monitor people who have had COVID-19 to see how their organs are functioning after recovery.

Many large medical centers are opening specialized clinics to provide care for people who have persistent symptoms or related illnesses after they recover from COVID-19. Support groups are available as well.

It's important to remember that most people who have COVID-19 recover quickly. But the potentially long-lasting problems from COVID-19 make it even more important to reduce the spread of COVID-19 by following precautions. Precautions include wearing masks, social distancing, avoiding crowds, getting a vaccine when available and keeping hands clean.

(Emphases in bold mine).

***

People, it behooves us to keep our guards up.  The time to close the parachute is when you've safely landed, not when you're still 50 feet up in the air.  And we should remember that we haven't even begun to see the effects of some of the worst variants, including the one now laying waste to India:

There have been a few additional variants identified since I found this table in March.  And more to come, no doubt.  Not to mention the possibility of recombinations.  It is also important to remember that viruses play the long game.  We have already seen some of the side effects of Covid.  I would bet the farm we haven't seen nearly all of them yet.  This pandemic is frequently compared to the Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918.  Here is some of what that pandemic surprised us with:

                                                   

Encephalitis Lethargica

And a P.S. to all you freedom/rights fighters:  During the 1918 Spanish Influenza Pandemic, you could be arrested if you didn't cover your sneezes in public -- and saloons and churches were raided by police if they didn't keep their windows open.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu?wprov=sfla1

***

Saturday Cartoons

 

Something To Think About...

 

Happy Mother's Day!

First of all, I hope all my readers had a Happy Mother's Day, whether you are a mother, a substitute mother to somebody (or many somebodies) who needs one, or someone who has been blessed by a mother or mother figure in your life, I salute you!

My felicitations and sympathies also go out to those of you whose experience with their mother or mother figures was not so positive.  We tend to make motherhood such a sacred cow.  I remember reading in one of author Robert (All I Really Need To Know, I Learned In Kindergarten) Fulghum's books that when he was an active Unitarian minister, one Mother's Day his homily alluded to these kind of relationships where the mothers were mentally ill, dysfunctional, or even abusive.  And Fulghum took alot of guff for even mentioning less-than-ideal maternal connections.  "Shame on you for spoiling this day!" was one of the more printable reactions to Fulghum's sermon that Sunday.  But for those of us who have had complicated relationships with our mothers, it is unrealistic and dishonoring to our experiences to make no mention of that reality at all.

My relationship with my mother has been a marathon, from living with Grandma (her mother) to my abusive stepfather, to just the two of us now.  The tenor of our tie has varied from the utter devotion of my childhood, to the feeling of betrayal after coming to the realization that, even if my mother was unaware of the sexual abuse my stepfather inflicted, she was mostly a silent but present witness to occasional physical, and nearly daily verbal abuse, as well as the many times my stepfather drove less than sober with me in the car.  One has to wrestle with questions like, "Why didn't my mother leave him, or at least protect me?  Didn't she love me?"  There are more questions than answers in this life, and this situation is one of them.  Maintaining even a semblance of a close relationship in this scenario requires either alot of denial, or forgiveness.  I've practiced both.  Neither route is easy; both can be fraught with complication and heartache.  But I can honestly say, there's no one in this life I have loved nearly as much as my mother.

One of my earliest memories is from when I was 3.  My mother and I were still living with Grandma.  One day my mum came home from her nursing job and she had a small quantity of blood on her uniform.  The amount looked big to my little eyes, and not being being real aware of the nature of my mother's work, I thought the blood was my mother's, and I demanded (!) to know who had hurt her so I could go beat them up (!).  As the reader can imagine, that allegiance came to be tested in the years after my mother's marriage, and just as I had worked through my childhood wounds, my mother became disabled, then the fight to retain her house began.  For more than 2 1/2 years I worked every day at one or another of three or four jobs, frequently 12 hours a day, without a day off.  I learned alot from the experience.  I learned how strong and resourceful I was, that my limits were not where I thought they were.  But most of all I learned that love is an action verb.  It is very easy to say we love someone, but the truth is in our actions, and our commitment to those we claim to love.

When I was young, like most of us, I didn't love the chores I was required to do, and as an only child, I had alot of 'em.  When I was about 14, my mother explained the reason behind the chores, "When you leave my house, these are the things you're going to need to know how to do in order to be on your own: Cook, clean, shop, laundry, ironing, simple sewing, and balancing a checkbook.  You're not leaving my house without knowing how to do all those things!"  And when I left my mother's house, I knew how to do all those things.  And because I did, I believed in my ability to learn how to do other things, like bake and make simple home repairs.  (Parents out there might consider my mother's list, and add a few other skills, like changing furnace filters, making those simple home repairs, and simple car repairs, too.  These skills are very handy to have, and quite expensive and inconvenient not to have, not to mention harder to learn when you're older and female.  It's best and easiest for parents to do the teaching).  Needless to say, growing up as I did taught me a good work ethic, which I'm sure most of us agree is indispensable in our post-modern world.

My mother taught me material honesty too, not just by saying, "Don't steal!", but by two incidents I remember from my childhood.  

One day we went through the bank's drive-thru to cash and deposit my mum's paycheck, and my mother received $2 too much.  We were in a hurry, my mother had to do a little grocery shopping and then go home and cook supper for us, and it was past 5:00.  (The bank was open till 8:00 on Fridays).  But she went right back through the line and gave the cashier the money back.  When the cashier thanked her, my mum said, " That's OK.  I didn't want your drawer to be short."  On the way to the grocery store, my mother explained to me that before she was a nurse, she'd had a job as a cashier in a little store, and if your drawer was short, you had to repay it, and if it was really short, you could be fired.  It's easy to make a mistake, and you couldn't always count on people to be aware or honest, and that was why she had been so scrupulous about returning the bank cashier's money.  We had a similar experience a few years later when the bakery overpaid her by 38¢.  The results of such diligence became apparent several years afterward, when my mother tried to pull $300 out of the ATM for an emergency.  She had taken some out the day before to treat us to some Chinese, and now wasn't allowed to withdraw what she needed because she'd be exceeding the daily ATM limit.  Of course it was after-hours.

I saw the branch manager working inside the bank and said to my mum, "Let's knock on the bank door, maybe Kerry can help us!" and after we did, Kerry the branch manager was prepared to give my mother money out of Kerry's own account because "you're a good customer, and I know where you live."  And my mother told her, "I'll give you a check right now, if you'll just approve it, for me to take it out of my own account," which Kerry did.  But can you imagine, being ready to give my mother money out of her own account?!  That is what I call having a good name!  My mother never commented on it, but just let me make of that lesson what I would.

In fact, my mother really isn't much of an advice-giver, unless I specifically request it.  And my mother isn't one who gives the conventional advice one might expect, you know, like clean-underwear-in-case-of-emergency-type of advice.  The most conventional advice my mother has given is along the lines of, "Don't lie, not only because it's wrong, but because you'll have to remember who you told what lie to, sooner or later you'll forget, and people will realize you lied, and everyone will be mad at you.  No one will trust you."  Yikes!

One thing I admire about my mother, when I ask her opinion, she gives it.  I don't always like my mother's opinions, but out of all the people I know, I can always count on my mother to tell me the truth, even sometimes unpleasant truths.  And my mother won't hesitate to tell me if she thinks I'm wrong.  My being her child doesn't mean she wears blinders.  I respect that.  It's helped keep my internal compass oriented a little closer to true north, and that makes my mother a valuable friend to have.

And many's the time my mother told me, "Claudia, the Good Lord gave you a brain.  Use it!"  That advice is coming in handy now.  I see people believing garbage that is being promulgated and spread, like so much fertilizer, over social media, etc., for the express purpose of furthering an agenda, whether it be lining their pockets, or strengthening their power base.  It makes me sick.  But I know it when I see it.  And that's because the same woman who told me to use my brain, also taught me to use reference materials, and did so by pretending not to know things I knew she knew.  Or not telling me answers to my endless questions, which would've been so much easier than making me look them up.  People whose mothers teach them to use reference materials tend to develop more critical thinking skills.  Thanks, Ma!

But my favorite piece of advice is totally off the wall, and I'd like to share it:  "When you're in a strange city, watch where the old people go to eat, and always go there.  It'll be the best food (cuz old people know good food) at the cheapest price (cuz old people are on fixed incomes)".   Sounds really off the wall, but I used that advice in Niagara, as well as the strangest of strange cities, Norfolk, VA, and it's definitely sound advice.

Because my mother is a nurse, and because so many members of my extended family are in the medical field (two doctors, another nurse and an EMT), and because our TV set broke and was not replaced for a year when I was about 10, (during which time I read everything in the house, to the tune of a set of encyclopedias, medical encyclopedias, and the Merck Manual), I had an unorthodox education.  So I was prepared enough for the pandemic not to believe the mountain of misinformation I saw, and I knew therefore how a virus operates, and what in general to expect.

Sometimes, perhaps like most of us, I have wished for someone else as my mother.  But not this past year.  This past year I have come to realize that though my mother made many mistakes that wound up hurting me, because she is my mother, I have been encoded, both by nature and nurture, with strength, courage, a hunger for knowledge, and a work ethic.  Among many other things.  Who's to say that these qualities haven't served me as well or better as other characteristics I may have wished for in a mother?

Jurisprudence

So Derek Chauvin is filing for a new trial.

Citing "abuse of discretion that deprived the Defendant of a fair trial; prosecutorial and jury misconduct; errors of law at trial; and a verdict that is contrary to law", Chauvin's attorney filed the request yesterday, just two weeks after a jury found the former officer guilty for the death of George Floyd.

Among the reasons: the fact that the jury was not sequestered prior to deliberations, possibly providing opportunities for the jury to be prejudiced; the defense's belief that the location of the trial should have been moved; the defense's contention that the judge did not sufficiently lay down the law to prevent prosecutors disparaging the defense, (which is considered prosecutorial misconduct in Minnesota); and lastly jury misconduct.

The alleged jury misconduct cited is the photo of Brandon Mitchell wearing a Black Lives Matter hat, and a T-shirt that said, "Get Your Knee Off Our Necks" at a march commemorating Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech in Washington, DC last August.  The pre-trial jury questionnaire asked whether the prospective juror had participated in any marches or demonstrations within a recent time period, as well as other questions designed to gauge the level of preconception about racial issues, especially in relationship to police.  It is apparent that Mitchell did indeed attend a march.

While it is doubtful that Chauvin's guilty verdict would be "impeached" or struck down, this blogger very much wants all concerned to be sure that a verdict in this case would be arrived at by obeying every jot and tittle of every letter of the law.  So Chauvin's attorneys have indicated that they probably will appeal after Chauvin's June 25 sentencing, and I hope they do.  But I don't think it will do them much good, because I don't think they lost their case because of jurors' prejudice, intimidation, inadequate sequestration, or attorney misconduct.  I believe the defense lost its case because it didn't have a case to begin with, and they did very little to make a case after.

Let's face it: in America, every detained suspect has the right to legal counsel via 1966's Miranda Decision, so someone had to defend Chauvin.  The prosecution was extremely thorough, calling 38 witnesses over a course of 11 days, and showing dozens of video clips.  The defense called only 7 witnesses over the course of 2 days.  Chauvin invoked his Fifth Amendment Right To Avoid Self-Incrimination, declining to testify on his own behalf.  So, all over America, Chauvin's nine and a half minutes kneeling on George Floyd's neck was shown countless times.  It didn't reflect well on him.  The prosecution did their job and heaped a ton more incriminating detail on the pile.  Did the defense show us anything we hadn't already seen or heard?  In short, Chauvin looked guilty in the videos, and nothing that he or his attorneys did in those two (!) days explained his actions, rehabilitated his image or truly defended Chauvin in any way.  They needed to play way over their heads, and they didn't even play up to par.  If the defense wants to win on appeal, they will have to present a much stronger case.  The American legal system owes justice all around: to the American people, to the plaintiff, to the defendant, to the concept of justice itself.  So impeach/overturn the verdict if that is ruled judicially proper. Or give Chauvin his day in court to appeal, if he so desires.  But if they really want to make it worthwhile to him, Chauvin's attorneys need to up their game.

Wow, this is Call-Outs And Shout-Outs Blog's 100th post!  Thank you, readers, for making it such a pleasure :)