In olden days an astrologer could be executed for treason if he prophesied the death of the king, but times have changed. To be clear, the purpose of this article is not to say that Joe Biden will expire in office, but that there is a window opening shortly which could produce that result, and it’s something we should take note of. Given the pressures of the office and Biden’s status as the oldest serving president, this should come as a shock to no one.
Ten months after his murder, George Floyd’s family received some closure and a form of justice when the jury convicted his killer, former Officer Derek Chauvin, on all three counts of murder and manslaughter charges, after less than 11 hours of deliberation. The evidence against him was so egregious, that outcome should have been beyond dispute, but in such racially charged cases of police misconduct, nothing is certain.
Not ten miles away from the George Floyd murder trial, another unarmed black man needlessly lost his life during a traffic stop in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Center. When police pulled him over, Daunte called his mother, worried what the outcome might be. The official story of why Daunte was stopped has changed; apparently, the initial charge was car deodorizers hanging from his rearview mirror. This shortly morphed into an expired license plate, during a pandemic where the DMV has been closed for months and processing of registration renewals has been notoriously delayed.
Less than a week after the spa shootings in Atlanta, shots rang out again in Boulder, Colorado, as 10 were killed in a crowded grocery store by a lone shooter wielding an assault-style rifle. The suspect, 21-year-old Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, is the same age as the Georgia shooter, but this motive is less certain. We do, however, have a birth date, and victim names which match asteroids, so let’s dig in on this latest atrocity.
At approximately 4:55 PM EDT on 16 March 2021, Robert Aaron Long allegedly entered the Young’s Asian Massage in Acworth, Georgia and opened fire with a 9mm handgun, killing 4 and wounding another. He then drove the half hour to Atlanta and continued his shooting spree at two additional massage establishments, Gold Massage Spa and Aromatherapy Spa, across the street from each other on Piedmont Road. Long shot three dead at Gold’s Spa, killing one more and wounding 4 others at Aromatherapy Spa. He was apprehended on the highway at about 8:30 PM, allegedly headed to Florida to continue his murderous rampage.
Not since Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in 2019 has a freshman congressperson made such a stunning impact in the House of Representatives as Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), quickly emerging as an avatar for the extremist fringe of her Party. Greene latched onto the Trumpist base with all the furor of a Sarah-Palin-inspired “pit bull in lipstick”, hawking every conspiracy theory to come within range while endorsing the lynching of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and the assassination of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Not surprisingly, Donald Trump strongly supported her candidacy, calling her “a future Republican star.” Since his departure from the Oval Office, he and Greene have exchanged phone calls frequently, with the newly minted Representative planning a visit to Mar-a-Lago soon, to kiss the ring: “Great news is, he supports me 100%, and I’ve always supported him,” tweeted Greene.
