*Biden Urged to Fight Big Pharma's Vaccine Greed at Key WTO Meeting.*

(satire) *Janet Yellen Announces Americans Can Use Promo Code "THANKS" For 10% Off All U.S. Goods And Services.*

The vaccine mandate for federal workers has been very effective.

It is weakened a little by the policy of granting religious exemptions. A religious belief is no grounds to give permission to risk spreading disease. However, it appears that the magniture of this weakness is fairly small, in the case of federal workers, so perhaps it is not an important problem.

*Justice prevailed in the trial of Ahmaud Arbery’s killers. In America, that’s a shock.*

I will not excoriate the defense attorneys for "playing the race card", since it is their responsibility to try to obtain an acquittal. What is significant is that they believed that appealing to racism was the way to win. We all know that it sometimes does win, and that reflects the fact that racism continues to be powerful and harmful in the US.

The article linked to just above displays symbolic bigotry by capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid endorsing bigotry, capitalize both words or neither one.) I object to bigotry, and normally I decline to link to articles which promote it. But I make exceptions for some articles which give important information about racism or the fight to eliminate racism. That article is one of the exceptions.

The US must bet on deterring Russian threats against Ukraine, or decide to back down to them.

I think Putin is bluffing and will not attack if the US takes purely defensive actions. He is an opportunist and grabs whatever is easy to grab. Furthermore, all his threats are only hints; if he does not attack, he will not have lost face. Thus, I think the US should take the defensive actions, then negotiate.

A commitment not to invite Ukraine into NATO would not deny Ukraine sovereignty, so I think it is ok to include in a peace deal, provided this is matched with Russian concessions. The US could demand Russia respect Ukraine's sovereignty by withdrawing support from the Donbas separatists.

However, demanding return of the Crimea would be too much. It is too late to undo that act of aggression.