Today is Wednesday, November 23, 2022, one day before Thanksgiving 2022. We learn today that Justice Department prosecutors have reached out to representatives of former Vice President Mike Pence to seek his testimony in the criminal investigation into efforts by former president Dumpf and allies to impede the transfer of power after the 2020 election, according to people familiar with the matter.

This new development in the ongoing criminal investigation of the former insurrectionist seems quite reasonable, given that Pence was in the room, literally, with the rogue president at the time of the plot to overthrow those legitimate election results. The story is covered in an online CNN article by Evan Perez, Katelyn Polantz, and Zachary Cohen entitled “DOJ prosecutors seek testimony from former Vice President Pence in January 6 criminal probe.” The New York Times first reported the outreach to the fly-encrusted Vice President who would rather go on a book tour to advertise his new book – which I would never read – than provide voluntary testimony as to what he knew about Dumpf’s motivation and state of mind on that fateful day in January 2021. Pence already indicated that he would not testify before the January 6 Select Committee. He arrogantly declared, actually, that Congress has “no right” to his testimony and that he was “closing the door” on providing it to the House Select Committee, which prompted swift criticism from the committee’s top two members.

The criticism was hurled right at the vice president’s head by Reps. Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney who said in a joint statement, “The Select Committee has proceeded respectfully and responsibly in our engagement with Vice President Pence, so it is disappointing that he is misrepresenting the nature of our investigation while giving interviews to promote his book.”

I think it’s very un-American for a former vice president to do what John Bolton did, who was Dumpf’s former National Security Advisor of the United States, who also refused to speak to investigators during Dumpf’s second impeachment trial to pursue a book tour instead in order to promote his book about the Dumpf administration called The Room Where It Happened, another opus I refused to read. So Pence is doing here what I’m dubbing a “John Bolton.” He’d rather discuss details of what happened with his mentally deranged president with interviewers on a book tour in order to attract readers for his brilliant tome. This is only being mercenary on the vice president’s part, not being patriotic. Pence is definitely not a patriot; he’s just a two-bit pursuer of filthy lucre.

In his favor, then, the ex-vice president has allowed his top aides to provide testimony in the House’s probe, as well as in the Justice Department’s criminal investigation. “CNN has previously reported that the Justice Department has successfully secured answers from top Pence advisers Greg Jacob and Marc Short in significant court victories that could make it more likely the criminal investigation reaches further into Trump’s inner circle.” Yippee, hiyah!

Adviser Jacob has been one of the most searing voices condemning the then-president’s actions after the election, especially regarding the pressure he and his election attorney, John Eastman, tried to place on Pence to block the congressional certification of the presidential vote.

A second shooting, only a few days coming on the heels of the Colorado mass shooting, occurred this time in Chesapeake, Virginia, on Tuesday evening at a Walmart that took the lives of six people and injured at least four others. Unthinkable!

This new tragedy is covered in an online CNN article by Eliott C. McLaughlin entitled “Employees forced to flee after manager ‘started capping people’ at a Walmart in Virginia, witnesses say.”

This outburst of violence occurred during a late-night shift change as some workers were congregating in a break room, witnesses said today of the latest demonstration of violence involving a gun.

The gunman in this incident was identified as overnight team lead Andre Bing, 31, who’d been with the company since 2010. Supposedly, he had exhibited odd and threatening behavior in the past, was gruff with other employees, and expressed paranoid views about the government, coworkers told CNN.

The disturbed gunman entered the break room after 10 p.m. Tuesday, police said. Witnesses stated that Bing just walked into the room and started shooting. He also said nothing before entering the break area. After shooting various people, the gunman then took his own life. Two slain workers and the shooter were found in the break room, while another was found at the front of the story, the city of Chesapeake tweeted. Three others died at the hospital, the tweet indicated. At least four people are hospitalized early Wednesday, two of them in critical condition, a Sentara Norfolk General Hospital official said.

Even though no information on a motive was released by the police, the shooter was armed with a handgun and multiple magazines. Despicable! And the ease of this guy walking into a crowded store at 10 p.m. with such fire power and not being stopped by security. What security, we should ask!

The profile that is emerging of this Walmart employee is disturbing. An employee who worked with Bing described him as a loner who didn’t like to be recorded and always said the government was watching him. He also eschewed social media and he kept black tape on his phone camera. She indicated, “Everyone always thought something was wrong with him.” That is an understatement.

So here we are with two mass shootings in as many days and it’s business as usual, sadly, in the United States. I’ve reported this before, but here it is again: the United States has suffered more than 600 (607, to be exact, I just heard on MSNBC) mass shootings so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive. What is this country going to do to end the bloody spate of gun violence afflicting its citizens? We all know only one political party in this nation has blocked commonsense gun control legislation for decades and it will not change with the latest incident of carnage or with others after that. It’s unconscionable how this country does nothing to stem the tide of gun violence. There are still five weeks left to this year, and who knows how many more incidents we will have before the beginning of 2023.

The deplorable Republican governor of Virginia, Glenn Youngkin, who I wanted not to win his seat last year, was asked about the abominable spurt of gun violence in his own state, and this fucker said, “It’s too soon to talk about it,” meaning introducing legislation to ban assault weapons in his violent state. What a putz! And the former insurrectionist mocked this new repugnican governor because his name sounded Chinese, which is wrong, linguistically, anyway. Dumpf is definitely no mental heavyweight, as everyone knows, except people comprising his base of supporters.

Now with this latest shooting, every American realizes that he or she is not safe anywhere, anytime, and this is fucking unsettling. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, bullets have killed more than 47,000 people last year. The number is staggering. As Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT), who has long fought for gun-safety reform, has said, “We have to maintain our sense of outrage at this. And I know that becomes harder and harder.”

I would contend that Americans are burned out with this endless recitation of bloodshed caused by gun violence. The public might never learn why the shooters in Charlottesville or Colorado Springs or Chesapeake pulled their triggers. Each of these people came from different places, each with different backgrounds and circumstances, motives, and hatreds. But they all had one thing in common: too easy access to guns. So we do have a path to reducing the number of innocent victims shot every day and that is commonsense gun control legislation. Senator Murphy does believe that more legislation will emerge from this endless cycle of violence. He has sadly accepted, however, that nothing will end mass shootings in America. Murphy believes they are inevitable.

The Washington Post relates the story of one possible shooting that was actually prevented by police in Miami that illustrates how crazy people are and how willing they would resort to violence because of some silly slight. Thus on Tuesday, a former Olympic boxer was arrested after police discovered that he planned to commit a mass shooting. He made a $150 deposit for an AK-47 semiautomatic rifle at a pawnshop and posted threats online, writing on Instagram that he was “willing to shoot with a [sic] actual gun.” He would go through it “for righteousness sake.” What was his target, one would ask? A local gym that had revoked his membership! This health nut was willing to face arrest or worse, his own death, because of a revoked gym membership? It’s beyond rational belief here.

So I’m going to wish everyone a safe and satisfying Thanksgiving tomorrow. (Tomorrow marks my two-week anniversary of my hernia surgery.) Let’s pray there are no more mass shootings anywhere in this sweeping nation of ours over the holiday. I’ll see you on Friday.

Stay safe and be well.