Mary's Typhoid Uncle

Something Stinks:  Let’s start with the good news, last night Congress averted one of those unnecessary, stupid shutdowns by voting to fund the government at current levels through February.  In the House all Republicans with the exception of Adam Kinzinger, who appears to have grown increasingly untethered from his party possibly his way of positioning himself for his future political aspirations like a run for Illinois Governor, opposed the resolution.  The vote in the Senate was more bipartisan, but only after an agreement was reached to allow a show vote on defunding Biden’s “immoral” vaccine mandates to placate a few Republicans Senators who threatened to let the government shutdown unless the jabs were defunded.  Count me as one of those people who thinks  it defies logic to question the value of vaccine mandates in the face of a new highly contagious variant during a pandemic but then again what about the Republican Party and its push against science and vaccines makes any sense.  Also, count me as very concerned about what will happen  with these types of necessary housekeeping votes if, or more likely when, this crop of Republicans takes control of the House.  As to COVID, this was the week that we learned that the Former Guy tested positive before his September 2020 debate Biden.  That’s both shocking and not shocking at the same time.  Shocking because by hiding his test results, the FG put candidate Biden, everyone associated with the debate, everyone at the Justice Amy Coney Barrett White House shindig/super spreader event, more than a few elderly veterans and all of his staff at risk of getting sick at a time when vaccines weren’t not yet available and the few effective medicines we now have weren’t yet approved for use. We learned this horrifying tidbit from former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who helped cover up the FG’s COVID lie, only because he’s about to embark on a book tour, one that he surely hopes will result in him selling more than the pathetic few thousand that Chris Christie managed to unload despite his countless TV appearances. Then again nothing about the FG’s behavior should really be shocking as the story we were fed about his illness and the timeline that led up to his hospitalization was sketchy from the start. Speaking of sketchy, Sean Conley, the White House physician who helped the FG hide his disease is now in that category.  Sure patients are entitled to privacy but not when they’re both serving as president of the country and endangering the lives of others.  So much for medical and that military thing about not following unethical orders.  Speaking of ethical behavior, Justice Sotomayor has had it with her conservative colleagues’ march to overturn Roe v Wade.  During this week’s hearing on the Mississippi case that seeks to dismantle the fifty year precedent of the Roe abortion rights decision, she suggested that the Court won’t “survive the stench” of eliminating reproductive rights.  Her point being that following politics rather than adhering to precedent will kill the whole idea of an independent judiciary. We won’t know for sure how far the Court’s conservative majority plans to go until their decision is published next Spring but based on their questions and comments it’s fair to assume that the outcome will be fairly dreadful unless of course you think that its okay to force all pregnant women to stay pregnant until delivery at which time they can, as Amy Coney Barrett suggested just toss that newborn off on the stairs of a church or police station for adoption. The Conservative crowd appears to have a limited understanding of biology and also don’t seem to care about the impact that forcing mothers regardless of their age, health, health of the fetus, economic status and or whether the pregnancy was the result of rape or incest can have on their future mental and physical health and economic status. They also appear unconcerned that most of the members of their preferred political party aren’t all that interested in funding the kind of prenatal and child care programs that all those future mothers and babies need because who really worries about providing diapers, food, health care and an education to children. Enough said, you get the gist.

People News: On the political front, voting rights champion Stacey Abrams has announced what everyone kind of knew she was going to announce, that she plans to run again to become Governor of Georgia.  Her path to the Georgia Democratic nomination is probably a sure thing which contrasts her to all those candidates in New York where still another Democrat, Long Island Congressman Tom Suozzi, has thrown his hat into the already very crowded Democratic field.  On the January 6^th committee front in an effort to avoid indictment for obstruction of Congress, former Justice Department attorney Jeffrey Clark now plans to testify on Saturday, however few believe he will do much more than plead the Fifth, an acknowledgement that he’s got lots to hide about how he tried to get then sitting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen fired so that he could take over the leadership of the Justice Department in order to abet the FG’s illegal coup.  Clark’s dance with contempt is probably not over yet as the members of the committee are unlikely to be all that happy if he refuses to answer any questions.  As to the FG, worth noting that he was so busy with his election overthrow project that he stopped taking security briefings before the Christmas Holidays when he decamped to Mar a Lago for a bit and then never started them up again even when he returned to the White House.  VP Pence, the guy he tried to get lynched did apparently keep reading those secret memos so at least one person, albeit one who was almost taken out and hung, did stay in the security loop.

Viral Musings:  Omicron is here in the US.  We still don’t know much more about its lethality, vaccine evading skills or contagiousness but we do know that it’s landed on our shores.  Not much of a surprise but still rather disconcerting.   President Biden says that “We’re going to fight this variant with science and speed, not chaos and confusion” which sounds good but who are we kidding, chaos and confusion is the American brand these days. Far too many Republican politicians are protesting vaccines while rooting for the virus to kill more of us not because they’re all as stupid as they sound but because they view an increase in virus spread and related deaths as something they can use to win elections and attack Biden’s competency.  And of course there are also a lot of people, like RFK Jr, the Kennedy scion who is just a loony, run of the mill anti-vaxxer.  In addition to pushing jabs, the Biden administration is pushing for more testing, for those boarding incoming international flights and also for those at home by having insurance companies pay for those do it yourself testing kits that cost more than they should when you can find them.  For now vaccines, boosters, masks and frequent testing are the solutions to managing the spread.  So mask up and get boosted if you haven’t already and stay home and test if you think you’ve been exposed or aren’t feeling up to snuff.  It’s likely to be a long winter.

Have a good weekend.