The Wizard of Oz?

Celebrity Shuffle:   Mehmet Oz, Oprah Winfrey’s favorite heart surgeon who is now better known for pushing quack cures and worthless diet supplements, announced that he is running for the Senate seat being vacated by retiring Pennsylvania Republican Pat Toomey.  Oddly enough like former football star Hershel Walker who is running in Georgia, Oz isn’t even a resident of his “chosen” state, or at least wasn’t until moments before his announcement.  Though he used his in-laws’ address to submit a possibly fraudulent absentee Pennsylvania ballot during the last election, his wife’s website confirms that he resides in New Jersey. Oz who once pronounced that the FG was healthy enough to be president before being appointed to serve as a member of his presidential fitness council is likely to get the FG’s coveted endorsement now that the candidate he previously endorsed has withdrawn from the race, something to do with losing a child custody battle over allegations of spousal abuse.  It’s not all that clear that Pennsylvanians will line up to support Oz but should he go the distance in the primary and the general election, he’ll fit right in with those other medical superstars, like Senator/Eye Doctor Rand Paul, Congressman/Dentist Paul Gosar and one time White House physician/Congressman Ronny Jackson who yesterday called the feared Omicron variant a midterm election trick.  On the subject of unqualified Republicans serving in Congress, yesterday after another video emerged we learned that Colorado’s Lauren Boebert has been doing her anti-Muslim shtick for a while now.  That could explain why her not really an apology call to Ilhan Omar fell on deaf ears. Of course Georgia Congresswoman Margie Q has weighed in on the matter now too.  After Nancy Mace, the newbie Republican Congresswoman from South Carolina, criticized Boebert’s Islamophobia, calling her the “trash in the GOP conference,” Margie laid into her, calling her a pro-choice RINO.  Mace who is neither a RINO nor pro-choice did not back down from her criticism.  Though he still hasn’t had much to say about Boebert’s hate speech, GQP Leader McCarthy responded by telling both Mace and Margie to stop their public twitter fight. Of course that went nowhere with Margie, who came out of her tete a tete with McCarthy and immediately called for someone to primary Mace, promising that whoever did would get the FG’s endorsement. Worth noting Mace comes from a swing district so someone to her right might not come out on top in the general election, well maybe.  In other Republican news, former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows now says that he will cooperate with the House January 6^th committee by providing them with some of what they’ve asked for and that he would answer some of their questions.  Only time will tell whether he’s stalling or if he plans to be forthcoming enough to avoid one of those contempt indictments. It’s fair to assume that the FG can’t be all that pleased with his cooperation but then again it’s not like he’s offered to pay any of Meadows legal bills.  We also learned yesterday that there is an ongoing federal probe into kraken lawyer Sidney Powell, something to do with her using money raised to fund her Defending the Republic election lie organization to pay her personal expenses.  Back in the semi-real world the Senate still has a lot to do on the funding and legislative front which likely explains why the wily Mitch McConnell and a number of conservative funded PACs have been putting the squeeze on West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, whose key vote makes him the most powerful man in the Senate.

Viral Musings: There’s not much more to say about the Omicron variant yet which probably explains why a lot of news reports seem hyper focused on the correct pronunciation of the Greek letter’s opening “O,” as if that’s the problem.  Although the World Health Organization has pushed back against the idea of blanket travel bans, they ominously (an easy to pronounce O word) warn that older people, as in people over 60 (ugh), and those with health issues should refrain from travel.  As to those travel bans that were implemented over the weekend, though they are politically expedient and temporarily soothing they probably don’t do much more than buy a week or so of time as the coronavirus is pretty stealthy and the Omicron variant has probably already arrived in most places.  Moreover, it turns out that though the South Africans were the first to detect Omicron, that’s mostly because they’re particularly good at genome sequencing.  It turns out that Omicron was already in the Netherlands even before the South Africa announcement. It’s starting to look like South Africa is being slammed for being the messenger, a policy that could cause them to go silent when they detect other strains.  On the anti-viral front an FDA panel narrowly approved Merck’s not so miraculous pill with some reservations over its less than impressive effectiveness and safety profile. And of course a spate of courts keep knocking down Biden’s federal vaccine mandates because why would we want to stop the viruses spread?   Now some good news, though NYS positivity is climbing particularly upstate, levels are low in NYC where were no reported COVID related deaths on Monday. 

Stay safe!