Fireworks 🌻🌻🌻,

Independence Day: Well if you ignore the mass shooting in Highland Park Illinois, the reports that the Former Guy is giving serious thought to announcing another run for the presidency, that a raped pregnant ten year had to flee her state to obtain an abortion, and all those flight cancellations, the holiday weekend was fun.  We still don’t know much about the Highland shooter’s motives, but given his social media postings which include at least one picture of him at an FG rally, it’s fair to say that he shouldn’t have been allowed anywhere near an automatic weapon but then again who should be?  As to the FG, Maggie Haberman, the NY Times reporter, who doubles as his unabashed whisperer, reported on Friday that he’s giving serious consideration to announcing a 2024 run for the presidency as early as this month.  Announcing a presidential run before the midterm elections cycle would be highly unusual but then again if we’ve learned anything about the FG, it’s that he is highly unusual in a despicable kind of way.  According to Maggie and her NYTimes cronies, the FG wants to get his announcement out now because he’s convinced that doing so will kneecap the ambitions of his potential rivals, most notably his more polished mini-me Florida’s Ron DeSantis, while also making it more difficult for him to be prosecuted for his criminal activity, like his attempted coup and the fomenting of violence on January 6. For some reason that escapes me, CNN featured South Dakota’s Kristi Noem, one of the FG’s most dedicated fans, as their featured guest on Sunday’s State of the Union.  Noem, who objects to Obamacare’s  Medicaid expansion because providing health care to the needy and those with unwanted pregnancies is so not her thing, fashions herself, both literally and figuratively, as the FG’s next VP or if he opts out of running as our next Republican presidential candidate.  Think of Noem as a Sarah Palin without the view of Russia from her window.  She did her best to avoid admitting what we all know, that if the aforementioned pregnant 10 year old was her daughter she’d get her an abortion ASAP, abortion politics be damned.  She did that by repeatedly pivoting to prices at the pump and sadly, Dana Bash, this weekend’s host was only partially successful at cutting her off. While CNN was serving as Noem’s mouthpiece, Liz Cheney, the embattled Wyoming Congresswoman who is also considering a run for the presidency revealed on ABC’s morning program that for what it’s worth, the January 6^th Committee could make several criminal referrals of the FG to the Department of Justice. She said that while also expressing confidence in the veracity of all of former Mark Meadows’ one-time aide, Cassidy Hutchinson’s, bombshell testimony, including the part about the fracas in the presidential chariot. Liz deserves our appreciation for her willingness to speak out against the FG but let’s not forget that as she keeps saying, she’s also ardently anti-choice and it’s not clear that pregnant ten year-olds would do any better if she was running the country.

Viral Musings: Sure the volume of air travel is up to pre-pandemic levels but the largely unspoken elephant in the room is that a good number of last weekend’s cancellations had to do with staff shortages triggered by the elimination of the virus protecting mask mandate. It’s hard to keep an airline fully staffed when pilots and flight attendants keep calling in sick.  Virus experts including Robert (Bob) Wachter, Chair of Internal Medicine at the University of California San Francisco, and Eric Topol of the Scripps Institute warn that BA.5, the Omicron variant that is on its way to dominating is the worst variant so far, more infectious than prior ones and, even more able to evade the protections of both prior infection and current vaccines which explains why virus levels and hospitalizations, though not as high as they were at their peaks, do remain stubbornly stuck at too high levels. Their recommendation, and don’t shoot the messenger for this, is to continue wearing masks indoors and in crowded outdoor venues and to avoid indoor eating because you can get COVID more than once, BA.5 COVID is particularly gnarly, and because long COVID is really worth avoiding. Wachter recommends getting the current booster now if you haven’t already, as well as the newer more targeted one again when it becomes available, probably in the Fall if we’re lucky.