Today is Monday, January 10, 2022. Today I learned that Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson has announced his reelection for a third term. This is Dumpf’s prime apologist for the January 6th insurrection, which he termed a “peaceful protest.” His decision to run is covered in an online Washington Post article by Amy B. Wang entitled “Ron Johnson says he will run for third Senate term despite previous pledge to retire.” He also suggested you could use Listerine to defeat COVID-19 at one time. He also is defying his own pledge not to run after serving two unremarkable terms in office. He must be defeated this time! For the survival of democracy, no less. This advocate of outlandish conspiracy theories, particularly about the coronavirus pandemic and the 2020 election, had the gall to say that he believes “the country is in too much peril” for him to leave after his second term. Yes, the country is in peril, Mr. Johnson, but it’s because of people like you and your disastrous colleagues like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, Mo Brooks, Paul Gosar et al. that our country is in dire peril, not because you’re not running. It’s in peril because you have decided to run again.

This terrible politician voted against confirming Joe Biden’s electoral college win and supported an audit of the election results in Wisconsin, which the Democrat flipped in 2020. Johnson is also one of the pack that played down the storming of the Capitol by a pro-Dumpf mob seeking to halt the counting of the electoral votes. This senator drew outrage in February when he claimed that the Capitol riot “didn’t seem like an armed insurrection to me.”

About a month later, you might recall, the senator faced calls from Democrats to resign after he said he “never felt threatened” by the terrorists on January 6, but might have had it been Black Lives Matter protesters. At the time of Johnson’s asinine comments, Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) said Johnson’s remarks were “seriously embarrassing” to Wisconsin. Pocan added, “We’ve moved from just plain old fringe, extremist rants to fringe extremist and racist rants.”

This two-term senator has also railed against coronavirus mandates, questioned the effectiveness of vaccines (we have to presume since he’s a senator that Johnson has himself been vaccinated), and promoted unproven treatments – like his Golden Idol – for COVID-19 to the point of getting temporarily banned from certain social media platforms like many of his other unhinged colleagues.

Back in June, Johnson shared a clip where he touted the supposed benefits of hydroxychloroquine in combating the coronavirus. At a town hall last month, Johnson was recommending gargling mouthwash as an effective treatment for the virus, prompting Listerine to publicly state that it is “not clinically proven to kill the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.” This is a man who should be reelected then? Heaven forbid! The guy should be institutionalized instead for some of his crazier beliefs.

What is now percolating through the news world is the stunning admission of a Republican senator from South Dakota that the 2020 election was fair and equitable. The senator’s name is Mike Rounds and he made this startling announcement in an interview with ABC‘s George Stephanopoulos. I use the word “startling” here in an exaggerated sense, as you might imagine, because this admission should not have usually garnered any type of dramatic reaction as it did now, where a third of repugnicans still believe the election was stolen from their orange-haired Mussolini.

The article even states that Rounds’ statement would have been, in a normal world, not terribly newsworthy when a “normal” Republican-elected official acknowledges that Biden won fair and square. By the way, the bastard out of Mar-a-Largo already trashed Rounds’ truth telling in an absurd statement which I won’t repeat here. Just know that this slimy human being called him a bad name, which is what this bully resorts to all the time.

Despite this senator’s courage in admitting the truth about the election, too many of Republicans are falling in line with Dumpf’s falsehood. This statistic will make you cringe: “A December 2020 survey of Republicans in Congress by The Washington Post revealed that only 27 members acknowledged that Biden had won the election.”

An even more sobering fact about this anti-Democratic party is that, as of January 6, 2021, 139 Republican House members and 8 Republican senators voted to object to challenges to either the Arizona and Pennsylvania results.

So even as we can applaud the courage – because that’s what it is – of this Republican South Dakota senator in telling the nation that the election was not stolen at all from the MAGA candidate, you can imagine the uphill battle that the entire repugnicans party must face as it tries to move toward a more fact-based reality. So far, we are still in “surreal land” about a year after Joe Biden took office. I don’t know about you, but I wonder when this madness will finally end.

As for what I did today, I can say nothing much other than going shopping to buy some ingredients for a classic Italian cheesecake that I intend to bake tomorrow. Tomorrow the temperature is supposed to be only in the twenties, so it could be the best time to stay home and bake.

I did venture out to my Austin House Diner for breakfast this morning. I met my regular server who wished me a Happy New Year. We spoke briefly about what we did for New Year’s Eve, which was basically nothing. But we both acknowledged how well we fared so far during the pandemic.

Elliot had an appointment with his periodontist at 1:30 to treat some gum issues.

Before writing the blog, I spoke to my Astoria friend, “Seth,” and had a pleasant enough conversation. We basically zeroed in on the coronavirus pandemic and the number of people Seth knew who have suffered breakthrough cases in the last few months: mostly coworkers and even some family members. Everyone has recovered by now, so what the experts have been saying about the Omicron strain seems to have been borne out in the numerous individuals that Seth knew who have come down with it, as they all have had mild symptoms. Can I say this is somewhat good news then? Could this stage of the pandemic signal a lessening of its overall deadliness?

So if you have to go out tomorrow, dress warmly.

Stay safe, warm, and be well.