Today is Friday, February 4, 2022. Today the Vice President under Donald Dumpf, Mike “Vanilla” Pence offered his strongest rebuke yet of his former mob boss at a Federalist society event in Ron “Death” DeSantis’s Florida. Pence rejected claims that he could have personally overturned the results of the 2020 election. All anyone can say over hearing Pence’s strongest words of condemnation toward Dumpf is this: What took so long? This breaking news was covered in an online article for the National Review by Caroline Downey entitled “Pence Issues Forceful Response to Trump’s Renewed Election Attacks: ‘No Idea More Un-American.'”

This is what Pence said at that event in Lake Buena Vista, Florida: “I heard this week that President Trump said I had the right to overturn the election. President Trump is wrong. I had no right to overturn the election. The presidency belongs to the American people, and the American people alone.” He even went further to say that the notion that any one person could choose an American president is un-American. Pence had called his responsibility to count the presidential election ballots “largely ceremonial,” which is exactly right.

At the time of the certification of the votes, Dumpf’s legal team had hoped for Pence to either invalidate the electoral votes or delay the counting of electoral votes to send the voter fraud issue to the state legislatures to investigate, with the latter being the overall favored option.

The reception for Pence this time contrasted with the cold one he received last year when he spoke at the Faith & Freedom Coalition conference last year in Orlando, Florida, when some individuals in the crowd booed his introduction and when one irate audience member had to be escorted out after yelling “Traitor!” to the speaker’s face.

This time he received a more friendly reception today from the Federalist Society members gathered in the Disney World complex, though dozens of seats remained vacant. As Pence began describing the events of January 6, he received polite applause as he defended his actions. Pence even characterized the events that unfolded on January 6 as “a dark day in the history of the United States Capitol.”

Without sugarcoating it as many in his repugnant party are doing right now, Pence said, “Lives were lost and many were injured, but thanks to the courageous action of the Capitol Police and federal law enforcement, violence was quelled, the Capitol was secured, and we reconvened the Congress that very same day to finish our work under the Constitution of the United States and the laws of this country.”

Pence’s stated break with Dumpf came at the end of a speech largely focused on criticizing President Joe Biden’s administration. This is where Pence showed his true right-wing colors that definitely don’t position him as a credible presidential aspirant in 2024.

He criticized Biden for attempting to mandate people take vaccinations, forcing health care workers to now “choose between vaccines and their jobs.” Where was the essential personal protective equipment for these most-necessary health care workers during the Dumpf administration? Did Pence conveniently forget that situation when his boss was in office?

In the area of Biden’s promise to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court, Pence hewed to the repugnican playbook that casts doubt on the President’s ability to do so, even though it would make the body much more reflective of America as it is today. But what do repugnicans know about that? They would rather have America enter a time tunnel to return to the supposedly idyllic 50s in which the population was predominantly white and homogenous. Biden has every right to nominate a black woman just like Ronald Reagan had every right of electing the first woman to the bench in the 80s. Where was the uproar then? Thus Pence lambasted Biden’s preference for a Black woman as “based first and foremost on the candidate’s race and gender.”

Pence really showed his true conservative colors by concluding, “If the radical left doesn’t end its obsession with identity politics, it will tear this country apart.” Why didn’t this potential presidential candidate in 2024 slam into his own party for not ending its own obsession with a cult leader that has surely placed it on the road to damnation and authoritarianism? Now that would have been a far stronger and effective speech, in my mind.

I’m wondering now if Pence’s remarks will be viewed as the beginning of a rift between the repugnican party and that of Dumpf. Pence’s breakup with the Orange Menace could be viewed as significant here and it could possibly set the wheels of dissent into motion with members of his party. Maybe now those cowardly reps and senators might be forced to choose between Dumpf and the Constitution. Maybe the iron grip of Dumpf on the party is finally slipping.

On a grimmer note, the United States hit a COVID-19 milestone today, with over 900,000 people reported dead from contracting the pernicious virus since the start of the pandemic, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

This somber milestone is reported in an online CNN article by Deidre McPhillips entitled “US reports more than 900,000 total Covid-19 deaths.”

For the past two weeks, there have been more than 2,000 new COVID-19 deaths reported each day in the country, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the coronavirus a global pandemic on March 11, 2020. More than a third of all reported deaths in the nation occurred last winter, between November 2020 and February 2021.

Here’s a fascinating statistic for you to absorb: Unvaccinated adults have 97 times greater risk of dying from COVID-19 than adults who are fully vaccinated and boosted, according to the latest Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) statistics.

The risk of dying from the virus is significantly higher for older people. In the United States, more than three-quarters (76%) of people who have died from COVID-19 since the pandemic struck have been 65 or older, including more than a quarter (28%) of deaths that have been among those 85 and older. A staggering 150,000 nursing home residents and staff have died of COVID-19, according to data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, accounting for about 15% of total COVID-19 deaths in the United States.

Globally, there have been more than 5.7 million reported COVID-19 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins data. The country accounts for about 5% of the world’s population, but about 16% of COVID-19 deaths, more than any other country. This statistic is not something this country should be proud of, in no way shape or form.

The state with the highest COVID-19 death rates is Mississippi and the lowest is found in Hawaii.

Overall, more than one in five people in the United States has been infected with COVID-19, with more than 76 million cases reported since the start of the pandemic.

Given the sobering picture reflected here in this article concerning our grim COVID-19 milestone, would you think we are “over with COVID-19?” I would think not.

So today was quite a miserable one – what with freezing rain and cold in the mix. The only thing Elliot and I did was drive to Fazio Tile & Design, on Metropolitan Avenue, where we met our contractor/wall paperer “Cameron,” to look at tiles for the counter space in the kitchen. We arranged to meet at 2:30 p.m., and we got there somewhat early.

Parking in front of the store, I used my Parking Meter app and registered for 2 hours of meter time. Then we walked in and spoke to a saleswoman behind the counter before Cameron met us on time. We saw many samples of quartz and granite slabs. The woman told us to see where the stone is made, a business called N.B. Stone Setters, Inc., located on Liberty Avenue, in Ozone Park. She mentioned that we could see the entire piece of granite or quartz for the kitchen top there to make a more informed decision as to what to finally choose. The store on Metropolitan Avenue only had a limited supply of samples to choose from.

So we hurried back to the car, taking Cameron with us, after he parked his car on a residential street. I put on the GPS and we got to the site in no time.

The business was located under the El; Elliot took the car to park it somewhere near the location, while Cameron and I got out and walked upstairs to see the lone sales associate in the office. Cameron did most of the talking, while we waited for Elliot to get back from parking the car.

The bespectacled representative took us to where the samples were, which was next door in a lot. By the time we started walking to see more tiles, Elliot was approaching the building. We all congregated in the display area and walked around while holding up two umbrellas. The rain was coming down mighty fiercely. After some consultation, we all agreed that one design was the best. At that point, Cameron walked with the sales rep upstairs to his office, while we waited downstairs. With the job finished, we all walked back to the car and got in, soaking wet.

Elliot drove Cameron back to his car on Metropolitan Avenue, and we headed home, where we stopped across the street from the Natural supermarket, so I could get out and choose something for dinner tonight.

I was responsible for finding a spot while Elliot got out and took the bags upstairs. I did find a spot on the street this time.

So I’ve been upstairs all this time. With the weather being so inclement, who would want to be outside? I turned on an episode of The Honeymooners in which Ralph gets a promotion at his bus company and is practically frozen out of his Brooklyn apartment because of lack of heat. Doesn’t this sound vaguely familiar even in our recent times? This was a two-parter, so I have to watch the concluding episode the next time.

A heads-up: I won’t be writing my blog tomorrow because of an impending visit by my Long Island friend, “Jake.” Usually, he stays the whole day, so this will preclude my posting an entry tomorrow evening. Unless he cancels! The weather is supposed to be rather icy tomorrow, so who knows? We’ll just have to wait and see. So I will see you on Sunday if everything proceeds as planned.

Have a good Saturday, despite the forecasted cold snap.

Stay warm, safe, and be well.