Let's reflect...

            

“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”

That was one of JFK’s signature lines from his inauguration in 1961.  And it’s a great suggestion.

So I’ve been thinking, what is it what we want FROM our government, here in the U.S. (or if you are somewhere else in the world, in your own government), and what is it that we can do FOR our government.

I’ve been jotting down some ideas off the top of my head.  So far I have:

FROM our government, we want:

• Healthcare
• Military safety
• Police force
• Food safety
• Fair taxation
• Judicial arbitration
• Higher education (min community college or tech school)
• Environmental oversight
• Safety nets including Social Security

 

FOR our government, we should:

• Pay our fair share of taxes
• Operate within/follow civil laws
• Do some sort of community service/participation (could be jury duty, voting, military, volunteering for something, charities support, other)

 

Granted, the devil is in the details of what is fair, what is legal, what constitutes h/c, etc.  But let's just speak in generalities for now.

Help me expand my generic lists.  What are some missing items?

Thanks for posting and recommending!

The Republican plan for women, the LGBQT community, and their rights

In several posts here about fundamentalist, radical right Christian nationalism (CN) I've written about sacred CN dogma related to women and the LGBQT community. Experts agree that women are to be subordinate to men, especially White men. The White race stands above all others and are chosen and destined by God to rule over all races. LGBQT people are ranked below heterosexual women and they are to be condemned in public and discriminated against by law. These infallible dogmas are a matter of God's will and not open to debate among CN elites and leaders. These core CN dogmas will be forced by laws onto society whether society wants them or not.

Thom Hartmann, a well-known liberal TV and radio talk show host with apparently expanding public reach, produces commentary and analyses of various issues. A new liberal politics radio station here in San Diego county has started broadcasting some of Hartman's programming. His content is biased to the left, but it is mostly fact-based from what I have seen so far. I am coming to trust his analyses and opinions.  

In response to the Supreme Court taking up a Mississippi case that significantly restricts abortion rights, Hartmann wrote an essay that he calls a daily rant. The Mississippi case seems to be set to either overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that legalized abortions (most likely outcome IMO), or leave Roe nominally intact but eliminate the fetus viability standard (about 24 weeks) as the line that cannot be crossed (next most likely outcome). Either way, the six Republican CN judges on the Supreme Court are set to significantly limit or completely eliminate abortion rights in states where CN Republicans control state legislatures. 

Much less likely is a court decision that makes all or nearly all abortions illegal in all states. The logic is that a fetus has full rights from the second the egg is fertilized and therefore all Constitutional rights and protection attach from the moment of conception. That is another bit of infallible CN dogma. 

But, radical right CN social engineering is likely going to get much worse than just loss of abortion rights. The CN agenda is aiming to gut and kill secular American society and fix it by forcing fundamentalist Christianity on everyone in the US. Hartmann writes in yesterday's daily rant: 

Once the GOP is done with birth control they're coming for gay marriage & ultimately, civil rights laws themselves including the rights to assembly, free-speech & due process.

In about six months, women in thirty Republican-controlled states will probably lose their right to get an abortion.

The Supreme Court and the Constitution don't “grant” or “give” Americans rights: they recognize rights and define the extent to which they can be infringed upon by our government, theoretically balancing private rights against the public good.

That said, the Court can take away rights, although throughout their 240+ year history they've only done it in a big way once: in 1896 with their Plessy v Ferguson decision that, until they reversed it in 1954 in Brown v Board, took away the freedom and voting rights of African Americans for half a century.

In the case of Roe v Wade, the Court ruled in 1973 that women have both the 14th Amendment “liberty” right to control their own bodies and the 4th Amendment “privacy” right to keep it between themselves and their physicians.

But that’s just the first of a series of ideas Republicans have to regulate women’s behavior and roll back the clock to the early 1960s when women couldn’t get a credit card without their father’s or husband’s permission, had no legal right to birth control in some states, and faced fully legal discrimination in housing, education and employment.

Next up on the GOP’s agenda to strip women of political and economic power will be banning most forms of birth control used today, including birth control pills and the IUD.

Step one is to hyper-regulate “morning after pills.”

While Texas’s 100% GOP SB8 law that puts $10,000 bounties on friends of women who get abortions receives all the attention, that same week the Texas legislature passed SB4.

This particularly insidious law makes it a crime for women to be prescribed abortion-inducing Mifeprex (works up to 70 days after the last menstrual period), Cytotec (works up to the 13th week of pregnancy) and methotrexate (works up to the 9th week of pregnancy) any later than three weeks after missing a period.

The law specifically criminalizes physicians and healthcare institutions who prescribe or provide these drugs outside of that parameter. When reporter Lauren Windsor asked Texas Governor Greg Abbott straight up if he’d be able to ban birth all control pills in Texas he suggested it was still possible.

Which, of course, is step two in the GOP’s War on Women.

Republicans — most famously Rick Santorum — have run for president saying that states have the right to ban birth control pills, and multiple states are pushing so-called “personhood” bills that specify that human life begins at the moment of fertilization in the fallopian tubes.

“Personhood” bills that would define any birth control method that prevents the fertilized egg from implanting in the uterine wall — which includes IUDs and all birth control pills — have passed at least one legislative branch in Montana, Kansas, Virginia, Tennessee, North Dakota, Arkansas, and Mississippi and been introduced by Republicans in Ohio, Georgia, Maine, Texas, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Iowa and in the US Congress.

The Personhood Alliance has affiliates all across the country, and a huge network of activists: once Roe v Wade is dead next summer, expect an explosion of activity in this next level of the GOP’s War on Women. Many Catholic leaders and multiple hard-right white evangelical denominations are on board as well.

And, as today’s “personhood” advocates will enthusiastically tell you, the roots of this situation are not recent:

• Pandora opened a box and humanity suffered; Eve ate the apple and her god has been angry with humans ever since.

• St. Paul wrote in his letter to the Ephesians, “wives be subject to your husbands,” a single phrase that became the foundation of British and American law for centuries.

• In the 4th century, St. Jerome, one of the most influential patriarchs of the early Roman Catholic Church wrote, “Woman is the gate of the devil, the path of wickedness, the sting of the serpent, in a word a perilous object.”

• Almost a thousand years later, Thomas Aquinas wrote that woman was “created to be man’s helpmeet, but her unique role is in conception…since for other purposes men would better be assisted by other men.”

And now the GOP’s Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice is on its way. It’s not as if we weren’t warned:

• During Mike Pence’s first year as governor of Indiana, his state put a young woman in prison for having a miscarriage, alleging that she’d taken an abortion-causing drug. Purvi Patel didn’t have a trace of such a drug in her system, but Pence’s state sentenced her to 20 years in prison anyway.

• Just a few years earlier, Indiana had also held Bei Bei Shuai for 435 days in the brutal maximum security Marion County prison, facing 45 years to life for trying to kill herself and, in the process, causing the death of her 33-week fetus.

• Utah charged 28-year-old Melissa Ann Rowland with murder because she refused a C-section, preferring vaginal birth for her twins, and one of them died.

• Sixteen-year-old Rennie Gibbs was charged by the state of Mississippi with “depraved heart murder” when her baby was born dead because his umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck: her crime was that she had cocaine in her bloodstream, according to prosecutors.

• Angela Carder was ordered to have a C-section to deliver her baby before she died of cancer; both she and the baby died from the procedure.

These cases have exploded in recent years, as the GOP and the nation’s law enforcement system have embraced the American “Christian” version of Sharia law which dictates that women are the property of men and their principal purpose for existence is reproduction.

According to Duke University’s Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, there were 413 documented—and probably thousands of lesser-known—cases of women being prosecuted for having miscarriages or attempting abortions between the time Roe v. Wade became the law of the land and 2005.

When Governor Mike Pence proudly signed Indiana’s abortion restrictions in 2016, women across the state noted that it required that miscarried fetuses (along with aborted fetuses) be “interred [buried in a cemetery] or cremated,” no matter whether the pregnancy was six or sixteen weeks along when the miscarriage happened.

It led to a movement across the state called “Periods for Pence,” in which women tweeted or called the governor’s office to tell him when their periods had started and ended, so the state wouldn’t mistake a normal menstrual period for a miscarriage. [In Saudi Arabia, there is an app for women to report their periods]

The press treated it as funny at the time; nobody’s laughing now.

And this is just the start. Today the Court is hearing a case out of Maine that could require states to pay for the tuition of all students attending religious schools, using taxpayer money that normally funds public schools. This would include forcing states to pay for religious schools that openly discriminate against LGBTQ+ students and staff, and teach children that being gay is a sin.

Once Republicans are done with birth control they’ll be coming for gay marriage and, ultimately, broader civil rights laws themselves including, like in Hungary (their new role model), ending the rights to assembly, free-speech, and due process.

And if you think that’s an over-the-top concern, consider: Just a few months ago, Ron DeSantis signed a bill into law that provides immunity to drivers who plow their cars into protesters, if those protestors are on a public street. They’re already going after our right of public assembly.

Here is some data from April of 2020 on how Americans feel about the Bible influencing American laws:

Questions: 

1. Is it likely that the theocratic fundamentalist Christian authoritarianism described here is what the Republican Party wants to do to American society, civil liberties and the law in general? 

2. Is it fair to see the Republican Party as a necessary but willing part of a powerful Christian Sharia political movement? [to my knowledge, no major Democratic Party politician talks like this or advocates making extremist Christian views into actual laws]

3. Is teaching critical race theory and/or BLM protests more of a threat to democracy, the rule of law and civil liberties than the rise of Christian Sharia in the Republican Party and on the Supreme Court? 

American plastic waste: We're #1!!

The new normal for some beaches

American exceptionalism is on display in a recent scientific report on global plastic waste. As usual, special interests wanting to defend their profits are chiming in (and secretly donating money to Joe Manchin and other pro-pollution politicians). The Washington Post writes:

The United States ranks as the world’s leading contributor of plastic waste and needs a national strategy to combat the issue, according to a congressionally mandated report released Tuesday.

“The developing plastic waste crisis has been building for decades,” the National Academy of Sciences study said, noting the world’s current predicament stems from years of technological advances. “The success of the 20th century miracle invention of plastics has also produced a global scale deluge of plastic waste seemingly everywhere we look.”

The United States contributes more to this deluge than any other nation, according to the analysis, generating about 287 pounds of plastics per person. Overall, the United States produced 42 million metric tons of plastic waste in 2016 — almost twice as much as China, and more than the entire European Union combined.

The researchers estimated that between 1.13 million to 2.24 million metric tons of the United States’ plastic waste leak into the environment each year. About 8 million metric tons of plastic end up in the ocean a year, and under the current trajectory that number could climb to 53 million by the end of the decade.

That amount of waste would be the equivalent to “roughly half of the total weight of fish caught from the ocean annually,” the report said.

The EPA recently released a national recycling strategy, which some critics faulted for not taking aim at the current level of plastics production. Today’s recycling system, scientists found in the new report, is “grossly insufficient to manage the diversity, complexity, and quantity of plastic waste in the United States.”

“A lot of U.S. focus to date has been on the cleaning it up part,” said Spring. “There needs to be more attention to the creation of plastic.”

The American Chemistry Council, a trade association, endorsed the idea of a national approach but said it opposed efforts to curtail the use of plastics in society.

“Plastic is a valuable resource that should be kept in our economy and out of our environment,” said the group’s vice president of plastics, Joshua Baca, in a statement. “Unfortunately, the report also suggests restricting plastic production to reduce marine debris. This is misguided and would lead to supply chain disruptions.”

 Despite the chemical and plastics industry claim that it wants to keep plastics out of the environment, the industry falsely claimed for decades that plastics were recyclable and would be recycled. That was just another of the endless capitalist, profit-motivated lies the American people are fed. It still is a lie. Only about 9% of all plastics are recycled. As discussed here before, the entire recycling scheme was a fraud right from the get go.

Symbols of deceit: ~91% of it isn't recyclable, arguably 

making this chemical industry 'public relations' campaign a 100% lie

Questions:

1. Are Americans too spoiled and/or lazy to give up their massive reliance on single-use plastic containers, especially the endless stream of plastic water bottles?

2. Does the chemical industry care about the environment and plastic pollution, or is its squeaks of concern sincere expressions of social conscience?

3. Will Republicans in congress protect the affected public interest here or the affected special interests, especially the chemical and oil industries?

Destined for a beach or ocean near you!

See, told 'ya so

The problem with combatting dark free speech

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act

Dark free speech: Constitutionally protected (1) lies and deceit to distract, misinform, confuse, polarize and/or demoralize, (2) unwarranted opacity to hide inconvenient truths, facts and corruption (lies and deceit of omission), (3) unwarranted emotional manipulation (i) to obscure the truth and blind the mind to lies and deceit, and (ii) to provoke irrational, reason-killing emotions and feelings, including fear, hate, anger, disgust, distrust, intolerance, cynicism, pessimism and all kinds of bigotry including racism, and (4) ideologically-driven motivated reasoning and other ideologically-driven biases that unreasonably distort reality and reason. (my label and definition)

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is a shield that protects online sources from liability for damage from dark free speech (DFS) that the owner or users post on searchable platforms. Algorithms that Facebook, Twitter and the like use tend to amplify DFS by highlighting it in online searches. Lies, hate, outrage, crackpottery and the like pop up and then spread much more than truth, clam and reason. 

This is a reflection of how the human mind generally works. Humans are made to quickly feel and react or decide, not to slowly think and react or decide. Feeling and reacting-deciding fast is usually a lot more fun and easier than doing it more slowly.

The New York Times writes that congress is wrestling with how to deal with the problem of algorithms spreading DFS and causing damage in the process. The NYT writes:

Lawmakers have spent years investigating how hate speech, misinformation and bullying on social media sites can lead to real-world harm. Increasingly, they have pointed a finger at the algorithms powering sites like Facebook and Twitter, the software that decides what content users will see and when they see it.

Some lawmakers from both parties argue that when social media sites boost the performance of hateful or violent posts, the sites become accomplices. And they have proposed bills to strip the companies of a legal shield that allows them to fend off lawsuits over most content posted by their users, in cases when the platform amplified a harmful post’s reach.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee discussed several of the proposals at a hearing on Wednesday. The hearing also included testimony from Frances Haugen, the former Facebook employee who recently leaked a trove of revealing internal documents from the company.

Removing the legal shield, known as Section 230, would mean a sea change for the internet, because it has long enabled the vast scale of social media websites. Ms. Haugen has said she supports changing Section 230, which is a part of the Communications Decency Act, so that it no longer covers certain decisions made by algorithms at tech platforms.

But what, exactly, counts as algorithmic amplification? And what, exactly, is the definition of harmful? The proposals offer far different answers to these crucial questions. And how they answer them may determine whether the courts find the bills constitutional.

The congressional attempt to reign in DFS is so complex that it may not be possible. Some proposed laws define the behavior they want to regulate in general terms. One proposal exposes a platform to lawsuits if it “promotes” algorithmic spread of public health misinformation. Social media platforms would be safe if their algorithms promote content in a “neutral” way, for example, ranking posts in chronological order. 

Other proposed legislation is tries to be more specific. One proposal defines dangerous amplification as doing anything to “rank, order, promote, recommend, amplify or similarly alter the delivery or display of information.” Think about how that might be implemented and enforced. 

The NYT points out that companies already use people's personal information to target DFS content to them if they are inclined to receive it, e.g., conspiracy theory crackpots who want to get crackpottery and lies from QAnon. Contemplated legal exemptions from liability for DFS-caused damage include (i) exempting sites with five million or fewer monthly users, and (ii) posts that show up when a user finds it in a search, even if the algorithm ranks bad content higher than the more honest stuff. The concern is negative unintended consequences.

Most of the proposals the NYT discussed come from democrats in congress. Given how critically necessary the free flow of DFS is to the Republican Party, Christian nationalism and laissez-faire capitalists, it is hard to imagine that any regulation of DFS will pass out of congress. We are probably locked onto the current status quo for a long time to come.

Free speech absolutists generally argue that more speech is better and people will figure out for themselves what is truth and what isn't. From that point of view, there is no reason to even try to regulate any speech, dark or honest. Clearly, that line is reasoning is false. Tens of millions of adult Americans are deceived, bamboozled and manipulated by political partisan lies and crackpottery all the time. It may be the rule, not the exception.

One expert commented: “The issue becomes: Can the government directly ban algorithmic amplification? It’s going to be hard, especially if you’re trying to say you can’t amplify certain types of speech.” At least the matter of damage that DFS causes is on the minds of some people. That is a lot better than most everyone seeing all speech, dark or honest, as equal.

Questions: 

1. Does the social cost-benefit indicate that it is better to try to limit DFS knowing that some honest speech will be collateral damage and some online sources might go out of business? Or, is there enough value inherent in DFS that it should just be left alone, even if it means the end of democracy and the rule of law as we now know it? 

2. Is it possible to regulate DFS without violating free speech law?

3. Compared to purveyors of honest speech, how much power does the combination of DFS on social media and algorithms that promote it transfer to people and interests who routinely rely on DFS, e.g., Russia, Exxon-Mobile, the GOP, kleptocrats, dictators, etc.? 

Oral arguments on the Supreme Court abortion case

Commentators on the two hours of arguments before the Supreme Court this morning lean toward an opinion that the Republicans on the court will uphold the Mississippi (MI) law that bans abortions after 15 weeks. The prior threshold was that states could not ban abortions before fetus viability, about 24 weeks. Under the MI law, the abortion ban sets in after 15 weeks. 

The state of MI and hard core Christian fundamentalists on the Supreme Court want to see the 1973 Roe v. Wade and another key pro-abortion precedent overturned. Abortion rights defenders argued to keep the old standard and Roe intact. Fortunately, the state anti-abortion side is arguing for the issue to be left to the states and the Republican judges seem to be OK with that. One possibility, now seemingly remote in view of the arguments this morning, was that 5 or 6 of the Republican Christians on the court would kill Roe and make all abortions in all states illegal. An all-out ban everywhere, at any time now seems to be quite unlikely based on the ~80 minutes of argument I listened to on the radio.

As the New York Times writes, Chief Justice Roberts wants to uphold the MI law, but not overturn Roe. The other 5 Republicans seem to want to see Roe gone:

Other conservative justices indicated that they were not interested in the chief justice’s intermediate approach. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said “the only real options we have” are to reaffirm Roe or to overrule it.

Assuming the three most conservative members of the court — Justices Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch — are prepared to overrule Roe entirely, Chief Justice Roberts would need to attract at least two votes for a narrower opinion, one upholding the Mississippi law but not overruling Roe in so many words, to be controlling. But the most likely candidates, Justices Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, said little to suggest that they were inclined toward that narrower approach.

The court’s three liberal members — Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor — were adamant that Roe should stand.  

Should Roe be overturned, at least 20 states will immediately or in short order make almost all abortions unlawful, forcing women who can afford it to travel long distances to obtain the procedure.

Chief Justice Roberts expressed frustration with Mississippi’s litigation strategy. In the state’s petition seeking Supreme Court review, officials told the justices that “the questions presented in this petition do not require the court to overturn Roe or Casey,” though lawyers for the state did raise the possibility in a footnote. Once the court agreed to hear the case, the state shifted its emphasis and began a sustained assault on those precedents.  

Justice Breyer quoted from Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the 1992 decision that reaffirmed what it called Roe’s core holding, the one prohibiting states from banning abortions before fetal viability: “To overrule under fire in the absence of the most compelling reason to re-examine a watershed decision would subvert the court’s legitimacy beyond any serious question.”

Justice Sotomayor asked whether the court would “survive the stench” of being considered a political institution, a point echoed by Justice Kagan.

Some arguments in brief

Anti-abortion people see Roe and 50 years of legalized abortions as (i) causing vast division and damage to society, and (ii) unconstitutional and not based on any workable standard to decide time limits for abortions. They argue that a standard of fetus viability is unworkable and socially divisive.  Pro-abortion arguments are that (i) the viability standard is quite workable and about as objective as one can get with a complex issue like this, and (ii) many women have relied heavily on the abortion option to control their lives, including when a pregnancy is unplanned despite use of birth control. 

In the time I listened, no pro-abortion argument was made that allowing abortions forces no woman to get an abortion, but banning abortions forces them to carry a birth to term and usually raise an unwanted child. Apparently, that is not an argument that carries legal weight and/or the court is just not willing to even hear it. Or maybe another concern I am unaware of is at play.

The pro-abortion side also argued that if the MI law is upheld, anti-abortion states would pass laws to seriously cut back on the time allowed for abortions, maybe to two or three weeks after conception or even less. A contested Texas law sets the limit at 6 weeks, which shows that time-cutting scenario has already started to play out. The anti-abortion side seems to implicitly agree and argues that there is no reasonably workable standard and thus Roe and key pro-abortion precedents need to be overturned and the issue left to the states.

The pro-abortion side also argued that since Roe and the key precedent Casey, not much has changed in science, law or society. That appears to be true. Anti-abortion arguments about fetal pain have been debunked because the fetal brain is not developed to the point that the early brain can feel pain at all. Despite the science, anti-abortion advocates argue the false fetal pain argument.

Finally, Chief Justice Roberts was desperately looking for a middle ground to uphold the MI law without overturning Roe. There really isn't any middle ground here I could see. Either fetal viability as the legal limit for protecting abortions stands, or Roe falls. The anti-abortion advocates seem to have a valid point here. Since 5 of of the 6 Republicans see fetal viability as (i) an unworkable standard, or (ii) otherwise rationalizable into no barrier, Roe seems set to fall. 

When the court decides (probably next May or June) to kill Roe, it is likely that at least each state can decide for itself on how to regulate abortions. That's the good news. The damage to women who are forced to bear a child, and their lives, in states that outlaw abortions is the price those people will pay for fundamentalist Christian nationalism deciding from the bench what is legal or constitutional and what isn't.

It is pretty clear that the radical Republicans on the federal bench are willing to survive the stench of the Supreme Court being considered a political institution, which it already is. That is a key reason why fundamentalist radical Christian Republicans have been put there by Republican Senates and Presidents. They hate abortion rights even more than they hate voting rights or same sex marriage rights.

Some anti-abortion judges and advocates also argue the fetus has rights equal to the mother and thus few or no abortions can be constitutional.

The neutral constitution argument: Anti-abortion advocates correctly argue the Constitution is silent about abortion. They argue that the matter must therefore be left to the states. If that was to hold, think of how many federal laws would be open to attack and thrown back to the states. That is why radical right conservatives have been attacking the general welfare and necessary and proper clauses for decades. They also dislike the implied powers doctrine for the same reasons.

In my opinion, shifting power to states, shifts power to elites and wealthy people and interests. States are easier and cheaper for special interests and wealth to corrupt and subvert than a single national government. This neutrality argument is potentially lethal to democracy and the rule of law.

Question: If Roe is overturned and states left to decide if they want to allow abortions under conditions the legislatures specify, would that be a win for abortion rights in view of the probably remote possibility the court could make all abortions illegal in all states under any circumstances? (is the glass half full or half empty?)

Welcome to the Land of Oz

 

TV host Dr. Oz to enter Senate race in Pennsylvania

The celebrity doctor says he will seek the Republican nomination to fill an empty U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania.

(CN) — Celebrity heart surgeon and TV personality Mehmet Oz announced plans Tuesday to run for Senate in Pennsylvania.

“I’m running for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania because America needs a Conservative Republican to cure what’s wrong with Washington,” Oz said in a tweet. “I’m a world-class surgeon, fighter, and health care advocate stepping forward to cure our country’s ills.”

The physician, best known as the host of the daytime talk show “The Dr. Oz Show,” is expected to enter a crowded and highly competitive Republican primary.

Several GOP candidates are aiming to fill a seat left open by retiring Republican U.S. Senator Pat Toomey, now that a leading candidate is out of the running.

Sean Parnell was once seen as a top GOP contender for Toomey's seat in the key battleground state. But Parnell, who had been endorsed by former President Donald Trump, announced his intention to suspend his campaign last week after losing custody of his children via a court order that said he was abusive towards his wife in the past.

Trump narrowly won the swing state in 2016, but Pennsylvania voters gave President Joe Biden a narrow 1 percentage point victory last year. 

“Pennsylvania needs a conservative who will put America first, one who could reignite our divine spark,” Oz said in a video released Tuesday.

The phrase “America first” and Oz’s promise to “tell it like it is” evokes messaging similar to that used by Trump during his presidential campaigns.

In an op-ed published in the conservative Washington Examiner on Tuesday, Oz commended Trump for overseeing the development of Covid-19 vaccines through Operation Warp Speed.

He added that “many great ideas were squashed” during that time, blaming “elites” for mishandling the pandemic response.

Born in Cleveland to his parents who are Turkish immigrants, Oz has resided in New Jersey for the past 20 years.

He started to vote in Pennsylvania’s elections this year through an absentee ballot registered to his wife’s parents’ address near Philadelphia. Oz’s campaign website lists his home as Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania, where his in-laws live.

Democratic Congressman Bill Pascrell of New Jersey's 9th District released a statement sarcastically congratulating Oz on his Senate campaign.

“I want to congratulate my North Jersey constituent Dr. Oz on his run for US Senate in Pennsylvania,” Pascrell said in a tweet. "I’m sure this fully genuine candidacy will capture the hearts of Pennsylvanians.” 

Democratic candidates for the Pennsylvania U.S. Senate seat have also expressed dismay toward Oz’s announcement, including Montgomery County Board of Commissioners Chairwoman Dr. Val Arkoosh.

Arkoosh says she is “the real doctor” who is eyeing the seat.

“We’ve seen what happens when TV personalities gain power & @DrOz is the last thing we need when we face real challenges," she said in a statement on Twitter. 

https://www.courthousenews.com/tv-host-dr-oz-to-enter-senate-race-in-pennsylvania/