I have disliked Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), from the first time I saw him on stage at the daily briefings from the White House. It just struck me that he was enjoying the spotlight far more than a Washington bureaucrat should.

I then began hating the way he kept changing the numbers when asked how many people he thought were likely to die from the Coronavirus. I kept hoping he’d simply say he didn’t know, which would have been the truth, but instead he kept tossing around numbers in the millions and the hundreds of thousands, leading to the panic and the nation-wide shutdown. While it’s true that it was a stupid question to ask about a disease that nobody appeared to know anything about, including whether warm weather was likely to have any effect on it; whether people who contracted it could contract it a second time; or even whether the blood of those who had contracted it but displayed no symptoms could provide antibodies that could protect others; Fauci could have simply said there was no way to predict the severity of the pandemic. But he enjoyed being the center of attention far too much.

When asked who he thought should portray him on “Saturday Night Live,” the little rascal of course said: “Brad Pitt” and, lo and behold, there was Pitt the following week on “SNL.” But, unlike Alec Baldwin’s portrayal of Donald Trump, this depiction was respectful in the extreme.

In reviewing the performance, Fauci gushed: “It was just great. Two thumbs up. I think he showed he’s not just a great actor but a really classy guy when at the end he took off his hair [wig] and thanked me and all the health care workers.”

There’s no doubt that the fact that at times Fauci and President Trump have been at loggerheads helped convince the folks at “SNL” that Fauci deserved the homage, which probably explains why Dr. Eleanor Birx hasn’t been portrayed by Tina Fey.

Part of the tension between Trump and the gnome with a medical degree is that Trump has threatened to cut off funding to the World Health Organization, the group that has acted to play down China’s role in causing and prolonging the pandemic. Fauci is a longtime defender of the WHO and its corrupt director, Dr. Tedros.

But Fauci’s crimes don’t stop there. In 2014, the U.S. placed a moratorium on the development of dangerous Coronavirus strains. In spite of that, in 2015, in his role as head of the NIAID, Fauci broke the law by diverting $3.4 million to the Wuhan Laboratory.

Then, in 2017, Fauci predicted there would be a pandemic during Trump’s first term. When people are that good at predicting, their friends generally urge them to test their luck at Vegas.

In a video that has gone viral, Dr. Rashid Buttar says that Fauci should be arrested and tried for treason. Do I hear a second?

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Knowing I enjoy mysteries, John Fosse recommended a novel titled “I Am Pilgrim” by Terry Hayes. Last week, I finally got around to reading it. It was pretty good, even though it’s over 600 pages long. As a rule, I don’t read novels that long. In fact, the only ones of that length I can recall reading were Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath” and a few by Russians named Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.

It’s no insult to say that Hayes doesn’t fit in that group. The problem is that he has combined two dissimilar plots in a single book.

But what I found fascinating was that one of the plots involved a brilliant, evil Arab terrorist who wished to wage jihad against America. Because it was to avenge his father’s death, his long-range plan begins when he is still a boy and calls for him to obtain a medical degree. By the time he is ready to launch his attack, he is in his mid-30s. It is his intention to attack America by smuggling in vials of smallpox disguised as a vaccine.

At one point, the villain who’s known only as the Saracen is musing about the final hurdle he has to clear in order to sneak the world’s deadliest virus into the Big Satan. As Hayes writes: “Indeed, for a time, he believed it was the single thing most likely to cause his plan to fail. Surely, he had asked himself back in El-Mina, wouldn’t the US Food and Drug Administration inspect drug shipments for possible contamination?

"He found the answer on the web – a transcript of a congressional hearing into the FDA that told him that one country alone had over five hundred factories exporting drugs and their ingredients to the USA.”

In response to a congressman’s asking how many of those facilities did the FDA inspect during the previous year. The answer was thirteen.

Later in the book, the Saracen is envisioning the result of the smallpox outbreak: “In the short term, the world would close down and travel be rendered impossible, as nations sought safety in quarantine and isolation. Some would be more successful than others and though a billion people had died from smallpox in the hundred years before its eradication, nothing like it had ever happened in the modern world – not even AIDS – and nobody could predict where the rivers of infection would flood and where they would turn.”

The book was published in 2014 and should serve as a warning in 2020.

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New evidence in the form of FBI memos has turned up showing that the Bureau not only conducted a sting operation in order to ensnare Trump’s National Security Advisor Michael Flynn but got him to confess to lying to the FBI by threatening to prosecute his son if he didn’t.

If Attorney General William Barr doesn’t start cleaning house at the FBI, he will be as culpable as Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch.

The fact that the likes of James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Bruce Ohr, Lisa Page, James Clapper and Michael Hayden, all members of the fascistic Dark State, are still running around loose is proof that the justice system in America is two-tiered, one set of laws and rules for the rabble and another for those who work or who have ever worked for the federal government.

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Arthur Hershey passed along a list that is titled “Oxymorons,” but I think they’re more like word ticklers, but I’ll let you decide:

Doesn’t it seem odd that the third hand on a watch is called the second hand?

Why do we say something is out of whack? What is a whack?

Why does “slow down” and “slow up” mean the same thing?

Why does “fat chance” and “slim chance” mean the same thing?

Why do tugboats push their barges?

Why do people sing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” when they’re already there?

Why are they called “stands” when they’re made for sitting?

Why is it called “after dark” when it is really “after light”?

Doesn’t “expecting the unexpected” make the unexpected expected?

Why do “overlook” and “oversee” mean opposite things?

Why is “phonics” not spelled the way it sounds?

If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?

If you are cross-eyed and have dyslexia, can you read all right?

Why do we put suits in garment bags and garments in a suitcase?

Why do we drive on a parkway and park on a driveway?

Why do we wash bath towels? Aren’t we clean when we use them?

How come “abbreviated” is such a long word?