"Big Brother" owns us all.[:(!]

Remember when SARS was gonna kill us all?

As you quite rightly suspect, it can’t be a coincidence that the Shrub’s big "Ooooh, bird flu gonna come ‘n’ kill us all, you betcha!" speech was conveniently scheduled right around the same time that:

1. Cheney’s chief advisor, Scooter "Bear Baiter" Libby, gets indicted for knowingly blowing the cover of a covert CIA operative, which is called treason in a real patriot’s book.

2. Karl Rove, the guy without whom the Shrub can’t successfully wipe his own butt, is confirmed to be the "Official A" in the above indictment, the primary source of the classified info.

3. Bill "I adopted kittens from animal shelters in med school so I could vivisect them for practice" Frist is in the middle of exactly the same kind of insider trading that got Martha Stewart sent to jail.

4. Tom "total rat" DeLay is getting measured for his own orange jumpsuit, not least because of his many and varied associations with well-connected GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff, a dude who — by the way — is now involved up to his neck in a gangland slaying related to a casino purchase.

5. Another buddy of Abramoff, a fellow GOP lobbyist named Jack Scanlon, made the mistake of letting the GOP’s real feelings for the people who vote for them be known, in an email to a Louisiana Indian tribe setting up a casino: "The wackos get their information through the Christian right, Christian radio, mail, the internet and telephone trees. Simply put, we want to bring out the wackos to vote against something and make sure the rest of the public lets the whole thing slip past them." (And people think I’m cynical?)

6. 2000+ and counting…

7. …oh, and by the way: they knew they were using false evidence and outright lies when they were making the case for WMDs, because they knew that the Shrub’s Daddy Issues weren’t going to be enough to get people to sign on for the war that he was so het up for.

So, what with all of that and more, what better to do than to try to Change The Subject? Since Harriet Miers, the last Changing Of The Subject, ended up being a fiasco, they decided to go with "Look out! We’re all gonna die!"

Could another 1918-style pandemic happen? You bet. It probably WILL happen in our lifetimes, if not this year. But freaking out about it because the government and the media want to distract you won’t do anybody any good.

Wash your hands. Drink a lot of orange juice. Get a flu shot, so you don’t have to worry about the everyday flu strains out there this year. Eat well and often. Think twice about that vacation to Thailand in January. Basically, don’t do anything stupid. Which is good advice no matter what’s in the news.

My Doctor is concerned about this. The pandemic of 1918 was an avian flu. But….we don’t have to wait long to find out if this is hype or not. By spring we will know. I may be among the few, but I don’t think that this was a stunt by President Bush. I may be crazy, but I don’t think he blew up the levies (levys?) in New Orleans, either,or caused global warming. I say, get your flu shot, take vitamins, and wait until spring, and we will know. [:)][:)] We feed the ducks in our nearby pond, and they are almost tame. They come running when they see us. We used to think it was cute. Now I wonder…? Most of the cases have been from people who clean out bird coops, though.

Fieldthistle, I have a great amount of respect for your other comments. This is the only one that I disagree with. I have to admit, though, I don’t live in a poultry capital. I have heard of the horrible polution that the industry causes.