Thursday, October 13, 2005

For the birds


While as a certifiable paranoid and professional crank, I suspect that the sudden attention paid to the latest Avian flu virus scare is diversionary, others seem to be taking the prospect of another epidemic quite seriously. An acquaintance of mine was orphaned as a baby by the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918 that is said to have killed nearly 50 million people and I have read old newspaper clippings that seem much like science fiction – describing a Chicago where there was nobody to keep the electricity on, the trains had stopped and the streets were deserted. The horror of an epidemic that has the potential of killing up to half of those infected can’t be overstated and an epidemic in our country, crippled by incompetent, crooked leaders and a depleted treasury is all the worse to contemplate.

True to form, the Incompetent in Chief has appointed another crony to be in charge of making sure America is prepared. Stewart Simonson is Assistant Secretary for Public Health Emergency Preparedness at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). He has no public health management experience. He got his job because he is a close associate of former Health & Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson. His job before joining HHS was as corporate secretary and counsel for Amtrak when Thompson was chief of the rail service. Prior to Amtrak, Simonson was staff lawyer for Thompson when he was governor of Wisconsin.

Is Simonson another Michael Brown? Can we afford to find out the hard way?

Of us we sing.

Anyone who protests is a traitor, anyone who questions a “warpresident” is a traitor. We paste flags on everything. We write God on anything that has to do with the USA. We need above all to believe in our divine mission and our divine grace and the complete goodness of everything we do and anything less than fulsome self-adulation is treason.

The Reign of Reason today has a great article on American self-worship. Will falling on our knees before our own graven image bring us down?



4 comments:

Crankyboy said...

Anyone who protests is a traitor, anyone who questions a “warpresident” is a traitor.

you mean it's not?

Crankyboy said...

Will falling on our knees before our own graven image bring us down?

How about worshipping me instead?

RR said...

Somehow the Republican machine has sold the American public on the idea that government is bad; that it has no legitimate role to play and that the market will solve all of our problems.

Anyone who spends even a modest amount of time thinking about issues such as public health, disaster preparedness (not response), etc. will quickly realize we need a proactive government to look out for our interests.

True, government can quickly become overly intrusive, but we have recently seen the result of those who don't believe in government at all.

So how did we elect someone to govern who doesn't believe in government?

Capt. Fogg said...

The idea that Government is a bad idea became inoperative once they took control - it's as if Animal Farm were the script for the whole thing.