Uh-Oh — I Just Sneezed!
The New York Times is reporting at this moment, there have been twenty confirmed cases of the boogeyman swine flu in the United States and 1300 in Mexico. In the U.S., all twenty cases have thus far been mild while in Mexico, there are eighty deceased as a direct result of this outbreak of the swine flu. I just sneezed out of nowhere; no warning, no split-second tingling — just a dry ACHOO!!! Am I frightened? Of course not, but the same couldn’t be said for my brethren and sisters from the Right.
Of course, I’m referring to the recent University of Nebraska-Lincoln study showing conservatives are more easily frightened than liberals are, which of course explains a LOT, of course. I suspect the G.O.P. is already brainstorming amongst themselves on how they can round everybody up and quarantine us and declare martial law somehow to fight this serious disease. Obviously, I hope not but I wouldn’t put it past them to be bombarding the Obama administration with pleas for them to allow police roadblocks in every town, flanked of course by the fifty National and Air National Guards to hand out facemasks and document everybody who sneezes, wheezes or even coughs during the “safety checks”.
How can anybody in their right minds turn this into a Left versus Right issue? Y’all just leave that one up to MOI (and again, of course I am part French and proud).
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Other “Must Reads” From My Fellow Political Bloggers: Andrew Sullivan of The Daily Dish (Moderate) has a “MUST SEE — faces of the day” photo; Drudge Retort (Left) as always offers one of the best opinion “back and forths” on the ‘Spheres; Shawn Mallow of Wizbang (Right) uses the same tongue-in-cheek logic to oppose my own; Jules Crittendon and Michelle Malkin (Both Right) are blaming this upon President Obama’s President Bush’s wide open border -slash- illegal alien policies; Meanwhile, Rick Moran of Right Wing Nuthouse resists his Conservative tendency to be easily frightened and even voices his doubts as to the seriousness of it all even points out the dismal track record of the Mainstream Media in these affairs; Larisa Alexandrovna of at-Largely is absolutely SHOCKED (!) this whole pandemic might just have something to do with a tad bit of corporate irresponsibility on behalf of Smithfield Foods, Inc.; Doctor Clarissa Pinkola Estés of The Moderate Voice (Centrist) gives a common-sense list of swine flu symptoms, what to look for and what to do IF…
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11:08 pm on April 26th, 2009 1
As a conservative, I have to tell you it takes a lot more than a couple of reported cases of swine flu to scare me even though I live in a southern border state. No martial law required as far as I am concerned. What frightens me are economy killing environmental proposals that have no chance of working. Reckless spending in Washington gives me nightmares. It doesn’t matter which party you want to blame for either one, we’ll all pay in the end.
http://is.gd/uHPc
Global Warming and Alarmist Policies
http://is.gd/tc4s
Joint Economic Committee Warns to beware of the budget
10:07 am on April 27th, 2009 2
When will the media stop hyping stories to their benefit? I will never know when an ACTUAL threat is possible, because they make everything seem like one. So, like many, I am jaded to their cries of seriousness. Avian flu, swine flu, the economy….who cares. We’ve heard it all, and survived. Why won’t we survive the new “disaster”? Ho, Hum. People don’t even care any more, which will be scary when something REALLY happens.
10:21 am on April 27th, 2009 3
THE LAST 3 PANDEMICS OF THE LAST 100 YEARS EITHER DIED OUT OR MUTATED TO LESS VIRULENT FORMS.THERE IS NO REASON TO THINK THIS WONT HAPPEN WITH SWINE FLU.IT IS NOT THE END OF THE WORLD.
11:17 am on April 27th, 2009 4
This company is creating a vaccine for the Swine Flu http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Baxter-International-working-apf-15034935.html?.v=2
12:35 pm on April 27th, 2009 5
Aw, low blow GTL. I can also point to a book and several studies showing the conservatives are much more generous (charitable giving) than liberals are. This also explains A LOT.
Note it was one of O’bamas advisors who I think said “Never waste a crisis”. This Swine flu paranoia provides a nice destraction to the energy hearings (goal: raise taxes and expand the entitlement culture – democrat voting base) and the ethics issues bubbling up in the liberal congress. Hmmmmm….
Steve
12:46 pm on April 27th, 2009 6
I’ll tell ya what’s really scary…
Obama.
Now that’s scary!!!
12:56 pm on April 27th, 2009 7
Not to mention that the Swine Flu panic will make it oh so obvious that we can’t survive without Socialized health care.
9:57 pm on April 27th, 2009 8
Fandb: something like that. the propaganda feature is to contrive legal grounds for more control of our health in general and our food in particular (for both political and financial reasons) to eliminate competition for Pharma and Agribusiness, even further undermine the mechanisms of self-reliance and maybe thin the herd a bit in the process. all kinds of monied interests can gain from CODEX (global food and medicine code) and it has almost unanimous bipartisan support.
but to give a nod to your own theory, yes, the more centralised the healthcare bureaucracy is and the more power we give it, the harder it is to fight the decrees of these remote and unelected “administrative bodies”, and such manufactured “crises” are very effective at overcoming public resistance to it.
NSF has various takes on the whole “pandemic” thing and its political utility: http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=2515
and from alternet:
“It first looked mostly like a swine virus but closer analysis showed it is a never-before-seen mixture of swine, human and avian viruses, according to the CDC.”
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N24524032.htm
12:08 pm on April 28th, 2009 9
Speaking of scare tactics, I see the left is trying to use this “crisis” as an opportunity to get the HHS secretary confirmed faster…nice. Got to say the Dems are using the scare tactics more than the Reps on this one.
2:15 pm on April 28th, 2009 10
SJ: scare tactics (other than ones designed to mobilise one’s base) most benefit the faction in power since they’re used to justify abuses of it, so the majority faction is usually the one “bringing the fear”. if a minority faction scares the populus it would likely backfire, since you can’t abuse power you don’t have.
UNFORTUNATELY when folks get scared they tend to cling to the current establishment and be less open to changes of course, even if the current course is what caused the trouble. as the saying goes, “the Empire can survive bad emperors better than it can stand revolution”. but that’s only true to a point and the ability to recognise when that point has been reached is the constant dilemma of every society and it rarely happens in time due to the fact that:
we humans seem to value “order” more than anything else, regardless of the form that order takes. the Founders even recognised that in the Declaration, acknowledging that people will swallow alot of injustice before “abolishing the forms to which they’ve become accustomed”.
bottom line: only anger trumps fear, and most people only get fighting mad when they’re hungry, which is why the European oligarchy ushered in the welfare state after the war: to keep the still-armed and freshly-trained proles from throwing in with the Reds who were whispering in their ears. so the bluebloods made with the bread and circusses to take the fire of revolution outta their bellies.
those who think the “welfare state” was conceived in compassion need to learn the history of its initial proponents (hint: same crowd that forced the Prussian-inspired compulsory “education” system on us): it’s nothing less than a bribe to look the other way to the machinations of an oligarchy. it was the creation of the mortal enemies of the Left, namely old money who considers it just part of the cost of doing business, and if you think anyone on the Right – especially the Business Right – would actually abolish it despite their half-hearted condemnation of “socialism” i have a bridge you might like.
our revolution was fought on Principle because it wasn’t a prole movement, it was a revolution by and for monied entrepreneurs who didn’t like the insults they were suffering at the hands of the King and preferred death to dishonour – but that’s an Elite value, historically, and you’ll find that most of those loyal to the Crown were working-class types who didn’t really stand much to gain from fighting and only fell in line with the Patriots when they got momentum on their side. but when it was in the argument stages most thought they were either criminals or nuts and the charge of “endangering our children with this irresponsible treasonous behaviour” was oft-levied.
i understand the evolutionary utility of this sociopolitical inertia, but it makes tyranny almost inevitable and that’s why civilisations tend to run on a cyclical basis.
btw, don’t think oligarchs can be proponents of socialism? Google “fabianism” but have the barf bag handy when you see the contempt in which they hold those they wish to “help”, and the REASON they wanna help them: so they can be an effective fighting force for Empire, and reliable employees for the corporatists, whom the Fabians believed should have monoplies in their industries for more “cultural cohesion” (read: rigid social castes). it’s like the worst of fascism and socialism in one bunch, and they form the core the so-called “Labour” party in Britain.
2:25 pm on April 28th, 2009 11
And of course the next logical step in the process is to bring all the countries, i.e. the entire world, under one government (while maintaining the appearance of national sovereignty, at least at first) that controls and directs all the major societal functions such as banking, military, food supplies, and education. And has there been any leader within memory who might have a better chance of being viewed as the world leader than Obama?
2:57 pm on April 28th, 2009 12
FANDB: that’s what CODEX ALIMENTARIUS (literally, “world food code”) is all about.
but Obama’s not “the One”, nor will there likely be one soon, if ever. he may help it along but the oligarchs have learned the effectiveness of layers of bureaucracy and the folly of placing their eggs in one basket, which not only gives them an Achilles heel but provides a focus for revolutionary angst, puts a face on something which otherwise just manifests as this vague sense that something’s wrong, but with no identifiable locus like a Hitler or whatnot that you can aim at taking down, and not even an identifiable philosophy that you can criticise, it’s like power for its own sake.
CODEX is a solution in search of a problem… and when the time comes, a good lab-bred germ might be just the “Medical 9/11″ the doctor ordered.
the American Revolutionaries used to aim for their officers and that caught them off guard, but they’ve adapted to the new rules..
3:01 pm on April 28th, 2009 13
GTL: Wordpress inserted your URL before the linked URL in my CODEX link above, any idea how to get it to stop doing that? it used to do it on my Wordpress blog too and i had to edit the link after posting but that took admin clout.
the link for those interested:
http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?page_id=157
5:41 pm on April 28th, 2009 14
Im a conservative.
Hep me!! Hep me!
Were all gonna die!!
It’s all Obama’s fault!!
Hep me!! Hep me!
9:43 pm on April 28th, 2009 15
SJ, several studies also show that along with being, on average, more generous, conservatives tend to be more well balanced and self confident. I think it was in Sept. of 02 that a study came out showing that conservatives were less fearful, had fewer concerns about travel, or being attacked then those on the left.
1:38 am on April 29th, 2009 16
Susan — I have no idea! edumacate me as soon as you figure it out please?
11:09 am on April 29th, 2009 17
will do sweetie. let me put my antiquated mid-80’s programming instincts to work here and grab at a straw: when it happened to me on the ‘Lizard, i’d simply fix the mis-coded link in the html editor after the fact but never spent much time on what might be causing it to happen. the one common thread was that it only happened when posting outgoing links but didn’t happen every time, so we have to control for input variations, and there’s only 2 variations in the way i make hyperlinks: one is copying the URL into the HREF tag, and the other is typing it in manually. this time i copied it, and maybe WP’s link creator doesn’t like the clipboard.
so let me try it again typing it directly into the HREF quotes, and if that doesn’t work i’m out of ideas for now, except that maybe WP’s using some new xml tags and is choking on my old-fangled html. here we go:
Codex Alimentarius
11:29 am on April 29th, 2009 18
it worked. the above link takes you to the article referenced in my post. so if you or anyone reading this is having trouble posting hyperlinks on WordPress blogs, try typing the URL into them manually instead of pasting it. if the linked URL is super-long, paste it into your post window to look at while you make the link then delete it.
1:56 pm on April 30th, 2009 19
As the World Health Organization raised its infectious disease alert level Wednesday and health officials confirmed the first death linked to swine flu inside U.S. borders, scientists studying the virus are coming to the consensus that this hybrid strain of influenza — at least in its current form — isn’t shaping up to be as fatal as the strains that caused some previous pandemics.
In fact, the current outbreak of the H1N1 virus, which emerged in San Diego and southern Mexico late last month, may not even do as much damage as the run-of-the-mill flu outbreaks that occur each winter without much fanfare.
After Joe biden told us we should close down our schools and borders Ima thinking perhaps the democrats have taken to heart the “Never let a good chance to scare a Republican” go to waste.
1:59 pm on April 30th, 2009 20
Frankly this is the most cowardly administration Ive seen in my long lifetime.
They use everything to drum up a crisis and then pat themselves on the back for handling a drummed up crisis.
When historians look back on this administration without partisanship they are going to put this administration at the very bottom of all presidents. They are flippin idiots that spend every day trying to scare Americans into loving them.