H1N1 – The Gathering (political) Storm

I will dive into this topic in a little more depth later...but I want to get these thoughts out there before the rest of the pundits.

The health care debate has stalled the reform bills, at least temporarily. People have grown weary of the spending, the government largess, and in the current economy they're crankier than normal anyway, so they've been spoiling for a fight. What the Obama team needs is a good crisis to distract us from how bad this legislation is and make us more pliable and open to pushing it through congress. What to do, what to do...[go into liberal mindset]

Aha! On the horizon - SWINE FLU! If it hits badly enough, and people start dying - WOW, that would really make a case for health care reform, right? Because if we had universal health care, everyone would have received a vaccination and no one would have died! Those evil Republicans must not care about your grandmother if they let her die from the swine flu, right? Let us pass the bill and this will never happen again!

But how to get the message out in a sufficiently scary way so we can use the politics of fear? If only we had a media that was complicit with our agenda. Oh wait, silly me, we do!! MSNBC, NBC, ABC - start doing your pieces on this scam - er, crisis. Warn people about the 500,000 plastic coffins the WHO and CDC have being stored outside the Atlanta airport, talk about the deaths being double to triple the normal death rate from the flu...do everything you can to scare people. Then we can beat them with the H1N1 club until they relent and let us pass the appropriate-length non-pork filled bill. Maybe it will actually be bad enough that we can suspend civil liberties and shut people up by force!

[come back to reality]...ugh. That was nasty in there! I feel dirty.

Will H1N1 be a big deal? I don't know any more than the rest of us do. The media seemed disappointed that round one didn't kill more people. Remember, if it bleeds it leads, and no blood makes for dull programming. The better question is: Will the administration use any and all means necessary to get health care reform passed, at any cost? You bet. You heard it here first...if H1N1 doesn't actually make you sick, prepare for the coverage and the political drafting off of its wake to make you ill anyway.