Story of the day...playing games with your health...

So the latest disease outbreak of the week is the swine flu, which has already claimed at least 149 lives in Mexico, as well as 42 documented cases in the United States. The virus, which is easily spread and attacks not just the old or weak, but young and virile, has for now essentially put Mexico on quarantine. There's a real fear that the flu will spread and get worse. But who would've known that?

When House Appropriations Committee chairman David Obey, the Wisconsin Democrat who has long championed investment in pandemic preparation, included roughly $900 million for that purpose in this year's emergency stimulus bill, he was ridiculed by conservative operatives and congressional Republicans.

Obey and other advocates for the spending argued, correctly, that a pandemic hitting in the midst of an economic downturn could turn a recession into something far worse -- with workers ordered to remain in their homes, workplaces shuttered to avoid the spread of disease, transportation systems grinding to a halt and demand for emergency services and public health interventions skyrocketing. Indeed, they suggested, pandemic preparation was essential to any responsible plan for renewing the U.S. economy.

That seems reasonable. I mean, who would be against a chunk of money, a fraction of what was handed over to the financial sector, to protect our citizens from a very deadly virus?

Oh yeah, this stupid cunt. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine used her "faux-moderate" blackmail card to dice out the pandemic funding from the stimulus bill. She even brags about it on her website, including the "cover" of the Wall Street Journal editorial under direction from dickhead-in-chief Karl Rove.

...state and local governments, and the emergency services that would necessarily be on the frontlines in any effort to contain a pandemic, got nothing.

Jesus fucking Christ. Are you sleeping well now, Susan, with that blood on your hands? How about we send you and your whole family to Mexico City, leave you in the street, and see how fun catching a terminal disease with no medical help can be? I dare you to come to television now to defend your inexcusable deeds. Oh wait you did before the outbreak.



But it gets better. What Cabinet officer would be the most important part of this swine flu plan? Well that would be the Secretary of Health and Human Services, of course. Oh wait. There is no Secretary, since the Republican leadership via Mitch "Turkeyneck" McConnell continues to invoke filibustering the confirmation of Gov. Kathleen Sibelius, who was a tepid compromise candidate anyway since Rahm Emmanuel is too much of a dick to let Obama hire Howard Dean, on the basis of her unwillingness to go 100% to the anti-abortion side.

Why are they blocking this nomination? Because Gov. Sebelius won't approve Kansas Republican bills to block abortion even if the abortion will save the mother's life. They say she is "an enemy of the unborn," because she thinks doctors should be able to save the mother's life.

This is reason why the vast majority of the fanatical anti-abortion wingnuts don't give a shit about what's moral or what's the best, but a team-thug mentality that proves that they're nothing but lemming hypocrites, who are gleefully putting the rest of us at risk for their fucktard insanity.

Now the question to Harry Reid and the President is this: where are your balls? GO RIGHT NOW on every freaking news/TV/Radio outlet you can to call the Republican bullshit. We can't put ourselves at risk for your sense of "bipartisanship". They are fucking weasels.

And while we're at it, Rick Perry, governor of Texas, who is so hard over seceding from the union by now trying to beg for Tamiflu for the pandemic, go fuck yourself.

All right, whew. Done my rant for the day. Purge. Deep breath. :-)