From a Senate source to me:

A Senate page has swine flu. Because of this, votes may be canceled on Friday (convenient) and if an outbreak is declared they will shut down the whole complex.

Brother Pejman expands on this report that Vice President Biden is telling people to avoid public transportation and yank their kids out of schools.

If President Obama wishes to handle this crisis by sending Vice President Biden to an undisclosed location until it’s over, well, sacrifices must be made.

Moe Lane

PS: Watch the video that Pej found above: it’s not every day where you see what is effectively a pet media organ of the Democratic party call for closing the border. And watch for the gaffe at about 5:15. Freudian slip there, Joe?

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

From the diaries by Erick

The highly irrational response to the Swine flu pandemic illustrates the ratings principle that fear and crisis boosts television ratings and newspaper and magazine sales.  Think of the weatherman and a snowfall that never appears, or appears at a quarter of the reported snowfall.

I want the Swine Flu because as far as I can tell, the mortality rates are equal to or less than regular flu.

And I want the immunities that getting the flu will give me, and I hope my whole family gets it too.

This will protect me in the future — from the inevitable mutations of this new flu.

The most creative political response to the flu I’ve scene so far is from the Muslim Egyptian government: let’s use the Swine Flu to get rid of all those pesky Christian’s pigs.

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For those following the health crisis du jour and trying to decide if now is the time to stock up on firearms, MREs, and gasoline for your generator, the CDC has launched a comprehensive web site tracking verified cases as well as providing definitive information on the outbreak.

Hey, who here thinks that the Nation, ThinkProgress, Washington Monthly, Firedoglake, and the rest of the Journolist stenographers are going to reference this?

(For those who can’t see it: it shows Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer bragging about cutting out the very funding that a good number of ostensibly-unrelated Left-bloggers and writers are trying to pin on the GOP, in the person of Senator Susan Collins.  And never mind the fact that the cutting was done as a spectacularly unsuccessful attempt to bribe the GOP into signing on to the Democrats’ debt bill; or that it was an incredibly tacky unsuccessful bribe in the first place.  Reality-based thinking is somewhat… flexible for the Online Left.)

Yes, neither did I.  Even the ones that aren’t overtly obediently writing whatever they get told to write are busy with their uncritical willingness to accept Democratic talking points as gospel truth (as if it’s our fault that it takes a Cabinet appointment to make a Democrat pay his taxes).  So it’s almost certainly foolish to expect that the dogs linked above will even dare bark at their masters.  Never a good idea to make those who feed you angry, right?

Anyway, see Michelle Malkin, Don Surber, Protein Wisdom, The Sundries Shack, Legal Insurrection, Q & O, AoSHQ, Hot Air, and my unworthy self for more details of what is proving to be all the evidence that you need that not only is the Left-sphere being fed its points: it’s being fed its points sloppily.  Frankly, any of the above could have done a better hit job, even if you assume (as well you should) that we’d be intending to sabotage it…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

[UPDATE]: And I thought that I was being harsh.

Back in the day, Senator Schumer bragged about removing the funding, in fact. He thought that it was “bipartisan.”

He said the compromise hammered out between Senate Democrats and moderate Republicans - which has enough support to get it past any threat of a filibuster - was far better than that passed by the House on Jan. 29.

“All those little porky things that the House put in, the money for the [National] Mall or the sexually transmitted diseases or the flu pandemic, they’re all out,” Schumer said.

(H/T: AoSHQ)

“Bipartisan” being defined as “three Republicans and the Democratic party,” of course. Now that there’s a question about said funding, suddenly they feel like they need to pin it all on the Republican party, and never mind that the stripped-out appropriations was part of a failed attempt to bribe the GOP. Note, “failed”: if they had wanted to do a real cut, they would have axed things that would have hurt across the board; instead, they went with what they themselves considered extraneous or meaningless, and it’s just Schumer’s bad luck that the swine flu decided to break out in Mexico.  So, as Don Surber notes, we’re going to get the default option from the Democrats again: blame it on the GOP somehow.

Of course, the people that will scream loudly about this will say not a word about Schumer if they can possibly help it. That’s because they don’t actually care about swine flu. Well, that’s not quite true: after all, the more people that die, the more they’ll feel justified and righteous about screaming about the Republican party. Sure, it’s a tragedy, but the really important thing for them is to elect more Democrats.

Moe Lane

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