"Distraction-Flu?"

Bird flu. Bird flu. Bird flu.

Remember last week? When every single eye-popping, 40 pt. BOLD Helvetica headline in the country said BIRD FLU IS COMING and we're all gonna DIE!!!!!!!!

We're all gonna die? No.

Listen. According to the World Health Organization, Avian Flu has claimed the lives of a staggering 75 people world wide in the past five years. And of those 75, 53 fell ill in the squalid tribal villages of Indonesia. The others were in Vietnam & Cambodia. Not exactly shining stars in the global medical care community. Imagine if they had even remotely better medical capablitlies...Maybe bird flu wouldn't be a problem at all....

(NOTE: according to a U.S. Centers for Disease Control report, about 36,000 people die every year from REGULAR flu problems in the US. Regular flu.)

So WHY all the hubbub about "Bird" Flu? I have a hunch:

Last week, every newspaper at the local newsstand told of our federal government's doomsday bird flu preparedness plan: throw $7.1 BILLION f-ing dollars at the problem.

$7.1 billion f-ing dollars!?!?! For 75 dead people in South East Asia? Huh. That doesn't add up. Especially after our current government recently ceded an entire American metropolis to flood waters and starvation, leaving THOUSANDS dead. Since when are they in the giving-a-sh@t business?-- Obviously this is a ploy to save a little face. But they're doing it with OUR $7.1 billion. (by the way, their plan won't even be ready until 2009). Man, I hate that.

And what about this indictment of the Vice President's chief policy advisor Scooter Libby? An indictment that sheds light on a VAST discrepancy between what we were told about Iraq and what was actually the case. You know, the thing that SHOULD have been on the front page but got buried on page 4 because of the impending "pandemic...." ???

Bird flu. Riiiiiiight.