Fear Mongering...

Another day, another Administration, another political party's pundits playing the fear card. I'm tired of it.

Last night, I was watching Countdown, and they spent an inordinate amount of time on the fact that Susan Collins and a few other Senators are still "bragging" about having removed pandemic readiness from the stimulus bill.

They did at one point admit that the readiness bill was passed separately, but they spent large amounts of time condemning these Republican Senators for their short-sightedness in light of the current Swine Flu situation.

But let's think about it. First off, Swine Flu is far from a pandemic at this point. It's a little bit scary, but the numbers of cases are not out of line with the numbers of cases of other influenzas, and the fatality numbers aren't that much higher than the other ones.

But secondly, given the fact that the preparedness bill did pass in an alternate form, what this really represents was someone's attempt to remove it from the stimulus bill, so as to make that already huge bill less political and pork-laden.

There are arguments on both sides, of course. Disease preparedness isn't directly related to stimulus, but it can also be said that a pandemic at a time of recession could topple the country into a full fledged depression, so viewed through that lens, perhaps it belonged in the stimulus bill as a "protective measure against further economic down turn".

But really, I'm sick and tired of people with political axes to grind. When you spend a lot of time talking about torture and what this country should do to atone and make right the behaviors of the recent past, that is not necessarily partisan. It certainly may be used for that purpose, but there are those of us who aren't looking for charges based on party affiliation, but on law breaking. If, as some assert, certain high ranking Democrats were briefed on the program and didn't object, they should be prosecuted as well.

But this whole "Lookie lookie at how the Republicans were short sighted, playing politics with this important bill, now that Swine Flu is rearing its ugly head" meme has got to go.

It isn't unreasonable for someone to believe it didn't belong in the stimulus bill, and it clearly passed separately, so any faux-trage is just political partisan posturing.

Enough.