Swine Flu? Bioterrorism? We Report, You Decide!

If you saw the press briefing about the swine flu outbreak the other day (replayed in part on The Daily Show) in which one reporter asked if this could be a bioterrorism attack. Well, this naturally causes one to voice the question, “WTF???” Bio-frickin’-terrorism? Who the hell would have THAT kind of paranoid fantasy? Well, MY guess would be the people who believe that the USA became less safe as of January 20, 2009. You know, the ones who discovered a terrorist plot every time they needed to score some political points so they could claim they’d made us “safer” and who now claim that revealing our use of torture–that everyone already knew about anyway–had made us less safe. Yeah, I’m looking at you, Dick Cheney and Fox News. But it isn’t just limited to them. President Obama went down to Mexico City and shook hands with an archaeologist and the next day, said archaeologist> dropped dead of flu-like symptoms. DUN DUN DUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. Obama was tested and found clear of the flu virus–a good thing too, because some people may have accused him of giving the flu to the archaeologist, instead of him contracting it from one of the thousands of flu victims in Mexico City. I can see a call for closing the borders coming–keep them illegal immigrants and their flus away.

Foxy, the cable news reporter, asks if the swine flu outbreak could be an act of bioterrorism. On being told there did not seem to be any reason not to ascribe it to natural causes, she naturally assumes that since the answer wasn't no, it was confirmed that the answer could be yes...

In the world of cable journalism, non-denial is as good as a confirmation.

What I want to know is, if someone was planning on a bioterrorist attack on the US, why did they start the outbreak in Mexico? Why not New York CIty or Chicago or any other crowded US metropolis? I think the only attack here, beyond the simple microbial, is an attack on reason. But that never stopped anything in this country! Reason, schmeason, the economy is in the toilet, our leaders had authorized torture, let’s have a good old-fashioned plague to get things really going. I’m surprised no one’s said it’s God’s wrath. Oh wait a minute, Tiffany Wellsley on Republican Faith Chat tells us that it’s GOD’S LATEST PUNISHMENT OF IDOL-WORSHIP, meaning Catholic saint veneration, and ends her screed with the “silver lining” that it may do something to alleviate the illegal immigration problem. Well, there you have it–a call to close the borders. I’m not going to post THAT url–if you need to find it, google it.

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Susan Boyle: Exclusive! Read It Only on Intravenous Caffeine!

Susan Boyle explains that with the world the way it is today, it's no surprise that she's hot.

Susan Boyle and Pebbles

INTRAVENOUS CAFFEINE FIRST! Our exclusive fictive interview with Susan Boyle, star of–well, not much at the moment except Britain’s Got Talent, a whole bunch of celebrity magazines and websites and Simon Cowell’s delusions of grandeur, but maybe something else soon! It’s safe to say you won’t find this anywhere else on the web! We sat down with the imaginary Miss Boyle and asked her these questions:

IVCAFF: So Miss Boyle, how do you feel?
Susan: Well, I’ve got a bit of an ache in my jaw muscles from all this smiling.
IVCAFF: No, I mean about your new found celebrity.
Susan: Oh, that, that’s a bit of all right, idn’t it? Fancy me, 47 years old and never been kissed and a star!
IVCAFF: I thought you made that up about never being kissed.
Susan: Hey, when you got a good line, use it. Make my day, I’ll be back, ’twas Beauty killed the Beast.
IVCAFF: Gotcha. But it is odd for sudden stardom to strike a woman of your … of your …
Susan: My age? My homeliness? My bad taste in housedresses?
IVCAFF: All that and more…
Susan: Well, it’s the economy, idn’t it? Things have been really down the crapper lately.
IVCAFF: True.
Susan: and when things are THIS bad, people start wanting to see happy endings. It’s the Cinderella story. I’m made for it, didn’t have a stepmum, but I took care of me sick mum for years, wasting me youth and good looks…well, youth anyway.
IVCAFF: You’re old, you’re dumpy…but you have a great voice.
Susan: Imagine that! Ugly as a pair of buttocks but has talent!
IVCAFF: Simon Cowell makes an odd fairy godmother. Well, it really shouldn’t come as a surprise, if you’ve ever followed jazz, half the chanteuses are all big mommas.
Susan: Or opera–they’re all two-tons Tessies, even the boys.
IVCAFF: But this is pop music, which has always put a premium on age and looks.
Susan: It’s ridiculous these days, why some of these pop divas make and break their careers while they’re still jailbait, they do.
IVCAFF: Only at Disney, home of the underage tease.
Susan: It’s true. Real women have warts! Hair growing out of moles! Jowls!
IVCAFF: Well, thank you Susan, all the luck in the world in your continued endeavors.
Susan: And thank you, Intravenous Caffeine, for not really coming anywhere near me.

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More Torture Memo Fun: Shepard Smith Finds a Conscience

Not-So-Innocent Condoleezza After All

Do you realize that Dick Cheney has seen the surface world more times in the last three months than in his entire tenure as Vice President? As usual, his current surfacings have been to tell us how bad a President Barack Obama is, how he’s endangering us with his reckless transparency and, of course, how effective our torture program was to gain information. Of course, we can’t find out if this is true because the documents are classified but Darth Cheney, aka, the Penguin, told us he made a formal request that they be declassified. Well, guess what? He isn’t VP anymore, just an ordinary mortal like the rest of us. He COULD have declassified the information himself before he left office, but naturally he assumed that Obama would just shut up about his predecessors misdeeds since that is the way the game has traditionally worked. But it seems Cheney didn’t ask the CIA about this, he made a FOIA request to the National Archives who, as of 2006, were 4 millions pages behind in filling FOIA requests. I don’t think they’ve caught up.
But what intel did we get? Marcy Wheeler of the Empty Wheel Blog dug through the 9/11 commission reports and found only 10 pieces of information obtained through the waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah. The first three, to give examples of the quality of info we got, were: 1. “Abu Zubaydah describes his role running the Khaldan and Derunta training camps.” 2. “Abu Zubaydah describes Rahim al-Nashiri’s success as a recruiter.” 3. “AZ describes Bin Laden’s popularity.” (See Marcy Wheeler: 83 Waterboardings, 10 Pieces of Intel in the Huffington Post. Wow, that must have saved innumerable lives, Mr. Cheney.
Notice however, that Cheney never really addresses the moral issue of whether or not we should torture. His argument is strictly, “It’s effective, therefore we should do it.” And apart from being little Miss Innocent, it’s seems Condi (Condoleezza) Rice was actually one of the FIRST to OK waterboarding Rice OK’d CIA waterboard request as Bush adviser. All the top people, Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld and Tenet were involved. Only Colin Powell appears to have been out of the loop, but remember, CIA is part of the State Department, which he headed.
In other news, Fox News anchor Shepard Smith has a new growth someplace on his body. It looks like…a conscience! I’m sure the Fox News health plan provides for the removal of these growths, but in the meantime, let’s take a look at HIS reaction to the memo problem. We have to agree with Shep’s response to Cheney. It doesn’t matter if it works. We’re America. We don’t torture.

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Torture? Only Following Orders? Get Out Of Jail Free!

Obama bails out the banks, gives freedom from prosecution to torturers, but will only snicker at legalizing marijuana....

And when Oprah takes a vacation, Obama has offered to substitute for her.

Oh, that Obama! Just like Dorothy in The Wiz, he wants nothing more than to ease on down, ease on down the road! Right smack in the middle. Doesn’t matter if one side is better than the other–might get someone upset if I don’t stay right in between. Don’t look back, there’s a whole lotta road ahead of us. Let’s just ease on down, ease on down the road!
The problem is–sometimes you DO have to take sides. Sometimes, staying in the middle doesn’t give you the optimal position, but a NEGATIVE optimum. In other words, if there’s a valley in between the two sides instead of a hill. Take these torture memos that just were made public. Omigod, the Bush administration really did authorize torture, they were fully aware of what they were doing and all the steps they took were simply to look like they weren’t committing war crimes. What to do, what to do? I know–we’ll make the documents public, but then we’ll say that we won’t prosecute anyone for it. That ought to satisfy both sides.
Well, now the conservatives are mad because the documents WERE made public–after all, now Al-Qaeda will know what kind of tortures we performed and aren’t allowed to use anymore! Despite the fact that both according to international laws and OUR OWN LAWS, torture is forbidden. And the liberals are none too happy either, because we’re letting these war criminals from George Bush on down to Private Joe Blow off scot-free. After all, they thought they were doing their patriotic duty and besides, everyone below the administration level was just following orders. I guess all those Nazi war criminals we hanged can now demand re-trials.
I think Obama suffers from Oprah-itis. He wants everyone to love him. Whenever possible, he tries to take a middle course in order to make everyone happy. The financial crisis, the tortures of the prior eight years. After all, Solomon tried a middle course with that baby the two mothers claimed. But if you take a middle course between good and evil, you wind up being neither, and not being good is not a good thing for the man who ought to set our moral compass as a nation. Let us leave behind the pain and suffering. But Obama, we were the ones who caused the pain and suffering. We CAN’T forgive ourselves for something we did to SOMEONE ELSE. Only they can forgive us. We need to show we mean business about no longer accepting torture as one of our standard operations–and we must take a hardline and punish those who authorized it. Otherwise, there’s no justice. We’re like the major leagues, looking away when everyone is using steroids because the big home run hitters bring in the crowds. If you get caught cheating, well, naughty naughty, promise you won’t do it again.
Yes, let’s ease on down the road. But let’s not leave a pile of crap where we’ve been. We need to clean it up and if a few people won’t like you for it, Barack, tough tushies. Let’s have no more “Get Out Of Jail Free” cards given out to people who did wrong and knew it.
BTW, April 20 is National Pot Smoker’s Day. While I am not a pot smoker…ummmmm, these days…I did partake in my youth. Consequently, I find it appropriate to nooge our President on another subject, legalization. Yes, it may only save a few billion dollars and that isn’t going to solve anything, Mr. President. But it will free up jail space for criminals who actually deserve to be behind bars, free the police to pursue real criminals instead of some silly potheads, and take money away from the drug gangs, as well as opening up marijuana to be used for legitimate medical purposes. You smoked when you were young–don’t be a hypocrite. And don’t snicker about it just to please the right wing.
And that’s the news.

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“I’m sick and tired of all this government spending!” Well, Where the Hell were you when the bill was being rung up?

Rich White People hold their own Tea Party so they won't come in touch with the riff-raff.

Don't Tread on Me--You'll scuff my Italian leather

Once again, Fox News has come out to protect the American Rich Person–and convinced a good number of the not so rich to support them. Does anyone over there even know that the tax increase only effects people making over $200K a year? What do they all think–they’re all gonna win the lottery? Or do they care, because in the back water of extremist right wing hate, it’s being claimed that this tax increase will be going to pay minorities to do nothing. Who needs roads, who needs education? Burn the books–as someone shouted at one of Glenn Beck’s 9-12 meetings the other week. Is Fox a news network or a cheering section? Do they blame George Bush for running up our national credit debt to ungodly proportions? No–it’s Obama’s debt, even though he’s been in office less than 3 months. A return to pre-Bush levels of taxation on the wealthy? TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION! What–do they think it’s only legitimate if Republicans vote the tax bill? Impeach Obama–not because of what he did but because of what he MIGHT do. Hey, isn’t that the kind of thinking that got us into Iraq? Texas may have to secede, says its governor, Rick Perry. Well, won’t that be a shame.
Look, I don’t give Obama a 100% on his report card so far. He’s done some good things, but I think he’s headed for trouble in the way he’s handling the financial crisis by listening to the people who are hoping that this is just a glitch in need of a big correction. And Afghanistan may turn out to be as bad a morass as Iraq if we escalate our presence. And his Justice Department needs a good swift kick in the rear. But if anything, he hasn’t raised taxes on the wealthy ENOUGH. He’s done nothing to warrant impeachment, unlike the fratboy who held the office the last 8 years, unless you believe all the lies that were spread about him with the help of the so-called “fair and balanced” news network that spread innuendo as if it were fact and bravely “asked questions” where there weren’t any questions that needed to be asked. And for God’s sake, how can he be a fascist AND a socialist at the same time???
Do this group know what it means to teabag someone? You bet they do. They want to teabag Obama and all the people who voted for him, all the people who voted out Republicans from the Senate and the House, all the people who believe in science instead of creationism, all the people who think they’re so smart, all those blacks and hispanics and asians and…

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