The Monk Bought Lunch

the cluck stops here

Is it just my imagination, or have scientist types for some time now been trying to tell us that the avian flu is some serious shit and that “pandemic” is not someone who’s diet is lacking in Chinese bears? Interesting, then, that in the midst of all the indictments, SCOTUS SNAFUs, and lowest-ever popularity ratings, the Prez all of the sudden gets all “Watch out fer the bird flu! Bird flu gonna getcha!”.
My guess is that soon you will start to see exchanges like this in the White House Press Briefing room:

Q: Scott, you stood at that podium and told us that Karl Rove and Scooter Libby had nothing to do with the outing of Valerie Plame. As a matter of fact, you called such charges “ridiculous”. Now that we know, and not in a “relating to an ongoing investigation” way but in a “right there in black and white, underneath where it says it will be 62 degrees and windy today” kind of way, that both were in fact involved, don’t you feel like a chump and don’t you feel stank?

Mr. McClellan: Are you feeling alright, Helen? You look a little peaked. You been messin’ with the chickens?

Which will eventually evolve into something like this:
Q: Scott, you lyin’ ass hair-club-for-men joinin’, phony paper passin’ and nix-check cashin’ lowlife, every time we ask you about any problem the administration is having, you try to hand us a steaming bowl of “focus on the work of the president”. What the holy hell IS that work, if not making sure he’s running a tight ship? Clearing the brush from his ranch?

Mr. McClellan: Terry, let me say this: Buh-GAWK! Cough cough. Buh-GAWK!

Q: You didn’t answer my question.

Mr. McClellan: I did answer your question, Terry. I said: buh-GAWK! You go, Goyal.

There’s this little gag I like to do to annoy my friends when we’re out in some noisy environment. I get their attention and wave them in close as if I want to tell them something, then once they’ve leaned in towards me I wave them away as if to say “nevermind- not important”. Then I wait a few minutes and do it again. The great part is that people will keep falling for it, so great is the instinct to respond as they do. It really pisses folks off, because it makes us feel just as stupid as we are. The Bushies seem to be trying a similar tactic with the whole “scare the shit out of the country whenever we get in trouble” scenario. But I’m here to tell them, it loses you friends.
My understanding from what news I’ve force fed myself on the “bird flu gonna getcha” front is that, while the prez is out there saying “hey, you can worry about indictments all you want, but we’re all gonna die”, he’s got reps on the news shows saying “we want municipalities to be aware that, if a pandemic hits, it’s going to be up to state and locals to deal with it”. Because apparently viruses recognize state and county boundaries.
It makes me wonder if the whole Katrina fuck-up wasn’t really the White House’s version of the sitcom husband burning dinner so that he won’t be asked to do it again.
“Hey, you don’t want the federal government managing catastrophes- we suck at that!”.

Back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Posted by monk at 02.11.05 08:45