Rove's flu

Fact: pandemics happen because of poor planning and bad policy.

Another fact: I was as up in arms about other outbreaks of the past 20 years as I am about the swine flu epidemic. We were in the heart of the rightist experiment, so I'm used to it. My immune system is probably steeled in every pathogen known to exist.

The rest of America though doesn't have this immunity - a fact that makes longtime GOP thug Karl Rove look even stupider than ever.

In February, Rove wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal in which he heaped ridicule upon government spending for flu preparedness. Rove complained about stimulus funds being spent on "pandemic flu preparations."

Uh, Karl?

If only the money was spent on this type of stuff years ago - instead of squandered on nonsense.

I live in an area where local governments spent untold dollars prosecuting a museum for "dirty" art and tapping phones for "communist" activity - but couldn't track the flu worth a damn. Local governments had money to give to big corporations that ended up moving all their jobs out of town anyway - but it failed to make sure we had clean drinking water.

And we wonder why things fall apart when conservatives take power.

The Bush regime could spend millions of taxpayer dollars on bank bailouts and on using the Patriot Act to track every political opponent who cheats on their spouse - but it was reluctant to spare that much to protect the country from a flu pandemic. (Bush eventually requested some money for flu preparedness, but only after ignoring the threat for years.)

Karl Rove's complaint about flu spending reminds me of Bobby Jindal whining about spending money to monitor volcanoes, just before one of the biggest volcanoes in America erupted. Or congressional Republicans' claims in the '90s that the Taliban was no threat.

Another website suggests renaming this strain of swine flu to Karl's flu. I disagree, because people might think it has something to do with Karl Marx or Karl Malone. I think we should call it Rove's flu.

We also have to look at other factors that have led to Rove's flu. There's a consensus that this outbreak started at a corporate factory farm - another example of the ravages of factory farming, which have already put small farmers out of business.

There's also signs that airlines' refusal to use clean air filters and properly clean aircraft contributed. (Improper airplane cleaning is also believed to be a major contributor to the nation's bedbug epidemic. Of course, the Bush regime sat on its hands through that too, and even gave a bailout to airlines.)

If the government won't spend money on fighting real threats like pandemics and volcanoes, why does it exist? In conservaworld, the government's role is to regulate people's sex lives and censor "communist" comic books. It's never to rein in big corporations or to keep us safe from flu epidemics.

(Source: http://rawstory.com/08/blog/2009/04/27/rove-mocked-spending-on-flu-preparedness)