I’m going to do something I haven’t done in a while:  issue a call to the MOB.

MOB bloggers – of all political persuasions – did you get an “invite” to Amy Klobuchar’s “tele-town-hall?”

Did you get the “callback” from A-Klo’s office to join the meeting?  Did you actually get to “attend” the meeting?

And presuming you got the “callback” – did you attend?  How did the meeting go?  Was there a balanced set of questions?

I plan on trying to listen to the audio later today. 

If you have a blog, write about it and either leave a link in my comment section, or email me.  If you do not have a blog, leave your story in my comment section.  I will update this post as needed.

I wanna see if there’s a story here.

Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple and a flaming liberal (one can assume evidenced by his fawning over Obama via his web site after the election) elected to have his liver transplant performed by a super-specialist surgeon in Tennessee. Job lives near Apple headquarters in Silicon Valley California.

“It’s not gaming the system,” [Jobs’ surgeon, Dr. James Eason] said in the Aug. 18 interview in Memphis. “It’s people choosing where they want their health care. Some people would leave Tennessee to go to California or somewhere else to seek treatment. Now we have people coming from California to Tennessee.”

I am not asserting that Obamacare would force someone like Jobs to seek care within the confines of California, or given his resources, even within the US. The fact that average Americans don’t know what choices they would have or would lose is probably what has derailed Obama’s momentum.

President Obama took his health care message to talk radio Thursday, telling listeners of Philadelphia-based host Michael Smerconish that he wants to overhaul the nation’s ailing health care system out of necessity rather than politics.

That’s a hard argument to make, at least to an informed audience, when Obamacare lacks tort reform. Malpractice litigation represents a large portion of the system’s cost structure and weighs heavily on health care provider decision-making when potentially being sued has to be constantly considered.

…but America isn’t buying it from a President and a Congress that will never be subject to the product of this “necessary” reform. They and their families will retain their private-jet health care.

America has witnessed a government that can’t administer an ill-advised yet simple rebate system for a narrow field of automotive sales transactions and yet aspires to manage the vast and varied intricacies of America’s health care complex.

The public trust of the Obama administration is fast eroding in the wake of White House confirmination that taxpayer dollars were spent on a spam campaign to promote reform most Americans are now resisting.

Liberal elites like Steve Jobs might also consider the fact that Jobs’ liver transplant, an unorthodox treatment of a rare cancer, while leaving 70% of patients healthy after one year, would most surely not be covered by Obamacare.

“It would not be considered the standard of care,” he said July 2 in a telephone interview. “It’s not something that would routinely be done nor is it proven to be a beneficial treatment, but it has nevertheless been tried and I’m sure in some cases been successful.”

However, experimental treatments, even if initially funded by the desperate-but-wealthy, tend to trickle down to the little people eventually once they are found to be beneficial – then widespread adoption drives down costs.

Moreover, at least in the case of Dr. Eason, government hasn’t forced him to care for those that can’t pay or represent a minority. He’s already doing it by his own volition.

While patients of Jobs’s stature are welcome, they aren’t regarded differently than anyone else, Eason said.

“Memphis is a very impoverished city in and of itself, with a large minority population,” he said. “I can tell you our floors aren’t full of billionaires.”

Eason said he’s aiming for better access to transplantation for the region’s poor, black and Hispanic populations.

One has to wonder if Jobs own personal experience might also give him cause for pause for Obama and his policies.

“Russians don’t take a dump without a plain…” – Admiral Painter (Fred Thompson), Hunt for Red October.

“Democrats don’t protest “Astroturf” unless some major organization tells them where and when to show up, and trained on when and how to cheer” – Mitch Berg, Hunt for Red November

Hyperbolic?  Maybe.  But I never let the chance for a good line pass me by.

Either, it seems, can whomever writes press releases for Betty McCollum and Keith Ellison:

As Minnesotans, we know we need health insurance reform.

(Actually, smart Minnesotans know we need it  vastly less than most people – about 8% of Minnesotans lack any form of health insurance – but then, “smart people” is not who this announcement was aimed at.  I digress).

We are sick of a few loud people dominating this debate.

(So much better to have a few people speaking into microphones in hearing rooms in Washington going unquestioned).

Please join us for a rally in support of reform.

I’d love to get video of the “Minnesotans For Higher Taxes and Eternal Deficits In Exchange For Crappy, Unsustainable Health Insurance” rally.

The rally will be followed by a canvass, where we will hit the streets and talk to you friends and neighbors about the need for reform this year!

Be careful when Democrat “canvassers” “talk“.

Featured speakers include:

Congresswoman Betty McCollum
Congressman Keith Ellison
St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman
Minneapolis Mayor RT Rybak
State Representative Erin Murphy

I wonder what ugly names Ellison will call anyone who opposes Obamacare?

Oh, there’ll be at least one.

Let me know if you plan on attending.

One of the main motivators for Obamacare socialized medicine, we are told, is that America’s health picture is so dismal and that our life expenctancy is falling, and…

…well, no.  Just, no.  Life expectancies in the US are up, and sharply:

The increase is due mainly to falling death rates in almost all the leading causes of death. The average life expectancy for babies born in 2007 is nearly three months greater than for children born in 2006.

The new U.S. data is a preliminary report based on about 90 percent of the death certificates collected in 2007. It comes from the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Life expectancy is the period a child born in 2007 is expected to live, assuming mortality trends stay constant. U.S. life expectancy has grown nearly one and a half years in the past decade, and is now at an all-time-high.

Last year, the CDC said U.S. life expectancy had inched above 78 years. But the CDC recently changed how it calculates life expectancy, which caused a small shrink in estimates to below 78.

I suppose it’s possible that socialized medicine will increase life expentancy; people who are waiting in line at the Department of Pharmacy won’t be subject to the risks of being at home, work or out on the street.

Just trying to find the silver lining.

Passing all that “fishy” dissent about Obamacare.  Dishing all those facts at all those kool-aid-sotted neo-socs.  All those blog posts, talk shows, tea parties.  All that dissent.

All for nothing, as the White House shuts down “flag@whitehous.gov”:

E-mails to that address now bounce back with the message: “The e-mail address you just sent a message to is no longer in service. We are now accepting your feedback about health insurance reform via http://www.whitehouse.gov/realitycheck.”The “flag” service was introduced Aug. 4, with a White House blog post saying: “There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.”

Well, at least America’s party informers still have an outlet.

America stepped up and took the wind out of the sails of the Obama administration’s plan to socialize America’s health care system.

It was not Republicans nor Blue Dog Democrats that derailed Jimmy II’s grand plan – credit this one to vociferous citizens exercising their rights, rescuing America from the brink of yet another irreversible government entitlement, and indicating a potential mid-term rout of Democratic ranks nationwide if they didn’t reverse course.

Bowing to Republican pressure and an uneasy public, President Barack Obama’s administration signaled Sunday it is ready to abandon the idea of giving Americans the option of government-run insurance as part of a new health care system.

It was never intended to be an option.

Meanwhile, Obama gets off the gas and on the back-pedal.

“All I’m saying is, though, that the public option, whether we have it or we don’t have it, is not the entirety of health care reform,” Obama said at a town hall meeting in Grand Junction, Colo. “This is just one sliver of it, one aspect of it.”

I think he said that just as he spied a cream pie with his name on it in the crowd.

No matter how liberal Dems spin this, it is a sound and stinging defeat in the wake of a Democratic super-majority.

The plan now may be to create a member-run non-profit option to compete with private insurers.

…but that may be moot. It may be more over than Obama is willing to concede at this juncture.

On the same day that a Cabinet member signaled the administration’s willingness to forego inclusion of a public health insurance option in the final version of health care reform legislation, a Texas Democrat who is also a registered nurse suggested that the public option might be a deal breaker for at least some House Democrats.

So much for Change^®.

More to come…

It’s interesting, listening to this 1961 speech by Ronald Reagan, how long the idea of socialized medicine/”single payer healthcare” has been knocking around.  He even notes the old “What would you do – throw senior citizens out in the streets” which, being alive in the 1980’s, I thought started in the 1980’s.

And while pining for the old days is a deadly narcotic, it’s amazing to listen to not only how eloquently Reagan trashes the idea, but with with a level of literate details.  They say American’s attention spans are shorter than they used to be – but on this sort of thing?

Anyway – worth a ten minute listen.

…and makes the case for privatizing health care.

To:  President Obama and his Administration

From: Mitch Berg – human ATM machine

Re: Your Stasi

Mr. President,

Before we get down to business:

For the record, the President has consistently said that if you like your insurance plan, your doctor, or both, you will be able to keep them. He has even proposed eight consumer protections relating specifically to the health insurance industry.

Ah.  “For the record”.  Well, that makes everything totally different.

Look: paper protections mean exactly as much as the paper prediciton that “Cash for Clunkers” funding would last a month.  Oh, the paper “protection” might be there – but there is no way for the private insurance industry to compete with a government-subsidized plan over time.  The market distortion and its’ “Unintended” consequences count for a lot more than any paper “guarantee”.

OK.  Let’s get down to business:

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

Flag this.  Like most criticisms of Obamacare, it’s not “misinformation” in any way.
Mitch.  Berg, with an “e”.

You can come on the Northern Alliance Radio Network and “set the record straight”.  Have your people call our people.

That’s what the Democrats’ apologists for Obamacare continue to assure us.

As usualy, they’re full of it.

More trouble on the horizon for The Great Society part deux: After thinking it over, many people are coming around to the notion that the current health care system may not be so bad after all.

Forty-eight percent (48%) of U.S. voters now rate the U.S. health care system as good or excellent. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that just 19% rate it as poor.

These figures reflect a significant increase in support for the health care system over the past few months. In May, just 35% of adults nationwide rated the system as good or excellent. A year ago, just 29% of Likely Voters rated the system in such positive terms.

The new polling also shows that 80% of those with insurance rate their own coverage as good or excellent. That’s up from 70% in May.

Bolding mine, and it’s a doozy. President Obama and his Congressional groupies launched into a bold initiative to reform the nation’s health care system under the premise that people wanted… ahem… change. But how much “change” will really be tolerated by people who already find their health care coverage as, at worst, “good”?

(more…)

The question isn’t so much “why is the President losing ground on healthcare”; socialized healthcare is a dumb idea, and most Americans (especially those of us who’ll be paying for it and losing from it) know it.  It was the shoal that the liberal Bill Clinton of 1992-1993 ran up on; it’ll be proof that the Obama administration is only human, too:

Pluralities now say that the president’s health care plan is a bad idea, and that it will result in the quality of their care getting worse. What’s more, just four in 10 approve of his handling on the issue.The poll also finds that Obama’s overall job-approval rating has dropped to 53 percent. And it shows a public that has grown increasingly concerned about the federal government’s spending as the administration defends its $787 billion economic stimulus and supports a $1 trillion-plus health-care bill.

No, the question is this:  Given that grassroots support for socialized medicine is falling faster than Nancy Pelosi’s jawline, the question is, how does this lack of support make middle-America racist?

First, lets be clear. Is our health care system the best in the world? Yes.

Are a majority of Americans satisfied with the system as it is? Yes.

Do most American’s believe our health care system needs change? Yes.

…but if it’s so bad, why are some of the wealthiest people in the world coming here for their health care? Just ask anyone in the hospitality industry in Rochester, Minnesota, who’s privately-owned jumbo jet sits on the tarmac for a week and who’s occupants reserve a whole floor at the Kahler hotel for their annual visit to the Mayo Clinic?

The Saudi Royal Family comes here for their health care.

These people have unlimited resources – and come here?

And yet, often cited are World Health Organization Statistics citing such items as national longevity, live birth rates and such, attempting to paint a bleaker picture and calling for Change^® in America, so we can get in line and be more like the rest of the world.

…but the WHO is an arm of the UN, who brought us the long debunked Man-Made Global Warming scam and thereby disqualifies itself as a source of reliable statistical  basis, let alone scientific integrity.

An interesting WHO statistic often cited in defense of socialized health care are physician salaries in other nations where socialized health care has long been the norm. Lower salaries for physicians is actually presented as an upside!

Riddle me this: how much do you want the guy who has his hands in your abdomen – or better yet your child’s – to earn? Who is going to sign up for eight years of crappy pay, long hours of internship and residency, and a couple hundred thousand dollars of med-school debt only to end up with a lifetime of crappy pay?

I want my doc to be driving a Porsche to deliver my baby or save my wife’s life.

Nonetheless, I think we can all agree, the the two main issues with our current health care system are coverage and cost.

One reason costs are high in America because we are wealthy as a nation. Seriously.

Food is cheap here and we eat a lot of it. Caloric intake and obesity have long been associated with increased morbidity and mortality via type two diabetes, heart disease, and stroke. Maladies our nation suffers disproportionately with much of the rest of the globe.

That’s not the only cause for the high costs, but it is a cause uniquely American. Our current third-party payer system is the culprit. This approach has gradually created a choke point between the consumer and the service. Here is the opportunity for real reform.

The current system has allowed providers and insurance companies to control far too much of the market under cover of little competition and very little consumer data on the cost and quality of care and coverage.

So before you say that the free market has failed health care, let’s actually try a free-market approach first. Because this has not been a free-market for years.

Reform is indicated, but further government encroachment is an absolute last resort.

For liberals however, it’s all they have to offer.

Liberals are attempting to seize the moment by bastardizing a need for reform into a call for a larger federal government. Obama innocently claims his plan just adds another player but true to form his eloquence is betrayed by the fine print. He intends on complete and total government control of the system.

His plan is a single-payer system, pointing health care reform in precisely the wrong direction by actually reducing accountability and market forces when increasing both is the only proven recipe for success.

As for access, there are millions of Americans without health insurance – many by choice – others because of situational factors like The Great Recession brought to you by liberals like Barney Frank. Certainly a great many need help – those that can’t do for themselves.

For those that legitimately don’t have access, government can and should help out by creating a system like unemployment insurance, possibly co-funded by insurers, providers and taxpayers to create temporary coverage with a choice of providers, for those who are unemployed, and a permanent system to bridge access to Medicaid for those that are truly unemployable. These are ideas we need to hear from our conservative leadership.

As unnerving as the socialization of health care is the dearth of alternative offerings on the part of conservatives who have instead put their chips on political polarization. Republicans are attacking the Democrats’ plan without offering a solution of their own, giving rise to calls that “any reform is better than no reform at all,” not to mention doing nothing for their chances in the next election cycle.

We are constantly compared with other industrialized nations and their universal health care systems as if America is expected to follow suit. Following the rest of the world is not what made us the most powerful nation in the world. America should be enlisting the forces of innovation, ingenuity and free enterprise that got us this far.

The answer to our health care ills can be found among the principles upon which this bruised but still great country was founded and which have propelled us to our current level of wealth and prosperity: Limited government and free enterprise.

In the mean time, on the health care issue, Republicans have become one-dimensional naysayers, a role heretofore reserved for Democrats.

Barack Obama is blowing his political capital like Bill Clinton in a strip joint. The Gates controversy coupled with an utter failure to get any health care reform to paper has left Barack Obama in a political crisis.

Now more than ever, the GOP needs to speak up and offer an alternative plan.

Lest this crisis be wasted.

The Congressional Budget Office has been misbehavin’ – how dare they assert that Government health care won’t save us money.

Obammy says it will!

This may explain the treatment of Douglas Elmendorf, the director of the supposedly nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office who last week told Congress that you can’t “save” money on health care by having government insure everyone.

…because they can do math, unlike Jimmy II.

For that bit of truth-telling, he was first excoriated by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

…a badge of courage as far as I’m concerned.

Then he was summoned, er, invited to the White House for an extraordinary and inappropriate meeting Monday with President Obama and a phalanx of economic and health-care advisers.

Advisers should be in quotes methinks.

Shall we call them the Obama Spanking Machine^™?

Key lesson:  Make sure there’s a free healthcare market next door for when your own system can’t handle things:

A critically-ill premature-born baby from Hamilton is all alone in a Buffalo, N.Y., hospital after she was turned away for treatment at local facility and transferred across the border without her parents, who don’t have passports.Ava Stinson was born Thursday at St. Joseph’s Hospital, 14 weeks premature.

A provincewide search for an open neonatal intensive care unit bed came up empty, leaving no choice but to send the two pound, four ounce baby to Buffalo.

For good, grim entertainment, ask the Norwegians – who still have some private healthcare – about the Swedes (who have none) who come across the border to actually get healthcare they can’t find in their own single-payer system.

(Via Ed)

Polls are polls which is to say one needs to take their assertions “under advisement,” taking into account who is behind them, etc. One troubling trend of late is that much of the Obama administration’s agenda seems to be more and more out of touch with the majority of Americans as depicted in a series of recent polls.

As a gearhead, I came across another such poll:

America’s “Cash for Clunkers” bill is on the cusp of being signed by President Obama, but according to a new survey by Rasmussen Reports, a majority of U.S. citizens aren’t in favor of the plan.

…not that Obama’s agenda is correlated in any way with what is best for America…or Americans. Obama thinks taxpayers want to spend more money our country doesn’t have to sell cars that people apparently still want so they can buy new cars that they don’t want right now either, from an industry where the taxpayer has already invested billions to buy the biggest domestic player.

According to the telephone survey, fully 54% of those queried are against the measure, while 35% are in favor and 12% aren’t sure how they feel about it. That’s up from a similar survey done last month, in which just 34% were against consumer vouchers for trading in older, less efficient cars and trucks. In fairness, Rasmussen Reports indicates that the change could have been influenced by a change in the wording of the respective surveys (the initial survey did not indicate how much the program might cost the government).

So, not unlike the President’s socialized health plan, there are those that are for it in theory (and in the minority) but when the promoters thereof have to account for the cost, support wanes.

Perhaps most interesting of all is news that many Americans would appear to have little faith in the ability of the government to help General Motors improve its fortunes, with 41% expecting for GM’s quality to deteriorate under federal ownership. (Presumably, this leaves 59% of those surveyed that feel otherwise or are undecided). Perhaps more damaging is that the study’s findings say that fully 57% of those questioned believe that the government is likely to pass laws and regulations that give Chrysler and General Motors unfair advantages over other automakers that did not receive bailout funds.

General Motors’ quality has markedly improved of late. Nonetheless it is by no means is on par across the board with the Japanese competition. As such, it’s not an area where GM can afford to backslide.

You can always buy a Honda and avoid this debacle, which is to say the consumer still has a choice. But substitute Obama’s government trespass du jour, “Socialized Health Care,” for “General Motors” in the passage above, and the stakes go way up, and there will be no going back; no alternative for consumers.

Led by the President, liberal lawmakers are working feverishly to trim their proposal down to a trillion dollars, to reform a health care system that covers most of us and that most of us are satisfied with to offer a theoretical system that will cover less of us and will almost surely degrade the quality and accessability of care. The proposal has less support now than when Hillary Clinton gave it a go.

…and yet the President persists here as well. So much for the theory that an Obama Presidency would be driven more by ambition that ideology as it is clear now that agenda has little regard for the times we are in or the people he represents.

…because President Obama conveniently failed to say “Americans.” In the spirit of creating crises that ostensibly only larger government can solve…as long as we’re counting the “uninsured”…I know there are a great many other living beings that aren’t insured too.

The administration uses the “46 million uninsured” as a reason to nationalize health care. But the Census Bureau says about a fifth of those aren’t U.S. citizens. In fact, a goodly number are illegal aliens.

According to “Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States,” a Census Bureau report published last August, of the 45.6 million persons in the U.S. that did not have health insurance at some point in 2007, 9.7 million, or about 21%, were not U.S. citizens.

“Being uninsured is a transitory state, since most uninsured Americans [emphasis mine-JR] are only without coverage for a short time.”…only 19 million Americans go without insurance for a full year.

If we work real hard, enlist our nation’s Neighborhood Organizers^®, and count house pets for example, we might find close to “100 Million Uninsured” if we discretely drop the “people” moniker altogether.

Subtract noncitizens and those who can afford their own insurance but choose not to purchase it, and the number of uninsured falls dramatically. “Many Americans are uninsured by choice,”

…but what about house plants! People talk to their plants, which means they have feelings, which means they suffer, which means they have a right to access affordable health care. Since most plants don’t have legs, we need to provide transportation as well.

Now we’ve got ourselves a crisis!…that only government can solve!

The good news:  Ted Kennedy’s brain cancer is in remission.  This is a good thing; I join with all credible conservatives in wishing Senator Kennedy the best.

The bad news?

[H]e is expected back in the Senate after the Memorial Day recess to spearhead healthcare reform, according to Democratic colleagues.

Seriously, Ted.  Get some rest.

Ad Age notes that  antimicrobials and hand sanitizers are doing a land office business:

Consumers stormed to the web to learn how to cope with the flu and hit drugstores looking for hand sanitizers and remedies; health groups turned to Twitter to calm fears. The Mexican Tourist Board looked for ways to protect the country’s third-largest industry, while the U.S. pork producers, fearing a sales falloff, endeavored to get the word “swine” out of headlines.

Friends who work for local companies in the sanitation and medical products fields report that sales are brisk.  A source at a local company that produces hand sanitizers for clinics reports that business at the company store – usually very slow, with the odd employee strolling in for a pen or t-shirt – involved four and five-deep lines at the cash register last week, with the store using a full-time order bagger for the first time in anyone’s memory, as empoyees stocked up on alcohol gel and antibacterial hand soap.

Vice President Joe Biden, toughened by his years on the mean streets of Scranton and in the coal mines of Wilkes-Barre, went all Sir Robin on us:

Vice president Joe Biden said today he would tell his family members not to use subways in the U.S. and implied schools should be shuttered as the swine flu outbreak spread to 16 states. His remarks quickly caused a stir, drawing a rebuke from New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg and later leading the White House to apologize.

The World Health Organization has raised it's classification of the swine flu outbreak to Phase Five, one step away from a worldwide pandemic.

The uproar began when Biden appeared on NBC's "Today" show and said he would advise against riding the subway or taking commercial flights and implied schools should be shuttered amid confirmation of the first swine-flu relation death in the U.S.

The National Associaton of Prison Shower-Room Nancyboys released a statement in response, telling Biden to "quit being such a friggin' pansy".

Seriously - this could still mutate into a bad epidemic.  The Spanish Flu of 1918 took one relatively mild pass through the population before it mutated into one of the worst plagues ever to hit mankind, 91 years ago, killing 50 million around the world including hundreds of thousands of Americans.

But we're not there yet, and we won't be for quite some time!

Biden must, indeed, be a living insurance policy on Obama's life.

Swine Flu – subject of the media’s panic du jour – might not be as dangerous as the usual strains of flu that bounce around the country every winter:

As the World Health Organization raised its infectious disease alert level Wednesday and health officials confirmed the first death linked to swine flu inside U.S. borders, scientists studying the virus are coming to the consensus that this hybrid strain of influenza — at least in its current form — isn’t shaping up to be as fatal as the strains that caused some previous pandemics.In fact, the current outbreak of the H1N1 virus, which emerged in San Diego and southern Mexico late last month, may not even do as much damage as the run-of-the-mill flu outbreaks that occur each winter without much fanfare.

The H1N1 outbreak (the government is trying to downplay the “Swine” moniker, and “Rosie O’Donnell Flu” hasn’t taken off yet) has killed somewhere between 20 (says the WHO, yesterday) and 100-odd people, mostly in Mexico.  This is compared to the 200,000 people hospitalized and 36,000 a year who die of flu-related causes, according to the CDC.  In other words, in the week that the world has been panicking about this outbreak, 250 people (on average) died of all the other mundane flus, without a single headline.

Not to downplay the potential this flu has to mess things up, and certainly not to downplay the tragedy suffered by the families of those who’ve died in this outbreak.

Minnesota reports its first “probable” case of Swine Flu:

Doug Schmitz, mayor of the town about 60 miles northwest of Minneapolis, said details on the case remain sketchy.”From people I’ve talked to no one seems really alarmed, though that could change once we get details,” Schmitz said. “At this point, everyone’s staying calm.”

Well, that’d be a good idea.

Let’s hope the regional media – which wets its pants over thunderstorm warnings – can do the same.

…Swine Flu is not the big kahuna.  It’s fairly preventable and treatable; it spreads through media that the average person can, with a little conscientious thought, cut down on.

Still, it’s serious now:

“I can confirm the very sad news out of Texas that a child has died of the H1N1 virus,” the CDC’s Dr. Richard Besser said.”As a parent and a pediatrician, my heart goes out to the family.”

He said the child was about 2 years old.

Six of the 64 confirmed swine flu cases in the United States have been reported in Texas, according to the CDC.

Of course, it’s been serious in Mexico for quite some time; the deaths there are no less real (although to the American media, which judging by the Today show is already switching into full-blown panic mode, a life north of the Rio Grande is definitely more newsworthy than one on the other side).

At any rate – stay informed, and don’t sneeze on me.

Interesting “real-time” map of swine flu cases.

…as soon as I get back to the office…and find them…and appoint them…oh, and once they’re confirmed.

The Obama administration declared a “public health emergency” Sunday to confront the swine flu — but is heading into its first medical outbreak without a secretary of Health and Human Services or appointees in any of the department’s 19 key posts.

President Barack Obama has not yet chosen a surgeon general or the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Meanwhile, how’s the golf game, Barack?