That Won't Do, Pig: Comandante Napolitano and the Swine Flu Pandemic

Lay down with pigs, America, and you'll come up with flu


By Rick Saunders

OK, kids, let’s get this straight. First, the World Health Organization (or "WHO," but not to be confused with Doctor Who) and the Centers for Disease Control ("CDC") have declared a health emergency in reaction to the outbreak of a virulent and contagious strain of swine flu that has originated in Mexico. That country has now sustained nearly 100 deaths confirmed as caused by swine flu, and some 1,600 more have been sickened and are suspected to have been exposed and infected.



Second, nations such as Israel, New Zealand, Spain, France and Canada, have reported suspected isolated cases after citizens from those countries returned home from Mexico. Reports have also surfaced that the twenty-some cases reported here in this country included several New York City students who got ill on spring break trips to Mexico. Russia has stopped all meat imports from Mexico, as well as from the states of California, Texas and Kansas, as well as pork imports from Mexico and a number of Central American nations and, additionally, the states of Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Florida. With no confirmed cases yet appearing in Japan, Tokyo’s Narita airport has nonetheless taken the preemptive precaution of installing a device to test the temperatures of passengers arriving from Mexico, as one good indicator of the flu is a fever.

Anyone yet see a pattern here?

Even though reports have also surfaced that the twenty-some sickened New York City students included many who became ill while on spring break trips to Mexico, Department of Homeland Security Comandante Janet Napolitano assures everyone that all is fine at the airports where people arriving from Mexico land in this country, and so there is no cause for alarm.

"Right now," Napolitano stated at a White House press conference yesterday, "we don't think the facts warrant more active testing or screening of passengers coming in from Mexico."



Great. Let’s wait until the problem is out of control before doing anything . . . anything, that is, other than blaming the Republicans and the problems Obama "inherited" from Bush. And don’t worry about linkage between swine flu and Republicans -- Napolitano & Co. will concoct all the linkage they need, but on their timetable. Think of the potential . . . pork-barrel spending . . . swine flu . . . the connection sure doesn't seem that difficult to make.

Let's keep this in perspective, though. Because of Mexico's drug cartel violence, we now have bomb-sniffing dogs, high-tech x-ray machines and neutrol scattering devices on our side of the border, in order to check cars and trucks traveling SOUTH from the United States into Mexico for contraband explosives, weapons and ammunition. We also have a Justice Department considering abridging Americans' constitutional rights in order to supposedly keep weapons out of the hands of cartels in Mexico. But we currently have no plans to impose travel restrictions or temperature scans on people traveling NORTH from Mexico into the United States in the face of what the CDC grimly refers to as a "potential worldwide pandemic."

And, of course, DHS certainly has no travel restrictions being enforced on illegal aliens streaming across the border at places other than airports. They have a bring-your-swine-flu-in-free card as, according to Napolitano, illegal immigration is not a crime.

To enforce travel restrictions or to even mimic the Japanese by utilizing technology to scan the temperatures of passengers arriving from Mexico is, well, just unthinkable. After all, what would the ACLU think? And what would be the reaction of MSNBC, the New York Times, or the Congressional Hispanic Caucus? Worse, what would George Soros think?

No, such a course of action would make far too much sense to the average American, and thus be deemed "rightwing extremism" by Comandante Napolitano. In effect, Napolitano and her politically mindset is willing to gamble on the safety of the American people by coughing up--no pun intended--the excuse that it’s still not "bad" enough to warrant precautions which even the Japanese see as prudent. Let’s see how long that charade goes on.

So, PC dogma once again trumps reason. Only in Obamerica . . . and we’re not even 100 days into it.


(NOTE: For the life of me, I cannot understand why this woman still has her job as Director of Homeland Security. At this point, she's gone from being an embarrassment to a disgrace . . . to a threat. It's time President Obama calls for her resignation -- though, admittedly, it will be difficult to find a replacement, as left-wing sympathizers with both a functioning cerebrum and a clean tax history are few and far between. I don't care, though. Get this woman out of there before innocent Americans get killed. -- Jeff)