{"id":1372,"date":"2009-04-30T07:04:07","date_gmt":"2009-04-30T11:04:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/morningseditionists.com\/msblog\/?p=1372"},"modified":"2009-04-30T07:25:48","modified_gmt":"2009-04-30T11:25:48","slug":"captain-trips","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/2009\/04\/30\/captain-trips\/","title":{"rendered":"Captain Trips"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.comicsbulletin.com\/news\/123190728697083.htm\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.comicsbulletin.com\/news\/images\/0901\/TheStand_CaptainTrips_PremiereHC.jpg\" alt=\"Captain Trips\" width=\"175\" align=\"right\" style=\"border: 0;\" vspace=\"3\" hspace=\"3\" \/><\/a>The Super Flu has worked its way to my county now, with a suspected case causing a nearby high school to close.  I guess it was inevitable, what with us being only 40 miles from <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mexico_(town),_New_York\">Mexico<\/a>.  Lot of pigs up that way, too, I think.  The lo-cal news is now loaded with stories of school districts doing &#8220;MRSA Level&#8221; cleaning of schools and buses (MRSA being the most recent big scare, of course), interspersed with flashes of the &#8220;Swine Flu Hotline&#8221; numbers.  <a href=\"http:\/\/health.usnews.com\/blogs\/heart-to-heart\/2009\/04\/29\/swine-flu-at-level-5--and-in-need-of-more-rapid-diagnosis.html\">We&#8217;re at Level 5, bitches<\/a>!  Time to get rolling with that duct tape and plastic wrap.<\/p>\n<p>This would be a good time to re-read Stephen King&#8217;s &#8220;The Stand&#8221; (or George R. Stewart&#8217;s &#8220;Earth Abides&#8221;)  Maybe they can run &#8220;The Stand&#8221; mini-series 24\/7 on all channels (interrupted only by breaking news of adding new flu cases to a giant electronic map &#8211; kinda like Stephen Colbert: &#8220;Better Know an Outbreak&#8221; &#8211; and commercials for Tamiflu&reg;).  Should I take this opportunity to remind everyone that Donald Rumsfeld is the former Board Chairman and a shareholder in Gilead Sciences Inc. (former Sec State George Schultz is also on its Board), which developed and holds the patent on Tamiflu&reg;?   :paranoid: <\/p>\n<p>On the bright side, the economy still sucks, apparently (yesterday&#8217;s slight rise in the Stock Market notwithstanding).  On the heels of GM&#8217;s decision to kill Pontiac (thereby finally putting an end to the use of the Ottowa Chief &#8211; who lead, arguably, the most successful Indian war against Europeans, kicking some major British ass &#8211; as a car mascot), it appears that <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/04\/30\/autos\/chrysler_deadline\/index.htm\">Chrysler&#8217;s negotiations with its creditors have broken down<\/a>.  Is the maker of the Edsel and the Pinto destined to become the only US automaker?<\/p>\n<p>In a somewhat ironic twist, the judge in the Fort Dix (where the first &#8211; that I remember, anyway &#8211; &#8220;Swine Flu&#8221; scare began in 1976 &#8211; before Carter was elected, for those of you who get their history from Michelle Bachman) terrorist attack case (or whatever that was) <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/hostednews\/ap\/article\/ALeqM5gsLSH4eWJRkmniC35_B6AAnu2lwwD97SBCLO0\">handed out the final sentences to the &#8220;plotters&#8221; yesterday<\/a>.  The final tally?  Four life terms and one 33-yr sentence, proving that stupidity, apparently, is neither excuse nor reason for leniency.<\/p>\n<p>In a case of what, for a politician, is remarkable consistency, global warming denier <a href=\"http:\/\/tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com\/2009\/04\/inhofe-specters-switch-is-first-visible-evidence-of-gop-comeback.php?ref=fp6\">James Inhoufe is now denying that Arlen Specter&#8217;s jump to the other team is anything but good for the Republican Party<\/a>.  <\/p>\n<p>Breaking News: partial building collapse in NYC.  Officials have tentatively identified the cause as Swine Flu.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Super Flu has worked its way to my county now, with a suspected case causing a nearby high school to close. I guess it was inevitable, what with us being only 40 miles from Mexico. Lot of pigs up that way, too, I think. The lo-cal news is now loaded with stories of school [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1372\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}