Déjà Vu for Obama Too:
The H1N1 Fiasco
December 9, 2009
When I was growing up, my mother’s most repeated words of advice were: “Watch out, those words may come back to bite you” and “If you can’t fix it, then just leave it alone”.
Mom was just warning me about the pitfalls of ignorant babble and clueless meddling.
And so I present to you Obama aka “the clueless wrecking ball”.
Or to rekindle John Kerry’s 2004 invectives, “If you can't get flu vaccines to Americans, how are you going to protect them against bioterrorism?”...“If you can't get flu vaccines to Americans, what kind of health care program are you running?”
What prophetic déjà vu.
Since taking office on January 20th, President Obama’s clueless meddling, matched only by the bravado of his grand pronouncements, has only made bad situations worse and tolerable situations bad.
He is a man possessed by a full-throttle mouth and half-throttle actions.
And not being able to deliver on one’s promises has consequences. Or, as the old saying goes...Fool me once, shame on you...Fool me twice, shame on me.
Even more to the point is the fact that when a leader loses credibility, that leader also loses the ability to lead...other than through coercive means.
And when it comes to losing credibility, the H1N1 “pandemic” is the Obama administration’s watershed moment.
The H1N1 virus has been in the United States since April of this year and, contrary to Obama administration finger-pointing, there has been more than adequate time to prepare the US for this “pandemic”.
Whether or not a reader believes that H1N1 is truly a threat remains a personal decision but, it should be an informed personal decision.
And the inability to make an informed personal decision regarding the H1N1 “pandemic” goes straight to the heart of Obama’s credibility or lack thereof.
If the H1N1 “pandemic” truly is the “national emergency” that Obama declared it to be in late October 2009, why did it take until late October for him to figure that out?
If, in early June 2009, the World Health organization declared H1N1 to be a “pandemic”, then why was Obama wasting resources on things that could wait for tomorrow (like Martha’s Vineyard, golf, national healthcare, cap & tax, etc.) instead of focusing on a world-wide “pandemic” today?
Anticipating the strong possibility of a “pandemic” in April-May of 2009, the government ordered 250 million doses of H1N1 vaccine (and promptly pledged to give 25 million of those imaginary doses away to “poor” nations).
By the end of September 2009, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said there “will be plenty of vaccine for everyone who wants it....”
As of this week, supposedly about 73 million doses have made it to the public.
As the New York Times reported, “The moment a novel strain of swine flu emerged in Mexico last spring, President Obama instructed his top advisers that his administration would not be caught flat-footed in the event of a deadly pandemic.”
Let’s call this a classic Obamian grand pronouncement.
As we all know, the delivery on that grand pronouncement has been less than grand. In fact, Obama, as in the delivery phase of all of his promises, has been a total failure.
For a recap of the lies and finger-pointing in Obama’s H1N1 debacle just read a previous article of mine, H1N1 and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcast of Liars.
In fact, Obama’s omnipresent certainty in pronouncing crisis after crisis has resulted in over half of the adult population not having certainty about anything.
Case in point...according to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll, “More than half of all adult Americans say they don't want to get the H1N1 flu vaccine.” Which is good news for Obama because his administration is unable to deliver the vaccine...until well after the H1N1 “first wave” has peaked...if at all.
The bottom line is that the majority of adults either don’t believe that there is a real H1N1 threat and/or that the vaccine is safe.
This reminds me of what a true leader (with honest intentions) does in the face of skepticism.
In 1944, Lieutenant Colonel Paul W. Tibbets was stymied by the skepticism of those he led. He was tasked with the mission of training crews on the new B-29 which, due mainly to engine fire problems, left most pilots as less than true believers.
Tibbets’ solution was not to blame Boeing for building an imperfect aircraft, nor was it to fail in his mission.
Tibbets creatively educated his pilots. He recruited two diminutive women to be his demo pilots and... after watching the women fly the B-29, the men stopped complaining about the plane. In fact, Major General Barney Giles told Tibbets that the women were “putting the big football players to shame.”
Imagine that kind of leadership...success without new legislation, coercion, arm twisting in back rooms, grand pronouncements and new taxes.
In contrast, Obama gives us Flu.gov which, as reported by the New York Times, gives you, “fuzzy Sesame Street characters Elmo and Rosita singing in English and Spanish about ‘the right way to sneeze’.”
Or better yet, Obama throws his minions like second term CT Democrat Rep. Chris Murphy into the field to run public service announcements informing the public to: (1) wash their hands with soap and water; (2) cough into your sleeve or a tissue and (3) stay home if you are sick.
Talk about a nanny state.
And not oddly...there is very little mention of getting vaccinated because there is very little vaccine...except for the Obama’s friends at Goldman Sachs and Guantanamo Bay.
In standard Obama double-speak, after a Department of Defense spokesman had said the H1N1 vaccine would be offered to Guantanamo terrorists, Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs (on November 3) said, “ There is no vaccine in Guantanamo and there's no vaccine on the way to Guantanamo”. Yet, on the same day, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said that, “Gitmo doesn't have any vaccine and is not expected to receive any vaccine for some time, probably late November...But we do have an obligation to provide appropriate medical care to everyone in our custody.”
Well here it is in mid-December and I’m happy that by now all of the terrorists have been adequately vaccinated while I stare at this message from the Flu.gov vaccine locator, “Temporarily out of stock”.
Too bad for Obama that there isn’t a promise-keeper equivalent of Viagra for people with big mouths and no follow-through.
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