Crying Wolf?

Has the manufactured hysteria over H1N1 influenza backfired? Quite possibly. Instead of the 8,000 immunizations the Salt Lake City health department expected to give out at a planned vaccination drive they actually administered a paltry 300.

The Salt Lake Valley Health Department had the lowest turnout ever for its annual flu vaccination drive Saturday.

Officials were hoping to give out as many as 8,000 flu shots, but only several hundred people showed up.

This year, the department decided to bump up the date for its clinic because of concerns with H1N1.

Audrey Stevenson of the Salt Lake Valley Health Department said, “What’s unusual is that the vaccine has been available earlier this year than in seasons past, and so individuals may not be aware that it’s time to get your seasonal influenza shot.”

This is the “regular” flu shot, not the H1N1 shot. Yet people are staying away in droves. Maybe people are still in “summer mode” as the piece says. Or maybe they are really getting tired of all the hype.  Too early to tell from one report, but we’ll see.

Sands Of Time

A story in sand, via The Los Angeles Times (found on Memeorandum):

The artist’s name is Kseniya Simonova. This is a brilliant talent working in an unusual medium.

UPDATE: The Telegraph narrates. This was a winning appearance on Ukraine’s Got Talent. (You really do not need the narration to understand this piece. The sheer artistry tells the story. The context may help understand what is happening, however.)

…The Government Is Deaf

Salina Zito, writing in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

Last Saturday’s “Tea Party” protest, spreading out across Capitol Hill, received little to no coverage; most news organizations wildly underreported the crowd’s size.

Later, former president Jimmy Carter said racism is behind the rhetoric of President Obama’s critics; New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd opined similarly.

Here is the problem with that: Pull out the race card, and the conversation ends. It does the president no good when anyone who disagrees with him is accused of racism; it simply builds a resentment that he did not foster.

Besides, most protests of and disagreements over policy have nothing to do with race – and to say that only dilutes real racism.

“When it comes to race, it is unfortunate that the Democrats are seeing everything through this analytical lens,” Brown said. “It undermines those instances in which racism and discrimination are truly important factors and are harming minorities.”

Bill Kalin of Portage, Ind., president of Union Local 6103, attended last week’s AFL-CIO convention in Pittsburgh. He dismissed as ridiculous most of the media depictions of Tea Party protesters. “No one should make fun of people that demonstrate, or call them names,” he said.

(That’s one guy who gets it.) Zito’s point, that politicians are being really, really foolish to ignore this very real uproar against what is happening in Washington is something I have pointed out repeatedly. Obama and the Democrats have badly misread what the voters wanted when they graced those politicians with high office. The politicians are on a course that will land them in very hot water, very soon.  

They will get there even sooner if they try to ram something down voter’s throats that the voters have been telling them they do not want.Ignore this at your own peril. Judgment Day is just over a year away.

There’s Something Happening Here

What it is ain’t exactly clear. Apparently, Andrew Breitbart has a real bombshell coming next week – “from out of left field“.

Update: Buffy Wicks? That name has popped up in the comments stemming from a comment/photo posted by Iowahawk – who says he’s talked to Breitbart about the revelation – at the Ace of Spades blog. Quoth Iowahawk:

Heheheh. I talked to Breitbart on the phone last night. Seriously. It’s gonna be good.

This is interesting.  I’d bet that there are a lot – a real lot – of frantic phone calls going on right now.

Give Breitbart credit here – he’s forcing the major media to pay attention by playing this hand out perfectly. The rest of the media is letting Fox steal their audiences waiting for the next shoe to drop. They can’t keep that up much longer.