James Robert Kelley

WARNING:  If you don’t care for conspiracy theory or material of a pluto nature, stop reading.

I noticed a news story on the Fox News website titled “Mexico Links Sickness, Deaths to Swine Flu.” It caused my tin-foil meter to rise when I read:

All seven U.S. victims recovered from a strain of the flu that combines pig, bird and human viruses in a way that researchers have not seen before.

That alone made me wonder if the virus was engineered or weaponized.  The article goes on to state that the flu virus has claimed at least 16 people so far in Mexico, so it has potential to be deadly.  The virus is communicable, as seen from the following statement:

The U.S. cases are a growing medical mystery because it’s unclear how they caught the virus. The CDC said none of the seven people were in contact with pigs, which is how people usually catch swine flu. And only a few were in contact with each other.

Considering it is a combination of several flu viruses, including avian and human, the virus is different than traditional swine flu.  This could account for the infection rate, but the nature of the various strains that constitute the virus is even more puzzling if it were naturally occurring:

CDC officials described the virus as having a unique combination of gene segments not seen in people or pigs before. The bug contains human virus, avian virus from North America and pig viruses from North America, Europe and Asia.

Viruses will combine and form new strains if a host is infected with more than one strain.  Let’s say a pig is infected with the swine flu, has contact with humans and eats a bird; you could see a naturally occurring strain containing components from each variant.  The last part of the quote above makes this exceptionally improbable event seem impossible.  The swine flu is actually composed of variants from North America, Europe and Asia.  Little piggies traveling to three continents to get infected seem unlikely.

After digesting that information I started to wonder the source of such a virus.  The next quote gave me a clue:

The cases were detected under unusual circumstances. One was seen at a Navy clinic that participates in a specialized disease detection network, and the other was caught through a specialized surveillance system set up in border communities, CDC officials said.

Don’t go looking in the article for that quote, it isn’t there.  When I first read the article I read the quote, and started thinking about how both cases were detected via government programs.  One being a Navy clinic and the other part of a specialized surveillance system set up in border communities.  Both of these would seem to have connections to military or security infrastructure.  Both were also have connections to research facilities that would be capable of altering virus genetics.

The fact that you won’t find this information in the article indicates someone was unhappy that the information was there.  It was removed quickly, because by the time a link to the article was read by a friend the information was removed.  Here is a screen shot of the article as it stands while this blog post if being written:

Not wanting to look like a raving fool for suggesting that Fox News would remove information that could indicate the source of the virus, I attempted to find the original text.  There was one version still existing on the Internet according to Google, the image below is a screen shot after a search for +border “strain of the flu that combines pig, bird and human viruses in a way that researchers have not seen before” on Google:

I took a string from the current article, and added +border to make sure only articles with the original text was displayed.  WJZ.com had the same content as the original with a different title: Rare Swine Flu Kills 16 In Mexico, Sickens 7 In U.S. It looks like they did not get the memo.  Just in case they do, here is a screen shot of the article:

Why would they remove interesting information so quickly, unless they were commanded to remove the information by someone who saw it as a potential risk?

Attached is the Internet Explorer “Save As” copied pages of the two sites, zipped.  They are only here in case the sites change more and you want to be able to reference how the content was when this blog post was written:

foxnews_com-mexico-links-sickness-deaths-to-swine-flu-cold-flu

Two schools of thought are battling in Washington over how to “fix” the economy.  The Keynesian school of thought reasons that increased government spending will stimulate the economy, which is opposed to the school that relies on the “free market” to resolve the current economic conditions organically.

Those who subscribe to the Keynesian school believe that increased spending will promote job creation and increase the flow of capital in the markets.  They point back to the President during the Great Depression, claiming his policies created an environment that paved the way out of the Great Depression.

When employing the Keynesian method, “pork” is not a bad word.  Politicians often use the words “pork” or “pork barrel” to give a negative spin to unfavorable spending.  This has the effect of making the politician look conscientious and conservative with tax dollars.  The current Keynesian leaning administration sugar-coats the spending by calling it a stimulus, thus avoiding the negative label.  In the end, spending, especially pork that favors their long term agenda is acceptable to them and their supporters.

On the other hand, people favoring limited government intervention would rather let banks and auto manufacturers sort the matter out themselves.  They claim the “economic downturn” will more quickly resolve itself without manipulation of the markets and economy.  One of the strongest points is that the current “crisis” was caused by debt, and adding more debt is likened to paying your credit card bill with another credit card.  You delay the issue, but need to deal with a bigger problem in the future.

The correctness of one school over the other is not provable in the now, since the only way to measure success is to see if the tried method fails.  Although, one school is winning: Keynesian.

Why are the Keynesians winning?  Simply put, most of the anti-Keynesian people are supporting the school.  Even Rush Limbaugh supports the Democratic Party’s preferred method.  It all has to do with the slow creep of thinking and position.  More on that shortly.

Politics is mostly a mind game.  If you can get people to huddle into distinct groups, they will be more easily conquered.  The main strategy involves polarization, also known as “divide and conquer.”  We have two main parties in the United States of America: Republican and Democrat.  If you are a member of one of the parties you are either Pro or Anti something.  Pro-Choice, Anti-Abortion.  Pro-War, Anti-War.  Pro-Death Penalty, Anti-Death Penalty.  This Pro and Anti choice forces people onto one or the other side, making the massive middle disappear and the masses easier to control.

The next step is to introduce hot items to get people emotional.  In the abortion polarization the hot item was “partial birth abortion.”  If you are on the Anti side you will become angry, if you are on the Pro side you will fear the angry people and feel that you are about to lose all gains.  In the economic crisis, the hot items are pork and unrestrained spending.

Corporate CEOs are being targeted because they are buying private jets and taking vacations after receiving money from the government.  You cannot totally blame the CEOs, because Congress gave them the money without any strings or guidance.  Once these large companies started doing what many large companies do, Congress and the President made them into a hot item.

The reason these games are played is to create an environment that allows people to feel they can create compromise.  The problem is that both sides of the compromise are on the same side.  Do you want to spend $2 trillion or just $1 trillion?  Forget about spending nothing.  When you are polarized and herded into a direction based on fear, compromise seems reasonable.  People who would normally be opposed to the spending will start to say, “Why not give the $10,000 per person directly to the tax payers.”  Either way the government is increasing spending, but you start to feel like you have control and forget you are controlling a sinking ship.  This is why I said Rush Limbaugh supports the Democrat agenda, he offered ( mostly in jest ) his own stimulus plan to divide the money into Republican and Democrat chunks.  One goes to spending and the other to tax cuts, but the end result is that he is supporting the spending.

Looks like Ron Paul is finally getting a little attention.  CNN’s “The Situation Room” hosted Dr. Paul recently, and now he will be appearing on CBS New’s “Face the Nation.”

The appearance on “Face the Nation” is, in my opinion, due to the success of the November 5th fund drive that brought in nearly $4mil in online donations plus $200k in off-line donations (see my conspiracy satire on the drive).  The appearance on CBS will be during the morning of another such fund raising effort, which is not billed as large of an effort, but hopes to bring in $1mil during November 11, 2007.

During his interview attention will surely be paid to the current efforts, I am curious to see how this is handled by the host of the show.

Official Press Release of “Face the Nation” appearance.