Bush: Doing What He Does Best -- Fear Mongering.

His party is falling apart, his policies are bankrupt, and his cronies are falling to investigations and special prosecutors. What's a hapless underachieving President like George Bush to do? He's ramping up the fear again. CNN's "Situation Room" was only too happy to oblige his "be afraid" message. "Prepare for the worst," they said. All because a relatively small number of cases (around 112) have occurred in distant countries.

Last year the me-too panic stricken just about knocked down Grandma to grab flu shots for themselves and their healthy kids. No one was too healthy to lie a about his plight. Many Americans with asthma or COPD, including half a dozen members of my family, run over by the panicked, the greedy, and those who didn't even need shots, for an epidemic that never arrived. Now Bush has revised the criteria for who gets protected (should an avian flu shot be developed). Guess what? Those with lung problems are way down on the list. If you are not a FOG (friend of George) or an insider, no need to apply.

The best indicator of how bad things are is how desperately George W. Bush spreads notions of "freedom," "terror," "epidemic." When the going gets tough, the tough get going and George W. Bush pulls another grandstand. Given his sorry performance recently and the self-aggrandizing way he photo-opped all over America when his failures were obvious, I'm not thinking he's the solution to an hypothetical epidemic anyway. My personal favorite moment was when George W. Bush had the temerity to stand before the UN General Assembly asking other countries to be more transparent. That's, sadly, the funniest thing I've heard all week.