Watch The Birdie.

My Unpaid Punditry colleague PSoTD (Political Story of The Day) is rapidly becoming one of the go-to guys for aggregating coverage of the probable upcoming avian flu worldwide epidemic. He has been scathing about the media's and the current administration's lack of response to the danger and has called, quite nicely all things considered, for the US media to get of its collective ass and play catch-up with the European media.

Why isn't there at least one major news media person who nightly is screaming WHAT DOES THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION HAVE TO SAY AND DO ABOUT AVIAN INFLUENZA, AND WHAT SHOULD AVERAGE PEOPLE BE DOING ABOUT IT?

Where the fuck are you on this issue, Wolf Blitzer? What the hell are you doing, Joe Scarborough? Lou Dobbs, can you drop your daily anxiety construction about immigration and cover this topic hard every day instead? Are you all waiting until you've completed building your stockpiles of oseltamivir and surgical masks? What are you waiting for? When will this story get anywhere near the coverage of Natalee Holloway before it's too late? Don't you have a responsibility to prepare Americans so that they can prepare themselves?

PSoTD also finds it depressing, quite rightly, that the lead agency should avian flu hit the US will NOT be a health-related agency such as The Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. Public Health Service or even the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

It will be the Dept. of Homeland Security.

That speaks volumes about how your government expects you and your fellow Americans to react, doesn't it?

The disease is expected to spread far more widely this fall as infected migratory birds from Asia and Russia pass it to local wild and domestic fowl. In Europe, testing of wild birds to catch early signs of the disease's arrival has already begun and some nations are moving their domestic birds indoors to prevent infection. The further the disease spreads, the higher the chance that it will mutate into a form easily transmitted between humans.

Meanwhile, Bush's planning level probably involves cleaning his shotguns and getting the camos out ready for huntin'.