And by the way, the governmental hype doesn’t begin and end with Obama and company. It was President George W. Bush himself who, in 2006, held a press conference to announce the launching of a new governmental website devoted entirely to information about the “bird flu pandemic.” Likewise, Bush’s Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff noted at the time that "the avian (bird) flu bears the potential for societal disruption of unprecedented proportion.”

At that time, the Bush gang was trying to recover from all the blame assigned to them a few months earlier for Hurricane Katrina. Recall that, in the aftermath of that disaster, it was open season for Bush-bashing, complete with Rev. Louis Farrakahn insinuating that the “white” President Bush had bombed New Orleans' protective levees so as to deliberately flood black neighborhoods.

So Bush had a political reason to “not waste a good crisis” back in 2006. And what might be the Obama gang’s reason to utilize this current crisis for their own benefit?

Well, let’s start with Ms. Napolitano. Perhaps she needed to become a “constant presence” in the media, because a week earlier she had people demanding her resignation after her announcement about pro-life activists and U.S. military veterans being on her list of “terror threats.”

Initially, when that news broke, Napolitano insisted that she “stood by” her report, but eventually ended up apologizing to a veterans group for her assertions. So what better time to be all over the national news media, “urging calm,” “offering reassurance,” and so forth? The “crisis” was certainly not wasted.

I must note here that, prior to the enraged phone caller spitting at me on the Canadian talk show last Friday, my discussions with the program hosts had nothing to do with “swine flu.” I was actually being interviewed about President Obama’s declaration that America’s interrogation of terror suspects before he took office had amounted to “torture.”

I had pointed out that the President Obama who declared interrogation to be “torture,” was the same President Obama who 2 weeks earlier had ordered Navy snipers to kill 3 terrorists holding Americans hostage at sea. Those terrorists (we called them “pirates”) didn’t have the great blessing of being taken in to custody, or being held at Guantanamo Bay Prison, or being “water boarded.” They were simply shot to death, at the order of President Obama.

My point on the show was that no President can allow terrorists - - neither teen age boys hijacking a ship, nor adults plotting to blow-up an American city - - to bully the United States. President Obama had made the tough decision, the right decision, just as President Bush had. Yet today, President Obama has so much to gain, personally, by “hyping” his indignation over a previous President’s decisions.

I understand people’s skepticism about “the media.” But we should all be a bit more skeptical about the intentions of politicians.