Aug 18, 2011 By Lisa Hoffmanscripps Howard News Service 4 min read

These days, the mournful sound of taps at military funerals is usually a digital rendition piped through a bugle “played,” lip-sync style, by someone pretending to be the real thing.

The passing of the vast World War II generation, combined with the accelerating aging of the Korean and Vietnam vets, have outstripped the ranks of uniformed buglers.

Of the 236,000 funerals for military vets conducted in 2010, just 25,000 were accompanied by an actual military bugler, according to the Pentagon.

Another 15,000 funerals were conducted with a real bugler sponsored by the American Legion or other veterans’ service organizations, which in recent years have stepped in to help fill the growing official military-bugler void.

But at 185,000 military funerals, the emblematic 24 notes came from what are called “ceremonial bugles,” which consist of standard bugles fitted with special electronic devices in their bells.

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Casting about for a way to reach those who think emergency preparedness is way too boring to think about, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention turned to zombies to liven up its disaster advice.

A May CDC Public Health Matters blog post by CDC Assistant Surgeon General Ali Khan alerted the country to the threat of a “zombie apocalypse,” and suggested ways to prepare.

His zombie-attack advice mirrors the tips the agency offers for basic flood, earthquake, hurricane, etc., preparedness: Assemble an emergency kit of food, water, radios, batteries and other necessities; make a family emergency plan; identify evacuation routes, and so on.

In the blog post, Khan’s tongue may have been firmly planted in his cheek, but, once the CDC’s zombie warning was posted on the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s website, many with a conspiracy bent have found sinister underpinnings in it.

FEMA has long been depicted by conspiracists as the vanguard of the “new world order,” a malevolent force that has established hundreds of secret detention camps around the country to hold those who get in the government’s way.

So, to little surprise, the CDC’s zombie tips have spawned suspicion on the Web that, among other things, the federal government has launched a “psy-ops” operation or is using the zombie pretext as an “insider warning” to its covert agents across the country.

In the dark online realm where the government cannot be trusted, the CDC’s Khan is even denounced as a “trilateral terrorist,” a sinister force plotting to unleash “chemtrailing poisons” that will make people appear to be zombies, thus unleashing mass hysteria and confusion.

The CDC’s zombie riff also takes a satiric hit from another online outpost: Something called the Zombie Rights Campaign protested its outrage that the CDC was drumming up hatred of the “Differently Animated.”

Your tax dollars at work.

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If Rep. Gabrielle Giffords decides to run for Congress next year, she’ll have a nice pile of cash in her campaign account awaiting her.

Giffords, an Arizona Democrat who was shot in the head in January and is undergoing rehabilitation, so far has raised nearly $684,000 in campaign funds, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics.

Most of that money has come from large contributions from individuals, who have kicked in more than $244,000. Political action committees, including the American Crystal Sugar PAC and the New York Life Insurance PAC, have contributed a total of more than $350,000.

Her campaign-finance reports also show that she was the beneficiary of fundraising events held after she was wounded. Among the hosts: The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, in March; the defense industry in May; and the financial-services and insurance industry, in July.

Email Lisa Hoffman at hoffmanl@shns.com. For more columns, go to www.scrippsnews .com.