The pseudonym "Philo Vaihinger" has been abandoned. All posts have been and are written by me, Joseph Auclair.

Friday, October 31, 2014

Thursday, October 30, 2014

Morals and malice

To what extent are mores in general and morals in particular, religious or not, not the creatures of altruism or benevolence but selfishness, malice, or even hate?

The new secular morality has removed much cruelty and repression from social life, but not without cost.

Abortion, maternal infanticide (the father will have no say in the matter), and the cruel travesties of same sex marriage and gross mutilation passed off as that perverse fantasy, sex change, are a few examples.

Wonderful targets for terrorists

EDF France: Inquiry after drones buzz nuclear sites

Democrats shout "Ofay!" to get out the vote

The Times takes note, but only to adjust the spin

Dictionary etymologies for "ofay" are hysterical, by the way.

It's just pig-Latin for "foe."

The Democrats are the party of naked racism and political propaganda based on vile, lying attacks imputing imaginary crimes and imaginary hatred to white people and to the Republican Party.

Their propaganda legitimates, encourages, and capitalizes on black fear and hatred of whites, sometimes frankly inciting and anyway often justifying violence.

When they try to point to the white racism they say pollutes Republican campaigns they blather about dog whistles and Willie Horton.

Willie Horton was a murderer out of prison on furlough when he killed again.

A Republican ad unfairly blamed Michael Dukakis for that since, though the furlough policy was not his creation, he supported it even after Horton's furlough crime.

The point was that he was soft on crime.

Democratic ads are full of explicit racial attacks on white police, voters Republicans, and Americans.

When they say tu quoque they have nothing to point to but the unracist Willie Horton ad and racism as invisible as the emperor's clothes (dog whistles).

Orwell is just like a Texican. When you need him, he's dead.

More college students support post-birth abortion

"Post-birth abortion" is like "Social Security privatization."

OK, I will belabor the obvious.

Killing a baby is infanticide, not abortion.

Replacing social security with personal IRAs is abolition, not privatization.

What sort of voter ID law would actually help?

Massive Non-Citizen Voting Uncovered in Maryland

Non-citizens are voting

Sad truth, the Democrats are the party of illegal voting, right up to the White House.

Aren't we there already?

The White House could soon be in the position of requiring quarantines for soldiers who had limited contact with Ebola while NOT requiring them for doctors and nurses who cared for patients.

Yes, we are.

The story is dated the 28th and Chuck Hagel made up his mind the 29th.

Donald Trump says it's 'morally unfair' for Obama to send soldiers into Ebola hot zone

Real estate tycoon says US shouldn't send its armies to western Africa unless China and Russia put their own troops at risk.

????

Notice the troops are in old-fashioned group quarantine and not individual isolation.

What happens if one of them gets sick at 20 days, so now the others are all suspected of possible exposure by him?

Another 21 days for all of them?

And so on?

California would quarantine Maine nurse

California issues quarantine policy for Ebola exposure

These guys talk tough and then back down, though.

The governor of New Jersey followed today by the governor of Maine.

Anyone arriving in California from an Ebola-affected area and who has had personal contact with a person infected with the deadly virus will be quarantined for 21 days, according to an order issued Wednesday by the state's public health director.

Wait for the rebellion of heroic, selfless care-givers and ACLU lawyers.

Or just of California's Democratic governor.

Black skin privilege

An African Country That’s 0.3 Percent White Now Has A White President

The chance this would happen was rated as slight by a young woman BBC World Service reporter the other day.

Although the constitution of Zambia does not prevent it, she seemed to think it would be highly inappropriate for a white man to succeed to the presidency, because colonialism.

As in the case of Bill Clinton, the blogs of the left report with approval comments by black people that this white man is really black on the inside.

Imagine how they would report comments by whites that Obama is really white on the inside.

Yes, the word for that is "Oreo," like the cookie.

Recall how touchy everybody got when white people described him with enthusiasm as articulate.

On the other hand, Guy Scott will almost certainly not be allowed to run for the presidency in the next election because the constitution, while it does not frankly exclude anyone by race, effectively excludes white colonials and their children, since it requires that one's parents and grandparents be native born.

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Late news

Maine governor sent state cops to enforce quarantine against that nurse.

Reports say he is "seeking legal authority" to enforce the thing.

????

Chuck Hagel has ordered that 21 day quarantine for all military returning from Ebola countries.

The official line of the left continues to be that only doctors have the right to decide any of the issues surrounding travel restrictions and quarantine.

And that's fine, except for their arrogance, ignorance, and obvious inclination to put other factors ahead of keeping Americans safe.

Which is why it's not up to doctors, but politicians, to make the law in this area.

Reportedly, governors of Connecticut, Illinois, and Florida have imposed quarantines, too.

Not sure what the rules are, but they are stricter than the White House, the CDC, Doctors Without Frontiers, and Samaritan's Purse want.

Oh, boo hoo.

NY Ebola doc lied about his movements

Ebola doctor ‘lied’ about NYC travels

Stick this in your honor system.

The city’s first Ebola patient initially lied to authorities about his travels around the city following his return from treating disease victims in Africa, law-enforcement sources said.

Dr. Craig Spencer at first told officials that he isolated himself in his Harlem apartment — and didn’t admit he rode the subways, dined out and went bowling until cops looked at his MetroCard the sources said.

“He told the authorities that he self-quarantined. Detectives then reviewed his credit-card statement and MetroCard and found that he went over here, over there, up and down and all around,” a source said.

Spencer finally ’fessed up when a cop “got on the phone and had to relay questions to him through the Health Department,” a source said.

Officials then retraced Spencer’s steps, which included dining at The Meatball Shop in Greenwich Village and bowling at The Gutter in Brooklyn.

Yep, these heroes are really special.

I'm not the only one who thinks so.

Ebola quarantines: catch the fever!

Heroic Ebola doctors and nurses lie to police, blow off voluntary isolation

John Hayward, not someone whose ideas I generally regard with favor, gets it on this.

Science and isolation

The most important fact about Ebola is how little we know. 

There’s no cure for the infected, no vaccine and no knowledge of how the virus might behave in colder temperatures. 

Doctors, nurses and missionaries who nobly volunteer in Africa could inadvertently bring Ebola to every continent, literally giving the virus wings.

To be cautious, Samaritan’s Purse, a relief organization, has imposed a 21-day isolation on workers returning from West Africa ever since one of its own, Dr. Kent Brantly, became infected. 

The hospital where Spencer practices emergency medicine requires a 21-day wait to return to work.

On Monday, the Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended that all U.S. troops returning from West Africa undergo a 21-day quarantine. 

Their biggest worry isn’t stigma.

Quarantine for the military? Science, not fear.

Hagel considering Ebola quarantine for all troops deployed to West Africa

Defense Secretary Hagel is considering a 21-day "quarantine-like" policy for all troops returning from West Africa, the Pentagon said Tuesday. 

The proposal was recommended to Hagel on Tuesday by the Joint Chiefs of Staff — which consists of its chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey and the chiefs of staff of the Army, Navy and Air Force.

Earlier this week, the Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno ordered all soldiers returning from West Africa to undergo a 21-day isolation and enhanced monitoring period. 
Odierno "has done this out of caution to ensure soldiers, family members and their surrounding communities are confident that we are taking all steps necessary to protect their health," the Army said Monday. 

The Pentagon said Hagel supports that "initial decision" but would take his time deciding whether or not to expand that policy department-wide.

Currently, a dozen soldiers from U.S. Army Africa are being isolated and monitored at Vicenza, Italy, including its commander Maj. Gen. Darryl Williams. The Pentagon has said there was no event to trigger the policy. 

Please explain why a Major General is not too high and mighty for such treatment, but civilian medicos are?

Like that nurse up in Maine?

The president explained why the military with no exposure to people with the disease are quarantined but civilian medicos with hands-on exposure to Ebola patients are not.

His explanation is so idiotic as to be astounding.

Democratic candidates have an Ebola problem

"The military is in a different situation," the president said. 

"They are, first of all, not treating patients. 

"Second of all, they are not there voluntarily. It's part of their mission that's been assigned to them by their commanders and ultimately me, their commander-in-chief. 

"We don't expect to have similar rules for our military as we do civilians."

The rebellion against quarantine continues

Kaci Hickox Won't Follow Maine Ebola Quarantine Rule, Lawyer Says

She is going to ignore the law.

If she is arrested or guards are put on her door her lawyers will challenge.

The rebellion has become a heartfelt cause of the left.

The kind of left that joined the Occupy movement, if you recall.

Anarchists, communists, and other crackpots, plus the tens of millions who sympathized but did not actually sleep in tents.

If we knew her personal politics, would we be surprised?

The newsies are wondering how the administration's continued, anti-quarantine stand squares with a major general and his troops sitting on their butts in quarantine in Italy for 21 days on the way home.

This "fuck you, you can't tell me what to do" attitude is not building public regard for or trust in nurses, doctors or the administration that is letting these selfish heroes in their own minds call the shots.

Maine

Her lawyer is retailing the lie that the rule is you put people in quarantine who you know are infected.

Perhaps he wants to make that the rule, going forward.

But the rule includes putting people in quarantine if you have reason to fear they are infected, and need to be sure they are not.

That is the rule that's got those soldiers in Italy waiting out 21 days.

If we knew the personal politics of her lawyers, would we be surprised?

Those loons in the "Occupy" movement had a lot of sympathizers.

Let all this be a reminder how awful people really are.

Not just stupid or even just selfish but actually malicious.

Will exit polls next Tuesday tell us that the Democrats got clobbered in part because people are outraged at the administration's arrogant refusal to take obvious steps to protect Americans?

That's not how I will vote.

But would it be a surprise if it's how lots of others will?

Obama digs in his heels

They're going to wait until something really bad happens.

Obama assails Ebola quarantines, saying they are based on fear, not facts

Half the medical professionals in America want quarantines.

And if they're so stupid why are our troops returning from Africa in quarantine in Italy for 21 days?

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

The population bomb

Population controls 'not effective'

But then there is Ebola.

Or the next wild virus.

Or the one after that.

The Aussies get it right

Australia's Ebola visa ban condemned

Good for them.

Their job is to protect Australians.

Denying visas to locals from Ebola countries will not stop aid going to them.

Ebola in the Big Apple

Don't worry. Be happy.

[W]hile city and federal authorities assure us the system is working, it very obviously is not, because the “enhanced screening” for travelers arriving from West Africa involves testing body temperatures at the airport, and Spencer passed that test with flying colors.  

Trusting him to self-isolate didn’t work, either.  

Nothing worked.  

Now we’re just hoping that either his latest screening returned a false positive, or if not, we get lucky and Ebola finds no purchase in a densely-populated city that isn’t exactly the most inhospitable environment for a virus.

Is the World Bank going to pay these volunteers?

World Bank calls for 5,000 volunteers

Medical professionals are sometimes in the top 1%, but they're mostly not all that wealthy.

Certainly not medics and probably not "support staff."

It's one thing to be brave and willing and another for your family to be OK with no paycheck.

To be clear

In the last week before the midterms the ads get pretty crazy on both sides, and I admit to being particularly harsh on offenses of advertising on the Democrat side - my own side.

Mostly I think it pretty much goes without saying that the ads run by the conservative side are offensive, irresponsible, deceptive, harmful to the national interest, full of lies, especially harmful to the interests of the non-rich of all races, religions, and ethnicities, sometimes disgusting, and often frightening.

And next Tuesday the wife and I, white seniors both and both on Medicare (and she's retired and on Social Security), will make the trek to the correct poling place, the same one it's been for decades, produce a current and valid Pennsylvania driver's license, and vote the straight Democratic ticket.

If nothing else, recall that both Goldwater and Reagan opposed Medicare as communism and said it would destroy our liberty and create totalitarianism in America, and that's pretty much what the old conservatives said about Social Security in 1935.

And remember that Ryan, Paul, Cruz, and the whole conservative movement are on a self-proclaimed mission to repeal every single progressive innovation since TR's time.

The wife and I will remember, anyway.

And you are surprised?

Berkeley Students Say No To 'Bigot' Bill Maher As Commencement Speaker

Liberals regularly denounce conservatives for refusal to tolerate any departures from the strict, 100% conservative line.

And the left?

Maher is with the liberals on almost everything, departing from the party line only on Israel (he's still a two-state guy and supports Israel about as firmly as the Obama administration) and on Islam.

As to the last, not being a president himself he has the luxury of candor and is unrelentingly forthright that Islam is much more backward, violent, and dangerous in our time than any major religion.

Oh, and he's a smidge off the reservation on Ferguson and racial conflict in America, generally, having no tolerance whatever for black people and black leaders whose anti-Semitism and bigotry against whites he will not excuse or decline to notice.

He has given literally millions in support of O and of Democrats, and remains a solid supporter.

Democrat propaganda drives whites out of the party

Desperate Dems Are Turning to Racial Attacks

Sure, the ads blame racist Republicans.

But the constant drumbeat of propaganda, and the propaganda events like Ferguson, are relentless attacks on white people.

Not Republicans.

White people.

Why do any retirees believe the Democrats are their enemies and the Republicans their friends?

This is why.

It's nonsense, but this is why.

Meanwhile, the Democrats and the black organizations responsible for the worst offenses shrug off charges of racism - though they are all still howling about Willie Horton.

Winter is coming as Ebola rages in Africa

Ebola can survive on surfaces for almost two months
  • Research claims certain strains of Ebola can remain on surfaces for 50 days
  • It survived the longest on glass surfaces stored at 4° (39°F)
  • Centres for Disease Control and Prevention claims Ebola typically lives on a ‘dry’ surface for hours - including doorknobs and tables
  • But when stored in moist conditions such in mucus, this is extended 
  • Survival time depends on the surface, and the room temperature
  • Virus can be killed using household bleach and people must come into direct contact with the sample to risk infection 
US Soldiers in quarantine in Italy
The full 21 days for all returning from Liberia.

Major General Daryl Williams is there, right now.

Meanwhile, CDC is still talking about "voluntary isolation" for returning civilian care-givers, and only those at "highest risk."

God forbid the health professionals running CDC should adopt a policy that inconveniences health professionals one tiniest bit more than they are willing to voluntarily accept.

Monday, October 27, 2014

Erdogan's Islamist Turkey and ISIS

Assad's warnings start to ring true in Turkey

American liberals, of course, were thrilled when Erdogan wrecked forever the ability of Ataturk's army to serve as the last guarantor of secular government in Turkey.

And to this day they share his wish to unseat Assad, though of course they persist in believing there is such a thing as a moderate, non-Islamist opposition in Syria America should favor - or in lying that they believe it.

ISIS beheads children, too

ISIS death threats and child beheadings force ‘Vicar of Baghdad’ to flee Iraq

They torture and behead children?

Concern spreads

As Ebola Spreads, Asia Senses Vulnerability

America's initial happy-talk deceived them.

American nurses in Texas getting sick undeceived them.

China, India, and others wising up.

Per the story,

An analysis published online last week by The Lancet, a medical journal, reviewed International Air Transport Association data for flights from Sept. 1 to Dec. 31 this year, as well as data from 2013, out of the three countries in West Africa with the biggest outbreaks of Ebola virus: Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. 

It found that six of the top nine estimated destinations for travelers from these countries were elsewhere in Africa. 

The others were in Europe: Britain, France and Belgium.

But the 10th-largest destination was China. 

India was 13th. 

Mali, a West African country that reported its first Ebola death on Friday, was 11th, and the United States was 12th.

No other Asian countries appeared in the top 20, and there have been no publicly confirmed cases of Ebola yet in Asia.

. . . . 

“The first thing at the top of their minds now is Ebola,” said Malik Peiris, director of the School of Public Health at the University of Hong Kong, after meeting on Friday with senior Chinese doctors and officials from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dr. Peiris, who is best known as a leader in the fight against SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, in 2003, said that flight and trade patterns between Asia and West Africa meant that five cities in the region would be at the front line in preventing Ebola from spreading: Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou in mainland China; Hong Kong, a semiautonomous Chinese territory; and Mumbai in India.

Another hero-worshipper in Africa

Samantha Powers in Africa

SP was bitterly unhappy that Bill Clinton did not intervene militarily to stop the Rwanda tribal slaughters.

Are those Cuban medicos truly volunteers?

If they bring the disease back to the island will the Cubans keep it off mainland Latin America?

Islam in Africa

Dozens More Girls Abducted by Nigerian Extremists

Liberals complain about Christian intolerance in Africa, but this is far, far worse.

ISIS seems a better-organized, better-advertised, and better-financed version of Boko Harem.

See this for an interesting contrast.

Anti-Muslim "attack" in Australia

A man of mixed signals, he is

Pope Francis praises retired Pope Benedict

The Ottawa shooter

Somebody finally confirmed the picture that was used from the first day is in fact a picture of the shooter.

And he made a video about which Canadian police will say nothing at this time, except that it confirms the shooting "was politically and ideologically motivated."

The shooter, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, was a French Canadian convert to Islam with a criminal record who was prevented from flying to the Middle East.

His mother says he wanted to study Islam in Saudi Arabia.

This time, not happy talk

21 Days

It is nonsense that relevant experts are universally on board with the CDC and administration "No cause for alarm" line.

Quite the contrary.

People who say otherwise are ill-informed or simply lying.

A bridge too far?

Mika and Joe today first reported the SNL skit lampooning disobedient medicos and then criticized as over the top the move by the governors of New York and New Jersey to make quarantine mandatory for care givers returning to the US from Africa.

First, let’s be clear about this.

The universal recommendation of all health authorities is that people who have had close contact with Ebola patients, including care givers, be isolated from others for at least 21 days.

Even Tom Frieden, head of the CDC, has said that these folks must self-isolate, call in twice a day with their temperatures, etc., and that if they are found to violate the policy they will then be put into mandatory quarantine.

This official policy is an honor system that has already failed, and we have found by repeated, annoying experience that care-givers cannot be trusted to observe the rules.

Repeatedly, medical personnel who have later turned out to be infected have gone off the reservation, costing authorities, air lines, and a variety of businesses a great deal of money in decontamination expenses and lost business and scaring the heck out of large numbers of people.

So far we have been lucky and no one has been infected by these hot shots.

The governors of New York and New Jersey have had enough, and have imposed mandatory quarantine on medical personnel returning from Ebola country because, as Chris Christie said, the honor system has not worked.

The argument repeatedly made by medicos that this will discourage volunteers presumes it to be generally true that these people are abundantly willing to risk their lives to help Africans cope with Ebola but not at all willing to observe the rules their own profession insists upon to keep Americans safe from that disease.

And, besides, to impose quarantine is, according to them and their adorers, treating them with a disrespect that is particularly outrageous since they are, according to themselves and their partisans, heroes who, as Mayor Bill De Blasio said, “did the right thing.”

But they are, in fact, self-infatuated spoiled brats, and De Blasio is the kind of Democrat who makes me ashamed of the party, encouraging them in their moral arrogance.

They need to be taken down a peg or two.

And the American people apparently need to be protected from these” heroes.”

On the other hand, an unheated tent on the grass?

Isolated nurse to challenge legality of quarantine

Notice that its opponents are now calling it "forced quarantine."

Look it up.

"Voluntary quarantine" is an oxymoron.

"Forced quarantine" is a pleonasm.

Update.

Christie backed down totally.

The whiny nurse is being released and the policy of quarantine of returning care givers has been abandoned in favor of the very honor system Christie correctly said does not work.

So far, the rebellion against quarantine has been successful whenever seriously pursued.

It remains true that the honor system doesn't work, but I suppose snotty medicos demanding their way will be allowed to continue to cheat until they actually kill a few people.

God forbid concern to protect Americans should in any way discourage these heroes from flying off to save Africans.

Sunday, October 26, 2014

How do you revise infallible doctrine?

The Pope and the Precipice

Well, first you (infallibly?) abandon infallibility.

And then you authoritatively, but not infallibly, revise.

Is that how this will eventually go?

And that would pretty much kill the Catholic Church, I think, at least in the euro-white world.

Followed by schism and an African counter-pope?

In case you missed the point

Can Ferguson Swing the Election?

Around the country, black voters are being mobilized to vote in the 2014 midterms with the argument that the death of Michael Brown resulted, in part, from lack of black civic participation.

. . . . 

The Georgia Democratic Party sent mailers to black voters with iconic images from the streets of Ferguson asking citizens to vote "if you want to prevent another Ferguson" and noting that "[t]he choices may not always be perfect, but the cost of inaction is simply too great." 

A Democratic Party spokesperson didn't shy away from the Ferguson/Georgia comparison in an interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, saying, "You have communities that can explode like that because you’ve taken the opportunity away from them."

And so on.

They cannot admit the kid died because he was a thug, was stoned, and attacked a cop and tried to take his gun.

Their propaganda needs the racist lies and racist hate they exploit.

Evidence discredits the progressive narrative.

The BIG Ego

David Brooks: A Lot Of People Have No Contact With People Like Us Giving Them Expert Opinions

Hey, maybe only columnists should be allowed to vote.

What do you think?

When people daren't trust their own judgment

Reagan's astrologer

Nancy's?

My foot.

People who crave and get power and then know only too well they are out of their depth.

What are your priorities, doc?

Mandatory Quarantines Have Negative Consequences

The nation's top infectious control doctor says mandatory quarantines of Ebola patients can have what he calls the unintended consequence of discouraging health care workers from volunteering in the Ebola-ravaged countries of West Africa.

Dr. Anthony Fauci (FOW'-chee) is the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. 

He says that as a physician and scientist, he would not have recommended a quarantine.

Because it would be bad for Africa.

Sounds like somebody needs to have a chat with those docs.

They're willing to risk their lives for stricken Africans but not to spend three weeks in quarantine to protect Americans from the same awful fate?

Morally entitled, she is. She thinks she's a hero and deserves deferential treatment.


I so don't care.


How dare we treat so noble a person as herself like this, huh?

How dare we?

"Coercive measures like mandatory quarantine of people exhibiting no symptoms of Ebola and when not medically necessary raise serious constitutional concerns about the state abusing its powers," says the director of New Jersey's ACLU. 

A rep for DWB is urging "fair and reasonable treatment" of its workers, and says it's trying to "clarify the details of the protocols with each state's departments of health." 

Meanwhile, Hickox notes the vast need for "more health care workers to help fight the epidemic in West Africa." 

In turn, she writes, "the US must treat returning health care workers with dignity and humanity."

So when she comes out of quarantine we'll give her a ticker-tape parade.

But no free pass on quarantine.

Medicos are perfectly free to risk their lives, if they want to.

But not ours.

Saturday, October 25, 2014

Wilson, Ferguson

Whether Wilson is indicted or not, whether he's convicted or not, it's win-win for the left and lose-lose for the right.

Also win-win for those who hate white people, and lose-lose for whites.

Marginally better for the left and worse for white people if he's indicted and again if he's convicted, judging by the balance of the evidence so far.

Supporting Wilson's story as it does, it hardly makes any opposing prosecution story credible "beyond a reasonable doubt."

So both indictment and conviction can reflect only the power of race hatred against whites.

The hypocrisy of Salon's political dominatrix, Joan Walsh

The glee with which the GOP relies on Obama-hate to turn out its base shows the disturbing racial reality of 2014

She's good.

She's very good.

She writes this with an appearance of complete innocence, candor, and honesty, though it is abundantly obvious to everybody that the Democrats have long spent most of their efforts keeping up the engagement of their black base, at any price.

The Republican Party is relying on Obama-hate to turn out its 96-percent-white, middle-class-to-wealthy base, while the Democrats, still trying to be a multi-racial party in a multi-racial country, are trying to court voters of every race and class. 

It can be a tough sell.

I personally am 100% white, an elderly male soon to rely crucially, though not entirely, as my mother already does, on Social Security and Medicare for my continued well-being.

I voted twice for O and would again, partly because he is black and despite his annoying racist attitude toward whites.

And I will vote the straight Democratic ticket in November, no thanks to Joan; she makes my skin crawl as surely as Michelle Malkin or Ann Coulter.

But she doesn't matter and neither do they.

The elites who dominate the Democrats remain, in opposition to the elites who dominate the Republicans, the lesser evil for the common man and the ordinary people of America, of any race, sex, religion, or ethnicity.

And so long as the Republican Party continues the complete slave of its anti-progressive ideology and elites while the Democrats remain relatively progressive, I can do no other.

Oh, let me share with you a gem, a lie from Joan so bland and egregious it made me laugh.

Lovers of false equivalence will say that Democrats work hard to turn out black voters, so why complain that the GOP is concentrating on whites? 

There’s really no comparison between the two strategies. 

Democrats rely on the fact that black voters overwhelmingly support the policies they promote, while Republicans still rely on white fear, if not white racism, as they promote a generalized Obama-phobia rather than specific counter-policies. 

A pact with the devil

The Democratic Embrace of Al Sharpton

In politics, war, and business, alliances come and go, are made and broken, with little regard to affinities.

There is always a down side.

The truth is that the leadership of black America is heavy laden with thugs, the political equivalents of Al Capone, and has been since Malcolm X was the most admired of them and Eldridge Cleaver and the Panthers spoke for millions.

Palling around with these racist monsters is the price the Democrats pay for the support of black America.

President Obama ’s embrace of Mr. Sharpton has been particularly intense this year. 

On Monday he called Mr. Sharpton’s radio show to discuss the Nov. 4 elections. 

In April the president appeared at a political rally organized by Mr. Sharpton’s National Action Network. 

Mr. Obama’s closest adviser, Valerie Jarrett, conferred with Mr. Sharpton in August about the police killing of an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Mo., as Mr. Sharpton led protests against the Ferguson police.

The Democratic establishment is just as obsequious. 

It turned out in force earlier this month to celebrate Mr. Sharpton’s 60th birthday party at New York’s tony Four Seasons restaurant. 

Hillary Clinton phoned in with best wishes. 

Barack and Michelle Obama sent a congratulatory letter. 

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo gushed: “He’s the nation’s Rev. Sharpton—and the nation is better for it.” 

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman , Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand , and Reps. Charles Rangel and Jerry Nadler rushed to pay their respects.

This is Big Al, and I believe he has never repudiated his past.

There was Mr. Sharpton’s frenzied involvement in the Tawana Brawley case.

In 1987 Ms. Brawley, a 15-year-old African-American, concocted a tale of being raped by six white males. 

The allegation was ultimately revealed as a hoax, but not before Mr. Sharpton had commandeered the racially incendiary story and poured fuel on it by accusing a white county prosecutor of having been among the attackers. 

The prosecutor, Steven Pagones, won a defamation suit in 1998 against Mr. Sharpton, Ms. Brawley and her lawyers. 

Mr. Sharpton refused to pay the judgment against him, which was eventually discharged by a group of supporters.

In 1991 a Hasidic driver in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights accidentally ran onto a sidewalk and killed a 7-year-old black child named Gavin Cato. 

Mr. Sharpton led protesters in angry cries of “No justice, no peace,” criticized Jewish diamond merchants in the neighborhood for selling goods from apartheid South Africa, and spoke at a rally where a banner said, “Hitler did not do the job.” 

During three days of violence following the accident, rioters beat to death an Australian rabbinical student named Yankel Rosenbaum.

In 1995 Mr. Sharpton led a protest in Harlem to stop a Jewish landlord—a “white interloper,” in Mr. Sharpton’s words—from evicting a black-operated record shop. 

One of the protesters would later set fire to the store, killing seven store employees.

Mr. Sharpton has never apologized for his involvement in the Brawley hoax. Nor has he taken responsibility for his agitation in Crown Heights.

As the article makes clear, Big Al continues to be a racist fiend, a crook, and an exemplar of corrupt politics, and de Blassio is stuck in his embrace.

When the White House won't step up

NY, NJ to Require Quarantine After Ebola Contact

Quarantine and public health are within the power of the states.

Interestingly, there is nothing in the constitution granting such powers to the federal government, and nobody at all has raised that as an objection to federal intervention in the matter.

Republicans, really the biggest constitutional hypocrites, want even more federal control.

But they will settle for governors stepping up and will even trumpet this as further proof of Obama's feckless weakness.

"It's too serious a situation to leave it to the honor system of compliance," Cuomo says. 

Couldn't agree more; said so days ago.

Any medical personnel who have treated Ebola patients in Sierra Leone, Guinea, or Liberia "will be automatically quarantined," says Dr. Howard Zucker, acting New York state health commissioner. 

An automatic three-week quarantine makes sense for anyone "with a clear exposure" to Ebola, says the former head of the International Society for Infectious Diseases. 

And it won't be long before that gets pushed to a month, I hope.

Twelve percent of those infected take more than 21 days to show symptoms.

That's just not good enough.

But aid organizations [Doctors Without Borders, Samaritan's Purse, and the like. PV.] warn that many health care volunteers won't go to Ebola hot zones if they know they'll be confined to their homes for three weeks after they get back.

Maybe so.

But if it's us or them I side with us.

Policing pop culture

Lena Dunham’s “race problem” is not really her problem at all

I have no idea who she is, but she has the wrong attitudes about race and gender, says the author, who is disturbed.

How clear can they make it?

Jim Crow persists

Yesterday they pointed to a Klan march against "race mixing" and called it racism, and that was true.

Today they point to white people carrying signs that say "We support Officer Wilson" and "Innocent until proven guilty" and they call that racism, which is hate propaganda and a flat out lie.

Smear, hatchet job, guilt by association when there isn't the least trace of association.

Throw Grandma from the train

Ain't my Grandma.

Open Thread - Old White People Complaining About Halloween?

Anybody but me see where liberals are drifting?

Anti-white, anti-working class, anti-elderly.

What a tough sell for all those young minorities they want the Democrats to work for and rely on, more and more.

Friday, October 24, 2014

The emerging truth that will be forever denied by American blacks and bien-pensant whites.

Michael Brown and Ferguson

I recall the President and his Attorney General have come out publicly at least three times to denounce white racism.

The Gates incident.

The Trayvon Martin shooting.

And the Michael Brown shooting.

In each case word of the event had barely reached the White House when the intrepid pair had denounced racism and demanded justice with almost the hate-filled and dishonest ferocity of Rev. Al Sharpton, famed instigator of the Tawana Brawley fraud.

In each case American blacks decided to protest with their usual rioting and crime wave, and in each case it turned out the actual event had gone down quite otherwise than as the Klan lynching denounced by the President and the Attorney General.

And yet the president is not a foolish man, and probably his racism extends not at all beyond a chronic willingness to believe the worst accusations against whites, no matter how wild.

I would be shocked and enraged, but not too greatly surprised, if he mused a bit during a speech about Ebola on Louis Farrakhan's claim that the disease was invented by whites as a tool of genocide against blacks, just like AIDS.

Of course, if he did, he would be defended by loyal white liberals to the last man.

The revered Bill Moyers was fine with Jeremiah Wright, you may recall.

Voter ID, tyranny, racism, and mockery

Brits mock Texas race-whiner

Sad that nobody will see this but people who already think the opposition to voter ID is stupid.

Almost as stupid as allowing felons, non-citizens, and people under 21 to vote.

One might almost suggest the families of felons be disenfranchised, but then the rainbow of voters would be missing exactly one color.

Suspicious, that.

Both Dallas nurses are OK and to be discharged.

Good to hear it.

Run, Pocahontas, run!

Senator Warren for president?

Looking better and more willing all the time.

I'll go for a Democrat over Hillary, sure.

Ebola in the Big Apple

Brave doctor brings Ebola back to America

A doctor who recently returned from Guinea has tested positive for Ebola -- the first case of the deadly virus in New York City and the fourth diagnosed in the United States.

. . . . 

Spencer came back to the United States last week after treating Ebola patients in Guinea, where he worked for Doctors Without Borders.

He completed his work in Guinea on October 12 and left the country two days later via Brussels, Belgium.

He arrived at John F. Kennedy International Airport on October 17, but he exhibited no symptoms of the virus until Thursday morning, said Dr. Mary Travis Bassett, New York City's health commissioner.

Sure, not as bad as Guatemala City, but bad enough if it gets loose.

These returning moral heroes are putting our grandchildren at risk.

Of course, he saw a few of his most beloved after the symptoms started, his fiancee and two friends, though if anybody in the world should have suspected from the first sign of flu symptoms that it wasn't flu, but Ebola, and immediately isolated himself, it was him.

But he did not do that.

All three are now in quarantine and being monitored.

The key thing to remember: people fuck up.

This guy is a doctor and he still fucked up.

Imagine if the next one has no medical training and, unlike Doctor Spencer, is more inclined to selfishness and denial than to dedication to the good of others.

How long will he continue close interaction with people, possibly with the public, spreading the disease before he is seen in an Emergency Room?

How big a scare do we need for the authorities to take more seriously their roles as protectors of the American people and less seriously the preferred global role of indispensable nation?

Ebola in Mali

Thursday, October 23, 2014

A left hook from the NYT.

Without Lucrative Market, Potential Ebola Vaccine Was Shelved for Years

The capitalism bashing about Ebola vaccines is a smoke screen.

The Times wants two things.

One is American medicine socialized as far as possible.

The other is Western assumption of financial responsibility for the health and well-being of Africans as close to on a par with the people of the West as possible.

Morality is the propaganda tool for achieving these aims.

That and the violence morality always threatens and legitimates, and often precedes.

Newspaper coherence

Mark Zuckerberg addresses Chinese university in fluent mandarin

That's their headline.

This is in their story.

While Zuckerberg’s Mandarin was far from fluent, his performance during the 30-minute session was coherent and, at times, charmingly idiomatic – at the talk’s start, he called his Mandarin level “really terrible”, to laughter and applause.

Some people would be scary even without a gun. With a gun? Oh, my.

Joni Ernst

About to win a seat in the senate, she is.

Yes.

Come to that, many of our classe politique ought not to be walking around, free and unattended, at all.

One man with a handgun "puts down" a terrorist with an assault rifle

When it occurs to the liberals what happened they will stop celebrating the guy and start to back away, arms extended, crucifix upheld, sprinkling holy water, as though he were a vampire.

This guy is almost there.

Meet the Lord High Badass of Canada

This, by the way, is why many lawmakers carry right onto the floor.

Why Nancy Reagan carried a small automatic in her purse.

Sometimes the Sergeant at Arms isn't Clint Eastwood, and you're on your own.

Oh, want to think again about those folks who, discussing Ferguson, began to urge that American cops be totally disarmed for normal business?

Medical mullahs mull morals

Only days ago I saw reports that Frieden claimed US care givers were at greater risk than Africans because standard care in the US involves procedures not possible in Africa, procedures such as intubation, procedures that put the care-given in exceptionally dangerous contact with the patient.

At the same time, he assured that proper methods, equipment, training, and supervision were adequate counters to that increased risk.

But the necessary package of those things - methods, equipment, etc. - is not possible at every hospital and that's why ideas such as the military flying squads of care givers and the possibility of shipping all the infected to the four most prepared hospitals in the country have been floated.

Add in the long-standing view of many that the US medical establishment effectively tortures patients and their families, prolonging horrific suffering and fear with procedures and methods that can achieve nothing else and in particular cannot save the dying patient.

And no doubt all that explains this.

Some U.S. hospitals weigh withholding care to Ebola patients

Black kid. Black crowd. White driver? Racism, but not the driver's.

Ice cream truck accident

Crowd attacks driver

The boy's uncle, Michael Harris, said his nephew and his older brother were heading home at the time of the crash.

“I don’t know what I’m going to tell my brother. His son is dead,” Harris said. “They say it was an accident but I don’t believe that. I don’t believe that one bit, none at all.”


Harris said his nephews and the boy's mother may have been involved in the attack.


"She has every right to," Harris said.


Harris is black, as were all involved except some of the cops.

Not one report mentions the race of the driver, or even of the crowd.

There are pictures of the crowd, but I have seen none of the driver.

Only one shooter in Ottawa, after all

On Morning Joe, Mika read a report that the Canadians had decided there was only the one guy.

Other reports say the shooter was a recent convert to Islam.

Ottawa shooting

Police will certainly check, but so far it looks as though if there's any connection to ISIS - or any Muslim terrorist group - it's only one of like-mindedness.

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Ebola serum


BBC, so-called 'singular they,' of course.

It's probably on their list of unbreakable rules of style.

If a person has successfully fought off the infection, it means their body has learned how to combat the virus and they will have antibodies in their blood that can attack Ebola.

Grammatically corrected, that reads thus.

If a person has successfully fought off the infection, it means his body has learned how to combat the virus and he will have antibodies in his blood that can attack Ebola.

I was taught grammar by a succession of elderly New England maiden ladies.

Wouldn't want to let them down.

Good news about the serum.

Question.

Certain Arab states have been rolling in oil money for decades, using it to buy ridiculous luxuries for their rulers and to finance not only the teaching of Jihader ideology but the conduct of Jihad by groups such as al-Qaeda and ISIS.

Are they helping at all with the Ebola crisis?

Could O be planning a presidential nullification of immigration law?

Green cards

They hint he will do so after the election, the point being to influence the election.

But we've seen stranger things.

More American Jihad groupies in Denver

FBI: US girls may have tried to join jihadis

Joining the sexual Jihad?

Volunteering for the role of slave girl?

People are weird beyond belief.

21 days of self-monitoring and calling in, not quarantine, for people traveling to the US from Ebola countries

CDC: Monitoring for All Coming From Ebola Nations

A step in the right direction.

Did somebody notice an election coming?

But not really good enough.

Too many people coming to America just get off a plane and disappear, as it is.

And haven't we had enough bad experience in other contexts of reliance on an "honor system"?

Good news. We have to wonder who gets the bill.

NBC Cameraman Ebola-Free

Ashoka Mukpo, the freelance American journalist who caught Ebola and was today discharged Nebraska Medical Center, said he owes the hospital staff "a debt he can never repay."

Shootings in Ottawa

'Horrific day' amid war memorial shooting near Canada's Parliament

Authorities have not said but the most reasonable guess would be that this is a Muslim terrorist attack.

But I do emphasize this is a guess.

Apparently one soldier on guard duty was killed, one gunman was killed by police, and it remains uncertain whether additional gunmen number 1 or 2.

At least one gunman was armed with a rifle.

All within the last couple of hours at most, I think.

Update.

Multiple shooters in Ottawa attack

Breast cancer is and has always been less a health problem than prostate cancer

Imagine that.

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

State of Siege

Camus' blindingly stupid play.

Rarely that much fun at the booth

The Hilarious Moment When a Guy Told Obama ‘Don’t Touch My Girlfriend’

Phooey. Just for show.

US imposes Ebola travel restrictions

The Obama administration has announced America’s first Ebola-related travel restrictions, forcing passengers originating from affected countries in west Africa to fly via US airports with screening procedures in place.

It looks better for O than rigid stonewalling.

But that's pretty much it.

It's just "optics," as they say.

Radical Chic never went away

The NY Post: The Death of Klinghoffer

Wikipedia: The Death of Klinghoffer

Wikipedia: Leon Klinghoffer

The crackpots back in the day who celebrated Ho and the Weather Underground, the Panthers, and the famous murderers Malcolm X and Edridge Cleaver included much of the rich Jewish elite of Gotham, perhaps most notably Leonard Bernstein.

Protesters, standing ovation

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg was in the audience, reports say.

Israel is the only European colony anywhere outside the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand, I think, that had the enduring population advantage without which all others in the 20th Century reverted to native rule - and native misrule.

That and the unique advantage of absolutely unswerving US diplomatic, economic, political, and military support.

Could they continue to survive without the tens of billions America gives them?

No idea.

“F*** all you white motherf***ers!”

Ferguson Protesters and Football Fans Brawl in Street After St. Louis Rams Game

There was a spitting incident caught on video — but this one involved a female protester spitting in a man’s face.

The black female was heard on the video yelling a string of racially charged expletives at police and fans.

“F*** all you white motherf***ers!” she was heard yelling at one point.

Black racism in America.

It's why there were Ferguson protesters, to begin with.

An earlier clash at a baseball game was also billed as an exhibition of racism.

White racism.

Cardinals fans clash with Ferguson protesters

The behavior and speech of the Cardinals fans was universally damned as racist.

The Ferguson farce

Consumed with hate, they are.

Pocahontas, the Democrat

Warren Makes the Case

If there is a primary pitting her against Hillary I might well vote for Pocahontas.

But it's not only Islam

Ultra-Orthodox Jews Attack Jerusalem Buses Over Ad

No one killed or hurt, though.

New rules

CDC issues new rules for protecting workers from Ebola

More and heavier gear, a site supervisor to be sure it's donned and removed safely, etc.

Hospitals and medical personnel are to treat a patient as if infected from the moment they decide he should be tested.

Monday, October 20, 2014

Stop the bungling

Stop the Ebola bungling! To show seriousness, ban travel

NYC Firefighters Union.

Back to the happy talk

The real lesson of Ebola in Dallas: this virus is very difficult to spread

The truth is that it's easy to spread, but it doesn't spread all that much because only sick people can spread it and they are generally way too sick to go out among healthy folks, as do people with flu or colds.

Hence the Hazmat suits for care givers.

People forget what forest is like, and how much of the US Northeast is still that

Pennsylvania police report probable sighting of suspect in manhunt

They've been hunting Eric Frein since September 12.

All religions are alike, and all fundamentalisms are alike

So say liberals.

"We can have slave girls, again."

Ben Affleck seen this?

Muslims free to be themselves

Pols talking down

Did it start with Lee Atwater telling Bush the Elder to make a real effort to achieve vulgarity in his campaigns and whenever addressing anyone with the American people listening in?

Or did it begin earlier than that?

When?

And is O getting more deeply into vulgarity during campaign rallies this time?

Fact check. This is not AIDS. This is not polio.

Ebola fast facts

Ebola is extremely infectious but not extremely contagious. 

It is infectious, because an infinitesimally small amount can cause illness. 

Laboratory experiments on nonhuman primates suggest that even a single virus may be enough to trigger a fatal infection.

All the same, the virus is a lot less contagious than any of the many that are airborne, like flu viruses, SARS, and cold viruses.

Partly that's because it isn't airborne, but mostly it's because only people with actual symptoms shed the Ebola virus and those people are way to sick to get around, very much unlike people with flu, SARS, or a cold.

On the other hand and again on the down side, this virus survives and remains deadly outside the body for up to 5 days in normal circumstances.

If you catch it, this is how quickly things will go.

Medical data

In non-fatal cases, patients typically improve approximately 6 days after the onset of symptoms. 

. . . . 

Fatal disease has been characterized by more severe clinical signs early during infection and progression to multiorgan failure and septic shock. 

Death typically occurs between days 6 and 16.

I spare you the ghastly details of how awful things will be during the illness.

If you live, the virus persists, alive and deadly, for months in semen and breast milk.

But you have antibodies that last at least a decade, say the medicos.

New Plan for dealing with Ebola

Pentagon building rapid-response Ebola team

Not going to rely on local personnel.

But what about local facilities?

Sunday, October 19, 2014

Marxism goes pop to exculpate religion

Religious beliefs, like cultural beliefs, are shaped by the material circumstances that give rise to them

Wow. Old fashioned historical materialism alive and well at Salon.

So many of the "progressive" sites seem to have gone so deeply red, lately.

And he seems actually to be adopting ISIS as, down deep, revolutionaries - and so, of course, basically the good guys.

Joan Walsh runs this site, huh?

Such a respectable seeming lady.

No, Blake Zeff, actually, whoever that is.

They know what they believe. They made up their minds the first day.

Michael Brown's blood found on Officer Darren Wilson's gun, car door

And OJ is innocent.

They tried, they really did. They couldn't find a white guy.

And they couldn't find anyone who doesn't think suppression of gun ownership is a public health issue and abortion is a women's health issue.

And they probably couldn't find anyone who thinks the Surgeon General's job is to concern himself with the health of Americans.

Just Americans.

Not a surprise

Ebola-linked cruise ship passenger cleared

To no  one's surprise, I think.

And the real agenda is?

Can Climate Change Unite the Left?

To avoid catastrophe, we must seize corporate polluters’ wealth. 

And to do that, we must change everything.

Oh, so it's really just that, is it?

Who says communism is dead?

Seemingly, a drastic shift to the left

Common Dreams

The site seems to have gone way left and pretty much everything they say about race, Ebola, and capitalism is stupid racist balderdash.

Not Belize. Not Mexico

Carnival Magic liner was turned away from Mexico and Belize

Some American pols think the US can handle anything.

Authorities in Mexico and Belize are not so foolish and refused the chance to face a disaster no one could deal with, Ebola lose in Latin America.

We should thank them for their caution.

Better a thousand who are not sick should be turned away than one who is be let ashore in Latin America, thanks.

Just not that scary, then?

Maybe they think if it's not serious enough to stop flights it's not that serious.

Maybe they're not that interested in an African rescue that's too much a matter of expensive and dangerous global charity.

Maybe they see him as ethnically motivated like some Irish senator supporting the IRA or some Jewish senator voting huge aid for Israel.

How does he expect to convince with that "This is huge; we've got to stop it in Africa" line when he is so dismissive of even well nuanced travel restrictions?

Obama annoyed by weak Ebola response from France, Italy and others

He is undermined by every smug liberal denouncing right wing Ebola hysteria.

To miss an opportunity to keep one's mouth shut

Caligula to Merea in Camus' play.

But we've heard that more recently.

Jacques Chirac during UN debates, when he was trying to stop GW from launching a war with Iraq?

He said it to or about somebody, I forget who, and it seemed a zinger.

Seems less so if in fact it's a pretty routine French thing.

Camus' Caligula

A flawed work by an ignorant youth.

Cherea: No. We've had experience of mad emperors. But this one isn't mad enough.

Caligula was Rome's third emperor.

Neither of his predecessors, Augustus and Tiberius, was mad.

Was Caligula mad?

Was Nero?

I think not.

People just say that about monstrous politicians they way they say terrorists are cowards.

It is interesting how far Caligula had to push to get assassinated.

Julius Caesar did not have to work nearly so hard.

He never ever became emperor.

Saturday, October 18, 2014

Reality check

Vaccine 'too late' for outbreak

It normally takes 7 to 10 years to develop a vaccine.

Pulling out all the stops, it will be at least a year for an Ebola vaccine.

Maybe longer.

Ferguson. The physical evidence supports the white cop

Michael Brown's blood found on Officer Darren Wilson's gun, car

It appears for now that the cop was fighting for his life, or anyway had plenty of reason to feel that way.

But all the same the black rabble of Ferguson got to vent their chronic hatred of whites for weeks, egged on by race-baiting black leadership and the whites who always yell murder when a white cop shoots a black man; that was what they really wanted.

Any pretext for a lovely hate bath will do, for some people.

But white liberal elites will continue to express amazement and moral outrage when whites tell them the race problem in America is mostly that blacks hate whites, blame them for everything, and believe any horrible story about them.

Or say they do.

Because they want to.

Yeah, yeah. Or else what?

Oxfam: World must do more to stop Ebola becoming ‘disaster of our time’

Charity says international community has two months to curb deadly virus 

And then?

Britain and the US said the international community will be responsible for a substantial loss of life in west Africa and a greater threat across the world unless the financial and medical response to Ebola was greatly increased. 

The US secretary of state, John Kerry, said a failure to respond could turn Ebola into “a scourge like HIV or polio”.

Polio? No, think Black Death or worse.

Oxfam said that while Britain was leading the way in Europe’s response to the epidemic, countries which have failed to commit troops – including Italy and Spain – were “in danger of costing lives”.

That Oxfam insists the developed world is morally responsible to stop Ebola to save African lives is no surprise.

That Britain and the US officially share this view is a triumph for the left.

The charity said it was extremely rare to call for military intervention but troops were desperately needed to build treatment centres, provide flights and offer engineering and logistical support.

Its plea for extra resources came after the World Health Organisation (WHO) admitted mishandling the early stages of the Ebola outbreak in west Africa.

More doctors and nurses were required to staff the treatment centres and there was a significant shortfall in funding to support the emergency humanitarian response, the agency warned.

Well, they still don't get it.

Comparing this to polio underestimates the threat every bit as badly as American leadership has been doing from the beginning.

Good interview

Bill Maher: Yes, I Can Generalize About Muslims

His own kind of left.

Friday, October 17, 2014

More than one related moral issue, as the Left sees them

If Ebola was in the UK we'd cure it, says leading doctor

I imagine he hasn't changed his mind since August.

Texas and Belize taking it seriously

Travel ban for Texas health care workers in Ebola case

Billy Graham joins Jeremiah Wright

"God damn America!" they say, though not for the same reasons.

America would deserve another 9/11, they think.

Rev. Billy Graham: ‘America is Just as Wicked as Sodom and Gomorrah Ever Were’

Jeremiah Wright, chums with Louis Farrakhan, just hates white people.

Billy Graham believes God hates fags so very, very badly that he rained down fire from Heaven to bring a horrible death upon them.

Le Feu du ciel

And might well visit similar violence on America.

If he did, says Billy G, much beloved American Evangelical preacher, America would have it coming.

A new Ebola Czar? Nonsense.

Obama will name Ron Klain as Ebola Czar

Saying it doesn't make it so.

He is just another establishment lawyer with zero medical or public health credentials.

He will not report directly to the president but to not one but two White House advisers who do, Lisa Monaco for Homeland Security and Susan Rice for National Security.

Ms. Monaco, also a lawyer and a prosecutor with zero medical or public health credentials, was as close as the White House wanted to get to having an Ebola Czar yesterday (they were calling her the "White House Ebola Coordinator"), and by George it looks like she still is.

Susan Rice, an historian by training and an establishment figure for some decades, is at any rate not another lawyer, praise be to God.

She is well known to favor altruistic American and Western interventions in Africa, and did so in the Clinton White House where she urged intervention in the Rwanda genocidal conflict.

On foreign policy generally she is well aligned with O and is a staunch globalist.

So how long will the press be going along with the pretense that Mr. Klain is the real thing?

Did the people who called for an Ebola Czar over the past week want just another political stooge, just another White House lawyer, for God's sake?

One who will be reporting to two White House advisers with no knowledge of or experience with medical or public health issues?

Where the hell is C. Everett Koop when you need him?

And could the White House possibly make it any clearer that it does not take seriously its own rhetoric about how serious a challenge Ebola is?

The bumbling, the refusal of travel restrictions, the refusal of a Czar, the small military mission to Africa, the tiny budget.

Maybe it all adds up to the Administration just not being all that concerned.

I think that's a mistake.

But it could be where they're at.

The moral issue

On the right the view is generally that the West has no duty to aid with African Ebola, and though the majority seem to agree it needs to be done for the general safety - meaning our own safety as much as anyone's - there is a minority that seems to doubt that.

Ann Coulter, for example, might not be quite on board.

On the left the occasion is being seized as a "teachable moment," a propaganda opportunity of the first water for subtle and not so subtle inculcation of the lesson that the West is duty bound to do whatever necessary to stop Ebola, and in general to attend to the health care needs of Africa.

Sometimes this involves the race card and sometimes it's pretty plain and heavy guilt-tripping, but not always.

Kofi Annan

No impact from pledges of help, MSF says

It is remarkable how small are the amounts of money in play compared to the huge amounts right now being squandered by our American government in a totally unnecessary and useless air campaign against ISIS.

Too much of the US classe politique has not got the message.

ISIS is not that big a deal for the United States.

Ebola is big, and will get a lot bigger if the world doesn't step up.

Succinct, good sense

Charles Krauthammer: Ebola vs. civil liberties

Not normally my favorite columnist - way too Zionist for me - CK nevertheless makes sense in this piece from which conservative race-baiting attacks are notably absent.

In case you missed it, Administration supporters are lying when they say the experts are on their side

That includes not only opinion writers but ordinary and supposedly objective journalists, even reporters doing the evening local news.

In truth, opinion is divided and recent surveys report more doctors are on this guy's side than on Frieden's.

We Should Quarantine Everyone Coming From Countries With Ebola Outbreaks

It is not irrational

West Africans in Washington say they are being stigmatized because of Ebola fear

Did the fellow who got up and moved away buy himself an increment of safety that was worth the trouble of getting up and moving away?

The subjective probability that that particular Liberian was ill and contagious seems slight, but the cost in case he was would be overwhelming.

So, rational?

Oh, I think so, given these two were random strangers thrown together on a public bus.

It was rational if quarantine ever is - and it oh so is.

Besides, public buses are cesspools of contagion, anyway.

As for those communities of West African immigrants, so long as there is relatively unrestricted travel to the US from West Africa they will be particular foci of danger, and that is just a plain fact to which we must hope the public health services are giving particular attention.

The PC police will rally to their defense, and people who express such concerns in public are apt to be abused and if possible punished, as have people who have expressed concerns about flying with young men in some way "visibly Muslim."

Actually, these concerns are considerably more well-founded than that.

The Medusa disease

Contact tracing, interviews, quarantine, etc.

Yes, people are getting perhaps a little too excited.

You can't get it from a glance by an infected person two weeks before symptoms appear.

Neutral monists vs. The Frankfort School?

The president said yesterday that he did not have any philosophical objections to travel restrictions.

I was wondering about that, and the title is my best guess on that matter.

[Yes, kidding.]

Meanwhile, as the election approaches the right continues to urge the president's loyalties or his priorities - or both - do not privilege America as they should.

This from the party most in fealty to Zionism and most given to squandering American lives and treasure in unnecessary wars of no earthly good to the country.

Though of course in all candor both parties are so in love with global power that both are for the foreseeable future irrevocably committed to policies that, from the point of view of national interests, amount to global military altruism though, if you follow the money, mostly subject American policy to the needs and aspirations of expanding, global capitalism.

Anyway, playing the race card, big time, they are, these right wing guys.

Pat Buchanan: Community and country come ahead of any obligation to people of Africa

Tom Frieden's story is that travel restrictions will help America very little, if at all, and will significantly impede efforts to deal with Ebola in Africa.

I don't agree, but that's neither here nor there.

Buchnan's position is that this prioritizes Africans over Americans.

But Frieden and those who support him might insist their policy will minimize the risk to the US, since the worse things go in Africa the worse they will be everywhere else, including here.

And though I have seen one or two white male liberals outside the Administration do so, neither O nor anyone else inside it, that I know of, has denounced travel restrictions as racist.

Au contraire, the suggestions that they have, and that they prioritize non-whites over whites, is itself a conservative effort to play upon racial fears, suspicions, and animosities with the ballot box in clear view.

Thursday, October 16, 2014

Bill Maher off the reservation. Again.

What are they going to do, refuse to cash his checks?

BM scorning PC, again.

Stop the flights.

I just can't believe how they go from one blunder to another

Meet Obama's Ebola Coordinator Lisa Monaco

Just amazing.

The woman coordinating the Obama administration’s response to the nation’s first Ebola scare in history has no background in public health or managing an outbreak.

Lisa Monaco, the president’s homeland security and counterterrorism adviser, is a lawyer with a background in federal law enforcement, criminal prosecution and crisis response.

The White House says she is a “highly competent individual” with experience coordinating federal agency responses to national security threats, which include Ebola.

Jesus, are they really all this stupid?

Is O just determined to sleep through his last couple of years?

'Cause he's sure as hell not been awake for any of this.

Any reason to think the outcome would have been different? Do they have legal recourse?

Ebola Patient's Fiancee Gets Hospital Apology for His Death

Malpractice?

Is that even constitutional? This is no more a war than the war on drugs or the war on crime.

Obama May Send National Guard to Liberia to Fight Ebola

NG's?

Come to that, where did he get the authority to send actual troops to West Africa?

And what are these treatment centers supposed to be like?

The high-level, space-age setup in Atlanta or Nebraska?

Or a bunch of Quonset huts, each open plan on the inside with cots for a dozen or so?

Closer to the latter, I'll wager.

Jesus.

They'll be herding the sick into tent camps surrounded by barbed wire, next, like some kind of Zombie virus movie.

PLENTY of blame to go around, friends

Obama administration failed to implement all of the CDC’s advice to prevent an Ebola outbreak

It is notorious GW ignored Bill Clinton's advice to watch out more for al-Qaeda, and then there was 9/11, and then the liberals went wild with blame.

Waiting for the other shoe to drop, now?

It's not the Black Death, yet, so, Hey? No big deal, right?

Let's Just Stop With The 'Ebola Is Obama's Katrina' Stuff

Another stupid bastard whose chief concern is partisan bullshit.

Yes, TPM, I'm talking to YOU.

Wow. Texas is so done with this.

Sources: Nurse with Ebola to be moved from Dallas hospital to Maryland facility

This is Nina Pham, the first nurse to come down with Ebola from treating Duncan in Texas, the one who is doing better after a plasma transfusion from that doctor who recovered.

Catch this.

Vinson never should have been cleared to board, she insisted.

Infectious disease expert Dr. Celine Gounder agreed. 

It's "ridiculous" to determine whether someone should fly based on a specific temperature, she said on CNN.

If people are exposed to Ebola, particularly if they've treated an Ebola patient, then they should not be allowed to fly, Gounder said.

Vinson "should have been in quarantine," the doctor said.

Really?

So, in her view, if you treat an Ebola patient you need to be in quarantine?

Is that the full 21 day mandatory deal, sort of like house arrest in your apartment or house, with daily monitoring to see if you become symptomatic?

Have all of the care-givers at all of the hospitals who have dealt with any Ebola patient in the US so far gone into a 21 day quarantine?

I don't think so.

At the hearings

U.S. health officials grilled on Ebola at congressional hearing

The ranking Democrat Rep. Diana DeGette disagreed that a travel ban would be effective, noting that U.S. and global public health officials have not called for those types of bans.

Waiting for global health officials to take the lead (Why should we wait for them?) is worse than waiting for McClellan to take Richmond.

Pure party line stuff, up to now.

There is no place else to send them, and there are pitifully few beds

Ebola Advice From Atlanta and Nebraska Doctors Fails to Ease Fears

Elsewhere I have read that maybe four or five hospitals in the whole country are really up to the job.

People diagnosed with the disease need to be sent there and money needs to be allotted now to increase the number of patients they can care for at any one time.

Anybody doing it?

Those geniuses in the White House?

Not that you'd notice.

Why no Hazmat suit?

'Clipboard Man' Without a Hazmat Suit at Ebola Flight Explained

Just a reminder

Reality check.

The Middle East Doesn’t Matter

A good summary

Ebola in the United States: How we got here

Heather Wilhelm talks sense

America's Dangerous Ebola Advice

A sneeze, huh?

An article I saw the other day said "droplets."

Lawmakers Seek US Ban on Travelers From Ebola-Stricken Region

O should not dig in on this.

It would only take one more sick Liberian, or even a health worker who didn't even suspect he was ill until days after he got off the plane, to force him to back down with a lot of unnecessary egg on his face.

And to force him to fire Frieden, who now enjoys very little public confidence, even among health professionals.

Lawmakers poised to spar with officials over Ebola travel ban

Pretty safe bet Frieden will dig in.

So close to the election, the White House is wrong not only on the public safety issues but on the politics of the thing.