…is a giant ice maker that is bad for global warming, you might just be a Warmist
The blog of the day is Flopping Aces, with a post on using Detroit as a test ground for economic prosperity.
BTW, for those who asked, no, you will not see any lady wearing Flyers, Rangers, Penguins, or Islanders apparel. Period. They are The Enemy. Yes, I’m old school hockey, and I’m not a Fan: I’m a Fanatic when it comes to NHL.
Read: If All You See… »
Of course, Glenn Kessler doesn’t specifically call them lying crap weasels, but does give them 4 Pinocchio’s
On many levels, this line of attack is absurd.
Obama’s Republican predecessor oversaw big increases in public-health sector spending, and both Democrats and Republicans in recent years have broadly supported efforts to rein in federal spending. Sequestration resulted from a bipartisan agreement. In some years, Congress has allocated more money for NIH and CDC than the Obama administration requested. Meanwhile, contrary to the suggestion of the DCCC ad, there never was a specific vote on funding to prevent Ebola.
There’s no doubt that spending has been cut, or at least failed to keep pace with inflation, but the fingerprints of both parties are on the knives. This blame game earns Four Pinocchios.
Interestingly, it was President Bush who really started kicking up the funding for the CDC and NIH (National Institute of Health). The funding leveled off in 2006, and, surprise, Democrats, who are whining now, didn’t bother kicking it up during the 4 years they fully controlled Congress.
In fact, something Kessler notes in passing, and I noted here, the recent budgets from Obama (which Democrats utterly refuse to vote on nowadays), recommended cuts to the CDC and NIH. Furthermore, let’s not forget that it was Obama who came up with the idea of Sequestration.
But, hey, this is the Democrat Party. For all their self absorbed utterances that they are the party of compassion, of looking forward, of being oh so nice, they’re nothing more than a bunch of sleazeball jerks. Sure, politics is a nasty business, but these people make the rhetoric emanating from the Westboro Baptist Church and ISIS look tame in comparison. They are simply nasty people.
Read: Fact Checker Notes Dems Are Lying Crap Weasels On CDC/NIH Cuts »
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In other words, most people just don’t care
(Gallup) The Republicans in Congress hold significant leads over the Democrats on four of the six issues that U.S. registered voters say are most important in determining how they will vote in November: the economy, the way the federal government is working, the situation with Islamic militants in Iraq and Syria, and the federal budget deficit. Democrats, by contrast, top their Republican rivals on just one of the six: “equal pay for women.”
And what we see from this is that “climate change” comes in dead last when it comes to issues that are part of midterm platforms. Fortunately for Democrats, this gives them a 20 point advantage over Republicans! Yay!
Regarding the rest
These results are from a Sept. 25-30 poll in which Gallup asked registered voters to rate the importance of 13 issues to their vote for Congress, and then to indicate which party would do a better job on each issue. The accompanying graph simultaneously displays the rankings of these issues on both dimensions. The higher an issue is, the greater the Republican Party’s advantage. And the farther to the right an issue is, the more important it is to the electorate.
The 13 issues measured in the new poll include eight that appeared in a Gallup Poll conducted in April, before the midterm campaign season came into full bloom, plus five new ones. In total, six issues were rated above the average of 69%, in terms of the percentage of voters saying they are extremely or very important to their vote:
- the economy (88%)
- the availability of good jobs (86%)
- the way the federal government is working (81%)
- the situation with Islamic militants in Iraq and Syria (78%)
- equal pay for women (75%) and
- the federal budget deficit (73%)
Of those 6 issues, the only one the Democrats are rated as doing better than GOP is equal pay for women.
This editorial by the Washington Post Editorial Board is a doozy, essential telling people to not be hysterical, to not worry, to stop being so panic-stricken. The web front page headlines it as “Keeping calm on Ebola”
Keeping an even keel at home on Ebola
THE EBOLA tidal wave is still flooding West Africa, running ahead of all efforts to contain it. This is the most urgent crisis and the one that requires maximum effort. Bruce Aylward of the World Health Organizationpredicted Tuesday that the case load could reach 10,000 a week by December. Currently, the virus has caused 4,447 deaths and infected 8,914 patients, and there is disturbing new evidence that the mortality rate is now 70 percent, higher than previously thought. An exponential leap seems possible, and the international response is still lagging — pledges are only slowly being turned into treatment centers on the ground, patients are being turned away and told to go home and there remains a desperate need for health-care workers.
I wonder if they were aware of the 2nd Texas health worker testing positive for Ebola when they wrote this?
At the same time, the outbreak of the deadly virus has sliced through American politics and the media with a vengeance. Understandably, the specter of such a dangerous disease in the United States has bred fear. But it is remarkable how some public figures are inflaming that fear. Commentator Rush Limbaugh took flight on Tuesday, saying on the radio that “I don’t think anybody involved with Ebola knows what they’re doing. I don’t care if it’s the WHO or the Centers for Disease Control, I don’t think anybody knows what they’re doing.†This was an unfounded rant that can only deepen public disquiet. By contrast, in a vote of confidence and generosity, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation donated $50 million recently to the United Nations and governments that need the resources for emergency response to the crisis. On Tuesday, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, donated $25 million to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Foundation to help fight Ebola. These rapid philanthropic responses to the outbreak reflect the best of American ideals and values.
Interesting. They use this as a platform to Bash Rush. Interestingly, the WPEB thinks uber-rich people donating money is the “best of American ideals and values”. I thought rich people were evil in the eyes of liberals? Actually, the best of American ideals and values is to roll up your sleeves and get to work. Another is that anyone, with hard work, can achieve. Anyhow, I wonder if the EB was drunk when writing that editorial, because next we get
The arrival of an Ebola patient in Texas, followed by his death and the subsequent announcement that a hospital worker, Nina Pham, who treated him has tested positive for Ebola, has fueled dread that the disease could spread in the United States. One of the nation’s top public health authorities, CDC Director Thomas Frieden, had reassured the nation that the health-care system could handle Ebola if the virus landed here. Ms. Pham’s illness — it is still not known how she got it — has caused many to wonder, not unreasonably: Are hospitals really as prepared as officials have said? Is the system so fragile that Ebola could jump the fence in the United States?
So, the Washington Post was asking questions in the same manner as Rush Limbaugh was stating it. (BTW, make sure you read Rush’s comments in full, for context). They, and citizens, wonder, “not unreasonably”, if health officials, hospitals, doctors, administration officials, know what they are doing.
One infected person, Ms. Pham, does not constitute an outbreak. But we think Dr. Frieden and others are wise to prepare for the worst, including by making sure that hospitals across the country know what to do if a patient shows symptoms that look like Ebola and have the ability to respond rapidly and effectively. At a time of tension, the nation’s public health leaders must not overpromise.
Interesting. Are they saying that there is uncertainty as to whether hospitals across the country know what they’re doing? Strange. Even more interesting, from the WP article on the latest Texas healthcare worker to test positive, we see
Indeed,  Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the agency regretted its initial response to the first Ebola diagnosis in Texas, acknowledging that more could have been done to combat infection at the hospital treating Duncan. He said authorities still don’t know how exactly Pham was infected–whether it involved a flaw in her personal protection gear or in the way it was used.
Nurses at the hospital, who spoke anonymously through the National Nurses Union citing fear of retribution, said that protocols at the hospital were “constantly changing†and that nurses received minimal training in infection control procedures.
“What I think we believe that what we could have done better was the oversight of the implementation of the protocols,†said Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell, speaking on CNN on Wednesday morning.
Soooooooo, nobody knows what they’re doing? We’ve witnessed one “surprise” after another with this outbreak. First the CDC was surprised at how the epidemic got out of control in Africa. Then they were surprised that a person with the disease got through their flimsy screening procedures. Then they were surprised that the hospital turned the guy away after he told them he was from Liberia. Then they were surprised that a nurse, wearing protective clothing, was infected. Now they’re surprised that another health care worker has been infected.
Don’t worry, though. Stay calm. There are 76 being monitored, and around a dozen which they are very concerned about. How many were exposed? Obviously, it is much more difficult to get Ebola. Both Ruth Marcus and Frank Bruni rightly note that the flu is much scarier in reality than Ebola. It’s considerably easier to get, and a lot more people die from it each year. Heck, people still get Bubonic Plague, otherwise known as The Black Death. But, there are treatments, cures, for both the flu and Bubonic Plague. There are lots of other diseases to be concerned about. Ebola requires fluid transfer, mostly by blood. But, there’s something about having your insides liquify, and knowing that there is a 70% mortality rate. It is also something that, at this time, is constantly within the news. And people aren’t particularly calmed by the reactions of the Obama administration, especially when Obama is playing golf, fundraising, and, really, avoiding doing the job.
Crossed at Right Wing News.
Read: Washington Post: You Silly People Just Need To Relax Regarding Ebola »
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…is a sport that will disappear because of too much heat, you might just be a Warmist
The blog of the day is The Lonely Conservative, with a post on what’s at stake for the mid-terms.
Read: If All You See… »
By now you’ve probably heard about the hyperventilating from the Pentagon about the threat from Hotcoldwetdry, which is a waste of money, pushed by administration weenies, and, quite frankly, a way to move the military even further to the Left politically, all based on supposition and looking into crystal balls. What if we stopped wasting money and time?
(The Hill) With each new case of the Ebola virus reported by the media, there is also more speculation about a pandemic if Ebola gets out of West Africa, which unfortunately it has. A pandemic is an epidemic that spreads across continents. The world has experienced pandemics at least as far back as the Middle Ages, when the Black Death killed about one-third of the world’s population, to more recent pandemics like smallpox, tuberculosis and most recently HIV/AIDs. In the early 1900s, the U.S. experienced the deadly Spanish influenza. Since about the middle of the 20th century, we have experienced at least four major epidemics: polio, Asian flu, swine flu and HIV/AIDS.
While the risk of an Ebola epidemic in the United States is believed to be small, it is a significant threat that will become even more serious if cases outside of West Africa become more numerous. As governments and health professionals focus on improving detection and treatments, it is fair to ask: What could we have done to better contain the risk? There is no single or simple answer. But one controllable condition is obvious: global poverty.
For over a decade, environmental scientist Bjorn Lomborg and others have been making a convincing case that the preoccupation with global warming/climate change has been misguided and wasteful. In a Wall Street Journalarticle in December 2009, he wrote that “Money spent on carbon cuts is money we can’t use for effective investments in food aid, micronutrients, HIV/[AIDS] prevention, health and education infrastructure, and clean water and sanitation.” He added that “our dogmatic pursuit of a (climate change) strategy … can only be described as breathtakingly expensive and woefully ineffective.”
We’ve wasted enormous amounts of time, resources, and money on this idiotic notion that Mankind is mostly/solely responsible for every little change in the weather, which could have gone into actually helping people.
Read: Say, What If We Spent Money On Real Threats, Rather Than “Climate Change”? »
This is a subject that I usually try to avoid, much like Neil Boortz avoided it on his radio show before his retirement. It’s usually turns extremely nasty, among other reasons. But, when something like this article crops up, wowser!
In Texas and across the nation, abortion access a sign of women’s well-being
Got that? Contributors Andrea Flynn and Shulie Eisen, both obviously ladies on the far left, think that abortion is about the well being of women. Because nothing screams “well-being” like having a medical procedure in a facility with fewer safeguards than at a veterinarian clinic.
Last week’s decision by New Orleans’s Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to reinstate Texas House Bill 2 (HB2) — the omnibus abortion bill responsible for closing 80 percent of the abortion clinics in Texas — is perhaps the most devastating attack we have seen on reproductive health and rights across the nation. Supporters of HB2 insist they are simply acting in the best interest of women’s health, but in reality do little to address rampant socioeconomic inequities and injustices facing their constituents. This isn’t surprising, given a new report by the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) and Ibis Reproductive Health that shows states with the most abortion restrictions also have the fewest policies to actually support women and families.
So, why are the abortion facilities closing?
HB2 was originally passed last year and requires all abortion facilities to operate as ambulatory surgical centers (ASCs) and abortion providers to have hospital admitting privileges within 30 miles of where they practice. Attorney General Greg Abbott (the Texas Republican gubernatorial candidate running against Democratic State Sen. Wendy Davis, who filibustered for 11 hours last summer in opposition to the bill) has been a steadfast supporter of HB2 and was quick to celebrate last week. “This decision is a vindication of the careful deliberation by the Texas Legislature to craft a law to protect the health and safety of Texas women,” he said.
We’ve seen the same complaints in North Carolina and other states, where abortion facilities are required to act like medical facilities, instead of body shops extracting an engine. One would think that abortionistas would be thrilled by government requirements for safety, alas, no. They are also Very Upset over requirements for state inspections of abortion facilities. No. Seriously. These kinds of things drive abortionistas bat guano insane. These same types of people want the federal government heavily involved in our health care and health insurance decisions, they want the government controlling decisions by college kids over when they can have sex, but any reasonable restrictions and requirements when it comes to aborting a baby? Nope.
There are no two ways about it: HB2 was designed to eliminate abortion access in Texas, and it is succeeding. Last year, the state had 41 abortion clinics and today it has eight..
Which should tell you exactly how many clinics had the same medical capabilities of a PetsMart.
Despite these facts, lawmakers have chosen to spend their time and money restricting women’s health options, leaving more than 1 million Texas women to travel 300 miles round-trip to access a constitutionally protected health service (some women will need to travel more than 1,000 miles).
I can’t find it in my copy of the Constitution. Can you? Funny how the people on the same side as abortion on demand are typically all for not just restricting, but doing away with all 2nd Amendment Rights.
We must address each of these issues, and so many more, if we are to improve the health and lives of U.S. women and their families. After all, as Melanie Zurek of Provide has said, “abortion will not offer a day of childcare for a neighbor or a ride to the clinic[;] it will not reach out a supportive hand, or vote, or provide itself.” But we know that without access to affordable and safe abortion, in addition to the full range of reproductive health services, other interventions will be meaningless. What is the value of other freedoms if women do not have the right and ability to make informed decisions about their bodies and the most intimate parts of their lives?
And boom, there it is, aborting a baby is about “health”.
Read: Leftists: Abortion On Demand Is Totally About Women’s Health, Ya Know! »
Since the outbreak of Ebola in Africa, the worst ever, really started to hit the media airwaves, and especially since several Americans infected with Ebola, there has been a call for travel restrictions. Team Obama has refused, even as both Republicans and Democrats have called for them. Many pundits, public figures, and administration officials have gone Typical Nutso with their explanations as to why we shouldn’t enact any travel restrictions, including those that a travel ban would be raaaaacist. And, of course, to suggest a travel ban is stupid. You know what? The majority of Americans do not care. They think there should be way more restrictions on people traveling out of the Ebola area
(Washington Post) Nearly two-thirds of Americans are concerned about a widespread Ebola epidemic in the United States, despite repeated assurances from public officials that the country’s modern health-care and disease-surveillance systems will prevent the type of outbreak ravaging West Africa.
In a Washington Post-ABC News poll conducted in recent days, the number of Americans who say the government should be doing more to prevent additional Ebola cases in the United States is almost twice the number who believe the United States is doing all it can to control the spread of the virus. (note: since the article glosses over this, the numbers are 33% think US is doing all it can, 67% think US can do more)
That includes overwhelming support — 91 percent — in favor of stricter screening for people traveling to this country from West Africa. Such screening began this past weekend at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York and soon will begin at four other international airports in the country.
Two-thirds of those polled support travel restrictions on people entering the United States from the Ebola-stricken countries. Federal officials have rejected travel bans involving West Africa, saying such a move could make it more difficult to slow the outbreak at its source, hampering the movement of supplies and aid workers and ultimately putting the world more at risk.
The breakdown is 67 for more restrictions, 29% against. The question itself asks “would you support or oppose restricting entry to the US by people who have been in affected countries?” So, what 67% are saying is “nope, do not let them in”.
The chances of actually catching Ebola are slim. But, people are very concerned, because it is usually a death sentence in a horrible way. No one really wants their insides liquifying, do they? Bleeding out of every orifice?
Also, way down near the end of the article, we get to the question “Do you approve or disapprove of the way Obama is handling The federal government’s response to the outbreak of the Ebola virus?” 43% approve, 41% disapprove.
Crossed at Right Wing News.
Read: Poll: Americans Want Travel Restrictions Regarding Ebola »
An interesting proposition from Grist
Perhaps you have heard about Ebola, otherwise known as The Most Terrifying Disease Of Our Modern Times (Sorry, MERs; panic is a fickle friend). But you might not have heard that Ebola’s origin story also features a favorite environmental arch-villain? And by “favorite,†I mean “actually the worstâ€: deforestation.
You see, the most recent outbreak of this extra-deadly strain of the Ebola virus began last December, in a town called Meliandou in the sleepy “Forest Region†of Guinea. That is, it used to be forested, as a recent article in Vanity Fair pointed out:
Trees were felled to make way for farms or burned down for charcoal. Endless truckloads of timber were shipped to construction companies. The forest suffered another trauma as mining interests — the Anglo-Australian Rio Tinto, the omnipresent Chinese — pushed aggressively to exploit the country’s natural resources (bauxite mostly). As the forests disappeared, so too did the buffer separating humans from animals — and from the pathogens that animals harbor.
That is an interesting explanation for the current outbreak, and I will be right there decrying deforestation. I think, though, it is important to view the entire paragraph from the Vanity Fair article
In Meliandou, bushmeat has long been a common source of food. As elsewhere in West Africa, hunters wade into the forest and come back with whatever they can find. Once, not so long ago, what they found was a rich and varied bounty: monkeys, antelope, squirrels. That has changed; the whole eco-system has re-arranged itself. After civil wars broke out in Liberia and Sierra Leone, refugees poured over the borders, and the population grew, even as a power struggle in Guinea took an economic toll. People started looking to the rich resource all around them: trees. Trees were felled to make way for farms or burned down for charcoal. Endless truckloads of timber were shipped to construction companies. The forest suffered another trauma as mining interests—the Anglo-Australian Rio Tinto, the omnipresent Chinese—pushed aggressively to exploit the country’s natural resources (bauxite mostly). As the forests disappeared, so too did the buffer separating humans from animals—and from the pathogens that animals harbor.
That changes the tone a bit, in that it was the citizens pouring in to those areas looking for money that started clear cutting, whereas the shorter excerpt attempts to paint a picture of evil Chinese and mining interests. And, for agricultural production. Food.
Anyhow, this did mean that the fruit bats, which are considered one of the prime suspects for Ebola, were in much closer contact with the people, who would then also catch and eat the bats.
This is not something new. The Washington Post, among others, discussed this back in July, but only in terms of outbreaks since 1994. That said, the first known outbreak was in Sudan and Zaire in 1976, both occurring in forested areas. Certainly, a link can be made to the deforestation, and having more people in the area. Changing nature can have dangerous consequences.
BTW, what do you do with contagious diseases? That’s right, isolation.
An interesting proposition at the New Republic
This August, Columbia University released a new policy for handling “gender-based†misconduct among students. Since April, universities around the country have been rewriting their guidelines after a White House task force urged them to do more to fight sexual assault. I was curious to know what a lawyer outside the university system would make of one of these codes. So I sent the document to Robin Steinberg, a public defender and a feminist.
A few hours later, Steinberg wrote back in alarm. She had read the document with colleagues at the Bronx legal-aid center she runs. They were horrified, she said—not because Columbia still hadn’t sufficiently protected survivors of assault, as some critics charge, but because its procedures revealed a cavalier disregard for the civil rights of people accused of rape, assault, and other gender-based crimes. “We are never sending our boys to college,†she wrote.
Anyhow, go ahead and read the rest, but it brings up some interesting points, including how the accused have little rights. This is all something I mentioned in a post, as did GC at Raised On Hoecakes.
Let’s think of this along a slightly different track: what is the left trying to accomplish here? As Jammie Wearing Fool noted
Left unsaid: All the folks listed above have failed over the course of five years to do anything about this so-called epidemic. Meanwhile, they never mention the epidemic of abortion. Hundreds of thousands will fight the cold weather to march against that epidemic today, but apparently that isn’t newsworthy.
This is not to say that there aren’t sexual assaults on campus, just like out in the Real World. There are. Are they as bad as some say? I’ll let others discuss that. One does have to wonder what is really going on. While some hard core feminists have been pushing that virtually anything a man does is rape (and want all women to be lesbians, and so on. See the Other McCain for so much), it wasn’t till recent, with the last year or so, that liberals suddenly became Very Interested in the subject. And what you got was a knee-jerk reaction, heavy handed on accusation and presuming guilt over innocence. Quite frankly, this has been a textbook operation right out of the Leftist playbook. The objective seems less to solve the problem and more to gin up an issue which leftists can rally behind, as well as empowering more authority to those in charge.
They aren’t trying to fix the problems. Unfortunately, there will always be sexual assaults. Such is life. But, the goals, again, seem to be political.
If they were truly interested, they might push notions like getting prosecutions out of the hands of colleges and into the hands of law enforcement, where it belongs. Except, in many cases, law enforcement/prosecutors have declined to charge. Yet, the schools still go after the accused.
They might recommend protective weapons other than rape whistles and to piss on yourself. Tougher jail terms.
Instead, the pass laws that heavily intrude into bedrooms, and create a situation that is a boon to lawyers. They want re-education and all sorts of squishy training. It’s all pushing Leftism, not solutions.
And if you’re against any part of their agenda, it means you hate women and are pro-sexual assault. And they’ll demonize you.
Read: Surprise: Accused College Sexual Assaulters Have Rightd »
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