Poll: Americans Want Travel Restrictions Regarding Ebola

By William Teach October 14, 2014 – 9:10 am

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.

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Did Deforestation Help Unleash Ebola?

By William Teach October 13, 2014 – 6:14 pm

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 worst”: 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.

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Surprise: Accused College Sexual Assaulters Have Rightd

By William Teach October 13, 2014 – 2:58 pm

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.

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If All You See…

By William Teach October 13, 2014 – 1:00 pm

…is a seas that will rise up hundreds of feet because someone used an ice maker, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The H2, with post on getting fit.

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Religious Leaders To Discuss “Climate Change” In Raleigh

By William Teach October 13, 2014 – 12:26 pm

Of all the things they should be concerned with, such as gay marriage, diminishing and destruction of moral values, kids raised with no fathers, out of wedlock births, etc, this is what they care about

(Raleigh N&O) Although churches are not generally known for discussing melting polar ice caps from the pulpit, the North Carolina Religious Coalition on Creation Care will sponsor its first state conference on climate change Monday.

Top regional and local religious leaders, medical professionals and scientists will explain climate change and address how residents can help.

The conference will take place at the Church of the Good Shepherd at 125 Hillsborough St., in downtown Raleigh.

“Climate change will undermine that which we have all strived to achieve, especially a better life for our sons and daughters,” said conference coordinator Don Addu of Durham.

“It is our duty to not turn a blind eye to the mounting threat before us, but instead face it directly and band together as a community and as a state to ensure a stable climate for generations to come,” he said.

Interesting. Humanity tends to do much better during warm periods than cool periods. Mankind did pretty darned well during the previous two warm periods, the Medieval Warm Period and Roman Warm Period, both of which were warmer than today.

“Climate change is a religious issue, as well as an environmental one,” said Dr. Stephen Jurovics, a member of North Carolina’s Interfaith Power and Light’s executive committee and a former EPA environmental engineer.

Well, yeah, it is kinda religious issue, because the Believers act in the manner of religious cultists as dogmatic and insane as the Westboro Baptist Church and ISIS.

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It’s Apparently Creepy Clown Season In Bakersfield, California

By William Teach October 13, 2014 – 7:17 am

Perhaps a few people have watched and/or read Stephen King’s IT a few times too many?

(Reuters) Reports of creepy clowns carrying knives and other weapons have been scaring people in the California city of Bakersfield for the past week, police said on Sunday.

In the latest incident, a person telephoned the Bakersfield Police Department on Saturday night, reporting a clown armed with a firearm, said watch commander Lieutenant Jason Matson.

“We’ve been having sightings all over the city,” Matson said. “They range from anywhere from a guy carrying a gun to a guy carrying a knife running up to houses.”

The Bakersfield Californian newspaper reported earlier in the week that at least some of the reports were hoaxes. Matson said he did not know whether the incidents were pranks.

One wasn’t a prank, as a teen was arrested for chasing a minor around dressed as a clown. And you get this stuff (via ABC Philly)

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It's funny you guys think I got arrested

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Obama Hits Milestone: 200th Round Of Golf

By William Teach October 13, 2014 – 6:56 am

Priorities

(UK Daily Mail) While officials in Dallas scrambled to calm public hysteria over news of the first Ebola transmission on U.S. soil, Barack Obama hit the links for his 200th golf game as president.

The president embarked on his leisurely outing to Virginia after taking a a few moments to speak with Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell for an update on the worsening situation in Dallas.

Accompanying the president to Ft. Belvoir were his crew of loyal White House aides including Joe Paulsen, Mike Brush and Marvin Nicholson according to press pool reports.

Let’s be clear: it’s not so much that Obama is taking some time for leisure. It’s partly about Democrats going after George Bush for playing golf early in his presidency, something he had to give up for optics. If it was OK to bash Bush, why is it not OK to bash Obama? There’s also the problem that Obama never really seems to work hard on the business of the USA to need these big breaks, nor does he really seem to care that much. It also goes to when he does it. He just got back from a multi-day fundraising trip, his favorite thing to do, and

White House Dossier reported the golf game count Sunday afternoon.

This isn’t the first time Obama has been spotted on the greens instead of in the White House during a time of national distress.

In August, after the beheading of American journalist James Foley, Obama issued a brief statement and then went for another round with his aides.

You have Ebola growing, and, more importantly, the fear of Ebola growing, here in the United States. And many Obama supporters are incredibly, and possibly correctly, fearful. You have ISIS. And so much more.

Just before running off to golf, and while the battle against ISIS continued to rage in the Middle East, Obama was first briefed America’s second Ebola diagnosis by Assistant to the President for Homeland Security Lisa Monaco. He later spoke to Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Burwell on the government’s response. According to pool reports, the president:

  • Instructed the the CDC to complete their investigation into what went wrong at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital as quickly as possible.
  • Ensured that CDCs sent out to Dallas work closely with state and local authorities.
  • Instructed those in the trenches to share information learned quickly and broadly.
  • Told federal authorities to take immediate additionoal steps should another Ebola patient be encountered

A final point is that Obama running off for some leisure wouldn’t be bad if there was any confidence that Obama was on top of the problem, was getting ahead of the problem. Instead, he mostly seems to be disengaged and going through the motions.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

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England May Have Problems Keeping The Lights On

By William Teach October 12, 2014 – 4:22 pm

Why? Because of the idiotic “climate change” policies

(UK Express and Star)  Increasing the reliance on renewable energy sources such as windfarms while cutting carbon emissions is a “flawed” plan, Owen Paterson will say in a speech next week.

According to The Sunday Telegraph, the Conservative MP will also call for the 2007 Climate Change Act that requires Britain to reduce fossil fuels use to be suspended until other countries sign up to similar restrictions.

Mr Paterson, who was sacked in the summer reshuffle, wants a series of small nuclear power stations created to meet domestic power demands.

“Blind adhesion to the 2050 targets will not reduce emissions and will fail to keep the lights on,” he will say. “The current energy policy is a slave to flawed climate action.

“It will cost £1,100 billion, fail to meet the very emissions targets it is designed to meet, and will not provide the UK’s energy requirements.

One day mankind will surely be able to replace energy sources like coal with other, cleaner methods. Today is not this this day. Nor next year. Possibly not even within the next 50-100 years, without a major breakthrough in power density capture. Meanwhile, the policies of Warmists cause prices to rise and energy needs to be left wanting, as has happened over the past 5 out of 6 brutal winters in Europe. Oh, and the last two years without a spring.

But, Warmists do not care about the results of their policy shenanigans: they only care about the policies themselves.

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If All You See…

By William Teach October 12, 2014 – 1:00 pm

…is a sport that is going to disappear because Someone Else drove a fossil fueled vehicle, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Raised On Hoecakes, with an interesting quiz.

This week is dedicated to the return of the NHL (and my Devils have started off 2-0 on the road, scoring 11 goals in those games). Hence the Devils Ice girls. Also, I’ll give a shout out to Jammie Wearing Fool, who’s an Evil Rangers Fan.

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Goodstuff Rule 5

By William Teach October 12, 2014 – 12:23 pm

An addendum to the Patriotic Pinup post. I forgot to add Goodread’s Cyber World, and adding stuff to that post with Droid app tends to break the post.

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