Is It Unfair to Criticize Obama Over Ebola?
I have seen it said that attempts to criticize Obama regarding Ebola are the worst sort of partisan politics. That the Ebola outbreak — particularly in West Africa — is unprecedented, and people have a serious job to do. That seeking out scapegoats and trying to tie them to Obama is symptomatic of the depraved political culture that has developed in this country.
I’d like to address that point of view.
First of all, there is no doubt that there are people out there who are driven by partisan politics, and will gleefully jump on any hint that a president has been unprepared for a crisis, no matter how unprecedented. Among that group of partisan cretins is Barack Obama. Here is video, which I previously embedded in this post, showing Obama blasting Bush for allegedly being unprepared for the avian flu — and comparing it to (of course) Katrina:
Having sowed the wind, as depicted in that video above (if you’re going to argue with me about this, watch it first), I can’t say I’m going to be too disturbed if partisan hacks like Obama reap the whirlwind.
Katrina was certainly unprecedented, but that didn’t seem to prevent people from blaming it on Bush. To those who complain about current partisan sniping, I would be happy to personally obtain a soapbox for them — assuming, of course, that they stood up during Katrina and solemnly declared that partisan politics was inappropriate, because the federal government had a job to do. The line forms over there. I think I saw one or two soapboxes; we shouldn’t need more than that.
Of course, two wrongs don’t make a right, and Obama’s hackery doesn’t mean that it’s right to turn an unprecedented crisis into an opening for rank partisanship. That’s not what I’m doing, though.
I don’t like Obama. I think he’s a liar and an incredible narcissist. That said, though, speaking for myself, I have a larger goal in criticizing the federal government concerning Ebola, and I will confess it now: I am trying to chip away at the public’s complacent acceptance of the proposition that the feds are in control, and that we can trust them to take care of everything.
That kind of cow-like trust in authority was on full display in this clip from Shepard Smith on Fox News yesterday.
As Allahpundit pointed out, Smith gets his facts wrong in this rant. He claims that the second infected nurse was asymptomatic when she boarded a plane, but in fact, she had a fever. (I will note as well that at 4:10 he says that “two health care workers have died in Texas” — an evident brain freeze. That’s OK, we all have them!) But errors like that aside, this part really struck me, at 5:00:
Someday something might start spreading that they can’t control, and then you know what we’re gonna have to do? We’re gonna have to relax and listen to leaders.
I am going to suggest to you that a blind trust in “leaders” is not wise, because a) they’re not always honest with us, and b) they don’t know as much as they would like to have you believe.
I know I keep repeating this, but I’m going to do so again because it’s highly relevant. On September 16, Obama said:
In the unlikely event that someone with Ebola does reach our shores, we’ve taken new measures so that we’re prepared here at home. We’re working to help flight crews identify people who are sick, and more labs across our country now have the capacity to quickly test for the virus. We’re working with hospitals to make sure that they are prepared, and to ensure that our doctors, our nurses and our medical staff are trained, are ready, and are able to deal with a possible case safely.
Was he lying? We partisans certainly have an opinion about that (which is: yes!) — but this is a post addressing the non-partisans (or at least those who claim to be) . . . and in that context, “Was he lying” is not the most productive question to ask. Let’s just stick with the facts. As Dana pointed out in this post, a nurses’ union said of the Dallas hospital:
There was no advance preparedness on what to do with the patient, there was no protocol, there was no system.
What’s more:
The guidelines were constantly changing and “there were no protocols” at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas as the hospital treated a patient with Ebola, the co-president of National Nurses United says.
Protective gear nurses initially wore left their necks exposed; they felt unsupported and unprepared, and they received no hands-on training, co-president Deborah Burger says, citing information she said came from nurses at the hospital.
Were these problems confined to Dallas? Apparently not:
Out of more than 1,900 nurses in 46 states and Washington D.C. who responded, 76 percent said their hospital still hadn’t communicated to them an official policy on admitting potential patients with Ebola. And a whopping 85 percent said their hospital hadn’t provided educational training sessions on Ebola in which nurses could interact and ask questions.
The survey also found that 37 percent of nurses felt their hospital had insufficient supplies for containing the deadly virus, including face shields and goggles or fluid-resistant gowns.
We have seen Obama tell potentially exposed West Africans it’s OK to ride the bus, while the CDC tells potentially exposed Americans to stay off public transportation. We have seen the CDC tell an infected nurse to ride on an airplane, and then seen the CDC head say that never should have happened. We have seen CDC officials tell a woman to go shopping in public with her partner after they had both spent time in close contact with an Ebola patient who has since died. Meanwhile the CDC and NIH tell us they could have prevented it all, if we had just given them more money — and never mind the money they spent on studies about poo-flinging monkeys or the rerun-watching habits of Americans, or their lavish multi-million dollar health centers with zero-gravity chairs and mood music.
My goal is not to use a health care crisis to take a few cheap whacks at Obama. My goal is to suggest that people question their trust in government, and to prompt them to consider that maybe, just maybe, they need to think for themselves.
I am trying to chip away at the public’s complacence that the feds are in control, and that we can trust them to take care of ANYthing.
Fixed it for you!
Stephen Macklin (de2190) — 10/16/2014 @ 7:58 amIs It Unfair to Criticize Obama Over Ebola?
Not in his case. Not when he’s purposefully allowed the southern border to be as porous as possible, and, for reasons of political correctness (or mischievous kumbaya-ism), refused to discontinue flights from Africa.
However, it may be unfair to criticize him for doing such things inadvertently and, in turn, bringing down the US in the process, because he very well may be intentionally pursuing such a strategy. Or in the words of his former trusted close adviser, “America, your chickens are coming home to roost!”
Mark (c160ec) — 10/16/2014 @ 7:59 amI think those linked vids might be the wrong ones…
Dan (00fc90) — 10/16/2014 @ 8:01 amhe picked the likes of Frieden from the Bloomberg nest, which has had the wrong priorities, to be charitable, at every point where we assume a bare minimum of competence we are dissapointed, so no.
narciso (ee1f88) — 10/16/2014 @ 8:01 amAny American who puts his trust, his life and that of his family in government deserves to live in Cuba. And any person (except a dumbass leftist) who listens to “experts” needs their head examined. Our government and their experts know as much about Ebola as they do man made glow-ball warming. And as usual with leftists it’s all about money. If they just had more money!
Watch the cash cows start- never let a crisis go to waste. And remember, it’s to save the children. They’ve already played the race card but expect it played more.
Hoagie (4dfb34) — 10/16/2014 @ 8:03 amOr it may have been a Firefox refresh anomaly. Vids correct now.
Dan (00fc90) — 10/16/2014 @ 8:05 amThe traditional silver sieves:
1. Is it kind?
2. Is it true?
3. Is it useful?
If it passes through any one of the three, it’s ok to say it. And I have one more:
nk (dbc370) — 10/16/2014 @ 8:07 am4. Is it fun? Obama is (ok, arguably) the most powerful man in the world. Not a helpless victim. Mocking the powerful is as old as imperial Rome.
Not knowing the truth, not having the slightest interest in the truth or one’s credibility, simply monomaniacally focusing on tendentious arguments for your preferred ends does not in any way whatever indemnify a liar.
SF Nan, tho she be batsh!t insane, is a liar. The WH Lectern Jockey is a reprehensible lying Enemy of the People. End it now, by any means necessary.
gary gulrud (46ca75) — 10/16/2014 @ 8:11 amAnd we don’t crucify people (not literally, anyway) for lese majeste over here.
nk (dbc370) — 10/16/2014 @ 8:12 amObama got up on the lectern at a black church and asked “where yo’ dollar?” (let’s ignore for the fact that he voted against giving them their Katrina dollar a week before or that it should have been “where your $10.00”).
jb (3d616c) — 10/16/2014 @ 8:13 amMy question to Obama: “where my dollar?” CDC has billions of dollars; so does NIH. “WHERE MY DOLLAR, Barky?”
Despite Obama and the CDC, I am willing to bet that at a lot of regional hospitals, and many ERs, the last week has seen intensive discussion and training regarding Ebola, at least as far as intake is concerned.
The main problem these places will have are the hypochondriacs who will see Ebola in every fever or loose stool. These folks will now have to be treated as possible Ebola patients at least for starters, when before they were treated as flu patients with delusions. That’s going to be a strain, and like TSA agents, it can be pretty tiring being on guard for the rare event while handling an endless stream of banal.
Kevin M (b357ee) — 10/16/2014 @ 8:17 amAgain, given that the CDC director was unable to offer a minimally cogent explanation of why Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea are not under a commercial aviation quarantine strongly suggests he’s reporting to people who cannot explain their own policy decisions because those decisions boil down to arbitrary preferences common in their social circles.
The fish rots from the head down.
You recall that in 2008, Gov. Sarah Palin (with 11 years under her belt as a public executive) was relentlessly attacked by partisan Democrats and Vichy Republicans for her supposed deficiencies while the Democrats offered up a complete tyro as the Presidential candidate. A partisan Democrat in a forum like this went so far as to say that Obama had run voter registration drives so he did have executive experience. The whole episode strongly suggested that the default state of the thinking in the Democratic Party and the legal and journalistic wing of the Republican Party emphasizes credentials (Obama’s degrees) and articulateness over actual practical experience. Well, look at the background and preparation of the President, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the Secretary of Health and Human Services, and see where that’s led us.
Art Deco (ee8de5) — 10/16/2014 @ 8:18 amHow many more cases will it take before the 30+ countries with travel restrictions impose one on US?
crazy (cde091) — 10/16/2014 @ 8:22 amhe picked the likes of Frieden from the Bloomberg nest, which has had the wrong priorities, to be charitable, at every point where we assume a bare minimum of competence we are dissapointed, so no.
Friden’s done real public health work abroad. The trouble is, his tenure in New York suggests he’s bought into reconstituting the professional mission of public health practitioners to attack behaviors and tastes a certain sort of bourgeois dislikes or was willing to damage public health agencies in riding the hobby horse’s of the Mayor of New York. Either possibility suggests he’s the wrong person for the job.
Art Deco (ee8de5) — 10/16/2014 @ 8:27 amIt’s fair to criticize Obama for the unseriousness with which his appointees have treated a serious health concern to cover his ass on the border run optics.
It’s fairer still to criticize him for the mule-ish refusal to limit traveler visas from Hot-zones, (and into them by US Citizens who can return).
No one has been able to articulate any sound basis for this refusal, and the underlying premise is that we are a world community and the world must suffer together, as if there were no USA whose interests superceded those of the world community. This is part of a general unsound view he has on that point. I wouldn’t be surprised if it is his way of pushing lucre onto friends who are developing vaccines that no one would have much interest in except for the threat of imported virus, but that’s only because he plays dirty on a regular basis; no conspiracy is necessary to point to his other assorted notions about preserving the interests of foreign nations near a level of our own.
SarahW (267b14) — 10/16/2014 @ 8:28 am“We partisans”
IOW, those of you who hold out hope for change, due to faith in democracy and in your party disqualify yourselves for reason of human passion and self-interest from making anything like a judgement of guilt.
In ancient Israel there were numerous offerings to the LORD, mae for sin, those to beg forgiveness for our fallen nature, and guilt offerings, for premeditated offense.
You partisans, notably lawyers, know the system of justice is geared not to determine Truth and Justice but order and profit.
You weak hearts can sit on your hands and wait for change but now is the time for rough men to once again to right the ship.
gary gulrud (46ca75) — 10/16/2014 @ 8:43 amIt may be hard to judge the seriousness of the Ebola problem. It is plain to see that the regime is not competent. The President and his head of his CDC send out different messages and the head of the CDC gives different messages in the same news interview. The public lacks confidence in the regime, because the regime lacks competence.
David Lentz (be9e6c) — 10/16/2014 @ 8:50 amI think it is fair to criticize his leadership in a crisis. A good leader finds wise people to listen to and listens to them, a good leader appoints good people to do what needs to be done.
Obama has no reason to listen to anyone by his own admission as he is always the brightest in the room,
and his appointments are not done for competence but for willingness to carry the water for him, starting with VP Biden.
It was linked and discussed earlier that there actually is an “Ebola Czar” who reports to the secretary of HHS, someone who was involved in a scandal about awarding contracts to the company of a friend, instead of one of the companies that is providing one of the experimental anti-Ebola drugs. Where has she been in all of this?
His handling of Ebola is like handling “ISIL” is like handling of everything else, political cover, the appearance of dealing with a problem. The only thing he cares about is his stated agenda to fundamentally transform America, from:
– a place of power on the world stage,
– a thriving semi-capitalist economy
– a Constitutional republic governed by laws
to:
– a place of no particular influence on the world stage, and undermining military strength and building the national debt to keep it that way even if the next president is of a different opinion
– a central run economy where equality for the masses is the priority, even if everyone is worse off (except of course for the elites who run the country and deserve more)
– a country run not by laws but by the whims of those with the power to do what they want
To repeat myself, other than his fundamental agenda, everything else is political cover to give the appearance of doing enough that he cannot be criticized by those who aren’t paying attention.
Now, how that can be communicated in this age of text messages and Twitter in a way that is helpful to the nation, I do not know.
It’s not that he plays so much golf that bothers me, it’s that when he is not playing golf he is not doing a very good job of governing the country.
MD in Philly (f9371b) — 10/16/2014 @ 8:52 amI think you are being unfair but to cows, not Obama. Cows pick leaders based on intelligence and experience. We could learn from cows.
DRJ (a83b8b) — 10/16/2014 @ 8:59 amI have no problem criticizing Obama on anything, as he is always wrong. It’s just that, on this issue, I find him and the CDC largely irrelevant. CDC’s only job here is running tests on blood draws in a timely manner. I expect they will screw that up, too, but that’s really their only job.
The main responsibility for training and organizing the response to Ebola is at local hospitals, and I think they know that now. I can see ER chiefs in major hospitals last week saying “I’ll be damned if my ER gets shown up like that place in Texas!” and getting the training done.
When government is shown to be incompetent, competent people in the private sector just ignore them and get the job done themselves.
Kevin M (b357ee) — 10/16/2014 @ 9:00 amThis report of a possible ebola case at Yale shows academia and government are equally inept:
DRJ (a83b8b) — 10/16/2014 @ 9:09 amFrom WND:
* If the U.S. has the most capable health care system in the world why was Obama and his Demoncrat co-conspirators so hell-bent on changing it?
Hoagie (4dfb34) — 10/16/2014 @ 9:09 amI know it’s regarded as poor form to say I told you so, beginning years ago, repeatedly and without respite, but I told you so:
http://online.wsj.com/articles/dan-henninger-a-year-of-living-on-the-brink-1413414887?mod=rss_opinion_main
And remember 2015 will be worse still.
gary gulrud (46ca75) — 10/16/2014 @ 9:13 amThis entire government from economics to medicine is run by lawyers. Unfortunately the only thing lawyers know how to do is protect you from other lawyers (civil) and protect you from government power (criminal). Somehow in this country lawyers have been given the power and the right to tell everyone what to do and how to do it from doctors to construction people. Now they’re even attempting to tell ministers what they can say.
I’ll never understand how our Founding Fathers permitted lawyers to serve in the legislature. Isn’t making the laws you will make money off of a conflict of interest?
Hoagie (4dfb34) — 10/16/2014 @ 9:15 amI disagree, Kevin M. The mission of the CDC is to provide reliable health information, but now infection control experts say hospitals were following federal guidelines that were too lax:
Why should each hospital reinvent the wheel? The role of government and the CDC — and there is a role here for them — is to provide responsible guidelines for public safety. They failed completely.
DRJ (a83b8b) — 10/16/2014 @ 9:18 amThis entire government from economics to medicine is run by lawyers. Unfortunately the only thing lawyers know how to do is protect you from other lawyers (civil) and protect you from government power (criminal). Somehow in this country lawyers have been given the power and the right to tell everyone what to do and how to do it from doctors to construction people. Now they’re even attempting to tell ministers what they can say.
Bingo. Those last two sentences describe about 1/3 of what the progressive project has decayed into.
Art Deco (ee8de5) — 10/16/2014 @ 9:20 amThe irony is the CDC had the guidelines used by WHO and Doctors Without Borders. It didn’t have to reinvent the wheel, but it did anyway.
DRJ (a83b8b) — 10/16/2014 @ 9:21 amgary gairud, thanks for the Daniel Henninger link. Good read.
Hoagie (4dfb34) — 10/16/2014 @ 9:22 amArt Deco,
The problem isn’t lawyers per se, it’s lawyers who give bad advice.
DRJ (a83b8b) — 10/16/2014 @ 9:22 amAnd do you think the CDC guidelines were written by lawyers or doctors?
DRJ (a83b8b) — 10/16/2014 @ 9:23 amThere are a lot of MDs and PhDs at the CDC. I only see one JD.
DRJ (a83b8b) — 10/16/2014 @ 9:24 amBut then, an outbreak of a deadly (and/or crippling) disease isn’t an unprecedented crisis.
http://neoneocon.com/2014/10/14/ebola-and-the-great-forgetting-the-best-of-times-the-worst-of-times/
What was simply a malaria control agency that sprayed swamps to eradicate mosquitoes became the CDC in order to wipe out polio.
I think it’s a good thing to compare Katrina to Ebola because it illustrates why the criticism of Bush was unfair but the criticism of Obama is. Katrina wasn’t unprecedented, either, in the sense that we’ve experienced disastrous hurricanes (fortunately not for a decade, thanks to Global Warming; don’t forget to increase your carbon footprint to save lives). What was unprecedented was that the left insisted Bush should have somehow used his “pen and his phone” and simply usurped power that belonged to state and local officials to respond to Katrina. FEMA at the time wasn’t supposed to be a first responder. It coordinated just the federal response to a disaster. It had some role in emergency preparedness (flood control measures, for instance) working with state and local authorities. But the bulk of that responsibility and the power to prepare to deal with emergencies still belongs to state and local authorities. If they are overwhelmed and declare a state emergency and request federal help, then a President can declare a federal emergency and FEMA’s response kicks in. After the disaster occurs.
There were actual separation of powers issues involved. Bush really couldn’t have signed an executive order and sent the FEMA buses (there weren’t any) to forcibly evacuate New Orleans. It was up to Governor Blanco and federal Bureau of Prisons inmate No. 32751-034 to have a plan and implement a plan to evacuate New Orleans.
Katrina was really the first test of FEMA under DHS. But Ebola isn’t the first test of the CDC. Obama really could use his “pen and his phone” and implement a travel ban from West Africa. There aren’t any separation of powers issues. Others have raised the legitimate point that the FAA banned travel to Israel for a brief period during the latest shooting war with Israel. There is no question Obama has the authority to do the same now to deal with Ebola. Yet the guy who says he can act when Congress won’t using his “pen and his phone” won’t act even though in this case it legitimately is entirely within his power to do so.
Steve57 (4d34f4) — 10/16/2014 @ 9:27 amThe viral load of Ebola in 1/5th of a teaspoon of blood is 10 Billion virus vs. 50K virus in HIV. This means that to be safe treating Ebola patients one must be in a fully immersible moon suit that can be fully showered with bleach for minutes to make sure every virus is removed. Paper gowns, booties and paper masks are a joke. We need an immediate travel ban and at least a 45-60 day quarantine as the incubation period now seems to be 41 days. No one with a visa stamp under 60 days old from the hot zone countries should be allowed to travel with out passing through quarantine.
Walter Horsting (b6a7e6) — 10/16/2014 @ 9:29 amPatrick, I can’t believe you even asked that question. You’re giving legitimacy to the “incompetent” artument when clearly it is malice at work.
It is impossible to look at the actions of this administration and arrive at any conclusion other than that they want this disease to spread.
creeper (a4cd2f) — 10/16/2014 @ 9:31 amFrieden: “One of my fears about Ebola is that it could spread more widely in Africa”
Lets start with the US which you are actually CDC director of.
SarahW (267b14) — 10/16/2014 @ 9:37 amLet’s not overlook Obama’s unilateral decision to put U.S. boots on the ground in epidemic hot zones. The country has a long history of using its military assets to aid others in recovering from natural disasters after the fact. I may be wrong, but this is the first time I can recall the U.S. inserting troops into the middle of active fatal epidemic zones. Contrast that with Obama’s unwillingness to commit troops or limited willingness to commit troops to areas in which they have more applicable training and in which the U.S. has a more direct interest.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 10/16/2014 @ 9:37 amWhy should each hospital reinvent the wheel? The role of government and the CDC — and there is a role here for them — is to provide responsible guidelines for public safety. They failed completely.
Why should this be a government job? Why can’t the health industry support a private CDC that is directly responsible to those they serve? Underwriters’ Laboratories has worked pretty well for 100 years. That’s the model I’d use.
Each hospital will have to do this now, because the CDC is hopelessly screwed up. Large regional hospitals will set a standard and the others will adopt them. I am willing to bet that a lot of folks at Texas Presbyterian are being consulted right now about what they would do differently next time.
My faith in the US medical system, at least as far as the better institutions is roughly the inverse of my faith in government. Bright people with their asses on the line make better decisions that REMFs.
Kevin M (b357ee) — 10/16/2014 @ 9:39 am* If the U.S. has the most capable health care system in the world why was Obama and his Demoncrat co-conspirators so hell-bent on changing it?
Compared to a scant ten years ago, it’s already ruined.
SarahW (267b14) — 10/16/2014 @ 9:40 amWho wants to be the last soldier to die in an ebola epidemic in a foreign country?
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 10/16/2014 @ 9:40 amHey everybody, chillax! Ebola is just a jayvee epidemic. It doesn’t pose a threat to us here in the “homeland.”
As I’ve noted before, we heard these same reassurances the day before AQ-affiliated jihadis successfully assaulted and took US territory in the form of a Benghazi diplomatic facility, killing US personnel in the process.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/09/10/readout-president-s-meeting-senior-administration-officials-our-prepared
Every time the “don’t worry, be happy” Preezy issues a statement about how we are so freakin’ prepared to protect Americans everywhere in the world, it’s time to make sure the gas tank is filled and recheck the bug-out supplies.
Seriously, it isn’t unfair to criticize Obama for what is his established pattern. Underplay the threat, issue a statement of some sort saying that everything is covered, then events reveal the threat was much worse than he was willing to admit and despite the press release nobody lifted a finger to prepare for anything.
And then insult everyone’s intelligence by insisting the plan (which has been revealed to be no plan at all) is working.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/10/susan-rice-all-is-well.php
Every. Single. Time.
Steve57 (4d34f4) — 10/16/2014 @ 9:41 amLawyers DRJ, who do you think wrote legal guidelines? The doctors told them what they wanted and the lawyers put it in legalese for them.
Hoagie (4dfb34) — 10/16/2014 @ 9:42 amHet Steve57, don’t forget the usual “it’s the Republican’s fault for cutting funds and, and, and Sequester!”
Hoagie (4dfb34) — 10/16/2014 @ 9:45 amI am reminded again of the SNL “Pepsi Syndrome” skit about
ThreeTwo Mile Island.“I’m a nuclear engineer, and I’m pretty worried right now.”
Kevin M (b357ee) — 10/16/2014 @ 9:45 amLet’s just hope and pray the sonuvagun doesn’t allow Ebola to be spread to all 57 states.
Colonel Haiku (0b084b) — 10/16/2014 @ 9:45 amThis means that to be safe treating Ebola patients one must be in a fully immersible moon suit that can be fully showered with bleach for minutes to make sure every virus is removed.
The authorities concluded that about 100 people crossed paths with Thomas Duncan in the period running from the time he fell ill (around 23 September) to the time he was shut up in the hospital (28 September). It’s been 18 days since he’s been out of circulation. The mean incubation period for this infection is six or seven days. The four people sharing the apartment with him (and using the same toilet) are not as yet ill.
This is not a readily transmissible disease.
Art Deco (ee8de5) — 10/16/2014 @ 9:46 amIn the unlikely event that someone with Ebola does reach our shores,
Inconceivable!
Kevin M (b357ee) — 10/16/2014 @ 9:46 amIs it fair to hold Obama accountable? I’m sure political partisans would claim it isn’t because one man can’t control a government bureaucracy of this size and scope. But it is inherently fair because establishing policies and being responsible for outcomes are the core responsibilities of American Presidents. The larger the bureaucracy, the more important it is that the buck stops with one person.
This isn’t a novel approach. This is what CEOs do every day, and ignorance of the details isn’t a defense — just look at Enron’s Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling, who were found guilty of consciously avoiding knowledge about wrongdoing. Someone is responsible, and that person is the President and CEO.
DRJ (a83b8b) — 10/16/2014 @ 9:47 amBTW, DRJ, when the lawyers write the legalese there’s always a vague area so they can come back latter and sue each other, the government, the doctor or the health insurer or hospital. Keeps the cash flow so they can get their new boat or Bentley.
Hoagie (4dfb34) — 10/16/2014 @ 9:48 am“We’re working to help flight crews identify people who are sick”
Our brave private sector flight crews are our first line of defense against ebola and have been trained not to hand out a second bag of peanuts to passengers who are sick.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 10/16/2014 @ 9:51 amIt makes some sense that doctors and businessmen hate lawyers. Do lawyers hate doctors and businessmen? Of course not. Do wolves hate lambs? No, they love them. We love doctors and businessmen.
nk (dbc370) — 10/16/2014 @ 9:59 amHoagie,
Prior to 1998, CDC scientists wrote Prevention Guidelines. See the Acknowledgements at the link, and there aren’t any JDs listed in the Acknowledgements. Since then, the authors for the guidelines are listed on each publication. See, for instance, these influenza guidelines authored by several MDs and PhDs.
Is it fair to say the CDC may have lawyers review its publications? I don’t know. I wouldn’t be surprised, especially with this Administration, but I don’t think lawyers are writing the guidelines — especially since the CDC has an authorship policy that lists the author as the person(s) who drafted the article or guidelines. Under this policy, the first author also has responsibility for the integrity of the report.
I’m not defending lawyers as a whole. Some lawyers have damaged our society with their PC concerns and their zealous, unthinking advocacy of every popular idea. But I don’t think it’s fair to pin this problem on lawyers.
DRJ (a83b8b) — 10/16/2014 @ 9:59 amWe don’t need to convince anyone that we’re fair, DRJ. We have the power; they’ll shut up and take whatever we dish out.
nk (dbc370) — 10/16/2014 @ 10:02 amI couldn’t agree more.
http://www.premierlonghorns.com/RidingLonghorns.html
We could learn from cattle when it comes to picking our leaders. I bet longhorns wouldn’t pick Exxonna to lead the herd just so she could be a “historic” first black Preezy. Exxonna actually has something on the ball (seriously, watch the training videos).
Overall you’ll find cattle are way more intelligent and useful than your average Obama appointee. And unlike an Obama administration official, cows won’t lie to you.
Steve57 (4d34f4) — 10/16/2014 @ 10:03 amthe presentdent is known as “the cheif executive”, because ultimate decision making responsibility is his.
a leader can delegate authority, but not responsibility, so yeah, any honest criticism of BamBam’s “performance* (to use a term loosely), is justified.
Harry’s sign, “The Buck Stops Here.” is still true, even if our #SCOAMF tried to replace it with one that reads “The buck passes here.”
redc1c4 (6d1848) — 10/16/2014 @ 10:04 amYou can’t sue the government, Hoagie. The government has sovereign immunity from suit, except where it has expressly waived it.
DRJ (a83b8b) — 10/16/2014 @ 10:05 am*We lawyers*
nk (dbc370) — 10/16/2014 @ 10:05 amHas Obama said “Heck of a job, Frieden!” yet?
Chris (0ba377) — 10/16/2014 @ 10:06 amIt is impossible to look at the actions of this administration and arrive at any conclusion other than that they want this disease to spread.
No. What you see when you look at this administration is a collection of hollow men. Their priority is the optics, first, last, and always.
Art Deco (ee8de5) — 10/16/2014 @ 10:08 amOderint dum metuant (let them hate provided they also fear), a favorite saying of Caligula, should be on every law license.
nk (dbc370) — 10/16/2014 @ 10:09 amFun links, Steve57. I was tempted to suggest Patterico change “cow-like trust” to “sheep-like trust” but apparently sheep aren’t dumb either. Does “robot-like trust” work?
DRJ (a83b8b) — 10/16/2014 @ 10:11 amnk,
I’m not disagreeing with you but, let’s face it, laymen have a reasonable distrust and dislike for lawyers. We’ve let lawyers with questionable judgment and a fair amount of greed make us all look bad. Some of the political lawyers are the worst in this regard. It’s up to us to repair our profession when we can, and defend it when it’s appropriate.
DRJ (a83b8b) — 10/16/2014 @ 10:13 amI have just the comment, but it’s more appropriate on the Houston thread and I’m running around a little. (Figuratively. 😉 )
nk (dbc370) — 10/16/2014 @ 10:16 amKevin M #37,
I agree with everything you say, and I hope hospitals and citizens learn from this not to trust government. But the CDC is responsible for promulgating infectious disease guidelines, and I think health care providers acted reasonably when they relied on those guidelines. Until now, of course. Now they know better.
DRJ (a83b8b) — 10/16/2014 @ 10:18 amIf you can’t sue the government why do I repeatedly hear of this department or that agency being sued? People, businesses and states themselves sue government all the time.
BTW, this got a little out of hand about lawyers. All I was really trying to do was point out Obama appointed the White House Homeland Security adviser Lisa Monaco as a sort of Ebola coordinator. And I assume because I don’t know for a fact, but Obama seems to surround himself with self-serving Harvard lawyers that Ms. Monaco is a lawyer. Just speculatin’. And as far as who writes what in government nothing goes without lawyers signing off on it.
Hoagie (4dfb34) — 10/16/2014 @ 10:18 amI’ll watch for your comment, nk.
DRJ (a83b8b) — 10/16/2014 @ 10:19 amHoagie,
The lawsuits are usually claims involving the government violating constitutional rights or statutory provisions — claims where state action violates a right or privilege. That isn’t the same as someone suing government because they were hurt by government policies. Government hurts people all the time and, in most cases, there’s nothing they can do about it.
I get your concerns about lawyers running things. It concerns me, too.
DRJ (a83b8b) — 10/16/2014 @ 10:22 amJust so you know nk and DRJ, the last thing I need is an argument with a crap load of lawyers. So right now I Surrender! As nk said: “We don’t need to convince anyone that we’re fair, DRJ. We have the power; they’ll shut up and take whatever we dish out.” I’m 63 so I’ve had my fair share of lawyers. Hell, I’m going into Philly tomorrow to see our lawyer about cutting through a bunch of bulls5it red tape in zoning (written by lawyers) so my wife can open a day spa. So at $350 an hour he’ll guide us through a maze of crap that 20 years ago I did on my own. See, every new generation of lawyers layers their own bull5hit on so they too can get that boat. What was good enough 20 years ago is a no-no know. I guess because 20 years ago one didn’t need a lawyer. They fixed that. Now if you’re a college kid and want to kiss a chick you need a lawyer to draw up an non-aggression treaty or you may be prosecuted.
Hoagie (4dfb34) — 10/16/2014 @ 10:33 amOverall you’ll find cattle are way more intelligent and useful than your average Obama appointee.
The problem is not that they are unintelligent. The problem you see in Democratic administrations is that they commonly are only intelligent (or that they are articulate and people mistake that for intelligence). Character, leadership, administrative talent, and expertise go by the wayside in favor of people who’ve been through certain organization-kid paces (and sometimes in favor of people who have not but have proven themselves useful flunkies). So, Hillary Clinton, a skeezy corporate and commercial lawyer who traveled a great deal on the government dime, is put in charge of the Foreign Service; she’s then replaced with John Kerry, a yarn puller who does know something of foreign affairs but has no background in public administration and no accomplishments to speak of as a legislator (he’s got that Yale degree, though). The Treasury secretary has had one of those curious careers you see among elite Democrats wherein he slid seamlessly between jobs as a political flunky, law practice, investment banking, and (for flavor), a slot in academic administration (he actually has run bureaucracies before). The Secretary of Commerce is a real estate investor cum Democratic donor. The Secretary of Energy, tasked with running an exceedingly challenging apparat, is a retired physics professor. The Secretary of Homeland Security is a lawyer. The Secretary of Labor is a skeezy dishonest political fanatic lawyer.
Art Deco (ee8de5) — 10/16/2014 @ 10:34 amDon’t surrender, Hoagie, because I’m on your side most of the time. There are too many regulations and, in most cases, lawyers wrote and enforce them. Just because we can make things complicated doesn’t mean it should be. The only qualifier I would add is that more and more people seem to want government to solve their problems, and much of our over-regulated times comes from people demanding government pass laws that fix every problem.
DRJ (a83b8b) — 10/16/2014 @ 10:39 amNot really. Their first priority is controlling the narrative.
It’s an odd mix. President Bieber’s handlers give the impression they care about optics when they stage carefully choreographed spectacle with styrofoam Greek columns or equally fake doctors wearing white lab coats the WH staff hands out to attendees at a Rose Garden Obamacare photo-op.
But then they’ll put on an awful Bergdahl Rose Garden press statement with hippie weirdo dad praising Allah in Pashto or let Tiger Beat slip the leash entirely so he can play golf minutes after declaring his outrage over James Foley’s beheading.
Would anyone who really cared about the optics send out a fundraising email accusing Republicans of being bought and paid for by the billionaire “one percenters” and who now care nothing about “average folks” and then do this immediately afterward?
http://freebeacon.com/blog/not-a-parody-obama-fundraises-with-rich-guy-named-rich-richman/
Go party with a billionaire named, no kidding, Rich Richman? At the real life “Richie Rich’s” multimillion dollar estate with all his multimillionaire and billionaire freinds?
They create carefully crafted images when they figure the press won’t do it for them. I suppose they can’t expect AP or Reuters photogs to always position themselves so Obama is wearing a halo. That’s what the WH photographer is for.
But the rest of the time they don’t worry about the optics because they with this LHMFM they figure they don’t need to. And in general they’re right. The WH press pool will dutifully submit their stories to the WH PR flacks for editing and approval. The LHMFM may grumble about not having access, but they will use the official WH photos for stories about WH events that they’re not allowed to attend.
A few times President Kardashian has been caught out, but in general the WH doesn’t need to worry about bad optics because the LHMFM will cover things up for their messiah. If you can control the LHMFM you can control the narrative. If you control the narrative, you control what doesn’t get reported. I.E. bad optics.
Steve57 (4d34f4) — 10/16/2014 @ 10:41 amlaymen have a reasonable distrust and dislike for lawyers.
1. I don’t mind rank and file lawyers who do rank and file lawyers’ work. Any society needs a mechanism of dispute settlement and a means of reducing uncertainties in the marketplace (through the composition of documents in language which makes consistent use of terms and concepts). These people have ordinary bourgeois incomes and tend to work in small firms with a local clientele.
2. I do mind the legal architecture growing hopelessly rococo (see tax law).
3. I do mind ever dizzier theories of liability and junk science. (Melvin Belli and John Edwards and Erin Brockovich, I’m looking at you).
4. I do mind law ordered to rent-seeking whose greatest benefit extends to lawyers.
5. I do mind massive ‘entrepreneurial’ firms (Katten, Munchen, I’m looking at you).
6. I do mind careers of men who seemlessly move between government, law, and investment banking, updating their resume and salary expectations each time.
7. I do mind Washington firms which benefit from political connections (Mr. Liz Cheney, I’m looking at you).
8. I do mind provincial firms with a ‘government relations practice’ (Robert Harding, Esq. of Clifton Park, N.Y., I’m looking at you).
9. I do mind law as a gateway to the legislature and other political offices (Barack Obama, Kristen Gillibrand, Andrew Cuomo, and a couple thousand others, I’m looking at you).
10. I do mind judges who fancy they should be in charge and not the hoi polloi (Anthony Kennedy, I’m looking at you).
11. I do mind fraud academics who supply them with arguments and with shallow smart-assed clerks (every law professor in America, I’m looking at you).
Art Deco (ee8de5) — 10/16/2014 @ 10:46 amShepard Smith may be a Fox news anchor, but he is not a good representative for those of us who want to be more self reliant. He is closer to a sheep than a german shepard. I can still recall a broadcast from an Isreali howitzer position on the Lebanon border during the conflict there in 2006. Smith and Greta Van Susteren were the hosts and Smith looked a bit like Dukakis when he wore the helmet in photo-op tank event. He was cowering and every time the Isrealis fired one of the big guns (120mm?) he flinched. Greta was a trooper and just carried on her report with a big smile and a lot of confidence. It doesn’t surprise me that Smith would endorse a nanny state.
bobathome (5ccbd8) — 10/16/2014 @ 10:50 amGood list, Art Deco. I’m not optimistic but I hope we get more law professors like Glenn Reynolds. I’d like to see people from many careers in government. One problem is that politics has become a profession, and it’s hard for people in most careers to do their jobs and be in politics. It’s easier for lawyers to have a law career and be in politics.
DRJ (a83b8b) — 10/16/2014 @ 10:52 am#OccupyEbola!
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 10/16/2014 @ 10:59 amDRJ @60, I’m glad you enjoyed the links. Cattle really are a lot brighter than people think. Although that requires a lot of forgetting considering that Oxen are just cattle trained and used for work, as they used to be in the West and still are in much of the rest of the world.
“Robot-like trust” works for me since only a human creation could simulate human stupidity. We assign bad qualities to animals such as calling donkeys or mules “stubborn” because they will refuse to do things and nothing can make them. But it turns out when they do refuse, it’s because some human is trying to make them do something that only a human would be stupid enough to do (well, sometimes a horse will go along with it, too).
You will never go broke overestimating the boundless dimensions of human stupidity.
Steve57 (4d34f4) — 10/16/2014 @ 10:59 amhttps://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-news-blogs/gwyneth-paltrow-hearts-obama-youre-handsome-cant-speak-025951514–abc-news-politics.html
Among the stupid things she said at this event, but unreported by ABC, was, “It would be wonderful if we were able to give this man all of the power that he needs to pass the things that he needs to pass.”
So, please, let’s stop assigning this kind of stupidity to cows or sheep or something. It’s not bovinely possible for the Artiodactyla to be this stupid.
And speaking of lawyers, can we stop comparing them to hyenas or jackals or vultures? Hyenas, jackals, and vultures have many admirable qualities, I’ll have you know.
Steve57 (4d34f4) — 10/16/2014 @ 11:11 amMost politicans, who are mostly lawyers, make a living by promising the impossible. For example, Obama’s criticism of Bush over the flu outbreak is based on the presumed ability of the government to halt flu outbreaks. This is an implied promise, contingent on replacing Bush with a Democrat. Other examples are more direct: FDR’s contribution to American history was our wonderful Freedom from Fear. A lot of silliness has stemmed from these fraudulent promises. We are at a point where the government is engaged in nonsense that promises to make everyone’s life perfect, meaning free of any conflict or hard choices and especially free of any consequences for those choices we do make. This is crazy. But it does open the door for sleezy lawyers to file suit when those impossible promises run headon into reality. The solution is always more fines, more awards for intangible damages, more rules restricting our liberties, and more incentive for more lawyers to get their 30% contingency fee.
But this has nothing to do with the government doing what it is capable of doing. It is capable of implementing a thorough quarantine. It is not capable of ensuring that Liberia continues to enjoy modest growth and happiness while in the midst of a plague. The continuation of our current policy will end up being yet another unfulfilled promise, one that may have enormous human costs here in the U. S. This should be avoided, and it is our duty to speak out.
bobathome (5ccbd8) — 10/16/2014 @ 11:17 amThe more paranoid take: http://minx.cc/?blog=86&post=352492#c22760761
Obama does sometimes leave me questioning whether there is a lady or tiger behind the door.
Incompetence or Malice? Does it even matter? Would he ever get called out for either?
SarahW (267b14) — 10/16/2014 @ 11:18 amPixy’s linkage doesn’t work as it once did. Here is the comment I linked to:
SarahW (267b14) — 10/16/2014 @ 11:20 amI won’t belabor this point if it’s not interesting to people, but I enjoy discussing the topic of lawyers for several reasons. One, I’m retired now but I was a practicing lawyer for many years. Two, I’ve spent many years working with doctors because of health problems in my family, and it didn’t take long to realize doctors and lawyers are trained to think in very different ways. Ditto re: engineers and lawyers. FWIW, I don’t think any of these professions think “best.” They think different because of the differing requirements and goals of what they do. And, three, like it or not, lawyers play an important role in how our country works — not because we have become a country of extensive regulations and laws (although we are), but because we are a philosophically different country that is based on laws, not men.
DRJ (a83b8b) — 10/16/2014 @ 11:20 ambobathome,
I spent most of last night wondering why Obama won’t ban or limit travel from Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea, especially since he hasn’t hesitated to warn against travel to those places. I’m cynical enough to believe he could be protecting Democratic donors’ financial interests in West Africa, but there’s also the White House’s August 2014 Africa Summit and the July 2014 http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/06/29/fact-sheet-president-s-young-african-leaders-initiativeYoung African Leaders Initiative. I can’t shake the feeling he and Valerie Jarrett are trying to make Obama as popular in Africa as George W. Bush is, and this is his way of trying to curry favor with Africans.
Do you have any theories?
DRJ (a83b8b) — 10/16/2014 @ 11:27 amSorry for the link problem. Try to ignore it if you can.
DRJ (a83b8b) — 10/16/2014 @ 11:28 amSarahW,
I think Obama is incompetent. I think Obama has malice for some Americans, especially the bitter clingers he and Michelle find so unappealing. But, mainly, I think he focuses on his goals and he’s been fairly good at accomplishing them. Protecting Americans isn’t his goal, despite his rhetoric, unless they are the favored few. Protecting and projecting his image of America is his goal. In this case, that goal leads him to curry favor with African leaders by not banning travel to their countries, and with world leaders by appearing generous. The reality is he appears weak, both here at home and abroad, but he doesn’t see it that way.
DRJ (a83b8b) — 10/16/2014 @ 11:32 amHe should stick with the Swedes. That’s where his skin-tone makes him special.
nk (dbc370) — 10/16/2014 @ 11:36 amDIfficulty. He appears almost heck-bent on turning a regional pandemic into a global one. Maybe he just doesn’t see it coming. It’s almost as though he believes it unfair for the US to avoid an avoidable plague.
SarahW (267b14) — 10/16/2014 @ 11:49 amBingo.
DRJ (a83b8b) — 10/16/2014 @ 11:52 amI heard some bits by Friedan on Rush driving around,
he basically said that if we don’t let people fly in from Africa that we can monitor and trace, they will find other ways to get into the country and we will not know who or where they are.
In other words, we don’t control our border, so we hope people are cooperative.
MD in Philly (f9371b) — 10/16/2014 @ 11:54 am#78… It’s the soft bigotry of low expectations, SarahW.
And it’s not “cow-like” or “sheep-like”, it’s “Dem voter-like” trust
Colonel Haiku (0b084b) — 10/16/2014 @ 11:54 amThis Washington Post article addresses the reasons for not imposing travel restrictions, and it’s the most intelligent analysis I’ve seen. I’m not convinced by the arguments but at least they’re plausible.
DRJ (a83b8b) — 10/16/2014 @ 11:57 amFrom the cdc.gov website:
From the whitehouse.gov website:
The CDC is responsible for protecting America from “health” threats — whether from within or from abroad. The CDC is part of the Health and Human Services Bureau, which is a cabinet level post of the Executive. Thus, the CDC is in the direct chain of command from the President.
If Government Motors made a defective car, you’d blame the CEO of GM, wouldn’t you?
So it all depends upon how you answer the question: does the buck stop there at the President?
Well, yes, it does. But, of course, it must be the correct President because, obviously, it’s Bush’s fault.
J.P. (cc46f4) — 10/16/2014 @ 12:02 pmO-presedente thinks he’s the leader of the not so free world, entitling him to redistribute diseases.
mg (31009b) — 10/16/2014 @ 12:02 pmThey left out the main reason: Of course the Party is right, because the Party is always right.
nk (dbc370) — 10/16/2014 @ 12:03 pm#81, DRJ: I think your conclusion to SarahW “but he doesn’t see it that way” is the crux of the matter. He is so wrapped up in himself that he can’t be bothered about other “visions” of reality. Everything that counts is in his head or on his teleprompter, and the rest is just noise. This myopia is beneficial in his career choice since “truth” is whatever he chooses to say it is today. He believes the balooney he pushes, and he get very angry when something happens that might cause another individual to reconsider their views. Cognitive dissonance is not an experience that he’s had to deal with.
Regarding the travel ban, or lack thereof, this will not work well for him if he’s as concerned about his legacy as you suggest, which I find believable. Those who live in Africa understand that the 5hit has hit the fan, and they will be required to deal with a very unforgiving reality. Obama’s policies can only be a puzzle to them. They will come to regard him as an almost alien creature. I’ll bet you that Obama never found the time to read Camus’ Plague at either Occidental or Harvard. I suppose it is now relegated to off-site archives in most college libraries. But the book had some lessons about committment and purpose that Obama would benefit from. He’s likely to be regarded as the 21st century’s Marie Antoinette …
bobathome (5ccbd8) — 10/16/2014 @ 12:05 pmI read your link SRJ, and aside from talking in circles I saw nothing intellectually persuasive upon which I would conclude closing off flights from infected countries would not be beneficial. I particularly noted how they stated Ebola travels by mucus and fluids, etc so one cannot get infected by someone sitting next to you on a plane and breathing. I ask only one question. Do any of you know anyone who goes through the day without a) sneezing, b)coughing or c) clearing his throat? Since all three of those common acts spreads mucus I submit allowing anyone from any infected area into this country knowingly is a criminal act. Furthermore, if the official position of the government is to allow this then they too are committing a knowingly criminal act.
Hoagie (4dfb34) — 10/16/2014 @ 12:22 pmSorry. At #94 that was supposed to be: I read your link DRJ. Gimme a break the S is right next to the D.
Hoagie (4dfb34) — 10/16/2014 @ 12:27 pmDRJ,
I don’t see how this sentence “I think Obama is incompetent” is consistent with the sentences that you place after it. You make the point of Obama’s competence probably better than I can, but I’ll take a stab at it anyway.
Barack Obama may not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but he is no idiot and he is not incompetent. Our President is simply reading from a script that was drilled into him from a very early age. And I don’t just mean he is figuratively reading from a script either, he literally reads from a script at all conceivable moments. I think this is why Hollywood connects so well with the President – he is a skillful interpreter of the script. In an earlier presidency, the Clintons, at times, read from the same script, but Bill Clinton was savvy enough to know when to go off message and ad lib. Bill Clinton’s intuition, a rare quality among men and especially among male pols, is what made the difference. Barack Obama is a more traditional man in this respect. He has only the script.
Our nation, the world really, is at a crossroads. It is now painfully obvious to all but the President and his closest supporters, that the limitations of the script have become a growing political liability. The problem is that for most on the Left, it is their script too. As we have seen with immigration reform and other initiatives, there is no rethinking possible, only delay forced by political necessity. For Barack Obama and his fellow travelers, this is what there is and all there is. It’s not the man; it’s the ideology.
ThOR (130453) — 10/16/2014 @ 12:36 pmthe problem with the American legal system is that it uses way to many lawyers and no where near enough rope.
IMHO, of course. 😎
redc1c4 (cf3b04) — 10/16/2014 @ 12:46 pmThat’s why we made the growing of hemp illegal in the United States, red.
nk (dbc370) — 10/16/2014 @ 12:50 pmbut he is no idiot and he is not incompetent.
Waal, one of his biographers has it that his modus operandi is to read memos delivered by his staff and check a canned option at the end, adding some inane marginalia like ‘we ought to be doing more of this’. His selections for senior positions are, how shall we say, haphazard. There’s no doubt the Bushes know how to read financial statements. Do you think Barack Obama knows the difference between cash accounting and accrual accounting? (See Steve Sailer’s analysis of the Obama’s household finances, while we’re at it). Where is the evidence of expertise in any subject? Where is the evidence he knows how to negotiate?
Art Deco (ee8de5) — 10/16/2014 @ 12:55 pmHis competence is in being kept by women. The ones who raised him, the ones around him, the ones who voted him into office. Pimp is too dignified. Gigolos make an effort. History’s most successful welfare recipient?
nk (dbc370) — 10/16/2014 @ 1:07 pmDo any of you know anyone who goes through the day without a) sneezing, b)coughing or c) clearing his throat? Since all three of those common acts spreads mucus
Again, they’ve been tracking a three digit population of people who encountered Thomas Duncan sometime after his arrival. It’s been eighteen days since the last of them saw him and about 20 days since the mid-point of their exposure to him. It has been 8 days since he died and 13 days since the mid-point of the time period during which hospital employees were exposed to him. The hazmat crew who cleaned out the family apartment was working on it 8 to 13 days ago. The mean incubation period for this disease is around 6 or 7 days and fewer than 5% of incubations take longer than 20 days. So far, we know he infected two people, both of them nurses, out of roughly 190 people whom he came into contact with or handled his effects.
Art Deco (ee8de5) — 10/16/2014 @ 1:07 pmHis competence is in being kept by women.
Clever, but not really true. He’s not responsible for his mother’s self-centered willfulness or his grandfather’s vocational failures. From the time he married Mooch, he was never not drawing a salary from some place, just never enough given their consumption patterns to allow her to retire for a while. I’ll wager he was receiving a subsidy from his grandmother intermittently during the period running from 1983 to 1992, but cannot guess the values involved. It is true he was professionally underdeveloped and was not giving primary focus to domestic life, which in his case would mean making more of his available human capital, not attempting to dance between three workplaces and open-ended volunteer activities, and being strict about household savings and revolving debt.
Art Deco (ee8de5) — 10/16/2014 @ 1:16 pmFLOTUS said: “That nephew you know who sleeps — get him up. Wake him up. (Laughter.) Young people, you all know folks who aren’t paying attention. Your classmates, your dorm mates — wake them up, get them out.”
Maybe she’s worried the Demo voters have got Ebola and can’t get out of bed.
AZ Bob (c949f7) — 10/16/2014 @ 1:21 pmYale grad student recently returned from Liberia is hospitalized with Ebola-like symptoms and currently being tested for Ebola, for those trying to keep track.
Chris (0ba377) — 10/16/2014 @ 1:25 pm#80, DRJ: I think the disconnect between lawyers and engineers/scientists (to name a few of the second group) is that lawyers are concerned with the findings of law, which are not contrained by conservation of mass and momentum, physical properties of materials, entropy, e=m*c*c, and so on. Public opinion, eloquence, the actual wording of the law, the intent of the writers of the law, prior legal findings, and jury selection are keys to a lawyer’s reality. Whereas nature should underly the thinking of the second group. If the Supreme Court decides that pi is 3.0, then lawyers would be happy to become rich suing fence companies that always exceed their bid price on fences around circular pastures. The Supreme Court’s exclusionary rule is another departure from the dictates of reality. Something happened, but we must maintain the legal fiction that it did not.
So these disciplines are not inherently compatible. Doctors are somewhere inbetween the two groups. There is a lot of science in medicine, but good Doctors must deal with real patients who have problems that may not be readily identified, and they must rely on empirical knowledge that is not backed up with a solid theoretical base.
The great danger that this presents is the tendency of politicians, or their agents in our regulatory bureaus, to write laws that defy reality or hinder our ability to do real research. The current drug approval rules are of this sort. The argument is made that the rules are sensible since they prevent patients from spending their money on things that “don’t” help them. For example, the FDA suggests adult Americans need just 4000 IU of vitamin D on a daily basis, and anything beyond that is wasteful. A man in Florida in December who is out working in the sun with his shirt off produces about 5000 IU every 30 minutes. The same man in Minnesota or Washington is bundled up and produces no vitamin D at all. My supplements cost about $0.30 a day, or around $110 a year. Only about $30 of this total is what the FDA recommends. The snarky little Napoleans at the FDA justify their salaries by suggesting that if everyone followed their advice, the country could save hundreds of millions of dollars every year, assuming they were all as frivolous as me.
It is said that politics is the art of the possible. This is cannot be true. Our politicians routinely promise the impossible, and they have huge followings that believe in their magical powers. Politics is the art of the con man absent principled, effective opposition.
bobathome (5ccbd8) — 10/16/2014 @ 1:26 pmPosted this on the wrong thread a minute ago…
So I’m curious…how many Ebola cases originating on US soil do you expect to see by EOY and/or by end of next year?
WTP (aca208) — 10/16/2014 @ 1:29 pm#BanBigGulpsNotEbolaZoneTravel!
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 10/16/2014 @ 1:59 pmtoo many, since we should have instituted a quarantine as step one.
redc1c4 (34e91b) — 10/16/2014 @ 1:59 pmOkay Art Deco, but again do you want to be sitting next to him when (not if) he sneezes? I’m not suggesting Ebola magically flies through the air. I am stating everybody coughs, sneezes and clears their throats so regularly no one even notices….until it’s too late.
Hoagie (4dfb34) — 10/16/2014 @ 2:09 pmThey should have preliminary, or first-test results back by now about the New Haven case in precautionary isolation for Ebola-like symptoms and a significant travel history. (That student traveled to Liberia recently, but had no known contact with ill persons or caretakers of ill persons) They were due around four – no word yet. I presume we would have heard if that test result had been negative.
However, I really expected it to be negative, (and it probably still is), I’m just wondering why they didn’t rush right out to say so after public statements they would announce ASAP. If postive, though, another test is carried out to confirm.
So now I’m worried the first test was positive and the more definitive confirmatory test is being carried out.
SarahW (267b14) — 10/16/2014 @ 2:11 pmWhew – they announced. The kid is negative. http://www.courant.com/health/hc-yale-new-haven-hospital-1017-20141016-story.html#page=1
SarahW (267b14) — 10/16/2014 @ 2:13 pmseeing the onver 50% casualty rate DWB has taken with this outbreak, i submit that no one’s protocols are sufficient, except maybe the full on BLS-4 facilities, and how many of them are there?
yeah, that’s what i thought.
which takes us back to quarantines again: if the bug can’t move around, the outbreak will die off…
if it keeps moving around, people die off. this isn’t rocket science, unless you’re either a moron or a politician.
(but i repeat myself.)
redc1c4 (34e91b) — 10/16/2014 @ 2:14 pmBy his own lights, Obama has been very successful. I think Patterico would agree.
DN (395a7b) — 10/16/2014 @ 2:22 pmno one even notices….until it’s too late.
You had a mess of people occupying an apartment with him, using the same toilet, and handling his blankets and other effects; they’re still healthy. The chances you’re going to get it from his sneezing is minimal.
Art Deco (ee8de5) — 10/16/2014 @ 2:54 pmRush pointed out that the CDC has said that “you can’t get it by sitting next to somebody on a bus”, but that also someone exposed with a slight fever should not get on a bus because “they might give it to somebody”.
Too many people are being unrealistic and making confusion, overreacting or bending over backwards to overly minimize.
Point #1, there is no data that suggests airborne spread in usual circumstances. If somebody happens to be on a plane with Ebola and sneezes into the air, everyone in the plane is not going to get it. Unless it has been kept quiet, it appears no one on that flight to Lagos with the fellow who ended up dying contracted the disease from him.
Point #2, obviously someone feeling not too bad one minute can start feeling pretty lousy within an hour and cough, sneeze, or vomit with secretions either contaminating the person next to them, or surfaces which can then be touched. This risk is definitely greater than zero, and since the consequences of this risk are great, there should be restricted movement of anyone known to have been exposed, like Cleveland Clinic telling their nurses who were on the plane with nurse #2 to stay home for 3 weeks.
If the CDC stopped holding press conferences to tell the public that things were under control and instead worked to keep things under control they would be much better off,
but as others have said, this administration knows little about accomplishing anything not related to its fundamental transformation of America, everything else is fecklessness dressed up to look like effort.
The world would be better off restricting flights in and out of the general African area except under extreme circumstances of using great caution (21 days in an “Ebola free zone”?).
There is plenty of opportunity for this to become a world-wide disaster, but it’s not going to be a major disaster for the US anytime soon. After the world economy collapses because areas of S. America and Asia have widespread outbreak and Europe has too many fires to try to put out then the US will have a big mess on its hands.
How many more cases in the US??? total guesswork.
I would not be surprised if several more healthcare workers from Dallas get it, perhaps from some systemic error like using respirators too late after Duncan was intubated. Maybe a few more secondary to them- but already every other worker in Dallas knows this is for real and they should be sitting tight with minimal contact with others which will help minimize more secondary spread.
I am actually surprised none of Duncan’s family or friends have contracted it, and am a bit worried that maybe they would hide and hope for the best rather than seek help if they start developing symptoms.
I imagine there will be more people killed most days because people were not wearing their seat belts than will from Ebola for quite a long time, perhaps forever.
MD in Philly (f9371b) — 10/16/2014 @ 3:06 pmWhich does not mean the situation isn’t terribly serious, it is, but dealing with it is what needs to be done, not spin control.
By his own lights, Obama has been very successful. I think Patterico would agree.
At what? At presiding over the most catastrophic loss of position in a federal election either party has suffered in the last 7 decades (and the worst his own party has suffered in more than 9 decades)? At manufacturing the malfunctioning insurance exchanges?
When Ronald Reagan was in his last years in office, competing to be his successor were the vice president with whom he was congenial, a prominent member of Congress who had been on his staff in California and claimed him as an inspiration, and a state Governor who claimed that Reagan had persuaded him that his antecedently held positions were in error and that Reagan’s were right. Every Republican presidential candidate of consequence in the last 30 years (bar, perhaps, Ron Paul) speaks well of Reagan and seeks the Reagan mantle. Who will succeed Obama? The smart money is on one of two elderly pols who were established presences in the federal capital when Obama was still in high school. A third option is a Baltimore pol who owes Obama nothing. That’s ‘success’?
Art Deco (ee8de5) — 10/16/2014 @ 3:08 pmAt what?
MD in Philly (f9371b) — 10/16/2014 @ 3:11 pmAt diminishing the stature of the US in the world, undermining Constitutional rule, facilitating an increasingly centralized economy, making more people dependent on the federal government for their daily existence.
Art Deco,
Reagan didn’t matter that much in the long run. Have you noticed present-day California? A friend who lives in Pasadena told me the California GOP might as well close up shop. The Democrats can do anything they want, except when fighting among themselves.
And Obama STILL polls at 40%. George W. Bush was down in the low 20’s. Nonwhites and white liberals still back him.
DN (395a7b) — 10/16/2014 @ 3:17 pmfor the Colonel, shamelessly stolen from a thread over at Ace’s (albeit with attribution)
redc1c4 (34e91b) — 10/16/2014 @ 3:19 pm#118: you can blame the durrent state of #Failifornia on several things:
unrestricted illegal immigrations (yes, they vote. one guess which way)
unrestricted migration from such garden spots as New Yak and 5hitcoghole, all of whom are apparently hellbent on recreating the success stories they fled.
homegrown stupidity, to include the GOPe trying to appeal to the same classes of LIVs the demonrats court, giving us RINO candidates like #CashAndCarry, Meg Whitman, etc…
several generations of youth all raised to be speshul snowflakes that believe they have a right to free 5hit from the cradle to the grave, and that the primary duty of the government is to do all their thinking for them, while providing said goodies.
IOW, we’re screwed.
redc1c4 (34e91b) — 10/16/2014 @ 3:25 pmPatterico – I notice nobody has stepped up on the soapbox you provided for them.
JD (a857a4) — 10/16/2014 @ 3:34 pm#121: that’s because he phrased the question wrong: “unfair” isn’t the issue.
that’s just an attempt by him to use white privilege to cover up his racism…
and that of other commenters.
i denounce you all raycssssses!
redc1c4 (cf3b04) — 10/16/2014 @ 3:55 pm“Katrina was certainly unprecedented, but that didn’t seem to prevent people from blaming it on Bush.”
No, it was a bad hurricane but not the equal of others like the 1938 hurricane that hit New England or The 1900 Galveston hurricane which was followed by The 1915 Galveston hurricane.
All of these were more severe that Katrina. Hurricane Camille caused as much damage to the Gulf Coast.
By central pressure and winds, Camille was the second strongest U.S. landfalling hurricane in recorded history, second only to the Labor Day Hurricane in 1935. It was also the first modern Category 5 hurricane to ever receive a person’s name when making landfall in the United States.
What was unprecedented was the lack of precautions by the idiot Mayor and Governor. As it happened, I flew into New Orleans the day after Hurricane Ivan missed the city the day before when it swing east.
After peaking in strength, the hurricane moved north-northwest across the Gulf of Mexico to strike Pensacola, Florida as a strong Category 3 storm, causing significant damage.
It was Category 5 over Cuba. When I landed at New Orleans for the American College of Surgeons convention, the hurricane had missed the previous day, hitting Pensacola instead. There were NO PRECAUTIONS taken in New Orleans that I could see. No windows taped or boarded, No evacuations at all. My hotel was opposite the Superdome. It was obvious the city had counted on the storm missing them.
A year later, Katrina hit the city which had prepared no better than for Ivan.
The news media had it in for Bush and the lies were notorious. Bush’s comment to his fool of a FEMA director made it worse but was not the cause of any damage. The city had been misusing funds intended for levies for years, spending the money on casino parking lots.
Mike K (90dfdc) — 10/16/2014 @ 3:58 pmI red the article linked by DRJ about why no travel ban.
MD in Philly (f9371b) — 10/16/2014 @ 4:09 pmIt seems to me to be largely beside the point, if we make a travel ban, supplies and help can’t get there….
um, I think we could let planes go in, flight crews not eat at the Monrovia café while they are there, and come home safely.
The best reason that I’ve seen is that if we can’t monitor people we know are coming in, then people will find other ways to get in,
and while that is true, maybe it is a reminder why we should enforce our borders-
oops, can’t do that
If people are forced to find obscure ways to get into the US, it will at least increase the number of days they use in getting here.
MD in Philly (f9371b) — 10/16/2014 @ 4:11 pmThough we do not want it to break out in Mexico City.
maybe every other country in the Western hemisphere will block travel.
I’m awaiting sammeh’s informed comment. He’s the Vox of Patterico.
hadoop (f7d5ba) — 10/16/2014 @ 4:17 pmPham’s boyfriend’s yay or nay on Ebola result has not been made public. It seems to me they should know by now.
SarahW (267b14) — 10/16/2014 @ 4:27 pmDuncans family is not in the clear even after the 19th, because they were stuck in an apartment full of contagion even after his departure to the last place he would ever visit.
Last I heard they remained in an undisclosed donated house in a gated community; I suppose it’s possible they could sneak off, but where would they go?
SarahW (267b14) — 10/16/2014 @ 4:29 pm#119… that’s a good one, red!
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 10/16/2014 @ 4:30 pmIf someone, a native Liberian, is trying to get to the US with ebola, ostensibly they are coming to get their Ebola treated here. No more risky than Duncan, who had a visa for all the good it did anyone.
SarahW (267b14) — 10/16/2014 @ 4:32 pmMD in Philly wrote:
At what?
At diminishing the stature of the US in the world, undermining Constitutional rule, facilitating an increasingly centralized economy, making more people dependent on the federal government for their daily existence.
Precisely. Each and every one of these accomplishments has been a “Progressive” goal for the last century. Where Woodrow Wilson and generations of Democratic pols have failed, Obama has succeeded. Why do you think Obama continues to poll well among the Democrats? Obama has put them over the top in a way no one else has come close to. He was and continues to be the wunderkind they have all been waiting for. Gwyneth Paltrow was speaking for almost 40 percent of the population and the lion’s share of Democrats when she said, “It would be wonderful if we were able to give this man all of the power that he needs to pass the things that he needs to pass,”
Success is the one thing – the only thing – that truly distinguishes Barack Obama from his liberal Democratic predecessors. Give him his due.
Doesn’t anybody get this? Is it just me?
ThOR (130453) — 10/16/2014 @ 4:33 pmbobathome 105,
You’ve given this more in-depth thought than I. I look at it from a process standpoint. I think all professionals consider the downside of each decision in the sense we all hope for the best and consider and plan for the worst but, in general, what I’ve noticed is:
1. Lawyers make decisions primarily on the ultimate worst-case scenario(s), e.g., “What are the worst things that can happen and how do we avoid them?”, because they generally don’t get second-chances at developing and implementing a legal strategy. That means the results often aren’t the best outcomes for clients but that’s primarily because, in rare exceptions like an open-and-shut criminal case, the goal is to keep the client from experiencing the worst outcomes.
2. Doctors make decisions primarily based on statistics, e.g., “How likely it is that a specific set of symptoms are the result of a specific disease?” Doctors treat patients as if they have the most likely disease that fits those symptoms, which is why people who have rare or unusual disorders have the worst outcomes. For example, I don’t think ebola was high on the radar of the ER doctors at Texas Presbyterian Hospital who screened Duncan, but it’s on every doctor’s radar now because the statistical probability of those symptoms being caused by ebola has gone up.
3. Engineers make decisions linearly, e.g., they take one step at a time, typically because the equipment and processes they deal with are highly complex. It’s very difficult to predict and factor in every variable in multiple steps, so engineers evaluate each step very carefully — concentrating on the pros and cons of each specific decision.
I’ve decided there isn’t a best way to think and, for the most part, each approach works well for each profession. Nevertheless, it’s still interesting to me to see these approaches play out and I think we’ve seen that in our discussions regarding ebola.
DRJ (a83b8b) — 10/16/2014 @ 4:35 pmhe’s feckless reckless
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 10/16/2014 @ 4:37 pman incompetent ninny
and resist we much
We all get it, ThOR. Why do you not see that we get it?
DRJ (a83b8b) — 10/16/2014 @ 4:38 pm“Why do you think Obama continues to poll well among the Democrats?”
Because he’s a Democrat.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 10/16/2014 @ 4:42 pmObama is such an empty suit, it’s not only his supporters who find him a blank screen to project their notions on. His opponents do too. Seems logical. There’s no “there” there, except golf, Hollywood, and Hamptons on the taxpayers’ dime.
nk (dbc370) — 10/16/2014 @ 4:44 pmBecause focusing antipathy on Obama lets all his fellow travelers off the hook.
And, as the Panetta comments/book demonstrates, Obama will be sacrificed for the good of the cause.
Let’s not be complicit.
ThOR (130453) — 10/16/2014 @ 4:47 pmObama sucks monkey turds and the Democrats should be first in line to tar and feather him for the shame he has brought to their party. I should not say that, thor?
nk (dbc370) — 10/16/2014 @ 4:53 pmJuan Williams sez people dealing with Ebola have made mistakes, nobody’s perfect. I say the federal government doesn’t have the sense the Good Lord gave a squirrel, won’t secure the border against illegal immigration or potential carriers of deadly diseases (even temporarily), treats illegal aliens like they’re royalty, doesn’t give a rip that young parents have children attending schools that allow illegal immigrant children to attend that have crossed our border without the benefit of being screened for infectious diseases, etc., etc., ad nauseum.
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 10/16/2014 @ 4:55 pmYou can say what you like.
But could you get the capitalization scheme right?
It’s ThOR
ThOR (130453) — 10/16/2014 @ 4:55 pmIs that like Yahweh not Jehovah?
nk (dbc370) — 10/16/2014 @ 4:58 pmDemocrats will throw the walking human disaster Obama under the bus in a vain attempt to breathe life into the corpse of their failed ideology… merely a speed bump in their sad and sordid history.
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 10/16/2014 @ 4:59 pmNo.
It’s more like SanDeE.
ThOR (130453) — 10/16/2014 @ 5:01 pmAllan Grayson and Bill Maher are calling for travel bans. These countries offer us nothing economically.
That press conference was a new height in surrealism. Obama may be drunk or high or both. We need a travel ban and a secure border to protect Americans, and this MORON thinks appointing an “Ebola Czar” will make us all dumb and happy.
Spare the time after the Lewinsky mess I cannot recall any President ever sounding stranger. And for all Clinton’s faults, he never lost his mental faculties. Obama is detached, past 3rd person. Simply for all those who tell us the Dear Leader is the smartest man ion the room, he must stay in singularly-populated rooms. The man is exposed as an idiot here.
Bugg (f0dbc7) — 10/16/2014 @ 5:04 pmPeople get attached to their local Democrats. You know, like the little boy who didn’t want Old Yeller shot even after he got rabies. Republicans have a better chance at swing seats with “Obama’s policies on the ballot”.
nk (dbc370) — 10/16/2014 @ 5:10 pmthe rest of the story, re yesterday’s scoop:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/10/16/insiders-blame-rove-for-covering-up-iraq-s-real-wmd.html
narciso (ee1f88) — 10/16/2014 @ 5:15 pm==Because focusing antipathy on Obama lets all his fellow travelers off the hook.==
I understand and agree with ThOR’s point that Obama’s administration has advanced the Progressive long march to a greater degree than any president in decades–and that just discrediting Obama or getting rid of him and his democratic hacks through elections and resignations does not magically solve or turn around this nation’s problems when an increasing percentage of the media and the electorate hold ideology and “values” that would have seemed impossible to most of us even 2 decades ago. But where I will challenge ThOR is his apparent interpretation that it does no good to make Obama personally the boogeyman or the poster boy for all that is going wrong. IMO, whether Barack Obama’s incompetent, or venal, brilliant, or stupid, or is merely willing to be used/manipulated by others is almost beside the point. He’s the president and the worst one in my lifetime. Our nation is in shambles from liberalism. Ideas in the abstract are always hard to fight against. So therefore the people who publicly exemplify the bad ideas, (and cause the poor results those ideas bore) have to be fought against as the named enemy. In other words Barack Obama is the necessary surrogate for denouncing the ideas themselves.
elissa (8fdbf9) — 10/16/2014 @ 5:55 pmDemocRAT operatives w/ press passes…
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 10/16/2014 @ 6:00 pmSometimes things don’t make sense, narciso.
MD in Philly (f9371b) — 10/16/2014 @ 6:03 pmI still wonder what made David Kay change his tune midstream.
Yes, as elissa says, since it has been pointed out that the real problem is an electorate that would elect and reelect Obama,
MD in Philly (f9371b) — 10/16/2014 @ 6:07 pmmaking Obama “Exhibit A” in showing the problems of liberalism might be a good way to go.
Yes, in one way get rid of him as president and the mindset remains,
unless we can show guilt by association.
As Rush has pointed out, everyone Obama puts into office, follows his agenda, there are rare exceptions like McCrystal and Petraeus but they get weeded out, this was the converse of W,
narciso (ee1f88) — 10/16/2014 @ 6:24 pmwhen Powell, O’Neil, Pillar, Armitage, worked against his policies,
i only steal the best stuff… 😎
redc1c4 (4db2c8) — 10/16/2014 @ 6:28 pm#103… more like Lazyazzitis, AZBob
Colonel Haiku (0b084b) — 10/16/2014 @ 6:29 pmI am still waiting for that “Heckuva job, Brownie” moment here.
Incompetence like this is potentially world-changing. It can get rid of all that surplus population in the use, reduce the need for energy, food, housing, carbon emissions, etc., which are all things that Obama and his friends want.
I think they see this as “win/win” for statists and greens.
“The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of 10,000 is a statistic.”
WarEagle82 (b18ccf) — 10/16/2014 @ 6:35 pmThe four people sharing the apartment with him (and using the same toilet) are not as yet ill.
Has that been publicly verified? I’m under the impression that no official source and, in turn, credible part of the media have said anything about Duncan’s family members, one way or the other. But if they, in fact, are not infected with the microbe, then that should help ratchet down public nervousness.
By his own lights, Obama has been very successful. I think Patterico would agree.
Yea, based on the “goddamn America” blueprint first outlined by Obama’s buddy, Jeremiah Wright, and embraced by Obama until controversy forced him to part company (but only superficially) with his former pastor.
Speaking of loony liberalism, I glanced at a chain email the other day penned by staunch liberals/Democrats arguing why it was WRONG — WRONG, THEY SAY! — to castigate Obama, whether the criticism is from the left, center or right. Of course, the leftist authors of the message reserved the bulk of their ire for conservatives/Republicans/Tea Party. But the rationalizing and excuse making was so extreme and ridiculous, that even more than a few non-zombie liberals reading that email should have winced.
Mark (c160ec) — 10/16/2014 @ 6:40 pmAce takes it to NPR, et all…
in case some of you actually don’t visit AoSHQ on a regular basis.
(like every 15 minutes or so… %-)
redc1c4 (6d1848) — 10/16/2014 @ 6:43 pmIt helps when you talk to somebody who knows what they’re talking about. Who has to pass a test every year on communicable diseases precautions. Who has been to Africa and seen, in a “good” hospital, fifteen patients per room on bare mattresses, with one bathroom for the entire floor, and rats running in and out from under the beds.
Maybe the snow job about the “protocols” is not coming from the CDC but from Texas Presbyterian and/or the nurses. Maybe treatment in the United States versus treatment in Liberia is like a space shuttle versus a dugout canoe, and maybe the nurses will survive because of that. Maybe Mr. Duncan will remain the only Ebola fatality in the United States. We’ll see.
nk (dbc370) — 10/16/2014 @ 6:53 pmIf the military has protocol for disease, perhaps the white house could borrow it for us?
mg (31009b) — 10/16/2014 @ 7:03 pmI think we are dealing with a Tom Sowell “Vision of the Anointed” kind of problem. I believe that many people today, and progressives appear to be particularly prone to this, are pathologically narcissistic. It’s not about how they feel taking a position, it is about how they feel about themselves, taking a position.
Because these types (and there are many on the Right, again) are completely convinced that they are correct on a cosmic, almost theological scale.
I saw a good friend of mine, an epidemiologist, recently post a meme on Facebook “The Americans who contracted ebola did so helping others. So Republicans, you do not have to worry.” I stopped myself from pointing how (i) how awful it is to politicize tragedy, (ii) the response will simply be the clusterfark that CDC and the administration have demonstrated, and (iii) such an insult not simply to people of the Right I know who DO help others…but even my friend’s parents, whom I know are right of center. And who help out the poor far, far more than my friend, to be honest.
My friend isn’t thinking. She is bumper-sticker reacting. Since she sees herself as cosmically “good,” people who oppose her must be cosmically “bad.”
Finally, and most fundamentally, folks on the Left know this administration is all messed up. They absolutely know. But they can never, ever admit it…because that would be admitting that THEY were duped.
And they are the smart ones. Just ask them. They’ll never admit it, no matter what happens.
It’s so sad, all around.
Simon Jester (c8876d) — 10/16/2014 @ 7:09 pmyour friend is a moron (not the good kind), no matter how “educated” she is, Mr Jester.
redc1c4 (589173) — 10/16/2014 @ 7:14 pmNo, the CDC farked things up, and now Pham and Vinson are facing these circumstances,
narciso (ee1f88) — 10/16/2014 @ 7:19 pmOdds are the first two Americans who got it were Republicans, even the radical extreme pro-life types at that.
MD in Philly (f9371b) — 10/16/2014 @ 7:21 pmwell he’s long since removed all doubt:
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2014/10/dude-former-obama-spokesman-tommy-vietor-mocks-christians-over-ebola-criticism/
narciso (ee1f88) — 10/16/2014 @ 7:24 pmSome of you may have seen this televised interview with Dr. Brantley but if not…it’s pretty good and the Dr. is quite impressive.
He is A positive. And he says he thinks it’s “bizarre” (as in lucky miraculous) that he and Pham, Sacra, and Ashoka Mukpo are all A+ and would be able to safely take his blood plasma. He also discusses the experimental drug he received and cautioned that it is not/was not a slam dunk decision to give or to take an experimental drug being used for the first time in humans. It apparently has some scary possibilities besides “cure”. He says he thought he was going to die anyway and so taking the drug was for him worth the risk. That suggests someone with less severe infection might think twice about the drug even if it were more widely available.
We know that Duncan was not a blood type that was compatible with Brantley. This interview did not mention what blood type nurse Vinson is.
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/ebola-survivor-dr-kent-brantly-interview-26243602
elissa (8fdbf9) — 10/16/2014 @ 7:28 pmWhy do I keep thinking OHSA? It’s hard to access federal regulations. Does OHSA have them only for sharps (bloodborne pathogens)? I know they have them for those.
nk (dbc370) — 10/16/2014 @ 7:30 pmThe Ace article is pretty good.
MD in Philly (f9371b) — 10/16/2014 @ 7:39 pmBut once again a speculation is made where the obvious is overlooked.
Maybe the virus has mutated to be more contagious, but that is not at all necessary to explain the phenomenon with this outbreak.
All previous outbreaks were relatively easy to contain because they were in isolated and sparsely populated areas.
This outbreak made it to a city relatively quickly, far outstripping the manpower available to try to contain it.
Actually, redc1c4, my friend is a bright and hardworking woman who has gone out of her way to help me, and stand by me during difficult times.
But I never, ever discuss politics with her.
As I wrote above, she marinates in this kind of thinking, and never ever considers how it sounds “the other way.”
It’s a good exercise. How would any of us feel when the shoe is on the other foot?
I work in academia, and I get to hear how “stupid” people on the Right are all of the time. I grit my teeth because I need my job. The only good—and I find it to be valuable—is to consider how it sounds to be so nasty and judgemental and snarky toward others. It’s why I don’t like name calling in politics. I hate it when folks on the Left call people I think are good and kind and hard working bad names. How can I think it is okay when “my” side does it?
That’s just my point of view. It’s not a common one, I find.
So, no, my friend is not a moron. She is thoughtless, and does not consider the Reciprocity Rule: how she would feel if people spoke of her the way she speaks of others.
Again, YMMV.
Simon Jester (c8876d) — 10/16/2014 @ 7:41 pmSimon, I hear you. I have a number of liberal friends and professional acquaintances whose presence in my life I treasure. They are “with me” for theater and music events, book discussions, charity drives, animal welfare activities, short road trips, weddings, funerals, etc. But there is really only one of them (we’ve known each other since college and have been through quite a lot of life’s experiences together both good and sad) with whom I dare discuss politics. And then gingerly and carefully-but for the most part meaningfully and without rancor. Fortunately, I have many conservative friends as well, with whom I can be comfortable discussing everything.
elissa (8fdbf9) — 10/16/2014 @ 7:48 pmHere we go. Page 5. http://www.cdc.gov/hai/pdfs/ppe/ppeslides6-29-04.pdf CDC recommends, OHSA imposes.
nk (dbc370) — 10/16/2014 @ 7:49 pmVery true, elissa.
The hardest part for me is one of my oldest friends, who out and out lies about his past. I grew up with him. We went door to door for Richard Nixon in 1972. He was always saying incredibly racists and sexist things, mostly for shock effect. In college he was a drunk frat boy. Then he went to law school, married a San Francisco lady from a well to do liberal family…and suddenly his whole back history has changed.
He claims that his family took him to LBJ’s inauguration in 1964. Well, we were in first grade at the time, and school started early enough that this was extremely unlikely. Not to mention his family was as poor as my own.
Later he said the most awful things about Sarah Palin, while claiming to be a feminist…well, you know the rest. He thinks Grayson is brilliant. Jeez.
So I had to make a choice. Call him on his lies, and lose a friend, or shut up. So I shut up, and focused on the positive. I don’t have many friends, I find. So I need to preserve those I have.
But it is irritating. Sigh.
I continue to think it is this weird narcissism.
Simon Jester (c8876d) — 10/16/2014 @ 7:57 pmSimon Jester 158,
I accept what you say because it makes sense, even though I have limited first-hand experience with liberals in my daily life. I don’t demonize them and I can even empathize, but why do you say your liberal friends and acquaintances know Obama and his Administration are all messed up?
My feeling is that, even if most liberals believe Obama has messed up, that doesn’t mean they think liberalism doesn’t work. The solution is still right even if the messenger failed — something we hear Obama say when his policies don’t work out. Don’t you think the liberals you know feel the same way, or do you think some may be beginning to doubt the message?
DRJ (a83b8b) — 10/16/2014 @ 8:07 pmnk,
So Texas Presbyterian Hospital may be getting daily OSHA inspections for the awhile.
DRJ (a83b8b) — 10/16/2014 @ 8:11 pmIf the two nurses recover, Texas Presbyterian might not be all that bad of a Pearl Harbor after all.
Right now, one of my Facebook friends, a doctor, is joking that if they put an Ebola center in his hospital, the only way he’ll see patients there is through his apartment window 4.5 miles away.
nk (dbc370) — 10/16/2014 @ 8:39 pmFriends are overrated where improperly defined.
gary gulrud (46ca75) — 10/16/2014 @ 8:41 pm“I continue to think it is this weird narcissism.”
Simon Jester
I’ve had similar experiences to Jester’s and I find them disconcerting. I don’t know what to make of the cult-ish beliefs and deep dishonesty of those I hold dear. I think they are driven by a desire to fit in and add meaning to their lives, though there certainly seems to be an abundance of narcissism – and yes, they see themselves as the anointed. I find it reassuring that at least of few of my left wing friends will guardedly admit to their concern about the current state of affairs or now simply refuse to talk politics.
ThOR (130453) — 10/16/2014 @ 8:42 pmA friend is somebody who helps you move and comes to help you change a flat in the rain. Putting up your bail is nice too. Voting the way you do? Who cares? Let’s be real. Your friend and that politician that you may be arguing with him about are as close to you, or as far from you, respectively, in value as they are in distance.
nk (dbc370) — 10/16/2014 @ 8:51 pm172. Epidemiologic modeling of the contacts in the pipeline predict up to two dozen cases by the end of the month.
The rate of contagion is 2.4, i.e., on average one case produces 2.4 more following an incubation period, e.g., 42 days.
D.C. itself is going to get what it deserves.
gary gulrud (46ca75) — 10/16/2014 @ 8:52 pm163. O type, universal donor, is more common among African-Americans than the average.
gary gulrud (46ca75) — 10/16/2014 @ 9:00 pm177. Correction, O negative is the universal donor.
gary gulrud (46ca75) — 10/16/2014 @ 9:03 pmAccording to this ABC report, Brantly’s blood type is A+ and Duncan’s blood type was B+. Brantly gave blood plasma to Ashoka Mukpo, Dr. Richard Sacra and Nina Pham, but he hasn’t been asked to donate blood plasma to Amber Vinson — which suggests, like Duncan, they aren’t a match. If so, perhaps Vinson is a match for one of the other 2 Ebola survivors, both of whom were treated at Emory where Vinson was taken yesterday.
DRJ (a83b8b) — 10/16/2014 @ 9:21 pmtherein lies the rub, Simon, their side will deride, defame, and most importantly propagandize,
and ours is too polite to point it out
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-nigeria-stopped-ebola-2014-10
what was that line about democracy dying with a wimper,
narciso (ee1f88) — 10/16/2014 @ 9:33 pmI’m sure the article is largely beside the point. All the excuses this administration comes up with not only are, but seem deliberately obtuse. Such as the notion that if we implement a ban on commercial travel, we wouldn’t be able to send aid. Of course, anyone of average intelligence could devise such a scheme. In fact, people have done exactly that in the past. We, as a nation have done exactly that.
We know it. And the truth is, they know it, too. They’re not as stupid as they’re willing to sound.
The excuses this administration comes up with aren’t designed for people like us. They’re designed to give ammunition to typical Obama voters who can be convinced that requiring a voter ID is anholy burden that is just too complicated for normal people. Such people aren’t likely to have a passport, are they? So they aren’t going to know, as Dr. Frieden insisted today before Congress, that a Liberian can’t simply lie to US immigration authorities when he arrives in NY on a flight from Heathrow about living in London for three years when his passport will reveal he only went through UK passport control two days before getting on the flight to the US.
But, again, if you’re still an Obama supporter and think a voter ID law will mean minorities can’t vote because IDs must be something you have to be rich and white to obtain, then surely the idea of passport controls will be a mystery to you, as well.
Still, why lie so obviously when many of us know what they claim can’t work, has and does every time it’s been tried. Then I realized Obama has told us why. We only think it can work. We’ve been seduced by an illusion. In reality, we’ve only been making things worse when we revert to the “tried and true.” So he has to talk down to us in terms that he thinks our primitive, lizard brains can understand. Barack Obama has told us that very clearly many times in the past.
We’ve been doing everything wrong. It’s no secret that Barack Obama hates the suburbs. He thinks the inner cities are poor because rich whites stole the wealth, then left. That’s why he his agenda includes “regionalism.” You can’t get rich in Chicago and leave his tax base. No, if you move out of town (and he has irons in the fire to stop that from happening, too, using excuses such as “sustainable growth,” “global warming,” etc., to make “suburban sprawl” as effectively illegal as building a coal-fired power plant but until he can make that happen) you’ll still be paying Chicago taxes. Also part of his “smart growth” initiatives will be a requirement to have “affordable housing” included in suburban planning. Yes, the feds will be micromanaging down to that level (in the sixth year of the Obamunist era can that come as a shock). You won’t be allowed to flee to the suburbs to escape inner city problems. Requiring that city planners bake including inner city problems into the suburban cake will ensure that. If he can make them follow you wherever you go, then he figures he can make you care about them and will more willingly redistribute your wealth back to the Chicago you tried to leave.
Or L.A. or Oakland or New York or Houston or wherever.
He thinks of America as one giant, affluent, suburban community. We’re only rich because we’ve plundered everyone else. We must be made to realize that. But we never will as long as we can hide behind our powerful military and our borders, as suburbanites hide behind their police forces and their community’s gates. Which allow us to kid ourselves into thinking these problems which are really our fault aren’t ours to clean up and address at the “root causes.”
This is why, say, he’s not listening to the joint chiefs when it comes to ISIS. They’re part of the problem; they look at history and tell him how to defeat ISIS. When he says there is no military solution, he means it. Naturally career military types think there is such a thing as victory. That’s exactly one of the habits he needs to break us of; thinking there can be. He has no intention of defeating ISIS because when we do, we just continue the cycle of creating more and ever worsening enemies. These are Rev. Jeremiah Wrights chickens that keep coming home to roost.
And you are correct; oops, we can’t enforce our borders. Hiding in our gated community called America is just another of those bad habits that he has to break us of. Things like borders and travel bans just mean we’ll keep plundering the third world, causing all kinds of misery including among other malignant effects disease epidemics that rage out of control because we’ve stolen their wealth leaving them helpless. We’ll just keep doing that if we continue the cycle of creating more and ever worsening epidemics. So, we have to be exposed to the misery we create until we learn to stop doing it. We’ll be forced to “care” about what we’re doing to Africa or Central America because he won’t let us continue our bad habit of insulating ourselves behind borders, and then we’ll tend to his root causes, he thinks.
He can’t explain all this to us. We’re too stupid. So he’ll have to show us how we’ve been doing everything wrong our entire history by bitterly clinging to our undeserved wealth (we want all the wrong things, but nothing a little wealth redistribution can’t fix), our military might, and our borders. His way is better; if only we were capable of appreciating it.
Remember that when he or John Kerry lecture the world about how people like Putin in the Ukraine or ISIS in Syria and Iraq are acting so 19th century, which isn’t how enlightened post-national citizens of the world ought to act in the 21st century.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9u5g9DL_Kc
He’s talking to us, too. We really can’t be allowed to go back to our brutish old-fashioned ways of dealing with Ebola or ISIS. Don’t we know it’s the 21st century? Apparently not, so they’ve got to lie to us. Badly, if that’s what it takes to drag us kicking and screaming into the 21st century.
Steve57 (4d34f4) — 10/16/2014 @ 11:00 pmWow, Steve. I think you’ve gotten inside Obama’s mind, and it’s frightening.
DRJ (a83b8b) — 10/16/2014 @ 11:07 pmA big part of intelligence analysis is discerning patterns, DRJ.
Steve57 (4d34f4) — 10/16/2014 @ 11:12 pmSuccessful analysis.
Steve57 (4d34f4) — 10/16/2014 @ 11:13 pmDRJ #170: I do think my progressive campus pals know the Emperor has no clothes. And I can tell for the same reasons that the students know I am not a Leftist—I have had a lot of students come to see me and say they are not progressivist, and know I am not, because of what I don’t say.
When GWB was President, I was treated to a near constant barrage of snickers, bizarre blame-game terminology, and nasty language regarding the gentleman. When BHO was elected, there was a constant hubbub of “one of us” being elected. The weird hero worship quickly devolved into abject hypocrisy. The chattering was constant. And as things slowly became bad, how those evil Republicans were responsible.
But for the past six or seven months, nothing. My progressive colleagues no long talk about BHO, at all. In fact, they are pretty quiet about politics these days. The only bashing of Republicans I hear is about how “stupid” and “anti-science” they are. Which I find amusing.
I think they know. They just can’t admit it. Oh, don’t worry. They will vote “D” no matter what. But their “hero” duped them.
Simon Jester (ccec60) — 10/16/2014 @ 11:39 pm==He thinks the inner cities are poor because rich whites stole the wealth, then left. That’s why he his agenda includes “regionalism.” You can’t get rich in Chicago and leave his tax base. No, if you move out of town (and he has irons in the fire to stop that from happening, too, using excuses such as “sustainable growth,” “global warming,” etc., to make “suburban sprawl” as effectively illegal as building a coal-fired power plant but until he can make that happen) you’ll still be paying Chicago taxes. Also part of his “smart growth” initiatives will be a requirement to have “affordable housing” included in suburban planning. Yes, the feds will be micromanaging down to that level (in the sixth year of the Obamunist era can that come as a shock). You won’t be allowed to flee to the suburbs to escape inner city problems. Requiring that city planners bake including inner city problems into the suburban cake will ensure that. If he can make them follow you wherever you go, then he figures he can make you care about them and will more willingly redistribute your wealth back to the Chicago you tried to leave.==
Steve57, could you provide links to some of the data points you have used to formulate the conclusions you’ve articulated here? Thanks. Not that I am saying you’re wrong, but I think since you’ve previously stated you’re not very familiar with Chicago you may be unaware of, or overlooking, recent trends in both outward and inward migration within the Chicago region. I can’t speak to the other cities you allude to in your post because I am not as familiar with them as I am Chicago.
elissa (d8d954) — 10/16/2014 @ 11:40 pmAnd I think Steve is pretty accurate in his post. Keep in mind that BHO has grown up marinating in rich white socialism. So he is essentially an academic in terms of mindset. The facts don’t matter as much as the High Concept.
After all, our Communist pals here in the US are not dissuaded by the horrific track record of Marxist nonsense. It just has not been carried out correctly. I cannot emphasize how academic this attitude is. Fact doesn’t matter. The narrative does.
I would add only one thing. There is an inherent aristocratic attitude behind all this. We will be forced to give up all kinds of things…but not the decision makers. They will get richer and more powerful. After all, wasn’t POTUS just decrying “the rich” while at a fundraiser at a billionaire’s home?
The Left loves aristocracy. And they are getting it.
A good example is how often I hear on campus that the faculty needs to be “more diverse.” And I hear this, generally, from white people from well to do backgrounds (I call them Marxists in 300 dollar shoes). Notice they aren’t giving up their jobs. They want other people to do that.
“It’s not fascism when I do it” seems to be the mantra.
Dangerous times indeed.
Simon Jester (ccec60) — 10/16/2014 @ 11:51 pmElissa, it isn’t a matter of being familiar with Chicago. I was using Chicago as shorthand for “Any City USA” simply because he’s from there. It’s a matter of being familiar with Barack Obama. His plans to control where and how people live are part of his domestic agenda and apply equally nationwide.
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2009/04/president-obamas-new-plan-to-decide-where-americans-live-and-how-they-travel
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/312807/burn-down-suburbs-stanley-kurtz
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-15/obama-will-use-nixon-era-law-to-fight-climate-change.html
The latter may not seem to belong to this group at first, but consider:
Using global warming as an excuse, he’s simply going to make it too expensive to commute from your bedroom communities to your job.
As discussed here:
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/343242/obamas-plans-suburbs-and-how-stop-them-stanley-kurtz
And he has an “all of the above” strategy for implementing his agenda.
Steve57 (4d34f4) — 10/17/2014 @ 12:34 amPrecisely. As Victor David Hanson noted in his post at “Works and Days” recently, never has a President decried the excesses of the super rich more than this President. And never have we had a President who so obviously enjoyed and felt entitled to the perks and the pleasures of the very lifestyle he denounces.
VDH observes this isn’t rank hypocrisy as it first appears. It is a medieval exception. He deserves that billionaire lifestyle precisely because he denounces it and intends to deny it to others who, like America itself, don’t deserve their wealth because they gained it illicitly.
Steve57 (4d34f4) — 10/17/2014 @ 12:43 amForgot. The stick the feds will be using to micromanage local development won’t just be fake concern over nonexistent global warming.
http://www.huduser.org/portal/affht_pt.html
They make it sound so benign. But dancing to the feds diversity tune is, as noted in the bolded text, a requirement. And as Al Armendariz of the EPA bluntly put it in a different context, when regulatory agencies randomly crucify the non-compliant to make examples of them, they tend to get compliance.
Any deviance from HUD’s diversity targets will by default be considered a result of deliberately discrimination.
Steve57 (4d34f4) — 10/17/2014 @ 1:01 am#181, Steve: You are definitely on to something. I live in a suburb of Seattle and the local government is focused mainly on providing housing for low (and zero) income individuals at the expense of everyone else. And this is done in part because of the Federal subsidies, and also out of fear of losing what they currently get if they depart from the grand plan. I mentioned a week or two ago that we couldn’t even fix a road damaged by an earthquake without massive Federal help, but of course the county can spend billions of dollars on an elevated railway, all the while complaining that they don’t have the 100 million dollars needed to keep bus service at current levels. The school system is dysfunctional, and worse, it takes its lead from the Seattle school district which is an abomination. When we lived in Seattle we knew wealthy parents (at our private school) who complained that the forced bussing in Seattle would have worked if only “they” had thought to prevent the middle class from fleeing the city. And this wasn’t said in an ironic or satirical fashion. They meant it.
And it isn’t just Obama. We have a system of teachers colleges (now grandly called Universities) in this state that are little more than centers of progressive indoctrination. When I visited Eastern Washington University 15 years ago for a summer camp for one of our kids, I discovered that the streets on the campus have names like Du Bois, but these names don’t seem to find their way onto maps of the campus for use by the general public. Presumably these “secret” names will become more prominent as Obama’s remaking of America progresses.
My assessment is that our governmental institutions at all levels have become incapable of functioning without the guidance provided by Federal rules. ArtDeco seems to think this proves I am hopelessly ignorant, or maybe just super stupid. Every year or so I watch a county crew spend three hours cleaning out a French drain in front of my house. The crew is diverse, and they are pleasant fellows. Four watch while one works very slowly with a small shovel. I clean it out the rest of the time spending no more than 15 minutes. These gentlemen of the county are not going to be much of resource if important work needs to be done. I expect that their real function is to demonstrate compliance with some crazy Federal rule. Far too many of our governments are like a patient receiving life support. They can’t breathe, feed, or clean themselves without outside assistance. Their only purpose is to obey imperial dictates.
bobathome (5ccbd8) — 10/17/2014 @ 5:08 am==Elissa, it isn’t a matter of being familiar with Chicago. I was using Chicago as shorthand for “Any City USA”==
LOL. Well OK, Steve57. Using Chicago “as shorthand” is always dangerous when I’m around. I thought everyone was aware of this! 🙂 Along with others I, too, think you make some good observations about liberals and their hopes for the future which you’ve collected from various opinion pieces. The sharing of real estate tax dollars for school funding is one example to be sure. But Howie Kurtz predicted some things back in his 2009 city planning piece which are already dead in the water. Not all regional planning is bad. And “inner city” means different things and connotes different things to different people.
So, sound the alarm and carry the flag, but just be careful with the gross generalizations and sweeping statements is all I’m saying, OK? That’s exactly the kind of thing that gets “great thinkers” like Hawaii’s Barack Obama himself into trouble when he later smacks up against reality.
elissa (9cc421) — 10/17/2014 @ 6:29 amWhat kinds of regional planning initiatives have worked well for Chicago?
DRJ (a83b8b) — 10/17/2014 @ 6:33 amThe Burnham Plan was effective to help Chicago build its infrastructure but it seems like successor initiatives have focused more on social/ideological/progressive projects, not only in Chicago but all over the country.
DRJ (a83b8b) — 10/17/2014 @ 6:37 amThere aren’t any proposed or operational regional initiatives that have either worked or not worked in my neck ‘o the woods as far as I know. DRJ. (Unless you count an occasional road extension to alleviate specific congestion or the pipe dream hopes that some who own land down there have had for a third airport to be built in Peotone.) That was kind of my point.
elissa (9cc421) — 10/17/2014 @ 6:53 amAw fer …. I’m very happy that parking in downtown Chicago is $30.00 for the first half hour. When I worked there in the early ’80s, in a law office, my shirt collars were black by the end of the day from air pollution. I’d wipe my forehead with a white handkerchief and it would come away black. Now, you can’t even smell the automobile exhausts during the morning rush hour. Chicago has a very good balance of business/commercial districts; tree-lined neighborhoods; and first, second and third ring suburbs. There is no place you cannot get to using only public transportation. Would you prefer the Manhattan or Los Angeles models? Don’t answer, I don’t want to hear it unless you live here. Leave Chicago alone. It has a lot of problems, but being the most livable big city in the United States makes up for most of them.
nk (dbc370) — 10/17/2014 @ 7:02 amGuess you beat me to it, and in a nicer way, elissa.
nk (dbc370) — 10/17/2014 @ 7:04 am181. Nice, now just tie in the antiChrist angle and you’re finished.
195, 196. Nothing buttery, now. Provincialism isn’t confined to France.
Darwin shall not be mocked.
gary gulrud (46ca75) — 10/17/2014 @ 7:17 amChicago is a beautiful city. To me, this discussion is about progressive policies that try to make cities more appealing and liveable but usually don’t. All cities suffer from those policies, both here in Texas and around the country.
In my neck of the woods, the shorthand for that phenomenon is Keep Austin Weird — a PR effort that started in the early 2000s but has its roots in the 1970s. Academic and political elites in Austin, Texas, have adopted that slogan in part to celebrate their efforts in telling people how to live and molding Austin to be the new urban paradise they want. (That’s about the same time Austin residents starting moving to the suburbs.) I lived in Austin for years and love it, and sometimes I even like their crazy attempts at urban planning — just as I’m sure you love your city and its quirks. But I’m happy to leave Chicago alone, and I apologize for offending both of you.
DRJ (a83b8b) — 10/17/2014 @ 7:18 amI like the Chicago commenters here. You add a lot, especially for me since I come here to get views that I don’t get in my community. I’m heartened to see that you feel the same pride in your city that I feel for my home.
DRJ (a83b8b) — 10/17/2014 @ 7:21 am199. You are such a dear, glad to have you back.
gary gulrud (46ca75) — 10/17/2014 @ 7:29 amit’s a big city machine, could be Baltimore, Los Angeles, New York, I split te he difference and call him ‘Alinsky’s Sorcerer’s apprentice,’ he’s applying his rules, to a world that operates by others
narciso (ee1f88) — 10/17/2014 @ 7:30 amThanks, DRJ and nk.
elissa (9cc421) — 10/17/2014 @ 7:33 amMy assessment is that our governmental institutions at all levels have become incapable of functioning without the guidance provided by Federal rules. ArtDeco seems to think this proves I am hopelessly ignorant, or maybe just super stupid.
No, just given to making strange and arbitrary judgments. Again, about 80% of all public employees work for state and local government. Why you think civil engineers, town planners, police officers, fire fighters, and certified public accountants don’t know what to do with themselves absent guidelines and edicts issued in the federal apparat only you know.
Art Deco (ee8de5) — 10/17/2014 @ 7:37 amYou did not offend me, DRJ. I live on a mountainside for eleven years. (I’m not sure that part of my limp is not from one leg being shorter than the other. 😉 Then I lived with a bus stop under my window for 25 years. Then I lived on the 28th floor of a highrise for ten years. Then I lived in a suburb designed in 1858 by the same guy who designed Central Park for nine years. Now, I’m back to a bus stop under my window with a men’s halfway house across the street and a women’s addiction recovery home halfway up the block. Chicago grows on you. On the other hand, I asked my daughter how she liked Manhattan and her answer was “Awesome!” But they were at Park Avenue and 39th, and only for three days.
nk (dbc370) — 10/17/2014 @ 7:42 am*lived*
nk (dbc370) — 10/17/2014 @ 7:43 amNK – I won’t say anything about Chicago, because I’ve never been there. But I consider NY to be *very* livable, particularly areas like Inwood (in far uptown Manhattan), Prospect Heights (in Brooklyn), and Astoria or Jackson Heights (in Queens). 🙂
aphrael (af3e66) — 10/17/2014 @ 7:55 amSteve57 is on track with reurbanization proposals by liberals. I’ve attended a couple of lectures by think tanks/institutes on what they see coming down the pike. It’s a lot easier to control people when they’re huddled together in cities rather than scattered all over the place and able to move about at will. Getting us to European level gas prices should help the progressive goal of eliminating the U.S. car culture.
I too was thrown for a temporary loop by the specific reference to Chicago because we don’t have that fun work in the city, live in the suburbs, pay additional taxes to the city on your earnings that they do in New York, yet.
I worked downtown in the early 1980s and did not have problems with white shirt collars turning black. Perhaps somebody else had hygiene issues.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 10/17/2014 @ 8:02 amPerhaps somebody else had hygiene issues.
Like more concern for them? Or maybe a better memory, old man? I remember the taste of gasoline in the air, too.
nk (dbc370) — 10/17/2014 @ 8:07 amTHX 1138, it’s a cook book,
narciso (ee1f88) — 10/17/2014 @ 8:08 amTo me, this discussion is about progressive policies that try to make cities more appealing and liveable but usually don’t.
The more liberal or leftist a community or nation becomes, the more crucial are the remaining pillars of that city, region or country. Namely, the demographics of a place in particular.
The scenario is analogous to a family with very permissive, naive, coddle-them-rotten parents who had better have very naturally self-disciplined, self-reliable, innately talented children. Otherwise, pandemonium of severe mediocrity is likely to ensue. So if the kids in that household are average to below average in such categories and, worse of all, prone to bouts of explicit misbehavior (and just about all young people are like that on occasion), watch out!
Mark (c160ec) — 10/17/2014 @ 8:10 amLike I said, aphrael, the daughter thought Midtown was “awesome”. And I have always trusted her instincts since she was a baby.
nk (dbc370) — 10/17/2014 @ 8:12 am“I remember the taste of gasoline in the air, too.”
nk – Were you living and working on Lower Wacker Dr.?
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 10/17/2014 @ 8:18 am#204, Art:
Why you think civil engineers, town planners, police officers, fire fighters, and certified public accountants don’t know what to do with themselves absent guidelines and edicts issued in the federal apparat only you know
Have you seen what they actually do? So much of it is mindless compliance with Federal dictates. The failure of the New Orleans city government was not a surprise to me. These institutions are not self reliant. A Seattle City Councilman when asked by a friend of mine (who eventually was elected to the Council) about potholes replied that he was a Councilman and such things were beneath him. Indeed, declaring nuclear free zones was much more attuned to his pay grade, which at the time, 15 years ago, was amongst the highest in the country. The town planners you mention are beyond a joke. The Big Dig in Boston is their model for “shovel ready”. We have a dig in Seattle that will increase the traffic on I-5 by 20% to 30% once it is completed and the existing waterfront viaduct is torn down. I-5 is currently very overburdened, and it will be impassable in my estimation. The only good news about our dig is that it is stuck, and the project will drag on for many years, postponing the final reckoning. And how could the 80% you mentioned have been so uninvolved as to let the schools collapse. These characters are pretty much all pensioners taking early retirement with 20 years of mandatory coffee breaks between now and then.
This isn’t to say every government in the area is comatose, but the biggest one is, and they control our political future with 80%/20% vote splits favoring the Democrats. And the characters in my small town seem to be preening their feathers and honing their resumes in hopes of a move up to the big time. Bicycle lanes are us.
bobathome (5ccbd8) — 10/17/2014 @ 8:20 am“Why you think civil engineers, town planners, police officers, fire fighters, and certified public accountants don’t know what to do with themselves absent guidelines and edicts issued in the federal apparat only you know.”
Art Deco – What don’t you believe police and fire fighters know how to do without federal guidance? Avoid litigation for racially discriminatory hiring and promotion practices and in the case of police arrests?
In the case of CPA’s national bodies promulgate the rules of practice, which change from year to year, especially for public companies. Are you referring to that guidance?
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 10/17/2014 @ 8:26 amRIP,Elizabeth Pena
narciso (ee1f88) — 10/17/2014 @ 8:29 amBrunswick Building, across from the Daley Center.
nk (dbc370) — 10/17/2014 @ 8:34 am‘up with the new boss, same as the old boss:
http://thefederalist.com/2014/10/17/new-ebola-czar-ron-klain-is-a-long-time-lobbyist-democratic-operative/
narciso (ee1f88) — 10/17/2014 @ 8:59 amHeh. you didn,t expect him to appoint Ron Paul or Rand Paul or anyone in the medical profession did you, narciso?
elissa (9cc421) — 10/17/2014 @ 9:02 amNK – I stay out of midtown as much as I can manage. The buildings are too tall for the city to feel like it has a human scale there (6-8 stories is about as high as I can tolerate residential density), everything is unbelievably crowded by the standards of the rest of the city, and it just generally feels stressful to be there.
This isn’t universally true – I went to midtown to see a movie the other night, for example, and I’m going to dinner there on Monday – but it’s generally true. There are much more pleasant parts of the city (all of which are still denser than, say, the suburbs of San Francisco were).
aphrael (af3e66) — 10/17/2014 @ 9:16 amI’ll bet even money that Mr. Duncan is the only Ebola fatality in the United States. The credit will belong to our medical community and infrastructure, but the SCOAMF will, of course, claim to have killed
nk (dbc370) — 10/17/2014 @ 9:36 ambin LadenEbola.More on the cruise ship quarantine. Aand the Vinson story changes again.
http://nypost.com/2014/10/17/texas-hospital-staffer-in-self-quarantine-on-cruise-ship/
elissa (9cc421) — 10/17/2014 @ 9:42 amdaleyrocks, I never doubted that local government is abraded by the federal government. My complaint (weeks ago) was against his odd assertion that local governments were ‘ornamental’ which he amended and elaborated upon by saying that they would not know how to perform their functions without federal guidance. They might need to consult federal agencies to know how to comply with federal edicts, but those edicts are not integral to their functions (and may impede those functions).
Accountants are licensed by state governments. The state governments typically accept passage of the certification examinations given by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants for licensure.
Art Deco (ee8de5) — 10/17/2014 @ 10:19 amBobathome, I’m tired of arguing with you.
That this or that municipal government louses something up is not an indication that municipal government in general requires federal guidance or that their performance would be improved by federal guidance. Federal agencies, state agencies, and local agencies have institutional cultures which may be good or bad, promoting capable people or promoting people who play office politics well. Supervision of local governments to contain the effects of the most corrupted and incompetent of them can certainly be undertaken by state agencies. You might benefit some from a larger pool of expertise. Then again you might not.
Again, where do you find 90% of the manpower devoted to law enforcement? In the state and local governments, that’s where (about two-thirds local, one third state, with the state biased toward prison guards, no officers). Where do you find > 90% of the civil engineers? In state and local government. There’s a subagency of the Department of Transportation which builds roads on federal land and there’s the Army Corps of Engineers (which has a budget under $10 bn); that’s federal manpower employed in civil engineering for civilian projects.
Where I used to live, you had a small corps of people employed as contractors, consulting engineers, architects, and building inspectors. They all draw off a body of knowledge which courses through higher education, through vocational training, and through trade and professional associations. A large slice of the inspectors work for municipal governments and are employed in enforcing state codes. The architects and consulting engineers are state licensed. The contractors are bound by what underwriters will tolerate. Which of these parties do you fancy cannot function without guidance from federal authorities??
Art Deco (ee8de5) — 10/17/2014 @ 10:33 amnarciso (ee1f88) — 10/17/2014 @ 8:59 am
If there was no reason to blame Obama before, there is now.
We already have several people in several agencies that should have been on top of this, some of them political lackeys who knew only how to distribute money to their friends.
And instead of being held responsible for foolish public declarations and inept appointees,
he makes it look like he is doing something by appointing a political operative who is only capable in regards to Ebola, if of anything, of coordinating talking points and PR moves.
How many people, including the media, will praise Obama for doing something, when in reality this should be condemned and de facto evidence that political posturing is more important to this guy than running the country,
and, unfortunately, we have more reason to think that Karl Rove is not that much different, refusing to allow the American public to be informed about WMD discoveries.
MD in Philly (f9371b) — 10/17/2014 @ 11:01 amelissa,
Mexico has joined Belize in denying the Carnival cruise ship entry to its port, so the ship is headed back to Galveston early.
DRJ (a83b8b) — 10/17/2014 @ 11:29 amArt Deco @223 – Completely non-responsive to your assertion that “police officers, fire fighters, and certified public accountants don’t know what to do with themselves absent guidelines and edicts issued in the federal apparat.”
The fact that CPA’s are licensed by states rather than feds is meaningless. So are lawyers and barbers and masseuses. Does that mean they sit around doing nothing awaiting guidance from federal apparat?
The fact that many municipalities can get state and federal money for even minor infrastructure improvements and repairs makes it imperative for civil engineers to be up to speed on current regulations in order to obtain largesse from further up the food chain.
Your pronouncements either make no sense or are blinding statements of the obvious.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 10/17/2014 @ 11:35 amChicago ain’t got nuttin’ on Texas.
Jeter's Bat (e42a92) — 10/17/2014 @ 12:25 pmTexas has Dairy Queen, Chick Fil A, country music stations with mega wattage, and some towns even have a Calloway’s Garden Nursery.
Heck, Texas even has the ebola.
How many of your yankee states have that ?!
Completely non-responsive to your assertion
That was not my assertion. That was his. Weeks ago. You’ve completely confounded what I had to say.
Art Deco (ee8de5) — 10/17/2014 @ 12:29 pmThe fact that many municipalities can get state and federal money for even minor infrastructure improvements and repairs makes it imperative for civil engineers to be up to speed on current regulations in order to obtain largesse from further up the food chain.
Yes, that sort of thing creates problems for civil engineers, as noted. The question at hand is whether civil engineers would be at sea without federal guidance. They benefit from the federal guidance to comply with whatever strings are attached to federal aid or other health and safety edicts. However, federal edicts are not integral to the practice of civil engineering. You remove the federal edicts, and civil engineers will still be able to function, but guided by trade standards, underwriters, and what ever health and safety regulations are promulgated by state and local governments.
Again, this began weeks ago with ‘bobathome’s’ weird assertion that state and local governments were ‘ornamental’ and do not know how to operate without federal guidance. These assertions are just plain weird. Civil engineers, cops, and accountants do not receive brain transplants from the federal government. Federal edicts create compliance costs for them.
Art Deco (ee8de5) — 10/17/2014 @ 12:37 pm“That was not my assertion. That was his. Weeks ago. You’ve completely confounded what I had to say.”
Art Deco – Nope, I pulled your exact words from comment #204 and put them in quotes.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 10/17/2014 @ 1:16 pmIf Barack Obama were from St. Louis or Buffalo I’d be “picking on them.” But he’s not. So when I read my various sources it’s difficult (and I think unnecessary) for me to separate the man from the place.
elissa, the point I was making was about how this
wood chuck would chuck wood if a wood chuck could chuck woodcommunity organizer would organize communities if he lived in a one party state. Like Gwyneth Paltrow wishes. I wasn’t claiming he’s been successful at it domestically.But in foreign policy we can get a clearer picture because as Preezy he has a freer hand as their is no real opposition to letting his freshman dorm instincts run wild.
Steve57 (4d34f4) — 10/17/2014 @ 1:24 pmSteve, chill. You made good points for which many here happily gave you kudos–including me. But the part about Chicago was wrong –you used it as a shorthand for any big city–which you admit. Other cities apparently do in fact tax suburbanites who travel to and work in the city. Chicago does not–yet. Using those real examples would have been compelling documentation. Both daleyrocks and I at separate times and on separate comments noticed the factual inconsistency and questioned it. As Patterico’s thread on Rand Paul and JD’s on Ezra point out, accuracy matters. That’s all. K?
elissa (a85fd4) — 10/17/2014 @ 1:38 pmelissa, I am totally chillaxed. But I still don’t think President B plus for effort needs to have any real-world success at anything to remain convinced he knows all the answers.
Steve57 (4d34f4) — 10/17/2014 @ 1:59 pmdaleyrocks, what I said (to bobathome) was this
“Why you think civil engineers, town planners, police officers, fire fighters, and certified public accountants don’t know what to do with themselves absent guidelines and edicts issued in the federal apparat only you know.”
That is a reference to his remarks, remarks he did not make in this thread but in another, weeks ago.
Reading comprehension. It’s great stuff.
Art Deco (ee8de5) — 10/17/2014 @ 2:03 pm> Other cities apparently do in fact tax suburbanites who travel to and work in the city
The state of NY used to do this for NYC (which cannot do it on its own, it requires the state legislature), but it hasn’t been true for fifteen years here, either.
aphrael (c3fb9a) — 10/17/2014 @ 2:32 pmMy concern about our local and state governments is that they have been institutionalized and minimized by their dependence on Federal largess. Someone who makes a career out of writing grant applications for Federal funds is not the same sort of person who oversaw the building of the road in my neighborhood 70 years ago. There is a selection process in our lower level bureaucracies that ensures self reliant, self starting individuals will find more success in the private sector. In fact, the dependence on all these Federal rules and regulations almost ensures that capable people from the private sector will not want to immerse themselves in what passes for local government. This is often the argument incumbents use to discredit their political opponents in an election, the new guy won’t know how to bring home the bacon.
We need guys who know how to make bacon, not beg for petty cash from a Federal agency so they can buy some. We need to identify and solve problems locally without Federal interference. And that will require wholesale changes in who works for our local governments. We need local public health departments that are aware that 277 doctors and nurses have been killed by Ebola and who have enough curiosity and initiative to take independent action to ensure that their city is as ready as it can be, for example.
bobathome (51d2a4) — 10/17/2014 @ 2:36 pmMy concern about our local and state governments is that they have been institutionalized and minimized by their dependence on Federal largess.
It’s a problem in that local preferences are distorted and manipulated. Nothing intractable about it.
Art Deco (ee8de5) — 10/17/2014 @ 3:01 pmSchool districts receive all of 7% of their budget from federal disbursements. They can get along without the money, and there is nothing that prevents the federal government from disbursing an unrestricted grant to state governments and state governments from doing so for county governments and school districts and county governments doing so for municipal governments. Just cut them a check in an amount derived from a formula and leave them alone. They can cope.
I’m almost sorry I brought up regional tax base sharing schemes as an example of the left’s pattern of illogic relevant to Obama’s approach to dealing with a problem i.e. Ebola.
I suppose I could have used Mayor Bloomberg’s insistence that the reason NYC had a problem with “gun violence” is because people in South Carolina can buy guns without his permission.
But then people would have thought I was talking about gun control. And, no, I’ve never been to NYC either, and…
Steve57 (4d34f4) — 10/17/2014 @ 3:04 pmso why was he really picked;
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2014/10/terrific-obama-appoints-far-left-hack-with-experience-in-revolution-planning-as-ebola-czar/
narciso (ee1f88) — 10/17/2014 @ 3:05 pmI am stunned, narciso! Why, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say it looks like President I’m-all-about-the-substance is appointing an Ebola czar as a matter of empty political theater.
Knock me over with a feather.
Steve57 (4d34f4) — 10/17/2014 @ 3:14 pmhttp://thefederalist.com/2014/10/17/new-ebola-czar-ron-klain-is-a-long-time-lobbyist-democratic-operative/
What would make this complete is if the new Ebola czar is presented to the public at a ceremony in which he and Obama are standing before a backdrop of styrofoam Greek columns, flanked by Bo Bergdahl’s parents wearing surgical scrubs.
Steve57 (4d34f4) — 10/17/2014 @ 3:22 pmhttps://patterico.com/2014/10/14/breach-of-protocol-try-no-protocol/#comment-1696263
I still stand by that statement as a good working rule of thumb.
Steve57 (4d34f4) — 10/17/2014 @ 3:31 pm#238 Art: It may only be 7%, but a very large percentage of administrative time is spent ensuring that they keep that 7%. And local school districts get state reimbursement for busing, and again, a large percentage of the administrative time is spent maximizing that reimbursement. The reason is easily understood: the school district receives a fixed amount of money from local sources, plus a fixed amount per student from the state for everyone enrolled at some specified date (say early October;) the amounts received for complying with the various state or Federal programs are the frosting on the cake. The administrative staff can “earn” this money by imposing rules and regulations on the district that otherwise wouldn’t be considered. Which is to say that the bureaucrats can justify their employment by maximizing these additional revenue sources without need of considering their effect on education because, after all, it is a given that this is all done “for the children.”
In 1922 Seattle had about 50,000 students with 3 employees in the superintendent’s office. In 1988, Seattle had 50,000 students with about 2500 administrative employees, and 2000 teachers. My kids were in private schools by then.
bobathome (08f1fc) — 10/17/2014 @ 3:44 pmPhilly has an income tax for all who work in the city. It is a bit less than the income tax for those who live in the city as well.
but let’s get back to criticizing Obama for:
A) ignoring the fact that he already has an Ebola czar that reports to the HHS Secretary, whose main accomplishments have been to:
– 1) stay out of the limelight during this fiasco
– 2) give lots of money to a company that is now defunct (and run by friends of hers) instead of a company which is making one of the experimental drugs being used
B) appointing a political operative to this new position, which is nothing more than political posturing in appearing to do something and finding a job for a friend.
I am too lazy/time constrained/ Google illiterate to look up the links, if I am wrong, please correct me
MD in Philly (f9371b) — 10/17/2014 @ 4:18 pmYou’re right on the ball, MD, Chicago is where he spent the better part of his adult life, it’s the ancestral home of Axelrod, the Ayers, et al, Dr, Lurie, last seen on a milk carton, arranged a sinecure for Ron Perlman, it was probably in the stimulus, that went nowhere,
narciso (ee1f88) — 10/17/2014 @ 4:24 pmIt’s also demonstrating profound contempt for the country. Obama appointing Ron Klain as Ebola Czar is the modern version of Caligula naming his horse Consul for the year.
In other news, those soooper smart CDC skreening skillz are serving the interests of public safety a whole lot better than an outright travel ban.
http://nypost.com/2014/10/16/alarm-after-vomiting-passenger-dies-on-flight-from-nigeria-to-jfk/
Steve57 (4d34f4) — 10/17/2014 @ 4:47 pmThe screeners in Lagos followed the protocols. We know the protocols work. Therefore, a quick glance at the body was all it took to determine the cause of death wasn’t Ebola. It could only have been Ebola if there was no breach of protocol.
Steve57 (4d34f4) — 10/17/2014 @ 4:49 pm*…It could only have been Ebola if there was
Steve57 (4d34f4) — 10/17/2014 @ 4:51 pmnoa breach of protocol.The way I read Steve57’s comments, I thought he was saying community organizers like Barack Obama often propose ways to redistribute wealth to accomplish their goals — including promoting plans like taxing suburban commuters to pay for the urban areas. Big cities don’t have to tax commuters to prove Steve57’s point. All city officials have to do is propose commuter taxes, and I’d bet officials from most of the big cities have done that over the years.
DRJ (a83b8b) — 10/17/2014 @ 5:08 pmHere is an interesting chart listing the nonresident workforce for many American cities. It’s interesting.
DRJ (a83b8b) — 10/17/2014 @ 5:12 pmHey JD, Dana, big boss, whoever-
How about a thread titled “Is it unfair to criticize Karl Rove for the successful demonization of George W. Bush?”
http://spectator.org/articles/60689/new-york-times-rediscovers-weapons-mass-destruction-iraq
this has been mentioned before here and there as an OT recently
El Rushbo was beside himself today, recounting how much energy went into demonizing Bush and republicans over the years, when there was evidence supporting many of the claims which were given as reasons to take out Hussein (even yellowcake, I’ve heard).
Yes I know, when we talk about protesting the RNC by not voting for them we just get people like Obama,
but fer cryin out loud, if the Repubs are more into PR management than clarifying truth then all we are gonna get is a completely cynical and fed up electorate who has no reason to vote for someone other than who promises the most goodies.
At the University of Wisconsin in the 70’s, a fed up student body elected the “Pail and Shovel” party into student government power. VP Leon Varjian said he came to the UW because “he could smell the beer from New Jersey”. For most it was a humorous departure from a student government filled with 60’s hangovers more interested in making statements on international politics than with campus issues,
but the equivalent for our national elections is not as entertaining.
And what was David Kay blackmailed with?
MD in Philly (f9371b) — 10/17/2014 @ 5:12 pmDRJ @250, you are correct. They don’t have to succeed in taxing commuters. They don’t have to succeed in any of their schemes. The just have to have their plans and attempt to pursue their goals to prove my point.
But I was also talking about why they have those plans and want to pursue those goals.
Barack Obama’s plans are very enlightening. But there isn’t anything original about them. The fact is that (here I boldly tread on that thin Chicago ice again) when he was a community organizer he fell in with a crowd that believed to its core that the very existence of suburbs caused Chicago’s problems. And the solution for places such as Chicago is to tax and regulate the suburbs out of existence.
This observation can be made without any particular familiarity with Chicago as a prerequisite. The left from coast to coast hates the suburbs. And it despises the bourgeois society that would want to create and live in the suburbs in the first place. It must be destroyed.
Barack Obama doesn’t keep his own hostility to the suburbs a secret. In Dreams From My Father he writes about how when he went to Occidental (full disclosure; I don’t know anything about that place, either) he didn’t want to be a “sellout” like the suburban black kids who sat with white kids and didn’t let their skin color define their identity. That’s why he sought the company of Marxist professors, Latino campus revolutionaries, radical feminists, etc; to avoid being a “sellout.” He continued to consider suburbanites “sellouts” when he pitched up in Chicago (there I go again; darn it) and chose Rev. Wright’s church as his spiritual home. And the TUCC’s Black Value System is central to its belief system.
https://trinitychicago.org/the-black-value-system/
While the black value system goes on to say ” it is permissible to chase “middleclassness” with all our might” it means being upwardly mobile financially. But not becoming part of the kind of bourgeois society that would has the kind of values that creates and lives in suburbs. The “psychological entrapment of Black ‘middleclassness.'”
That would make them “sellouts” in Barack Obama’s and Rev. Wright’s theology.
The always brilliant neo-neocon has a post up today in which she wonders whether Dinesh D’Souza had a point about “how one of Obama’s biggest motivations is his hatred of colonialism in Africa, and a desire to redress and/or revenge its wrongs for his father’s sake,” if if that explains the lack of the travel ban. That could very well be part of it.
http://neoneocon.com/2014/10/17/does-the-lack-of-a-ban-on-travel-from-west-africa/#comments
But toward the end of the post she dissects an article she read in Politico, writing:
They aren’t going to give you any evidence, because we’ve been doing it wrong all along. That was my point in #181. And not only have we’ve been doing it wrong, we’ve been measuring it wrong. So the evidence is wrong.
It has all been done, measured, and more importantly desired wrongly.
So our betters aren’t just explaining why travel bans don’t work. They have to explain reality. Which we haven’t been living in all our lives. Which is why their explanations sound stupid to our primitive lizard brains. We’re still stuck in our illusion, which can only exist inside the bubble that is maintained by our police forces, our gated suburbs, our powerful military, and our borders.
The reality is our suburbs, our police forces, our borders, our military, our travel bans, all our old caveman ways of doing things, only make things worse. They were all products of our false consciousness. And the way we measured success or failure of the products of our false consciousness were also wrong, because our ways of evaluating these things were also products of our false consciousness.
This is “the snare” that the black value system of Barack Obama’s TUCC warns its members to avoid at all costs.
If we could grasp reality, we wouldn’t be the kind of people who’d want to live in the suburbs, or even want borders. But we’re sellouts. Only when Barack Obama bursts our bubble, then we’ll develop our true consciousness. And appreciate how much better His New Way really is.
Steve57 (4d34f4) — 10/17/2014 @ 6:45 pm250. 251. 253. Consciousness and false consciousness babble aside, in my region which still is struggling for enough middle class jobs there are increasing numbers of those jobs located in the suburbs and collar counties as both small businesses and fortune 500 firms locate their businesses, campuses and new industry industrial parks there. Of course many established firms especially related to manufacturing, finance, law, government and tourism remain healthfully ensconced in the city. Both the city and the suburbs are considered good places to live for a myriad of reasons by people of all ages or at different ages and stages of their lives. Our expressways and even commuter trains are crowded going both directions during both the morning and evening “rush hours” (one assumes by city workers going home to the burbs, and suburban day workers going home to the city). Telecommuting has changed the way people work and where they spend their time performing it, or if they even leave their homes to do it.
Obama may well be motivated exactly as you assert, and he and his commie buddies can plot and scheme and propose to their heart’s content for the kind of income redistribution and taxation schemes you describe. But it will still eventually have to come down to significant real world “success”(i.e., implementation) to have an impact such as Steve describes and fears. And so far there is little evidence of that–at least in my area. The confluence of conflicting interests of city, suburban, exurban and state governments, powerful politicians protecting their turf, voters, homeowners, landowners all stand athwart.
elissa (5b5463) — 10/17/2014 @ 7:58 pmelissa, I’m talking about Obama’s way of looking at and understanding the world. Not about any particular plan to redistribute wealth from the suburbs to the cities.
No. It won’t. That’s only your false consciousness talking, though. By his own definition he’s wildly successful. You and I just aren’t worthy of him.
Conventional thinking is a product of your false consciousness. It leads to bad habits. Like suburbs. And the Iraq war. That’s what makes you think he has to demonstrate success, to you, in the way your false consciousness perceives success, before his way of fixing all the world’s problems can have an impact. That’s another bad habit he’s going to have to break you of.
If you don’t fixate on tangential issues you’ll see it’s already having exactly the impact I’m talking about.
http://www.newrepublic.com/blog/the-spine/the-multitudinous-disasters-the-obama-administration-here-syria-and-iran
That was from 2010. Has he changed course since then, elissa? When Susan Rice recently went on the Sunday talk shows and said, among other things, Obama will not reassess his strategy…
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/10/susan-rices-sunday-trifecta-of-dissembling.php
…she wasn’t just talking about his strategy regarding ISIS.
And I’m not just talking about jobs or urban planning or taxes.
Or Chicago.
At all.
Steve57 (4d34f4) — 10/17/2014 @ 8:32 pmelissa, I hope you don’t think I believe that babble. As George Orwell observed, some ideas are so wrong no ordinary human being could believe them. You have to go to all the right schools, and perhaps get a law degree from Yale, to be able to believe them.
I’m describing such a person.
Steve57 (4d34f4) — 10/17/2014 @ 8:46 pmEbola, ISIS, Wealth redistribution, rise of Russia, Syria, Iran, Susan Rice, Just pick a subject and stick with it, Steve57. Yes. Obama sucks. We here all already know that. We all agree. We all see what his background was and who his associates and family were, and we can therefore guess what his motivations for most decisions are. We can and see how he thinks, and what his worldview is, and that he is a liar, and that he has daddy issues and probably some diagnosable personality disorders, too. What makes you believe others here are blind to these things or can’t fathom them– and only you do?
But in reality you don’t really want a discussion on specifics do you? You just want to rant. DRJ’s links about non-resident workforce charts and her comments about cities proposing commuter taxes and aphrael’s and daleyrocks’ similar comments suggest I’m not the only one who thought you brought up regionalism and the death of the middle class earlier in the thread because that was what you were focusing on and that you really wanted to explore them.
elissa (5b5463) — 10/17/2014 @ 9:07 pm“You’ve completely confounded what I had to say.”
Art Deco – Rereading the thread through now, I don’t understand what the hell point you were actually attempting to make, abrasions included, in response to a two week old comment or on this particular thread. Do you have a damn point?
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 10/17/2014 @ 10:33 pmApparently two is the magic number.
http://www.7newsbelize.com/index.php#story10
Steve57 (4d34f4) — 10/17/2014 @ 10:46 pm“DRJ’s links about non-resident workforce charts and her comments about cities proposing commuter taxes and aphrael’s and daleyrocks’ similar comments suggest I’m not the only one who thought you brought up regionalism and the death of the middle class earlier in the thread because that was what you were focusing on and that you really wanted to explore them.”
elissa – I think the liberal fascination with high speed rail goes hand in glove with designs to reurbanize and control the population, although I agree it will take a sea change in American attitudes for any success to be realized.
I am happy to hear than NYC’s commuter tax expired via aphrael’s comment. I was unaware it had a sunset date and it was always a PITA compliance wise. New York state also hounded me for years for income tax after I moved to Illinois because I maintained a professional license in New York. Bastards.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 10/17/2014 @ 10:56 pmActually, elissa, no. I didn’t want to talk about regionalism or details of any specific policy.
I also wasn’t interested in a rant, but I’m glad you got all that off your chest.
What I remain interested in exploring was this question DRJ raised with bobathome:
It was one of the last comments on this thread when I headed out for the day, and it’s a good question. It dawned on me as I was driving hours later that I had a theory about why he wouldn’t ban travel. And the answer to the question of what Barack Obama will or won’t do isn’t too different regardless of the issue. Whether it’s a foreign or domestic issue.
The only difference is how much freedom of action does he (legally) have to act unilaterally. And he has more freedom of action when the issue concerns foreign affairs. That’s when you see him in his truest form.
I thought I had been pretty clear. And I don’t find that everyone understands who this guy is and what he is really up to.
Steve57 (4d34f4) — 10/17/2014 @ 11:57 pmR.I.P. actress Elizabeth Peña
Icy (bd3a80) — 10/18/2014 @ 12:39 amAs I read Steve57’s comment 181, his point was trying to understand Obama’s worldview and how it impacts Obama’s policies. Steve57’s discussion of Obama’s foreign and domestic policies — including topics like regionalism and suburban sprawl — were examples intended to show why Obama wants to change America, not an attempt to evaluate how successful Obama’s efforts have been in a particular city. That’s why Steve57 followed his paragraph on regionalism with: “Or L.A. or Oakland or New York or Houston or wherever.” It wasn’t about Chicago but about Obama’s view of what Chicago and other cities should be, and how that impacts his decision-making.
I also think how Obama wants to change America is interesting, and that led me to topics like commuter taxes and nonresident workforce charts. Similarly, Stanley Kurtz has repeatedly explained how Obama supports regionalism in his quest to transform America. I hope cities like Chicago and its citizens continue to resist these efforts, but it’s hard when government policies work against them.
DRJ (a83b8b) — 10/18/2014 @ 3:44 amI appreciated Steve’s comment at #181 for the analysis and for lively comments made in reply. Also, I am one of those “unhappy few” who needed Obama’s mind explained in order to make some sense of (t)his Presidency.
Wierdness: Just this week a friend was recounting his childhood to me with a story about his father’s business (a meat-market) which was located in the downtown area of a Texas (Seguin?) city. His father lost his business when the city council effectively eliminated parking. This was about 55 years ago.
felipe (40f0f0) — 10/18/2014 @ 6:58 amIt dawned on me as I was driving hours later that I had a theory about why he wouldn’t ban travel.
Given the transparent nature of liberals like Obama, I’m surprised such a question even comes up or is pondered, particularly at this late date. Namely, people of his ilk perceive various societies or communities (or certain people—hello, Trayvon Martin!, hello, Nidal Hasan!, etc) as deserving tons of sympathy and a million benefits of the doubt, and to impose hardship upon them — even if that would make good sense — or to be cynical or skeptical towards them, is deemed as unkind, inhumane and non-compassionate (or racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic, etc). So if good people and good places get trashed (or killed, or die) in the process of upholding that (supposed) do-gooderism, well, that merely exemplifies the virtue of the concept that the good must suffer with the bad.
Mark (c160ec) — 10/18/2014 @ 7:38 amhttps://twitter.com/pmarca/status/523255185670287360?refsrc=email
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 10/18/2014 @ 8:18 am253. “hatred”
Withal the ignorance & incompetence begets, Prom Queen Swallow’s abiding companion is Antipathy.
Amerikkka, your hard work, your charity, your ingenuous morality are despised and reviled.
Even if all that remains of Gay Crack Whore’s sojourn is our death & destruction he will be exonerated.
gary Gulrud (46ca75) — 10/18/2014 @ 9:02 ambobathome – I am curious if you believe Art Deco accurately summarized your two week old argument in this thread.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 10/18/2014 @ 10:26 amMark, if you think it’s a particularly late date given the fact that Obama is not only still alive, but still POTUS, you’re going to be stunned out of your gourd that this question “even comes up or is pondered.”
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/11/understanding-stalin/380786/?single_page=true
I mean, given the transparent nature of Bolsheviks like Stalin, how could the question of “Understanding Stalin” still be coming up?
Of course, the answer is you can’t take a cookie cutter approach to analysis and assume that all people of a particular stripe are exactly the same. As the article notes, one of the reasons people have misconceptions about Stalin even at this late date is they rely on “opponents [who] have imposed their prejudices as well. Leon Trotsky, Stalin’s worst enemy, was far and away his most influential 20th-century interpreter, shaping the views of a generation of historians, from Isaac Deutscher onward. Trotsky’s Stalin was lacking in wit and gaiety, an unlettered and provincial man who obtained power through bureaucratic manipulation and brute violence. Above all, Trotsky’s Stalin was a turncoat who betrayed first Lenin and then the Marxist cause. It was a portrait that served a purpose, inspiring Trotskyites to remain faithful to the Soviet revolution that “could have been”—if only Trotsky had come to power instead of the gray, guarded, cynical Stalin.”
In a parallel development, we have opponents such as Panetta imposing their politically self-serving prejudices on the public today. If you listen to this guy now, the Obama administration has “lost its way.” I’m saying it hasn’t, as Obama continues to see issues through the exact same prism and approach them as he always has. If anything, Obama is doubling down on “his way.” As I said earlier, when Susan Rice went on the Sunday talk shows last week to announce Obama will not be reassessing his strategy, she wasn’t just talking about ISIS. That’s who Obama is. He picks the wrong thing to do, and sticks with it no matter what. It’s just that we’re all too stupid to appreciate his genius.
It’s self-serving for Panetta to say Obama has lost his way for two reasons. First, it absolves him from any blame for serving this President. It was the exact same Barack Obama, doing things as Barack Obama has always done them then and now, when Panetta was his CIA director and SecDef. But it’s in Panetta’s own interest to claim Obama has changed and “lost his way” when he clearly has not.
It also serves Panetta’s political interests because he’s a Hillary! supporter. Hillary!, too, is an alynskyite leftist of limited personal ability like Obama. But she would be different in some respects if only because her personal influences are not the same as Obama’s. Bill Clinton, the “co-President,” for one, is a more practical politician than both. Whereas Obama is an inflexible, unimaginitive ideologue, Bill Clinton is capable of tactical retreats where Obama is simply not.
So Hillary!, we can safely predict, would change course when the political winds shift whereas Obama will not. And her defenders will insist her course changes are not course changes, as they insist that the Obama who stuck to his course when they served him has “lost his way” when he keeps the same course now as he did then.
Hillary! would also be a disaster as President. We can know this because she was a disaster as SecState. But like Obama she has limitless, undeserved high regard for her own abilities and is under the delusion she did an outstanding job. She can’t name a single concrete example of a success.
So where people are getting the idea these people need any sort of track record of success before they can impose their policies on an unwilling populace, I don’t know.
But she would be a different disaster than Obama. Being a different person, she capable of screwing up the country and our position in the world in different ways.
I highly recommend the article about Stalin in The Atlantic. It’s still important to understand Stalin.
Steve57 (4d34f4) — 10/18/2014 @ 10:59 amJayvee seems to getting some good trades:
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2014/10/discord_dissolves_pa.php
I’ve distrusted Panetta ever since he called us a ‘nation of torturers’ only years later did he admit that some of the interrogations did lead us to Abbotabad,
Peter Nicholas at the Journal is agregiously covering up for her,
narciso (ee1f88) — 10/18/2014 @ 11:08 amYes, much like Hannah Arendt’s ‘banality of evil’ obscured much of what Eichmann had really wrought,
narciso (ee1f88) — 10/18/2014 @ 11:26 amfinally corrected by Bettina Stangneth, also Caesarani, did take some steps forward,
It’s a work in progress. It isn’t like I have all the answers. I can’t read his mind, but I can look for patterns of behavior. So can anyone else. The patterns of behavior I see remain consistent with how he says he thinks. And are consistent with how his major influences taught him to look at the world. And have remained consistent throughout his life, and corroborated by the impressions he made on people throughout his life. This was on Small Dead Animals back in 2009:
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/010944.html
When he himself writes (or, more likely, what he told Bill Ayers) about his community organizing experiences at Altgeld Gardens, he did all the work. Which I find ironic as he’s claiming credit for this great success in which nothing much got done. Like the leadership role, the “good job well done” only exists in his own mind.
http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/politicsnow/la-na-obamaorganize19-2007feb19-story.html#page=1
Shocka! This, an exaggeration, from the Preezy who killed bin Laden all by his lonesome? Unpossible.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/01/22/a_defining_time_of_advocacy/?page=full
To hear him talk about it, you wouldn’t know President Lady MacBeth left behind the same mess that was there when he first got there.
“…it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”
Whether or not my analysis is accurately calibrated depends on whether or not Tiger Beat acts as such a person would be expected to act. I think his response to the Ebola “hysteria” as he sees it remains true to form. Appoint a political hack as Ebola czar, who already describes his main job as “messaging.” And the message from his boss is we’re a bunch of emotional hysterics who aren’t dealing with reality. He also continues to view his very existence as a benediction. Why else would he tape a message to the Liberians? It almost does sound like book of the Bible, doesn’t It?
“The Message of Chicago Jesus to the Liberians.”
Who needs his healing presence more these days?
Sorry to hear it. I know a few people who’ve lost their businesses for essentially the same reason. Except parking has been effectively eliminated due to either the Obama recovery, where you can’t even get to the places because of the construction work/detours, and the current mania with light rail. So there’s no parking or even traffic where they’re building those white elephants. And there won’t be when they’re done, as light rail means people will no longer be able to drive by their shops, and the 10 or 15 people who regularly commute to work on this heavily tax-payer subsidized boondoggle can’t and won’t sustain all the businesses that are going to be destroyed along the route.
Steve57 (4d34f4) — 10/18/2014 @ 12:36 pmSorry. felipe wrote that @264.
But Obama displays the same “detached leadership style” now that he did then, doesn’t he? Which is another way of saying he has no leadership style. He didn’t have one when he was in school, and he hasn’t grown one since.
It’s why I call his presidency the freshman dorm. By the time information has been processed through his filters, it’s been massaged to convince him he’s been right about everything since he finished high school. So why change?
Steve57 (4d34f4) — 10/18/2014 @ 12:42 pmAnother notion that somehow caught hold:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/anne-applebaum-nato-pays-a-heavy-price-for-giving-russia-too-much-credita-true-achievement-under-threat/2014/10/17/5b3a6f2a-5617-11e4-809b-8cc0a295c773_story.html?tid=pm_opinions_pop
narciso (ee1f88) — 10/18/2014 @ 1:59 pm