Tag: ebola

Thousands of Americans Died While Reagan Ignored the Outbreak of a Deadly Virus

Jon Ponder
Elizabeth Taylor persuades President Ronald Reagan to finally acknowledge the HIV problem and for the first time he uses the term "AIDS" in a public speech. “There’s no reason for those who carry the AIDS virus to wear a scarlet ‘A,’” he said, as ACT UP protesters yelled outside. Americans who have died from AIDS surpass 40,000.
Elizabeth Taylor persuades President Ronald Reagan to finally acknowledge the HIV problem and for the first time he uses the term “AIDS” in a public speech. “There’s no reason for those who carry the AIDS virus to wear a scarlet ‘A,’” he said, as ACT UP protesters yelled outside — Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation

Republicans have taken great glee in turning the Ebola outbreak in the United States — six cases have been treated here so far, one patient has died — into an election issue this year. Blaming Pres. Obama for the outbreak fits neatly in their strategy of nationalizing the midterms by making the election about him, rather than about their party’s own lousy record in Congress.

The fact is, the Obama administration has acted rapidly and with keen efficiency in its handling of the Ebola outbreak when compared with the record of the handling of a similar outbreak in the early 1980s by the administration of GOP patron saint, Ronald Reagan.

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In Hearing, GOP Chairman Issa Misnames African Country, Repeatedly Mispronounces ‘Ebola’

Jon Ponder

Congress is out of session, of course, but yesterday House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa hastily called his committee into session in order to fan public hysteria about Ebola after a physician in New York was found to have contracted the disease while tending patients in Africa. In his opening statement, however, Issa mistakenly referred to the African nation of Guinea as Guiana, a country in South America, and then repeatedly mispronounced “Ebola” so that it rhymed with “e coli.”

Here’s a rough transcript of the highlights of Issa’s statement:

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Pew Study Confirms That Fox Is Dominant Source of ‘News’ on the Right – Liberals Rely on Many Sources

Jon Ponder

graph-pew-differences-in-liberal-conservative-news-sourcesThe PewResearch Journalism Project has released a study that confirms what is already clear: The American right gets most of its information about politics from Fox News, while the left relies on multiple sources, including CNN, NPR, MSNBC and the New York Times.

According to the study, consistent conservatives:

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A Logical Argument for Sealing the Border of South Carolina

Buck Banks

I’m very concerned. We had people who, I’ll repeat it, the creed of Hamas: We value death more than you value life. What? That’s their creed. Okay, well, part of their creed would be to bring persons who have Ebola into our country. It would promote their creed. And all this could be avoided by sealing the border, thoroughly. C’mon, this is the 21st century.

— Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC), saying that terrorists from Hamas could purposely infect themselves with the Ebola virus and then travel to America, BuzzFeed reports.

Poll: 61% Express Confidence in Govt Efforts to Fight Spread of Ebola

Jon Ponder

61%

Percentage of Americans polled by right-leaning Politico.com who expressed “a lot of confidence” or “some confidence” in the U.S. government’s handling of the spread of Ebola. Just 33 percent said they had “not much confidence” or “no confidence at all” that the government could stop the virus from spreading. Despite the positive result for the Obama administration, the headline on Politico’s story about the poll reads, “Democrats in Danger over Ebola.”

chart-politco-poll-on-ebola

You Think Ebola Is Scary? Check Out How Many People Die from Plain Old Flu Every Year

Jon Ponder

Be afraid: The influenza virus kills thousands of Americans each year
Be afraid: The influenza virus kills thousands of Americans each year
Five cases of Ebola have been treated in the United States so far this year. Three were contracted in Africa. Two of these victims were Americans who were flown home for treatment. The other was the Liberian national, Thomas Duncan, who developed symptoms after he arrived in Texas from Africa. The last two were healthcare workers who treated Duncan in Dallas. Of the five, only one patient has died — Thomas Duncan.

Tragic as these cases are, the hysteria they have unleashed in the media and among Republican politicians is beyond over the top. The Ebola “crisis” has topped the hour on cable news channels for days. The lowest point, so far, was when news choppers tracked an ambulance for an hour or so one early evening last week as it transported one of the nurses to a hospital, bringing to mind the infamous “slow speed chase” on L.A. freeways that kicked off the O.J. Simpson murder scandal in 1994.

Meanwhile, with the midterm elections a few weeks away, Republicans have worked nonstop to blame the Ebola outbreak on Pres. Obama and, by extension, the Democrats. They have also incorporated the outbreak into their get-out-the-vote strategy by fanning the flames of fear to get their easily terrorized followers to the polls. Their unified message on Ebola — a call to ban flights into the United States from the affected areas in Africa — is typically anti-scientific and counterfactual. Experts say such a ban would likely create a bona fide crisis here, and there is the embarrassing fact that there are no direct flights into the United States from the affected countries.

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Don’t Ask for Whom Ebola Tolls

Trish

The West tried not to get involved. It sat back and watched what happened and I think that now we’ve got to a stage where either you go to the disease and sort it out or the disease is going to come to you.

— Paul Danahar, Washington bureau chief, BBC, and author of “The New Middle East: The World After the Arab Spring,” explaining why American troops are being deployed to provide infrastructure in Ebola-stricken countries.