What’s interesting in the news today?
1. We’ll start off today with some busted memes. First up, the “Ebola is the Republicans fault” meme.
From Gov. Bobby Jindal, writing at Politico “In a paid speech last week, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton attempted to link spending restraints enacted by Congress—and signed into law by President Obama—to the fight against Ebola. Secretary Clinton claimed that the spending reductions mandated under sequestration “are really beginning to hurt,” citing the fight against Ebola: “The CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] is another example on the response to Ebola—they’re working heroically, but they don’t have the resources they used to have.”
Her argument, like those made by others, misses the point. In recent years, the CDC has received significant amounts of funding. Unfortunately, however, many of those funds have been diverted away from programs that can fight infectious diseases, and toward programs far afield from the CDC’s original purpose.
Consider the Prevention and Public Health Fund, a new series of annual mandatory appropriations created by Obamacare. Over the past five years, the CDC has received just under $3 billion in transfers from the fund. Yet only 6 percent—$180 million—of that $3 billion went toward building epidemiology and laboratory capacity. Especially given the agency’s postwar roots as the Communicable Disease Center, one would think that “detecting and responding to infectious diseases and other public health threats” warrants a larger funding commitment.
Instead, the Obama administration has focused the CDC on other priorities. While protecting Americans from infectious diseases received only $180 million from the Prevention Fund, the community transformation grant program received nearly three times as much money—$517.3 million over the same five-year period.”
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More from EricErickson “According to the Atlanta Business Chronicle, in January the CDC won in the budget deal.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will see an 8.2 percent budget increase for fiscal 2014, thanks to a $1.1 trillion spending bill announced by Congress Jan. 13.
But not just that. There was also this nugget of news:
This influx of cash will raise the CDC budget to $6.9 billion, which is $567 million more than it received in 2013. This is more than the agency anticipated, because the president’s fiscal year 2014 budget request for it was just $6.6 billion — a decrease of $270 million from fiscal 2012.
Yes, you read that right. Republicans in the House of Representatives voted to give the CDC more money that President Obama requested. And what did the CDC intend to do with all that money. Cure Ebola?
Well, umm . . . .
The CDC listed some of its top spending priorities in its fiscal 2014 budget request. It wants to boost spending for vaccines for children by $287 million and increase funds by $53 million for its “World Trade Center Health Program.” It requested a $40 million increase for AMD, $22 million more for Health Statistics, $20 million more for its National Violent Death Reporting System, almost $17 million more for Food Safety and an additional $15 million for polio eradication.”
Like I said, busted. And maybe they’d have appropriate funding if they weren’t wasting it on studies to find out why lesbians are overweight and other such nonsense. Just sayin’…..
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Next up, a double meme buster. The “Republican’s are the party of the rich” and the “Democrats are for the average guy” meme. It’s not just Democrat donors like Soros and Rich Richman that are busting these memes.
From MSN “It has long been a given that politics is a rich man’s game, and there is nothing in Roll Call’s latest compilation of the 50 richest members of Congress to contradict that notion.
The publication’s annual report reveals that about one in ten of the 535 members of the House and Senate rank among the nation’s top one percent financially based on their net worth.
Some of those lawmakers may be troubled from time to time to be associated with so reviled an institution as Congress, which is saddled with an approval rating averaging a lowly 14 percent. But they can take solace in their personal financial balance sheets, with some showing their net worth in hundreds of millions of dollars.”
8 out of the top 8 are Democrats. This one’s all busted up.
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And the last one, also a double, the “Gun free zones stop crazy people with guns” meme and the “Mass shootings are on the rise” meme.
From Breitbart “On October 9, the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) released a revised report showing that 92% of mass public shootings between January 2009 and July 2014 took place in gun-free zones.
The CPRC report was released in response to an Everytown for Gun Safety study claiming only 14% of mass public shootings took place in gun-free zones. Everytown actually claimed 86% of such incidents occurred in places where guns were allowed.
CPRC showed that the 86% claim rests on Everytown’s “inclusion of attacks in private homes” and “numerous errors in identifying whether citizens can defend themselves.” For example, Everytown “[ignores] rules that prevent general citizens from carrying guns [for self-defense]” in certain cities, and they fail to recognize that “allowing police to carry guns is not the same thing as letting civilians defend themselves.””
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More here from LegalInsurrection “An FBI report released on September 16th, 2014 makes the assertion that active shooter attacks and deaths have increased dramatically since 2000 – both increasing at an annual rate of about 16 percent. As the headline in the Wall Street Journal stated: “Mass Shootings on the Rise, FBI says.”
But the FBI made a number of subtle and misleading decisions as well as outright errors. Once these biases and mistakes are fixed, the annual growth rate in homicides is cut in half. When a longer period of time is examined (1977 through the first half of 2014), deaths from Mass Public Shootings show only a slight, statistically insignificant, increase – an annual increase of less than one percent.
The FBI’s misleadingly includes cases that aren’t mass shootings – cases where no one or only one person was killed in a public place. While the FBI assures people that it “captured the vast majority of incidents falling within the search criteria,” their report missed 20 shootings where at least two people were killed in a public place. Most of these missing cases took place early on, biasing their results towards showing an increase.”“
Do these people ever tell the truth? Everything is half-truths and exaggerations from them.
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2. Another feel good idea bites the dust. Or at least it should, but they’ll probably just throw more money at it.
From TheWashingtonExaminer “As school children continue to protest Michelle Obama’s push for healthier lunches by dumping their full trays into garbage bins, the nation’s school boards are joining in to demand that the Obama administration let them off the hook of serving the costly and tasteless meals.
Armed with a national poll for National School Lunch Week, the National School Boards Association on Monday demanded that Washington address the “onerous requirements for federal school meal programs.””
“The survey of school leaders revealed:
— 83.7 percent of school districts saw an increase in plate waste.
— 81.8 percent had an increase in cost.
— 76.5 percent saw a decrease in participation by students.
— 75 percent of school leaders want an increase in federal funding for school districts to comply with the new standards.”
It’s not working.
From CNSNews “In the first two years since First Lady Michelle Obama launched her ‘Let’s Move’ campaign to fight childhood obesity in 2010, teenage obesity rates increased, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
From 2009-2010, 18.4 percent of children ages 12-19 were classified as obese, according to the CDC. Since then, from 2011-2012, one in five children ages 12-19 or 20.5 percent, were classified as obese, an increase of 11.4 percent. The CDC has been tracking these data since 1966-1970, and at that time only 4.6 percent of teens were classified as obese.”
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3. Not good.
From TheHill “Global health officials said Tuesday that the death rate in the Ebola epidemic has risen to 70 percent, up from 50 percent.
The World Health Organization (WHO) made the announcement at a news conference in Geneva, where officials said there could be up to 10,000 new cases of the virus every week within two months.
A total of 4,447 people have died from Ebola this year, the WHO said, while 8,914 have been sickened. Experts believe the real number of Ebola victims is much bigger than the official figures due to difficulties in reporting the cases.
WHO Assistant Director-General Dr. Bruce Aylward underscored the need for a more robust international response to Ebola with a timetable.
If the effort to fight Ebola is not intensified within 60 days, he said, deaths will mount and the virus will become even harder to control.”
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4. Here’s more on the story 6 Arrows posted a link to last night, from the group fighting the overreach by city officials.
From AllianceDefendingFreedom “City officials are upset over a voter lawsuit filed after the city council rejected valid petitions to repeal a law that allows members of the opposite sex into each other’s restrooms. ADF attorneys say the city is illegitimately demanding that the pastors, who are not party to the lawsuit, turn over their constitutionally protected sermons and other communications simply so the city can see if the pastors have ever opposed or criticized the city.
“City council members are supposed to be public servants, not ‘Big Brother’ overlords who will tolerate no dissent or challenge,” said ADF Senior Legal Counsel Erik Stanley. “In this case, they have embarked upon a witch-hunt, and we are asking the court to put a stop to it.”
“The city’s subpoena of sermons and other pastoral communications is both needless and unprecedented,” said ADF Litigation Counsel Christiana Holcomb. “The city council and its attorneys are engaging in an inquisition designed to stifle any critique of its actions. Political and social commentary is not a crime; it is protected by the First Amendment.”
In June, the Houston City Council passed its “bathroom bill,” which sparked a citizen initiative to have the council either repeal the bill or place it on the ballot for voters to decide. The public submitted more than three times the legally required number of valid signatures, which the city secretary, who is entrusted by law to examine and certify petitions, certified as sufficient. The mayor and city attorney defied the law and rejected the certification.”
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5. Is the federal appeals court system stacking the deck for gay marriage rulings? Wouldn’t surprise me.
From BuzzFeed ” The lawyer representing the group that supports Nevada’s ban on same-sex couples’ marriages made an explosive claim on Monday: He argued that a federal appeals court appears to have picked specific judges “in order to influence the outcome” of marriage cases.”
“One of the reasons he asked for the rehearing, he claimed, is the “high likelihood that the number of Judges [Stephen] Reinhardt and [Marsha] Berzon’s assignments to the Relevant Cases, including this and the Hawaii and Idaho marriage cases (which we treat as one for these purposes), did not result from a neutral judge-assignment process.”
Stewart wrote that the claim was the result of “careful statistical analysis” by Dr. James H. Matis.
Stewart went further, writing, “The appearance of unfairness is not a close question here. Even without the aid of professional statisticians, a reasonable person will immediately sense that something is amiss when one judge out of more than thirty is assigned over a four and one-half year period to five of this Circuit’s eleven cases involving the federal constitutional rights of gay men and lesbians, another to four of those cases, and both of them to the momentous ‘gay marriage’ cases.”
In an affidavit filed and signed by Stewart with the filing, he noted the legal team’s decision to obtain the analysis from Matis and includes Stewart’s personal conclusion that the panel of judges that heard the Nevada marriage case was one of the most favorable possible panels for the same-sex couple plaintiffs and “among the least favorable” for “the man-woman marriage side.” He then added that “such preferences and conclusions are known and understood by all at the Ninth Circuit involved with the judge-assignment process.”
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6. Ah yes, the extortion racket. 🙄
That’s a lovely country you have there…..
Be a shame if somethin’ were to happen to it…..
From Yahoo/Reuters “The United States should provide billions of dollars to help Central American nations curb the flow of illegal migrants, Guatemalan President Otto Perez said, and his government warns the problem will get worse if Washington fails to help.
Fleeing violence, trying to reach relatives already in the United States or seeking jobs, record numbers of child migrants from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador have been stopped at the southern U.S. border this year, causing widespread alarm.
Last month, the three countries pitched Washington an ambitious development plan to confront the issue.
They want to pump about $10 billion into the region to create jobs and lift living standards, with the bulk of funding coming from the United States, Perez told Reuters.”
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Wandering Views 
This is indeed troubling. I leave home for a few days to visit the grave of Stonewall Jackson and the tomb of Robert E. Lee. After a pleasant night at The Robert E. Lee Hotel and a fine dinner at The Southern Inn, I read that Ebola threatens Dallas and perverts have conquered Houston. It may be time to seek refuge west of the Caprock on the plains of the Llano Estacado.
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I am very curious about WHO’s numbers. 4,447 out of 8,914 is 50% and that ratio of 50% has not changed during all the reporting (i.e. when the infection rate was around 3000, the death rate was at 1500). I am aware that there are still people sickened who may die, but I would like to know more about where they are getting the 70%. Also they have been saying all along that they don’t know how many are really sick, so that really isn’t anything new. It would be extremely short-sighted of them to use scare tactics to bolster aid to these countries.
It seems there was a wide breach of protocol in the Dallas hospital: http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/ebola-outbreak-2nd-health-care-worker-in-dallas-tests-positive-1.2798937.
This is not good news, as it will take longer to contain the outbreak now. However, it has now been 17 days since Duncan was taken by ambulance and his family isolated and none of his family have yet shown any symptoms. I hope it continues that way.
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The problem, Phos, is that they didn’t know what the protocol was. They still don’t.
As for the pastors supplying copies of their sermons. Our pastor (the one who just left for another church) had the perfect solution. I’m sure it will be continued.
All of his sermons are available on CD nor a nominal price.
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Chas, the protocol is when a patient comes in with certain symptoms and has been recently in West Africa, they are immediately placed in isolation. Then they are tested for Ebola. We recently had two cases like that in Ontario, both patients were kept in isolation until the tests confirmed they were negative and they were released. Not only did the Dallas hospital fail to do that the first time, it seems that the second time Duncan came to the ER, he was left lying in the open ER for several hours. As he was in critical enough shape to need an ambulance, his symptoms would have been quite noticeable and quite infectious at that point. In other words, the infection of these two healthcare workers wasn’t due to a failure in the systems put in place, but to a failure to implement the system.
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Chas, and our sermons can be heard for free online on our website & at sermon audio.com (our pastor also prints out full notes for the congregation).
But still. No. 4 is really jaw-dropping.
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White House reporters develop a means to avoid WH censorship. It seems that at least some reporters believe in a free press.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/white-house-pool-reporters-test-own-news-distribution-system/2014/10/14/e005686a-53cc-11e4-809b-8cc0a295c773_story.html
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It just gets worse. The clowns are running the circus.
http://www.businessinsider.com/second-ebola-nurse-was-on-2-flights-and-the-cdc-is-now-looking-for-its-passengers-2014-10
“The second Dallas healthcare worker to be diagnosed with Ebola flew on Oct. 13, the day before she reported symptoms.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are asking all passengers on that flight to call the agency.
According to the flight crew, the healthcare worker, 29-year-old Amber Jay Vinson, showed no signs or symptoms of illness while on Frontier Airlines Flight 1143 Cleveland to Dallas-Fort Worth.
The plane that may have carried the virus is currently being held and cleaned at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, ABC 5 reports.
Because Vinson wasn’t showing any symptoms of Ebola while on board the flight, it is very unlikely she could have infected other passengers.”
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The nurses are blaming changing protocols.
http://houston.cbslocal.com/2014/10/15/nurses-union-ebola-patient-left-in-open-area-of-er-for-hours/#.VD6QMXxKI_k.twitter
“Medical records provided to The Associated Press by Duncan’s family show that Pham helped care for him throughout his hospital stay, including the day he arrived in intensive care with diarrhea, abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting, and the day before he died.”
“Duncan’s medical records make numerous mentions of protective gear worn by hospital staff, and Pham herself notes wearing the gear in visits to Duncan’s room. But there is no indication in the records of her first encounter with Duncan, on Sept. 29, that Pham donned any protective gear.
Deborah Burger of National Nurses United, who convened a conference call with reporters to relay what she said were concerns of nurses at the hospital, said they were forced to use medical tape to secure openings in their flimsy garments and worried that their necks and heads were exposed as they cared for Duncan.
RoseAnn DeMoro, executive director of Nurses United, said the statement came from “several” and “a few” nurses, but she refused repeated inquiries to state how many. She said the organization had vetted the claims, and that the nurses cited were in a position to know what had occurred at the hospital. She did not specify whether they were among the nurses caring for Duncan.
The nurses allege that his lab samples were allowed to travel through the hospital’s pneumatic tubes, possibly risking contaminating of the specimen-delivery system. They also said that hazardous waste was allowed to pile up to the ceiling.”
“The nurses’ statement said they had to “interact with Mr. Duncan with whatever protective equipment was available,” even as he produced “a lot of contagious fluids.” Duncan’s medical records underscore that concern. They also say nurses treating Duncan were also caring for other patients in the hospital and that, in the face of constantly shifting guidelines, they were allowed to follow whichever ones they chose.”
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Everyone in the world needs to move into a separate room and have no contact with anyone else in the world for 21 days.
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I know what some of you are thinking. But it’s no sillier than some of the other stuff we’re getting.
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Ran across this article, explaining the reason for the subpoenas. The writer says the headlines we’ve been seeing on this are fear-mongering.
http://americanvision.org/11407/houston-demanding-oversight-pastors-sermons/
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I’m watching a pastor being interviewed now who said the subpoenas aren’t just for the sermons — but for emails and texts and any other correspondence that mentioned the mayor or the law?
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Here’s Joe Carter’s take:
http://blog.acton.org/archives/73241-city-houston-pastors-show-us-sermons.html
” … They are trying to send a message to area pastors that criticism of city policies from the pulpit can result in their being dragged into court. This is a despicable display of government overreach and an attempt to stifle both religious freedom and political speech. If this violation of citizens rights isn’t checked in Houston, other cities will get the message that irrelevant legal actions can be used to harass church leaders who dare to challenge our ‘public servants.'”
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