Yes we can't!

Sergio Aragonés

In politics, nothing is contemptible.
Benjamin Disraeli

Obola czar announcement

The only difference between Obama and Bush is that Obama is killing more people. He’s about double the numbers now. Can you imagine if McCain had won and did precisely what Obama has done, with every speech and every political maneuver overseas? There’d be riots in the streets about the people we’re killing. And yet because it’s Obama, and he’s better looking and better at reading the teleprompter, we let him get away with it.
Penn Jillette

I’m not actually a scientist

Klain is a smart guy, and a competent political fixer, but it says something disquieting that the Obama administration has chosen a political fixer to take charge of a public health emergency. It suggests that the White House sees the Ebola problem as a political problem to be managed, not a public health problem to be solved.

As quite a few people have remarked, the most troubling thing about the Ebola crisis isn't even the Ebola, but rather the widespread incompetence it has revealed among people who are supposed to take threats to the nation seriously. And that incompetence, alas, isn't limited to Ebola.

Does God still look after fools, drunkards, and the United States of America? At this point, we'd better hope so.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds

Here’s the scene:

[Five scientists in hazmat suits huddle around a small glass container marked “Ebola.”]

“This is a very rare strain of the Ebola virus,” says one scientist who, oddly enough, looks extremely similar to Klain. “It produces MRNA, the deadliest of the stem loop structures.”

[The camera slowly zooms closer. Klain’s doppleganger clumsily knocks the glass container holding the virus off the table. It breaks on the floor. The other scientists gasp.]

“Oh, don’t worry,” he says, “it’s not an airborne strain.”

“Excuse me,” another scientist says, “how long have you been studying the Ebola virus?”

“Well,” he says, “I’m not actually a scientist, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.”

[Another scientist behind him passes out.]

Six signs your governments too big

Ron Klain is a political fixer.  This response demonstrates once again that the administration is not inclined to actually do anything productive, just to make it appear that they know what they are doing.

So we start to get a pretty clear sense of where the president is going. Obama has a habit of taking audaciously inactive positions, like not bombing ISIS, only to crawfish backwards when public outrage intensifies. A travel ban of some kind is on its way, just as a war of some kind is now underway against ISIS. A president who prides himself on defying his critics has, this midterm year, turned into a public opinion appeaser. But positions obtained through backpedaling, particularly on national security, are unlikely to reassure. Having opted for another crawfish maneuver, Obama will struggle to stay ahead of the public panic that is driving his actions.

Chris Stirewalt

Don’t vote! It just encourages the bastards

P. J. O’Rourke

In Michael Glennon’s new book (National Security and Double Government), “he catalogs the ways that the defense and national security apparatus is effectively self-governing, with virtually no accountability, transparency, or checks and balances of any kind. He uses the term ‘double government’: There’s the one we elect, and then there’s the one behind it, steering huge swaths of policy almost unchecked. Elected officials end up serving as mere cover for the real decisions made by the bureaucracy.”

The U.S. government is run with, Glennon says, “a bifurcated system — a structure of double government — in which even the president now exercises little substantive control over the overall direction of U.S. national security policy.”

The result of this double government, he says, is a system that marches relentlessly “toward greater centralization, less accountability, and emergent autocracy.”

Boston Globe

http://dailyreckoning.com/dont-blame-obama-power/

And, of course, ISIS is a Frankenstein largely of the US military’s creation.

But the reason Ebola has gotten the shaft over ISIS is obvious: There are no high-dollar contracts to shuffle in the fight against Ebola. Until, of course, Ebola gets completely out of control and the government can justify vaccinating whole populations (cha-ching!).

Chris Campbell

If voting made a difference, they wouldn’t let us do it.

Mark Twain

If there is any larceny in a man, golf will bring it out.

Paul Gallico

Maybe one day History will tell us that Ebola never won but rather Government's failed to act, and that Ebola just simply walked in and meet No resistance, Barring a few brave souls that fought the Virus on their own and never relied on the Government Coming to Help, the victor always writes the history what will Ebola write about Mankind.
Paul Gilbert

The earth is attempting to rid itself of an infection by human parasite.
Richard Preston

We feel confident that there won’t be an outbreak.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

Who ya gonna call?

President Barack Obama will appoint Ron Klain his "Ebola czar," knowledgeable sources tell CNN.

Another political hack to the rescue.

We have arrived at a moment with our elite institutions where it is impossible to distinguish incompetence from willful misdirection. This can only compound an already dangerous situation.

Jonathan Last

The irrational fear of an alien pathogen is fueled by rational suspicion of an incompetent and dishonest government.

Michael Goodwin

If it breaks out, it’s literally ‘Katie bar the door’

Marine Corps General John F. Kelly

A travel ban is not the right answer. It’s simply not feasible to build a wall—virtual or real—around a community, city, or country. A travel ban would essentially quarantine the more than 22 million people that make up the combined populations of Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea.When a wildfire breaks out we don’t fence it off. We go in to extinguish it before one of the random sparks sets off another outbreak somewhere else.

We don’t want to isolate parts of the world, or people who aren’t sick, because that’s going to drive patients with Ebola underground, making it infinitely more difficult to address the outbreak. . . .

Importantly, isolating countries won’t keep Ebola contained and away from American shores. Paradoxically, it will increase the risk that Ebola will spread in those countries and to other countries, and that we will have more patients who develop Ebola in the U.S.

Dr. Thomas Frieden, CDC

If there had been a travel ban in place, Thomas Duncan would have likely reached the same sad fate—but without infecting two Americans and setting the virus loose in North America. And it’s difficult to follow the logic by which banning travel from infected countries would create more infections in the United States, as Frieden insists. This is not a paradox; it’s magical thinking.

Jonathan V. Last

As a side note, if anyone cares, wanna know what Obama’s up to?

According to the Golf Channel, he just swatted his 200th round of golf as President.

Good for him.

Oh, what the hell…

Daily Reckoning

Is the term Obola Racist?

 

If you have time the Vice story on Ebola is worth watching: http://youtu.be/ANUI4uT3xJI