CDC MUST Take Charge of Ebola Response: State Governments Are Messing Things Up and CDC Is Said to Be “Unhappy” With NJ & NY Responses to Ebola Threat

More evidence that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) MUST take charge of all screenings of travelers coming into U.S. Airports of Entry emerged in the last few days.  Nurses returning from Africa reported that they were treated like prisoners and that officials were rude and insulting to them when questioning was going underway.  And the screenings were not done correctly.

These are Americans who risked their lives to save others and they deserve to be treated with the utmost respect, while at the same time ensuring that they are not sick.  

There has to be a way to respect Constitutional protections while isolating those who need to be isolated.  The answer is probably in better Ebola detection testing.  Waiting 21 days to learn if someone is going to come down with Ebola is too slow.   

We need a test that shows the presence of Ebola in a test subject within a matter of an hour or two at most, at any point during the incubation period.

CDC needs to be on point NOW.

Wait a Minute: ISIS Is Using IRAQI Chemical Weapons??! The Weapons We Went to War Over in 2003? Iraq War Narrative Favored By the Democrats Appears to Be Falling Apart Right Before Our Eyes

I’m really confused.  It’s being reported that ISIS is using captured Iraqi chemical munitions against the Kurds in northern Iraq.   WHAT IRAQI CHEMICAL WEAPONS??!

According to anti-war Democrats and liberals and peaceniks, those weapons were destroyed in the 1990s by the United Nations. 

Yet there are now news reports about a bunker that was nicknamed by U.S. occupation forces as the “Dragon’s Egg” as being under ISIS threat.

Looks like the anti-war peacenik narrative on the reasons for the Iraq War are crumbling to dust right before our eyes. 

I had accepted that there were no chemical weapons in Iraq and that we had gone to war for no good reason, but now there are news accounts of U.S. soldiers finding Saddam’s deadly arsenal.  The liberal media ignored the reports in favor of their own narrative.   And the U.S. military, realizing that the media was not on their side or on the side of the Bush Administration, decided not to reveal all that they had found.

Former soldiers are releasing the information now.   And the media is being forced to confront the photographic evidence, such as in the case of Specialist Richard Beasley, who was burned by mustard gas.

Michelle Obama’s School Lunch Program is Awful: The Food Has No Taste, the Kids Don’t Like It, and Schools Are Abandoning the Program and Federal Money to Purchase Food That Kids Will Eat

“Too far, too fast” seems to be echoing throughout many school districts across the country as the districts struggle to meet Federal standards on school lunch programs.  Some of the districts have opted out of the program to buy food that their students will actually eat.

Having eaten school meals over the last couple of years, including food that the district bought before and after the change in Federal standards went into effect, the food they offered before was better, in my opinion.  The pizza they served tasted like cardboard, no yogurt was available, the healthy choice chips that they offered were bland, and most of the items on their menu would not appear on most home menus.  Bleah!

Cut the sodium, by all means.  Cut the artificial flavoring too.  But they shouldn’t have to sacrifice basic good taste for healthy options.

Ebola Screening Begins at Five International Airports in U.S.: It’s Not Enough

Ebola screenings have begun at five airports that accept international flights: Chicago-O’Hare, JFK, Newark, Hartsfield-Jackson and Washington-Dulles.   It’s not enough. 

It’s said that 90% of passengers in Ebola-ravaged Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia use those airports.  But what if passengers change their flight plans to get past the screenings at those airports?

What if a traveler carrying Ebola comes in at one of the other “Airports of Entry?”  The list is quite extensive as shown here.  Five airports for this screening process clearly isn’t enough.

If Americans have the “right of return” as the director of the CDC has said, then they should return when they’re declared Ebola-free.  Same thing for others who have the right to travel to the U.S. from wherever they are.

I have not seen anything so far to indicate that our government has a handle on the problem.   This band-aid fix may be too late.  We’ll know within a matter of days if there’s a huge problem in Texas.   The Liberian who died there had contact with 46 others who are under observation.  A nurse who was treating him was diagnosed with Ebola last night.

And what’s with this story of the NBC news team breaking quarantine?  If they do develop Ebola and infect others during their violation, can they be charged with some kind of crime?  They are said to be “low risk”, but many would rather see them pass by the 21-day incubation period without getting sick before pronouncing them “low-risk.”   NBC should threaten to fire this crew if they don’t follow orders, regardless of whether they get sick or not.

Ebola is here.  We need a better solution than what’s been done so far.

Vice-President Biden Does It Again: He Had to Call Foreign Leaders to Apologize for His Latest Gaffes

Once every generation, we have a politician who comes along who makes gaffe after gaffe, and makes all prior political gaffe-makers look good by comparison.

That’s what Vice-President Biden is doing for former Vice-President Dan Quayle.  That’s all I’m going to say on that topic.

In the latest gaffes, Biden was forced to call the leaders of the UAE and Egypt to apologize for suggesting that they were aiding the al-Qaeda spinoff group ISIS.  The media seems to be having a field day with it; even the liberal press is jumping on it.  It probably has something to do with a recent poll that suggests Democratic voters prefer Hillary Clinton as a presidential candidate over Joe Biden as a presidential contender by a HUGE margin---70% to 20% in some markets.

Biden really needs to stay away from the cameras and live mikes if he’s serious about a Presidential run.  After this latest royal screw-up, he can’t make any more mistakes while he’s Vice-President. 

Limbaugh is probably counting down the days to launching Operation Chaos II…getting Republicans to vote in Democratic primaries for Biden to derail Clinton.  I think it’s going to happen. 

For a senior politician, Biden isn’t helping the feeling that the Administration is running amateur hour through the Oval Office.   He rivals Cheney in sheer arrogance, and doesn’t have the foresight to see what kind of damage his words cause.

God help us if Biden ever becomes President, either through the 25th Amendment, or if he is elected to his own term as President.  

Why Hasn’t There Been a Full Embargo on Air Travel to Ebola-Hit Nations in West Africa? Huge Screw-Up at Texas Hospital Has Allowed Ebola to Gain a Foothold in U.S.

An “out of the blue” case of Ebola appears to have hit in Texas due to a screw-up at a Dallas-area hospital.

Why was this allowed to even happen?   The outbreak in West Africa was bound to show up on our shores sooner or later, yet our government has no controls in place to contain it, other than to have the Centers for Disease Control to play catch-up.

There’s no air embargo against West Africa in place.  There’s no plan in place to quarantine incoming travelers until they’ve undergone testing and observations in CDC or infectious disease facilities.   And hospitals haven’t been adequately warned.

CDC cannot afford to play catch-up; one man in Texas may have infected a dozen other people, plus untold (and unconfirmed) hundreds of other people who were in close proximity to him during the flight from Africa to the various air terminals.  All of a sudden, we may have a thousand people or more who are at a direct risk of coming down with Ebola.  How many will these people pass Ebola to?

Hopefully the damage that’s already been done will be contained to the people who are directly involved in Texas.    The nightmare scenario is that Ebola cases start to pop up all over the country like a bad case of chicken pox, and thousands more are infected.

The Obama Administration needs to take drastic action to keep this problem from happening again, if the current situation is indeed contained, as we’re all hoping and praying that it is.