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PROBABLY NOT: Are U.S. Hospitals Prepared For The Next Ebola Case?

[CDC director Thomas] Frieden was on the news saying any hospital in the U.S. should be able to manage an Ebola patient. That struck me as odd, because managing an infectious disease in a hospital is not as straightforward as it may seem. Infectious diseases like C. diff [Clostridium difficile] and MRSA [methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus] have presented significant challenges for hospitals for years. Why did the CDC think that managing Ebola would be straightforward?

I think hospitals 50 or 60 years ago were better at that.

IF THE DEMOCRATS GET THEIR WAY, SURE: Washington Post: Could Non-Citizens Decide The November Election? “How many non-citizens participate in U.S. elections? More than 14 percent of non-citizens in both the 2008 and 2010 samples indicated that they were registered to vote. Furthermore, some of these non-citizens voted. Our best guess, based upon extrapolations from the portion of the sample with a verified vote, is that 6.4 percent of non-citizens voted in 2008 and 2.2 percent of non-citizens voted in 2010. Because non-citizens tended to favor Democrats (Obama won more than 80 percent of the votes of non-citizens in the 2008 CCES sample), we find that this participation was large enough to plausibly account for Democratic victories in a few close elections. Non-citizen votes could have given Senate Democrats the pivotal 60th vote needed to overcome filibusters in order to pass health-care reform and other Obama administration priorities in the 111th Congress. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) won election in 2008 with a victory margin of 312 votes. Votes cast by just 0.65 percent of Minnesota non-citizens could account for this margin. It is also possible that non-citizen votes were responsible for Obama’s 2008 victory in North Carolina. Obama won the state by 14,177 votes, so a turnout by 5.1 percent of North Carolina’s adult non-citizens would have provided this victory margin.”

DEMOCRATIC OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES — AND CLOWN SHOES. Hit On Georgia Republican Perdue Blows up In BuzzFeed’s Face. “Perdue wasn’t signing a ‘woman’s torso,’ as BuzzFeed claimed. The truth is that he was signing a woman’s diabetic pump at the request of the woman as a way to raise awareness for juvenile diabetes. Rather than own up to and correct the error, BuzzFeed merely blame-shifted by changing the headline to: Tracker Fail: Dems Miss Insulin Pump In Video Of Perdue Signing Young Woman.”

When you take pre-digested hit pieces from political hit men. . . .

IT’S NOT HER FAULT, IT’S THE CONCUSSION TALKING: Hillary Clinton: Business Don’t Create Jobs!

HEH: What Happens When You Serve McDonald’s to Food Snobs and Tell Them It’s Organic.

EBOLA: The Hacklash. “I’m much less worried about contracting Ebola than I am about the dismissive reaction to it. Hacklash appears to be a cyclical problem, and as an indicator of the health of our Republic, I don’t see how this ends well.” We have the worst political class in our nation’s history, and the journalists are just another part of that.

PRICE TRUMPS EVERYTHING: Dodge Viper’s $15,000 Price Cut Boosts Monthly Sales by Nearly 200 Percent—to 108 Cars.

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Another Honor Student Expelled over “Zero-Tolerance” Idiocy.

REMEMBER, HE DOESN’T DO PHOTO OPS: Obama Hugs Ebola-Free Nurse: ‘Let’s Give a Hug for the Cameras.’

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IT’S COME TO THIS: PhotoMath uses your phone’s camera to solve equations. Soon, you won’t have to know how to do anything!

WOW: Tesla About To Sell 5000th Model S.

HARLEY DAVIDSON GOES ELECTRIC.

CHESTER FINN: The State Of Education Reform.

HIPSTER TECH: The Old-School Cassette Player That’s Connected to Spotify.

TAXPROF: The IRS Scandal, Day 533.

GAZPROBLEMS: Europe’s Energy Supplies Are Anything But Secure. “Nuclear energy is an attractive option, but in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima disaster many in Europe are reluctant to move forward with new plants, and indeed Germany is in the process of phasing out the zero-carbon energy source. Commercial production of domestic reserves of shale gas hasn’t yet taken off, due to a mix of geologic complexity, bureaucratic red tape, and staunch local opposition. Starry-eyed greens will point to renewables as an option for diversifying away from Russian hydrocarbons—Putin has no hold on the sun or wind, they’ll be quick to point out—but these sources can only serve as peak supplies. That is, due to the intermittency of wind and solar energy production, they can’t be relied upon to consistently provide a baseload amount of power, and until more effective storage technologies become available, renewables won’t be able to replace fossil fuels like-for-like. LNG is another oft-touted option for Europe, but with Asian buyers paying a hefty premium for the ship-carried energy source these days, Europe will have to pay out the nose for the privilege—something the continent’s struggling economies won’t be happy to do.”

IF YOU CAN’T AFFORD A HOUSE, DON’T BUY ONE:

When legislators and activists say that we need low-down-payment loans because most people couldn’t possibly save up for a 20 percent down payment, what they’re really saying is that people can’t actually afford to buy a house. Helping them to go buy one anyway is not a great idea; it will work out well for some, to be sure, but it will have tragic consequences for others, and for the housing market as a whole if there’s another downturn. We just spent six years learning, the very hard way, that you can’t borrow yourself rich. That knowledge is too expensive to throw away so easily.

Our government hasn’t learned that yet.

MICHAEL GERSON: The world is in denial about Ebola’s true threat. “The Ebola virus has multiplied in a medium of denial. There was the initial denial that a rural disease, causing isolated outbreaks that burned out quickly, could become a sustained, urban killer. There is the (understandable) denial of patients in West Africa, who convince themselves that they have flu or malaria (the symptoms are similar to Ebola) and remain in communities. And there is the form of denial now practiced by Western governments — a misguided belief that an incremental response can get ahead of an exponentially growing threat.”

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HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE:

One of my first papers in college was about Gertrude Stein’s “Three Lives.” I happened not to enjoy the book, and so focused my paper on its failings. When I received the paper back, I was completely horrified to discover that I’d gotten an F. The professor’s comments filled the margins—things like “you write like a conservative,” comparisons to Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, and the (still absurd) statement that “an intellectual reads with sympathy for the protagonist.”

Um.

STEPHEN L. CARTER: Obama’s White House Can’t Take A Joke.

Well, I remember when Barack Obama “joked” about auditing his enemies, so maybe they know something about his sense of humor that we don’t.

RON FOURNIER: Obama needs to ‘fire himself.’