WELL, DEBLASIO HASN’T BEEN IN ALL THAT LONG, YET: New York is Still Competent, Even if Ebola Comes.
Archive for 2014
October 17, 2014
TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): Female teacher who had 2-year affair with 14-year-old student is spared jail. “Explaining his decision to issue a suspended sentence, Judge Austin Stotan stated that although the boy was underage, he was a ‘willing’ participant in the affair.” I’m sure a male teacher would get similar consideration.
GET A HEADSTART ON CHRISTMAS WITH the Amazon Holiday Toy List.
HOW’S THAT “SMART DIPLOMACY” WORKING OUT? On outskirts of Baghdad, Islamic State’s advances raise tensions.
Related: Austin Bay: The Wages of Smart Diplomacy. “After a month of presidential bravado, Obama’s anti-Islamic State coalition is little more than a loose collection of promises, occasional airstrikes and jaw-dropping political errors.”
To be fair, it’s only meant to last until November. He’ll have more flexibility after the elections.
MARK STEYN: Protocol Theater:
The Centers for Disease Control is one of those elite federal agencies that people hitherto assumed was, so to speak, immune to the pathologies of less glamorous government bureaucracies. It turns out it’s the DMV with test tubes – just the usual “Sorry? Did we say you need two copies of the green form? We meant you need three copies of the pink form” routine with extra lethality. The Protocols of the Elders of Druid Hills have proved to be boundlessly mutable and mostly honored in the breach:
~Don’t worry, the Protocols are in place – except that Thomas Duncan, the original Ebola patient, was left in an open area of the Dallas emergency room for hours and the medical staff treating him did not have protective clothing for the first two days.
~Don’t worry, they did eventually get fully sealed, protective clothing – well, except for their necks, which remained exposed.
~Don’t worry, exposed medical staff aren’t supposed to fly – except that Nurse Amber Vinson got on a flight to Cleveland with a fever.
~Well, okay, but that was totally in breach of the Protocols – except that Nurse Vinson called the CDC to check and they said, “Sure, get on the plane. What’s the worst that can happen? And make sure you share the bag of mini-pretzels…”
~Well, okay, but the next time Nurse Vinson got a flight, everyone followed the Protocols and wore hazmat suits – except for the guy with the clipboard, who works for the CDC and so can’t be expected to know all this Protocol stuff…
As I said yesterday, the mortality rate for Ebola is 70 per cent – if you go nowhere near a hospital and just stay in your primitive disease-ridden village. If you go to a Liberian hospital, the mortality rate goes down a whopping three per cent to 67 per cent. One had assumed that western hospitals would be able to lower that significantly, but Hazmat Bob’s Ministry of Propaganda is not terribly reassuring on that front.
Yeah, if there’s a major epidemic, you might be better off locking yourself in a room with a bunch of pedialyte.
But also keep a copy of Mark Steyn’s brand-new book, The Undocumented Mark Steyn, so that you can at least die laughing.
CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Federal court in Idaho strikes down ban on possessing guns for self-defense on Army Corps of Engineers property. “The regulations govern over 700 dams — holding back more than 100 trillion gallons of water — built by the Corps, and the surrounding recreation areas that serve over 300 million visitors annually.”
TEACH WOMEN NOT TO MURDER! The Texas ‘Black Widow’ Case: Man Shot Dead in Bed by Own Wife.
MATT LEWIS: What Obama’s nakedly political moves say about our screwed-up polity. “More and more, the president seems uninterested in even trying to hide the fact that he is making policy moves based on political considerations — in confessing he has to act one way until after the next election, at which point he can act another way.”
PERHAPS PREHISTORIC PEOPLE SAVED US ALL FROM THE WALKING DEAD: In a 7,000-year-old town in Bulgaria, over 100 graves have been uncovered, revealing skeletons with stakes through their hearts and mutilated bones. Meet the vampires that almost were.
AS YOU MIGHT EXPECT, IT’S KIND OF A LONG ARTICLE: What Ezra Klein Gets Wrong About How Laws Work. But really, not knowing the difference between a preponderance of the evidence and beyond a reasonable doubt? I’m not saying everyone should know that, but every journalist — or even “journolist” — should. And certainly any who choose to write about legal issues. . . .
IF YOU’RE WORRIED ABOUT EBOLA, it’s because you’re a racist. “Ebola is now a stand-in for any combination of ‘African-ness’, ‘blackness’, ‘foreign-ness’ and ‘infestation’ – poised to ruin the perceived purity of western borders and bodies.”
So where are the biggest racists? In Africa! Africa stems Ebola via border closings, luck. “South Africa and Zambia slapped travel and entry restrictions on Ebola-stricken countries. Kenya Airways, the country’s main airline, stopped flying to the affected lands. In Zimbabwe, all travelers from West Africa are put under 21-day surveillance. Health officials regularly visit those travelers to check their condition.”
My presumption, now, is that anyone who goes on about racism is either a fool or a tool.
ANOTHER HORSEMAN: Famine Approaches To Add To West Africa’s Torment. As I’ve mentioned, my brother advised our Nigerian relatives to stockpile 3 months worth of food.
MICHAEL BARONE: Hispanics seem to be souring on Obama Democrats.
October 16, 2014
AS THE ACADEMY CONTINUES TO EAT ITSELF: Students: Transgender Woman Can’t Be Diversity Officer Because She’s a White Man Now.
Tip: When students go on about social justice, the proper response is to tell them you don’t care what they think, because they don’t know enough to have an intelligent opinion yet. If universities were run on this principle, the 3% of students responsible for 98% of the idiocy would no longer have their destructive impact. Also, it’s true: They don’t know enough to have an intelligent opinion, as demonstrated by the opinions they do have.
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Plus, Fall Deals on Men’s Shoes. Also, Women’s Shoes.
SO I’VE HEARD SOME SPECULATION that the reason Obama jumped on this issue all of a sudden is that they now expect the Ebola outbreak to get worse in the U.S. Ebola in the Big Apple? CDC tells NYC to get ready.
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: Obama administration ‘days behind in coming to obvious conclusions’ about Ebola. They’ll ban travelers from Ebola countries right about the time it’s too late to do much good.
UPDATE: Poll: 82% want quarantine, 66% would block entry. “As the Ebola crisis surges to the top issue on the minds of Americans, a new poll finds that 82 percent of those following the issue closely want to quarantine anybody who has recently traveled to the virus-stricken nations. The Economist/YouGov poll found that women are more concerned than men and would refuse entry to anybody from those nations. Just 16 percent would allow them into the nation.”
Security Moms —> Quarantine Moms?
OUT: WHITE PRIVILEGE. In: Pathetic Privilege.
HMM: Nurse May Have Had Symptoms of Ebola Longer Than First Thought. ‘A nurse with Ebola may have shown symptoms of the virus as many as four days before authorities once indicated, meaning that she might have been contagious while flying on not just one, but two commercial flights, officials said Thursday. . . . The CDC announced later Thursday that is ‘expanding its outreach to airline passengers now to include those who flew from Dallas-Fort Worth to Cleveland on Frontier flight 1142′ last Friday — which is how Vinson got to Ohio, from Texas, originally.”
Plus: “’12 confirmed contacts of Amber Vinson in Ohio … are currently under quarantine,’ according to Summit County’s assistant health commissioner Donna Skoda. They include four people who worked at a bridal store, where the 29-year-old nurse went as part of her wedding planning.”
Related: Ebola outbreak ‘running much faster’ than response.
HMM. THAT’S CERTAINLY NOT THE POPULAR IMPRESSION: “Marriage results in women getting thinner, but men fatter.”
It turns out, though, that fatness is correlated with working longer hours, so men work more once they’re married, while women work less, and hence get thinner.
NEWS FROM OUR RULING CLASS: Joe Biden’s Son Hunter Discharged From Navy Reserve After Failing Cocaine Test.
Vice President Joe Biden ’s son Hunter was discharged from the Navy Reserve this year after testing positive for cocaine, according to people familiar with the matter.
Hunter Biden, a lawyer by training who is now a managing partner at an investment company, had been commissioned as an ensign in the Navy Reserve, a part-time position. But after failing a drug test last year, his brief military career ended.
Mr. Biden, 44 years old, decided to pursue military service relatively late, beginning the direct-commission process to become a public-affairs officer in the Navy Reserve in 2012. Because of his age—43 when he was to be commissioned—he needed a waiver to join the Navy. He received a second Navy waiver because of a drug-related incident when he was a young man, according to people familiar with the matter. Military officials say such drug waivers aren’t uncommon.
I assume Hunter was trying to burnish his resume for some sort of political office. I don’t suppose this will help.
UPDATE: From the comments:
I had the misfortune of spending some time in USAREC (US Army Recruiting Command). We could get a waiver for a dude over forty if he had a really important skill….like doctor or Arabic linguist. Not PR dudes. We could also get a waiver for a dude with a drug issue…if it was really old and he’d never need a security clearance. An officer? No way.
I guess there was a waiver I wasn’t familiar with…the Vice President’s son waiver that covers a multitude of reasons why the average recruiter would tell a 42 year old drug addled lawyer to get the hell out of his office and leave the pens and stickers.
Indeed.
SULTAN KNISH: The Savage Lands of Islam.
ELI LAKE: Insiders Blame Rove for Covering Up Iraq’s Real WMD. “Starting in 2004, some members of the George W. Bush administration and Republican lawmakers began to find evidence of discarded chemical weapons in Iraq. But when the information was brought up with the White House, senior adviser Karl Rove told them to ‘let these sleeping dogs lie.’”
Yeah, that was bad advice.
WHY NOT? THE REST OF US HAVE: Is Wall Street Tuning Out CBS?