Category Archives: Ebola Outbreak

11/11/2014
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Alayne Fleischmann, Climate Change Denial, Democracy Now!, Ebola Outbreak, Great Recession, Hysteria, JPMorgan Chase, Mark Twain, Matt Taibbi, Sen. James Inhofe, The War Prayer, Veterans Day

Hot Air

Veterans Day

The War Prayer, from Mark Twain:

Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth into battle — be Thou near them! With them — in spirit — we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended in the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames in summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it —

For our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimmage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet!

We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.

WW II

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This is a good day to remember precisely what war is.

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We’re All (Not) Gonna Die!

Well, whaddya know! This holy land is now scot-free of the deadly, dreaded, sure-to-kill-us-all ebola virus. The last remaining ebola patient in America was released, cured, from Bellevue Hospital in New York yesterday.

This is exciting news! Now we can look forward to the next the big thing that’s going to kill us all. I wonder what it’ll be. Let’s see, an asteroid hitting the Earth? Naw, that’s so 2013. E. coli? Uh uh — that’s last year, too. Sharks? Puh-leeaze, that’s way too old school. Ebonics? Nix; most police departments have military weapons and vehicles now so that threat can be neutralized in one bloody swoop.

Police Militarization

Pronounce Your TH’s Or We’ll Shoot!

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Wait, I know! Robots.

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Scourges, Real & Imagined

So, those annoying, silly, eventually-embarrassing-to-the-wearer, low-slung drawers may soon be illegal in Forest Park, Illinois, a western suburb of Chi.

The mayor of FP, Anthony Calderone, sez he’s tired of seeing young men’s bloomers, acc’d’g to Fox News 32.

Low Slung Pants

Criminals

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The crime fighters of Forest Park’s town council are considering a ban on the wearing of pants so low. At long last, our civilization may be saved from this scourge.

Meanwhile, beginning in January Oklahoma’s James Inhofe will be sworn in as the new chair of the US Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee. He’ll be in charge of those who rule on federal laws dealing with the dumping of all categories of shit into our air and water. Oh, and global warming. You know, the thing that Inhofe believes is no scourge at all.

In fact, Inhoff insists, it’s a hoax.

I need a drink.

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Stop, Thief!

Here’s Matt Taibbi and former JPMorgan Chase analyst and whistleblower Alayne Fleischmann ripping the cover off the investment bank’s racketeering pre-The Great Recession.

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JPMChase’s banksters, acc’d’g to the two, defrauded investors, customers…, hell, the whole world, for that matter, by peddling their garbage mortgage-backed securities. Then that particular Money Mob fleeced the fed. gov’t out of hundreds of billions of USD in bailout dough.

No wonder business schools have been the biggest graduating classes at universities all around this holy land for the last few decades.

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10/18/2014
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Andy Borowitz, Bill O'Reilly, breitbart.com, Centers for Disease Control, Commercial Development, Dr. Thomas Frieden, Ebola Outbreak, Epidemiology, Kim Jong-il, Kim Jong-un, North Korea, Parking, The New Yorker, Trolley Circulators, Washington Post

Hot Air

We’re all gonna die!

Like the headline sez, but it ain’t gonna be ebola that gets us.

This is not West Africa. We’re turning ourselves inside out over the fact that one guy has died (and he was recently arrived from West Africa.) Now two other people have it.

The populace of this holy land is having conniption fits over this non-epidemic, thanks mainly to a corporate media whose most precious talent is the ability to scare the poo out of us. They’re doing so.

Anyway, let’s turn to a little science. Have you caught this piece in the Washington Post?

From WaPo

Click Image For Full Story

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Each of the grid charts illustrates how a specific disease spreads and kills (if at all). Ebola may be a killer but it ain’t a spreader. At least not a fast one. It simply does not jump from body to body easily.

An alert medical system and educated populace can stem the disease relatively quickly.

So, no, Centers for Disease Control head Dr. Thomas Frieden does not need to resign, despite the demands he do so by that noted epidemiologist Bill O’Reilly and the learned experts at breitbart.com. See, Frieden does not think ebola is gonna kill us all, nor does he want to seal our borders against the even more terrifying and dangerous natives of Africa.

Almost as perilous is what fear of ebola is turning us into. Andy Borowitz of The New Yorker states the case clearly and firmly (satire alert, natch):

From The New Yorker

You Know The Drill — Click For Full Story

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And, of course, since we live in a nation awash in grievances, some among us consider themselves victims even though they haven’t got a fever. For instance, I know a nurse who is loudly proclaiming on the interwebs that nurses, as always, take the blame for everything. She’s referring to suggestions that the nurse who caught ebola from the Liberian man in Dallas may have employed faulty personal protection practices while caring for him.

The idea being, she might have touched her eyelid or mouth with a contaminated glove finger, a simple mistake that any human can make. But, naturally, chronically aggrieved parties interpret any criticism as the moral equivalent of slavery.

Post

Nah, Don’t Click The Image

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This is the first time I’ve ever heard that nurses are being blamed for anything. They, like teachers, are the Virgin Marys of our society, above reproach, free of sin, spotless vessels. Now, suddenly, they’re the fall guys for everything?

We Americans are weird.

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Big City Blues

The Herald Times reports this morning (paywall) that Monroe County is going full steam ahead with plans for a 220-spot parking garage next to the Zietlow Justice Center and jail. Only “The full cost of the project is not known.” and “A construction date has not been set.”

So scotch the full and the steam. The ahead while you’re at it, too.

All I know is the county and the city had better get cracking on throwing up some parking garages quickly, what with hotels springing up everywhere near the formerly quaint Courthouse Square. Hell, no fewer than three developments are in the planning stages for the intersection of Lincoln and Kirkwood avenues alone. And another is planned for the bank property at Washington and Kirkwood.

Hong Kong

Bloomington’s Future?

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It’ll be easier to catch ebola in Bloomington than find a parking space once all these structures go up. To steal and mangle a line from Jerry Seinfeld, They’re gonna be building hotels inside of hotels soon.

Anyway, here’s my suggestion. Let’s build a nice round number of parking facilities spaced out to ring the downtown area. Say six of them. The existing parking facilities — on 4th Street, on Walnut and 7th, and behind the Buskirk Chumley Theater will give us a total of nine. (Let’s leave the Monroe County Municipal Library lot for library patrons, shall we?) Eliminate street parking for a two or three block radius around the Square, maybe more. Contract with a private company to run regular trolley service between all the lots, the Courthouse, the Zietlow facility, the hotels, the library, the Buskirk Chumley, the Sample Gates, City Hall, and whatever other attractions and municipal service centers there are in the vicinity.

Trolley

Catch The Trolley

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How do we pay for it all? Slap a room tax on all the new hotels going up. Add a food and beverage tax to all appropriate places within the service area. Hell, a five-dollar surcharge on a hotel room isn’t going to kill anybody. And adding 50 cents to a dollar to everybody’s grub and booze tab isn’t going to stop people from stuffing their faces and getting sloshed.

If Bloomington wants to pretend it’s a big city, it’s going to have to act like one.

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The Haircuts Of Kim Jong-Un

As a public service, I’m providing a photographic timeline of the North Korean Dear Leader’s coifs. Historians and researchers will benefit greatly from this.

KJU 1

A Very Young KJU With His Daddy-o, KJI

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KJU 2

KJU Adopts The Adolph Look

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KJU 3

KJU Opts For The Collegiate Crew Cut

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KJU 4

KJU Shaves The Sides

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KJU 5

KJU Ditches The Part

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KJU 6

KGU Sprouts Speed Racer Villain Horns

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KJU 7

KJU’s Pompadour/Fade Begins To Attain Towering Heights

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You’re welcome

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10/14/2014
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Bloomingfoods, Chris Brown, Conspiracy Theory, David Brent Johnson, Ebola Outbreak, Malcolm Abrams, Phyllis Schlafly, Unions

Hot Air

The Bloom Is Off The Foods Store?

Here’s some alleged inside dope about the air that Bloomingfoods workers breathe. I caution you to take it with a grain of salt. It’s one person’s observation. I’ll continue canvassing other insiders at the five-store co-op, some of whose employees are making union noises these days.

Bloomingfoods/Union

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Acc’d’g to this B-foods employee — let’s call him Joe Doe — morale at the stores has been sinking for a good long time. There are several reasons for this:

  • Newer employees must obey the rules and do the dirty work while older, entrenched employees tend to take these things a bit less seriously
  • B-foods is bruised and bloodied, thanks to competition from the likes of Kroger which is now selling many of the same natural and certified organic products at better prices
  • Management seems slow to respond to the competition — B-foods’ merchandising, inventory, and retail strategies are the same ones the co-op has depended on since its inception 38 years ago
  • Those sweet employee benefits linked to here yesterday? They’re available to full-timers but — here’s the rub — try getting F-T hours

Again, this is one Bloomingfoods worker’s testimony. If there’s any truth to it, though, it would indicate the co-op just might be suffering through a mid-life crisis. Most companies go through it. Brilliant, ambitious, visionary entrepreneurs start businesses that take off like rockets. For years these operations are model wealth generators, their set-ups sleek and enviable. After a couple of decades of robust growth, the ideas that put these cos. ahead of the pack have been co-opted by everybody else in the industry. Those one-time visionaries eventually find themselves incapable or unwilling to adopt newer ideas in their fields. They’ve become hidebound and cocksure.

Hell, even Apple kicked Steve Jobs out the door at one point. Every company needs a shake-out at the top at some point in time.

Is this Bloomingfoods’ time?

Maybe, maybe not. Stayed tuned here for more testimony from insiders who may or may not buy into this theory.

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Ebola Causes Insanity

And now a new flood of crazy has begun. This time the topic is ebola.

You had to figure that would happen, no? First, batshit paranoia emanated from the cakehole of that deep thinker, Phyllis Schlafly (who, unaccountably, is still alive and being interviewed). Schlafly sez Prez Obama, natch, not only is responsible for ebola coming into this holy land, he wants it here. The reason? So’s we can become just like the rest of the planet’s cool kids.

He wants us to be just like everybody else, and if Africa is suffering from Ebola, we ought to join the group and be suffering from it, too.

Schlafly

Schlafly

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So says the woman whose greatest accomplishment in life was to lead the battle against the passage of an amendment to the US Constitution that would guarantee civil rights for half its citizens. Thanks, Phyll.

Anyway, pop star, noted domestic abuser, and serial violent tantrum-thrower Chris Brown has now weighed in on the greatest threat to America since the last one. He tweeted yesterday:

I don’t know … But I think this Ebola epidemic is a form of population control. … getting crazy bruh.

Brown

Brown

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Laugh if you want, but his tweet contains an unassailable truth: he doesn’t know.

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Whee, Me!

Scads o’thanks to writer David Brent Johnson and publisher Malcolm Abrams for the neat profile of this scribe in the October/November edition of Bloom magazine.

Johnson/Abrams

Johnson (L) & Abrams

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Somehow, Johnson succeeded in catching the gist of The Pencil and me in only 400 words. That’s writing, babies. And Abrams had the good sense to recognize that the founder of this communications colossus must be immortalized in his mag.

Honestly, boys, I appreciate it. Now, let’s see some good Bloom ink translate into a gazillion page views here!

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10/02/2014
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AIDS, Centers for Disease Control, Dr. Kent Brantly, Ebola Outbreak, Panic, Ryan White, Tom Phelps

Hot Air

Panic

Is it my imagination?

Scads of folk are howling about ebola these days, natch. The howlers, generally, seem to think we’re not doing enough to protect ourselves from the scourge.

Ourselves being the citizens of this holy land.

In fact, I recall a number of interwebs yowls wherein the complainants were aghast that we should let that missionary doctor who’d contracted the disease back into the country.

Brantly

Dr. Kent Brantly, Ebola Survivor

[The Guardian photo]

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A country, I might add, that is pretty much alone among the world’s nations in having the facilities, the technology, and the dough to handle victims of ebola. Where the yowlers wanted the poor doctor to go was never explained.

Now I understand a lot of Dallas parents are keeping their kids home from school lest their snowflakes become infected. This despite health officials’ repeated assurances that there is no danger their kids’ll catch ebola.

Dallas is where the nation’s first diagnosed ebola case was discovered. A newly-arrived Liberian was diagnosed with it within the last week. It’s said the Liberian came into contact with up to 18 people between the time of his arrival here (September 20th) and his isolation. Any Dallas school kids he might have come in contact with have been removed from school and are being monitored.

The Centers for Disease Control and every other reputable medical and epidemiological expert tell us ebola can only be spread through direct contact with an infected person’s sweat, urine, feces, saliva, or other bodily fluids. In other words, you have to come into fairly intimate contact with an ebola patient before the disease grabs you.

Still, prudence is the best course and ebola can kill you almost as quickly as a self-appointed, self-aggrandizing neighborhood watch stalker with a gun, so those stricken with the virus must be isolated.

We’ve also learned that an ebola patient is only contagious when s/he is exhibiting symptoms. That’s why the number of people the Liberian has been in contact with is sketchy. It’s not known to the minute when he became symptomatic and when he had contact with each of the individuals.

All that said, people wanting to keep their kids home from school is over the top.

Rather like the reaction when, say, Ryan White wanted to keep going to school even after he was diagnosed with AIDS.

Another disease, I might add, that is only contagious via bodily fluids, specifically blood, semen, breast milk, and vaginal and rectal fluids.

No one can forget how panicky so many were over AIDS. Panic being the key word.

Screen Shot 2014-10-02 at 9.04.37 AM

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Note the qualifier, “hysterical or irrational behavior.”

I don’t recall much panic over, say, a few strains of seasonal flu that were particularly virulent in recent years. The flu, acc’d’g to the CDC, kills anywhere from 3000 to 49,000 people each year, depending on the strain. Forty-nine thousand people! Man, only 33,561 people were killed in automobile accidents in 2012, the last year for which the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has released data. And we bay like coyotes about traffic safety and passenger protection.

Auto Crash

Not As Bad As The Flu

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The flu, on an annual basis, is more deadly than car crashes.

People don’t keep their kids home from school during flu season, though. Nor, for that matter, do they do so because their kids must be transported to school via motor vehicles.

Yet a number of Dallas parents are keeping their kids home for fear of ebola. Panicky fear.

Is it because ebola thus far is known as a disease of the other? Just as AIDS once was? The other could be Africans or simply dark people in general or it could be homosexuals.

Flu can kill you. Riding in a car can kill you. No one’s panicking over the flu or riding in a car. What makes ebola and AIDS different? Their association with the other?

Or is this all in my imagination. Nah.

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Other Voices, Other Screeches

You thought I was red-assed over the NFL’s recent domestic violence scandals and subsequent cover-ups? You’d better get over to Tom Phelps’ new blog, Random Musings from an Implacable Optimist.

RMFAIO

Click Image

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Not only is Phelps, of Ellettsville, teed off, he’s got some solutions for the NFL to consider if it’d like to get itself back in the good graces of civilized society (a desire on the league’s part I tend to doubt exists.)

In any case, TP’s new screech outlet looks promising. Really promising. I’m going to read it daily — or however often he will post — and I recommend you do too.

Only after you’ve read my screeches.

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08/04/2014
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Benghazi, Donald Trump, Ebola Outbreak, GMO, Impeachment, Martha Crouch

Hot Air

Scandal! Impeachment!

No, it’s not and no, they won’t.

The they, of course, are the House of Representatives Republicans who’ve been tumescent over impeaching Barack Obama and, for that matter, prob. lynching him as well ever since he false-birth-certificated his way into the White House. The it is Benghazi which, if you listen to the most hysterical of the Republicans enough, you’ll come away convinced was a terrorist operation conceived of and coordinated by the Phony Prez himself.

Two reports on the September, 2012, attack on the US Embassy in Benghazi, Libya, have been released by Congressional panels recently. Each destroys the Tea Party-led GOP move to make hay out of the tragedy. Neither really has gotten much press play, natch.

London Evening Post

Barack Obama Poses For A Photo During The Benghazi Attack

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The online arm of the San Francisco Chronicle, sfgate.com, Friday revealed that the House Intelligence Committee has completed its inquiry into the mob violence around the embassy that resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, and it will soon release its report. Mike Thompson, a Dem member of the Intel Committee from California, told the Chronicle the report “confirms that no one was deliberately misled, no military assets were withheld and no stand-down order (to U.S. forces) was given.”

All three charges had been leveled against the Obama White House by Republicans who’ve been dying to nail BHO on something, anything. Republican Mike Rogers of Alabama chairs the Committee.

An earlier report was issued by the House Armed Services Committee in February of this year. It said no one at the White House issued any stand down orders to military units in the region which many in the far end of the sanity spectrum of the GOP believe Obama himself did because, naturally, he wants the US to be toppled. The Armed Services Committee report did, though, criticize the readiness of everyone from the State Dept. to the Army in regard to the attack. That makes sense. Nothing else charged does.

So, y’got nuffin’, kids. Personal to the wingnutty branch of the Republican Party: Chill out. BHO’ll be gone by January, 2017. Be patient. And start sharpening tour knives now for Prez Hillary.

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My Newfound Spirituality

I don’t believe in god but I may be inclined to believe in the Devil.

That’s because Satan may walk among us. His name is Donald Trump. And he says (oops, Tweets) things like this:

Trump Tweet

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Those dopes, helping people in strange, dark lands. They must suffer the consequences!

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Open-Minded Me

I just met noted anti-GMO biologist Marti Crouch this morning.

I told her I’d be delighted to change my mind on GMOs (I don’t see the problem with them as yet) if she’ll take the trouble to convince me. (And if I buy her arguments.) So, she took my card and promised to send me material she’s written on the topic.

Fair enough.

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