Importing Ebola; World Policeman or World Quarantines Incubation Site? Election fraud?

View 848 Wednesday, October 29, 2014

“I have observed over the years that the unintended consequences of social action are always more important, and usually less agreeable, than the intended consequences.”

Irving Kristol

“Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.”

President Barack Obama, January 31, 2009

It has not been a great week. Monday starts well, but it was late before I got to anything like work. I did manage to do the Five Tibetan Rites, and hoped I’d be able to repeat that daily this week, but so far I have not. Tuesday was consumed with doctors and examinations and then shopping, and it was dinner time before I got home. Today was consumed by locusts mostly.

The eye people have decided that I will get at least one more iteration of new tri-focals before cataract surgery. That’s a bit expensive – even at Kaiser my glare free photo grey tri-focal glasses run to several hundred dollars – but it does put off the cataract surgery for a while. I am told by people I trust that modern cataract corrections are nothing like what I recall from the days when Bob Bloch get the procedure and then needed to be driven everywhere at night. I don’t know precisely when that was, but I do know that I drove him to the grand opening of Star Wars at Fox, so it would be possible to find the date that way. At least he could see the movies (and I made some money on it: after I saw it I bought Fox stock, although alas I couldn’t afford a lot). Now, I am told, the procedure is simple, over with quickly, and you’re better off. But I’m still glad to put it off for a bit.

I was also examined for skin problems, and got spritzed with liquid nitrogen in many places, all of which are now uncomfortable as they decay then heal. Frostbite is a good treatment for pre-cancerous conditions…

But I appear to be in pretty good shape for an 80 year old brain cancer survivor, even if I do tire more easily than I like. They tell me I’m good for another decade.

Importing Ebola

Hello Jerry,

Seems like Ebola is not becoming epidemic in the US rapidly enough to suit the Obamunists, so they are planning to import it in wholesale quantity:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/oct/28/state-department-plans-to-bring-foreign-ebola-pati/

Sounds like a plan—if the plan is national suicide. Or, more precisely, national murder.

A more striking example of ‘benign incompetence’ would be hard to imagine. Apparently a backup to the previous plan of sending the 101st Airborne from Fort Bragg to the center of infection in Africa to ‘fight Ebola’. After all, if you need a ‘quick reaction force’ to ‘fight’ something, isn’t the 101st the first outfit that would come to YOUR mind?

Bob Ludwick=

The Obama Administration says that we cannot quarantine against Ebola.

Obama warns against strict quarantines for Ebola workers

By Lesley Clark, Nancy Youssef and Tony Pugh

McClatchy Washington Bureau October 29, 2014

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama called for health care workers returning from treating Ebola patients in West Africa to be treated as “the heroes that they are,” amid continuing confusion and public anxiety over state health measures that call for some to be confined to their homes.

Obama warned there may be future cases of Ebola in the United States and that the only way to bring the risk to zero is to contain the outbreak at its source, in West Africa.

“If we’re not dealing with this problem there, it will come here,” he said at the White House, joined by his Ebola response coordinator, Ron Klain, and sharing a stage with doctors and nurses who have been to West Africa. “What we need right now is these shock troops who are out there leading globally. We can’t discourage that. We’ve got to encourage it and applaud it.”

Without naming any states, Obama warned against overly restrictive monitoring measures, saying, “If we’re discouraging our health care workers . . . from traveling to these places in need, then we’re not doing our job in terms of looking after our own public health and safety.”

Obama’s remarks came as Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel on Wednesday ordered that all U.S. troops who travel to Liberia to help build Ebola treatment centers be quarantined for 21 days afterward, even though the service members will not come into direct contact with Ebola patients. The measure exceeds the recommendations of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But Hagel noted that the troops are not volunteers and described the measure as a “safety valve.”

And in Maine, nurse Kaci Hickox, who was quarantined without her consent in New Jersey after returning from treating Ebola patients in Sierra Leone, said Wednesday that she won’t comply with health officials in Maine who want her to remain in her home and avoid public contact. Hickox went home to Maine after New Jersey officials released her on Monday.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/10/29/245117/obama-warns-against-strict-quarantines.html#storylink=cpy

Of course these heroes will cooperate with the health authorities and would never risk transmitting Ebola to anyone in the United States.

Ebola doctor ‘lied’ about NYC travels

By Jamie Schram and Bruce Golding

October 29, 2014 | 3:21am

The city’s first Ebola patient initially lied to authorities about his travels around the city following his return from treating disease victims in Africa, law-enforcement sources said.

Dr. Craig Spencer at first told officials that he isolated himself in his Harlem apartment — and didn’t admit he rode the subways, dined out and went bowling until cops looked at his MetroCard the sources said.

“He told the authorities that he self-quarantined. Detectives then reviewed his credit-card statement and MetroCard and found that he went over here, over there, up and down and all around,” a source said.

Spencer finally ’fessed up when a cop “got on the phone and had to relay questions to him through the Health Department,” a source said.

Officials then retraced Spencer’s steps, which included dining at The Meatball Shop in Greenwich Village and bowling at The Gutter in Brooklyn.

http://nypost.com/2014/10/29/ebola-doctor-lied-about-his-nyc-travels-police/

The military will quarantine the soldiers sent to the plague zone, preferably in another country; but the military is held responsible for its actions. That does not seem to be true for non-military heroes.

I think I would rather be the world’s policeman than the world’s incubation site for Ebola survivors,

And of course we understand how Ebola propagates.

Questions remain about how Dallas nurse got Ebola

By Ashley Fantz and Holly Yan, CNN

The nurse wore a mask, gown, shield and gloves as she helped care for a dying Ebola patient in Texas.

And a day after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said she tested positive for Ebola, health officials are still trying to figure out how exactly she caught it.

"Something went wrong, and we need to find out why and what," said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/13/health/ebola-nurse-how-could-this-happen/index.html

Mad intelligence

Dr Pournelle

"Public thinkers such as politicians and members of the media who comment on them are the first generation of our society to have been badly schooled without being aware of the fact."

Rev. George W. Rutler, Mad Intelligence: The Secularist Response to Islam http://www.crisismagazine.com/2014/mad-intelligence

Live long and prosper

h lynn keith

The definition of a Dark Age is not one in which we have forgotten things; it is a time when we no longer know we ever knew them. We appear to be entering a Dark Age for a fairly large part of our population. Of course that makes self-government nearly impossible, but the smart one in charge have a remedy for that.

War Has Been Declared against Us

Dr Pournelle

RE: https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/mail-bag-2/

Geert Wilders: War has been declared against us.

Islam delendum est?

Live long and prosper

h lynn keith

Don’t you wish you got all the government you pay for?

Royals panties confiscated from Kansas City lingerie shop by Homeland Security

Copyright infringement is the reason feds pop up at lingerie shop, which was trying to find a way to support Royals during World Series against Giants.

Ladies, don’t put on those panties without the expressed written consent of Major League Baseball!

In an underwear-related manner that is apparently a matter of national importance, the Department of Homeland Security descended upon a women’s lingerie shop in Kansas City, Mo., according to The Wichita Eagle. The federal officers were there to stop the business – Birdies Panties – from making undies with the Royals logo during the team’s Cinderella run to the World Series.

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/royals-panties-confiscated-kansas-city-lingerie-shop-homeland-security-article-1.1985501

2014 Margin Of Fraud

Jerry,

The midterm elections are a week away, and many of our hopes to reduce further damage to the nation are tied up with the Republicans taking the Senate. Right now, they nominally look like doing so, barely – Realclearpolitics.com’s "no tossups" average of recent polls shows a

52-48 R result. (I’m counting Orman, barely leading in Kansas, as a D.)

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2014/senate/2014_elections_senate_map_no_toss_ups.html

However, it’s way too soon to relax. RCP has ten of these races listed as "tossups", IE the average-of-polls margin is less than 5%. RCP’s split with tossups is 45 R, 45 D, and 10 too close to call.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2014/senate/2014_elections_senate_map.html

Those ten tossups are of extreme interest right now. They break down as

follows:

AR R+5%

LA R+4.5 (in the likely runoff)

KY R+4.4

CO R+3.2 (universal mail-in ballots with minimal verification) AK R+2.2 IA R+1.7 GA R+0.5 (Libertarian 3.7%, runoff if less than 50%) KS D+0.6 (stealth D) NC D+1.0 (Libertarian 5.0%, no runoff) NH D+2.2

On the face of it, a 7-3 R split. But, read http://thefederalist.com/2014/10/22/do-democrats-always-win-close-statewide-elections/,

and worry. Of 27 statewide races decided by less than 1% since 1998, the D’s have won 20. That’s a 74% D win rate in close races over the last 16 years.

My working hypothesis is that in states where they control one or more major urban centers, the D’s are able to at need manufacture (dead voters, illegal voters, invented voters, non-voters voted-for) on the rough order of 2% more votes than would otherwise exist, and in close recounts they can then (unless actively and knowledgeably prevented) manufacture the additional votes needed to win.

My conclusion is that we may well see "surprise" D wins in any or all of Iowa, Georgia, Alaska, and Colorado (all possibly involving recount-till-D’s-win), with Colorado possibly unusually blatantly fraudulent due to the now universally mailed-out ballots being bought and sold.

So, a word to the wise. Absent a significantly higher than predicted R turnout in close states, next week’s result is like to be a "miraculous"

narrow D hold of the Senate. (I wouldn’t hold out much hope for Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker either, currently tied in the polls but with all those dead voters in Milwaukee and Madison polling solidly against him.)

(Oh, and while I’m at it, a Libertarian vote in North Carolina this election looks to me pretty much a vote for two more years of Harry Reid as Majority Leader. NC D 43.6, R 42.6, L 5.0.)

So, assuming I’m right, what then? The D’s won’t likely have been overly subtle about it, given what’s at stake.

Interesting times.

Porkypine

But it is racist to suggest that voters identify themselves. Or so I am told. Vote fraud is imaginary anyway, even if Cook County did once deliver more votes to a presidential candidate than were there were registered voters in the county…

We’re illegal – and We Vote!

http://www.nationalreview.com/campaign-spot/391134/jaw-dropping-study-claims-large-numbers-non-citizens-vote-us-jim-geraghty

Charles Murray interview

Hi Dr. Pournelle,

My takeaway from the Charles Murray interview that you linked (the emphasis is mine):

“…we need to live in a civil society that naturally creates valued places for people with many different kinds and levels of ability. In my experience, communities that are left alone to solve their own problems tend to produce those valued places. Bureaucracies destroy them.”

My experience is that Mr. Murray is correct.

Neil

My experience has been that for most of his life Dr. Murray has been correct. I am no admirer of the Social Sciences, which I usually call The Voodoo Sciences, and I generally pay little attention to Sociologists and their natterings, but Charles Murray actually deals with facts and scientific method. He also writers well.

The Trouble Isn’t Liberals. It’s Progressives.

Not everyone on the left wants to quash dissent or indulge President Obama’s abuses of executive power.

By

Charles Murray

Social conservatives. Libertarians. Country-club conservatives. Tea party conservatives. Everybody in politics knows that those sets of people who usually vote Republican cannot be arrayed in a continuum from moderately conservative to extremely conservative. They are on different political planes. They usually have just enough in common to vote for the same candidate.

Why then do we still talk about the left in terms of a continuum from moderately liberal to extremely liberal? Divisions have been occurring on the left that mirror the divisions on the right. Different segments of the left are now on different planes.

A few weeks ago, I was thrown into a situation where I shared drinks and dinner with two men who have held high positions in Democratic administrations. Both men are lifelong liberals. There’s nothing "moderate" about their liberalism. But as the pleasant evening wore on (we knew that there was no point in trying to change anyone’s opinion on anything), I was struck by how little their politics have to do with other elements of the left.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/charles-murray-the-trouble-isnt-liberals-its-progressives-1404170419

The rest of this essay is worth reading. And Losing Ground is still very much worth attention.

And to change the subject considerably:

Woot woot woot

Yes! Got it right!

http://www.iflscience.com/physics/when-parallel-worlds-collide-quantum-mechanics-born#

and the paper:

http://journals.aps.org/prx/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevX.4.041013#fulltext

Stephanie Osborn

Interstellar Woman of Mystery

http://www.Stephanie-Osborn.com <http://www.stephanie-osborn.com/>

You may now stretch your mind….