There's a lot of discussion out there on Ebola as political football, and
Margaret Hartmann at New York Magazine runs through the Republican scare tactics:
Since the first Ebola case was diagnosed in the United States this week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has attempted to assure Americans that there's no need to panic. Ebola is ravaging several West African countries that were already severely lacking in resources, from medical infrastructure to public sanitation. However, the United States is entirely capable of "stopping it in its tracks" — or is it? Over the past few days, Republican lawmakers have been sharing some terrifying thoughts about the Obama administration's Ebola response. "It's a big mistake to downplay and act as if 'oh, this is not a big deal, we can control all this,'" Senator Rand Paul warned. "This could get beyond our control." Here are some other horrific things to consider before deciding to leave the house without a Hazmat suit.
Sarah Ferris at The Hill:
Ebola is becoming an issue for the midterm election campaign, with several Republicans using the spread of the virus to the United States to criticize President Obama’s leadership.
[...] Democrats are also arguing that a lack of health funding has weakened the nation’s response to preventing Ebola.
“Funding for biomedical research is crucial and when Congress works on a funding bill in the coming months we need to ensure the [National Institutes of Health] is fully funded,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) said in a statement this week.
The nation’s two largest health agencies — the CDC and the National Institutes of Health — have taken a hit from budget cuts in recent years.
Steve Benen:
Because Rand Paul has a medical background, some may be more inclined to take his concerns seriously on matters of science and public health. With this in mind, it’s probably worth noting that the senator, prior to starting a career in public office four years ago, was a self-accredited ophthalmologist before making the leap to Capitol Hill.
So when Paul compares Ebola to an ailment that is “transmitted very easily,” and describes the virus as “incredibly transmissible,” it’s a mistake to assume the senator knows what he’s talking about. There are actual medical experts and specialists in the field of transmittable diseases – and the junior senator from Kentucky isn’t one of them.
If Paul were just a little more responsible, he wouldn’t make public comments like these at a time when many Americans already have irrational fears.
Much more on the day's top stories below the fold.
Even some conservatives are saying that Republicans are taking the Ebola Obama-bashing and scare-mongering too far, like Jonathan Tobin at Commentary:
[E]ven if we concede that the system wasn’t foolproof and health-care personnel not entirely ready to deal with it, the president was also probably right when he said America’s “world class facilities and professionals” can respond effectively to the outbreak and that there is no reason for anyone to be panicking. And while tough questions deserve to be asked about what happened in Dallas and the measures being implemented to deal with any other possible cases coming into the country, this is not the moment for opinion leaders to be sounding the doom and gloom theme or shoehorning Ebola into a grand narrative about the administration’s incompetence.
Krystal Ball and Anne Thompson:
If only there was someone around who could educate the American public about the actual level of risk. Someone who was trusted as a public health expert and whose job it was to help us understand what we really need to worry about and what precautions we should take.
Actually, that is one of the primary responsibilities of the United States surgeon general. There’s just one problem: Thanks to Senate dysfunction and NRA opposition, we don’t have a surgeon general right now. In fact, we haven’t had a surgeon general for more than a year now — even though the president nominated the eminently qualified Dr. Vivek Murthy back in November 2013.
The lack of a surgeon general is now becoming more than just one more abstract example of government gridlock.
Turning to foreign policy,
The New York Times examines "the fundamental horror of ISIS":
The mind rebels at the reports of cruelty by the Islamic State, the beheadings, crucifixions, tortures, rapes and slaughter of captives, children, women, Christians, Shiites. The evidence is there on YouTube, in gruesome images and the cries of witnesses too numerous to deny or doubt. Even in a part of the world where terror has been perversely enshrined as a legitimate weapon by Islamist zealots, the Islamic State — led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi — stands alone in its deliberate, systematic and public savagery. The grievances, resentments and frustrations that drive young Muslims to violence and extremism have been analyzed and debated, and the Islamic State, also called ISIS, is a link in a long chain of Arab and Muslim terrorist organizations. But no Islamist group before, no other offshoot of Al Qaeda or Hamas or Hezbollah, has so nakedly adopted a cult of sadism, not only as a weapon in its stated goal of establishing an Islamic caliphate but as the very reason for its existence.
Paul Krugman on "depression denial syndrome":
Now, we normally think of deficits as a bad thing — government borrowing competes with private borrowing, driving up interest rates, hurting investment, and possibly setting the stage for higher inflation. But, since 2008, we have, to use the economics jargon, been stuck in a liquidity trap, which is basically a situation in which the economy is awash in desired saving with no place to go. In this situation, government borrowing doesn’t compete with private demand because the private sector doesn’t want to spend. And because they aren’t competing with the private sector, deficits needn’t cause interest rates to rise.
All this may sound strange and counterintuitive, but it’s what basic macroeconomic analysis tells you. And that’s not 20/20 hindsight either. In 2008-9, a number of economists — yes, myself included — tried to explain the special circumstances of a depressed economy, in which deficits wouldn’t cause soaring rates and the Federal Reserve’s policy of “printing money” (not really what it was doing, but never mind) wouldn’t cause inflation. It wasn’t just theory, either; we had the experience of the 1930s and Japan since the 1990s to draw on. But many, perhaps most, influential people in the alleged real world refused to believe us.
And now, let's take a look at the blowback on the College Republican National Committee's over-the-top, sexist "Say Yes To The Candidate" ad.
Atima Omara at The Huffington Post:
Today a generation of young women, worry about pay equity in an already rough economy, they find out their male colleagues will get paid more than they do for the same work. But the GOP has voted against the Paycheck Fairness Act just as early as this summer. In order to postpone the baby, some young women are not ready to support economically they take birth control. But the GOP has voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act (over 54 times) that contains full cost coverage of birth control and even restrict further access to abortion in many state legislatures across the country. In this economy, young people today are crippled by the ever-increasing student loan debt from college that has grown over the years. But Republicans refuse to get behind legislation that would ease the interest rate on student loans whereas Democrats have actively proposed legislation like the Warren bill that if passed would help refinance student loan interest rates at a lower level.
Jessica Valenti:
Republicans are very much in the right to be desperately seeking women’s votes and the support of young people – they are utter failures on this front, and Senate seats hang in the balance because of it. But oblivious ad campaigns like ‘The Rick Scott’ video just go to show that no matter how much money the GOP throws at women, it will continue to fail. Efforts to seem hip just look out of touch and sad, and attempts to talk to us feel more like “politics for dummies” than a genuine interest in engaging.
If Republicans want their “woman problem” to go away, they need to stop being such a problem for women. Stop the ongoing attacks on our bodies and health. Stop the stupid comments about rape. Stop questioning our ability to cast a vote. Actually … just stop.
And
Peter Grier at The Christian Science Monitor:
here’s their underlying secret: not that many actual voters may see them. The CRNC has about $2 million for its entire field budget this cycle. According to news reports, the group will spend about $1 million on the dress ads. Spread over six states, that is unlikely to move anybody’s poll numbers.
Sometimes, political ads created by non-candidate groups are intended to drive news coverage, and raise the profile of the group itself. Remember “Creepy Uncle Sam?”
Also, identical ads churned out for multiple races often don’t work. That’s a good point made by political scientist Jonathan Bernstein at Bloomberg View.
One more take from
Esther Berger at The New Republic:
Bad acting and cheap production values aside, there’s that recurring message: For young women, political decisions are like dating. And not even legitimate dating—the superficial, emotionally staged dating of reality TV. True, nobody bases their political beliefs on policy alone, and there are all sorts of emotional factors tied up with political affiliation: how you perceive yourself, how you want others to see you, which candidates you feel you can trust. But the young women who voted Democrat in the last election did it because of policies, not because they have a crush on the candidate. “Budget is a big deal for me, now that I’ve graduated from college,” Britney, our undecided voter, says at the beginning of these new ads. Had the CRNC focused on that, and not wedding dresses and fitting rooms and champagne, they might have had a shot at being “culturally relevant.”