A bit tangential, but I think a good response to Reagan's quip about being from the government is; "I'm from a corporation and you have nothing to worry about."

Hey if it weren't for your poor life choices and dependance on government, you would never have been at risk for a life threatening public health crisis. Throwing money at the problem isn't the answer. Accountability is. Society's makers are too busy disrupting the paradigm to get sick from communicable diseases anyway. I'm sure there will soon be an app so you don't have to worry about it.

Hm. The only Ebola outbreak is in Africa. Even if we had discovered an Ebola vaccine, I'd guess that vaccine would take its sweet time getting to them. Maybe that could be blamed on republicans but it's sort of a stretch.

Republican states are a mess. Republican states are at the bottom of quality of life. Republican states have shitty economies, shitty employment, shitty education, shitty infrastructure, shitty safety and shitty environments. Shitty, shitty shitty. And yet people buy their shit like it's sweet nectar.

This is very much fair game, particularly in light of all the "president Obola" jokes.

Is that Darth Vader at the end?

@5 Not only that, how many times has John McCain gone on Meet the Repressed to pee his pants about supposed cuts to the military? Republicans don't think public health and other research cuts have national security implications? Or is Haliburton the only group they can trust to manage any crisis?

Which is why the Republicans are so busy trying to blame this on immigrants. All of the good things that government does, the things that only government can do, get shuffled under in the Republicans' greed for tax cuts.

An educated populace would send the Republicans packing this election, but we live in America.

@3 - it's not just the lives in Africa we would have saved; it's the lives here in the US. Vaccinating just health care workers would have dramatically improved the numbers, including here in the US.

@3 Have you never seen the response from the WHO or MSF whenever there's a major outbreak of a vaccine preventable disease? Vaccines aren't treated like the drugs you see advertised on tv - they're usually heavily funded and once production is up there are many reputable organizations who are able to react quickly in the event of an emergency.

Look, I'm been whining about lack of public research here for a while now, and these are the consequences we have to face because of it. The private sector is gutting R&D - look at all those R&D jobs that left Seattle just a few months ago. I know it's not a sexy topic, but it's really fucking important that our medical and biology related sciences are properly funded.

I know it's fun to take a shit on STEM folks, but we're not talking about Google-glass wearing assholes, we're talking about folks who spend most of their lives working odd hours in a laboratory for moderate wages. They're not making stupid apps or expensive toys, they're trying to make treatments and cures for some of the most serious shit we face.

It's time we started paying attention.

@9,
Yeah, but only one person has died of Ebola in the U.S., right? And only two others have contracted it.

I'm not trying to defend republicans - they're despicable people - I'm only saying Paul's blog is kind of poorly worded. There's no Ebola outbreak in the U.S.

@12 We wouldn't need to worry about an outbreak at all if we properly funded the CDC, the NIH and the NAS.

The wing nuts are already blaming democrats for Ebola. Rush Limbaugh said that bringing it here was a democratic plot. Seriously. He said that.
We can talk all we want about this and show how the GOP is ruining this country, but the wingers don't care about the logic. Illogical conspiracy theories hold more value for them then proven facts.

While we're on the topic, now would be a great time to reach out to your local anti-vaxxer and smack them in the face for their stupidity. Unlike the diseases they refuse to vaccinate against, hitting someone isn't contagious.

Just to add some icing to the cake: There is NO REASON for budget cuts, and "fiscal austerity" that Repub's/Democ's push through... they are just immiseration policies.

The venerable Bank of England dixit: ' "Rather than banks receiving deposits when households save and then lending them out, bank lending creates deposits." '

If you don't realize that this revelation upsets the very foundation upon which the baleful cry "We don't have enough money! Something must be cut!" is built, please continue on and read this article. (NB, some economics understanding is helpful.)

The opposition to Universal Healthcare, --and our Crumbling Infrastructure(TM)--, is built upon air.

We can have the money, if we want to spend it to improve the lives of people. We certainly have enough billions/year "lying around" for various ForeverWar(TM) initiatives...

@13,
100% agree.

@14 Yes, but they aren't relevant for political advertising. It's the independents who you try to convince to vote sensibly. Anyone whose vote is set is essentially ignored. The focus is always on swing voters. And most swing voters probably don't buy into huge conspiracy theories.

In general, I don't agree with drawing partisan conclusions about arbitrary issues like the ebola crisis.

Though I would like to point out... What better way to prevent the spread of disease than to add inefficient needless bureaucracy, and a false sense of security to transportation systems, which forces people into closely confined lines and spaces! Right??

This has Valerie Jarrett's fingerprints all over it. More than likely she brought up the idea of scaring low information voters in the mid-terms, Obama gave the nod, they rang up Arianna over at Huffington Puffington and she was only too happy to get a team on it.

@19 Yes, it's totally needless bureaucracy/false security that causes people to be cramped up in a small space, and not the fact they'll already be cramped up together in the cabin of a plane or train soon thereafter. Yeah, that's the real concern here.

How can you completely disregard the comments of many within the healthcare world and come up with that piece of shit?

"Oh guys, I'm totally gonna ignore a bunch of doctors, research scientists and epidemiologists and blame the whole thing on the TSA". Yeah, that's a load of shit and you should be ashamed for thinking that was a reasonable position to take.

@22,
Interesting. Ok, I stand corrected, there is an outbreak here.

Republicans are good at fucking things up. I forget John Stewart's line, but paraphrasing it is something like, "republicans are like children who break their toys and then complain their toys don't work anymore."

@22 - Aye, Public health departments [...] are our first line of defense against infectious disease outbreaks, but no one cares about preventative measures until shit gets real.

And with climate change altering plant ecosystems, changing insect and pathogen ranges, increasing floods & droughts, and supersizing storms....all conditions ripe for new, fun infectious disease opportunities... NOW would be the best time to shortchange our medical infrastructure, because Hey! *some*one's gotta put that money in their Cayman Isl. bank account and get rich! And you know what? Fuck the poor anyway, the world is too goddam overpopulated, a few good outbreaks would reduce the stress on all our budgets. Profit!

(NB. I am NOT saying this is blip's POV. Nope, not at all. - I'm saying this is the POV of the überweathy/politicians class that currently controls the money supply.)

@3, 11: The problem with Ebola has historically been that it appears in rural African villages far off the beaten track and then burns itself out within a few weeks. By the time it's possible to get researchers out there in the wake of the aid workers, the villagers are usually either dead or convalescent, and there's not a whole lot to study, especially with regard to which treatments are effective. This latest outbreak is different in its geographical breadth and its longevity.
We'd still have a much damned better shot at having a working vaccine if the Republicans weren't constantly blocking funding to research. Remember Sarah Palin complaining about all the millions of dollars going to fruit fly research? Yeeup.

@25: specifically regarding your suggestion of libel, such a case would almost certainly fail on two counts. 1) the presumed plaintiffs (Republicans) would have to show that the statement "Republicans are responsible for the ebola crisis" was false, no easy task; and 2) they would have to prove injury—it's as likely to enhance their brand image in the eyes of many.

By-the-by, the CDC's excellent journal Emerging Infectious Diseases is available to read for free online here (at least until the Republicans find out and "privatize" it, i.e. corporate welfare for one of the rapacious scientific publishing juggernauts). A little too early to see research on the current outbreak, but there's lots of past studies. Current discussion and recommendations are here.

Perhaps the CDC shouldn't have been spending money researching lesbian obesity and gun control or posh new offices.

@26 I want to sucker punch every single jerk off that complains about "fruit fly research".

Then force them to retake high school biology.

Good thing Ebola poses virtually no threat to public health in the US because it's so hard to contract and the CDC is so well prepared to deal with it.

@28: Good thing they're not, you moron.
The "lesbian obesity" study you're whining about was actually from the NIH, not the CDC, and it wasn't (strictly speaking) about lesbian obesity. Rather, it was about the correlations between obesity and sexual orientation, and its budget is about 0.08% of the TOTAL NIH EXPENDITURE ON OBESITY RESEARCH. Bucket, meet drop. (Source.)
The CDC also hasn't done any research on gun control since 1996, when Republican Congressmen wrote into law that they can't use federal funding to do any research that could be construed in any way to support gun control. (Source.) This effectively means that gun violence can't be studied AT ALL, just in case the results happen to suggest that gun control might be helpful in preventing deaths. It's a gag order that goes against every tenet of scientific inquiry; we follow the evidence and see where it leads, not pre-emptively ignore things that make us question the status quo. It's like if the Catholic Church had banned any research on astronomy rather than risk someone coming up with findings supporting heliocentrism. What is the NRA afraid of?
That was some low-quality trolling right there, delbert. You'll never get anywhere at that rate.

@29: Get in line!

The Washington Post factcheckers gave this claim their highest rating of "four Pinnochios". Blame for the budget falls on BOTH sides of the political aisle. And for those who want to politicize this crisis and whine there wasn't enough money, (there never is to these people) no, these bureacrats had their priorities screwed up and got caught. There is MORE than enough money but the bureaucrats pi$$ it away on pet projects that mostly have no businees being funded by these departments. And now they want to deflect blame away from where it rightly belongs...on themselves. Ebola has been on the radar for years and finding a vaccine should have been a top, if not THE top, priority. And why don't we as Americans ask about Dr. Nicole Lurie and her department....she has been tasked for YEARS to handle things like the ebola crisis. Where is she, where did all the money that went to her and her department go and what is there to show for it??????????

And to the ludicrous claim that repub states are "shitty" explain why there is a steady exodus from the the wildly successful progressive democrat-run states and cities like california, new york, detroit to repub-run states like texas. Yeah, don't let those pesky facts get in the way of a good delusion.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2…

And read the Washington Post factchecker article for yourselves. The blame needs to stop and the energy directed toward solutions!!!!!!!