Obama appointing longtime Democratic political operative as ebola czar
Hey, that’ll work!:
President Obama has asked Ron Klain, who served as chief of staff to both Vice President Biden and former vice president Al Gore, as his Ebola response coordinator, according to a White House official.
“He will report directly to the president’s homeland security adviser, Lisa Monaco, and the president’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, as he ensures that efforts to protect the American people by detecting, isolating and treating Ebola patients in this country are properly integrated but don’t distract from the aggressive commitment to stopping Ebola at the source in West Africa,” a White House official wrote in an e-mail.
Klain, a longtime Democratic operative, served as Biden’s chief of staff from 2009 to 2011 and as Gore’s from 1995 to 1999. He helped oversee the Democratic side in the 2000 presidential election recount as its lead lawyer, a role that Kevin Spacey portrayed in the HBO film “Recount.”
In other words, he will not challenge the administration in any way, and will mouth the party line to reassure the proles that all is in the very best of hands.
No experience except for the political. And the following [emphasis mine] is really a masterpiece in gracefully laconic understatement by the WaPo. My hat is off to the article’s authors:
Klain is not known for his health-care expertise, though he would get briefings on those policies in his capacity as a campaign strategist for Gore and the Democrats’ 2004 presidential candidate, John Kerry.
On the other hand, the doctors who’ve been dealing with this so far, such as Frieden, have been so bad at it that perhaps a complete naif would be better. If a person were organized, smart, independent, and honest it could work. But Klain’s status as party operative makes the “independent and honest” part pretty much an impossibility.
[ADDENDUM: More here from Ron Fournier. Excerpt:
13. Klain can’t be a disruptively productive force without autonomy. I have to ask: How many senior White House officials, including the president, have ever created an organization chart? Anybody with a rudimentary understanding of management would know that you don’t untangle a chain of command by injecting a new figure haphazardly into it. The answer is to put somebody atop it. Which brings me back to my first sentence, and the real problem here.
14. We shouldn’t need an Ebola czar. The president needs to do his job better.
It depends, however, what the president thinks his job is.]
Being totally unqualified worked for Obama, right?
Neo, at least give the administration it’s proper name.
shows where their focus is.
a lawyer knows what they can get away with, and is potentially defensable in court
a doctor would know what to do to save people (At least that would be the prsumption)
Martial law…
depends on whether they can ambiguously screw htings up enough to cause enough turmoil that it seems a reasonable response to the children of twilight..
What could possibly go wrong!
Found over at the Althouse blog:
I’m sure that quote will be run 24/7 on CNN. (/sarc)
There’s Obama, always reaching out to the other side. The Great Uniter….wait.
Let it never be forgot: This so-called President once referred to 50% of Americans as “enemies” who should be “punished”.
For that alone, even if there was never anything else, he should live in infamy forever.
Just briefly heard on the radio Rush talking about this, he pointed out that America already has an ‘Ebola Czar’ one:
Nicole Lurie, M.D., M.S.P.H.
Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR)
RADM, U.S. Public Health Service
Which is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
So I did some research and from wikipedia:
On Oct. 18, 2011, Dr Lurie delivered the following testimony to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, entitled, “Safeguarding our Nation: HHS Readiness to Respond to a Biological or Other Emergency.”
So, unless she’s an outright liar, the programs, personnel and organization are already in place to deal with an Ebola outbreak. Which makes the lack of response intentional. All at the direction of one Barack Obama.
Since one already exists, Obama hasn’t created an ‘Ebola Czar’ out of necessity but out of political expediency. Klain is there as another layer of political insulation for Obama and, when the time is right, someone to be thrown under the bus, so that once again Obama can avoid responsibility…
The federal alphabet soup of overlapping, redundant bureaucracies is so bad that they can’t even achieve the appearance of fulfilling their core purposes.
It is time to scrap more than a few of them. If we throw out the bathwater, we are very likely to discover there is no baby.
For a bit of ghoulish humor try this: http://www.cdc.gov/phpr/zombies_novella.htm. Should link you to the CDC pamphlet: “Preparedness 101: Zombie Pandemic”. CDC describes it is as; “a fun way to teach about emergency preparedness. Our graphic novel…”
This fun way to learn through a graphic novel was issued by the “Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response”. Yes, there is such an office. I suppose that the staff’s primary responsibility will now be to fetch coffee for the soon to be created “Staff of the Ebola Czar”.
Morning news; individual who handled medical waste from first Nurse is on a cruise ship.
Don’t worry, we are rushing to close the barn door, and will have this all contained–sometime. If your life has been disrupted because you worked in the wrong hospital, flew on the wrong plane, were related to the wrong health care professional, or cruised on the wrong ship, then tough stuff.
This would all be funny if it were not so depressingly serious.
“If we throw out the bathwater, we are very likely to discover there is no baby.”
Funny, but sadly true. DHS is the place to begin the dismantling. Next education, commerce, energy, and hhs to the chopping block. It will never happen, but it does fall under the hope and change mantra.
For years the CDC has been doing everything except fight infectious disease. They have been pushing motorcycle helmet laws, gun bans and the like, all in the name of public health. They obviously don’t know the difference between meddling and medicine.
Another czar. So they’ve given up any pretense of Constitutional government. The President does what he pleases, and Congress apparently doesn’t have a problem with that.
Geoffrey –
The White House probably wants to keep Lurie out of the spotlight. It turns out that she’s tied to a possible scandal involving a company tied to a political financer winning a contract for a (non-Ebola) vaccine that isn’t panning out. It turns out that the company that has possibly been complaining the most about the contract is the one that developed the experimental Ebola vaccine that is currently available only in very limited quantities.
That would be radioactive for the administration if the mass public were to find out about it.
“Don’t worry, we are rushing too close the barn door…”
If only that were true. The ‘old czar’ is not dead, she’s earning her pension and securing her future employment as a lobbyest. This ‘decisive and bold’ move by dear leader is smoke and mirrors to allow dear leader to keep that southern barn door open to bring in even more future dem voters and more disease to crash the system. When there is no crisis to exploit, create a really big one that is all the better to exploit.
Imagine the worse motives on the part of team obama and then cube it to understand the agenda of these *#£é—&é·%=€.
Political Operative Ron Klain for Obola Czar.
Deserter Bowe Bergdahl for 5 Islamic Terrorists.
American people voting for Obama in 2008 and 2012.
Is the Republic dying?
On Thursday, Dr. Thomas Frieden, the director of the Centers for Disease Control, admitted that Africa’s porous land borders made the Ebola crisis worse. …
“The porous land borders among countries and remoteness of many villages have greatly complicated control efforts,” Frieden conceded in his prepared statement, noting that there have been Ebola cases “imported into Nigeria and Senegal from the initially-affected” West African nations.
a phd requres one removes common sense and parrot the party line… evenmore so for phd administrators of the leftist kind… i am not to happy about these kinds of people as i work with them every day, and we are a location where such patients have and will come to… its a special kind of stupid…
a man from nigeria came in on a plane from JFK throwing up… he died before they could get him off the plane, they claim its not ebola
and
A woman who recently returned from Africa and was found vomiting today has been transferred to and isolated at Inova Hospital in Fairfax, Virginia. Officials are scrambling to find everyone the woman has had contact with recently
it sure looks like what i said would happen. with borders open by obama, every sick person who can is jumping on a flight to get 500k treatment for free rather than stay home and die… at least they die in a nicer place at worst (for them)
U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Friday rejected a call for travel bans from Ebola-ravaged West Africa, suggesting that it was too early for such a move
and
President Obama is considering a plan to bring the world’s Ebola patients to the United States to be treated. Judicial Watch, the conservative public watchdog group, says in a shocking report that the president is “actively formulating plans” to admit Ebola-infected non-citizens just to be treated. “Specifically, the goal of the administration is to bring Ebola patients into the United States for treatment within the first days of diagnosis,”
so much more i dont want to scare ya
by the way. its also a good time to start a war with us when distracted by so many man made crisis
In the wake of an Ebola scare in New Haven Thursday, the state has ordered two individuals under quarantine,
Dr. Thomas Frieden Medical License lapsed. No longer a licensed Doctor!
Not that its needed but here’s one more indication of the intentionality of the supposed incompetent ‘bumbling’ of the CDC and administration; “A passenger died on a Nigeria-to-JFK flight after a vomiting fit Thursday – He was vomiting in his seat and died sometime before the plane landed around 6 a.m., the source said. The crew contacted the CDC, whose officials boarded the plane as about 145 worried passengers remained on board, a federal law enforcement source said.
“The CDC went on the plane, examined the dead body and said the person did not have Ebola,”
http://nypost.com/2014/10/16/alarm-after-vomiting-passenger-dies-on-flight-from-nigeria-to-jfk/
No tests, no attempt to ‘monitor’ the passengers and crew. A quick, cursory ‘examination’ and then, “nothing here to see folks, move along now”. How much more evidence do we need before we’re forced to conclude that this isn’t a matter of incompetence but of intent?
BTW, anyone want to bet that the Hazmat CDC worker who proclaimed that it wasn’t Ebola did NOT take off his helmet?
Mr. G. Britain,
#1. How could they tell so fast that he didn’t die of obola?
#2. If it wasn’t obola, then what did he die of?
#3. Aren’t they, the CDC supposed to be tracing, if not quarantining the flight passengers?
#4. Yes, you are more than justified in attributing “INTENT” and not competence to Obama and his liberal administration. Malevolent intent.
The Pentagon is taking things seriously: Ebola Fears Reach Pentagon After Woman Became Ill on Shuttle Bus:
The question is what comes after the October Surprise. November surprise? December Surprise? January Surprise? What’s next.
If Obama can get Congress to pass Comprehensive Amnesty he doesn’t need a surprise because with a permanent majority, its the beginning of the end and “checkmate”. As with a super-majority the left can fundamentally transform the Constitution, which is the legal barrier to completing the fundamental transformation of America.
If he can’t get Congress to pass Comprehensive Amnesty then IMO he (or a Pres. Hillary, Warren or Cuomo) does need a ‘bi-partisan’ crisis*, one sufficiently severe that a plausible case for martial law can be made, necessary to keep the US Military ‘neutral’.
Given those conditions, under martial law he can suspend constitutional provisions and rights and, ala the Emancipation Proclamation, Obama can proclaim amnesty and citizenship for all illegal immigrants and, there’s his instant, super-majority. Then under martial law, hold State legislature and Congressional elections with a now permanent democrat majority. Then have his rubber stamp State legislatures and Congress start to amend the Constitution.
No need for tyrannical violence or political internment camps, all nice and legal and, permanent.
* plenty of potential bi-partisan crises to choose from, take your pick:
a) fiscal collapse into sovereign bankruptcy due to unsustainable levels of debt
b) a pandemic
c) an ISIS terrorist campaign of attacks in America
d) Iran getting the bomb and seizing the Strait of Hormuz then squeezing the life out of the West’s economies
e) a nuclear terrorist attack against an American city
Obama both domestically and in the foreign arena is and has been actively creating the conditions necessary to these crisis. It is literally a case of which will occur first, rather than if any will occur.
GB,
You sound as paranoid as me. 😉 dear leader is indeed capable of ‘community organizing’ much death and chaos to achieve his agenda of turning DC into Havana on the Potomac. The teleprompter will be working overtime as he delivers 4 hour speeches about his majestic vision for transforming America into a fascist utopia.
parker,
When considering the possibility of this level of mendacity from a President with all the power he holds, any sane person has to ask themselves is this paranoia on my part?
I’ve asked myself that and, repeatedly. I’d much rather he just be a fool. And he is indeed a fool but I’ve reluctantly reached the conclusion that he’s a malicious fool and his maliciousness springs from his Marxist influences, his racial animosity and his Muslim sympathies.
His policies are too comprehensive with all promising a disastrous consequence for America to be merely the result of foolish happenstance.
GB,
Agreed. Prepare to protect you and yours. Government against all; every man, woman, and child for themselves. Yesterday I ordered 10 cords of wood to be delivered to the family cabin in northern Minnesota, the propane tanks topped off, and stored 50 gallons of gas in the garage. My siblings have taken similar actions, as have all our children. The long, cold winter in the north country keeps out the riff raff, and all the locals are conservative and have scoped hunting rifles.
Pay through the nose, or beg to borrow a copy of John Ross’ s Unintended Consequences. Learn how to kill and escape detection. Be of stout heart. Our founders faced overwhelming odds and prevailed.
People who are actual medical doctors are in charge of the CDC and NIH. But like many generals, they get coopted by Washington culture and become more politician than expert operator.
They become the head bureaucrats. When that happens, they lose perspective on what their mission should be and instead adopt the parochial views of their agency.
“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”
— Matthew 6:24
“Not known for his health-care expertise”? What an extraordinarily polite way to put it. Yeah, I’m not known for my string-theory expertise, either. Their writing would be tighter and clearer if they had written “has no.”
Geoffrey Britain & parker-
I’ve got to say I agree.
Our Dear Reader isn’t exactly acting like he’s worried about Americans dying en masse of a terrible disease. So what would a reasonable person deduce from that? The only thing I can come up with is that he’s waiting for A Really Serious Crisis which he can use to – – but there’s where my imagination fails me. Martial law? Suspend the Constitution? IF we’re already undergoing some sort of “matter of existential urgency” situation, whatever he does is going to be too late (and totally superfluous) because there will be 300-odd million people in “survival mode” in the country. I just don’t see how his hoped-for consolidation of power could happen amidst nationwide chaos. He could proclaim himself Emperor of the Galaxy, but if there’s no food at the supermarket, nobody’s going to pay attention.
He could proclaim himself Emperor of the Galaxy, but if there’s no food at the supermarket, nobody’s going to pay attention.
The ideal of dictators is finding internal and external enemies to focus the problems on, so the people hate them instead of hating the tyrant. Hussein @Iraq did it. North Korea does it.
They aren’t going to “Fix’ the problems. THey’re just going to find people like the Tea Party, to crucify for it. That may not be the goal, but it’s part of the journey.
The Democrat party was one of the earliest members of the Leftist alliance in the US, what I call a founding member. They were able to blame Lincoln for the War of Northern Aggression and for being a tyrant that got killed, because the Democrats controlled the culture and economy of the South after Reconstruction. They were then able to do it again by convincing blacks Lincoln was a Democrat, and that all the KKK racist business was because of white Republicans. Even though it was likely Nation of Islam and other blacks that killed MLK and Malcom X, for disagreeing with socialist or weak racial policies.
So the Democrats, least, have a long history of this kind of thing. It’s bred in the blood and the bone by now.
It’s not surprising that they are using the WMD issue in Iraq now, to benefit themselves. The flip flop isn’t due to inconsistency, it’s due to enemy strategy.
A_Nonny,
You ask good questions, and the answer is rather simple: create enough fear and 50+% will follow dear leader’s directions to the ovens.