October 13, 2014

How to get the ebola-panic working for your side.

Here's an effort by the Agenda Project Action Fund (famous for "Granny Off the Cliff") attempting to crank up the fear and get it to go this way:



Meanwhile, other Democratic Party voices are saying calm down, we know how to control outbreaks, and fear is unhelpful, a problem in itself. The cynical among us assume that politicos tell us to fear when they think they can manipulate our fear to serve their interests. With this new ad, the Agenda Project shows it believes it can work fear effectively, so it invites panic. But it's stepping all over the dominant message from the President's party, which is anti-fear. This fear/don't fear message is confusing. It's like: Don't fear, but if you do fear, blame Republicans for whatever is scaring you. And yet, if confusing people were thought to be a good move, it would be made, would it not? The lofty voices in the party say don't fear, we know how to handle this, and we are diligently on duty, while the fringe groups crank out viral paranoia.

IN THE COMMENTS: Ignorance is Bliss said:
The Agenda Project Action Fund has received official IRS recognition of its tax exempt status under sections 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code.

Good thing the IRS has been keeping a close eye on the tea party groups, otherwise a tax-exempt non-profit might engage in politics.

52 comments:

bbkingfish said...

Speaking of confusing, did anyone try to read the paragraph posted above by our hostess? Thet thar is some authentic Badger Law School gibberish!

BarrySanders20 said...

Is there really Ebola panic? More like curiosity.

But the fear idea is interesting as a study in blame-the-leader. W was personally responsible for not sending limos before Katrina, and then helicopters after, to save people who refused to leave New Orleans. Fair or not, he was in charge when the problem hit, and it was his problem.

Now we have the most incompetent leader certainly in our nation's recent history, and probably of any major western nation in recent history, and yet the people who created this, who also support Barry The Incompetent, feel safe in raising the alarm because they know that the media will not assign blame where it naturally falls in times of government failure.

Can't argue with the logic, since when has Barry ever been held accountable for anything? The dimwits targeted by this ad are the same ones who still believe the HOPE poster is all that's needed for a Nobel prize, that to hold Barry responsible for his policies and administration is somehow racist.

Don't be too quick to conclude the ad won't work as intended. It depends on the targeted audience. Reinforcement baby.

HoodlumDoodlum said...

Seasons don't fear the reaper/nor do the wind, the sun or the rain.

Can you be like they are?

jr565 said...

Another good way for ebola panic to work for your side is to have people with ebola winding up in American hospitals.

SGT Ted said...

Modern Progressives are 2 bit crooks more interested in accruing political power, rather than solving things. This "Blame Ebola on the GOP" bullshit is case in point.

PB said...

Perhaps if the CDC stopped stupid programs like the one that studies lesbian obesity...

jr565 said...

Don't see why people shouldn't view this as a reason to panic. Ebola is not supposed to be in the US but in some far off country. but it is because there is no restrictions on flights out of those countries and no workable safeguards that sick people couldn't get around to get here.

Just saw on Drudge that two people are now in a NY hospital who may have ebola. Who were they in contact with? Me perhaps? Did I pass one of them on the street? Did my mom, who just came back from a trip bump into them at the airport. This has the potential to get REALLY bad really quickly.
Liberias neighbors get it. They're blocking traffic from the country. We should be doing the same.

compare it abstinence versus non abstinence when it comes to sexually transmitted diseases. Abstinence may be hard, but how many people have STD's in the country now? Right now the country is our vagina, and the ebola patient is an infected penis. If you dont' want the spread of diseases, then you lock it up and don't let that penis come within 30 meters of the vagina.
All these safety measures are like the guy telling you he'll pull out in time and you wont get pregnant. If you didn't have sex, you also woudlnt' get pregnant. So I'm saying, we shouldn't be having sex (as a country) with anyone infected with ebola. Right now they need to get their shit together before we consider dating them.

Sigivald said...

I keep seeing progressives on Facebook saying "those Republicans always try to make people afraid!"

That there's irony.

madAsHell said...

"Never waste a good crisis!!"

mikee said...

So those evil Republicans voted for only $50,000,000 for CDC infectious disease funding? Damn them all to hell!

Oh - wait - a curious coincidence: The Obama administration only requested $50,000,000 for infectious disease funding for the CDC.

Emily Latella, your country needs you!

lemondog said...

Always trust those healthcare professionals.
Dr. Nancy Snyderman spotted at New Jersey restaurant during Ebola quarantine, draws health department crackdown

Take-out was critical to inoculate against ebola.

pm317 said...

Some Democrat one time said 'never let a crisis go to waste'..

Alexander said...

I just want to make a PSA to all my "countrymen" living in the cities:

Everything is fine. You have nothing to worry about. You elected Obama and he is totes on top of this. There is no reason for you to try and think a week or two beyond your event horizon and stock up on a few weeks of food and water and enough gas to get you out of the city.

In fact, I'm pretty sure I heard someone, somewhere say something raciss, so if you'd like to get a head start on burning down gas stations near highway onramps, that would be a productive use of these completely uneventful times.

jr565 said...

How by the way are democrats realistically going to get ebola panic to work for them? They are the ones who are in charge? These poplcies are Obama's policies. Theyre the ones NOT shutting down air traffic and then reading the reports that yet another person got through on a flight who may have ebola. And now have to montitor him, hims family and anyone he may have been in contact with. And then send in hazmat teams to scrub entire buildings. It wouldn't have to happen if we put our foot down and said no flights out of Liberia until this outbreak dies down.

Henry said...

Don't fear spin: it was just a breach in protocol.

$29 billion wasn't enough to define a correct protocol? For a correct protocol you need $30 billion?

MadisonMan said...

All these safety measures are like the guy telling you he'll pull out in time and you wont get pregnant.

Needs the Obama the Boyfriend tag.

Todd said...

PB Reader said...
Perhaps if the CDC stopped stupid programs like the one that studies lesbian obesity...
10/13/14, 12:22 PM


Or studying guns and other things that have (you know) like NOTHING to do with why the CDC was created? If they would stick to their core mission, they would have plenty of money.

Michael K said...

"Perhaps if the CDC stopped stupid programs like the one that studies lesbian obesity…"

The CDC is an arm of the Democratic Party. Notice not a peep about dispersing thousands of illegal aliens all over the country in secret, followed by an epidemic of an enterovirus common in Central America.

HoodlumDoodlum said...

Oooh no
It's panic time let's go
Go go Ebola!

History shows again and again
Liberian travel is not your friend

richard mcenroe said...

When the Democrats blandly assure you they have a protocol and matters are in hand, remember the Democrats in New Orleans had a fully worked out evacuation plan in a big shiny binder.

They just never actually read or used it....

Lydia said...

The situation simply can't be dire because, otherwise, Obama wouldn't just have played his 200th round of golf since taking office. Right?

HoodlumDoodlum said...

With a mighty high fever
And a bloody wet cough
Those doctors in spacesuits carry you off
Go go ebola

Oooh no
To quarintine now go
Go go ebola, yeaaah

alan markus said...

I was trying to find something else, but tripped across this:

Jindal: CDC Spending Millions on Streetlights While Ebola Rages

This fund receives annual mandatory appropriations created by Obamacare, according to Jindal, who notes that despite nearly $3 billion the CDC has received from the fund over the past five years, just 6 percent went toward building epidemiology and lab capacity.

"Especially given the agency's postwar roots as the Communicable Disease Center, one would think that 'detecting and responding to infectious diseases and other public health threats' warrants a larger funding commitment," Jindal writes.

He points out that the community transformation grant program received three times as much money as what was appropriated to fight infectious disease.




BarrySanders20 said...

Word Origin and History for quarantine
n.


Sense of "period a ship suspected of carrying disease is kept in isolation" is 1660s, from Italian quarantina giorni, literally "space of forty days," from quaranta "forty," from Latin quadraginta. So called from the Venetian custom of keeping ships from plague-stricken countries waiting off its port for 40 days (first enforced 1377) to assure that no latent cases were aboard. The extended sense of "any period of forced isolation" is from 1670s.

The Godfather said...

The ad assumes that the viewer will recognize a whole bunch of politicians whose pictures flash by in the instant it takes it say "cut", and will know they are Republicans. It's a real in-crowd ad that will appeal only to Democrat true-believers. They're already committed to voting for every Democrat candidate, several times, in several different States, if possible.

But to the extent that the ad reaches any undecided voters, or Democrats who aren't much motivated to vote, it will have the opposite effect. IF anyone is responsible for the Ebola threat (and I'm not sure that anyone is), it's got to be the people who are in charge, and that means the Obama Administration and its supporters. So the Agenda Project, which got Paul Ryan a VP nomination in 2012, looks like it will help the GOP in 2014, too.

alan markus said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
n.n said...

Actually, Obama threw granny of the cliff, or at least pushed her, when he redistributed her contributory medical fund to subsidize Obama-"care".

richlb said...

They threw me down in the lazaretto
Born rottin', bored rotten
Makin' models of people I used to know
Out of coffee and cotton....

wildswan said...

The CDC only authorized funding on one Ebola study as far as I can see on Report.NIH.Gov. Instead the CDC did a lot of studies on cholera which was then killing many more people than Ebola ever has - yet. A year ago this seemed right. Because a year ago the NIH Partnership on Biodefense thought that Ebola was on the JV in terms of threats and is now surprised at how fast it is spreading and how virulent and barbaric it is.

But if something has gone wrong with the NIH assessment then the Republicans made the assessment while Obama was playing golf with Francis Collins.

Balfegor said...

As BarrySanders20 points out, it's not really a panic at all -- people generally seem to view the issue as completely manageable, just with a government that's unwilling to take the steps to manage it. Even just shutting down direct flights (which are all or basically all shut down anyhow), and (a) requiring people with connecting flights from the Ebola zone (e.g. through Brussels) to wait 21 days in the transit country before boarding planes to the US or (b) requiring that entrants take a blood test and remain closely watched until the results come back negative would seem like reasonable and balanced approaches to avoiding the disease reaching the US.

There's very few appointments that can't be dealt with through teleconferencing or videoconferencing or wait 21 days (other than medical emergencies), and medical staff who are stopping back in the US before returning to the Ebola zone ought to be under a close watch anyhow. Close scrutiny of all civilian (and government) visas from the countries affected by Ebola is also not exactly an invasive or draconian step -- Patient 0 down in Texas was a Liberian national here on a visa, and there's really no reason he couldn't have waited another three weeks to enter the US (well, other than that he was infected with Ebola and died).

Rather than take these sorts of measures the authorities seems fixated on (1) this ludicrous canard about how limiting flights will impair our ability to fight the disease over there (just carve them out!) and (2) how even these measures won't be perfect (literally letting the perfect be the enemy of the good).

Consequently, as a half-way measure, we're left with more useless security theatre -- taking peoples' temperature as they enter the US. It's frustrating, to say the least, but there's no signs of widespread panic right now.

tim in vermont said...

America's original sin was not the apocalypse we visited on aboriginal Americans when stone-age peoples met Western technology, as also happened across Europe from the founding of Rome.

Was not the importation of enslaved stone-age Africans purchased from African slave traders.

It was not our barbaric interference in Japan's march across East Asia with our petulant oil embargo against their empire, or even the atomic weapon we used against them as an exclamation point on the matter.

No, it was none of these, or any other horror you can name than the failure to give Obama and the Democrats the five trillion dollars in credit against Chinese banks that Obama wanted from the stimulus.

wildswan said...

And also the CDC shifted away as a matter of policy from working on a Ebola-specific vaccine and began to fund only work on a vaccine that would prevent multiple Ebola-like diseases - see the ARRA report on Ebola. And this they haven't yet found.

Bobber Fleck said...

Ebola has no known cure. The only way to stop it has been containment. That's why it is so important to allow airline traffic between West Africa and the USA.

Wince said...

This is one case where Obama has been reluctant to use his pen and his phone, because either might have Ebola germs on it.

Todd said...

The Godfather said...
The ad assumes that the viewer will recognize a whole bunch of politicians whose pictures flash by in the instant it takes it say "cut", and will know they are Republicans. It's a real in-crowd ad that will appeal only to Democrat true-believers. They're already committed to voting for every Democrat candidate, several times, in several different States, if possible.
10/13/14, 1:45 PM


Actually, I think it is worst than that. I think the ad could show ANYONE saying "cut funding" for any reason. They could use the folks from the price is right and no one would notice because the ad says "REPUBLICANS", for many, that means that everyone in the ad is Republican and nothing else matters, facts included.

traditionalguy said...

The CDC is gone political. They will not admit that as Leaders they are not learning as fast as the followers. Blaming her Ebola case on a nurse for not using protocol was stupid, nasty and a sure way to get the truth flung back into CDC's PR man's face.

Carnifex said...

The administration does nothing logical or sensible. Only that which promotes the head kenyan's image.

As gwinnie said "If only we would give him the power to do what he wanted"

Yeah...if only. Idiot.

tim in vermont said...

"Earlier today, we had been asked to accept in transfer a patient who had reported traveling from Liberia. While Liberia is an area where Ebola is present, after our initial evaluation, this patient does not appear to meet CDC criteria to be considered someone at high risk for Ebola and the likelihood of Ebola Virus Disease is extremely low. "

Statement from Beth Israel Hospital, Boston.

I believe them. Sure, why not. First they tell us that it cannot be transmitted airborne, now we learn that it has never been studied. So I am sure their criteria is flawlessly accurate.

Lydia said...

Beth Israel is keeping that person in isolation, though -- here's some more of that statement:
"The patient will remain in isolation as we continue to evaluate and monitor the patient’s condition. All precautions continue to be taken to ensure the safety of our patients, their families and our staff."

JRoberts said...

The CDC complex here in Atlanta (next to the campus of Emory University) is spectacular in it's design and construction. It does not appear a penny of taxpayer money was spared to provide the finest stone and glass to build this government cathedral.

PuertoRicoSpaceport.com said...

I'll repeat my prediction that Ebola will be all gone, at least as a US problem, by November 15 or so.

It works for the Demmies by pushing all their other scandals off the front page and nightly news.

So, after the election, it will quietly fade from our consciousness.

Or we'll all be dead!

John Henry

PuertoRicoSpaceport.com said...

There is some good news about Ebola, especially for Madison. People of European descent have some immunity. Especially people of Scandinavian descent.

So a win for Madison as it solves their black problem.

I will miss Crack, though.

Journal article here (Peer reviewed so you know that it is 100% guaranteed dead nuts accurate!)

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/03/050325234239.htm

PuertoRicoSpaceport.com said...

Bobber said that Ebola has no known cure.

Isn't that true of all virus based diseases? That they have no known cure. If you can keep the patient alive, the body will fight off most of them or they run their course.

Even Ebola, if caught early, is fairly survivable. High death rate and a really nasty disease but if you get treatment early a better than 50/50 chance of survival.

And, so far, something like 5,000 people have died from it. Ever. Compare that to the annual hundreds of thousand of cholera deaths, a million from malaria, 30,000 plus from flu (US) and so on.

Worry? Sure.

Panic? Not yet.

John Henry

Anonymous said...

Back to the future: The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

Brando said...

Yeah, nice try--disasters and any poor response to disasters hits the party in the White House. There's no spin they can use to overcome that.

damikesc said...

These poplcies are Obama's policies. Theyre the ones NOT shutting down air traffic and then reading the reports that yet another person got through on a flight who may have ebola.

They also dismantled health regulations put in place by Bush during the avian flu thing. Those were demanded by high-ranking Democrats, such as Sen. Obama.

Or studying guns and other things that have (you know) like NOTHING to do with why the CDC was created? If they would stick to their core mission, they would have plenty of money.

As Instapundit said, go through their budget and zero out anything that is not directly targeted at specific diseases.

avwh said...

Has anyone noticed that the GOP controls just one half of one third of the government - yet, somehow everything bad is their fault?

Rather remarkable, isn't it?

Anonymous said...

Hey, lets send four thousand Americans into the middle of the hot zone. What could go wrong?

Ignorance is Bliss said...


The Agenda Project Action Fund has received official IRS recognition of its tax exempt status under sections 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code.

Good thing the IRS has been keeping a close eye on the tea party groups, otherwise a tax-exempt non-profit might engage in politics.

Big Mike said...

Their budget wasn't cut; it was increased. NIH frittered the budget away on hippy-dippy projects like researching why lesbians tend to be overweight (because they don't have to attract men!).

Hyphenated American said...

If a mere 100 people in America get ebola, our entire economy will collapse, the hospitals will be overwhelmed, millions of people will stay home.
Think about it. One crazy guy from Liberia paralyzed CDC. One freaking guy. Just one. Imagine if a dozen more are coming to USA from West Africa, and they carry this disease. Tell me Obama and his lackeys will be able to control the situation. Same idiots who cannot fart and chew gum at the same time.
This is not Stevens in Libya, who got killed by peaceful demonstrators because of a video. This is right here.

K in Texas said...

A good example of early detection and treatment for a bad disease is Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. If caught and treated early, the mortality rate is 2 - 5%. If not diagnosed until day 4 or 5, the mortality rate could be as high as 60%. I had it, but I was fortunate enough to know I had been bit by a lone start tick. So when I showed up at the ER with a 102F fever, I could tell the ER doctor ER what antibiotic I needed.