Showing posts with label danger. Show all posts
Showing posts with label danger. Show all posts

Monday, February 2, 2015

Chris Christie and Rand Paul Want "Measure of Choice" for Vaccinations ~ Updated

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Previous Related Post:
Measles Epidemic Pits Anti-Vaxx Parents Against Public Health

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Presidential hopefuls Chris Christie and Rand Paul have decided that raising money for their 2016 campaigns is more important than the health of children everywhere. Both are pandering to the Anti-Vaxx movement, saying that vaccinating your kids should be a "choice" and not a mandate from the government. This is an epic fail on their parts, and completely irresponsible!

But what do they care about the public good? They only want to be President of the United States, right?

In order to get elected, these guys have to be seen as the "Anti-Obama," and the President is pro-Vaccination (because he is also pro-science and has a brain).





It's bad enough that Rand Paul's father, perpetual candidate Ron Paul, is a medical doctor, and Rand Paul himself is some type of doctor. But Chris Christie is worse, since he recently had an Ebola patient quarantined and basically held at house arrest in New Jersey, but for kids who get measles from the unvaccinated - you're on your own, kids!

UPDATE: The Nurse who was quarantined by Chris Christie for Ebola had some words for him:

"I think this is a good example of Gov. Christie's making some very ill-informed statements. We heard it a lot during the Ebola discussion, and now it seems to have happened again," Maine medic Kaci Hickox said in an interview that aired Monday night on MSNBC's "All In With Chris Hayes."
. . . "I think the unfortunate thing or the scary thing is that I want a leader who consults experts and thinks about sort of all of the different sides to an issue before making statements and — and policies that are unfounded in science," she said.



They are both being intellectually dishonest about their true beliefs. Notice they both used the phrase "measure of choice," which tells me that this is probably a GOP talking point and not something they actually wanted to say. They are pandering to the base.

From Guardian UK
Christie, who is considered a leading presidential candidate, told press during his visit to the UK that parents should have “some measure of choice” in the decision to vaccinate their children.
“It’s more important what you think as a parent than what you think as a public official,” said Christie. “I also understand that parents need to have some measure of choice in things as well. So that’s the balance that the government has to decide.”
Within hours, Christie’s office had sent a clarification. “The governor believes vaccines are an important public health protection and with a disease like measles there is no question kids should be vaccinated,” wrote a representative. “At the same time different states require different degrees of vaccination, which is why he was calling for balance in which ones government should mandate.”

From The Hill
Paul was asked to weigh in on vaccines, after New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), a likely rival for the GOP nomination in 2016, said Monday morning that there should be "some measure of choice" for parents leery of vaccinating their children.

"I'm not anti-vaccine at all, but most of them ought to be voluntary," Paul, an ophthalmologist, said Monday on the "Laura Ingraham Show," in a segment circulated by the Democratic National Committee along with criticism of Paul's views.

Paul added a shot at potential presidential primary rival former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who made an HPV vaccine mandatory in his state before later calling it a "mistake."

"I think there are times where there can be some rules, but for the most part it ought to be voluntary and the biggest one is — I don't know if you remember when Governor Perry made it mandatory to get, for a sexually transmitted disease, to have everybody have to take it," Paul said. "While I think it's a good idea to take the vaccine, I think that's a personal decision for individuals to take and when they take it."































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Measles Epidemic Pits Anti-Vaxx Parents Against Public Health

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No parent enjoys taking their infants and toddlers in for vaccinations. My husband hates needles, which meant that I was the one who always had to take our kids to the health department for shots against Measles-Mumps-Rubella (MMR) or Diptheria(whooping cough) and Tetanus (DpTt) shots. I would go in with a happy smiling baby, come out with a screaming, cranky baby who would then run a fever for several days as the antibodies from the shots built up immunity in the blood.

No parent enjoys taking a little lamb in for shots, but I always reminded myself that children once died from things like Measles and Whooping Cough. Vaccines are a miracle. The kids in the U.S. are lucky to have nearly free vaccines for the asking.

Except when parents don't ask and don't care, and don't take the steps to get their children vaccinated. And when there's an actual "Anti-Vaxx" movement, then many more children are at risk. And now it is causing a dangerous epidemic that started, of all places, in Disneyland!

From Time Magazine
Somewhere in Orange County, Mary Poppins and Ariel the mermaid may be running a fever. The same could be true for her coworkers—any of the other 23,000 people (OK, or characters) who punch in for work at Disneyland every day. And the same could be true too for any one of the estimated 16 million people who will pour into the theme park this year.

The reason? Measles. The cause? This may not come entirely as a surprise: the anti-vaccine crowd.

. . . The outbreak has spread to five other states—which is to be expected when the place that is ground zero for any infection attracts visitors from all over the world. Of the first 20 Disneyland victims, 15 were unvaccinated. Concern about the infections has gotten so great that California State epidemiologist Gil Chavez warned the public that anyone who has not had the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine should avoid all California theme parks “for the time being.”



Schools were once the frontline against epidemics, either becoming makeshift clinics for vaccinations, or by insisting that parents have their children vaccinated before they could attend school. But thanks to the Anti-Vaxxers, some systems began to allow parents to opt-out of the requirement for religious or personal reasons. In politically red states, the Anti-Vaxx movement has been helped along by a GOP that appears to hate any type of mass health care, and who like to pander to far-right Libertarians and Homeschool parents.





How did the Anti-Vaxx movement get started? Mostly because there are "clusters" of autistic children around the country and no one has proven scientifically why that is happening. One scientist decided to "prove" that it was the vaccination mixtures causing autism. And since autism remains vastly more frightening to parents who have never actually seen what measles can do to child, they bought the idea hook, line and sinker.



From Forbes
...The wave began with a 1998 paper published in The Lancet by Andrew Wakefield, claiming that the MMR vaccine was linked to autism. Wakefield’s work was later shown to be fraudulent, and his claims about the vaccine “dishonest and irresponsible.” After lengthy investigations, the paper was retracted and Wakefield lost his medical license. Despite this very public repudiation, Wakefield has stuck to his claims, though, and has spent much of the past 15 years speaking (or perhaps “preaching” would be a better term) to anti-vaccine groups, to whom he is a kind of folk hero.
It’s not just Wakefield, though. Anti-vaccine messages have been broadcast aggressively by the group Generation Rescue, led by former Playboy playmate and MTV host Jenny McCarthy, and by Age of Autism, a group dedicated to the proposition that vaccines cause autism. (Age of Autism is doing it again right now.) And just last summer, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. published a new book further promoting the long-discredited claim that thimerosal causes autism.

Who are these parents?

From Washington Post
. . . the anti-vaccination movement is fueled by an over-privileged group of rich people grouped together who swear they won't put any chemicals in their kids (food or vaccines or whatever else), either because it's trendy to be all-natural or they don't understand or accept the science of vaccinations. Their science denying has been propelled further by celebrities, like Jenny McCarthy, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and actress Mayim Bialik, who is also a neuroscientist and even plays one on TV.

Of the 34 patients in the current measles outbreak whose vaccination status is known, only five were fully vaccinated, according to the Los Angeles Times. And the worst of the outbreak is centered in Orange County, ground zero for the anti-vaccination movement that's put children at risk over junk science.
























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Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Keystone Cops from Hell ~ Obama and the Secret Service - UPDATE: Pierson Resigns

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Cling and Clang, the Useless Cops
 from the 70's kid series H.R.PufnStuf
(Jimmy was NEVER Safe on Living Island)



I'm speechless about all the stories about the Secret Service, who not only let an intruder into the White House last weekend, but who apparently have been asleep (or drunk) on the job for years. They are truly the Keystone Cops from Hell, and it just isn't funny.

For once in my life, I agree with Darrell Issa who raked the head of the Secret Service over the coals today in Congress.

For one thing, the Secret Service, and especially Director Julia Pierson, have been lying about every incident. Take the latest fence-jumper. All weekend the official story was that he didn't make it any further than the front hall of the White House - which was shocking enough. But actually, he ran through several rooms and nearly made it to the stairs that lead to the President's quarters!?! What. The. Hell?

UPDATE 10-1-2014

MSNBC: Secret Service Director Julia Pierson Resigns
Embattled Secret Service Director Julia Pierson resigned Wednesday following embarrassing missteps that placed the president and the first family at risk, the Department of Homeland Security announced.
“I salute her 30 years of distinguished service to the Secret Service and the nation,” Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said in a statement.
Joseph Clancy, a retired special agent, would return to the agency as interim acting director, Johnson announced.

From the Washington Post:
The man who jumped the White House fence this month and sprinted through the front door made it much farther into the building than previously known, overpowering one Secret Service officer and running through much of the main floor, according to three people familiar with the incident. An alarm box near the front entrance of the White House designed to alert guards to an intruder had been muted at what officers believed was a request of the usher’s office, said a Secret Service official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.



And look at this:











And remember that shooting at the White House in 2011? Well, they lied about that too, or didn't take it seriously enough. My God! They didn't bother to investigate a bunch of bullet-holes in the White House windows? Think of the consequences!





USA Today
. . . for nearly 3½ hours Tuesday, Pierson was the focus of lawmakers' ire. In addition to the Gonzalez breach, they pressed the director on recent disclosures about a 2011 shooting incident that the Secret Service failed to recognize as an attack on the White House until days later.
...In a tense exchange with Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., about the shooting, Pierson acknowledged that evidence of the gunfire was not discovered until three or four days after the attack.Ultimately, a White House housekeeper discovered broken glass -- damage left by multiple rounds from a high-powered rifle -- along the iconic Truman Balcony.
"Can you tell me why a housekeeper found the evidence and your agents did not?'' Gowdy asked. "Why not search every inch of the White House? This is just processing a crime scene; this is not high math. Why wasn't it done?''
"It was not as thorough as it needed to be,'' Pierson conceded. The director later said she was particularly "troubled'' by recent reports about a young Secret Service officer who was on duty during the 2011 shooting and heard the gunfire. The officer told investigators reviewing the incident that she did not challenge her supervisors' order to disregard the incident as a false alarm because she feared possible criticism.

And there's even more! Last week the President was allowed onto an elevator in Atlanta with a so-called "security contractor" who had NOT been cleared by the CIA, and who had a gun nobody knew about! And this was in Georgia, which has a "guns everywhere" law. So, hello? DANGER! Somebody has been asleep at the wheel, and this has to stop.

From Carol Leonnig in Washington Post
The private contractor first aroused the agents’ concerns when he acted oddly and did not comply with their orders to stop using a cellphone camera to record the president in the elevator, according to the people familiar with the incident.
When the elevator opened, Obama left with most of his Secret Service detail. Some agents stayed behind to question the man and then used a national database check that turned up his criminal history.



















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Monday, July 15, 2013

Greenwald Threatens America


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From Reuters
"Snowden has enough information to cause harm to the U.S. government in a single minute than any other person has ever had," Greenwald said in an interview in Rio de Janeiro with the Argentinean daily La Nacion.
"The U.S. government should be on its knees every day begging that nothing happen to Snowden, because if something does happen to him, all the information will be revealed and it could be its worst nightmare."

From Guardian UK ~ "About the Reuters Article" by Greenwald
...That Snowden has created some sort of "dead man's switch" - whereby documents get released in the event that he is killed by the US government - was previously reported weeks ago, and Snowden himself has strongly implied much the same thing. That doesn't mean he thinks the US government is attempting to kill him - he doesn't - just that he's taken precautions against all eventualities, including that one (just incidentally, the notion that a government that has spent the last decade invading, bombing, torturing, rendering, kidnapping, imprisoning without charges, droning, partnering with the worst dictators and murderers, and targeting its own citizens for assassination would be above such conduct is charmingly quaint).

From the Associated Press
He said the "literally thousands of documents" taken by Snowden constitute "basically the instruction manual for how the NSA is built."

"In order to take documents with him that proved that what he was saying was true he had to take ones that included very sensitive, detailed blueprints of how the NSA does what they do," the journalist said Sunday in a Rio de Janeiro hotel room. He said the interview was taking place about four hours after his last interaction with Snowden.

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It's one thing to say that Mr. Snowden possesses some information that could be harmful, and that could be part of the calculation that everybody makes here. It's another to make that kind of an aggressive, non-reportorial statement [that] a reporter has no business making.
~ Famed Reporter Carl Bernstein on Morning Joe

I realize Carl Bernstein hasn't done any actual reporting for a couple decades now, but he should nonetheless take the time to read what he's opining on. The Reuters article he's referencing is a complete distortion of what I actually said in that interview. The point I made is the opposite one: that Snowden has been as responsible as a whistleblower can be in ensuring that only information the public should know is revealed, but not gratuitously harmful information.
~ Glenn Greenwald in letter to Politico, responding to Carl Bernstein on Morning Joe



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The USA should be "on it's knees"? Who talks like this? What is this, the W.W.E.? This is an absolute joke.
Is Greenwald a journalist or Snowden's agent? I've seen subtler hype machines for Paris Hilton reality shows.
~ WinSmith on Daily Kos

What an amazingly arrogant, skin-crawlingly creepy statement, even for this most arrogant of journalists. Is Greenwald trying to get Edward Snowden killed?
~ Charles Johnson on Little Green Footballs

I’ve been thinking about this all weekend: what’s to keep Snowden from changing the terms of the threat? What if Snowden is apprehended by U.S. officials and they take away his beloved computer? What if he doesn’t like the ways he’s being treated in custody? This is a very paranoid guy under a lot of self-imposed stress, and he’s surrounded by a team of other paranoiacs. As far as I’m concerned just about anything could engage the “dead man switch.”
. . . Greenwald volunteered the threatening language, not Snowden or Wikileaks or Assange. He did it in classic noir mob movie style: “Don’t nobody move, see, or the United States government gets it!”
~ Bob Cesca on The Daily Banter

Starved for attention? Greenwald is becoming rather obnoxious. I wonder if he's actually the one afraid for his life, and he's trying to make himself feel better.
~ StarGazer09 on Democratic Underground

Greenwal and snowden are sounding more and more like terrorists
With their threats, demands, and accusations.
~ BushIsAnIdiot on Democratic Underground

The American government does not negotiate with terrorists and will not negotiate with Snowden while he holds a gun to the head of Americans security.
~ Bocalou in Huff Post

Glenn "it's all about me" Greenwald.
~ Shadrack Hyde on Huff Post

Is this Blackmail??? Is this a Felony??? Is he a Conspirator???
~ Bob A D on Huff Post

pure and total b.s. if that was the case snowden would have been dead weeks ago. the navy seals would have done a bin laden on him and he would be deep in the pacific ocean. i am losing respect for greenwald more every day. america will get him, he wil serve his 10, and then become a greeter at walmart. that is his future.
~ aldoray on Huff Post

This is what heroes do, right, inflict damage on their country and bring it to its knees. So says the hero's champion, the altruist and all-wise journalist Greenwald--just like Ben Franklin.
~ Humble Sage on Huff Post

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Sunday, July 14, 2013

Shock, Anger and Grief Over Trayvon Martin Verdict ~ Updated



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source


Previous Posts:
Why Was Prosecutor Angela Corey Smiling?
Zimmerman Verdict: Not Guilty
Best Tweets From the Zimmerman Trial

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