Political Correctness Governs Ebola Response
We've had a Missouri doctor from Springfield who flew into Atlanta in full hazmat gear to raise consciousness to his belief that the CDC has no idea what they're doing, and if they do know what they're doing, then they're lying to us. But he's chalking it up to incompetence.
I'm telling you, it's incompetence. Now, it may be some informed incorrectness, but there's also political correctness, which is guiding all of this as I spent many, many minutes yesterday detailing. And I'm gonna give you more evidence of that today. It's a combination of incompetence and political correctness, but it's a chicken-and-egg thing. Which breeds which? Is it political correctness, which leads to incompetence, or does the incompetence come first? And, at this point, we may be running out of time to draw any distinction there.
We
just have to deal with the reality that people in these time-honored
places, these institutions, like the CDC, we've always put implicit
trust that people there are the best this country has to do what needs
to be done there. We've thought that about the Secret Service. And now
we're questioning all of this, legitimately so. We are questioning
whether or not we've got the best. We know we have a president who's
totally unqualified. We have a president who has never done anything
and yet believes he is the smartest and the best and the wisest and
whatever. And it's a dangerous combination.Steve Wynn once again is out there talking about he just can't believe that this country has elected somebody so unqualified for this job. And it all starts there. If you have somebody unqualified in that job, the people they are gonna put in these very important jobs, these institutions, like the FDA, like the Centers for Disease Control, they are also gonna be incompetent because these people, especially those governed by political correctness -- competence is not even a factor when it comes to political correctness. Competence is the last thing you look at in filling positions or coming up with policy ideas.
By definition, political correctness, competence cannot possibly be used because competence means better at it than somebody else or very good at it, and that is not permitted. We're not to have these kinds of great differences. We're not supposed to have people super-qualified, really, really good the things, because that humiliates those who aren't as good, and we don't want to hurt their feelings. So we put people who aren't as good, aren't as qualified in positions of authority to make them feel better, to show that we can be fair, to show that we understand equality and all this gunk, and it's how you end up in situations such as those that we are finding ourselves in now.
It
is so bad, Obama's latest numbers, just to illustrate this, only four
in 10 people, 40% of the country, approve of Obama's handling of the
economy. And you know what the next two most important issues are in
this public opinion poll? Terrorism and national security and
immigration, and after them is health care. And on every one of those
Obama is well below 50% in terms of people who have confidence in the
way he's handling it. Forty percent approve of the way he's handling
the economy, and his numbers are under 50% for terrorism, national
security, immigration, and then health care.So what's Obama gonna do? He finds himself in negative territory. You know what he's gonna do today? He's gonna go make a speech on the economy. He's gonna go to Chicago. He's gonna deliver a speech in Chicago explaining why you are wrong in your assessment of the economy. Obama is gonna go out there and do a speech and tell you that you are better off than you were six years ago; you just don't know it.
But do you think, with everything that's happening at the moment...? The economy has been an issue. The economy in the tank has been an issue for years. It's bad, and people have lost confidence in this Regime, as the polling data indicates, to do anything about it. But things are so bad elsewhere that Obama's gonna turn to the economy and then, while we're in the midst of a non-recovery recovery, he's gonna tell you what an idiot you are.
He's not gonna use the word, of course, but he's gonna tell you that you're wrong about the condition of the economy. "You're better off than you were six years ago. You just don't know it." This is classic. Now, let me turn to Ebola and the umbrella issue again of political correctness, which leads to incompetence, and there's another issue that is extremely or highly relevant here, and it's immigration.
It's illegal immigration and just who it is that is Patient Zero, how he got here and why he got here. It turns out that there is a huge Liberian community of illegal immigrants in Dallas. It's in the tens of thousands, I think. I saw the number 10,000. Oh, yeah, the doctor in the hazmat suit. The doctor, he's from Springfield. His name is Gil Mobley. For some reason, the name rings a bell.
You know, I'm from Missouri. I am Missouri.
He's from Springfield, and I don't know anybody in Springfield that I know of. But the name Gil Mobley for some reason sounds familiar. But that's who the doctor is. He's a microbiologist and emergency trauma physician, and he flew into Atlanta in a full hazmat suit to make the point that either CDC doesn't know what they're doing with Ebola or they're lying to us about how safe everything is, how nobody is at risk.
But let me pose a scenario and give you some predictions based on the political correctness that's governing the way we're handling not just this, but what do you think it is that's the intellectual justification for the Regime and the left's view on legal immigration? Again, it's political correctness. So many things there. "It's not fair that we're such a powerful nation!
"It's not fair that we're so rich while the rest of the world is so poor. We have made the rest of the world poor because we are so rich. We couldn't get this rich on our own. It's not possible. We had to steal it. So these people from whom generation after generation have been stone from by us, want to come here and improve their life. Well, who are we to tell them they can't?"
That's how political correctness works, and throughout it is guilt. Guilt is one of the primary overriding psychological factors in this. Now, people can come here illegally for benefits. Shouldn't that include coming here for treatment for Ebola? If you're in Africa and you are in an area surrounded by Ebola, and there's a place in the world where you can get well, maybe -- and maybe not even get the disease -- wouldn't you want to go there?
That'd
be the United States of America, and if people all over the world are
getting into the US simply because they want benefits, why shouldn't
treatment for Ebola being one of those benefits? We have things they
want. We have things they want, and we've got leaders telling them that
they're entitled to come here because we have been so mean in the past,
and our immigration laws are so restricted and punitive anyway."We shouldn't have all these closed borders. It's mean of us to treat the peoples of the world this way." So therefore we open the borders, and that's exactly what we've done. We have opened the borders. The Chamber of Commerce may think this is for jobs and low-skill labor, but there's a whole heck a lot of lot more than that going on here.
I mean, whether people in foreign countries are abused by political conditions or viral conditions like Ebola, they're welcome to come to America as refugees, right? "Who are we is to tell them they can't come?" Not only is this one of the attitudes of the Regime, I've had well-known liberals, TV hosts, say it. I've gotten in arguments with them about immigration.
They're tell me, "Rush, if some poor slob from Central America wants to come to my country and improve his life and seek the American dream, I am in no way gonna sto them."
"What if the guy pitches a tent in your backyard, sir?"
"Well, that would never happen."
"What do you mean, it would never happen?"
You know, when you personalize it they'll finally oppose it. But when the illegals are gonna show up somewhere else, it's all fine and dandy. And when they want to come here for Ebola treatment, why check anybody for past crimes or past infections? "That's discriminatory, you see. We can't discriminate against people that want to come here. We can't discriminate against the sick.
"My
God, what kind people do that? Do you realize how mean and insensitive
that is, to discriminate against the sick, especially people who are
coming here for love? They need work; we have jobs Americans won't do.
They need treatment for disease; we have it. It's not fair that they
don't, so who are we to tell them they can't come? They need medical
treatment; we have treatments for diseases that Americans don't have
yet."So why are we being so selfish with our health care? It isn't fair! If somebody anywhere in the world is sick and America can treat what ails them, fairness dictates they come here get treatment for free." That's how it works., and anything less than that makes you mean-spirited, discriminatory, racist, bigot, sexist -- and maybe even a homophobe, depending. "Need a job? We got one! Need benefits? We got 'em!
"Need treatment? We can treat it!" Ebola patients. By the way, if we also tell sick people around the world that they gotta stay where they are, that's not good because we're now a "global culture." You'll hear this in a moment. We're a global culture. This is not about just the United States anymore. We are a global culture, and we can't just act like we're a single country. We are a part of the globe.
So these people are really not foreign. "They're just human beings who want what's available here. We got no right to tell 'em they can't have it." This is how politically correct people think, because what I just described to you is how they define justice. So this is what we are up against, and we have people that now run places like the Centers for Disease Control, and we have people in very serious positions -- medical research, biological research -- who feel the same way.
We got a president who looks at the world this way. We have everybody he's appointed in the Regime that looks at the world and the United States this way. This is what we're up against.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, I didn't intend to spend this much time on this 'cause there's a lot of stuff I want to roll through here. A lot of people are beginning to question, as news becomes known about Patient Zero, the guy from Liberia who shows up in Dallas, goes to the ER and is sent home with antibiotics, was not tested. Even though he told them he was from Liberia, he was not tested for Ebola.
There is now many more than 12 to 18 people he's come in contact with. It's many more. It turns out there's an entire community in Dallas of Liberians, and the thing that is probably true, and you can assume this because of the way it's being reported, many of them are probably here on expired visas. They came here with visas never intending to leave. They've set up communities. Nobody's deporting them. So many of them are here illegally.
And it goes back to the thing I said at the very beginning of the show. We've got treatment. They don't have it. Why shouldn't they come here, and who are we to tell 'em they can't? We don't close the borders anyway. We're wide open for benefits and other reasons for immigration. Why not this? It's only fair.
I'm gonna take you back to 2010, the archives of USA Today:
"Obama Administration Scraps Quarantine Regulations." This story will
explain to you why Obama isn't doing anything to stop flights to and
from countries where Ebola has broken out or why he's not doing anything
to stop people with diseases from pouring into the country. It's
largely because the ACLU and Obama think such measures are unfair.
Here's the story. This is four years ago."The Obama administration has quietly scrapped plans to enact sweeping new federal quarantine regulations that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention touted four years ago as critical to protecting Americans from dangerous diseases spread by travelers. The regulations, proposed in 2005 during the Bush administration amid fears of avian flu, would have given the federal government additional powers to detain sick airline passengers and those exposed to certain diseases. They also would have expanded requirements for airlines to report ill passengers to the CDC and mandated that airlines collect and maintain contact information for fliers in case they later needed to be traced as part of an investigation into an outbreak."
Now, this was related to the bird flu, but Obama scrapped all this.
"Airline and civil liberties groups, which had opposed the rules," airlines, 'cause they didn't want the additional work. It would cost money they couldn't bill back in fares. The airlines and civil liberties groups "praised their withdrawal" of all of these safety measures, because, after all, folks, we can't discriminate against the disease. Who do we think we are? What kind of mean society does that, discriminates against a disease?
"The Air Transport Association had decried them as imposing 'unprecedented' regulations on airlines at costs they couldn't afford." Well, okay, fine. Take a look at the price of airline stocks today. They're not going up. Airline stock prices are -- I don't want to say through the floor, but they're on the downside, and it's because of Ebola fears.
"The American Civil Liberties Union had objected to potential passenger privacy rights violations and the proposal's 'provisional quarantine' rule. That rule would have allowed the CDC to detain people involuntarily for three business days if the agency believed they had certain diseases: pandemic flu, infectious tuberculosis, plague, cholera, SARS, smallpox, yellow fever, diphtheria or viral hemorrhagic fevers such as Ebola."
This is four years ago. If you want to know why there is no ability to quarantine or to segregate or to identify, it is because Obama and the ACLU considered these steps discriminatory. Therefore, the number one job of the president of the United States, to protect the homeland, to defend and protect the Constitution, to protect the American people, however you want to describe it, the number one job was cast aside because that's unfair. That's discriminatory. We can't treat the sick that way. We can't segregate them, even if it means protecting the American people.
Folks,
liberalism matters. People who are leftists, it matters what they
believe. And what they believe is that there's nothing special, that we
are no better and we ought not have any access to anything anybody else
doesn't have access to, and if we do, we should share it with everybody
and not help ourselves first. No, no, no, no. That's discriminatory.
We have to do this because it's unfair we're so powerful to begin
with.And none of what I'm telling you is an exaggeration. None of what I'm telling you is being exaggerated to make a point. It's exactly the way they think. "The people of United States do not deserve any more protection than the people in Africa, and if we are able to provide that protection to our people, then we are guilty of discrimination and guilty of caring about ourselves more than others" and on and on.
To a lot of people, that's a very seductive message. I mean, that sounds like the essence of compassion, isn't it? It's right out of, "Women and children first!" If the ship's going down, women and children get saved first. What is that all about? That's about chivalry and taking care of those who can't take care of themselves.
Well, this has been expanded now to the point that it ends up being genuinely harmful and detrimental to the people of the United States of America. So this is why what's happening all over the country now in regard to the enterovirus or Ebola... This is why. Obama, four years ago, scrapped any ability to protect the American people on this basis. Now, part and parcel of this, "Why would Obama and the ACLU do this?" is you've gotta understand what their attitude going in is.
They don't like this country in the first place because it's so powerful. They don't think any of this is fair. "Most of this country is unjust and immoral, and it's time we pay the price. We gotta find out what it's like in the rest of the world. It's a global world now. We're not a superpower, and we don't dominate things anymore. We gotta find out what it's like." That may be hard to comprehend or accept or believe, but it's exactly the kind of thinking that is shaping policy on everything that is happening in this country.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: "The Department of Health has confirmed a patient is currently in isolation and undergoing testing in Honolulu. The Hawaii Nurses Association said the person is being treated at The Queen’s Medical Center." It turns out we only know about this because of the nurses union. The nurses union made this public.
"A message sent to all employees Wednesday said that the hospital is 'evaluating a patient for possible symptoms that may be consistent with Ebola.' The union that represents the nurses was tipped off about the message Wednesday afternoon. Joan Craft, president of the Hawaii Nurses Association, immediately contacted the hospital for assurance that safety procedures are in place to protect her members."
Now, why all the tap dancing here? Why can't the officials just say the person has Ebola-like symptoms and they've been to West Africa recently? What is gained by playing with words like this? All it does is make everybody distrust the authorities even more. Why not just be up front about this? By the way, isn't that the responsible thing to do? I know, I know, everybody's worried about panic. But you imagine the panic, if you lie to everybody and tell them, "Nothing to see here. Nothing to worry about," and then there's an outbreak, you want to talk about panic?
It would seem to me that the authorities here want to be trusted and believed, and they want their authority to be respected. And all this tap dancing around here and trying to keep things from people is only going to ratchet up suspicion. From the New York Times we know who the patient in Dallas is. He's been identified as Thomas Eric Duncan. He's a resident of Monrovia in his mid-forties. He flew to Dallas, was later found to have the Ebola virus, and it was the Liberian government that successfully identified him.
So
we now know he is not an American citizen. Why was this information
withheld? They ran through hoops the past couple days trying to keep
the identity of the patient. I know medical health security, safety,
privacy, but this is not an American citizen here. Let me just give you
this in a nutshell. Thomas Eric Duncan is a Liberian citizen. He had
direct contact, physical contact with a woman, whom he knew died of
Ebola. He had physical contact. He knew that others who had contact
with the same woman at the same time had died. But he did not tell the
medical staff in Dallas any of this.Also, we now learn that Mr. Duncan had relatives in Dallas who he said were telling him to come live with them. And we now know that he quit his job with FedEx in Liberia, giving no reason, before getting on the plane to Dallas, all of which indicates that Thomas Eric Duncan was intending to move in with his family, his relatives, here in Dallas. The odds are that they are people who have overstayed their visas and are here, quote, unquote, illegally, and that's another thing that we won't be told.
Can you imagine the firestorm if that kind of thing gets outs? So they'll try to cover that up, because we're preparing to do executive amnesty here after the Mary Landrieu runoff in December. That's what we're waiting on, by the way, for executive amnesty. Obama's not gonna do anything that's gonna impair the Democrats' chance at winning the Senate. That's a whole other subject I want to get into today, too, by the way. Michael Barone has a column out there saying it's gonna be a wave, they just don't know how big. Yet other people are telling them, no this thing is gonna come down to a runoff in two races, Louisiana and Georgia. So there's nobody that really knows, but the opinions are far and wide on it. I want to treat you to all of it as the program unfolds.
Now, for the record. People from Liberia have the fifth highest visa overstay rate in the United States. Now, how many times did the administration and the news media make fun of or mock people for suggesting that somebody might come across the border with Ebola? Ever since the Ebola outbreak occurred, coupled with our open borders, there have been people warning, are we doing anything? Are we being vigilant? Are we making sure that this disease is going to be kept out of the country?
Oh, yeah. Oh, there's nothing to worry about. Obama goes out, "It isn't gonna happen." It's a hard disease to get, the CDC guy said, it isn't gonna happen. And everybody who worried about it was mocked and made fun of and there were intimations that we were listening to racists and bigots. That's what it means. If you want steps to be taken to protect your country and the population of your country, and yourself and your family, you're bigot. You are not behaving properly according to the tenets of political correctness.
Well, guess what, folks? Here's a simple little fact of life. Every international airline is a border, and now we have had somebody come across the border carrying Ebola with them who lied at every step of the process to get here, which makes total sense. The CDC director said yesterday, "Oh, well, you know, we're ... we're ... we're ... we're ... taking their body temperatures before they get on the plane in Africa."
"Really? How are we doing that?"
"Well, we zap 'em with this laser device. This laser device tells us whether they're running a fever or not -- and then we ask 'em if they've got Ebola."
"Oh, you asked them if they've got it, and you expect them to say 'yes,' right? 'Cause they're on the verge of getting on an airplane out of Africa." (scoffs)
So somebody came across the border carrying Ebola with them, somebody who was visiting probably illegal aliens, family -- somebody was probably going to be become an illegal alien himself. "Mr. Duncan, who was a family friend and also a tenant in a house owned by the Williams family, rode in the taxi in the front passenger seat while Ms. Williams, her father and her brother, Sonny Boy, shared the back seat, her parents said.
"Mr.
Duncan then helped carry Ms. Williams, who was no longer able to walk,
back to the family home that evening, neighbors said." Never mind all
the warnings about touching Ebola patients. (sigh) All the while, the
president and everybody else are telling us there's nothing to see
here.CBS News: "The patient, identified as Thomas Eric Duncan by CBS Dallas station KTVT, left Monrovia, Liberia, on Sept. 19 aboard a Brussels Airlines jet to the Belgian capital, according to a Belgian official. After layover of nearly seven hours, he boarded United Airlines Flight 951 to Dulles ... After another layover of nearly three hours, he then flew Flight 822 from Dulles to Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, the airline confirmed."
How many people have come in contact with him during these three flights and these layovers? How many people sat in his seat on subsequent flights? And note, ladies and gentlemen, this detail buried at the bottom of this story: "The CDC typically notifies an airline when it learns that an infectious person traveled on that carrier.
"The airline then turns over the flight manifest to the CDC, and health officials notify other passengers while the airline deals with crew members. In this case, the CDC told United but not the public what flights the man took." Why is that? Whatever happened to the public's right to know? What about the other airlines he used besides United?
Here's the answer. It's right here. "In an interview Wednesday, Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the CDC, suggested that doing so would divert public-health resources away from controlling an outbreak of the virus." How in the world does that happen? How does telling people about it divert resources from controlling it?
This guy is saying things that literally are contradictory and make no sense. CDC told United Airlines. How much more resources would it take for them to tell other airlines and the public in general? The bottom line is they know things they're not telling you. We know why. They're afraid of causing a panic. I think there's a larger reason. The larger reason is, they may not know what they're dealing with here.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here is Phil in Rochester, New York. Phil, thank you for calling. It's great to have you on the Rush Limbaugh program. Hello.
CALLER: Thanks, Rush. In my hand I am holding an infrared thermometer. I use it to take temperatures of material that I'm inspecting. It operates between a distance of six to 24 inches and casts a red dot on the item that I'm taking a temperature of. Now, I remember you saying yesterday or heard, rather, in one of the sound bites that they're saying they're taking these people's temperature from a distance?
RUSH: That's right. The director of the Centers for Disease Control said they're doing this while people are waiting to board airplanes in Africa to determine whether or not they have a temperature.
CALLER: I'm taking the temperature of the side of my face right now, and it's telling me I'm 91.5 degrees.
RUSH: Really? And how far away is the device from the side of your face?
CALLER: Within the operational range of six to 24 inches, with this particular device.
RUSH: You ought to be, let's see, 98.6. You should be in deep trouble here.CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: Body temperature at 91 degrees.
CALLER: Hypothermia.
RUSH: Yeah, actually, you should probably be at the bottom of San Francisco Bay.
CALLER: (laughing) Yeah.
RUSH: The point is these things are not accurate, that's your point, right?
CALLER: Stick the thermometer in the ear of my child, just in the hole, and I can see that working 'cause obviously they have accurate readings with that, but I don't know what device they're using, but if it's an infrared thermometer --
RUSH: You can't. Again, this is my point. This is my point exactly. You got the CDC guy out there, "Oh, yeah, we're taking every step imaginable to make sure that the sick don't get on those airplanes. Why, we're conducting exhaustive interviews, and there's a form that they fill out, and they have to admit whether they have Ebola." Ha-ha. Really? Think they're gonna do that? "Yeah, and then we got this thing that takes their temperature. We just aim it at 'em and it reports back," and so forth.
Now, one of two things. Either this guy knows that what he's saying is full of it and he's just saying it hoping he can convince us. Or he's genuinely full of it and doesn't know what he's talking about. Either way, it does not inspire any confidence. By the way, I should tell you that the family of Thomas Duncan, this is Ebola patient in Dallas, his family's already complaining because he's not getting ZMapp. That's the serum that we're out of. There isn't any left.
ABC News is reporting that Joe Weeks, who lives with Duncan's sister, said the family's concerned that Duncan was admitted to the hospital and put in isolation on Sunday, but he has not received this drug, the ZMapp serum. "I don't understand why he's not getting the ZMapp." The manufacturer of the drug has said they've run out of it. It's experimental anyway. This is the stuff that comes from a specific tobacco plant in Kentucky.
And now the AP is reporting that Liberia plans to prosecute this guy, Mr. Duncan, who brought Ebola to the US. "Liberian authorities say they plan to prosecute the man infected with Ebola who brought the disease to the United States, saying he lied on his airport health questionnaire." Really?
Anyway, what this all adds up to is that this man knew he had Ebola. But we were told that he wasn't showing any symptoms and nobody should be worried. If you came in contact, they told us yesterday, if you came in contact with this man on the airplane, you have nothing to worry about, he was not showing symptoms. Well, he had come in contact with people suffering and who later died from it. I mean, physical contact. He knew when he got on the plane. He lied on his questionnaire. So he knew he was coming here.
Look, don't misunderstand. I mean, we're all human beings here, and the guy knows if he stays in Liberia, it's hopeless. Who wouldn't want to come here? That's the whole point. Who wouldn't want to? But I think that deserves a little bit of expansion. Why is the US the only place in the world that might offer hope here? And again, it gets back to it's not because we're better people. It's not because we're smart. We have had a capitalist economy which has rewarded the endless hours of research and development and marketing and production and sale, a growing, thriving economy, which allows people to pursue their dreams and their passions and to invent great things happens in the United States.
But in Liberia, Monrovia, the per capita income is $700 a year. They have no economic growth. They live under socialist regimes or worse. Here comes the global warming movement telling them they can't modernize because that'll create pollution and more CO2. So they've gotta stay poor. It's a death sentence for them. So you can't blame this guy for wanting to come here to get treated. That's why these things have to be dealt with by responsible people authoritatively who understand and honestly can tell us what we're doing.
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