TMR: Americans Don't Trust the CDC, CA Gov Jerry Brown Signs Horrible Gun Bill, and Cato Institute Thinks NSA Spying is GOOD
You lucky kittens, you, not only do you get a Morning Roar! written by me today, but also tomorrow! Throw your hats in the air!Americans Don't Trust the Center for Disease ControlThere is an interesting article up on NBC's website that calls into question the trust that Americans have and should have in the CDC, especially in light of the organization's handling of the ebola outbreak that is spreading and has just recently been found in Dallas.
Many Americans are mistrustful. “Sorry I am not confident in their confidence that it won't spread... that is what they told us when they brought the 3 infected folks here... it will spread it is just a matter of how fast,” Wendy Head-Chapman writes on NBC News Health's Facebook page. “Government can’t be trusted,” chimes in Janet Calderone McElroy.But the CDC knows it does not pay to lie to people about disease, says Dr. Tom Inglesby, director of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s Center for Health Security, a think-tank dedicated to health threats.
“They know it would be a terrible mistake for the institution, a terrible strategy, and they just won’t do it,” Inglesby told NBC News. “People are learning what is known by the CDC when the CDC learns it.”
What's funny about this story is that NBC is making a case throughout the article, should you read it in its entirety, that people should in fact trust the CDC. This, in my opinion, couldn't be farther from what people should be doing, which is taking everything the CDC says with a massive grain of salt. Let's read on, briefly, for why:
“The team they have there is a group of veteran public health professionals that have been doing this for a long time, working on SARS and bird flu and 2009 H1N1 (influenza) and MERS. There isn’t any evidence from any of those outbreaks in the past that CDC would sit on something to prevent people from panicking,” Inglesby said.
Frieden correctly predicted that someone would show up at a U.S. hospital with Ebola, and he's been quick to say that it's very possible the Dallas patient will have infected someone else.
When H5N1 bird flu first became a big threat in 2003, government health agencies did a full-court press on learning how best to communicate threats to the public. One overlying message was that lying always backfires.
So yes, the CDC doesn't "lie" to the public and sit on information to "prevent people from panicking." Far from it! In fact they breathlessly scream at the top of their lungs so people will in fact panic. It's utterly ridiculous.They reference SARS - what a joke that was. Everyone was in a tizzy, wearing masks, getting shots, avoiding each other like it was the plague and those who caught a cold were quarantined. How many you might ask? Well, there were only eight Americans who got it. All of that insanity and hand wringing and media coverage...for eight people. How many people had it worldwide? A bit over 8,000. Statistically insignificant. Those numbers are from the CDC.The epically evil Bird Flu? According to the WHO, 685 people worldwide contracted Bird Flu - 386 died. More people die falling out of their beds every year (literally - roughly 450).Ebola is a gross and nasty disease - but one that, like virtually everything, is easily handled in a first world country. I don't trust the CDC - its track record speaks for itself.Jerry Brown Removes All Good Will With Horrible Gun BillSo on Monday I wrote an article about Jerry Brown being a doofus who sometimes did things right but most recently has been failing miserably from a liberty standpoint, and his most recent action taken yesterday has utterly removed all good will I have towards the man. Were Jerry lying in the street with heart failure, I would pass on by without offering my now out of date services as a mouth-to-mouth resuscitator. Why? Well, ol' Jerry has decided to sign a bill that would allow family members to report their blood-kin to the feds and have their 2nd Amendment rights revoked.
California will become the first state that allows family members to ask a judge to remove firearms from a relative who appears to pose a threat, under legislation Gov. Jerry Brown said Tuesday he had signed.
This bill was spurred on, as all of these liberty crushing abominations are, by an anomaly - a tragic shooting that led to the deaths of innocents, at the hands of one Elliot Rogers.
Lawmakers approved the bill by Democratic Assembly members Nancy Skinner of Berkeley and Das Williams of Santa Barbara amid pleas that they act after the May 23 attack in which six people were fatally stabbed or shot and 13 others wounded in the community of Isla Vista.
Weeks before that shooting, Elliot Rodger's parents had his therapist contact Santa Barbara County mental health officials. Sheriff's deputies talked to Elliot Rodger but never entered his apartment or checked to see if he owned guns.
In Elliot Rodger's case, there is no evidence his parents or anyone treating him knew he had weapons. That prompted Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson, D-Santa Barbara, to introduce a related bill that would require law enforcement to develop policies that encourage officers to search the state's database of gun purchases as part of routine welfare checks. That bill, SB505, also was signed by the governor.
It's always under the guise of protection that our ability to protect ourselves is removed. Governor Jerry Brown, your last name belies your true nature and the stench that rises from you.Cato Institute Does it Again! Another Anti-libertarian Position; This Time About NSA Spying The Cato Institute is a regular punching bag here, mostly for being a "libertarian" organization at its front and a neocon secret society at its core. The Chicago Tribune recently featured the Cato Institute's Roger Pilon, the VP for legal affairs at the Cato Institute and director of Cato’s Center for Constitutional Studies in a co-authored op-ed. The argument, which argues that NSA spying is a grand thing, is shocking:
As the president said, the process involves some necessary loss of privacy. But it's trivial, certainly in comparison to the losses that would have arisen if the government had failed to discern the pattern that let it thwart the 2009 New York subway bombing plot by Colorado airport shuttle driver Najibullah Zazi, an Afghan-American, who was prosecuted and ultimately pleaded guilty.
A complete loss of privacy and a blatant violation of the 4th Amendment is trivial compared to the (small) loss of life from two attacks that may or may not have hinged on this data? The NSA's Director came out admitting that the spying had produced ZERO results. No terror plots foiled. None. So what is this argument based on again?
Yes, government officials might conceivably misuse some of the trillions of bits of metadata they examine using sophisticated algorithms. But one abuse is no pattern of abuses. And even one abuse is not likely to happen given the safeguards in place. The cumulative weight of the evidence attests to the soundness of the program. The critics would be more credible if they could identify a pattern of government abuses. But after 12 years of continuous practice, they can’t cite even a single case. We should be thankful that here, at least, government has done its job and done it well.
WHAAAAAAAATTTT???? This is the most obtuse argument I have ever heard. The abuses already happened! Violating the constitutional rights of every single American is an abuse! You would think that Cato's "constitutional scholar" would realize this very simple fact. This man should be in a right wing politician's cabinet, not parading himself around as a libertarian.Pathetic.Read The Morning Roar every weekday Monday-Friday!The Lions of Liberty are on Twitter, Facebook & Google+Receive access to ALL of our EXCLUSIVE bonus audio content – including “Conspiracy Corner”, “Degenerate Gamblers” and the “League of Liberty Podcast” by joining the Lions of Liberty Pride and supporting us on Patreon!
