(Via The Federalist)  […]   See, in 2004, Congress passed The Project Bioshield Act. The text of that legislation authorized up to $5,593,000,000 in new spending by NIH for the purpose of purchasing vaccines that would be used in the event of a bioterrorist attack. A major part of the plan was to allow stockpiling and distribution of vaccines.

Just two years later, Congress passed the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act, which created a new assistant secretary for preparedness and response to oversee medical efforts and called for a National Health Security Strategy. The Act established Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority as the focal point within HHS for medical efforts to protect the American civilian population against naturally occurring threats to public health. It specifically says this authority was established to give “an integrated, systematic approach to the development and purchase of the necessary vaccines, drugs, therapies, and diagnostic tools for public health medical emergencies.”

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We pointed this out yesterday after we noticed Paul Begala begin the talking point. But we ran out of time to write about it.  Thankfully Eric Erickson expands on the nonsensical narrative…

@PaulBegala Dear Paul, how much did President Obama request for the NIH in his 2015 fiscal year budget proposal? Thought so, take a seat.

— TheLastRefuge (@TheLastRefuge2) October 13, 2014

[…] To this end, the Administration’s FY 2015 budget request for the NIH is $30.362 billion, $211 million, or 0.7 percent, above the FY 2014 level.  [NIH Testimony to appropriations] 

Erickson uses the CDC 2014 budget appropriations to drive home the same point.
Erickson […]  The latest Democratic attack is pretty straightforward in its insanity. Because the GOP won’t let the Democrats spend more money, people are getting Ebola. The Democrats would have you believe that the very same government that could not build an Obamacare website with hundreds of millions of dollars could somehow cure Ebola yesterday with more money.
There is just one problem: facts. (more…)

Inside the beltway conversation has all but announced the nomination of current labor secretary Tom Perez to replace Eric Holder. If you were inclined to think of Eric Holder as an activist Attorney General, you can multiply that by infinite magnitudes with Tom Perez. We have researched him for several years as his job before Labor Secretary was the head of the CRS.

However there are two serious issues which could disqualify Perez from contention to the job, IF they are reviewed by the Senate.
The first was his attachment to an illegal quid-pro-quo scheme.
Back in 2013 a St. Paul, Minnesota community activist, Frederick Newell, appeared before a senate committee to expose (discuss) a $200 million whistleblower lawsuit that Tom Perez, the head of the Department of Justice’s civil rights enforcement, allegedly dismissed as part of a quid pro quo deal with the city of St. Paul.
The city withdrew a petition that was headed to the Supreme Court in a case that would have easily overturned the concept of disparate impact, a racial discrimination doctrine that Perez supports.
The concept of disparate impact is the lynch pin to the entire construct of the DOJ’s approaches toward activist engineering and policy – a supreme court ruling against the application of disparate impact would have destroyed years of social engineering work done by the DOJ.
In exchange for St. Paul dropping the Supreme Court case, the DOJ dropped their support for a whistleblower lawsuit against the city citing the lawsuit having no merit. (more…)

The primary problem for the Ferguson thugs is evidenced within the guidance provided by the professional grievance class – a problem of authenticity.

Cutting right to the heart of the matter, and despite the earnest efforts of the professional left, their protests cannot gain traction.

You can see it in the assistance and guidance provided by the DOJ Community Relations Service under the auspices of The Dream Defenders.
You can also see the problem within the assistance of the united professional left who tried to coordinate Ferguson October.
At the heart of the issue is the inauthentic grievance….
A troubled thug, Mike Brown, represents the modern issue within the black grievance industry.  No matter how they try to frame the narrative, the basic foundation is a thug, doing thug-type behavior, was justifiably shot by law enforcement. No amount of leftist spin can assist the narrative when the foundational flaw is brutally obvious.
We can see the perpetually aggrieved trying desperately to find authenticity, but nothing is sticking.
(more…)

https://twitter.com/DRUDGE_REPORT/status/521462911001055233
We can’t begin to say how infuriating this is. Friday the first U.S. troops arrived in Monrovia to begin setting up aid for Liberian healthcare workers within the Ebola “Hot Zone”. Today those same healthcare workers go on strike.

“Beginning tomorrow we will be on a nationwide strike in every hospital and every health centre including ETUs (Ebola Treatment Units),” said Joseph Tamba, chairman of the health workers’ union.

There is NO DOUBT they have taken the opportunity of our U.S. arrival to remove themselves from the risk inherent in the care of Ebola patients. This will put additional pressure on our military to fill the caregiver void.
Insufferable !

It has been a challenging pill to swallow to see 4,000 of our servicemen and women dispatched into a dangerous region on a humanitarian effort when little to no support is coming from Western “allies”. Add to that the pure selfishness of the Liberian opportunists which further endangers our troops, and the entire situation is beyond insufferable. (more…)

One cannot praise the fighting resolve of the Kurdish people in Kobane Syria too much. The Kurdish men, and especially women, are amazing fighters and together with ordinary citizens including grandparents and children, they are striking back against ISIS.

Good outline from the Daily Beast HERE:

In a stunning show of bravery the Kurdish men and women holding Kobani continue to hold out—and an ISIS poster boy is reported killed

SURUÇ, Turkey—He gazes at the photograph of his daughter Evan on his cellphone as he offers to let me look. She is 18 years old with long dark wavy hair. It isn’t a snapshot but a more formally posed picture. The girl has lively eyes, a pleasant smile. It was taken shortly before she left a note for her parents telling them she was crossing the border into Syria to join the Kurdish defense militia, the YPG. That was six months ago and last week she contacted him and explained she was fighting the militants of the Islamic State in the besieged town of Kobani.
There is both sadness and pride in her father’s eyes. Ali, a 47-year-old shepherd and father of ten from a nearby village, says, “She is greater than me. I can’t be like her. I have not reached her level of commitment.” (more…)

(Reuters) – At Fort Campbell in Kentucky, spouses of U.S. soldiers headed to Liberia seem to be lingering just a bit longer than usual after pre-deployment briefings, hungry for information about Ebola.
For these families, the virus is raising a different kind of anxiety than the one they have weathered during 13 years of ground war in Afghanistan and Iraq. They want to know how the military can keep soldiers safe from the epidemic, a new addition to the Army’s long list of threats.

“Ebola is a different problem set that the division hasn’t (faced) before,” said Major General Gary Volesky, who will soon head to Liberia along with soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division. (more…)

The True Story Of Enterovirus D68 is Not A Story of Surprise

Back in July of 2014 we outlined how the “surprise influx” of Unaccompanied Alien Children from Central America was not in actuality “a surprise”.  We knew it was not a surprise because the Obama Administration was specifically pre-planning for an influx a full seven months before the story began to reach the headlines:

On January 29th of this year, the federal government posted an advertisement seeking bids for a vendor contract to handle “Unaccompanied Alien Children“.
Not just any contract mind you, but a very specific contract – for a very specific number of unaccompanied minors: 65,000.

Obviously the key take-away was:  How could DHS and HHS claim a surprise when they were specifically looking for contractors to handle a very specific number of UAC’s seven month earlier?

Immediately we knew a few things.  First, we knew it wasn’t a surprise.  Second, we know this administration never lets a crisis go to waste.   The UAC crisis was soon framed as a ‘humanitarian crisis’ to position a more favorable outcome for comprehensive immigration reform.  It almost worked.
Almost. (more…)

It has been three weeks since we first stated “all you will ever need to know about President Obama’s real commitment to defeating ISIS you will learn in Kobane”.  

Actions speak louder than words.

President Obama has made the ruse, his ruse, within Syria, transparent in the extreme.
We called this “Operation Decisive Ambivalence” as administration officials said losing Kobane “was not a big concern” to them.   The administration has done nothing to support the Syrian Kurds fighting ISIS near the northern border city of Kobane.   The Kurdish people are the “moderates” within the region that President Obama has specifically stated need support.  Yet he does nothing. 
Kurdish fighters, including women and grandparents, are fighting and dying – for them, failure is not an option.  If Kobane falls to ISIS somewhere around 10,000 Syrian Kurds will have been killed.  Yet Obama’s plan is to arm and train 5,000 “moderate” Syrian’s within a year.  Think about the insufferable fallacy within the logic.
There should be NO DOUBT -in the minds of U.S. observers- what is actually taking place in Syria.   Both President Obama and Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan, are ideologically aligned with ISIS, even though they may express public disapproval of the methods.  Erdogan and Obama support the creation of a Sunni Islamic state, a “caliphate” within the region compromised of radical islamists within the various factional forces of the Muslim Brotherhood…     (more…)

The Kurdish forces trapped and fighting for Kobane (Kobani) will not surrender, will not relent, and will go to their deaths fighting the Islamic slime that is ISIS. Meanwhile President Obama and Prime Minister Erdogan willingly watch the slaughter. 

In 2011 Obama took us to war in Libya over his doctrine “The Responsibility To Protect”.  Even the usually insufferable United Nations is requesting an intervention.

From Bastogne To Kobane – What a Distance We’ve Traveled !

SURUC, Turkey (AFP) — Islamic State jihadists captured the headquarters Friday of Kurdish fighters defending the Syrian border town of Kobani, with a UN envoy warning thousands would likely be massacred if it falls to them.

Outgunned Kurdish militia were struggling to prevent the jihadists closing off the last escape route for civilians still in the area, prompting an appeal for urgent military assistance.
US-led warplanes have intensified air strikes against IS, which has been attacking Kobani for three weeks, but the Pentagon has warned that, without a ground force to work with, there are limits to what can be done.
Neighboring Turkey has so far refrained from any action against the jihadists on its doorstep, despite four straight nights of protests among its own large Kurdish minority that have left 31 people dead. (more…)