By Prince George’s County Expat
Folks in Canuckistan wise up?
At WND.
Friday, October 31, 2014
Swedes Gone Wild. Again. Congo Crowd Kills Man, Eats Him After Militant Massacres
By RC
The incident in the town of Beni followed a number of overnight raids in the area blamed on the Islamist group ADF-NAUL, who are thought to have massacred more than 100 people this month, using hatchets and machetes to kill their victims.
Witnesses said the man, who has not been identified, aroused suspicion on a bus when passengers discovered he could not speak the local Swahili language and that he was carrying a machete.
The incident in the town of Beni followed a number of overnight raids in the area blamed on the Islamist group ADF-NAUL, who are thought to have massacred more than 100 people this month, using hatchets and machetes to kill their victims.
Witnesses said the man, who has not been identified, aroused suspicion on a bus when passengers discovered he could not speak the local Swahili language and that he was carrying a machete.
Marysville-Pilchuck High School Shooting: Shaylee Chuckulnaskit, 14, Succumbs to Her Wounds, Following Seven Day Struggle for Survival; Police Release 911 Tapes
Shaylee Chuckulnaskit
Re-posted by Nicholas Stix
Thanks to reader-researcher RC for this article.
Hospital: Girl, 14, dies after school shooting
By Martha Bellisle, Associated Press
Updated 7:16 p.m., Friday, October 31, 2014
San Francisco Chronicle
•
Photo: Elaine Thompson, AP
Image 1 of 11
• Carved pumpkins with the names of those involved in a deadly school shooting nearly a week earlier line a memorial for victims, Thursday, Oct. 30, 2014, in Marysville, Wash. The shooter, Jaylen Fryberg,
was a homecoming prince from a prominent tribal family. On Friday, Fryberg pulled out a handgun in the Marysville-Pilchuck High School cafeteria north of Seattle and started shooting. The victims were Zoe R. Galasso, 14, who died at the scene; Gia Soriano, 14, who died at a hospital Sunday night; Shaylee Chuckulnaskit, 14, who is in critical condition [sic]; and Fryberg's cousins, Nate Hatch, 14, who is in satisfactory condition and Andrew Fryberg, 15, who is in critical condition.
Image 4 of 11
Native American drummers lead mourners out of a gymnasium following the memorial service for the 15-year-old gunman in a deadly Washington state school shooting nearly a week earlier, Thursday, Oct. 30, 2014, on the Tulalip Indian reservation, in Tulalip, Wash. The shooter, Jaylen Fryberg, was a homecoming prince from a prominent tribal family. On Friday, Fryberg pulled out a handgun in the Marysville-Pilchuck High School cafeteria north of Seattle and started shooting. The victims were Zoe R. Galasso, 14, who died at the scene; Gia Soriano, 14, who died at a hospital Sunday night; Shaylee Chuckulnaskit, 14, who is in critical condition; and Fryberg's cousins, Nate Hatch, 14, who is in satisfactory condition and Andrew Fryberg, 15, who is in critical condition.
SEATTLE (AP) — One of the teenagers wounded in a Washington state high school shooting died Friday, raising to four the number of fatalities from the moment when a student opened fire in a cafeteria a week ago.
Shaylee Chuckulnaskit, 14, died late Friday afternoon, officials at Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett said.
Zoe Galasso, 14, was killed during the shooting Oct. 24 by a popular freshman at Marysville-Pilchuck High School. Gia Soriano, also 14, died Sunday at the Everett hospital.
Two other students remain hospitalized at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. Andrew Fryberg, 15, was in critical condition Friday and Nate Hatch, 14, was in satisfactory condition.
The school 30 miles north of Seattle was closed this week and will reopen Monday. The school will have grief counselors available.
"Our hearts are broken at the passing of our beautiful daughter," Shaylee Chuckulnaskit's family said in a statement released by Providence officials. "Shay means everything to us. In Shay's short life she has been a radiant light bringing us incredible joy and happiness. She has been a loving daughter, a caring sister, a devoted friend and a wonderful part of our community. We can't imagine life without her."
The family also thanked medics and hospital officials.
Newly released police radio traffic recordings from the shooting scene showed officers faced a daunting task as they responded to reports of a shooter. They learned they would have to secure a maze of buildings that make up the sprawling campus.
About a minute after 911 dispatchers reported at 10:39 a.m. Oct. 24 that they were receiving calls of a shooting in the Marysville-Pilchuck High School cafeteria, one officer got on the radio from inside and said: "It's confirmed. We have a shooter. We have five down."
A few seconds later he added, "The shooter is DOA. We've got apparently four" and then "the shooter is down. Two causalities." Two minutes later: "I have two that are still breathing and alive. Looks like I have three possibly deceased."
Jaylen Fryberg, a freshman, was quickly identified as the [killer, say it!] person who opened fire at his classmates before killing himself.
The recordings, sent to The Associated Press in response to a public records request, reveal the breadth of the police response and the difficulty as officers spent the next two hours trying to get hundreds of students to safety. Authorities have not yet released 911 calls from inside the school.
After one hour, 51 minutes, an officer called in to report: "I need four buses. We have several hundred kids still sheltered in place."
One hour, 20 minutes into the crisis, the dispatcher told the command post that a parent called to report his son received a text message "indicating that they were lucky (Fryberg) only had six rounds. I don't know if that was from the subject or secondary."
The commander responded: "That needs to be addressed immediately."
As officers arrived at the area, the command post moved them around — closing off this road, securing that building, taping those doors and filling those buses.
They had to get medics to the injured, but they didn't know if anyone else was part of the shooting. That made the officer inside anxious.
"Advising it's head wounds," he told the dispatcher at 5:43 minutes into the crisis.
"Scene's secure for aid -- get 'em in here," he said at 6:44 minutes.
"Aid can come in, they need to expedite," he said at 8:11 minutes. And at 9:47 minutes, he said "We need aid ASAP."
Ten minutes into the crisis, officers reported they had four medical units moving into the school and they identified a landing zone for a helicopter.
But they still needed to secure Washington's largest high school and reunite those 2,500 students with their parents.
Officers went building to building, knocking on the locked doors and yelling "police."
"We've got a group of 25 coming out of the library," one officer said 34 minutes into the crisis.
The students and teachers had followed protocol and locked themselves in secure places, but that created a needle-in-a-haystack situation
on a campus made up of dozens of separate buildings.
They moved some students through the parking lot before being advised that the cars had not been cleared. A new set of officers rushed in to make sure no other shooters were hiding in the vehicles.
It went on like that for hours.
They finally loaded the students on buses and carried them several blocks away to the Shoultes Gospel Hall church, and to their frantic parents.
___________
Follow Martha Bellisle at https://twitter.com/marthabellisle
AP Targets Christian Boys’ Group with Nazi Hoax
AP smears Trail Life boys with misleading ‘Nazi’ photo
By Todd Starnes
March 6, 2014
FoxNews.com
“I was horrified,” said John Stemberger, chairman of the board of Trail Life USA, a new, rapidly-growing scouting organization that doesn’t allow openly gay members.
Stemberger was referring to an Associated Press photograph that accompanied an in-depth story about Trail Life. The image showed a group of young boys gathered in a circle with their hands raised at an unusual angle. The AP’s original caption on the photo said they were reciting the organization’s “creed” during a meeting in North Richland Hills, Texas.
It took the AP several days to acknowledge their error. But by then, the unfortunate comparison to Nazi Germany had spread on the Internet faster than Hitler’s invasion of Poland.
“There are children involved and that made it more outrageous. They were exploited and misunderstood.”- John Stemberger, chairman of the board of Trail Life USA
“New Trail Life scouting group excludes gay kids & they do a ‘Sieg Heil! Style salute,” tweeted Cathy Lynn Grossman of Religion News Service.
And that’s exactly what it looked like.
“It looks like some kind of German salute that was used during the Nazi period,” Stemberger told me in a telephone interview.
The photograph ran last Sunday in newspapers across the nation and generated hundreds of angry emails and some threatening telephone calls to Trail Life headquarters.
But it turns out that the boys were not saluting Hitler and contrary to the first Associated Press caption, they were not reciting a creed. The boys were singing “Taps,” a longtime Boy Scout tradition that the Texas Trail USA troop had adapted as their own.
The boys had gathered in a circle with their hands raised straight into the air. They gradually lowered their hands as they sang the song. It concludes with their hands flush against their side.
“It really misrepresented what was going on,” Stemberger told me. “There are children involved and that made it more outrageous. They were exploited and misunderstood.”
Subsequently, Grossman removed her tweet and apologized, according to the GetReligion.org website.
But what really infuriated Stemberger was the Associated Press’ initial reluctance to remove the photograph and correct the caption. The Trail Life leader provided me with email correspondence he had with Nomaan Merchant, the writer of the story.
“This is really unconscionable,” he wrote to Merchant on Sunday, March 2. “You told me Saturday afternoon you were going to immediately have the AP photo removed completely because children were involved and being photographed.”
“This is unfair,” he continued. “Reasonable minds will not differ on this. Ask any third party what they think this photo is. I told you this exact thing would happen if the photo was not removed.”
Nomaan struck an apologetic tone in his correspondence and told Stemberger he would try to have the photograph removed.
“I was told that that’s generally reserved only for photos that are doctored or so otherwise egregious that they cannot stand otherwise,” Nomaan wrote.
So apparently a photograph that gives the impression that young boys are saluting Hitler (when in fact they were not) is not egregious enough for the Associated Press?
Merchant wrote to Stemberger that he showed the photo to some of his colleagues and they didn’t seem to have a problem with it.
“I really do think it’s a nice image of the boys singing a song,” he wrote.
As an aside, I showed the same photograph to some of my colleagues here at the Fox News Corner of the World and every single person said it looked like boys saluting Hitler.
Merchant did offer an apology and said he regrets “any misconceptions due to this one image.”
“I take very seriously the issue of media bias and did my best to give full weight to all perspectives in the story, which I had a lot more control over,” he wrote.
And that’s the truth.
Stemberger said Trail Life was pleased with Merchant’s story. He called it “fair minded and straightforward. And he also understands that the reporter was not responsible for selecting the photographs that were used.
By Monday afternoon, the Associated Press had still not corrected the caption or removed the photo. So Stemberger posted a message on the Trail Life Facebook page explaining the situation to confused members and angry outsiders. A member of the Trail Life team also called me.
On Tuesday, I reached out to Associated Press to get their side of the story and received a prompt reply.
“Any suggestion that the photo shows the boys giving a salute was unintentional,” AP spokesman Paul Colford told me.
He also said AP had decided to correct the inaccurate caption. The corrected copy states the boys were singing taps.
The AP later confirmed to Erik Wemple’s Washington Post blog that the photo would be removed from its archives.
Associated Press did the right thing – albeit in a less than timely manner. Still, the damage has already been done. Liberal bloggers are having a field day with the photograph – at the expense of young patriotic boys.
And lest there be any confusion at AP headquarters, any photograph that exploits children is egregious.
Todd Starnes is host of Fox News & Commentary, heard on hundreds of radio stations. Sign up for his American Dispatch newsletter, be sure to join his Facebook page, and follow him on Twitter. His latest book is "God Less America.
Thursday, October 30, 2014
George Will on the Campus Rape Crisis Hoax
Re-posted by Nicholas Stix
George Will: Colleges become the victims of progressivism
By George F. Will
June 6, 2014
Washington Post
George Will: Colleges become the victims of progressivism
By George F. Will
June 6, 2014
Washington Post
Colleges and universities are being educated by Washington and are finding the experience excruciating. They are learning that when they say campus victimizations are ubiquitous (“micro-aggressions,” often not discernible to the untutored eye, are everywhere), and that when they make victimhood a coveted status that confers privileges, victims proliferate. And academia’s progressivism has rendered it intellectually defenseless now that progressivism’s achievement, the regulatory state, has decided it is academia’s turn to be broken to government’s saddle.
Consider the supposed campus epidemic of rape, a.k.a. “sexual assault.” Herewith, a Philadelphia magazine report about Swarthmore College, where in 2013 a student “was in her room with a guy with whom she’d been hooking up for three months”:
“They’d now decided — mutually, she thought — just to be friends. When he ended up falling asleep on her bed, she changed into pajamas and climbed in next to him. Soon, he was putting his arm around her and taking off her clothes. ‘I basically said, “No, I don’t want to have sex with you.” And then he said, “OK, that’s fine” and stopped. . . . And then he started again a few minutes later, taking off my panties, taking off his boxers. I just kind of laid there and didn’t do anything — I had already said no. I was just tired and wanted to go to bed. I let him finish. I pulled my panties back on and went to sleep.’”
Six weeks later, the woman reported that she had been raped. Now the Obama administration is riding to the rescue of “sexual assault” victims. It vows to excavate equities from the ambiguities of the hookup culture, this cocktail of hormones, alcohol and the faux sophistication of today’s prolonged adolescence of especially privileged young adults.
The administration’s crucial and contradictory statistics are validated the usual way, by official repetition; Joe Biden has been heard from. The statistics are: One in five women is sexually assaulted while in college, and only 12 percent of assaults are reported. Simple arithmetic demonstrates that if the 12 percent reporting rate is correct, the 20 percent assault rate is preposterous. Mark Perry of the American Enterprise Institute notes, for example, that in the four years 2009 to 2012 there were 98 reported sexual assaults at Ohio State. That would be 12 percent of 817 total out of a female student population of approximately 28,000, for a sexual assault rate of approximately 2.9 percent — too high but nowhere near 20 percent.
Education Department lawyers disregard pesky arithmetic and elementary due process. Threatening to withdraw federal funding, the department mandates adoption of a minimal “preponderance of the evidence” standard when adjudicating sexual assault charges between males and the female “survivors” — note the language of prejudgment. Combine this with capacious definitions of sexual assault that can include not only forcible sexual penetration but also nonconsensual touching. Then add the doctrine that the consent of a female who has been drinking might not protect a male from being found guilty of rape. Then comes costly litigation against institutions that have denied due process to males they accuse of what society considers serious felonies.
Now academia is unhappy about the Education Department’s plan for government to rate every institution’s educational product. But the professors need not worry. A department official says this assessment will be easy: “It’s like rating a blender.” Education, gadgets — what’s the difference?
Meanwhile, the newest campus idea for preventing victimizations — an idea certain to multiply claims of them — is “trigger warnings.” They would be placed on assigned readings or announced before lectures. Otherwise, traumas could be triggered in students whose tender sensibilities would be lacerated by unexpected encounters with racism, sexism, violence (dammit, Hamlet, put down that sword!) or any other facet of reality that might violate a student’s entitlement to serenity. This entitlement has already bred campus speech codes that punish unpopular speech. Now the codes are begetting the soft censorship of trigger warnings to swaddle students in a “safe,” “supportive,” “unthreatening” environment, intellectual comfort for the intellectually dormant.
It is salutary that academia, with its adversarial stance toward limited government and cultural common sense, is making itself ludicrous. Academia is learning that its attempts to create victim-free campuses — by making everyone hypersensitive, even delusional, about victimizations — brings increasing supervision by the regulatory state that progressivism celebrates.
What government is inflicting on colleges and universities, and what they are inflicting on themselves, diminishes their autonomy, resources, prestige and comity. Which serves them right. They have asked for this by asking for progressivism.
Read more from George F. Will’s archive or follow him on Facebook.
Read more about this topic:
Kathleen Parker: Fair warning, provoking a thought is literature’s job
Ruth Marcus: Denouncing binge drinking is not victim-blaming
Alyssa Rosenberg: Elliot Rodger’s UCSB massacre, sexual assaults and campus speech codes
Corpus Christi, Texas: Black Virgin Murders His Mother, and Rapes Her Corpse
Re-posted by Nicholas Stix
Thanks to reader-researcher Jerry.
Disgusting: Man Admits to Killing Mom and Losing Virginity to Her Corpse
By Sean Levinson
October 9, 2014 - 10:35 a.m.
Elite Daily
A Texas man has admitted to killing his mother and having sex with her dead body.
Kevin Davis, an 18-year-old from Corpus Christi, first tried to strangle his mother, 50-year-old Kimberly Hill, with a cord from a video game console on March 27, Raw Story reports.
Hill would not stop screaming, so Davis proceeded to hit her in the head with a hammer around 20 times.
In a videotaped interview, he told investigators that he stuck his hand in the fatal wound to feel her brain and make sure she had died.
Davis then raped his mother.
He said,
Guess I lost my virginity to a dead corpse.
Davis had originally planned to also kill his sister when she got home but instead rode his bicycle to a random couple’s house not too far away, according to Raw Story.
He told them to call the police because he’d just killed someone.
He told authorities,
I had my fill of killing. It seemed a little much.
The defendant waved “hello” at the couple as they testified in court.
He also smiled at the jury and nonchalantly admitted to murderous fantasies and acts.
Davis said he once killed a cat and violated it sexually, and he dreamed of cutting a girl’s head off and having sex with her body.
Police found a series of handwritten notes from Davis in the apartment where he killed his mother.
One read,
Chase me. Sorry for the mess. KD.
As for why he killed his mother, Davis said he had asked her for permission to commit suicide, and she told him that she was upset but ultimately could not stop him.
His mother did not deserve to die, Davis said, but he didn’t necessarily regret the act and therefore blamed it on his own sadistic desires.
He said,
I’m not mentally disturbed, I’m sane. I know what I did.
Davis pleaded guilty to first-degree murder right as the trial began on Wednesday and was sentenced to life in prison less than an hour later.
He had told investigators that he should go to prison for 100 years because he would kill again if he had the chance.
H/T: Mirror, Photo Courtesy: Raw Story
Not a Halloween Prank: Neighbors Find Beheaded White Woman’s (66) Corpse in Three Pieces Spread Across Street; Her Son, 35, Killed and Dismembered Her on the Street, Before Jumping in Front of Train
Murderer-suicide Derek Ward
Re-posted by Nicholas Stix
P.S. I thank the reader who provided the link to the above photos.
Police: Man beheaded his mother in Long Island, then jumped in front of a train
By Abby Ohlheiser
October 29, 2014 at 4:45 P.M.
Washington Post
Some people in a Long Island neighborhood thought a body and severed head lying on the sidewalk must have been a Halloween prank. It wasn’t.
On Tuesday evening, police responded to what New York media reports described as a gruesome murder-suicide: a decapitated woman in her 60s lay dead in front of an apartment building, with her head apparently across the street. Shortly after she was found, a commuter train struck and killed a man in his 30s.
Nassau County Police Detective Lieutenant John Azzata later identified the victim to the Associated Press as Patricia Ward, 66, a professor of language arts at Farmingdale State College.
In a statement to NBC New York, a spokesman for the college said Ward was “well-known, well-liked and well-respected.”
Nassau County Police officer Steve Zacchia told The Washington Post on Wednesday morning that Ward was the victim of an “apparent homicide.”
Ward’s body was found about 8 p.m. Tuesday in Farmingdale. Twenty-five minutes later, MTA police notified county police that an adult male was struck and killed by an eastbound Long Island Railroad Train. The tracks were about 1,000 feet from the site where the woman’s body and head were found.
Azzata told the AP that the male was Ward’s 35-year-old son, Derek Ward. Police said that the son had a decade-long psychiatric history, and that they believe Ward stabbed his mother inside her apartment, before dragging her to the street and beheading her.
Law enforcement officials told NBC New York that it appears that the man jumped in front of the train. An investigation is ongoing. The MTA is also investigating the incident, according to Zacchia.
Reports quoting witnesses described the scene Tuesday night. “The body’s feet were at the curb, the shoulders were at the middle of the street. The head was across the street,” Jack Imperial told the New York Daily News. “I’ve seen some gruesome stuff in my years of living … but nothing like this. I didn’t expect to see something like this, especially not out here.”
He added: “I thought it was a Halloween hoax. … It looked staged.”
WBCS 880 spoke to an unidentified neighbor, who said: “I literally thought it was prank. We saw the body on one side and saw the head on the other side. I thought everything was a prank.”
The New York Post spoke to witnesses who said that several neighbors assumed it was some sort of Halloween decoration, “only to lift the lifeless body and discover it was real.”
Abby Phillip contributed to this report.
[This post has been updated]
Abby Ohlheiser is a general assignment reporter for The Washington Post.
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
In Praising Giants’ Madison Bumgarner, Fox World Series Announcers Suffer Amnesia Regarding Pitching Durability
By Nicholas Stix
Fox’ announcing crew has been claiming that Madison Bumgarner, who won two games as starter, and is now about to begin his fifth inning of relief in game seven against the Royals, is doing something that no pitcher has done since the dead-ball era.
Well, you can prove just about anything, if you fudge things enough.
The rule in the Series used to be that a team’s ace started—and typically finished—three games. The rule.
Thus, Bob Gibson, the greatest money pitcher of them all, started and finished three games against the Yankees in 1964, going 2-1 and being named the Series MVP; completed three games against the Red Sox, going 3-0, and wining Series MVP, in 1967; and completed three games, going 2-1 against the Tigers in 1968.
Gibby did not win the Series MVP in 1968, because his offensively anemic Cardinals scored only one run off Mickey Lolich, who was until that point a fat, .500 workhorse and strikeout artist. (Fat pitchers were then almost unheard of; the only other one I can think of was George Brunet.) Lolich went 3-0 that Series, and won the MVP.
Is America the World’s Poorest Nation? Countries by Government Debt as % of GDP (Graphic)
GRAPHIC: Countries by government debt as % of GDP. pic.twitter.com/qWrKvtoVVH
— The Int. Spectator (@INTLSpectator) October 29, 2014Secret, Detailed Obama Memo on Bringing Foreign Ebola Patients—and Thus, the Plague—to America Leaked; State Lies and Denies
Re-posted by Nicholas Stix
Internal memo pushes bringing non-citizens to US for Ebola treatment; State denies plan
October 28, 2014
FoxNews.com
A memo obtained by Fox News indicates the Obama administration has been considering allowing non-American Ebola patients into the U.S. for treatment – though a State Department official on Tuesday denied any such plans.
The document was obtained by Fox News from a Capitol Hill source, who said it is a memo prepared by the State Department. The top of the document is marked “sensitive but unclassified – predesicional (sic).”
CLICK TO READ THE MEMO
The “purpose” of the memo states: “Come to an agreed State Department position on the extent to which non-U.S. citizens will be admitted to the United States for treatment of Ebola Virus Disease.”
The document goes on to discuss – and advocate for -- devising such a plan. The memo recommends that “State and DHS devise a system for expeditious parole of Ebola-infected non-citizens into the United States as long as they are otherwise eligible for medical evacuation from the Ebola affected countries and for entry into the United States.”
Explaining that recommendation, the memo says the U.S., for instance, has an “obligation” to help non-citizen employees of U.S. agencies and U.S.-based private firms. It says the U.S. “needs to show leadership and act as we are asking others to act by admitting certain non-citizens into the country for medical treatment for Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) during the Ebola crisis.”
The memo was obtained after House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., wrote to Secretary of State John Kerry and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson a week ago asking if either department was formulating a plan to allow non-U.S. citizens with Ebola to come to the U.S. for medical treatment.
Goodlatte also told Fox News Monday night that his office had received "information from within the administration" that such plans were being developed. So far, only American Ebola patients have been brought back to the U.S. for treatment from the disease epicenter in West Africa.
Goodlatte warned that expanding that policy could put the country at more risk.
"Members of the media, my office have received confidential communications saying that those plans are being developed," Goodlatte said Monday night. "This is simply a matter of common sense that if you are concerned about this problem spreading … we certainly shouldn't be bringing in the patients."
The administration, though, has denied planning to do so.
A State Department official said Tuesday that they're only talking about letting other countries use U.S. planes to transport Ebola patients to their own home countries.
"There are absolutely no plans to MEDEVAC non-Americans who become ill from West Africa to the United States," the official told FoxNews.com. "We have discussed allowing other countries to use our MEDEVAC capabilities to evacuate their own citizens to their home countries or third-countries, subject to reimbursement and availability. But we are not contemplating bringing them back to the U.S. for treatment.
"Allegations to the contrary are completely false."
And on Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest was asked about the matter and said “that certainly hasn't happened so far -- I don't know of any plans to do that.”
A Goodlatte aide told FoxNews.com that "someone in one of the agencies" initially contacted their office with the tip.
In his letter last week, Goodlatte asked whether the administration is crafting such a plan, seeking details and communications among their employees.
The conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch also reported, shortly before Goodlatte sent the letter, that the administration was "actively formulating" plans to bring Ebola patients into the U.S., with the specific goal of treating them "within the first days of diagnosis."
Fox News’ Mike Emanuel contributed to this report.
Internal memo pushes bringing non-citizens to US for Ebola treatment; State denies plan
October 28, 2014
FoxNews.com
A memo obtained by Fox News indicates the Obama administration has been considering allowing non-American Ebola patients into the U.S. for treatment – though a State Department official on Tuesday denied any such plans.
The document was obtained by Fox News from a Capitol Hill source, who said it is a memo prepared by the State Department. The top of the document is marked “sensitive but unclassified – predesicional (sic).”
CLICK TO READ THE MEMO
The “purpose” of the memo states: “Come to an agreed State Department position on the extent to which non-U.S. citizens will be admitted to the United States for treatment of Ebola Virus Disease.”
The document goes on to discuss – and advocate for -- devising such a plan. The memo recommends that “State and DHS devise a system for expeditious parole of Ebola-infected non-citizens into the United States as long as they are otherwise eligible for medical evacuation from the Ebola affected countries and for entry into the United States.”
Explaining that recommendation, the memo says the U.S., for instance, has an “obligation” to help non-citizen employees of U.S. agencies and U.S.-based private firms. It says the U.S. “needs to show leadership and act as we are asking others to act by admitting certain non-citizens into the country for medical treatment for Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) during the Ebola crisis.”
The memo was obtained after House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., wrote to Secretary of State John Kerry and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson a week ago asking if either department was formulating a plan to allow non-U.S. citizens with Ebola to come to the U.S. for medical treatment.
Goodlatte also told Fox News Monday night that his office had received "information from within the administration" that such plans were being developed. So far, only American Ebola patients have been brought back to the U.S. for treatment from the disease epicenter in West Africa.
Goodlatte warned that expanding that policy could put the country at more risk.
"Members of the media, my office have received confidential communications saying that those plans are being developed," Goodlatte said Monday night. "This is simply a matter of common sense that if you are concerned about this problem spreading … we certainly shouldn't be bringing in the patients."
The administration, though, has denied planning to do so.
A State Department official said Tuesday that they're only talking about letting other countries use U.S. planes to transport Ebola patients to their own home countries.
"There are absolutely no plans to MEDEVAC non-Americans who become ill from West Africa to the United States," the official told FoxNews.com. "We have discussed allowing other countries to use our MEDEVAC capabilities to evacuate their own citizens to their home countries or third-countries, subject to reimbursement and availability. But we are not contemplating bringing them back to the U.S. for treatment.
"Allegations to the contrary are completely false."
And on Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest was asked about the matter and said “that certainly hasn't happened so far -- I don't know of any plans to do that.”
A Goodlatte aide told FoxNews.com that "someone in one of the agencies" initially contacted their office with the tip.
In his letter last week, Goodlatte asked whether the administration is crafting such a plan, seeking details and communications among their employees.
The conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch also reported, shortly before Goodlatte sent the letter, that the administration was "actively formulating" plans to bring Ebola patients into the U.S., with the specific goal of treating them "within the first days of diagnosis."
Fox News’ Mike Emanuel contributed to this report.
Ferguson Mayor Neville Chamberlin James Knowles Throws Police Chief Thomas Jackson to Nazis as Part of Surrender Reform Package, Declares “Peace in Our Time”
[See also, by yours truly:
“Four White Cops Already Ferguson’s ‘Invisible Victims,’ as the Need for Ruthless Coercion Mounts.”]
Re-posted by Nicholas Stix
Ferguson Mayor James Knowles, yelling at Police Chief Thomas Jackson: Where's that indictment, you silly, stupid old fool? Where's that indictment? Do you realize what this means? It means more riots, and scandal and disgrace! That's what it means! One of us is going to jail; well, it's not gonna be me!
CNN: Ferguson police chief expected to step down
Posted 9:01 pm, October 28, 2014
By CNN Wires
Updated at 12:12 a.m., October 29, 2014
FERGUSON, MO – The police chief in Ferguson, Missouri, is expected to step down as part of the effort by city officials to reform the Police Department, according to government officials familiar with the ongoing discussions between local, state and federal officials.
Under the proposed plan, after Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson leaves, city leadership would ask the St. Louis County police chief to take over management of Ferguson’s police force.
Related: Source: Massive Ferguson reform package developing
The announcement could come as soon as next week. It would be one step in what local officials hope will help reduce tensions in the city as the public awaits a decision on whether the St. Louis County grand jury will bring charges against Officer Darren Wilson in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown.
Jackson said Tuesday he is not being pushed out.
“Nobody in my chain of command has asked me to resign, nor have I been terminated,” he said on the phone to CNN.
And Ferguson Mayor James Knowles said there is no plan in place for the police chief to step down.
When asked whether the federal government was pressuring the city to force out the police chief, he told CNN: “People have been saying that for months, I mean for him to step down. But we’ve stood by him this entire time. So there is no change on that.”
The St. Louis suburb drew national attention after protests erupted following Wilson’s shooting of Brown, an 18-year-old unarmed African-American.
Wilson, who is white, hasn’t been charged in the case, though a grand jury is hearing evidence that could lead to an indictment.
Jackson had faced criticism over his department’s handling of the Brown shooting and the protests in its aftermath.
Last month, weeks after the Justice Department announced it was investigating Ferguson police, Jackson told CNN he would not step down despite calls for his ouster.
“I’ve talked to a lot of people who have initially called for that and then changed their mind after having meetings and discussions about moving forward,” he said.
“Realistically, I’m going to stay here and see this through.”
Speaking about his job and the fallout over the Brown shooting, he said, “This is mine, and I’m taking ownership of it.”
Justice Department investigation
Justice Department investigators are looking at the Ferguson Police Department’s use of force, analyzing stops, searches and arrests and examining the treatment of individuals detained at Ferguson’s city jail, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has said. That complicates plans expressed by some officials who want to dissolve the entire Ferguson Police Department and turn over law enforcement to county police.
In an interview with CNN last week, Holder said the Justice Department was looking at the leadership of the Police Department as part of its ongoing investigation of the department’s practices.
“We have an ongoing — having a practice investigation into the Ferguson Police Department. And we’re looking at a whole variety of things, including the leadership of that department, the practices that the department engages in, the nature of the interaction between the department and the community that it is supposed to serve,” Holder said. “So I think it’s a little premature for me at this point to comment on the leadership of the Ferguson Police Department. That is certainly something that we are looking at.”
Chief apologized last month
Last month, Jackson released a video apology he said was directed at Brown’s parents and the peaceful demonstrators who took to Ferguson’s streets to protest the teen’s death.
“The right of the people to peacefully assemble is what the police are here to protect. If anyone who was peacefully exercising that right is upset and angry, I feel responsible and I’m sorry,” he said.
He also acknowledged that the incident had sparked a larger conversation about societal issues.
“Overnight I went from being a small-town police chief to being part of a conversation about racism, equality and the role of policing in that conversation. As chief of police, I want to be part of that conversation. I also want to be part of the solution,” he said.
He conceded that Ferguson and the surrounding areas have “much work to do.”
“For any mistakes I’ve made, I take full responsibility. It’s an honor to serve the city of Ferguson and the people who live there. I look forward to working with you in the future to solve our problems, and once again, I deeply apologize to the Brown family,” he said.
Later that day, he waded into the crowd at a protest and apologized again.
Some people seemed satisfied by his apologies. But not everyone was anxious to hear from him.
[Reports said that they started to riot, and Jackson had to be rescued by the policemen he’d betrayed.]
One man shouted into a bullhorn: “If you are not resigning tonight, go home.”
NASA Explosion: Moslem Outreach Agency Tries Its Hand at Space Exploration, Yet Again with Disastrous Results
By Nicholas Stix
Why would an American government agency, whose mandate is space exploration squander billions of dollars, in order to
“reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their [virtually non-existent] historic contribution to science, math and engineering.”At VDARE.
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
Texas: A Campaign Incineration Status Update on Wendy Davis
By Nicholas Stix
Wendy Davis has three political assets (or you could say two: dead babies and a world-class plastic surgeon):
My legions of feminist readers will doubtless respond, "So, that's the best you can do? Attacking her body?"
Not at all. However, her embrace of the surgically-created MILF look does go to her character (in part to sucker men she intends to screw over into voting her), as any honest feminist would acknowledge. Oops, my mistake. The only honest feminist is an ex-feminist.
As for the inevitable comparisons to Sarah Palin, the young Palin (unlike the young Davis) was pretty and sexy, the middle-aged Palin comes by her sex appeal naturally, does not now look younger than she did 24 years ago.
And if we scratch the surface, we find with Davis (again, unlike with Palin) that the phoniness of what is skin deep is matched by the phoniness of what goes on in the depths of her character, or lack thereof.
At VDARE.
Papa John's CEO Attends Funeral of Employee Shot Dead by Robbers While Working at the Popular Pizza Chain - and Pays for his Service and Medical Expenses
Suspected war criminal Rodney Harvell
Suspected war criminal Darious Fitzpatrick, though only 17, is already a violent career criminal with several felony convictions as a juvenile; his example is spurring calls for juvenile justice reform in Tennessee
By David in TN
I know this area very well, sometimes go to a restaurant close by.
Papa John's CEO attends funeral off employee shot dead on job
Papa John's CEO John Schnatter traveled to Columbia, Tennessee to attend the funeral of Gordon Schaffer, 22, who was killed while working at the popular pizza chain.
At the Daily Mail.
Marysville School Shooting: Shilene George is Alive and Well, but Gia Soriano Has Succumbed to Her Wounds from School Shooter Jaylen Fryberg; Next 24 Hours Will Determine Whether Shaylee Chuckulnaskit Makes It
By Nicholas Stix
It looks as though what saved Shilene George’s life was that she attended a different high school than Jaylen Fryberg. If anything, she would have been the first person Fryberg would have wanted to murder.
Current reports say that Fryberg had been beating George, and that her parents had responded a few days earlier by ordering her to have nothing to do with him. He then carefully planned out his attack, by inviting each of his four victims to join him for lunch, where he shot them all.
The romantic triangle theory is losing plausibility in my mind. If he had just lost Jilene, how could Zoe Galasso be so important to him? And what of Shaylee Chuckulnaskit and Nate Hatch?
And what’s up with this weird theory proposed by a cousin of the killer, one of the Hatch boys? He said that these were the people the killer cared the most about, and that the latter wanted to be with them forever. He seemed to find this a touching sentiment. Touched, is more like it.
Gia Soriano, 14, Marysville-Pilchuck shooting victim dies
KING 5's Michael Konopasek reports.
KING Associated Press and KING 5 News 8:08 a.m. PDT October 27, 2014
MARYSVILLE, Wash. - A 14-year-old girl who was wounded when a student opened fire inside a Washington state high school has died, raising the death toll in the shooting to three.
Gia Soriano died Sunday night, more than two days after she was shot, officials at Providence Regional Medical Center Everett said.
"We are devastated by this senseless tragedy," her family said in a statement, read at a news conference by Dr. Joanne Roberts.
"Gia is our beautiful daughter, and words cannot express how much we will miss her."
Roberts said Gia's family was donating her organs for transplant.
The Snohomish County Medical Examiner's Office confirmed Monday that Zoe Galasso, 14, was also killed in Friday's shooting at Marysville-Pilchuck High School north of Seattle.
Family members had previously identified her as a victim.
The shooter, Jaylen Fryberg, died at the scene of a self-inflicted wound.
Three other students remain hospitalized, two in critical condition and one upgraded Monday to satisfactory condition.
Earlier Sunday, parents and students gathered in a gymnasium at the school for a community meeting, with speakers urging support and prayers and tribal members playing drums and singing songs. Fryberg was from a prominent Tulalip Indian tribes family.
Young people hugged each other and cried and speakers urged people to come together during the gathering Sunday.
"We just have to reach for that human spirit right now," said Deborah Parker, a member of the Tulalip Indian tribes.
"Our legs are still wobbly," said Tony Hatch, a cousin of one of the injured students. "We're really damaged right now."
Harborview Medical Center in Seattle says 14-year-old Nate Hatch is in satisfactory condition Monday with a gunshot wound to his jaw. Spokeswoman Susan Gregg says he's awake and breathing on his own and still in the intensive care unit.
Another student at Harborview Medical Center, 15-year-old Andrew Fryberg, remains in critical condition in intensive care.
A 14-year-old girl, Shaylee Chuckulnaskit, remains in critical condition in intensive care at Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett.
Related: Faith community offers healing after tragic shooting
Related: As Marysville mourns, teacher is hailed as hero
Fryberg died in the attack, after a first-year teacher intervened. It's unclear if he intentionally killed himself or if the gun went off in a struggle with a teacher.
[Garbage. She had no effect on him.]
The makeshift memorial on a chain link fence by the school, which will be closed this week, kept growing Sunday. Balloons honoring the victims and the shooter adorn the fence along with flowers, stuffed toys and signs.
[Balloons honoring the shooter?!]
The close-knit community, meanwhile, on the nearby Tulalip Indian reservation struggled with the news that the shooter was a popular teenager from one of their more well-known families.
[If he were white, they wouldn't be emphasizing how wonderful his family was. Adam Lanza came from a wonderful, devoted family, but the media and the public treated his mother like dirt.]
A tribal guidance counsellor [sic] said no one knows what motivated Fryberg.
"We can't answer that question," said Matt Remle, who has an office at Marysville-Pilchuck High School, which is 30 miles north of Seattle. "But we try to make sense of the senselessness."
In the nearby community of Oso, where a mudslide this spring killed dozens, people planned to gather to write condolence letters and cards. Remele said he knew Fryberg and the other students well.
"My office has been a comfort space for Native students," he said. "Many will come by and have lunch there, including the kids involved in the shooting."
They all were "really happy, smiling kids," Remle said. "They were a polite group. A lot of the kids from the freshman class were close-knit. Loving.
"These were not kids who were isolated," he said. "They had some amazing families, and have amazing families."
These factors make the shooting that much more difficult to deal with, "Maybe it would be easier if we knew the answer," Remle said. "But we may never know."
Full statement from the Soriano family: "We are devastated by this senseless tragedy. Gia is our beautiful daughter and words cannot express how much we will miss her. We've made the decision to donate Gia's organs so that others may benefit. Our daughter was loving, kind and this gift honors her life. "Thank you to Providence for their excellent care – bar none – from beginning to end. Thank you to our friends and family who have supported us. Thank you to Drs. Bill Finley, Sanford Wright and Anita Tsen for their tremendous support and compassion. And thank you, to Bill and Ben with LifeCenter. "We ask that you please respect our privacy and give us the space and time we need to grieve and spend time together as a family in memory of Gia."
Halloween Came Early This Year: Weird Crime News of Zombies, Dog Rapists, Haunted Houses, etc., via Jamie Satterfield
Monday, October 27, 2014
Reasons Why Ordinary Whites Should Vote GOP
By Nicholas Stix
1. The party leadership hates your guts;
2. We are working to make you unemployable, through flooding the country with cheap, Third World unskilled and skilled labor;
3. The RNC has long supported privatizing profits, while socializing costs;
4. The GOP will never do anything to repeal or de-fund Obamacare;
5. The GOP heartily supports affirmative action discrimination on behalf of non-whites and against whites, which is unconstitutional, illegal, and a moral outrage, and has no desire to ever change its position;
6. The GOP aggressively reaches out to Hispanics and blacks who hate it and will never vote for it, while telling whites, in so many words, to drop dead;
7. The GOP cares only about the millions of dollars in contributions it is raking in from the Cheap Labor/Open Border Lobby, its base and the party’s future be damned!; and
8. The GOP supports a nation-breaking, mass illegal alien amnesty.
I can’t imagine why anyone would vote against the GOP!
NBC’s Dr. Nancy Snyderman: Yet Another Medico Who, in Her “Arrogance and Dismissiveness” Flagrantly Ignored Voluntary Ebola Quarantine (She Worked with Ebola Cameraman Ashoka Mukpo), Dodged Responsibility, Had to be Put Under Forced Quarantine, Has Lost Credibility and is Under Non-Suspension Suspension; NBC News Honcho Hopes Dodge Will Make Public Forget Doc’s Negligence by November; ABC Health Editor Dr. Richard Besser was Equally Arrogant, in Refusing to Quarantine Himself After Visit to Ebola Zone
'Quarantines are for the little people': NBC News' chief medical editor, Dr. Nancy Snyderman, above; below, ABC News health editor Dr. Richard Besser
Re-posted by Nicholas Stix
Dr. Nancy Snyderman Encouraged to Take a Break from NBC News
By Bill Carter
Oct. 23, 2014
New York Times
NBC News appears to be looking for time and the intrusion of other news stories to tamp down negative attention that has surrounded its chief medical editor, Dr. Nancy Snyderman, following news that she violated a self-imposed quarantine after being potentially exposed to Ebola in Liberia.
The network’s news president, Deborah Turness, issued a memo to staff members on Wednesday that included the announcement that Dr. Snyderman would take a break from her duties. (The network subsequently emphasized that this move was not a suspension.)
Ms. Turness told the staff that the longtime medical journalist had finished her 21-day quarantine and was symptom free, but that she and those who had traveled with her to Liberia had been encouraged to “take some time with their families and friends to help restore some normalcy to their lives.” Ms. Turness said they would return “next month.”
She couched that decision in positive terms, saying the news organization would “look forward” to that return. And she pointedly praised Dr. Snyderman’s work on the Ebola outbreak as “first class, firsthand reporting from the front lines of this tragic and monumental story.”
Critics in the media and in some health care circles had taken Dr. Snyderman to task when news reports said she had been seen outside her home in New Jersey during the period when she had said she would restrict her public activities. State health officials in New Jersey quickly imposed a mandatory quarantine on her. In a subsequent statement, Dr. Snyderman did not directly acknowledge that she violated the voluntary quarantine, but said instead that “members of our group” had.
In an Associated Press story this week, Kelly McBride, a co-author of “The New Ethics of Journalism: Principles for the 21st Century” who comments on journalism ethics for the Poynter Institute, said that in the future “some news consumers are going to see the woman who put others at risk, rather than the reporter and professional with great experience.”
At the same time, many NBC executives and staff members spoke highly of Dr. Snyderman, whose career in network news began at ABC 25 years ago. (She joined NBC News in 2006.)
The move this week to reduce her profile could also be seen as a plan to keep her out of the public eye until the Ebola crisis has subsided and other news has seized public attention. On Wednesday, the attack on the Canadian Parliament dropped the Ebola stories out of the lead position in most news reports, and next week the midterm elections are expected to be the biggest story.
NBC's Snyderman Faces Credibility Issues
20 Oct 2014
NewsMax
The quarantine against possible Ebola exposure ends this week for Dr. Nancy Snyderman, but the troubles clearly aren't over for NBC News' chief medical editor.
An admitted lapse in the quarantine, combined with a curiously imprecise explanation, unleashed a furious response. NBC must now decide whether Snyderman's credibility is too damaged for her to continue reporting on Ebola or other medical issues and, if so, for how long. The network would not comment.
Snyderman, who spent 17 years as a medical correspondent for ABC News and has been at NBC since 2006, covered the Ebola outbreak in West Africa and worked briefly with Ashoka Mukpo, the cameraman who caught the virus and is now being treated in Nebraska. Upon returning to the United States, Snyderman and her crew voluntarily agreed to quarantine themselves for 21 days, the longest known incubation period for the disease. They have shown no symptoms.
Yet New Jersey health officials ruled that her quarantine should be mandatory after Snyderman and her crew were spotted getting takeout food from a New Jersey restaurant. [My emphasis.]
NBC won't give details about who actually went into the restaurant, or even how many of its employees are being quarantined. Snyderman issued a [dishonest] statement saying "members of our group" violated their pledge.
More than 1,100 people have subsequently written on Snyderman's Facebook page, many expressing anger. There were suggestions she should be fired or lose her medical license, and some viewers said they wouldn't trust her again. Snyderman's failure to be more specific about the lapse or take greater responsibility was another flashpoint.
Snyderman's "arrogance and dismissiveness" create a huge PR and credibility problem for NBC, said Kelly McBride, an expert on ethics for the journalism think tank the Poynter Institute.
"People are so freaked out about Ebola that the problem NBC has now is that whenever they put her on the air, some news consumers are going to see the woman who put others at risk, rather than the reporter and professional with great experience," McBride said.
McBride suggested that Snyderman "lay low" or take a leave of absence. Certainly she should not report on Ebola anymore for the network, she said.
[Here comes a big, hot, heaping serving of b.s. by a political ally of Snyderman.]
Susan Dentzer, a longtime health journalist and commentator for National Public Radio and the PBS "NewsHour," said people shouldn't forget that Snyderman put herself at risk to travel to Africa and cover the story. [So, her putting herself at risk gives her license to put the public here at risk?] The public is reacting to a fear of Ebola instead of science, she said. [Fear of Ebola is rational, like fearing snakes, and the notion that people are not reacting to science is Big Lie that Obama supporters have used, as the latter lie about science.]
"She and her team clearly should have observed the terms of their quarantine, and she has said clearly that they made a mistake," Dentzer said. "But let's put it in a broader perspective."
[There is no “broader perspective.” No ifs, ands, or “but(s).”]
Before Snyderman's trip for takeout, ABC News' medical expert arguably had bigger problems. ABC health editor Dr. Richard Besser was in Africa at the same time as Snyderman and did not quarantine himself upon his return. That led ABC News President James Goldston to send his staff a memo explaining that the network was following medical advice.
Still, Besser was disinvited to a speaking engagement at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, he wrote last week in the Washington Post. Some colleagues have avoided him.
"I've been surprised by how many colleagues have waved from across the room and quickly made an exit," Besser wrote. "Others won't enter my office."
NBC could face a competitive disadvantage if Snyderman is taken off medical stories. Robert Bazell, the network's longtime health and science correspondent, left last year to teach at Yale.
An important first step for Snyderman will be to explain to viewers exactly what happened, perhaps on a venue like the "Today" show, said Bill Wheatley, a longtime NBC executive who now teaches journalism at Columbia University.
"If she and the network are more forthcoming about the whole matter, I believe that her credibility can be preserved," Wheatley said.
Sunday, October 26, 2014
In Bizarre Op-Ed, Ebola Nurse Kaci Hickox Expresses Her Concern for Africans Dying from Ebola, and Her Contempt for Americans’ Right to be Protected from Plague
Re-posted with running commentary by Nicholas Stix
Note that while the Dallas Morning News emphasizes Hickox’ education, in order to induce readers to submit to her purported authority, she writes in a style mixing hysterical emotionality—like a child who knows nothing of deadly pandemics—with arrogance towards basic public health precautions. It reads as if she were saying, between the lines, that her work with sub-Saharan Africans puts her morally above the rules required to protect American public health. She also clearly holds Americans and their health in contempt. Then again, she just returned from working for a Marxist and anti-Semitic medical group, Doctors Without Borders. And thus, I now bestow on her the title, Ebola Whore.
[Oh, so officials in Sierra Leone have a right to quarantine people, in order to limit the outbreak, but we don't?]
UTA grad isolated at New Jersey hospital as part of Ebola quarantine
By Kaci Hickox
Published: 25 October 2014 12:00 P.M.
Updated: 25 October 2014 08:56 P.M.
Dallas Morning News
(Editor’s note: Kaci Hickox, a nurse with degrees from the University of Texas at Arlington and the Johns Hopkins University, has been caring for Ebola patients while on assignment with Doctors Without Borders in Sierra Leone. Upon her return to the U.S. on Friday, she was placed in quarantine at a New Jersey hospital. She has tested negative in a preliminary test for Ebola, but the hospital says she will remain under mandatory quarantine for 21 days and will be monitored by public health officials. Dr. Seema Yasmin, a Dallas Morning News staff writer, worked with Hickox as a disease detective with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. With Yasmin’s help, Hickox wrote this first-person piece exclusively for the News.)
I am a nurse who has just returned to the U.S. after working with Doctors Without Borders in Sierra Leone - an Ebola-affected country. I have been quarantined in New Jersey. This is not a situation I would wish on anyone, and I am scared for those who will follow me.
I am scared about how health care workers will be treated at airports when they declare that they have been fighting Ebola in West Africa.
I am scared that, like me, they will arrive and see a frenzy of disorganization, fear and, most frightening, quarantine.
[Hundreds of health care workers have already died in West Africa from Ebola. American health workers have brought Ebola to America. Other American health care workers have been infected with Ebola from caring for the lying, scheming Liberian, who brought it to this country.
Why does Hickox speak in such a selfish, contemptuous tone regarding American public health? Does she think she has a right to spread a plague in America? Why does she say she is “scared” for public health workers coming from the Ebola Zone? She doesn’t even sound believable. Her rhetorical reminds me of leftists who would say they are “scared” of what Republicans will do to the country. If she cared about public health, she would be scared of what an outbreak would do to Americans. And quarantine is a tried-and-true method for dealing with epidemics and pandemics much older than she is. Why would she fear quarantine?]
I arrived at the Newark Liberty International Airport around 1 p.m. on Friday, after a grueling two-day journey from Sierra Leone. [No one forced you to go there.] I walked up to the immigration official at the airport and was greeted with a big smile and a “hello.”
I told him that I have traveled from Sierra Leone and he replied, a little less enthusiastically: “No problem. They are probably going to ask you a few questions.”
He put on gloves and a mask and called someone. Then he escorted me to the quarantine office a few yards away. I was told to sit down.
Everyone that came out of the offices was hurrying from room to room in white protective coveralls, gloves, masks, and a disposable face shield.
One after another, people asked me questions. Some introduced themselves, some didn’t. One man who must have been an immigration officer because he was wearing a weapon belt that I could see protruding from his white coveralls barked questions at me as if I was a criminal.
[Should he not have taken his job seriously?]
Two other officials asked about my work in Sierra Leone. One of them was from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They scribbled notes in the margins of their form, a form that appeared to be inadequate for the many details they are collecting.
[Aren’t we being a bit petty?]
I was tired, hungry and confused, but I tried to remain calm. [She sounds like a petulant child, as if she were being terribly patient regarding the outrageous demands being made on her.] My temperature was taken using a forehead scanner and it read a temperature of 98. I was feeling physically healthy but emotionally exhausted.
Three hours passed. No one seemed to be in charge. No one would tell me what was going on or what would happen to me.
I called my family to let them know that I was OK. I was hungry and thirsty and asked for something to eat and drink. I was given a granola bar and some water. I wondered what I had done wrong.
[Again, with the emotional, ignorant tone. She doesn’t write like someone who works with a pandemic, or who has any experience as a health care worker. Is she adopting this tone, in order to bamboozle ignorant readers? I’m married to a veteran nurse, and I have worked as a nurse aide, and health care workers don’t talk like this. She sounds more like a difficult patient than a nurse.]
Four hours after I landed at the airport, an official approached me with a forehead scanner. My cheeks were flushed, I was upset at being held with no explanation. The scanner recorded my temperature as 101.
The female officer looked smug. “You have a fever now,” she said.
I explained that an oral thermometer would be more accurate and that the forehead scanner was recording an elevated temperature because I was flushed and upset.
I was left alone in the room for another three hours. At around 7 p.m., I was told that I must go to a local hospital. I asked for the name and address of the facility. I realized that information was only shared with me if I asked.
Eight police cars escorted me to the University Hospital in Newark. Sirens blared, lights flashed. Again, I wondered what I had done wrong.
[This was tiresome the first time she used this line; this is the third time.]
I had spent a month watching children die, alone. I had witnessed human tragedy unfold before my eyes. I had tried to help when much of the world has looked on and done nothing.
[And what should “the world” have done, Nurse Moral Superiority? And because you risked your life in the Ebola Zone, you now think you are above the rules of fighting epidemics and pandemics at home, and that we must submit to you, because our lives are less valuable than those of West Africans?]
At the hospital, I was escorted to a tent that sat outside of the building. The infectious disease and emergency department doctors took my temperature and other vitals and looked puzzled. “Your temperature is 98.6,” they said. “You don't have a fever but we were told you had a fever.”
After my temperature was recorded as 98.6 on the oral thermometer, the doctor decided to see what the forehead scanner records. It read 101. The doctor felts [sic] my neck and looked at the temperature again. “There’s no way you have a fever,” he said. “Your face is just flushed.”
My blood was taken and tested for Ebola. It came back negative.
I sat alone in the isolation tent and thought of many colleagues who will return home to America and face the same ordeal. Will they be made to feel like criminals and prisoners?
[Enough already. If you weren’t willing to be quarantined, you had no business going to an area hit by a pandemic.]
I recalled my last night at the Ebola management center in Sierra Leone. I was called in at midnight because a 10-year-old girl was having seizures. I coaxed crushed tablets of Tylenol and an anti-seizure medicine into her mouth as her body jolted in the bed.
It was the hardest night of my life. I watched a young girl die in a tent, away from her family.
With few resources and no treatment for Ebola, we tried to offer our patients dignity and humanity in the face of their immense suffering.
[Then it should be obvious to you why you must be quarantined. Otherwise, you and your colleagues should not be permitted to return to America. It sounds to me like you think Americans have no right to live.]
The epidemic continues to ravage West Africa. Recently, the World Health Organization announced that as many as 15,000 people have died from Ebola. We need more health care workers to help fight the epidemic in West Africa. The U.S. must treat returning health care workers with dignity and humanity.
[America must do whatever is necessary to protect Americans from Ebola. Health care workers who are offended by the inconvenience, should refrain from heading to West Africa.]
Marysville, WA High School Shooting: Zoe Galasso was the Girl Jaylen Fryberg Murdered
By Nicholas Stix
The Zo Galasso Memorial Fund has so far raised $13,870 from 287 donors in 14 hours, in order to help defray her family’s funeral expenses.
This makes even less sense than if Fryberg had murdered his ex-girlfriend, Shilene George. As far as I could determine, he and Zoe Galasso had never been romantically involved. That he would murder a girl he had a crush on simply for not dating him would not only make his act evil, but would leave it without any mitigating circumstances.
One hour ago, Tracy Schwiger wrote at the Memorial page,
Saw the other girls have passed away please set up funds for those girls families too.
Let us hope that she heard a false rumor.
School Shooting: Where is Shilene George? Is She Alive?
By Nicholas Stix
Shilene George had reportedly been high school shooter Jaylen Fryberg’s girlfriend until she recently broke up with him.
Reports say that the classmate Fryberg murdered Friday morning was a girl, and at least one report (in the Daily Mail) says that it was the girl who had jilted him, to go out instead with his cousin, Andrew Fryberg, whom Jaylen Fryberg also shot. However, while some reports state that Shilene George had been Jaylen Fryberg’s girlfriend, none mentions her current situation, i.e., her reaction to the shooting, the Daily Mail ominously fails to even mention her by name, and her Facebook page has been taken down. Is she the dead girl, or was there a second girl with whom Fryberg was obsessed?
Unfortunately, the one thing we do know is that a girl is dead, whatever her identity should prove to be.
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