Obama admin's globalist ideology hinders Ebola fight

It's not often that a president's utter, abject incompetence struts across the stage for all the world to see, but that is happening in the battle to contain the spread of the deadly Ebola virus.

Unfortunately, that incompetence will cost not only political embarrassment but American lives.

How many American lives is the president willing to sacrifice before admitting he doesn't have a clue how to fight Ebola and has no intention of placing the protection of American lives at the top of his agenda?

Maybe the place to start is for the president to learn the name of the disease. In an Oct. 2 news conference, he pronounced it, "Ebolee." You can experience that embarrassing moment for yourself here.

Obama's mispronunciation of Ebola reminds us of his speaking of his Navy "corpse-men" when referring to the Marine Corps. This is a man not comfortable using military terms or phrases, and a man entirely too dependent on what appears on his teleprompter.

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But the bloopers and blunders keep coming. Are we sure this is not an elaborate Jon Stewart hoax?

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On Friday of this past week, Obama named Vice President Joe Biden's former chief of staff, Ron Klain, as his "Ebola czar," to coordinate of the Obama administration's Ebola containment effort. If the new czar's first task is to calm the fears of citizens alarmed by the administration's transparent ineptitude, that will be a tall order given Klain's lack of expertise in medicine or experience in health care. True to form, his main claim to fame is not all that inspiring: Klain was in charge of the implementation of Obama's 2009 "Recovery Act." We all know what a big success that has been.

Secretary of State John Kerry has felt it necessary to remind his fellow countrymen that in this fight against Ebola, we must above all be citizens of the world. This battle, he says, is a "real test of global citizenship." No, it's a real test of intelligent leadership in health-care policy and putting first things first.

But Kerry's warning about global citizenship is revealing. Yes, it is true that fighting Ebola requires a working partnership among many nations and a spirit of cooperation in getting adequate health-care resources delivered where and when they are most needed. That is only common sense, and the United States is already the leader in that effort. But what does that have to do with "global citizenship"? Halting the spread of Ebola in Africa is one of the goals of international relief efforts, but preventing its spread to America must be the primary goal of American officials.

Unfortunately, when we turn our attention to the speeches and actions of Obama's appointed head of the Centers for Disease Control, Tom Frieden, we see a pattern of incompetence that would make any White House official jealous. Over the past month, the CDC spokesman has continuously revised CDC policies and "protocols" to keep pace with events – and yet has always remained three days behind the curve. Where did this guy come from?

You will not be surprised to learn that Obama's hand-picked head of the CDC came from New York, where he was Michael Bloomberg's director of public health. In New York, Frieden was the sponsor of such notable public health success stories as the ban on 20-ounce soft drinks. Are we shocked that he is an embarrassment as the director of the nation's public health response to Ebola?

The bad news keeps on rolling across the headlines. Now we learn that the nearly 4,000 American soldiers being sent to Liberia and Sierra Leone to help fight Ebola will receive a total of four hours of Ebola training. Many of those soldiers are coming from Fort Carson in my home state of Colorado, and no one should be surprised that Colorado officials are asking a lot of questions about the wisdom of that deployment.

The Ebola epidemic in West Africa has been a topic of international concern since at least March, and the U.S. has donated more than $100 million since then through the U.S. Agency for International Development. The Obama White House and CDC were aware of the potential danger of Ebola coming to our shores, and yet the CDC was totally unprepared to give professional, scientifically sound guidance to local hospitals like the one in Dallas.

But is "incompetence" the only reason for the blunders and blindness we have seen from the CDC? Can we blame incompetence for the willful blindness at the Department of Homeland Security with regard to the threats to public health presented by the total lack of border security? Obviously not. Our porous borders at both airports and the Rio Grande are a matter of policy, not neglect or ignorance or inadequate resources.

Many people are also starting to ask questions about the public health consequences of placing more than 60,000 children from Central America in homes across the country without adequate health screenings for diseases with long incubation periods.

Since August, CDC has confirmed more than 400 cases of the enterovirus D68 in 40 states, some of them associated with a Polio-like paralysis. Is this a mere coincidence that this unparalleled EV-D68 epidemic is happening in the wake of that particular "humanitarian amnesty"?

That 60,000 number does not include at least 700,000 other illegal aliens who entered our country across our southwest border in 2013 – all without health screenings.

Is incompetence the right word to describe this lunacy?

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