Fear of Facts, Fear of Ebola, Fear of ISIS, FEAR OF FAILURE

The Hagedorn campaign for CD-1 against Tim Walz has taken a hard right turn for the nastier foolish propaganda as the date for the election nears.  This is intended to appeal to the right wing neo-con hatriots, the ones who are the most science illiterate on the right, and who never met a war they didn’t like (so long as someone else fought it, and paid for it).


Not only does it fear monger to the anti-immigrant bigots, reaching for the broadest possible appeal among that ugly, wilfully ignorant demographic, but it reflects the attempt by the right to turn Ebola into a big dumb stick with which to try to beat Obama, in the hopes that it might at least indirectly damage any and every Democrat in the country running for office through guilt by association.

I’ve been watching this trend of right wing propaganda for a few weeks now.  It includes the usual suspects in the right wing propaganda machine, beginning with Alex Jones and his silly info-wars, claiming that the President and the CDC are LYING TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ABOUT EBOLA!

In support of that red meat for the conspiracy theory crowd, they offer a publication in the Lancet, cited in the New York Times back in 2000 to argue that people riding the bus with you could appear perfectly healthy, not having any Ebola symptoms (you know, like bleeding from every orifice, looking like a Zombie), not even feeling ill, AND STILL SPREAD THE DISEASE TO EVERY AMERICAN (especially the right-wing red-blooded ones).  They don’t even have to eat your brain, or bite you (wait…that’s vampires, not zombies), all they have to do is breathe or sneeze on you!  You can get it like flu, from doorknobs, even if they don’t bite you or eat your brain!

Of course, the righties don’t actually READ these studies that gin them up and send them to the polls, but I do.  That 14 year old study appears to be an outlier, doesn’t appear to have been replicated anywhere; while another  referring to a few pig farmers in the Philippines who never showed any symptoms of having ‘the Ebola’, but who did register a weak immune response to it, suggesting they had been infected by it at some point in time.  Apart from the fact that it appears you can be infected and not be symptomatic, from the two different reports, it does NOT appear you can actually infect someone while asymptomatic, as no documented case of doing so appears anywhere.
from the original 2000 Lancet article:

The Lancet study does not warn of an apocalyptic scenario where any casual contact could cause infection. It is more focused on contagion through sex or blood transfusions.

It should be noted that NEITHER study claims that Ebola can be transmitted by asymptomatic individuals, or that anyone, anywhere, EVER, caught ‘the Ebola’ from asymptomatic individuals.  But part of the fear being generated by fliers like the one above, of ISIS suicide terrorists infected with Ebola is that they might not LOOK or FEEL sick enough to be identifiable, and if they lose their obvious terrorist outfits, they could walk among us — like ZOMBIES AND VAMPIRES!– infecting us all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Bloomberg Politics did a great summary of 8 GOP leaders, linking closing the border, ISIS and Ebola, ranging from the claims of Congressman Duncan, to Senate candidates like Scott Brown in New Hampshire (he should be sure to say Hi to Chip Cravaack); here are just a few of the highlights:

“She’s [Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen] voted not to secure the border and I have and it’s so critically important that we really use every tool, shut out every mechanism for them and that disease and other potential diseases to come into our country.”
Distance from the Mexican border: 1,800 miles

North Carolina Congressional candidate Mark Walker:
“If you have foreigners who are sneaking in with drug cartels, to me that is a national threat. And if we’ve got to go laser or blitz somebody with a couple of fighter jets for a little while to make our point, I don’t have a problem with that, either.”
Distance to Mexican border: 1,340 miles

New York Representative Peter King:
“We definitely have to be on our guard. That’s the type of thing that ISIS has to be considering. Obviously, the southern border is more porous and vulnerable. We have to absolutely be on our guard on the southern border.”
Distance to Mexican Border: 1,700 miles

Arkansas Senate candidate Tom Cotton
“We’ve got an Ebola outbreak, we have bad actors that can come across the border; we need to seal the border and secure it.”
“Groups like the Islamic State collaborate with drug cartels in Mexico who have clearly shown they’re willing to expand outside the drug trade into human trafficking and potentially even terrorism. They could infiltrate our defenseless border and attack us right here in places like Arkansas.”
Distance to Mexican border: 600 miles

It’s not like this is unique to Hagedorn, he’s just in GOP-stupid lock-step with the rest of the right wing candidates trolling for the radical tea party vote.   Hagedorn appears to be hoping that a mix of ignorance and hysteria might help him against Walz.

Politico suggests it is not working – at least, not against Rick Nolan in CD-8.  Perhaps with that congressional district snug up against our common border with Canada, those Minnesotans are just too far from the threat for that to work.  Distance from Mexico to Minnesota : 1,656 miles.  I doubt the difference between, say, Bemidji and Mankato, 233 miles,  will change that.

In Minnesota, the National Republican Congressional Committee has released two ads targeting Nolan for being soft on terrorism as part of a nationwide campaign attacking vulnerable Democrats.

But in Nolan’s 8th Congressional District, ISIL discussion has been surprisingly rare, even though the two candidates disagree.

“Launching airstrikes on another country, by any standard, by any definition, is an act of war,” Nolan said in a House floor speech the week of the vote on Syria military aid. “Have we not had enough of imperial presidencies doing what they want in the world?”

During a recent debate, Mills said he supports U.S. airstrikes and working with regional allies to “crush the threat.” But it was the one issue in the debate in which the candidates did not attack each other over their differences. Mills has spent more time on the campaign trail talking about guns and mining than ISIL.

“This is just not an area where either side sees the best punch,” said Larry Jacobs, an expert in state politics at the University of Minnesota. “It’s not that they don’t have differences — and they do … [but] it’s not kind of a hot issue that’s breaking decisively for one side.”

Nonetheless, ISIL is a significant issue in many midterm races.

Republicans are using the militant group’s rapid rise and the new U.S.-led military campaign to put Democrats on the defensive. Already, the fight has gained significant public traction: A recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found it was the No. 1 issue for Republicans, with 41 percent calling it the most important factor for their vote.

Polling has been showing Walz with at least a 6% lead over Hagedorn.  I can only hope that even our right wingnut Minnesotans will have better judgement than to fall for this kind of lowest possible denominator appeal.

A vote AGAINST Hagedorn and the MN GOP, and the national GOP is a vote AGAINST sleazy, tasteless ignorance like this.  We’re finally shut of Michele Bachmann; we don’t need another tacky teabagger in Congress from Minneosta to embarrass us.

Don’t stay home — VOTE!

Throw fliers like this, and candidates like this, out with the trash.