New Report Warns About Threat of Emerging Infectious Diseases

(Compiler's note: A must read report.)

by Anthony L. Kimery

The nation's defenses against emerging infectious diseases are insufficient

The already staggering number of Americans who die each year from merging and re-emerging infectious diseases could skyrocket during a worst case influenza pandemic or yet unknown disease outbreak, stated a new report by the Trust for America's Health (TFAH), “Germs Go Global: Why Emerging Infectious Diseases Are a Threat to America.”

More than two years ago, HSToday.us reported health authorities were concerned that hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) that kill an estimated 90,000 to 100,000 Americans each year during routine hospital stays could be expected to be rampant during a health crisis in which tens of thousands – or more – persons require emergency medical care under what will likely be less than sterile and sanitary conditions. Conditions primarily responsible for the transmission of HAIs.

Shortly before his recent death, the world renowned virologist, Dr. Graeme Laver, also expressed his concern to HSToday.us about the spread of HAIs during a pandemic and mass casualty events. He said "they would most assuredly spread" in overcrowded hospitals and temporary structures erected to treat the numbers of people who will need medical attention in a pandemic.

“We’re looking at a little known and largely ignored health crisis secondary to a pandemic or large-scale terrorist bombing like a nuke or something,” a source involved in federal emergency medical preparedness planning told HSToday.us a year ago.

HAI infections can cause serious illnesses and, in severe cases, death. Indeed, infectious diseases are a major cause of illness, disability and death, statistics and authorities point out.

A year ago the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reported that a strain of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) spreading around the country is causing more life-threatening infections than public health authorities had thought, and killing more people in the US each year than AIDS.

"Antimicrobial resistance undercuts the effectiveness of essential medicines and reverses years of progress made in the treatment of infectious diseases. Left unchecked, antimicrobial resistance is as destructive and deadly as any global health threat," said Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH). "That's why I've introduced the Strategies to Address Antimicrobial Resistance (STAAR) Act. By accelerating efforts to combat antimicrobial-resistance, this bill would prevent further erosion in the effectiveness of critical medical treatments."

"Infectious diseases are not just a crisis for the developing world. They are a real threat right here, right now to America's economy, security, and health system," said TFAH Executive Director, Dr. Jeffrey Levi. "Infectious diseases can come without warning, crossing boarders, often before people even know they are sick. Americans are more vulnerable than we think we are, and our public health defenses are not as strong as they should be."

TFAH’s report also finds that the nation's defenses against emerging infectious diseases are insufficient, creating serious consequences for the US health system, economy, and national security.

Because of this possibility, and the fact that the spread of HAIs is already at an alarming level during non-catastrophic emergency conditions, HSToday.us noted that HAIs are viewed as a national security threat, according a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), a fact the TFAH report also highlighted.

In Jan. 2000, the National Intelligence Council, the US Intelligence Community’s (IC) center for midterm and long-term strategic thinking which leads the effort to produce National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs), released an unclassified version of the NIE, “The Global Infectious Disease Threat and Its Implications for the United States,” which expresses alarm over the national security implications of HAIs. The NIE “represents an important initiative on the part of the IC to consider the national security dimension of a nontraditional threat.”

Indeed, the NIE “responds to a growing concern by senior US leaders about the Implications - in terms of health, economics, and national security - of the growing global infectious disease threat. The dramatic increase in drug-resistant microbes, combined with the lag in development of new antibiotics, the rise of megacities with severe health care deficiencies, environmental degradation, and the growing ease and frequency of cross-border movements of people and produce have greatly facilitated the spread of infectious diseases.”

A crisis will compound the problem. “Alone or in combination, war and natural disasters, economic collapse, and human complacency are causing a breakdown in health care delivery and facilitating the emergence or reemergence of infectious diseases,” the NIE emphasizes.

In this NIE, the IC stated that “hospital-acquired infections … will pose a threat” to national security, noting: “Inadequate infection control practices in hospitals will remain a major source of disease transmission in developing and developed countries alike.”

The TFAH report examines major vulnerabilities in the current US strategy for combating infectious diseases. One crucial area that is problematic is treatment.

“While the US government has invested significantly in treatments that could counter an intentional biological attack, new drugs to treat emerging diseases and new antibiotics to address growing antimicrobial resistance have received far less attention,” the TFAH report stated. “The development of new, improved therapies to treat drug resistant bacterial infections, as well as influenza and other viruses, is essential.”

US Cities, Counties Prepare for Civil Unrest after Election

By Mickey McCarter

Municipal and state police forces around the country have prepared to contain massive celebrations or protests upon the announcement of election results Tuesday night or Wednesday morning, according to various US news sources. ....

Why Liberals Cannot Be Trusted With National Security

by Gregory D. Lee

In the October 25, 2008 edition of the Standard-Times, Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) provided some insights as to what we can expect if he and his fellow liberals win both houses of Congress and Sen. Barack Obama becomes president.

According to the article, he called for a 25% cut in military spending, saying the Pentagon has to start choosing from its many weapons programs. “The military cuts also mean getting out of Iraq sooner,” he said. Then he added, “We don’t need all these fancy weapons.”

Does cutting defense 25% while engaged in two wars make any sense? It does to liberals.

Despite the fact that most of the 9/11 terrorist hijackers were in this country illegally, and many possessed multiple genuine driver licenses, liberals continue to push legislation to grant licenses to illegal aliens. Sen. Obama is in favor of illegals obtaining drivers licenses.

Sen. Obama proudly reminds voters at every opportunity that he was against the war in Iraq from the beginning. John Edwards said his vote was a mistake. If the overwhelming intelligence available at the time couldn’t convince Sen. Obama that Saddam Hussein was a threat that had to be stopped, I’m afraid nothing would have convinced him to go to war to protect this country. If someone showed Obama a photograph of Bill Clinton or John Edwards passionately kissing his wife, would he say there wasn’t enough evidence to question her about it?

Stanfield Turner almost single-handedly dismantled the CIA when he was Jimmy Carter’s liberal director, but he did succeed in destroying the morale among the ranks of intelligence case officers with loony ideas like only using persons with clean records as informants to gather intelligence. Please show me an informant for the CIA who doesn’t have baggage like drug dealing or human rights violations. These people possess valuable information only insiders like them have and they are willing to trade it for something valuable. The idea of only using priests and rabbis as intelligence gatherers is a very bad idea. Yet it was hailed by liberals as a necessary reform at the CIA.

Liberals are also the ones who built the “wall” within the FBI’s criminal and foreign intelligence divisions and between the FBI and the CIA so they could not share information about terrorists operating in the U.S. Then liberal members of Congress had the gall to appoint Jaime S. Gorelick to the 9/11 Commission. Gorelick, as an underling to former Attorney General Janet Reno, actually wrote the Department of Justice policy that erected the wall! The commissioners didn’t have to go far to find out who was partially to blame for the tragedy. All they had to do was turn their chairs to the far Left and there she was.

Despite liberals’ dismal track record on national defense policy, they claim to be every bit as patriotic and concerned about national security as conservatives. Even if you gave them the benefit of the doubt about their patriotism, they cannot point to a single policy or achievement since the dropping of the bomb on Nagasaki that has enhanced national security. Advocating a nuclear freeze during the Cold War when it was needed most, defunding anti-Communist guerrillas in Central America, voting against a missile defense shield, leaving town for a recess instead of voting on an important terrorism wiretap bill that was about to expire, and not allowing off-shore drilling for oil, readily come to mind as other examples of the weakening, not strengthening, of national security.

Democrat vice-presidential candidate Sen. Joe Biden said to mark his words that a President Obama would be tested with a foreign policy crisis within the first six months of his presidency. I think he may be right, given Sen. Obama’s liberalism and lack of any meaningful experience. Putting liberals in charge of this nation’s security is a fool’s bet. In this dangerous era of Islamofacism and Russian reemergence, a liberal in charge of our national security is a nightmare that might come true this election.

I’m going to go out on a limb and predict the American people will come to their senses and elect Sen. John McCain by a two-to-five point margin. We don’t have long to find out if I’m right.

John Bolton: Letter to the next president

(Complier's note: A must read opinion piece.)

Congratulations, Mr President-elect, on your victory. After the longest presidential campaign in our history, you now have 77 days to prepare to govern. While foreigners might see eleven weeks as an eternity, you know only too well that it is precious little time to select your top advisers and then subject them to our cumbersome FBI and ethics screening of their backgrounds, their finances, their potential conflicts of interest, and whatever skeletons are hanging in their closets.

Then, of course, they need to learn the intricacies of their respective responsibilities, and, for many, begin the Senate confirmation process, which may take months. Time is already growing short.

The current economic turmoil will consume a significant amount of your Transition Team’s time and effort, and properly so. But in the wider world, our adversaries and even our friends are actively considering how to advance their interests as your January 20 Inauguration approaches.

You will have four full years of foreign-policy issues and problems, such as the rise of China and India, the decline of the European Union, and the role of Russia, but I suggest the following as priorities in your first Hundred Days:

You are the decider

Although President Bush tried to make this his mantra, his Administration was plagued in its first term by incoherence in national security decision making. Crisp decisions were not made, strong differences of opinion among Cabinet Secretaries were not resolved, and policy too often oscillated between conflicting options with no consistency or direction.

Ironically, the Bush Administration’s second term erred in the opposite direction, almost eliminating differences in advice to the President until there was really only one voice in his ear at critical points. You must avoid both pitfalls, and you must make that clear immediately. You must resolve disagreements among your advisers, and not allow drift, and you must insist on discipline once you make a decision.

If anyone disagrees with this approach, you may invite them to do the honourable thing and resign, or not sign on in the first place. Iran Tehran’s ruling mullahs have no intention of affording you a “honeymoon”. They will move quickly to test your resolve both on their rapidly progressing nuclear weapons program and on their massive support for international terrorism.

Nearly six years of European diplomacy has failed to slow Iran’s nuclear program. Five UN Security Council Resolutions demanding that Iran halt uranium enrichment (and imposing risibly weak sanctions) have had essentially no effect.

Russia in particular is using Iran as the sharp tip of the spear to disrupt our policy throughout the Middle East. Moscow will watch what you do just as intently as Tehran. Any new President will be advised to engage in at least some renewed diplomatic effort. But do not be fooled. Insist on three months of intense, good-faith negotiations, and we will soon find out if Iran is serious.

If not, which I believe to be demonstrably the case, suspend negotiations quickly. Then, ratchet up efforts on the only options, unattractive though they are, that have a chance of stopping Iran from acquiring deliverable nuclear weapons: regime change or the targeted use of military force against Iran’s nuclear program.

If you wait longer, you will surely have the worst of all worlds: Iran with nuclear weapons, and an even greater threat of nuclear proliferation as other Middle Eastern states draw the appropriate conclusions from its success at thwarting our non-proliferation efforts.

North Korea

We are kidding ourselves if we think North Korea will ever voluntarily give up its nuclear weapons program. Even during the campaign, as the Bush Administration was squandering our negotiating leverage, North Korea continued to try to proliferate ballistic missile technology.

As with Iran, there is essentially no chance that Pyongyang will be talked out of its nuclear weapons. Moreover, with the world in near-complete ignorance about the state of Kim Jong-il’s health or plans for regime succession, even more uncertainty surrounds the intentions of this prison camp of a country. Expecting that the long-running Six-Party Talks will “solve” the North Korean problem is a delusion.

Instead, you must deal directly with China as the highest priority in our bilateral relationship, and insist that we act together to eliminate the current regime in Pyongyang and is nuclear program, and ultimately reunite the Korean Peninsula.

China needs to understand that leaving the North with nuclear weapons is not an option, and that their inaction will have an increasingly negative impact on our bilateral relationship. Beijing alone can change North Korea, and it needs to get started.

America’s Image

Do not let global “public opinion” about the United States, from Albania to Zimbabwe, dissuade you from doing what you think is right for America. Your job is to defend and advance our interests and values, a task which invariably will displease our adversaries, and even many of our friends, especially those who wish we were, well, more European in our behaviour and attitudes.

What we must do, however, is more effectively advocate the policies you will be pursuing. Failure at both the political level in Washington and abroad, and at the level of the career Foreign Service, made the Bush Administration one of the most tongue-tied Presidencies in our history. We should try to shift international public opinion to support our policies, not modify our policies to try to satisfy international public opinion. The State Department will not understand this distinction. You must.

A final word

Many U.S. and foreign commentators have been quick to tell us that America is in decline, and that our role in the future will not be what it once was. They will be correct only if you fall prey to their pessimism.

And if you do, rest assured that they will shortly turn critical of “American isolationism,” just as they have been critical in recent years of “American unilateralism.” You will never satisfy them. Defend America and its friends, and the rest will take care of itself.

Opposing Views: Could Voter Fraud Steal the 2008 Election?

(Compiler's note: Read and consider each side on this issue outlined below. It will likely impact what we see in the days to come.)

Also see Toledo Police brace for possible civil unrest

A fierce firefight has erupted over voter fraud as the 2008 presidential campaign races toward its conclusion. Both sides are worried sick that America's true choice for chief executive will get hijacked by dirty pool. Are dead people voting? Have minorities been disenfranchised? The non-partisan Web site Opposing Views asked the Heritage Foundation and the NAACP whether voter fraud will play a role in this election.

We Should Be Worried

By Hans A. von Spakovsky, Heritage Foundation

Should we be concerned over voter fraud in the upcoming election? If history is any guide, then the emphatic answer is "yes!" There are numerous cases, just in the last decade or so, in which elections were stolen and races were decided by a handful of votes.

An investigation of 5,000 fraudulent absentee ballots in Miami in 1997 resulted in the election results being overturned. In addition to votes by fictitious individuals and persons using false addresses (persons who didn't actually live in Miami), votes were also bought. And vote buying is a federal crime that the Department of Justice has prosecuted repeatedly.

In 2003, the Indiana Supreme Court threw out the results of a mayoral election because of absentee ballot fraud. The results of a state senate race in Tennessee in 2005 decided by only 13 votes were declared invalid because of votes by felons, the dead, people who didn't live in the district, and individuals whose registered addresses were vacant lots. The photographs of those vacant lots, taken by an investigator, starkly illustrate the kind of voter fraud that unfortunately still goes on in our elections.

Today, there are investigations in more than a dozen states over tens of thousands of fraudulent voter registration forms submitted by ACORN. How many of those fraudulent registrations have not been caught by election officials? How many will result in fraudulent votes? If we have a very close election, fraudulent votes may well end up deciding the results, damaging our democracy and our confidence in our election process.

Hans A. von Spakovsky is a visiting legal scholar at the Heritage Foundation. His Special Report on "Democracy in Danger: Case Studies of Election Fraud," is available at www.heritage.org.

Voter Discrimination is the Real Fraud
Hilary Shelton, director of the NAACP Washington Bureau

According to those chanting the disturbing chorus of "voter fraud," elections are being influenced and sometimes determined by people ineligible to cast a ballot impersonating eligible voters.

To be sure, the NAACP sees disenfranchising, disturbing instances of "voter fraud" every election cycle. However, the "fraud" we witness is different. We know of deceptive practices, misinformation and lies that are used to keep registered, legitimate voters away from the polls. Sadly, we also still find ourselves fighting attempts by unscrupulous election officials to disenfranchise the people in communities we represent.

It is our experience that "voter impersonation" is actually quite rare. Nationwide, between 2002 and 2006, when a crackdown on voter fraud was one of the U.S. Justice Department's top priorities, more than 400 million votes were cast, but an average of only 30 federal cases per year were prosecuted.

Regardless of the questionable prevalence of this type of voter fraud, several states have passed discriminatory photo ID laws. Sadly, rather than addressing real voter fraud, the true effect of these laws is to disenfranchise the estimated 20 million Americans who have not purchased IDs. Disproportionately these people are minorities, elderly and low-income Americans.

Yet, malicious voter fraud continues. In Virginia, registered voters received robotic calls stating that they could vote by telephone by pressing a number for the candidate of their choice. The call ended by stating that they had now voted and didn't need to go to the polls.

In 2006 in Orange County, Calif., 14,000 Latino voters got letters in Spanish saying it was a crime for immigrants to vote in a federal election. It didn't say that immigrants who are citizens have the right to vote.

The NAACP has also seen a dramatic increase in erroneous purging of voting rolls, as well as eligible voters mistakenly not added. These are voters believing or having been told that they have done everything correctly, only to be turned away from the voting booth on Election Day.

We know from Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004 that erroneous purging of the rolls, underestimating the number of needed functioning voting machines and ballots, the inadequate number and under-trained poll workers, intimidation of voters and the misuse of photo ID requirements, especially in neighborhoods with heavy concentrations of racial and ethnic minorities, along with blocked access to polling sites and intentional deception and voter intimidation, lead to disenfranchisement of eligible voters. These problems are more than just "voter fraud." These problems are a national travesty.