Rachel Maddow Deliciously Unravels The Fox News “Voter Fraud Frankenstein” Fallacy

Posted by on October 26, 2014 at 5:00 am. 3 Comments :

Last Tuesday Megyn Kelly of Fox News hosted a segment on what she characterized as a frightening assault on democracy in Colorado as Democrats plotted to surreptitiously turn the “red meat state” blue. Setting aside the fact that Colorado has been a solid purple state for years, Kelly’s alarm was grossly misplaced and indicative of her extreme right-wing bias. She led off with a dire message for her easily spooked audience.

“Breaking tonight. With two weeks to the midterms we are getting warnings that a new law has opened the door to possible voter fraud in a critical senate race that could decide the balance of power in Congress.”

Fox News Voter Fraud

Saints preserve us. What malevolent disaster is looming over us now? Kelly “reported” that Colorado’s Democratic governor and legislature passed a new “first of its kind” law that “literally allows residents to print ballots from their home computers.” And with a chastening glare she facetiously asks “What could go wrong?”

What indeed? Well, the first thing that could go wrong is that Kelly’s reporting is entirely false. When local reporters with KUSA TV contacted Colorado’s Republican Secretary of State he told them that there was no truth to the story. Rachel Maddow covered the misleading reporting by Kelly in a brilliant segment that broke down the shameless dishonesty that is the hallmark of Fox News:

Kelly has still failed to acknowledge or correct her false reporting, proving that the only fraud here is that committed by Fox News on their pathetically gullible viewers. But the story doesn’t end there.

Following Kelly’s thoroughly fictional “breaking” news opening, she introduced her guests Michelle Malkin and David Bossie who were there to promote their new crocumentary “Rocky Mountain Heist,” about alleged voter fraud in Colorado. But before the interview began, Kelly played the entire two minute trailer for the film uninterrupted, giving the deceitful project free advertising worth tens of thousands of dollars.

Malkin said the film unveils a “voter fraud Frankenstein,” but like every other right-wing allegation of voter fraud, she never provides any evidence. And in this case she doesn’t even offer an example of any the fraudulent activity she alleges.

Most appalling is Malkin’s apoplectic complaint that “hundreds of thousands of dollars from unknown donors were poured into these races to target them and turn the legislature blue.” And she has the gall to whine about this supposed assault on democracy while sharing the interview with the man that made unscrupulous political donations possible on an unprecedented scale. David Bossie is the President and Chairman of Citizens United, the organization whose Supreme Court ruling permitted donations from corporations and individuals in unlimited amounts that can be kept hidden from the public.

Bossie also told Kelly that he has no problem with the spending on the part of the Democrats, but complained of a lack of transparency. Talk about hypocrisy. It was his lawsuit that made it all possible and he argued in favor of it when it was to his benefit.

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So in this one segment of Kelly’s program she proliferated lies about the Colorado elections procedures, contributed valuable airtime to advertise a brazenly partisan documentary, and gave a platform to hypocritical right-wing propagandists to smear their Democratic foes just days before a consequential election. She provided no opportunity for the maligned Democrats to respond or for a representative of the other side to rebut the scurrilous charges. But that is typical of the absurdly tagged “fair and balanced” network that is neither. And it is the reason that Kelly is no better than Sean Hannity, or Glenn Beck, or any of the other ideologically prejudiced Fox mouthpieces past and present.

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The GOP/Tea Party Post-Midterm Agenda: Impeach Obama

Posted by on October 25, 2014 at 3:02 pm. 3 Comments :

With a little more than one week until election day the Republican Party is still lacking any affirmative plan for how they will govern should they assume total control of Congress. They have no economic plan, no foreign policy, no terrorism response, no reforms for immigration, and certainly no programs to address climate change which they don’t believe exists. The whole of their political ideology is a negative fixation that rests on their blinding contempt for President Obama.

Mars Impeaches

Last summer GOP House Speaker John Boehner made a splashy announcement of his scheme to sue the President for having issued an executive order delaying the implementation of a component of the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare). Never mind that Republicans usually oppose frivolous lawsuits and that the ObamaCare measure being delayed was one that Republicans also wanted to postpone, the lawsuit was heralded as a blow for righteousness and justice.

In truth, the lawsuit was a bone being thrown to the Tea Party who had been clamoring for impeachment. Boehner was seeking to pacify the drooling Teabaggers with a scaled back distraction. And now Politico is reporting that the lawsuit that garnered so much excitement has failed to materialize. There has been no progress made on its filing and it is not expected to proceed until sometime after the midterm election. No one even knows what the complaint will consist of. When asked back in June, Boehner responded “When I make that decision, I’ll let you know.” He still hasn’t made that decision.

Speculation by insiders is that the lawsuit has been benched because it might have fired up Democrats to mobilize in advance of the election and to increase donations and turnout. So the motivations on the part of the GOP are purely political and not tied to any principles. What’s more, it’s confirmation that they intend to resume their litigation as soon as the election is no longer part of the mix.

Therefore, it is not implausible to assume that the fringe-right will also return to their wet dream fantasies of an Obama impeachment as well. With so many Republican operatives having expressed their interest in it, they are very likely to still harbor a desire to proceed. The Boehner lawsuit is a sort of legal appetizer before the main course. And since the issues that were previously discussed as the reasons for the lawsuit may be moot by the time they file (if ever), the only option left for the Obama-haters will be impeachment.

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Without the promise of the lawsuit to look forward to, the Tea Party will demand that they be given satisfaction. The Republican honchos know that they can’t win an election if the Teabaggers bolt. A recent Gallup poll asked voters to describe their motivation to vote in this election. Seventy-three percent of Tea Partiers responded that they were extremely/very motivated. Contrast that with other Republicans at 57%, and non-Republicans at 42% and you can see why the party is worried. You can also see why the party would be inclined to proceed with the impeachment demands of their right flank. Particularly after the much ballyhooed lawsuit fizzles.

In reality, the Tea Party is not as big a factor in national politics as the establishment Republicans believe. They are an ever decreasing group that is supported by less than 25% of the American people. Supporters of reproductive choice outnumber Tea Partiers. So do supporters of background checks for gun purchases, supporters of immigration reform, supporters of taxing the rich, supporters of alternative fuels, and many more progressive causes. Yet for some reason there has never been a poll to ascertain the motivation of those voters.

For most of the past six years the Republican Party has demonstrated itself to be a lily-livered appeaser of its worst elements. And there is no reason to expect them to change after November. So if you have an interest in advancing solutions to real problems in this country, rather than becoming mired in a bitter and partisan impeachment melodrama, you had better vote on November 4th, and make sure that all of your progressive friends and family do as well.

If you don’t think they’re crazy enough to do it, you haven’t been paying enough attention to John Boehner and Darrell Issa and Louis Gohmert and Michelle Bachmann and Steve King and Blake Farenthold and Steve Stockman and – oh hell, this could go on forever. Let’s just say the whole friggin’ congressional GOP caucus.


More Americans Died From Guns TODAY Than Ebola Ever

Posted by on October 24, 2014 at 4:23 pm. 11 Comments :

Is it time to talk about the epidemic of guns yet?

With shootings in a Washington state high school and in Sacramento, California, the fatalities caused just by these events that the media chooses to sensationalize exceeds all of the fatalities in the U.S. from Ebola since that story began. And that’s not even counting the shootings that occur every day in communities across the country.

Guns vs. Ebola

Nevertheless, our politicians and pundits continue to be obsessed with manufactured threats that have a more theatrical appeal, but are in reality a far smaller risk. The likelihood of any American being killed by Ebola or ISIL remains remote, but guns are killing innocent people everyday. The numbers are staggering. Over 30,000 Americans die by gunfire each year, and today’s news reminds us that way too many of the victims are children.

There is a good case to make that the NRA is more dangerous to Americans than Ebola ever was. So is tobacco, influenza, pollution, and lightening. In fact, you are even more likely to die by your own hand (39,000 annual suicides) than to be killed by Ebola. So whatever you do, don’t get on any plane that you are on.

Our representatives have to stop being cowed by the NRA whose sole mission is to lobby on behalf of gun manufacturers. The influence exercised by the NRA far outweighs their actual clout with the public at large. But they continue to hold our legislators hostage. They even have a role in preventing a comprehensive response to Ebola. It is the NRA that coerced members of Congress into blocking the confirmation of President Obama’s nominee for Surgeon General. Now that we need someone in that post, the obstruction continues to prevent it.

With the upcoming midterm elections there is an opportunity to reduce the NRA’s influence in Congress by voting out Republicans in the Senate. The American people need to recognize the importance of this election and resolve to participate and persuade others to do the same. Failing this we can expect the holocaust of gun victims to continue and spread long after the Ebola threat has been forgotten.


F-Bombs For Feminism Asks What’s More Offensive: Saying F*ck Or Being Raped?

Posted by on October 22, 2014 at 4:24 pm. 7 Comments :

The video below has been making quite a stir for it’s raw approach to feminist advocacy. It is, to say the least, NSFW. It is already being condemned by the right-wing martinets of virtue, but some on the left are also likely to find it, shall we say, extreme.

FckH8

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Starting from the position that this video is going to be regarded as controversial, and even offensive in some circles, it nevertheless needs to be seen and the point it makes is a valid one. Personally, I think it’s adorable and the girls appear to be strong-willed, self-determined young activists with a healthy concern for what the world holds for them in their future. The producers at FCKH8.com introduce it by saying…

“Facing a future where women are still paid 23% less than men for the same work, and where 1 in 5 women are raped or sexually assaulted in gender-based violence, little girls between 6 and 13 years-old dressed as pretty pink princesses drop F-bombs to draw attention to society’s continued sexism. Asking the question, ‘What’s more offensive? A little girl saying f*ck or the sexist way society treats girls and women’ these adorably articulate little ladies in sparkling tiaras turn the ‘princess in distress’ stereotype on its head and contrast the F-word with words and statistics society should find shocking such as ‘pay inequality’ and ‘rape.'”

Fox News posted it on their Fox Nation fib factory with a headline that said “VILE: Little Girls Used as F-Bomb Pawns in Pro-Feminism Video.” Naturally, the network that promises to let you decide has decided for you. But that’s not how News Corpse works. So without further ado, enjoy and/or seethe:


The Cult Of Fox News: New Study Affirms Blind Devotion To Cable’s Church Of Disinformation

Posted by on October 22, 2014 at 12:15 pm. 33 Comments :

One of the fundamental methods employed by cults to assure unwavering loyalty is to demand that devotees believe only in the doctrine bestowed by the cult. All others are presumed to be deceivers and unworthy of trust.

With that in mind, consider the results of the new Pew Research study on “Political Polarization & Media Habits.” The year-long research surveyed American news consumers and categorized their relationships to thirty-six sources for news and information about government and politics by political ideology. The differences in the levels of trust exhibited by consistent conservatives and liberals are profound.

The study reveals that conservatives have drastically constrained their access to news to a very few, hard-right outlets. They behave as if any exposure to a conflicting viewpoint would be tantamount to fraternizing with Satan. Consequently, they rely almost solely on Fox News for their information intake. That is how Fox maintains their ratings position, by herding all of the conservative cattle into one corral.

Pray for Fox News

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Nearly half (47%) of conservatives identify Fox News as their “main source” for news. Nothing else even comes close. Compare that to liberals who cite CNN as a main source only 15% of the time with a half dozen other sources closely competing for their attention. What’s more, conservatives obediently trust Fox News by a larger margin (88%) than any other group of viewers. And the only other sources they trust more than 50% of the time are similarly far-right partisans: Sean Hannity (62%), Rush Limbaugh (58%), and Glenn Beck (51%). Of course, none of those sources are objective news providers, or even journalists.

While Conservatives have only four sources that they trust more than 50% of the time, liberals express trust for nine different sources at that rate: NPR (72%), PBS (71%), BBC (69%), New York Times (62%), CNN (56%), NBC (56%), MSNBC (52%), ABC (52%), and CBS (51%). Note that they are all (with the exception of MSNBC) generally regarded as legitimate journalistic enterprises. Except, that is, by conservatives who trust none of them. In fact, conservatives only have greater trust than distrust for twelve of the thirty-six sources in the study. So consistent with the cult maxim, conservatives actively distrust twenty-four (two-thirds) of the sources. Liberals flip that stat, having greater trust for twenty-eight of the sources and distrust for only eight.

The mission of Fox News from the beginning was to divide the nation by ideology. It is why they came up with their “fair and balanced” slogan with the implicit accusation that the other news providers were neither. They deliberately sectioned off their audience and told them that everyone else was lying to them. Subsequently, when they lied to their viewers (which they do constantly), there is no place for them to turn for the actual truth. The Fox version of events becomes the unqualified gospel for their audience/disciples despite being riddled with falsehoods and rancid partisanship. And additional proof of that is seen in the studies that show that Fox viewers are less informed than those who watch other media, or even those who watch nothing at all. And the more you watch Fox, the less you know.

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The correlations to cult status are unmistakable: Proselytize relentlessly (Fox is #1); repeat/preach the cult’s doctrine (anti-Obama, anti-government, Benghazi); reinforce obedience with fear (tyranny, terrorism, Ebola); glorification of idols (Ronald Reagan, Ted Cruz, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin); demonization of competing views (Democrats, the rest of the media); and fabricating a comforting home for faithful followers by casting experienced propagandists and appealing, mostly blonde, presenters as reporters. It’s a closed loop society that succeeds by keeping the flock secluded, ignorant, and artificially happy. I just hope they don’t start serving Kool-Aide.


Crackpot Conservative Conspiracy Theory: Obama Secretly Planning Amnesty For Millions

Posted by on October 21, 2014 at 4:46 pm. 1 Comments :

Here we go again. The right-wing nut cases who think that Ebola infected terrorists are streaming across the border to confiscate our guns, get free abortions, vote for Democrats, and gay marry atheist children, have a new delusion to occupy their twisted attention.

Fox News

The usual conservative media mouthpieces like WorldNetDaily, Breitbart News, Townhall, Newsmax, and of course, Fox News, are all reporting that there is a plot afoot by the Obama administration to grant amnesty to some 34 million “illegal” aliens soon after the midterm election. To put that number into perspective, that’s more than three times as many undocumented immigrants as are currently estimated to be in the United States. It’s a third of the entire population of Mexico. If they all occupied a new state it would be the second most populous state in the country after California with 38 million.

Where would they all go? No one is saying. It’s enough just to float the conspiracy and get the Tea Party dimwits riled up and fearful of something other than Ebola and ISIS for a couple of hours.

This new panic attack was triggered by a report that the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services put out a call for a vendor that could produce between four and nine million Green Cards and/or work permits a year for a five year contract. What the idiots in the rightist press conclude from that is that Obama is planning to issue all 34 million of those documents in a mass ceremony sometime around Christmas.

We have seen this sort of stupidity crop up before. The last incarnation of this sort of nonsense was a frightful scenario wherein the Department of Homeland Security had published a vendor request for more than a billion bullets. In the minds of the nutcases on the right, that was evidence that the DHS was plotting a response to some impending Zombie-driven civil unrest that would require the government to shoot every person in America five times.

In both of these cases of mass hysteria there was a simple explanation. The government, like any large enterprise, purchases routine supplies in advance and in bulk in order to get better rates. With the bullets, they were used in both field work and, more often, in ongoing training exercises. As for the immigration documents, they are often issued for new arrivals as well as replacements for lost or damaged documents. In many cases they are temporary and reissued for various types of applicants including migrant workers and technology consultants and even rock stars who come and go many times throughout the year. Work permits are even issued to American minors who take summer jobs.

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But leave it to Fox News and their sleazier cousins to make this into a doomsday plot by a determined and evil president bent on destroying the purity of our white, Christian utopia. Seriously, do these people ever get tired of being scared by fake pronouncements of doom? Do they feed off of fear like some Star Trek alien life form? Maybe if the rest of us all keep thinking happy thoughts it will weaken and float away into space. Wouldn’t that be a happy thought?

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BUSTED: Pathological Liar James O’Keefe Is Caught Attempting To Commit Voter Fraud

Posted by on October 21, 2014 at 10:07 am. 3 Comments :

Fresh on the heels of a pathetically dishonest scam in Kentucky, James O’Keefe took his medicine show to Colorado. This time his con was to entrap supporters of Democratic senator Mark Udall into agreeing to participate in a voter fraud scheme.

James O'Keefe

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According to the report published by Mother Jones, O’Keefe’s operatives approached Udall supporters and offered to help the campaign by submitting fraudulently obtained mail-in ballots.

“Last Tuesday, a man who appeared to be in his twenties showed up at a Democratic field office in Boulder wanting to volunteer to help elect Udall and Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.), according to a Democratic staffer who met with him and asked not to be identified. The man introduced himself as ‘Nick Davis,’ and he said he was a University of Colorado–Boulder student and LGBT activist involved with a student group called Rocky Mountain Vote Pride. Davis mentioned polls showing the race between Udall and Gardner was tight, and he asked the staffer if he should fill out and mail in ballots for other college students who had moved away but still received mail on campus. The Democratic staffer says he told Davis that doing this would be voter fraud and that he should not do it.”

Of course, the group that the phony “supporter” claimed to represent doesn’t exist and the staffer properly shot him down and sent him packing. But that didn’t stop the O’Keefe operation from trying it several more times. That is the key methodology of his hoax manufacturing outfit. He fishes around for a gullible victim and then throws out all of the evidence of people who did the right thing. It may take him ten or twenty times to find a sucker. Then he pretends that the few people he may have duped were the only ones he encountered. It’s an editing deception that defines O’Keefe’s unscrupulous activities.

On this occasion the O’Keefe con was cracked wide open. His minions were were unmasked and even he was recognized in a lame disguise as he tried to lie through another attempted political smear job. As noted previously, this convicted scumbag seems to have no limit to the copious quantities of shame he can endure at his own hand. And hopefully more people will be wary of this sort of unethical racket and continue to put him in his place.

For the record, here is a boilerplate background on James O’Keefe:
O’Keefe is best known for making an ass of himself on video while imagining an acclaim that is shared by no one outside of the Tea Party Home for the Chronically Delusional. Some of his other recent antics have resulted in his arrest and conviction in a Louisiana senator’s office, a legal order to pay a $100,000 settlement to a former ACORN employee he defamed, and a sleazy plot to seduce a CNN reporter aboard his “Love Boat.” More recently his “Cinema Veri-tasteless” earned him a rebuke from a team of Special Prosecutors in Texas (yes, Texas) who officially concluded that his video “was little more than a canard and political disinformation.” And he staged a remarkably juvenile stunt wherein he crossed the Rio Grande wearing an Osama Bin Laden mask.


Bill O’Reilly: American Women Are Emotional, Gullible, And Don’t Care About The Country

Posted by on October 21, 2014 at 1:46 am. 7 Comments :

In his Talking Points Memo segment last night, Bill O’Reilly demonstrated his overt bigotry along with a pitifully shallow analysis of public polling. He cited a poll from Politico that found that 64% of respondents from battleground states believe that “things in the U.S. feel like they are out of control.” O’Reilly then reported that the poll also found that if congressional elections were held today, 41% would vote for Democrats and 36% for Republicans.

Uh oh. O’Reilly must now find a reason for that snub of his conservative pals. So he contends that the poll results are illogical and blames the ignorant American people. He can’t understand why anyone would vote for a Democrat if 64% of the people think things are out of control. Let’s help him out.

Fox News Bill O'Reilly

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The main problem is that he is assuming that the people who think things are out of control hold the Democrats responsible for it. That is the result of an inherent tunnel-blindness that wingnuts like O’Reilly suffer from wherein everything bad is the fault of President Obama and the Democrats, and that the whole country concurs. In fact, every poll in recent years show that it is Congress that the people hold in contempt with an approval rating of about 12% (compared to Obama’s 41%), and those polls also show Republicans with a much lower approval rating than Democrats. So if the people believe that things are out of control, it is more likely that they blame the Republicans in Congress.

O’Reilly goes on to say that America is “a much weaker country” since Obama has been in office. To make make that argument requires O’Reilly to recall 2008 as a year that the United States had not just suffered the worst financial calamity since the Great Depression. He would have to have forgotten that there were 150,000 American troops slogging through battlefields in Afghanistan and Iraq. He would have to believe that a national deficit more than twice as large as the current one was evidence of weakness. He would have to prefer a nation where millions of Americans were unprotected by health insurance and threatened with bankruptcy and/or devastating medical problems. In short, he would have to be suffering from an acute form of ideological amnesia, because who in their right mind would want to return to the nightmare of 2008?

O’Reilly makes the absurd assertion that voting for Democrats is an act of selfishness and that “if you’re voting for the country, you’re less likely to support the Democrats.” That’s the old right-wing canard of calling your opponents unpatriotic. But it gets even worse. O’Reilly surmises that the reason people favor Democrats is emotion, and he puts the blame for that on women who he says, in effect, are too emotional and/or gullible to know what’s good for them. That, he says, is why “American women continue to favor Democrats, no matter what happens to the nation.”

Can right-wingers really still be confused about why so many Americans regard the GOP as engaging in a war on women? With their banner-carriers alleging that women are emotionally-driven dimwits who don’t care about the country, it seems pretty obvious that women would reject them. Yet the GOP continues to say these sort of idiotic and insulting things out loud, and on national television.

O’Reilly’s confusion as to why anyone would vote for a Democrat would be better expressed as why any woman would vote for a Republican. And that can be extended to why any African-American, Latino, working, or middle-class citizen would vote for the party that regards them as lazy, criminal, moochers, and spends all its time and effort tearing down democratic principles and obstructing progress on behalf of wealthy special interests and partisan prejudice.


The Racist Fox Nation Mocks And Insults African-American Voters

Posted by on October 19, 2014 at 3:38 pm. 4 Comments :

One of the most predictable occurrences in modern media is the emergence of overtly racist comments spewing forth whenever Fox Nation posts an article related to race. They just can’t seem to help themselves. It doesn’t matter if it is an article on an important issue, or just a photo of a public figure, the Fox Nationalists jump at every opportunity to disgorge their bountiful hate.

The latest example of this boorishness came in the form of an article re-posted from the New York Times that advanced the painfully obvious analysis that Democrats would be hurt if African-American voters failed to show up at the polls during the midterm election. Why anyone at the Times or Fox would regard that revelation as newsworthy is beyond me. However, it did open up the floodgates of racial animus for Fox’s audience.

Fox Nation

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The ignorance demonstrated in these remarks is a sad statement on the mindset of the political right. After all, these are not comments pulled from the KKK website or some other fringe outpost. It is the community of Fox News viewers who represent the mainstream of today’s conservatives. And as if to make sure that they were wholly aligned with their ignorant audience, Fox misspelled the word “Losses” in their headline.

It’s clear that the haters at Fox are fixated on stereotypes that cast African-Americans as stupid, dishonest, and unworthy of the rights that other Americans enjoy. That’s why they support voter ID laws that are deliberately designed to throw obstacles in the way of black voters. In 2012, resentment over the right’s efforts to disenfranchise them actually brought out more voters than were anticipated. Hopefully that same dynamic will come into play this year.


How Effective Would A Travel Ban Be Against Countries With Ebola?

Posted by on October 18, 2014 at 4:38 pm. 10 Comments :

America’s politicians and pundits are engaged in a bitter debate over what to do about the Ebola non-crisis. One of the most fervently argued issues is whether or not to implement a travel ban against countries that are having a problem with Ebola.

GOP Tents America

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Let’s set aside for the moment that the United States is one of those countries, and that conservatives believe that because of our allegedly incompetent president, porous borders, and lax security, it is just going to get worse. So you’d have to ask if the the wingnuts want a travel ban on America.

The remaining arguments center on what benefits and harm will result from a ban on travel. Right-wing politicos have lined up on the side of a ban arguing that it would keep infected persons out of the U.S. On the other side are doctors, scientists, and other public health experts who assert that a ban would serve no purpose because people could still travel to places without a ban and continue on from there to the U.S. In the process they would have slipped though existing monitoring and tracking procedures. In addition, a ban would present an obstacle to the flow of doctors and supplies to the areas that need them most.

What I haven’t seen in any discussion on this topic is a straightforward, unbiased look at the relevant statistics associated with a travel ban. So here is what we are really talking about.

First of all, there is already a de facto ban due to the fact that there are no direct flights on U.S. carriers from the affected West African countries to the United States. However, travelers originating from those countries do arrive here via connections in other countries. The total is estimated to be about 150 per day.

The first (and only) infected West African to arrive in the U.S. was Thomas Eric Duncan. He was a Liberian who began his travel on September 19, without noticeable symptoms. He later became ill and eventually died in a Dallas hospital.

It’s difficult to pinpoint when the risk for Ebola-infected travelers began. So let’s just begin counting on the day that Duncan arrived in the U.S. From then it has been 28 days. With 150 travelers from the affected West African countries arriving every day for 28 days, there have been 4,200 people arriving here from the troubled region. And out of that 4,200 people there has been one – that’s ONE – who became ill with Ebola. That’s 0.0024% of the travelers from West Africa. And for that Republicans and wingnut pundits want to impose a total ban on travel that experts insist will make matters worse.

Three other people with Ebola (all Americans) came home to the U.S. for treatment. They all survived, and no one at any of the hospitals where they were treated became ill. The only transmissions (two so far) occurred at the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital that treated Duncan.

Just thought you’d like to know.