Jim Inhofe Maybe OK With Fighting Ebola Now, Maybe

Wingnuts who think it's just crazy for Barack Hussein Obama to send U.S. troops to Africa to fight Ebola -- don't be silly, you can't shoot a virus! -- have themselves a new hero in Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe. Until this morning, he had blocked funding for the mission because heis an amoral assholehe has serious concerns about stretching the defense budget too thin at a time when we need to be ready to do war in Syria and stuff.

The Department of Defense requested $1 billion for the mission, the House whittled that down to $750 million, and then when the proposal got to the Senate, "a limit of $50 million was put on the transfer until the DoD provided details on how the money would be spent to address the crisis." The Senate Armed Services Committee eventually approved the $750 million request, but the whole shootin' match was being held up by Inhofe. The money for the Africa mission would be transferred from a fund for the war in Afghanistan, which apparently is a good use of defense money, while preventing a disease outbreak from spreading further is a bad use of defense money.

Even after the DoD provided the details that Inhofe has requested, a spokesperson from his office said Thursday that Inhofe had not changed his mind. At the last moment this morning, Inhofe reversed course and allowed the funding to go through. Maybe someone promised he could cut funding for global warming research in exchange.

In other Ebola news, shrieking hate harpy Phyllis Schlafly told World Net Daily that she's pretty sure that Barack Obama is allowing patients infected with Ebola to be treated in the U.S. because he wants America to be more like Africa:  

“There are all kinds of diseases in the rest of the world, and we don’t want them in this country,” she said, “and it’s Obama’s job to keep them out.”

“Out of all the things he’s done,” Schlafly continued, “I think this thing of letting these diseased people into this country to infect our own people is just the most outrageous of all.”

Where exactly is that "President protects us from disease" clause in the Constitution? As of today, exactly zero people have been infected by the handful of Ebola patients brought to the U.S. for treatment, possibly because doctors know more about isolating infectious diseases than Phyllis Schlafly knows about containing her own idiocy. But she knows exactly why Barack Obama wants us all to get Ebola and die:

“Obama doesn’t want America to believe that we’re exceptional,” Schlafly said. “He wants us to be just like everybody else, and if Africa is suffering from Ebola, we ought to join the group and be suffering from it, too. That’s his attitude.”

This is just logic, really, if you simply give it a little thought.

And over at Fox, Keith Ablow, the World's Worst Psychiatrist, has some thoughts on why Barack Obama is encouraging all this fear. Darn that Obama and all his fearmongering!

Adults admit to anxiety about whether the illness could strike many more people here, and children have confided to me that they are terrified of Ebola. And what is being said is only the obvious part of the psychological virus (call it "Ebolophobia") that is spreading; I would venture that millions of people are already unconsciously spending mental energy to suppress their worries that the disease could infect them or those they love.

Keith Ablow likes naming diseases that don't exist! We're sort of wondering why anyone needs to "suppress their worries" about Ebola, when it makes more sense to simply learn a few things about it from sources other than paranoid hucksters, and then you don't need to worry. Oh. We see Ablow's problem. Anyway, all this fear -- which Ablow upgrades to a "psychological virus" -- is totes Obama's fault, says Ablow, "because of President Obama’s continuing reticence to put America first."

For instance, Obama hasn't put a travel ban in place because he listens to public health policy experts instead of Fox News. Health experts say that travel bans wouldn't work to stop the Ebola virus -- but even if that's true, shouldn't we institute such a ban to make people feel like we're doing something?

Such a travel ban would go some distance to stem the tide of Ebolophobia, too. It would symbolize our country’s intention to shore up its defenses against the illness. But President Obama is very sensitive to being defined in any way by the borders of this country. I think he sees himself as a citizen of the world and sees Americans as having infected others with our deadly economic policies for a long time, thereby inflicting untold suffering on developing nations. To now lead the way to America insulating itself from a scourge sweeping the very countries he seems to think we have preyed upon could, of course, strike him (if only unconsciously) as profoundly unfair.

I believe the president may literally believe we should suffer along with less fortunate nations. And if he does, that is a very dangerous psychological stance from which to confront Ebola.

Keith Ablow sure is a smart person! He has diagnosed exactly why President Obama has this pathological need to make America unsafe:

Let me say this plainly, as a psychiatrist who has studied this president only from a distance: In order for President Obama to keep thinking of himself as the leader of the world -- and not just the free world -- it may be that our boundaries must remain porous, allowing illegal immigrants and, potentially, even diseases to flow through them.

Yr Wonkette will not claim a similar level of psychiatric training, but we do worry that perhaps Keith Ablow's brain may be infected with pathogens from having his head so far up his ass.

[ MotherJones / RightwingWatch via RawStory / FoxNews via Mediaite ]