Quotes Of The Day -- Breaking Containment

 

"... The CDC benefited from ears on the ground during that [Ebola] outbreak, which began in late 2013 and grew to more than 28,000 cases and 11,000 deaths. Some were CDC staff, others were contractors or physicians at partner organizations like USAID.  [snip]

"But last year, DOGE took a wrecking ball to that network. USAID was shut down practically overnight, which led to Ebola-prevention funding being “accidentally” canceled, as Elon Musk cavalierly noted. Musk at the time claimed it had been restored, but ultimately the health infrastructure was dismantled. Meanwhile, the CDC faced its own steep cuts and the U.S. — which had long been the WHO’s top funder — withdrew from the organization entirely.

"While it’s too early to directly blame those cuts for the late detection of the current outbreak, one thing is certain: The decimation of USAID and the U.S.’ exit from the WHO will make containing the spread much more difficult..." -- Lisa Jarvis, Bloomberg News, on why "Containing Ebola Is Hard. The U.S. Made It Worse."

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“But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States….”

-Section 4, 14th Amendment

"... It is by now widely understood that the 14^th Amendment guarantees birthright citizenship, and protection from state interference with citizenship rights. The Amendment incorporates the concept of equality – racial equality – into our Constitution for the first time. In so doing the 14^th brings our Constitution into harmony with the core principle of the Declaration of Independence that 'all men are created equal.' The drafting and ratification of the 14^th Amendment constituted a stunningly ambitious act of constitutional repair and reconciliation.

But the Amendment does even more. For the first time, our Constitution confronted head-on the destructive forces that live in the DNA of our country that had been laid bare by the Civil War. The powerful force of white supremacist ideology would have to be cabined. But those founders recognized something else – that the strain of insurrection that led to secession and the creation of the Confederacy continued to run strong throughout the South, and it too would need to be disabled.

For these reasons, the 14th Amendment did more than guarantee equality. Section 2 of the Amendment contains a provision designed to punish southern states if they attempted to keep Black (men at the time) from voting. Section 3 bars those who participated in insurrection from serving in public office.

Section 4, excerpted above, bars payments to insurrectionists...." -- Sherrilyn Ifill, in "Sherrilyn's Newsletter," on "Trump's Insurrectionist Payout Scheme Violates the 14th Amendment."

Both quotes illustrate the bitter irony of the Malignant Fascist's "Make America Great Again" slogan when, in fact, it's a national suicide movement.