Laura Ingraham is the new conservative substitute for Rush Limbaugh. While his stock goes down, hers goes up in the world of birthers and wingnuts who hang on her every word as a way to justify their insanity.
On Monday, she gave them another one when she blamed Obama for the single case of Ebola diagnosed here in the U.S. Calling for a travel ban to Sierra Leone, Ingraham said Obama allows them to continue because of his "familial connection with Africa."
She then elaborated on this thought by musing about why he might allow flights to continue, saying "He has an enormous amount of, I think, you know, core ties to the African continent. He's mindful of his own family history there. ... Come on, it doesn't make any sense not to have stopped these flights from coming in."
Wednesday night, CNN Tonight guests Ben Ferguson and Van Jones took that on, both agreeing that a travel ban is not called for, that Obama wasn't responsible for the person getting the virus, and that it was an overreaction.
But Jones took it one step farther, calling her allusion to Obama's father a "smear." I'll go one more than that -- it was birther bait. The only purpose for her to say what she said was to fuel that hater fire that still burns in the hearts of birthers and wingnuts like Everest Wilhelmsen, the Facebook lunatic raising money to 'remove the userper' from the White House.
Van Jones upped that yet another notch, when he called the whole thing "stupid."
He's right, it is stupid. Chris Matthews should take a hint and shut up about it too. Disease happens. The right response is the one that understands quarantines and disease control. The hysteria isn't going to change anything, nor will it magically immunize the country against the possibility of someone contracting Ebola. So calm the hell down, media, and be smart about this.
Listen to these guys. They have it right. The transcript of Van Jones' remarks follows:
To me it's worse than a stretch. It's stupid. This is not a stretch. This is stupid. It's low. The World Health Organization, nobody has said that we should be stopping planes from coming here at this point.
Ben is right about that. That's not in anybody's mind. If you think it's a bad policy, that's fine.
But what difference does it make where the president's dad is from? Why do they keep dragging that in? It's this whole smear campaign against the president. He's not really an American. I think it's low.
We are in a very serious situation in Africa and the world right now. We should be trying to support good information, not bad information.
