"How dare you" was Glenn’s response to an outlandish attack ad created by Democrats which blamed the Ebola outbreak on Republican budget cuts. As the CDC continues to botch things up at every turn there should be more focus on what they should be doing - instead of political hackery.
Watch the ridiculous ad below:
"Wow," Glenn said. "This is absolutely outrageous. Just outrageous."
"Let me give you the facts. Over the past five years, the CDC has received just under $3 billion in transfers from the fund. Only 6 percent, $180 million of that $3 billion went towards building the epidemiology and laboratory capacity. Instead, this administration has focused the CDC on other priorities," Glenn explained.
Glenn read some of the facts about Ebola published by Giv. Bobby Jindal in Politico:
Instead, the Obama administration has focused the CDC on other priorities. While protecting Americans from infectious diseases received only $180 million from the Prevention Fund, the community transformation grant program received nearly three times as much money—$517.3 million over the same five-year period.The CDC's website makes clear the objectives of community transformation grants. The program funds neighborhood interventions like “increasing access to healthy foods by supporting local farmers and developing neighborhood grocery stores,” or “promoting improvements in sidewalks and street lighting to make it safe and easy for people to walk and ride bikes.” Bike lanes and farmer’s markets may indeed help a community—but they would do little to combat dangerous diseases like Ebola, SARS or anthrax.
"People are critical when we say things like, well, this food desert thing is stupid, and we shouldn't be wasting $500 million a year on it? Well, what happens. At what cost were we spending that to build grocery stores in communities that didn't need them. Or when you were talking about Agenda 21 and bike paths, people would say, oh, how could you possibly be critical of bike paths?" Stu said.
"Well, that money could have gone and should have gone to do something that the CDC should be doing, like stopping Ebola, which, by the way, is hard," he added.
"Every American should be outraged," Glenn said. "How dare you say that George Bush - by using a photograph of him viewing the World Trade Center from an airplane was using a tragedy, just for election purposes. How dare you say that, when people are currently dying, America is freaking out about Ebola, we're now talking about a possible 10,000 new cases a week, when there are only 8,000 cases currently worldwide. That we're talking about 10,000 cases a week, and what that will do to our country, how dare you ratchet up the fear with something like that commercial."
"Cut, cut, cut. G.O.P. kills. How dare you."
