I can see it now: Testimony of parents who have contracted Zika virus and given birth to babies with microcephaly, overlaid with comments by Republican Members of Congress, explaining why they delayed the vote on Zika funding by 3 months, and underfunded it by 1/3.
Isn’t this the Daisy ad of this election, or am I missing something?
Unabogie
Someone has to make that ad first. But yes, Republicans are scum. Yet what’s the top story today? Not Zika. Emails.
Gin & Tonic
Timing is bad. They’d have to be second-trimester by now in order to be available for the ad, and we didn’t have zika here in the winter.
smith
They will find some way to blame it on Obama. After all, he was apparently responsible for the financial crash that happened before he was elected, so why wouldn’t he be responsible for everything that happened during his presidency?
Roger Moore
I don’t think it will work that well. When Zika really becomes a problem, the Republicans will be screaming about it at the top of their lungs, demanding to know why Obama didn’t do anything and blaming him for everything. The media will happily play along, no matter how ridiculous the claims or how much the Democrats hit back at them.
mistermix
@Gin & Tonic: How about a room full of pregnant women with Zika overlaid by those quotes. Actually, that’s even better – they’re sweating it every day, and what did Republicans do? Not a damn thing. Do-nothing Congress.
@Roger Moore: This is why we pay for ads – to get a message out that the media won’t report. Hillary will have a billion dollars to spend on this shit. And this probably works better as an attack ad in down-ticket races.
Also, the ad should be aired about 1 week before the election.
JPL
@Gin & Tonic: Pretty sure that Zika virus can strike anytime during the pregnancy.
I do think that you could do an ad though. It appears that Paul Ryan wants to kill every Zika mosquito by ridding us of the clean water act.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
Anyone else encountering a Liz Cheney ad at the top of this thread? Ugh.
amorphous
I’m just hopelessly depressed that we have a system that results in concepts like this, and moreover that they are painful accurate.
I’m a longtime mostly lurker here. I moved to Germany a few months ago. Since it was a family move I don’t expect to ever move back. And the thing is, I’m not sure I’m at all really saddened by that. Sure, we made a shit ton more money in the States than here, but at what cost? I would be lying if the “What If?” of swapping citizenship hasn’t crossed my mind, more and more every day as I see the pro-Trump assholes in my FB feed and ever day at work I get questions about the latest “Seriously, what’s the deal with you guys?” Trump-based news o’ the day.
Damned at Random
Microcephaly may just be the beginning. Children exposed in utero who don’t have microcephaly may exhibit developmental delays – all the data isn’t in yet. There should be monitoring in place to determine less obvious effects of the virus over time
Cacti
I wonder what next year’s trendy, exotic disease that will surely kill us all will be?
cintibud
I think it might be more effective if targeted at specific house members. By the time those ads start running the zika mess will be further along. At the national level the R’s will simply point to Obama, as others have said.
smith
@Cacti:
Plenty to choose from, and global warming will deliver them right to our doors!
JPL
One ad on tv now, and the repubs would act. They would of course blame Obama.
patrick II
The time to complain loudly about that was during the 3 months of Republican delay to set the groundwork for highlighting republican obstructionism. Right now all we did was ask, but we didn’t ask loud enough, often enough or with enough urgency. This should have been a big issue not for political reasons, but because preventing a viral plague is an important and vital policy issue. Everyone has been too damn calm.
JPL
Every now and then I’ll stream MSNBC, and I must just miss the outrage over the delay.
Trollhattan
@Cacti:
Cthulhu? More of a plague than discrete disease.
Mike in NC
@efgoldman: Drumpf is probably thinking of Liz as a potential running mate.
Trollhattan
@West of the Rockies (been a while):
I’m getting Paypal; a different sort of cash machine than Lizard. She’s so much like dear old dad she’d be rejected as a film character for being “too obvious.”
Gimlet
am I missing something?
You are deliberately trying to suppress future Zika-derived Republican Party members.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@amorphous: I would sell everything I own and probably could be persuaded to kill someone in the bargain just to get a shot at an opportunity like that. The spouse and I are now officially Too Old to be taken by most nations. And we both want out, bad. The end game is very clear and I want no part in living in America 1890s redux. Or 1920s, for that matter.
cleek
GOP: objectively pro-Zika
Mnemosyne
@Roger Moore:
As others have said, better to get the ads out now and make the Republicans deny reality later.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
I seriously hope my wife and I aren’t one of those people testifying. I mean, political victory is great and all, and I’m willing to do my part, but that’s a steeper price than I’m willing to pay.
pseudonymous in nc
Ryan’s social media shit today tells the story: “worry about zika later, kill mosquitos now”, i.e. mass spraying of DDT.
Wingnuts love them some DDT, because Cleek’s law and fuck bald eagles.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
I don’t see why they have to wait though. How about an ad “Coming this summer, courtesy of our Republican Congress” with images of these children from Brazil.
JPL
@pseudonymous in nc: He was to rid us of the clean air act, also.
gene108
@efgoldman:
Maybe only if he/she is from their state and/or district.
They are crapping on Rubio’s attempt to get funding. They crap all over states trying to get emergency relief from disasters, whether a Red state or Blue state; they do not care.
I do not know what evil drives their ideology, but they’d let cities drown and thousands die because…reasons…
hellslittlestangel
More likely, a Republican ad for the 2036 presidential campaign: “Hey, microcephalics! Vote for Trig Palin and Ivanka Trump! Gabba gabba, we accept you!”
scav
For some reason I just keep seeing an old-timey second amendment protection against those ZIka flying aliens. Heavily pregnant barefoot mama on the porch in a rocking chair, be-hatted red-blooded he-man next to her, picking out all the individual skeeters in the yard with his can-do, boot-strap, patriotic sniper skills.
gene108
@patrick II:
There’s no anti-Zika lobby. There’s no single group out there that’s pushing people to call their Congresscritters about Zika funding.
The whole Zika thing only really started being discussed late last year.
And it takes time for people, who have other things to do, to let that sink in, especially in the Fall and Winter months, when mosquitoes are not a concern.
WJS
Pointing out the shortcomings of Republicans is shrill and it means you won’t get invited back on TV, so don’t do it, ever, okay?
patrick II
@gene108:
Somebody might try leading instead of following. Zika is potentially massively harmful to significant portions of the population — and we need a lobby and maybe some contributors? WTF.
jl
In terms of economic efficiency, the best time to really stop an epidemic, or establishment of endemic infectious disease, is to whomp on it big time when its threat is first detected. If it expands above an initial threshold, then end up in typical dismal world of having to put up with it, and dicker over how much effort should be put into control before additional cost doesn’t justify additional benefits from control.
The only good news (so far) is that only two or three mosquito species carry the virus and their habits are very well known. So we know where to look. In California, control will be relatively easier compared to things like Nile Virus. I dunno about the South.
GOP should be slammed hard on their malfeasance on Zika. How effective the an ad campaign will be depends on whether the first reports of infected mosquito populations in US come out before or after the election, unfortunately. But I think probability nearly one that it will become endemic in some parts of the country (including Northern California).
JPL
@pseudonymous in nc: Maybe they’ll use agent orange.. that’s suppose to work on mosquitoes.
? Martin
@patrick II:
Something that is widely acknowledged to be harmful in that way doesn’t need a champion. There is no ‘Don’t set yourself on fire’ lobby. It’s literally the least we expect out of our elected leaders. As soon as you feel you need to advocate that, you should instead acknowledge that we have completely lost our governance.
Mustang Bobby
@smith: I had a tweet tiff with someone who claims that “Barry” stole $500 million from the Zika fund and gave it to the UN Green Fund. Oy.
? Martin
@pseudonymous in nc:
Bald eagles isn’t what you should be worried about.
DDT is well known for it’s persistence. Basically, it never goes away. Women pass it to their children through breast milk, and the children pass it along as well. Animals accumulate it in their bodies and pass it onto humans through dairy products and meat.
Swapping out one birth defect for another (and some cancer as well) hardly seems like a good bargain.
nutella
Yeah, you’re missing something, OP. When we get to the general election it’s going to be wall to wall on the MSM just like ebola was and EVERYTHING about it is going to be Obama’s and Clinton’s and dirty, dirty immigrants’ fault. The Republican refusal to deal with the public health issue when it was a small problem will go straight into the memory hole.
Exurban Mom
This goes along with the ad another BJer suggested recently: “Republicans: They Want You Dead.” Seriously, one could easily list a long strong of actions, inactions, delays and malfeasance leading to the deaths or injuries of American people. And it wouldn’t even require hyperbole.
patrick II
@? Martin:
Amen.
pseudonymous in nc
@patrick II:
This is another reason why American government is broken: you can’t get any traction on legislative stuff during a presidential election year because the political press are all primaries and all horse-race all the time. There was interest in who replaced Boehner, but right now the press has mostly forgotten that there’s an unprecedented refusal in the Senate to consider a SCOTUS nominee. Legislating? Who cares?
pseudonymous in nc
@? Martin: silly Martin, every good conservative knows that DDT is safe to humans and that back in the day people bathed in it and abortions cause breast cancer.
JPL
@pseudonymous in nc: Did anyone ask Ryan about travel overseas? Maybe instead of a vaccine, they could just warn everyone about travel to countries, that decide not to poison their citizens.
J R in WV
@amorphous:
We’ve talked about where to go if that nazi bastard gets elected… Belize, Costa Rica, Europe appeals to me, but I might have trouble with a new language…
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@efgoldman:
Once more running for Congress critter in Wyoming. Smug mug, rheumy eyes….
Villago Delenda Est
@srv: There are a great many things you can’t see.
Elliott
Don’t forget to add in this little detail: Zika can be sexually transmitted.
father pussbucket
Why was Obama putting perverts in our bathrooms when he should have been spraying DDT everywhere?
Matt McIrvin
Fear makes people right-wing. The right-wing spins on this, blaming it on dirty immigrants, sex perverts and hippie DDT bans, will win over any liberal messaging. The best we can do is control the damage.
Davis X. Machina
@scav: It’s alarming how big a flap has been made over one, albeit interesting, heterodox Socialist psychoanalist-cum-theater-critic. And I’m not sure exactly how he spreads disease. But then I’m not a scientist
Davis X. Machina
@Elliott: My old Jesuit moral theoloy professor used to say “Life is a disease; an invariably fatal, sexually transmitted, disease.’
Millard Filmore
@CONGRATULATIONS!: How many years do you have to go before retirement? Thailand and Philippines have large English speaking areas, and are friendly.
My worry is that the Republicans will somehow make it very difficult to transfer retirement and SS money out of the country.
Frank Wilhoit
You’re missing two things.
1: Zika, even if it turns out to be a very bad epidemic as such things go, is probably not going to be in the “everybody knows somebody who…” category.
2: no one believes in public health.
Jeffro
@Gin & Tonic:
I agree, but I think the solution is to do the ad, only with future dates and actors, overlaid with the actual/current quotes from GOP Congressmen.
“June 2017: Congressional testimony on Zika epidemic. Etc etc”
Will Reks
I think its more likely we’ll see ads claiming illegal immigrants are bringing Zika with them as they traverse our borders.
SFAW
@blomi:
Oh, look, blomi is here for his standard “Fuck all the FPers” song stylings.
SFAW
@Mike in NC:
Although I guess there’s no reason he wouldn’t try both of those paths.
J R in WV
@Will Reks:
Illegal Mosquitoes flying over Trump’s fairy wall ???
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Frank Wilhoit: As of about a month ago, there were 91,000 Zika infections in Brazil with 5,000 cases of microcephaly, or roughly 5.5%.
There are 669 locally-acquired Zika cases in Puerto Rico. Roughly quadrupling in 2 months.
100k locally-acquired infections in the US seems like an unlikely outcome this year, but who knows.
But it shouldn’t even be in the realm of possibilities. The fact that we have to worry about such things is a sign of how deranged the GOP and the Teabaggers are now.
Cheers,
Scott.
Will Reks
@J R in WV: Sure, something like that.
kimp
The Zika virus seems to be status blind. When middle class families start to be fearful that they may be impacted by disabled children, anti-abortion laws will get a whole new look. Congress will then, albeit too late, give it the attention and funding required. They are incapable of seeing a bigger picture.
Mnemosyne
@Frank Wilhoit:
As has been shown here in California multiple times, not believing in public health doesn’t protect you from getting infected with a virus. In fact, it makes you more vulnerable to infection. But you can’t reason people out of a stupid, harmful belief.
Sam Dobermann
An antibiotic resistant strain of bacteria has now been found in the US.
Probably coming to a hospital near you.
We have an appalling lack of research going on in field of antibiotics. I think all the pharma companies selling in the US should be dinged a certain amount — perhaps based on either profits or amount of PR and advertising spending — to fund some labs for antibiotic research. Any profit/excess from sales would go back into that research lab(s).
One can dream.