Obama Names Indiana Political Hack As Ebola Czar

The People's Republic of Barack Obama today announced that a Central Indiana native and certified political hack, Ron Klain, will assume a new title as "Ebola czar." Klain is a North Central High School graduate with a law degree from Harvard. Do we no longer have a Surgeon General? What kind of medical experience does Klain have? CNN reports on more of the same kind of bizarre stuff you just can't make up.

President Barack Obama will appoint Ron Klain his "Ebola czar," knowledgeable sources tell CNN.

The president on Thursday signaled his openness to the idea to have one individual coordinating the entire federal response to any threat of an outbreak in the United States.

"It may make sense for us to have one person ... so that after this initial surge of activity, we can have a more regular process just to make sure that we're crossing all the T's and dotting all the I's going forward," Obama said.

The administration has been criticized for its response to the incidents of Ebola in the United States, in terms of how prepared hospitals have been for potential Ebola patients and also how prepared healthcare workers were in terms of their personal protective gear. Some lawmakers have called for a travel ban on individuals coming from West Africa where the outbreak is most serious but the administration has so far not embraced that idea.

Klain is highly regarded at the White House as a good manager with excellent relationships both in the administration and on Capitol Hill. His supervision of the allocation of funds in the stimulus act -- at the time and incredible and complicated government undertaking -- is respected in Washington. He does not have any extensive background in health care but the job is regarded as a managerial challenge.

He will report to both White House homeland security adviser Lisa Monaco and National Security Advisor Susan Rice, according to a White House official.

A former chief of staff to Vice President Joe Biden and also to then-Vice President Al Gore, Klain is currently President of Case Holdings and General Counsel of Revolution, an investment group. He has clerked for the U.S. Supreme Court and headed up Gore's effort during the 2000 Florida recount. He could not be reached for comment on Friday.

I don't know about the rest of you folks, but I've come to the conclusion the Ebola scare inside the United States is nothing but a big hoax on the American public. A guy easily boards a plane from Liberia to America after being exposed to several people who died from the disease before contracting the disease days later after he arrives in the U.S.  Despite being confined for days in a small apartment in which he came in contact with a number of family members and outsiders where he was blowing chunks and crapping non-stop from diarrhea, none of those unprotected people become infected.

Despite wearing the mandatory protective suits, two nurses who helped treat Thomas Eric Duncan before he died come down with the disease but not before hopping on planes and jaunting all over the country, one of whom was actively sick with the disease when she boarded a plane. Then we have this spectacle of one of the sick nurses being boarded on a plane by persons donning all of the protective gear while another guy with a clipboard, a supposed medical supervisor, comes into direct contact with the patient on the tarmac and then boards the plane without any protective gear. Did someone in wardrobes and costumes screw up? To add to the frivolity of it all, we're treated to a video recording of one of the supposed sick nurses, Nina Pham, who looks happy and healthy, invites us to come party with her in Maryland.

It seemed incredible to me as someone who survived a very serious illness after 10 days of hospitalization during which I required a ventilator to breath that Dr. Kent Brantly, the 33-year old doctor formerly from Indianapolis who became infected with the virus while helping treat victims in West Africa as part of the Doctors Without Borders project, could walk out of a hospital in Atlanta on his own looking quite healthy after supposedly being on his death bed for nearly three weeks while being treated with an experimental drug, ZMapp. Hell, he even walked into the hospital on his own after being flown across the Atlantic Ocean to Atlanta after being stricken by the disease. Perhaps it's all too incredible to believe.