# Stupid liberal idea of the day **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [April 20, 2011, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-liberal-idea-of-the-day/579086 "2011-04-20T15:35:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 112
**Author:** ![zoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zoid/32/336_2.png) [@zoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zoid)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2014, 5:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-liberal-idea-of-the-day/579086/2221 "2014-07-30T05:28:22Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > On the CDC issue and their ability to prevent or handle a possible ebola outbreak, there can be no surprise. How the fuck can the CDC monitor everywhere an Ebola outbreak might occur and be on top of it?! There’s no way to guarantee that an Ebola outbreak _somewhere_ in Africa will not come as a surprise to the entire world. Your expectations are irrational. As you yourself stated the CDC has quarantine procedures and there is no reason to think they don’t work. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2014, 5:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-liberal-idea-of-the-day/579086/2222 "2014-07-30T05:32:41Z")
The CDC knows about the outbreak in Africa. They know Americans are trying to help. They know those Americans will be returning home. They now know that one who was infected actually tried. So it’s not irrational at all to want to know, “Do the quarantine procedures work?” Your assertion that there’s no reason to assume they don’t is not evidence that they do in fact, work. This is where the President should be finding out. He should not be finding out in the papers that it didn’t work because their procedures were unclear and they weren’t certain what authority they had. That would be very bad. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2014, 5:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-liberal-idea-of-the-day/579086/2223 "2014-07-30T05:36:59Z")
A quick search does verify that the PResident has been engaged on the issue as far as the outbreak in Africa: > **[Obama briefed on Ebola outbreak as U.S. agencies provide support: U.S. official](https://news.yahoo.com/obama-briefed-ebola-outbreak-u-agencies-support-u-194035605.html;_ylt=A0LEVxDng9hTVRoAPZ1XNyoA;_ylu=X3oDMTEzamh2YjAyBHNlYwNzcgRwb3MDMQRjb2xvA2JmMQR2dGlkA1ZJUDM2NV8x)** > > President Barack Obama is getting updates on the outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, an administration official said on Monday, noting U.S. agencies had increased their assistance in the past several... So that’s good. Hopefully he’s also aware of the fact that we just dodged a bullet and is making sure we’re ready if someone infected actually makes it into a US airport. ---
**Author:** ![zoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zoid/32/336_2.png) [@zoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zoid)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2014, 5:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-liberal-idea-of-the-day/579086/2224 "2014-07-30T05:39:58Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > So it’s not irrational at all to want to know, “Do the quarantine procedures work?” Your assertion that there’s no reason to assume they don’t is not evidence that they do in fact, work. This is where the President should be finding out. He should not be finding out in the papers that it didn’t work because their procedures were unclear and they weren’t certain what authority they had. That would be very bad. So you concoct some hypothetical situation that _ **never** _ happened because of hypothetical failures in hypothetical procedure you know nothing about and you want to hold Obama responsible for this hypothetical failure. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2014, 5:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-liberal-idea-of-the-day/579086/2225 "2014-07-30T05:43:19Z")
You’re paranoid.🙂 All I’m saying is that I hope he’s being proactive this time. It’s not hypothetical. At some point, an infected person is going to enter a US airport. What happens next, the buck stops with him. ---
**Author:** ![zoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zoid/32/336_2.png) [@zoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zoid)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2014, 5:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-liberal-idea-of-the-day/579086/2226 "2014-07-30T05:45:43Z")
How the fuck is that even conceivable true? We already established that the POTUS cannot possibly oversee the entire federal government. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2014, 5:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-liberal-idea-of-the-day/579086/2227 "2014-07-30T05:49:57Z")
1. That is actually his job. 2. When his chain of command is failing, it becomes his job to fix it. 3. When something big is coming down the pike and he knows it might be coming, or has already come, he will want to give it his personal attention. So far, everything I’ve read tells me this is on his radar, so maybe he’s already doing what he should be doing. That would be a good thing. What would be bad is for him to just throw up his hands and say, “What can I do? It’s all just too much! I guess I just have to hope they know what they are doing.” as you are suggesting. Your argument seems to imply that every time the President decides to spend time on an issue, that he shouldn’t be doing it. Technically, almost all of that stuff is someone’s job under him. Unless you are arguing that he can focus on whatever he wants to focus on and how dare I suggest he focus on something that he finds boring… ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2014, 6:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-liberal-idea-of-the-day/579086/2228 "2014-07-30T06:00:09Z")
Why do I get the feeling that in the morning I’m going to get piled on, big time?🙂 ---
**Author:** ![zoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zoid/32/336_2.png) [@zoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zoid)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2014, 6:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-liberal-idea-of-the-day/579086/2229 "2014-07-30T06:00:37Z")
No one is saying throw up your hands when the shit hits the fan. Of course he should manage the aftermath. You’re saying he should never let the shit hit the fan and that’s just not possible. I’m guessing you never held a management position in a large corporation. When you take over the position, some of the shit you find out has been happening for years will turn your fucking hair white. The problem is sometimes you find it out and fix it relatively quickly Sometimes it takes months of getting to know the operations before you say “OKAY, this has to stop.” Sometimes it only becomes apparent when something goes tits-up and then you find out that a group of people 3 levels down from you have been doing something so crazy that no one would have ever expected it. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2014, 6:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-liberal-idea-of-the-day/579086/2230 "2014-07-30T06:15:00Z")
> [@zoid](#): > > No one is saying throw up your hands when the shit hits the fan. > Of course he should manage the aftermath. > You’re saying he should never let the shit hit the fan and that’s just not possible. I get what you’re saying. Sometimes things just catch you by surprise and there’s no way you could have known beforehand. Shit happens. But often, you get warning of what’s coming. “Osama bin Laden determined to strike the US.” “Hey, there’s a big fat hurricane bearing down on Louisiana!” “We’re getting reports that the VA is falsifying records”, “The IRS is holding up Tea Party applications”. All four of those examples, the White House was warned and in three of those cases took no action(in the example of Katrina, the President was pro-active in making sure FEMA was ready, but failed to follow through, even after it was obvious FEMA was faltering.) > [@](#): > > I’m guessing you never held a management position in a large corporation. > When you take over the position, some of the shit you find out has been happening for years will turn your fucking hair white. > The problem is sometimes you find it out and fix it relatively quickly > Sometimes it takes months of getting to know the operations before you say “OKAY, this has to stop.” > Sometimes it only becomes apparent when something goes tits-up and then you find out that a group of people 3 levels down from you have been doing something so crazy that no one would have ever expected it. Sure, that happens a lot. Since you are implying you have experience with this, what do you do when people below you or outside your part of the organization are telling you things are going wrong? Do you investigate and find out if things are as bad as they say, or do you go into CYA mode or even retaliate against the informers? When a major project or rollout was coming, did you just assume your folks could handle it or did you speak to them, ask them if they needed anything, was their role clear? I’d imagine you did your job well. I’m not in management right now, I’m in a pretty low position in my company. And me and my team do our jobs very well, so we rarely have to hear from upper management. But when something new or big is coming and we have to implement it, they come to see us, find out how we’re doing, make sure we understand what’s expected of us. And since it’s a great company, I can say without worrying about them being angry at me, “I’m going to need a training class because I have no experience with this software.” If an organization doesn’t have a healthy culture like that, if whistleblowers are punished, if people raising concerns are told to shut up, if management seeks to cover up failures or point fingers, if the top management doesn’t get involved where process breaks down and middle and lower management can’t or won’t make the calls to fix it, then you get a broken organization. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2014, 6:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-liberal-idea-of-the-day/579086/2231 "2014-07-30T06:29:18Z")
Here’s a concrete example of how it should work: Our main production system went down because our data center had a power outage. This caused the entire company to grind to a halt. Of course, I hear from the CEO within ten minutes. “What happened?” I told him. “What are we doing to fix it?” I said that I’ve contacted this person, this person, and that person and they are assessing the cause of the problem. “Do we have an ETA?” Not yet, we have to determine why we had a single point of failure when we thought we didn’t. “Keep me updated, let me know as soon as you have an ETA.” When it was all over, the CEO got everyone involved in his office to find out what we were doing to prevent this occurrence in the future. “You said we had backup power! Why didn’t that happen?” He got an answer which I still don’t fully understand. “What do we need to make sure this doesn’t happen again?” He got an answer that wasn’t terribly expensive. “Great, get it done.” Now let’s say our organization wasn’t so healthy, suffered from years of bad leadership, but we’ve got this new CEO who promises to change things. Same thing happens. “What happened?” I’m not sure. THe power seems to be out. “Is it being worked on?” Er, no, I don’t know what procedures to follow in case of something like this. I wasn’t adequately trained. “Did you ever bring up that you weren’t sure about how to do your job?” No, they get mad whenever I tell them my concerns. See, now a big problem in the organization has been identified. The organization must be fixed. Managers that created such a toxic culture have to be replaced. Employees have to be retrained. It sucks, but if the CEO is the only effective guy in the organization, he actually does have to give it his personal attention and ensure himself that it gets done. Likewise, if the President finds that he’s got a dysfunctional agency, like say, the VA, then he has to find out what the hell has been going wrong, fire the people responsible for things going so wrong, and retrain employees. Make sure they are comfortable raising their concerns with superiors, rather than what one employee said recently, “They have the power to destroy your life.” Since the federal bureaucracy is so big, hopefully there’s someone competent in the chain of command who can handle it so the PResident doesn’t have to personally. Problem is, in the VA, no such person has been identified. So as Tammy Duckworth, Illinois Representative and war hero said, " “I think he’s relied on Secretary Shinseki, but we could use his personal attention at this point.” > **[Obama's Silence Amid VA Crisis Raised Stakes for Democrats](https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-WB-45725)** > > Leaders on both sides of the aisle have woken up to the potential political fallout of the VA scandal, and as the allegations widen, so, too, has criticism of President Obama's handling of the matter. Shinseki wasn’t getting it done. No one was getting it done. Guess whose job it is when no one from the bottom all the way up to the President can’t get it done? It’s his job. ---
**Author:** ![zoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zoid/32/336_2.png) [@zoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zoid)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2014, 6:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-liberal-idea-of-the-day/579086/2232 "2014-07-30T06:36:46Z")
If people tell you things are going wrong that’s one thing, unfortunately no one ever tells you the bad news and frankly that’s a problem because the knee-jerk reaction of many mangers to bad news is to ask the messenger “what are you going to do about it?” The result is that people get keen to the fact that if nothing changes, middle management eventually gets replaced and we can go on doing exactly what we’ve done. If you do really intend to initiate change no one wants it because they just want to do what they did yesterday, go home at five, and get paid. The point is that to think that a guy with a 4 year contract can redefine the way all of the current federal government offices conduct business is simply unreasonable. When issue arise they should clearly be addressed but as I said, a complete review of even a single office could take years and cost millions. ---
**Author:** ![zoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zoid/32/336_2.png) [@zoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zoid)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2014, 6:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-liberal-idea-of-the-day/579086/2233 "2014-07-30T06:45:48Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Here’s a concrete example of how it should work: Our main production system went down because our data center had a power outage. This caused the entire company to grind to a halt. Of course, I hear from the CEO within ten minutes…Shinseki wasn’t getting it done. No one was getting it done. Guess whose job it is when no one from the bottom all the way up to the President can’t get it done? It’s his job. So you want the POTUS to get involved every time there’s a power outage at a facility? I’m guessing that’s not what you mean. The point is that there are underlings who must be held responsible for stuff like this, there is no way the POTUS can cover everything like you suggest. Everyone has to sleep, if a biological fact. What you describe is inhuman. ---
**Author:** ![Not\_Carlson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/bc79bd/32.png) [@Not\_Carlson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Not_Carlson)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2014, 9:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-liberal-idea-of-the-day/579086/2234 "2014-07-30T09:12:50Z")
I see this thread has devolved into the _Hypothetical Stupid Liberal Idea of the Day._ ---
**Author:** ![El\_Kabong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/el_kabong/32/496_2.png) [@El\_Kabong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Kabong)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2014, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-liberal-idea-of-the-day/579086/2235 "2014-07-30T13:12:43Z")
> [@Not\_Carlson](#): > > I see this thread has devolved into the _Hypothetical Stupid Liberal Idea of the Day._ Yeah, if only Obama hadn’t attacked the Republicans on not enacting immigration reform, we wouldn’t have this Ebola outbreak that we might eventually have. Or something. ---
**Author:** ![42fish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/4/b487fb/32.png) [@42fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/42fish)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2014, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-liberal-idea-of-the-day/579086/2236 "2014-07-30T14:02:44Z")
> [@Not\_Carlson](#): > > I see this thread has devolved into the _Hypothetical Stupid Liberal Idea of the Day._ TO be fair, it’s not any worse than the original “ **Clothy** ’s Stuff That Makes Me Mad That I’m Going to Call a Stupid Liberal Idea Even if It’s (a) Not Stupid; (b) Not Liberal; or (c) Neither Stupid Nor Liberal” was. ---
**Author:** ![Death\_of\_Rats](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a6a055/32.png) [@Death\_of\_Rats](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Death_of_Rats)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2014, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-liberal-idea-of-the-day/579086/2237 "2014-07-30T14:10:50Z")
> [@El\_Kabong](#): > > Yeah, if only Obama hadn’t attacked the Republicans on not enacting immigration reform, we wouldn’t have this Ebola outbreak that we might eventually have. Or something. The hypothetical Ebola outbreak that the President is already on top of…but [del]FIRE[/del] OBAMA BAD!!! ---
**Author:** ![Sinaptics](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/278dde/32.png) [@Sinaptics](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sinaptics)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2014, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-liberal-idea-of-the-day/579086/2238 "2014-07-30T14:25:54Z")
> [@Death\_of\_Rats](#): > > The hypothetical Ebola outbreak that the President is already on top of…but [del]FIRE[/del] OBAMA BAD!!! I’m actually going to count this as a win for Obama for successfully preventing a hypothetical outbreak. ---
**Author:** ![Double\_Foolscap](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85e7bf/32.png) [@Double\_Foolscap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Double_Foolscap)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2014, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-liberal-idea-of-the-day/579086/2239 "2014-07-30T15:14:11Z")
Don’t forget preventing the hypothetical outbreaks of Kuru Disease, Hog Cholera and Disco Fever. ---
**Author:** ![El\_Kabong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/el_kabong/32/496_2.png) [@El\_Kabong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Kabong)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2014, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-liberal-idea-of-the-day/579086/2240 "2014-07-30T15:48:31Z")
> [@Sinaptics](#): > > I’m actually going to count this as a win for Obama for successfully preventing a hypothetical outbreak. Not only that, but there has not been a single case of a Bengal tiger rampaging though a US airport since Obama was first elected. Fact. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-liberal-idea-of-the-day/579086.md?page=111) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-liberal-idea-of-the-day/579086.md?page=113)