Science Sunday

posted by The Vidiot @ 11:53 AM Permalink

NASA Scientists in Deutsch with the White House:

NASA, rapidly becoming the No Actual Science Allowed agency, is being used by Bushco to advance their religion and politics¹. While the scientific papers are still peer reviewed, it tuns out that means reviewed by a 'peer of the realm' of our imperial presidency. King George has appointed² a 24 year old former campaign worker to stifle science and promote the fundamentalist screed of Intelligent Design.

George Deutsch, whose qualifications for the job consist of being an intern in the "war room" of the 2004 Bush-Cheney re-election campaign, has repeatedly promoted one religious point of view over, you know, actual science. From the NYT:

Climate science has been a thorny issue for the administration since 2001, when Mr. Bush abandoned a campaign pledge³ to restrict power plant emissions of carbon dioxide, the main heat-trapping gas linked to global warming, and said the United States would not join the Kyoto Protocol, the first climate treaty requiring reductions.
[...]
Repeatedly that year, public-affairs directors at all of NASA's science centers were admonished by White House appointees at headquarters to focus all attention on Mr. Bush's January 2004 "vision"⁴ for returning to the Moon and eventually traveling to Mars.

Starting early in 2004, directives, almost always transmitted verbally through a chain of midlevel workers, went out from NASA headquarters to the agency's far-flung research centers and institutes saying that all news releases on earth science developments had to allude to goals set out in Mr. Bush's "vision statement" for the agency, according to interviews with public-affairs officials working in headquarters and at three research centers.
[...]
In October 2005, Mr. Deutsch sent an e-mail message to Flint Wild, a NASA contractor working on a set of Web presentations about Einstein for middle-school students. The message said the word "theory" needed to be added after every mention of the Big Bang.

The Big Bang is "not proven fact; it is opinion," Mr. Deutsch wrote, adding, "It is not NASA's place, nor should it be to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator."

It continued: "This is more than a science issue, it is a religious issue. And I would hate to think that young people would only be getting one-half of this debate from NASA. That would mean we had failed to properly educate the very people who rely on us for factual information the most."

So a 24 your old republican operative turned pr flack is a better judge of science and the facts than the actual scientists who did the research!?
Foooomph! [/sound of head imploding]

---

IG stands for Ignoring Gripes:
First the good news:

An FBI-led watchdog agency has opened an investigation into multiple complaints accusing NASA Inspector General Robert W. Cobb of failing to investigate safety violations and retaliating against whistle-blowers. Most of the complaints were filed by current and former employees of his own office.

Written complaints and supporting documents from at least 16 people have been given to investigators. They allege that Cobb, appointed by President Bush in 2002, suppressed investigations of wrongdoing within NASA, and abused and penalized his own investigators when they persisted in raising concerns.

Now the bad news:

The complaints are being reviewed by the Integrity Committee of the President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency.⁵ Cobb is among four of 11 inspectors general appointed by Bush who previously worked in the White House, and one of nine with no audit experience.6

Obviously Mr. Cobb is doing a heckuva job!





1) Yes, I know religion and politics is redundant for this regime. [back]

2) Or was that 'anointed?' It's so hard to tell these days. [back]

3) Translation: "abandoned a campaign pledge" = 'lied.' [back]

4) I think perhaps they meant 'visions', See: aberration, apparition, delusion, fantasy, head trip, hallucinations, illusion, mirage, phantasm, phantasmagoria, phantom, pink elephant, pipe dream. Ready examples of georgie's 'vision' include not being able to find his a$$ with both hands in a hall of mirrors, an inablilty to pour pi$$ from a boot with the instructions on the heel, and a proven ability to f@#! up an anvil.

5) Every time I read that the word 'oxymoron' comes to mind. [back]

6) I'm starting to sense a pattern here, but maybe it's just the Scotch. [back]