Of course, this is only a budget *proposal*. Congress will make its own changes. Granted they can blame everything and anything on Trump, far more than they would do with an actual Republican President.
... Finally, we get to Earth Science. This proposal cuts it overall by about $100 million (in a just shy of $2 billion total), and it does so in large part by axing four missions: DSCOVR, OCO-3, PACE, and CLARREO Pathfinder. You may not be shocked to learn that all four are important climate missions. Given the maniacal denial of the reality of climate change by Trump and essentially everyone he has put in a position of power (including Scott Pruitt, the head of the EPA), cutting these missions in the budget was as easily predictable as it is ridiculously short-sighted, and, frankly, dangerous....
I wouldn’t expect the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to be able to pick up the slack, either: Deep cuts are proposed for it as well (of course), and the GOP members in Congress have been cheerleading this sort of thing for years.
It is this aspect of the coming budget that has me most up in arms. We are heating this planet up, and that is already affecting us, and will only get worse as time goes on. With Trump in the White House and the GOP running both sides of Congress, this is more than worrisome. It’s potentially catastrophic....
Sam Clovis, a former Trump campaign adviser and one-time conservative talk radio host, has no background in the hard sciences, nor any policy experience with food or agriculture. Still, that did not stop President Donald Trump from officially nominating Clovis to the position of the United States Department of Agriculture’s undersecretary of research, education, and economics, the agency’s top science position....
Maybe not "policy", but it does look like he has plenty of experience with food.
"Censoring experts for doing their jobs is an abuse of authority. Launch an investigation into Department of the Interior Secretary Zinke's arbitrary reassignment of Joel Clement and 50 other senior officials and scientists."
Because of his Russia link via Papadopoulos. Not because of his being appointed as the Agriculture Department's chief scientist, despite having no science credentials and being a climate change denier. (Though perhaps the jury is still out on whether climate is important to agriculture.)
Because of his Russia link via Papadopoulos. Not because of his being appointed as the Agriculture Department's chief scientist, despite having no science credentials and being a climate change denier. (Though perhaps the jury is still out on whether climate is important to agriculture.)
Can we say that it's an indirect win for science if a wholly unqualified AGW denier is also revealed to be an America-hating traitor?
... Clovis's decision comes just days after court filings indicate that he may have encouraged President Trump's campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos to set up meetings with Russians for the Trump campaign.
Court document show that an unnammed campaign supervisor encouraged Papadopoulos. The Washington Post reported that the unnamed campaign supervisor was Clovis, who was Trump's national campaign co-chairman....
Because of his Russia link via Papadopoulos. Not because of his being appointed as the Agriculture Department's chief scientist, despite having no science credentials and being a climate change denier. (Though perhaps the jury is still out on whether climate is important to agriculture.)
I thought that went without saying. Has any trumpette lost trump's support due to ineptness, or ignorance?
Trump: “We had the safest border in the history of our country - or at least recorded history. I guess maybe a thousand years ago it was even better.”
I thought that went without saying. Has any trumpette lost trump's support due to ineptness, or ignorance?
Depends on your definition - Lewandowski, Manafort, Flynn, Price, Marino, Comms Directors exploding like Spinal Tap drummers, and probably a few that I'm forgetting. It sounds like Jared will be one of the next scapegoats.
Has any trumpette lost trump's support due to ineptness, or ignorance?
Just the opposite:
"I'm Leninist. Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that's my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today's establishment...
- chief Trump strategist Steve Bannon, to a Daily Beast reporter in 2013
The Trump team keeps appointing people to head government agencies who are on record as wanting to dismantle those agencies. Or if unavailable, appointing incompetents to head them. A non-scientist climate change denier as chief agriculture scientist hits that Venn diagram right in the middle, and is consistent with Bannon's goal.
----
BTW, there's a big recall on Kidde (based in North Carolina) home fire extinguishers. I just checked mine, and they're in the recall. Apparently they'll send a replacement model at no charge.
BTW, there's a big recall on Kidde (based in North Carolina) home fire extinguishers. I just checked mine, and they're in the recall. Apparently they'll send a replacement model at no charge.
Pretty sure that’s the rip in the space/time fabric caused by so many working to take us back to the 19th Century.
Somehow I’m sure it will be linked to the gays before sunset!!!
Well, we gays are apparently very powerful in that way. You know, causing floods and droughts and terrorist attacks and all.
It’s the sound of millions of women roaring in unison “No Moore.”
God smites Moore!! Film of small smoking crater at Moore’s residence at 5pm!!
That was their final warning.
It was God editing Moore’s copy of the 10 Commandments. He added “or daughters” to the commandment about “coveting thy neighbor’s wife”.
And don’t forget the one about lying too — that one is toast.
If you’re Republican, those were Strongly-Worded Suggestions, not Commandments
Some Republican marked their ballot for Jones and their head exploded?
And finally, more creatively poetic than is decent on a web forum:
Miss Leigh (based on Annabel Lee, as retold by Roy Moore):
It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom in the south,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Miss Leigh;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to get away from me.
I was a predator and she was a child,
In this kingdom in the south,
But I loved with a love that was more like a shove—
I and my Miss Leigh—
With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven
proclaimed was disgusting to all but me.
And this was the reason that, not long ago,
In this kingdom in the south,
A sound bellowed out of the air, chilling
all who would vote for me;
So that her local policemen came
And bore all girls away from me,
To shut up my supporters,
In this kingdom in the south.
_____________________________________________
I could go on, but I don’t want to hack up any more of my favorite poem by Poe. Suffice to say it gets my point across.
CDC banned from using 'evidence-based' and 'science-based' on official documents: report
The Trump administration has reportedly banned the Centers for Disease Control from using the phrases “evidence-based” and “science-based” on official documents.
Senior CDC officials distributed the list of “forbidden” words and phrases to policy analysts at the CDC on Thursday, the Washington Post reported Friday. The list also bans the use of “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender” and “fetus.”
Analysts are reportedly prohibited from using the phrases on official documents they prepare for the 2019 budget, which is expected to be released in February.
An analyst who attended the meeting at the CDC in Atlanta told the Washington Post that instead of “evidence-based” or “science-based,” policy analysts are instructed to use the phrase, “CDC bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes.”
The analyst told the Post that other branches of President Trump’s health department are likely adhering to the same list of banned words. The source said that others at the meeting reacted with surprise when given the list.
“It was very much, ‘Are you serious? Are you kidding?’” the analyst said, “In my experience, we’ve never had any pushback from an ideological standpoint.”
