Bush-world logic has some very deadly consequences.
Jun/10/2006 18:30
Mr. President,
Figures don't lie, but liers can figure. As long as people have understood how one number differs from another there have been unsavory people who use numbers to their advantage.
In high school, I enjoyed math, and science because there was only one answer to a math problem. ; 1 + 1 = 2. It is a universal truth, no matter where you were in the world, no matter whom you spoke with. Math seemed to be the purest form of logic. I also enjoyed science because the scientific method sorted out ambiguity. Water boils with the application of heat, gravity keeps us from floating up in space and force equals mass times acceleration regardless of where you are in the world. Back then, I had a big problem with English composition, because there were just too many correct or wrong answers for every writing assignment I was given. It was way too subjective for me.
I was never sure if our teachers graded us by the style alone or did the subject and our conclusions bias our final grades? If I wrote a feature piece on Adolf Hitler and ended the story on a sympathetic note for Nazis; would the teacher rate the story on style alone or would they allow the content and my pro-Nazi theme insured a lower grade? I wanted a good grade so I didn't take any chances, and I kept my articles mainstream; I was chicken. I just wanted to get back to math and science where the answers were absolute and apolitical.
Many years later I find myself longing for the same thing again. I want to get back to science where the answers are absolute and apolitical; so does the Union of Concerned Scientists.
In Bush-world I have learned that up is down, patriots are traitors, pollution is good, and one plus one only equals two if it supports right-wing conservatives or U.S. business interests. Math and science are not sacrosanct. Scientific facts are beaten into malleable bits of contrary information to justify almost anything
UCS
Scientists get really upset when their scientific results get distorted. More than 100,000 scientists engineers and other concerned citizens have formed an alliance, an independent nonprofit group called the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).
The UCS was founded in 1969 by faculty members and students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technologies who were concerned about the misuse of science and technology in society.
They have been very busy since you took office. Your science distortions of scientific truths have been so shocking; Nobel Laureates and world renown scientists have formally protested your actions.
The most recent public display of your war against science is your support of "intelligent design."
You publically sided with creationists who still believe evolution is a theory and consider science an affront to God and the Bible. You said intelligent design should be considered an alternative to evolution. This foolish argument went so far, that many schools even changed textbooks and added labels to others, promoting intelligent design.
Several Imax theaters, including some in science museums, were cowed into refused to show movies that include evolution, the Big Bang or the geology of the earth, because they were afraid of protests from people who object to films that contradict the bible's version on Earth's origin or its creatures.
The films that were banned included "Cosmic Voyage," which shows the universe and covers many subjects from subatomic particles to clusters of galaxies; "Galápagos," a film about the islands where Darwin first theorized about evolution; and "Volcanoes of the Deep Sea," an underwater movie which shows the exotic creatures that thrive in the hot, sulfurous vents in the ocean floor.
So your nut-jobs have the power to keep me from seeing movies about volcanos?
Science has been distorted on everything from Abstinence to Yellowstone Park and everything in-between including subjects like mad cow, abortion, drugs, mercury levels, cancer causing agents, and stem cells.
This false science has guided your policy decisions on laws, funding, foreign policy and people's health. And it is all based on crap.
You've suppressed scientific facts that don't support your dogma and promoted phony science that does. As president you want to manipulate science as you want to manipulate the news, except you can't completely control either one just ask the church.
The Church did it too
The Catholic church strived to control science a long time ago. Galileo was excommunicated because he stated and proved the sun was the center of our solar system not the earth. A major work published in 1632 resulted in Galileo's conviction on suspicion of heresy and a lifetime house arrest.
According to a church website on the issue, Galileo's case against the church's teachings demonstrated that the free pursuit of truth became possible only after science "liberated" itself from the theological shackles of the Middle Ages.
Early Warnings
The warnings from leading scientists immediately came in from the scientific community. They are not stupid; they knew what you were trying to do.
Early in your presidency many scientists began to see this disturbing pattern in your administration. Several prestigious scientific journals editorialized about your dealings in science including Science, Nature, and the New England Journal of Medicine.
An editor at Science, for example, said that you are injecting politics into arenas of science "once immune to this type of manipulation."
The editors of the Lancet also noticed "growing evidence of explicit vetting of appointees to influential [scientific] panels because of their political or religious opinions" and warned against "any further right-wing incursions" on those panels.
Rosina Bierbaum, dean of the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment, said the Bush administration has cut scientists out of some of the policy-making processes.
You gave physicist Richard Garwin a medal for his "valuable scientific advice on important questions of national security." Just three months later, Garwin joined more than 4,000 scientists and 48 Nobel prize winners signed a statement condemning you and your administration for misusing, suppressing, and distorting scientific advice.
"This administration has distanced itself from scientific information," said Kurt Gottfried of Cornell University, said this is part of a larger effort to let politics dominate pure science.
The behavior of the White House on these issues is part of a pattern that has led Russell Train, the EPA administrator under Presidents Nixon and Ford, to observe, “How radically we have moved away from regulation based on independent findings and professional analysis of scientific, health and economic data by the responsible agency to regulation controlled by the White House and driven primarily by political considerations.”
Just this last week you even directed The Washington office of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the agency responsible for protecting endangered salmon, to route media questions about salmon back to headquarters. Only three political appointees from the entire agency are authorized to talk about salmon, according to an employee who has been silenced.
Allowable Rocket Fuel In drinking water
During the last five years your EPA raised the minimum amount of perchlorate, a byproduct of rocket fuel, is allowable in our drinking water. The National Research Council panel, led by Richard B. Johnston Jr. of the University of Colorado's School of Medicine in Denver, concluded that perchlorate posed a health threat because it can interfere with the human thyroid gland, which controls how the brain develops in infancy.
The EPA panel did not suggest a specific limit for drinking water, but it did recommend an amount, they called a reference daily dose, that they say would not cause any problems if consumed in water and food.
Scientists said you weren't even close. The maximum daily dose of perchlorate recommended by the scientists is about 23 times higher than recently proposed by your EPA. The panel recommended 0.0007 milligrams per kilogram of body weight per day compared with EPA's 0.00003.
Government scientists from every department were censored and given political oversight. Global warming has not just silenced scientists at the EPA but also the Departments of Health and Human Services, Agriculture, and Interior. Special attention is given to any scientist who provided findings which contradicted your policies or your political supporters.
Robert Paine, an ecologist at the University of Washington who chaired an advisory panel on endangered salmon and trout, said his team was warned by the government to remove facts that undermined policy.
NASA scientists were ordered to remove any mention of the Big Bang from all documents provided to the public. They were also told to change their findings on global warming.
These are but a few of the distortions you have touted, the UCS has a pretty complete list at( http:/www.ucsusa.org )
No Guilt?
Doesn't it bother you that you are sacrificing every American's health to gain the goodwill of right-wing extremists and Republican-supported businesses? How is that any different from what Islamic extremists are doing in Iraq?
Extremists are very willing to accept the deaths of innocent Iraq's as collateral damage to fulfill their goals too.
It's hard to believe an American president would not realize that by helping himself politically in this manner he also helps our enemy. You are no better than Al Quida. Your distortion of science for political means is poisoning us.
Consequences
Highly qualified scientists have been dropped from advisory committees dealing with childhood lead poisoning, environmental and reproductive health, and drug abuse, while individuals associated with or working for industries subject to regulation has been appointed to these bodies.
The United States is losing its dominance in critical areas of science and innovation, according to federal and private experts who point to strong evidence like prizes awarded to Americans and the number of papers in major professional journals. Foreign advances in basic science equal and even exceed America'
World ranking
Our country already ranks in the bottom of civilized nations in math and science; I guess you want to keep us there.
You have infected so many scientific agencies in our government with so many muddleheaded-Bush-minions there is very little anyone can believe from any site with a .gov attached to it.
I couldn't even begin to guess how many people have died or been irrevocably damaged when you hide the truth and posted lies to pass Bible-thumper-supported legislation.
Collateral Damage
The collateral damage you've caused has to be tremendous, even if you just consider the weight many people give to government agencies such as the NASA, FDA, USDA, CDC, and the EPA.
These organizations affect every drink we take, every food we eat, every pill we ingest, and every breath we take.
Personal consequences
Can a president be charged with manslaughter? The definition of manslaughter is The unlawful killing of a human being without malice or premeditation, either express, or implied; distinguished from murder, which requires malicious intent.
Could an independent counsel construe intentionally forsaking our health for political gain, malicious intent? If not what could you be charged with for providing information which leeds to the death or serious injury of thousands of people?
One and one equals two junior , and not the church nor George Bush will ever change that.
From: comments@whitehouse.gov
Date: June 10, 2006 7:35:08 PM CDT
To: guzmatom@mac.com
On behalf of President Bush, thank you for your correspondence.
We appreciate hearing your views and welcome your suggestions.
Due to the large volume of e-mail received, the White House is
unable to respond to every message, and therefore this response
is an autoreply.
Thank you again for taking the time to write.
Figures don't lie, but liers can figure. As long as people have understood how one number differs from another there have been unsavory people who use numbers to their advantage.
In high school, I enjoyed math, and science because there was only one answer to a math problem. ; 1 + 1 = 2. It is a universal truth, no matter where you were in the world, no matter whom you spoke with. Math seemed to be the purest form of logic. I also enjoyed science because the scientific method sorted out ambiguity. Water boils with the application of heat, gravity keeps us from floating up in space and force equals mass times acceleration regardless of where you are in the world. Back then, I had a big problem with English composition, because there were just too many correct or wrong answers for every writing assignment I was given. It was way too subjective for me.
I was never sure if our teachers graded us by the style alone or did the subject and our conclusions bias our final grades? If I wrote a feature piece on Adolf Hitler and ended the story on a sympathetic note for Nazis; would the teacher rate the story on style alone or would they allow the content and my pro-Nazi theme insured a lower grade? I wanted a good grade so I didn't take any chances, and I kept my articles mainstream; I was chicken. I just wanted to get back to math and science where the answers were absolute and apolitical.
Many years later I find myself longing for the same thing again. I want to get back to science where the answers are absolute and apolitical; so does the Union of Concerned Scientists.
In Bush-world I have learned that up is down, patriots are traitors, pollution is good, and one plus one only equals two if it supports right-wing conservatives or U.S. business interests. Math and science are not sacrosanct. Scientific facts are beaten into malleable bits of contrary information to justify almost anything
UCS
Scientists get really upset when their scientific results get distorted. More than 100,000 scientists engineers and other concerned citizens have formed an alliance, an independent nonprofit group called the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).
The UCS was founded in 1969 by faculty members and students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technologies who were concerned about the misuse of science and technology in society.
They have been very busy since you took office. Your science distortions of scientific truths have been so shocking; Nobel Laureates and world renown scientists have formally protested your actions.
The most recent public display of your war against science is your support of "intelligent design."
You publically sided with creationists who still believe evolution is a theory and consider science an affront to God and the Bible. You said intelligent design should be considered an alternative to evolution. This foolish argument went so far, that many schools even changed textbooks and added labels to others, promoting intelligent design.
Several Imax theaters, including some in science museums, were cowed into refused to show movies that include evolution, the Big Bang or the geology of the earth, because they were afraid of protests from people who object to films that contradict the bible's version on Earth's origin or its creatures.
The films that were banned included "Cosmic Voyage," which shows the universe and covers many subjects from subatomic particles to clusters of galaxies; "Galápagos," a film about the islands where Darwin first theorized about evolution; and "Volcanoes of the Deep Sea," an underwater movie which shows the exotic creatures that thrive in the hot, sulfurous vents in the ocean floor.
So your nut-jobs have the power to keep me from seeing movies about volcanos?
Science has been distorted on everything from Abstinence to Yellowstone Park and everything in-between including subjects like mad cow, abortion, drugs, mercury levels, cancer causing agents, and stem cells.
This false science has guided your policy decisions on laws, funding, foreign policy and people's health. And it is all based on crap.
You've suppressed scientific facts that don't support your dogma and promoted phony science that does. As president you want to manipulate science as you want to manipulate the news, except you can't completely control either one just ask the church.
The Church did it too
The Catholic church strived to control science a long time ago. Galileo was excommunicated because he stated and proved the sun was the center of our solar system not the earth. A major work published in 1632 resulted in Galileo's conviction on suspicion of heresy and a lifetime house arrest.
According to a church website on the issue, Galileo's case against the church's teachings demonstrated that the free pursuit of truth became possible only after science "liberated" itself from the theological shackles of the Middle Ages.
Early Warnings
The warnings from leading scientists immediately came in from the scientific community. They are not stupid; they knew what you were trying to do.
Early in your presidency many scientists began to see this disturbing pattern in your administration. Several prestigious scientific journals editorialized about your dealings in science including Science, Nature, and the New England Journal of Medicine.
An editor at Science, for example, said that you are injecting politics into arenas of science "once immune to this type of manipulation."
The editors of the Lancet also noticed "growing evidence of explicit vetting of appointees to influential [scientific] panels because of their political or religious opinions" and warned against "any further right-wing incursions" on those panels.
Rosina Bierbaum, dean of the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment, said the Bush administration has cut scientists out of some of the policy-making processes.
You gave physicist Richard Garwin a medal for his "valuable scientific advice on important questions of national security." Just three months later, Garwin joined more than 4,000 scientists and 48 Nobel prize winners signed a statement condemning you and your administration for misusing, suppressing, and distorting scientific advice.
"This administration has distanced itself from scientific information," said Kurt Gottfried of Cornell University, said this is part of a larger effort to let politics dominate pure science.
The behavior of the White House on these issues is part of a pattern that has led Russell Train, the EPA administrator under Presidents Nixon and Ford, to observe, “How radically we have moved away from regulation based on independent findings and professional analysis of scientific, health and economic data by the responsible agency to regulation controlled by the White House and driven primarily by political considerations.”
Just this last week you even directed The Washington office of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the agency responsible for protecting endangered salmon, to route media questions about salmon back to headquarters. Only three political appointees from the entire agency are authorized to talk about salmon, according to an employee who has been silenced.
Allowable Rocket Fuel In drinking water
During the last five years your EPA raised the minimum amount of perchlorate, a byproduct of rocket fuel, is allowable in our drinking water. The National Research Council panel, led by Richard B. Johnston Jr. of the University of Colorado's School of Medicine in Denver, concluded that perchlorate posed a health threat because it can interfere with the human thyroid gland, which controls how the brain develops in infancy.
The EPA panel did not suggest a specific limit for drinking water, but it did recommend an amount, they called a reference daily dose, that they say would not cause any problems if consumed in water and food.
Scientists said you weren't even close. The maximum daily dose of perchlorate recommended by the scientists is about 23 times higher than recently proposed by your EPA. The panel recommended 0.0007 milligrams per kilogram of body weight per day compared with EPA's 0.00003.
Government scientists from every department were censored and given political oversight. Global warming has not just silenced scientists at the EPA but also the Departments of Health and Human Services, Agriculture, and Interior. Special attention is given to any scientist who provided findings which contradicted your policies or your political supporters.
Robert Paine, an ecologist at the University of Washington who chaired an advisory panel on endangered salmon and trout, said his team was warned by the government to remove facts that undermined policy.
NASA scientists were ordered to remove any mention of the Big Bang from all documents provided to the public. They were also told to change their findings on global warming.
These are but a few of the distortions you have touted, the UCS has a pretty complete list at( http:/www.ucsusa.org )
No Guilt?
Doesn't it bother you that you are sacrificing every American's health to gain the goodwill of right-wing extremists and Republican-supported businesses? How is that any different from what Islamic extremists are doing in Iraq?
Extremists are very willing to accept the deaths of innocent Iraq's as collateral damage to fulfill their goals too.
It's hard to believe an American president would not realize that by helping himself politically in this manner he also helps our enemy. You are no better than Al Quida. Your distortion of science for political means is poisoning us.
Consequences
Highly qualified scientists have been dropped from advisory committees dealing with childhood lead poisoning, environmental and reproductive health, and drug abuse, while individuals associated with or working for industries subject to regulation has been appointed to these bodies.
The United States is losing its dominance in critical areas of science and innovation, according to federal and private experts who point to strong evidence like prizes awarded to Americans and the number of papers in major professional journals. Foreign advances in basic science equal and even exceed America'
World ranking
Our country already ranks in the bottom of civilized nations in math and science; I guess you want to keep us there.
You have infected so many scientific agencies in our government with so many muddleheaded-Bush-minions there is very little anyone can believe from any site with a .gov attached to it.
I couldn't even begin to guess how many people have died or been irrevocably damaged when you hide the truth and posted lies to pass Bible-thumper-supported legislation.
Collateral Damage
The collateral damage you've caused has to be tremendous, even if you just consider the weight many people give to government agencies such as the NASA, FDA, USDA, CDC, and the EPA.
These organizations affect every drink we take, every food we eat, every pill we ingest, and every breath we take.
Personal consequences
Can a president be charged with manslaughter? The definition of manslaughter is The unlawful killing of a human being without malice or premeditation, either express, or implied; distinguished from murder, which requires malicious intent.
Could an independent counsel construe intentionally forsaking our health for political gain, malicious intent? If not what could you be charged with for providing information which leeds to the death or serious injury of thousands of people?
One and one equals two junior , and not the church nor George Bush will ever change that.
From: comments@whitehouse.gov
Date: June 10, 2006 7:35:08 PM CDT
To: guzmatom@mac.com
On behalf of President Bush, thank you for your correspondence.
We appreciate hearing your views and welcome your suggestions.
Due to the large volume of e-mail received, the White House is
unable to respond to every message, and therefore this response
is an autoreply.
Thank you again for taking the time to write.