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Sunday, February 05, 2006

Before you dance for joy that your heating bills aren't as bad as you expected...
Posted by Jill | 6:36 AM
...read John's entry today on global warming's very real meanifestations, and then think about the Bush Administration silencing scientists at NASA because real science might upset the Christofascist Zombie Brigade.

Then wonder just what kind of science the Bush Administration is calling for your kids to study. 10 bucks says it has something to do with some great alpha male in the sky.

Here's the kind of voodoo we're up against:

In October, for example, George Deutsch, a presidential appointee in NASA headquarters, told a Web designer working for the agency to add the word "theory" after every mention of the Big Bang, according to an e-mail message from Mr. Deutsch that another NASA employee forwarded to The Times.

[snip]

The Big Bang memo came from Mr. Deutsch, a 24-year-old presidential appointee in the press office at NASA headquarters whose résumé says he was an intern in the "war room" of the 2004 Bush-Cheney re-election campaign. A 2003 journalism graduate of Texas A&M, he was also the public-affairs officer who sought more control over Dr. Hansen's public statements.

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."

The memo also noted that The Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual specified the phrasing "Big Bang theory." Mr. Acosta, Mr. Deutsch's boss, said in an interview yesterday that for that reason, it should be used in all NASA documents.

The Deutsch memo was provided by an official at NASA headquarters who said he was upset with the effort to justify changes to descriptions of science by referring to politically charged issues like intelligent design. Senior NASA officials did not dispute the message's authenticity.

Mr. Wild declined to be interviewed; Mr. Deutsch did not respond to e-mail or phone messages. On Friday evening, repeated queries were made to the White House about how a young presidential appointee with no science background came to be supervising Web presentations on cosmology and interview requests to senior NASA scientists.

The only response came from Donald Tighe of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. "Science is respected and protected and highly valued by the administration," he said.


Think about it: Some 24-year-old pisher of a political hack with ZERO background in science has the authority to pressure NASA to discount scientific knowledge if it conflicts with the Republican Party's Christofascist Zombie Brigade base.

So next time Bush talks about science, and you think maybe, just maybe, this intelligent design furor is history, re-read this blog entry and then you might ask at your kids' school just what they're teaching as science. Religion is not science. And the sooner we make these idiots understand that, the better.

You want your kid to be able to get a decent job and not have EVERY job requiring concrete knowledge outsourced to India? Then this affects you. Because if the Bush Administration has its way, your kid will be believing that a big white father figure in the sky created everything, and then he'll wonder why no one will hire him to do scientific research.

World O'Crap has more on the wise proclamations of George Deutsch, among them his ruminations on the likelihood that Satanic killers are behind the Laci Peterson murder, the compelling evidence of an Iraq/Al Qaeda link prior to Bush's war, and his view that Donald Rumsfeld had nothing to do with a plan to use torture of war prisoners. And this is the guy the Bush Administration put in charge of NASA's public face.
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