God in Paradox and Pennsylvania Politics

  GEORGE TEMPLETON: COMMENTARY  

By George Templeton
Rim Country Gazette Columnist

Pennsylvania Republican candidate Rick Saccone and author of God in our Government accused liberals of hating the USA, our President, and God.

Patriotism fueled by religion is dangerous.  God, duty, and obedience are like peas in a pod.  We are too easily misled by the desire for power that ministers to self-interest.

Robert Penn Warren captures our President in his novel, All the Kings Men.  “… Fellows like (Trump) are born outside of luck, good or bad, and luck which is what about makes you and me what we are, doesn’t have anything to do with them, for they are what they are from the time they first kick in the womb until the end.  And if that is the case, then their life history is a process of discovering what they really are, and not, as for you and me, sons of luck, a process of becoming what luck makes us.”

A preacher warned that your mind could get you in trouble, but only in Paradise is ethics not necessary.  Lack of a mind can get a nation in trouble.  Why should eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil be mankind’s “fall”?  Does it warrant God’s punishment of pain, evil, and suffering for evermore?  Isn’t evil more clever than described here?  What we know about good and evil is not what they are but rather what is exposed by the kind of questions we ask.

Emotion impairs judgment, but what kind of person has no empathy?

The left brain understands god rationally.  Ramanujan, described in the Netflix film The Man Who Knew Infinity said, “An equation has no meaning for me unless it expresses a thought of God.”  Real mathematicians don’t solve equations.  They want to know if a solution can be found.

The right brain understands emotionally.  Chagall said, “If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing.”

If God is beyond human understanding, why do we persist in trying to describe him that way?  We see God as having both character and personality.  What about a sense of humor?  The 1977 George Burns movie, Oh God portrayed God in comedy, but we cannot make sense of that.  What could God be?

The Holy Trinity

The simultaneous Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, codified by the Council of Nica in 325 C., wrestled with controversy.  The Trinity is a relational definition, missing from Saccone’s “us versus them” diatribe.  It was emphasized during God’s surprising court appearance.

Court Clerk:  Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

God:  So help me, me.

Judge:  So help you, you?

God:  If it pleases the court, and even if it doesn’t please the court, I’m God, Your Honor.  I know how hard it is in these times to have faith.  But maybe if you could have the faith to start with, maybe the times would change.  You could change them.  Think about it.  Try.  And try not to hurt each other.  There’s been enough of that.  It really gets in the way.  If you find it hard to believe in me, maybe it would help you to know that I believe in you.

A Creative Force

Is God the invisible creator who is the absolute authority, unchanging, infinite, holy, perfect and just?  Belief in God is a choice, but the laws of physics are not!  Is God a force like electromagnetism, obscure, but at the same time our partner, personal, eternally loving, forgiving, and our best friend, available in times of need?  Can we know God by understanding something without understanding everything?

Jerry:  People are always praying to you.  Do you listen?

God:  I can’t help hearing.  I don’t always listen.

Jerry:  So then you don’t care?

God:  Of course I care!  But what can I do?

Jerry:  What can you do?  You’re God!

God:  Only for the big picture.  I don’t get into details.

Jerry:  Whatever happens to us…?

God:  Happens!

Most of us have difficulty defining God, but we know him when we see him.  Our narrow views are restrictive.  Our broad views are open-ended.  A specific God is less ultimate.  We think of God in terms of inerrancy and infallibility, but what does this really mean?  Is God Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omni-benevolent, and Omnipresent?

Omnipotent

George Burns:  Anybody who could turn Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt, incinerate Sodom and Gomorrah and make it rain for forty days and forty nights has got to be a fun guy.  

Can God create a rock so heavy that he or she cannot lift it?  If yes, God is not all powerful.  If no, God is not all powerful.  Does an inability to make nonsense statements true subtract from God’s power?  Did God create everything including the logically consistent physical laws and their constraints?  If he was the cause of all things, the first cause, did he cause himself?  Did God create everything from nothing?  How can nothing become something?  If he was constrained by the available raw materials at the time of the creation, he was not omnipotent.  Why would God want to violate his own laws?  Are the regularities in the universe simply because God is making things behave that way in every instance or did God just wind up Newton’s clockwork universe and let it run?  Why stop?  Did God need to rest after the six-day creation?  Wouldn’t God create as much as he could?  If God had a plan, why didn’t he make a universe where it was already achieved?

Omniscient

God controls the future.  God knows all things entirely, past and yet to come.  True omniscience does not learn.  It has always known.

Is God looking over our shoulder to see the grand view of history evolving, a consequence of our free will, a limitation of his omnipotence, or are we just puppets?  Our problem is that free will is only possible in a deterministic universe where we are the cause of effects.  An undetermined universe, without cause, has no laws, no rhyme or reason.

Jerry:  There’s no plan?  No scheme – to guide our destinies?  A lot of it is luck.

God:  A lot of it is luck.

Jerry:  Luck!  Just luck?  You don’t control our lives?

God:  I gave you a world and everything in it.  It’s all up to you.

Jerry:  You don’t care!

God:  I do care.

Jerry:  But, then, do something about it!

God:  I did.  I got you to carry the ball!

God believes every proposition that is true and none that are false.  But it is not possible to know everything about something that does not exist because there is nothing to know.  Thinking takes time.  God must exist within time if he is to believe.  Knowing can be timeless, but that does not allow the changes that define time, cause, and effect.

Is God the unmoved mover, existing in a single eternal moment?  When we speak of a “living God” we see him acting within time, developing, changing, and personally involved.  Scientists know that time and place cannot be separated.  God cannot plan and act without them.

Jerry:  When you said everything would work out, uh, I thought you could tell the future.

God:  Absolutely, I could tell the future, the minute it becomes the past.  I said, everything could work out, if that’s everybody’s choice.  People have to decide on their own what’s to be done with the world.  I can’t make a personal decision for everybody.

Our understanding is distorted by anything we are part of, are involved with.  We can’t teach what we do not know.  In teaching we understand more.  If we could see the future, we would change it.  As in Robert Pen Warren’s novel, we would discover ourselves.  This is the strange loop of consciousness depicted by the Dutch graphic artist M. C. Escher who understood infinity as a loop, an endless process originating in mathematics, paradox, illusion, and double meaning.  

Omni-benevolent

Free will lets us be ourselves.  We have no choice but to believe in free will, because without it we can have no moral responsibility.  But a mandatory choice is not freely made.

God never does what is evil or less than perfect.  If God cannot do wrong, how can he deserve praise for doing what’s right?  And if God’s actions cannot be celebrated, how is he morally perfect?  If God cannot do wrong, how can he be both all-good and all-powerful?

The eighteenth-century philosopher Leibniz argued that God had to create the best possible world.  He was not free to do anything else.  Any other choice would have resulted in more evil.

Predestination seems incompatible with human free will, but it is also incompatible with divine free will, even if God is outside of time.  Causality requires the existence of time.  Absolute foreknowledge makes it impossible for God to do other than what will be done.  At least we have the illusion of free will, but that is not available to God. 

Perhaps God could do evil acts, but chooses not to, thus retaining omnipotence and moral perfection.  But if God knows everything then there is no moral choice to deliberate.  If evil is against God’s will, then he is not omnipotent.

We wish to live a life which values morality above wealth, power, and pleasure, but there is nothing guaranteed to reward the good or punish the wicked.  Justice does not always win in the long run.  The crisp and concise version of the Ten Commandments may be the least culture bound moral code ever written, but for modern man morality may be more a process than a verdict.

Jerry:  How can you permit all the suffering that goes on the world?

God:  How can I permit the suffering?

Jerry:  “Yeah!”

God:  I don’t permit the suffering.  You do!  Free will.  All the choices are yours.

Jerry:  Choices?  What Choices?

God:  You can love each other, cherish and nurture each other, or you can kill each other.  Man and women, persons, their existence means exactly and precisely, not more, not one tiny bit less, just what they think it means and what I think doesn’t count at all.  I want to say to everyone that everything around them, that they can see and smell and feel and hear, they should delight in all this.  That, what is here, is some of my very best ideas.  And I want everyone to try very hard to make sure it doesn’t all go down the drain.

Omnipresent                

George Burns:  I worried about playing God.  We’re about the same age but we grew up in different neighborhoods.

If you have ever been nowhere in particular, you will know what alone is.  How can God be everywhere, in the shape of things, yet always present at a particular time and place?  In the beginning, God was present in the volcano, the tent, the Arc, and the temple.  In the end, God has become a rule and a prayer.  Some find him in all things, not separate from his creation.

Can God be found in the “big bang” that started the universe 14 billion years ago?  Its evidence, the pieces of our puzzle, leads us to an infinitely small and dense point where time, space, and physical laws did not yet exist.  That was the ultimate unknowable, the simplest thing, the interface between the natural and supernatural.

Paradox

Whenever we try to cloak zero and infinity, never and forever, all or none, within the confines of our experience we are walking on thin ice.  In science, we remove objects to a never-ending distance, shrink them down to a dimensionless point, and make them infinitely long, infinitesimally small, thin, or infinite in number, until they fit.  We forget that statistics are only a mathematical abstraction lacking particularity.  These idealizations help seeing.  Real infinities and God’s Omni’s have paradoxical qualities.  The Omni’s are interdependent ideas, like God, self, society, and nature.  They are not quantifiable like length, width, and height.  Properly understood, they stand only within the context of total personal experience.  As such they are relative, situational, and limited.  To make them simultaneous and absolute is to make them impossible.  Realizing this is not a hatred of God.

University of Arizona ranked in top 1% among 18,000 universities worldwide

UA Research Shines in International Ranking

University Communications

May 30, 2018

The University of Arizona finished in the top 0.28 percent among

more than 18,000 higher-education institutions worldwide in the
Center for World University Rankings, released Monday.

The UA's 2018 global ranking of No. 52 represents a 23-spot increase

over last year's position. The number of UA-led research papers 
appearing in highly influential journals and how often those papers
are cited by peer researchers once again contributed to the
university's strong showing in the CWUR ratings.

"I am very glad to see the University of Arizona ranked alongside

the world's top academic research institutions again this year,"
said UA President Robert C. Robbins. "This is a fantastic reflection
of the incredible talent we have here at the UA.

Our faculty's commitment to groundbreaking research strengthens

our position as becoming a global leader in the Fourth Industrial
Revolution, and we will continue our climb among the ranks of the
world’s premier universities."

The UA's overall score of 84.3 placed it 34th among U.S.

universities — 11 spots higher than in 2017.

CWUR annually publishes the only global university rankings that

use quantitative measures to assess the quality of education, the
prestige of faculty members and the quality of faculty research,
without relying on surveys and university data submissions.

Rankings by category:

• Influence: 43
• Citations: 48
• Quality of Faculty: 53
• Quality Publications: 96
• Research Output: 111
• Alumni Employment: 164
• Quality of Education: 166

The UA also was recognized recently in Forbes' third annual
"America's Best Value Colleges" ranking, placing No. 108 out of
300 colleges and universities. The UA ranked No. 59 among public
institutions and No. 69 among major research institutions.

Is Roseanne Barr What America Has Become?

Roseanne Barr. (photo: ABC News)

By Juan Cole, Informed Comment

30 May 18

readersupportdnews.org

 

he cancellation of Roseanne Barr’s situation comedy reboot at ABC/Disney is not, as some of my more serious acquaintances on social media are saying, unimportant.

Barr’s attack via Twitter on former Obama aide Valerie Jarrett (who, Barr said, looked like the offspring of a union of the Muslim Brotherhood and planet of the apes), is an important moment in American cultural history. It signals the significance today of internet conspiracy theories (why focus on Ms. Jarrett now, years after she was out of office?) and of a new racist fascism that belittles attempts to reign it in. Ms. Jarrett is African-American, and ape comparisons are an ugly staple of anti-Black discourse.

Even the right wing comic Wanda Sykes (a former National Security Agency employee) resigned from the show as production consultant.

The internet has been thick with falsehoods for years about Ms. Jarrett having wanted to promote Islam in the US. Apparently these lies derive from her having been born in Shiraz, Iran, while her father, an American physician, was helping out at a hospital there. The family is not Muslim. The connection from there to the Muslim Brotherhood is ignorance, since the Brotherhood is Sunni but Iran is largely Shiite.

It probably does not need to be said that it was the ‘planet of the apes’ crack rather than the weird invocation of the Muslim Brotherhood that got Barr fired. Racist language against Muslims, Arabs and Palestinians is virtually the only uncontroversial hate speech in today’s America. Barr even did a segment about Muslim neighbors with strong Islamophobic overtones. Senator Ted Cruz even wants to legislate the designation of the peaceable Muslim Brotherhood (which in Egypt made a commitment to peaceful activism in the early 1970s) as a terrorist group, as a wedge for delegitimizing all Muslim non-governmental organizations.

Those on the Right who are complaining of left Stalinism or interference with free speech are surely jesting. No individual has a right to have a television show on ABC (if they do, I’ve been short-changed). ABC/ Disney is a private company and can hire and fire at will for cause, and this behavior was clearly cause. A consumer boycott of ABC advertisers would cost a lot more than what the network will lose from Roseanne’s ratings.

Unlike a lot of academics, I actually watch a good deal of television and have done so my entire life. I spend my days reading heavy tomes, so in the evening I’m just not ready for Hegel. I used to watch Roseanne during its first incarnation in the Clinton years, and remember remarking that it was the only place on television where actual working people were regularly depicted. I remember hearing an NPR interview with a 1960s television writer who said that the studios strictly instructed him never to bring up the words “union” or “strike.”

Situation comedies can be game changers. Joe Biden is convinced that Will and Grace paved the way for greater acceptance of gays and gay marriage. Right wing politicians recognized this reality. George H. W. Bush’s long-forgotten vice president, Dan Quayle, railed against a “cultural elite,” by which he meant those in Hollywood purveying what he saw as liberal values. Quayle was raised in a John Bircher family and almost certainly meant Jews like Barr when he used the term. But this Roseanne show clearly had the potential to push the other way.

Barr herself, what with being an outlandish comedian, was always a bit of a hot mess, clearly prickly and strident. Amy Zimmerman at The Daily Beast surveys Barr’s history of sharp and sometimes baffling exclamations. In her liberal days she castigated Israel for its treatment of the Palestinians. She ran as candidate for leader of the Green Party in the 2012 election.

Then, more recently, Barr flipped. Steve Bannon and Breitbart got into her head and so did Alex Jones and Infowars. She started calling Muslim-Americans “savages” and embracing the wild conspiracy theories that flourish in the fact-free, White-resentment-fueled hothouse of fascist New Media (usually backed by fascist New Billionaires). She retweeted Milo Yiannopolis and spoke darkly of Kamala Harris’s sex secrets. She attacked #MeToo victims. She had long had business dealings with Trump, and made the same shift he did. I am not a psychiatrist and never met either one, nor wish to, but purely as a lay observer of people, I do not believe either one is a well person.

Barr’s odyssey (or odd-yssey) from a liberal champion of the underpaid working class to a vitriolic Trump supporter and conspiracy theorist with an attraction to racist language is in many ways symptomatic of the United States itself. And it is worth noting that Donald J. Trump appears to have followed the same path, though perhaps there were always some racist conspiracy theory issues that were privately important to him. In public, he sounded like liberal Democrat until the last years of the past decade, after Barack Obama was elected.

It may have seemed natural to ABC/ Disney to do a reboot of Roseanne’s show after Trump’s election. The US business elites bought the myth of major white working class support for Trump. (Defections by about 14% of the white working class who had voted Obama to the GOP could have been the margin of victory in some states, but that is one in six, not a majority). It is always reassuring to corporate managers to think that the people you pay badly and deny basic benefits and overwork don’t actually hate you or your party. Not to mention that the working class in the US is not majority white to begin with.

But ABC/ Disney either knew about Barr’s bizarre statements and endorsements on social media in recent years and ignored all that (so blinded by dreams of a sure ratings hit that they disregarded the unpalatable behavior) or they did not do due diligence. In the former case, they were exploiting, let us say, a clearly fragile personality–which is a risky thing to do with tens of millions of dollars.

After a moment of contrition, when she blamed her remarks on Ambien, Barr recovered her balance or rather imbalance:

Robert Mackey ✔ @RobertMackey

Updated: Roseanne Barr responded to anger over her racist tweet by thanking racists and conspiracy theorists for defending her, suggesting Michelle Obama had directed ABC to fire her, and writing, "i feel bad for @POTUS-he goes thru this every single day" https://interc.pt/2xmfPLe

The whole tale is a sorry commentary not on Barr but on where American culture and politics now stands. We went from a corporate elite nervously allowing some working class characters on mass media in the 1990s (just as long, you understand, as it gave no support to actual striking laborers) to transmogrifying it into an Islamophobic hatefest in the teens of the 21st century.

Some of my Twitter acquaintances are complaining that the news of a Harvard study showing thousands of deaths in Puerto Rico from last fall’s hurricane has been overshadowed by the Barr firing, implying that the latter is fluff. But both pieces of news point at the same reality, of a downward spiral in American politics. George W. Bush was pilloried for his inaction over Katrina. Trump has gotten away with criminally neglecting the US citizens of Puerto Rico.

At least we have not retrogressed to the point where Barr’s attack on a prominent African-American was allowed to pass by her employers, though it should be noted that Trump has said many things as offensive as Barr and remains at 40% in the polls.

In a better America, there would be as much discomfort with Barr Islamophobia as with her disdain for African-Americans.

Impeachment is NOT the best punishment for Trump. But this is.

Well, kids. It was nice while it lasted!

Murfster35  

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Thursday May 24, 2018 · 1:47 PM PDT

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Jeez, quit boiling up the tar, and stop plucking the damn chickens will ya?!? It all comes out right in the end, just hear me out. Wadda you have to lose, you're already reading, aren't you?

Let's be honest, shall we? In the current circumstances, impeachment is a pipe dream. Even if we retake the House in November, by the time that the newly minted Democratic led committees could finish doing fair, responsible investigations and generate articles of impeachment to vote on, we will already be in the run up to the 2020 elections, and nobody will have the stomach for that kind of political upheaval.

Besides, Democratic oversight would effectively rein in the madness, and the passage of progressive House bills for the Senate to shoot down would basically emasculate the rest of Trump's term. Also, when you come right down to it, impeachment is not an effective punishment for The Tiny Thumbs Diktator.

When one is convicted of a crime, one is sent to prison and loses his or her freedom. What is the ultimate punishment that comes with impeachment? Removal from office.

Short and sweet, the ultimate deterrent of impeachment is personal and professional shame. Quick show of hands! Who thinks that Der Gropinfuror has one modicum of shame in his entire, portly carcass? Trump has spent his entire life forgiving himself for and justifying his excesses. And he has already laid the groundwork to fleece his undying supporters that he is actually a martyr, politically crucified for the purity of his cause. As long as 41% of the country believes him, the rest of us can kiss his ass.

Trump will never feel shame for being impeached, because he will refuse to acknowledge his crimes that led to his impeachment in the first place.

But be of good cheer, there really is a much more suitable punishment, and it's one that he can't avoid, or wriggle his way out of. The most common axiom applied to the execution of the Mueller investigation is three simple words, "Follow. The. Money." In terms of the Trump-Russia investigation, it is meant to follow Trump's byzantine finances to look for illicit connections to Russian or other foreign sources that could be used as a point of leverage over him as President. But confirmation of those crimes would logically lead only to impeachment, and that event is unlikely.

BUT! Investigating possible illicit ties to Russia that could affect Trump's Presidency are not the only times you can follow the money. Mueller's probe into Trump's Russia connections has given him almost unprecedented access to Trump's financial records. Good Lord, a bank in Cyprus even turned records over to the FBI in it's investigation into Paul Manafort. Just because a financial crime may not directly involve the Russia investigation doesn't mean that a crime wasn't committed. And as we have already seen with Michael Cohen, Mueller is not shy about taking incriminating evidence he finds that he can't use, and turning it over to prosecutorial agencies that can use it.

Rumors and speculation have swirled around the Trump organization for years.

Possible bank fraud. Possible money laundering of Russian rubles through his overpriced schlock condos in New York, and his luxury golf properties. Suspicious circumstances around a property he bought in Florida, and sold soon afterwards for double what he paid for it, to a Russian oligarch no less. Allegations of Russian money laundering through an exclusive Trump branded property in Panama City, to the point that the actual owner of the property used armed security guards to try to keep Trump employees from accessing the property. And don't forget his aborted Trump Tower in Baku, Azerbaijan, where you can't even plow a driveway without the proper payoff to the ruling oligarch family. If ever there was a mechanism in place to uncover and connect the dots on this kind of complicated financial tomfoolery, it's the Mueller investigation. And all of it can be routed to the proper jurisdictions for criminal prosecution.

But. But. But. If Trump even gets a whiff of an upcoming prosecution for unrelated financial crimes, he'll just preemptively pardon himself, and his family. OK, fine.

Simple solution? Don't prosecute Trump, prosecute his COMPANY! The constitution permits a President to pardon an individual for his crimes, nothing authorizes him to pardon a company or corporation. If any of these crimes were committed, they weren't committed via Trump's personal bank and checking accounts, they were funneled through his company books. Follow. The. Money. And then take it, all of it. The Enron trial alone proved how effectively the government can dismantle a criminally liable company when they choose to.

For Hair Furor, this would literally be a fate worse than death. Trump can, at least in his own mind, con his way out of the shame and humiliation of an impeachment as a political "witch hunt." But to be exposed to the world as nothing more than a common criminal, and not a very good one, since he got caught? His ego couldn't survive that. Criminal fines and restitution would cripple the company, and if the feds played their hand right, it is possible that the prosecution could fall under the RICO statutes, allowing them to confiscate even more. And what survives? Investors and builders would come out of the woodwork to file civil suits against the Trump organization for lost contracts and properties, picking the carcass clean. Best of all, whether Trump survives the stress or not, a successful prosecution would strip his Satan's spawn of any hope of an inheritance.

Can this actually happen? Who knows. It all depends on the depth of Trump's greed, and his willingness to break the rules to get the money. Personally, I think that Trump has been erasing lines since day one, and if his current situation is anything to go by, he isn't very good at covering his tracks. If he's dirty, the FBI should have no problem connecting the dots. But you must admit, the thought of His Lowness spending the rest of his miserable existence shacked up in one of Jared's rent controlled slums, and binge watching The Apprentice reruns, beats having to listen to him blather about his "witch hunt" impeachment hands down.

* The Wait Is (Almost) Over!!! * President Evil II: A Clodwork Orange will be available on Amazon.com on Jun e 1st, and is available for pre-order as we speak. Longer, with occasional explanatory authors notes, and original cover art by our own elenacarlena, it is a worthy companion to it's older brother.
Cross posted on Politizoom.com

WE'RE BAAAAAACK WITH A MUST-READ, NON-POLITICAL PIECE BY GARRISON KEILLOR

Garrison Keillor. (photo: MPR)

Someone to Sit Next to Me

(GAZETTE BLOG EDITOR'S NOTE: Found this while waiting out a thunderstorm in New Orleans.  It's a poignant love story that you must read if you are in love, out of love, looking for love, or don't think there is such a thing as love.  You will be richer and wiser for doing so.)  

By Garrison Keillor, Garrison Keillor's Website

16 May 18

readersupportednews.org

 

here was so much good news last week. Gorillas appear to be thriving, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society, and there are about 361,919 of them, twice as many as had been believed. Humpback whales, who were nearly hunted out of existence in the 19th century, are making a comeback in the seas off Antarctica: the birth rate is on the upswing, according to a new study. (The animals are the size of a school bus and have a life expectancy similar to ours.) And a study at the University of Michigan shows that people who work out even 10 minutes a day tend to be more cheerful than those who don’t.

This is science, people. This isn’t fake news. These conclusions are based on actual facts established through observation by people who can count. What I learn from this is that it brightens your day to skip the front-page stuff about Washington and focus on science. Someday I expect to find a study showing that 75-year-old men who rode school buses as children have a longer life expectancy. That’s me.

I rode a school bus for six years, 12 miles each way morning and afternoon, on a highway in Minnesota, cornfields to the west, the Mississippi to the east. I stood at the end of a gravel road, a gawky kid with wire-rim glasses, wearing second-hand clothes, knowing there would not be an empty seat because mine was the last stop.

The bus pulled up, the door opened, I climbed aboard, and the driver waited until I sat down before he started the bus. Nobody squeezed together to make room so I had to pick out a seat with skinny girls in it and hurl myself at them and hold on for dear life as they tried to shove me out when the bus went around a sharp curve. This is a fact.

I had emotional problems in my youth — who didn’t? — and a religious crisis and a search for identity, all of that — but the struggle for seating on the bus was my No. 1 problem. My mother had five other children so I didn’t bother her with this. The school had no grief counselors that I could discuss it with. I had to pull up my socks and fight for a few inches of seat, enough for one cheek, and hang on with all my might.

Now you know why I avoid public transportation. And when I fly, if I’m upgraded to First Class, my heart sings.

Six years of classmates resisting my physical presence had a big effect on me. I learned to not be put off by rejection, that all you need is one acceptance.

Somewhere on the school bus of life is one beautiful person who will move over and make room for you. That is all you need.

The fellow passenger who has made room for me all these years happens to be a professional musician, trained to read tiny insect tracks on a page and perform as indicated while a man with wild hair waves a stick in the air. She is no slacker, in other words. She has run a marathon, given birth to a child, hiked alone through foreign landscapes, lived close to the poverty line in New York City, and recently read Anna Karenina. She tends the plants in the yard and knows their names. She is well-versed on social convention and has sound opinions about music, books, and design. She is more than capable.

It’s a comedy routine when she’s around and a lovely system of checks and balances. I say, “Let’s put a ping-pong table in the living room” and she says, “I’d rather we didn’t” and so we don’t.

She says, “You’re not wearing that tie with that shirt, are you?” “Not anymore,” I say.

She points discreetly at her left nostril and hands me a tissue. She reminds me of the name of that woman with the glasses (Liz) whom I ought to know — I told my wife, “Her and me went to school together” so that she’d have the satisfaction of saying, “She and I went to school together.” “No,” I said, “You’re 15 years younger; you didn’t go to school with Liz and me.”

The loner with the guitar is the American hero, but I love a member of the orchestra, and try to submerge my individuality into a good marriage. The secret of civility is synchronicity. The gorillas and whales know that and now I think I do too.

    The Rim Country Gazette Blog will    

 be on vacation until Monday, May 28.  

  Thanks for reading and see you then. 

White House, EPA blocked chemical water pollution study to avoid 'public relations nightmare'

States have been pleading with EPA for help, and experts say that contamination is widespread. (photo: Paul J. Richards/AFP)

By Annie Snider, Politico

15 May 18

readersupportednews.org

Intervention by Scott Pruitt’s aides came after White House official warned findings would cause a ‘public relations nightmare.'

cott Pruitt’s EPA and the White House sought to block publication of a federal health study on a nationwide water-contamination crisis, after one Trump administration aide warned it would cause a "public relations nightmare," newly disclosed emails reveal.

The intervention early this year — not previously disclosed — came as HHS' Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry was preparing to publish its assessment of a class of toxic chemicals that has contaminated water supplies near military bases, chemical plants and other sites from New York to Michigan to West Virginia.

The study would show that the chemicals endanger human health at a far lower level than EPA has previously called safe, according to the emails.

“The public, media, and Congressional reaction to these numbers is going to be huge,” one unidentified White House aide said in an email forwarded on Jan. 30 by James Herz, a political appointee who oversees environmental issues at the OMB. The email added: “The impact to EPA and [the Defense Department] is going to be extremely painful. We (DoD and EPA) cannot seem to get ATSDR to realize the potential public relations nightmare this is going to be.”

More than three months later, the draft study remains unpublished, and the HHS unit says it has no scheduled date to release it for public comment. Critics say the delay shows the Trump administration is placing politics ahead of an urgent public health concern — something they had feared would happen after agency leaders like Pruitt started placing industry advocates in charge of issues like chemical safety.

Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) called the delay "deeply troubling" on Monday, urging Pruitt and President Donald Trump "to immediately release this important study."

"Families who have been exposed to emerging contaminants in their drinking water have a right to know about any health impacts, and keeping such information from the public threatens the safety, health, and vitality of communities across our country," Hassan said, citing POLITICO's reporting of the issue.Details of the internal discussions emerged from EPA emails released to the Union of Concerned Scientists under the Freedom of Information Act.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a fellow New Hampshire Democrat, called the delay "an egregious example of politics interfering with the public’s right to know. ... [I]t’s unconscionable that even the existence of this study has been withheld until now."

The emails portray a “brazenly political” response to the contamination crisis, said Judith Enck, a former EPA official who dealt with the same pollutants during the Obama administration — saying it goes far beyond a normal debate among scientists.

“Scientists always debate each other, but under the law, ATSDR is the agency that’s supposed to make health recommendations,” she said.

The White House referred questions about the issue to HHS, which confirmed that the study has no scheduled release date.

Pruitt‘s chief of staff, Ryan Jackson, defended EPA’s actions, telling POLITICO the agency was helping “ensure that the federal government is responding in a uniform way to our local, state, and Congressional constituents and partners.”

Still, Pruitt has faced steady criticism for his handling of science at the agency, even before the recent spate of ethics investigations into his upscale travels and dealings with lobbyists. In his year leading EPA, he has overhauled several scientific advisory panels to include more industry representatives and recently ordered limits on the kinds of scientific studies the agency will consider on the health effects of pollution.

On the other hand, Pruitt has also called water pollution one of his signature priorities.

The chemicals at issue in the HHS study have long been used in products like Teflon and firefighting foam, and are contaminating water systems around the country.

Known as PFOA and PFOS, they have been linked with thyroid defects, problems in pregnancy and certain cancers, even at low levels of exposure.

The problem has already proven to be enormously costly for chemicals manufacturers. The 3M Co., which used them to make Scotchguard, paid more than $1.5 billion to settle lawsuits related to water contamination and personal injury claims.

But some of the biggest liabilities reside with the Defense Department, which used foam containing the chemicals in exercises at bases across the country. In a March report to Congress, the Defense Department listed 126 facilities where tests of nearby water supplies showed the substances exceeded the current safety guidelines.

A government study concluding that the chemicals are more dangerous than previously thought could dramatically increase the cost of cleanups at sites like military bases and chemical manufacturing plants, and force neighboring communities to pour money into treating their drinking water supplies.

The discussions about how to address the HHS study involved Pruitt's chief of staff and other top aides, including a chemical industry official who now oversees EPA’s chemical safety office.

Herz, the OMB staffer, forwarded the email warning about the study's "extremely painful" consequences to EPA’s top financial officer on Jan. 30. Later that day, Nancy Beck, deputy assistant administrator for EPA's Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, suggested elevating the study to OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs to coordinate an interagency review. Beck, who worked as a toxicologist in that office for 10 years, suggested it would be a "good neutral arbiter" of the dispute.

"OMB/OIRA played this role quite a bit under the Bush Administration, but under Obama they just let each agency do their own thing...," Beck wrote in one email that was released to UCS.

Beck, who started at OMB in 2002, worked on a similar issue involving perchlorate, an ingredient in rocket fuel — linked with thyroid problems and other ailments — that has leached from defense facilities and manufacturing sites into the drinking water of at least 20 million Americans. Beck stayed on at OMB into the Obama administration, leaving the office in January 2012 and going to work for the American Chemistry Council, where she was senior director for regulatory science policy until joining EPA last year.

Yogin Kothari, a lobbyist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, called Beck's January email "extremely troubling because it appears as though the White House is trying to interfere in a science-based risk assessment."

Environmentalists say such interference was routine during the Bush administration.

"It’s why the Obama administration issued a call for scientific integrity policies across the federal government," Kothari said in an email to POLITICO. "Dr. Beck should know firsthand that the Bush administration sidelined science at every turn, given that she spent time at OMB during that time."

Soon after the Trump White House raised concerns about the impending study, EPA chief of staff Ryan Jackson reached out to his HHS counterpart, as well as senior officials in charge of the agency overseeing the assessment to discuss coordinating work among HHS, EPA and the Pentagon. Jackson confirmed the outreach last week, saying it is important for the government to speak with a single voice on such a serious issue.

“EPA is eager to participate in and, contribute to a coordinated approach so each federal stakeholder is fully informed on what the other stakeholders' concerns, roles, and expertise can contribute and to ensure that the federal government is responding in a uniform way to our local, state, and Congressional constituents and partners,” Jackson told POLITICO via email.

Pruitt has made addressing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, a priority for EPA. The unpublished HHS study focused on two specific chemicals from this class, PFOA and PFOS.

States have been pleading with EPA for help, and experts say that contamination is so widespread, the chemicals are found in nearly every water supply that gets tested.

In December, the Trump administration's nominee to head the agency's chemical safety office, industry consultant Michael Dourson, withdrew his nomination after North Carolina's Republican senators said they would not support him, in large part because of their state's struggles with PFAS contamination. Dourson's previous research on the subject has been criticized as too favorable to the chemical industry.

Shortly after Dourson's nomination was dropped, Pruitt announced a “leadership summit” with states to discuss the issue scheduled for next week.

In 2016, the agency published a voluntary health advisory for PFOA and PFOS, warning that exposure to the chemicals at levels above 70 parts per trillion, total, could be dangerous. One part per trillion is roughly the equivalent of a single grain of sand in an Olympic-sized swimming pool.

The updated HHS assessment was poised to find that exposure to the chemicals at less than one-sixth of that level could be dangerous for sensitive populations like infants and breastfeeding mothers, according to the emails.

Dave Andrews, a senior scientist with the Environmental Working Group, said those conclusions line up with recent studies on the health effects of PFAS.

“They are looking at very subtle effects like increased risk of obesity for children exposed in womb, lowered immune response, and childhood vaccines becoming not as effective,” Andrews said.

The HHS document at issue is called a toxicological profile, which describes the dangers of a chemical based on a review of previous scientific studies. It would carry no regulatory weight itself, but could factor into cleanup requirements at Superfund sites.

EPA scientists, including career staffers, were already talking with the HHS researchers about the differences in their two approaches to evaluating the chemicals when officials at the White House raised alarm in late January, the emails show. Those differences, according to the correspondence, stemmed from the agencies’ use of different scientific studies as a basis, and from taking different approaches to accounting for the harm that the chemicals can do to the immune system — an area of research that has burgeoned in the two years since EPA issued its health advisory.

Enck, the former EPA official, said she sees one troubling gap in the emails: They make “no mention of the people who are exposed to PFOA or PFOS, there’s no health concern expressed here.”