in the old Soviet Union.

and one we'd keep paying for in the years to come...

...I am sick of being represented by idiots like this guy and Gohmert, Cruz and just about every other of Texas' elected politicans. When did we Texans become so gullibully stupid as to elect this bunch of asshats.

Love it. R&K for this alone.

The bible has a verse that may support this amusing but wrong claim

Kings II Chapter 7 verse 23

And he made the molten sea, 10 cubits from brim to brim: round all about, and a height thereof 5 cubits: and a line of 30 cubits did compass it round about

It takes off where Reefer Madness left off, only this time they are crazier. Hit the gavel faster Johnny, Faster, Faster.......We're MAD with POWER!

From their willingness to accept some things as truth, I'd guess Ecstasy and a concussion.

Crazy people. Craaazy mutha fuckin people. They can't win unless they cheat and will even commit RICO without batting an eyelash. So, why are we surprised to hear they want to game science?

There is some serious brain washing and social engineering going on among the Republican ranks. It's all about divine destiny, which is why they will take this country into an age of Idiocracy if they're not stopped.

Surely you can find the bipartisan "middle ground." Just go groveling to Bohner and ask him where it's at.

Bipartisanship sucks

First, he is in a gerrymandered district where he won by 25 points in 2012


Republican Lamar Smith Incumbent 60.5% 187,015
Democratic Candace E. Duval 35.4% 109,326
Libertarian John-Henry Liberty 4.1% 12,524


So it is unlikely that the voters there, the majority of whom are proven batshit crazy Texas Republicans, will get rid of him.


The most likely course of action to remove him from power is to elect a Democratic majority in the House, electing Dems in more favorable districts. Then he can be marginalized.

But I agree it will be tough. Still, we have demographics on our side in most states, so we need to keep trying.

Also, the Republicans have truly adopted the party line of 1984:

“War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.”

They are particularly fond of these "truisms" as they see it. Just ask Sarah Palin or any of the other douchebags racing to see who can out stupid the last one. Lamar Smith is just today's early front runner, by lunch someone is bound to go further into the shit-house crazy pool...

Sickening that so many of their mindless drone supporters believe this kind of nonsense is possible WITHOUT a totalitarian BIG government!

There was O'Reilly's bullying technique, and Hannity had a segment just like The Two-Minute Hate. America's Enemies, I believe it was called.

Naturally, all were Democrats, liberals and anti-war people. And the way they switched from one enemy to the other and edited things, is pure Memory Hole and 'We've always been at war with Oceania' method.

They were caught, along with other cable 'news' stations using subliminals with pictures of Al Gore. The word 'rat' was imposed. This is the Third Reich material used on Jews.

Did their followers never have to do book reports on '1984' in public school or are they high on the quick moving visuals, music, etc. and don't notice?

I saw or intuitively felt what they were doing, and was in a state of first amazement, then one of fear that they were going straight for those methods. No one called them on it, and if anyone disagreed, they shut off their mikes.

A lot their current dogma came from Ronald Reagan. Check the quotes here and you'll see the themes then, haven't changed:

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan

This has only increased with their other creepy methods, the fake populist, 'I'm your friend' technique used by Rush, Fox and Beck who is the master cult puppetmaster.

He inoculates his viewers just before saying some outrageous smear. Goes like, 'The liberals and progressives will tell you this isn't true, but don't believe them, my friends.'

It's one big nightmare that the people don't realize is a myth. It would take deprogramming away from television and radio to get these folks to see any other point of view. When I talk to these guys, I feel as if I'm surronded by zombies or robots on auto-pilot, following their programming.

If they weren't so hateful and on the verge of violence, I would not care. But they are bringing this totalitarian society upon us with glee. You are right infinitely more frightening. No transparency or public input because you don't own the information that is being held and used.

I'm thinking The Running Man or Rollerball, but really, it is so much worse. And America was meant to be so much better.

Oh, another pic for them:

Vote them out.

That's all we can do.

Makes one feel helpless sometimes but if that's what we've got, that's what we've gotta do.

the sun goes around the earth one more time it will be election time. Maybe then he will get voted out of office.

and if so, very funny. nice one!

And welcome from a fairly newbie myself.

Lysenko.

Soviet science

Amazing these idiots want to do that

And then there was Lysenko.

there has got to be a tipping point, hopefully, soon.

but I won't.

Politics and political interference with science in the Soviet Union, put the Soviets decades behind the US in biology.

I have also noted a very disturbing Republican trend towards politicizing and corrupting scientific research and either attacking or suppressing research or conclusions that don't agree with right-wing dogma. Lamar Smith is not alone, alas. He's merely the most currently visible of Republican legislators heedlessly turning the US into a backwards, second-rate nation composed of a small population of haves and much larger population of have-nots.

Perhaps it's my wishful thinking, but I still believe that there was a time when much, if not most of the Republican Party was not only supportive of scientific research, but had the ability to face unpleasant facts and the political will to do something about it. I have come to believe that that sort of Republican has increasingly been marginalized and has sold out his (or her) convictions and their powers of thought and observation for dishonest promises of power and influence by the right-wing factions currently in control of the GOP.

Those people still thinking that the Republican Party has their interests at heart or is willing to do what is necessary to preserve even the medium-term interests of the USA and Americans as a whole are only deluding themselves. The right-wingers who deny facts and deny the evidence of their own eyes and senses have had the GOP by the throat for over two decades now, and any movement Republican moderates and Republican realists may start at this point is doomed to failure.

Republican voters genuinely interested in the long-term interests of the USA and their posterity should do what would be the most effective way to save their country and their children's future--they should leave the GOP and stop voting for Republican candidates.

This is why our nation is becoming increasingly stupid.

I ask, is it a minor form of treason for the Chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology to sponsor a bill called the "High Quality Research Act" while knowing full well that the wording invalidates scientific methodology and hampers knowledge and technology and basically guarantees we can't reach space?
One would expect from the title "House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology", a group which was in favor of science, space and technology, but apparently not. I urge the members to check the definitions of "oversight" and "suppress", there might be a mix up.
Lamar S Smith of the 21st district Texas, seems like a person who would understand scientific methodology, given the high caliber of his education (Granted, the Southern Methodist University now holds the George W. Bush Library; calling into question the price of the school's moral code as well as their definition of the word library). His past committee seats on Justice, Ethics, and Budget should have given him a understanding of fair play, truth, and the fact that addressing a 0.2 % of a budget in order to balance said budget is mental masturbation (and unexciting masturbation at that, be careful your hand doesn't go to sleep). The wording of the bill indicates at least a passing knowledge of "peer review" and "research duplication", so personal ignorance seems unlikely.
Occam's razor (the simplest explanation which agrees with all the facts) insists the the right Honorable Representative Lamar S. Smith, isn't. Isn't right, honorable, or representing his constituents; merely big business interests.
At least thats how it seems to me.
New material and thoughts.
Further proof of Smith's love of money over sense of duty was his letter asking the NSF to find fault with scientific research to make his donors right.

That the tide will indeed obey kings and assholes and not drown them.


Sounds like a perfect experiment to show these idiots what their form of political correctness will cost them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cnut_the_Great#Ruler_of_the_waves

...the two bodies revolve around their common center of mass.

But, then the other planets perturb that nice dance. To hell with it! Let's go get a drink and pick up our stipend from the Kochs.

Some gal or guy with weird classes can probably figure it out.

And these fuckers will have wished they didn't shit all over science.

in 2014!

Research is funded with tax dollars (some of those dollars are mine!). But, if the results are politically inconvenient, he would withhold from the very people who paid for it, and somehow he calls this integrity. What an ass.

surrender to our national collapse, indeed

John Stewerts joke makes a lot of sense.

"The bill says that any research done using federal funds (which is the majority of research done in the United States) must have its results and finding approved by the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation of the Senate and the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology of the House of Representatives. If the findings are not agreed to, the research is taken from the researchers and disposed of by Congress as it sees fit."

Which basically says that no research needs to be done by scientists. If the results have to be verified by the committees, then they might as well do the science. I am sure they are still trying to figure out where that ship went as it sailed away from port. Had to have fallen off the edge of the world.

Congress can't legislate what it already has, and he wants to add science into the mix? I can see it now:

"Your study to show a woman's body has a way to shut that all down has been approved!".

"Your study enhances the efficiency of solar panels? Denied. There's no proof solar energy is workable!"

Lysenkoism ... or Lysenko-Michurinism was the centralized political control exercised over genetics and agriculture by Trofim Lysenko and his followers. Lysenko was the director of the Soviet Union's Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences. Lysenkoism began in the late 1920s and formally ended in 1964.

Lysenkoism was built on theories of the heritability of acquired characteristics that Lysenko named "Michurinism". These theories depart from accepted evolutionary theory and Mendelian inheritance.

Lysenkoism is used metaphorically to describe the manipulation or distortion of the scientific process as a way to reach a predetermined conclusion as dictated by an ideological bias, often related to social or political objectives.

Does not indicate that the committee takes on the role of peer review. What it does is limit the scope of how research grants are selected, which is too restrictive. He has, however, targeted five recent NSF grants that he feels does not need high standards.

I don't know where addictinginfo got their information. I'm looking at the editorial in Science Mag., that got a draft of the bill, and reported on it.


http://www.sciencemag.org/content/340/6132/534.full

The new chair of the House of Representatives science committee has drafted a bill that, in effect, would alter peer review at the National Science Foundation (NSF) by embracing a set of criteria chosen by Congress. The proposed legislation, from Representative Lamar Smith (R–TX), has angered congressional Democrats and left NSF officials wondering what Smith thinks is wrong with the current system.

The bill, called the "High Quality Research Act," is the latest—and bluntest—attack by congressional Republicans on how NSF decides which grant proposals to fund. In late March, Senator Tom Coburn (R–OK) successfully attached language to a 2013 spending bill that prohibits NSF from funding any political science research for the rest of the fiscal year unless its director certifies that the research pertains to economic development or national security.

Smith's draft bill, which has not yet been formally introduced, goes much further by applying similar language to NSF's entire research portfolio. In particular, it would require the NSF director to certify, prior to any award, that the work being funded is "ground breaking" and "not duplicative" as well as important to national interests. NSF's current guidelines, updated last year, ask reviewers to consider the "intellectual merit" of a proposed research project as well as its "broader impacts" on the scientific community and society.

"I don't know what problem he's trying to solve," says Dan Arvizu, chair of the National Science Board, a 24-member presidentially appointed body that sets policy for the foundation. "NSF's mission is to support the best research, and we feel it has done a good job doing that. There's always room for improvement, but the legislation implies that you're being unpatriotic if you don't agree to do things differently."

In other words, the NSF director has to predict the future. I'd also like to see a working definition of "ground breaking". IBM posted a video the other day of moving atoms around to create a movie. Sounds ridiculous until you think of the possibilities for nanotechnology.

The current one probably doesn't want to make waves, but a former one would slice and dice this idea without mercy.

After that, if the committee disapproves of the research, it probably falls back to earlier legislative standards for how to go about ending grants and requisitioning partial results.

The draft bill doesn't address the disposition of such research, but that doesn't mean the laws don't already exist. Think of it as an overlay.
http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/HQRA.pdf

PB

As it is, Congress can't get anything done, who will be doing the oversight of the huge amount of information? Who will be judging the secret research papers? And who will pay for this unbelievable stupid idea?

The Soviets did this in the 1930s and it was called Lysenkoism. And, much like the Soviets of the Stalin era, the GOP also hates trade unions, the arts, and eduction.

Just a co-inky-dinky... or not.

This time for sure.....

for the past several years republicans have been cutting state funding to universities, with the idea that the universities should rely more on the overhead dollars of federal grants. Now the fed republicans want to control what type of research can be funded.

Suppress the truth, spew the party line: what a disastrous recipe inviting a free, enlightened first-world society to become a third-world society.

is getting a hot letter. I never write him, a waste of time. But this is ridiculous and dangerous.

Something doesn't conform to your dogma - well, just have it "disposed of by Congress as it sees fit".

So what happens if the Senate agrees to it but the House does not. What then?

where reality didn't challenge us at every turn and where a fool was an esteemed job position and not just a laughing stock

Who, exactly, is going to read all these papers? For qualified reviews, you'll need PhD level scientists. Unless you're planning to have it done in India, this would cost a fortune. Folks won't do this for nothing like they do the scientific reviews for journals. At minimum, Universities will have to include this in faculty workload and reduce teaching requirements.

"republicans today demanded proof that the earth actually revolves around the sun. One republican senator was quoted as saying, "Look, sure, this is what we were told via "science" but looking up into the sky is real, not some mumbo jumbo on black board."

wait for it.

I found this draft: http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/HQRA.pdf

And can't find the part that says "If the findings are not agreed to, the research is taken from the researchers and disposed of by Congress as it sees fit. "

Can someone help me find it? Draft Legislation is not my strong point.

Your scientists give you the resulte you paid them fo find.....