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The Capricious Non partisan Government Arbitrary Action thread.

Do Not Sell My Personal Information
I mean, come on...

View: https://twitter.com/AP/status/879827291248971777


The Trump administration’s top environmental official met privately with the chief executive of Dow Chemical shortly before reversing his agency’s push to ban a widely used pesticide after health studies showed it can harm children’s brains, according to records obtained by The Associated Press.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt’s schedule shows he met with Dow CEO Andrew Liveris on March 9 for about a half hour at a Houston hotel. Both men were featured speakers at an energy industry conference.

Twenty days later Pruitt announced his decision to deny a petition to ban Dow’s chlorpyrifos pesticide from being sprayed on food, despite a review by his agency’s scientists that concluded ingesting even minuscule amounts of the chemical can interfere with the brain development of fetuses and infants.

EPA spokeswoman Liz Bowman said Tuesday that Pruitt was “briefly introduced” to Liveris at the conference.

“They did not discuss chlorpyrifos,” Bowman said. “During the same trip he also met with the Canadian minister of natural resources, and CEOs and executives from other companies attending the trade show.”

EPA released a copy of Pruitt’s March meeting schedule earlier this month following several Freedom of Information Act requests. Though his schedule for the intervening months has not yet been released, Bowman said Pruitt has had no other meetings with the Dow CEO. There was a larger group meeting that Pruitt attended which also included two other Dow executives, but she said that didn’t involve chlorpyrifos.

Dow, which spent more than $13.6 million on lobbying in 2016, has long wielded substantial political power in the nation’s capital.

When President Donald Trump signed an executive order in February mandating the creation of task forces at federal agencies to roll back government regulations, he handed the pen to Dow’s chief executive, who was standing at his side. Liveris heads a White House manufacturing working group. His company also wrote a $1 million check to help underwrite Trump’s inaugural festivities.

The American Academy of Pediatrics urged Pruitt on Tuesday to take chlorpyrifos off the market. The group representing more than 66,000 pediatricians and pediatric surgeons said it is “deeply alarmed” by Pruitt’s decision to allow the pesticide’s continued use.

“There is a wealth of science demonstrating the detrimental effects of chlorpyrifos exposure to developing fetuses, infants, children, and pregnant women,” the academy said in a letter to Pruitt. “The risk to infant and children’s health and development is unambiguous.”

The AP reported in April that Dow is also lobbying the Trump administration to “set aside” the findings of federal scientists that organophosphate pesticides, including chlorpyrifos, are harmful to about 1,800 critically threatened or endangered species.

The chemical is similar to one developed as a weapon in World War II. Dow has been selling Chlorpyrifos for spraying on citrus fruits, apples, cherries and other crops since the 1960s. It is among the most widely used agricultural pesticides in the United States. Dow sells about 5 million pounds domestically each year.

As a result, traces of the chemical are commonly found in sources of drinking water. A 2012 study at the University of California at Berkeley found that 87 percent of umbilical-cord blood samples tested from newborn babies contained detectable levels of chlorpyrifos.

Dow, which sells chlorpyrifos through its subsidiary Dow AgroSciences, contends it helps American farmers feed the world “with full respect for human health and the environment.”

Under pressure from federal regulators over safety concerns, Dow voluntarily withdrew chlorpyrifos for use as a home insecticide in 2000. EPA also placed “no-spray” buffer zones around sensitive sites, such as schools, in 2012. But environmental and public health groups said those proposals don’t go far enough and filed a federal lawsuit seeking a national ban on the pesticide.

In October 2015, the Obama administration proposed banning the pesticide’s use on food. A risk assessment memo issued in November by nine EPA scientists concluded: “There is a breadth of information available on the potential adverse neurodevelopmental effects in infants and children as a result of prenatal exposure to chlorpyrifos.”

The law requires EPA to ensure that pesticides used on food in the United States are safe for human consumption — especially children, who are typically far more sensitive to the negative effects of poisons.

Pressed at a congressional hearing this month to cite evidence that chlorpyrifos is safe, Pruitt said his decision was based on “meaningful data and meaningful science.”

Asked by AP to provide details, Pruitt’s office responded with quotes from media releases from trade groups and the U.S. Department of Agriculture attesting to the chemicals usefulness to farmers, but did not offer scientific studies on its safety.

“Despite several years of study, EPA has concluded that the science addressing chlorpyrifos remains unresolved,” Bowman said Tuesday. We will make a decision based on the science, not on real — or perceived — pressure from companies or environmental activists.”

Before coming to EPA in March, Bowman directed issue advocacy and communications for the American Chemical Council, an industry trade group of which Dow is a member.

At a hearing Tuesday, Sen. Tom Udall again challenged Pruitt to cite a single peer-reviewed study showing chlorpyrifos is safe. Pruitt responded that he had relied on “interagency dialogue” with USDA before denying the petition to ban the chemical.

EPA says its next review of the chemical’s safety will occur by October 2022, the next statutory deadline for the agency to perform a legally mandated review of chlorpyrifos’ safety. That would mean Dow’s product will potentially remain on the market well after the expiration of President Trump’s current term.
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czvo said:
I mean, come on...

View: https://twitter.com/AP/status/879827291248971777
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18093ecf677b89cfd18cb9eb07ef5f47a7cf9f8851e4b055fd2471a0600c1f80.jpg
 
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Another story about Nancy Pelosi's odd behavior/brain freezes:

http://www.theamericanmirror.com/video-nancy-pelosi-suffers-multiple-brain-freezes-nyc-appearance/

It may be that she's showing some signs of dementia, which is very sad if true. As much as I would like to see her remain in her post, if she really is having signs of dementia, I hope for her sake that the Dems ease her out. I don't want to see anyone in that condition mocked or made fun of, no matter how much I dislike their politics.
 
The Human Q-Tip said:
Another story about Nancy Pelosi's odd behavior/brain freezes:

http://www.theamericanmirror.com/video-nancy-pelosi-suffers-multiple-brain-freezes-nyc-appearance/

It may be that she's showing some signs of dementia, which is very sad if true. As much as I would like to see her remain in her post, if she really is having signs of dementia, I hope for her sake that the Dems ease her out. I don't want to see anyone in that condition mocked or made fun of, no matter how much I dislike their politics.
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You know, I've now seen Q make posts referencing numerous highly suspect sites like the one above, and it's fairly alarming. Q, I thought you were RCF's resident "level-headed" conservative? If this is where you're getting your information from, then we may be in far more trouble as a country than I anticipated.
 
Also, that "article" is akin to "LeBron has a house in LA. OMG HE'S TOTALLY LEAVING FOR THE CL1PPERS!!!"
 
Really good article in The American Conservative:

http://www.theamericanconservative....mattis-cleaning-up-kushners-middle-east-mess/

Tillerson and Mattis Cleaning Up Kushner’s Middle East Mess

On March 25, 2011, a Qatar Air Force Mirage 2000-5, took off from Souda Air Base, in Crete, to help enforce a no-fly zone protecting rebels being attacked by Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi. Qatar was the first Persian Gulf nation to help the U.S. in the conflict.

Qatari operations were more than symbolic. The Qatari military trained rebel units, shipped them weapons, accompanied their fighting units into battle, served as a link between rebel commanders and NATO, tutored their military commanders, integrated disparate rebel units into a unified force and led them in the final assault on Qaddafi’s compound in Tripoli.“We never had to hold their hand,” a retired senior U.S. military officer says. “They knew what they were doing.” Put simply, while the U.S. was leading from behind in Libya, the Qataris were walking point.

The Qatar intervention has not been forgotten at the Pentagon and is one of the reasons why Defense Secretary James Mattis has worked so diligently to patch up the falling out between them and the coalition of Saudi-led countries (including the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt), that have isolated and blockaded the nation. In fact, Mattis was stunned by the Saudi move. “His first reaction was shock, but his second was disbelief,” a senior military officer says. “He thought the Saudis had picked an unnecessary fight, and just when the administration thought they’d gotten everyone in the Gulf on the same page in forming a common front against Iran.”

At the time of the Saudi announcement, Mattis was in Sydney with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to dampen concerns about the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Paris climate accords. The two glad-handed Australian officials and issued a reassuring pronouncement on U.S. intentions during a June 5 press briefing with that nation’s foreign and defense ministers. When the burgeoning split between the Saudis and Qataris was mentioned, Tillerson described it as no more than one of “a growing list or irritants in the region” that would not impair “the unified fight against terrorism …”

But while Tillerson’s answer was meant to soothe concerns over the crisis, behind the scenes he and Mattis were scrambling to undo the damage caused by Saudi action. The two huddled in Sydney and decided that Tillerson would take the lead in trying to resolve the falling out. Which is why, three days after the Sydney press conference, Tillerson called on Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt to ease their anti-Qatar blockade and announced that the U.S. supported a Kuwaiti-led mediation effort. The problem for Tillerson was that his statement was contradicted by Donald Trump who, during a Rose Garden appearance on the same day, castigated Qatar, saying the emirate “has historically been a funder of terrorism at a very high level.”

A close associate of the secretary of state says that Tillerson was not only “blind-sided by the Trump statement,” but “absolutely enraged that the White House and State Department weren’t on the same page.” Tillerson’s aides, I was told, were convinced that the true author of Trump’s statement was U.A.E. ambassador Yousef Al Otaiba, a close friend of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner. “Rex put two-and-two together,” his close associate says, “and concluded that this absolutely vacuous kid was running a second foreign policy out of the White House family quarters. Otaiba weighed in with Jared and Jared weighed in with Trump. What a mess.” The Trump statement was nearly the last straw for Tillerson, this close associate explains: “Rex is just exhausted. He can’t get any of his appointments approved and is running around the world cleaning up after a president whose primary foreign policy adviser is a 36-year-old amateur.”

Worse yet, at least from Tillerson’s point of view, a White House official explained the difference between the two statements by telling the press to ignore the secretary of state. “Tillerson may initially have had a view,” a White House official told the Washington Post, “then the president has his view, and obviously the president’s view prevails.”

Or maybe not. While Trump’s June 9 statement signaled that the U.S. was tilting towards the Saudis and the UAE, Tillerson and Mattis have been tilting towards Qatar. And for good reason. “Every time we’ve asked the Qataris for something they’ve said ‘yes,’ which isn’t true for the Saudis,” the retired senior U.S. military officer with whom I spoke says. “It really started with the help the Qataris gave us in Libya, but it goes well beyond that. They’ve been absolutely first rate on ISIS. The Saudis, on the other hand, have been nothing but trouble – in Yemen, especially. Yemen has been a disaster, a stain. And now there’s this.”

That view has been reflected by both Mattis and Tillerson. Six days after Trump’s statement, Mattis met with Qatari Defense Minister Khalid al-Attiyah to sign an agreement shipping 36 F-15 fighters to the Gulf nation. The $12 billion sale had been in the works for years, so Pentagon officials were able to claim that it had not been fast-tracked by Tillerson, whose department oversees arms transactions. But the Mattis announcement seemed suspiciously well-timed to signal Mattis’ and Tillerson’s views.

On the same day that Mattis was announcing the Qatar arms agreement, Tillerson told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that it would be a mistake to classify the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group, one of the primary reasons that the anti-Qatar coalition gave for isolating their Gulf neighbor. “There are elements of the Muslim Brotherhood that have become parts of government,” Tillerson said, naming Turkey and Bahrain as having brotherhood members in their parliaments. Those “elements,” Tillerson added, have renounced violence and terrorism. “So, in designating the Brotherhood in its totality as a terrorist organization . . . I think you can appreciate the complexities this enters into our relations with [governments in the region].”

But the single most important reason for the Qatar tilt is obvious to anyone who knows how to read a map. The U.S. leases the al-Udeid Air Base, southwest of Doha, which is home to the Air Force’s 379th Air Expeditionary Wing. The U.S. (and the Qataris), not only mount fighter-bombers from al-Udeid against ISIS units in Iraq and Syria, the base serves as the first line of defense against Iranian encroachments in the region. Even more crucially, al-Udeid not only protects America’s Persian Gulf allies, it protects Israel – and would be a launching point for U.S. aircraft against Iran were Israel to be attacked by the Islamic Republic.

More crucially, particularly from Mattis’s point-of-view, the Saudi-Qatar feud not only shattered the anti-Iran coalition the administration cobbled together during the president’s trip to Riyadh, it redrew the geopolitical map of the Middle East. In the wake of the Saudi-Qatar falling out, Turkey pledged its support for Qatar (and deployed troops to a Qatari military base to guard Qatar’s sovereignty), while Iran took steps to help ease the Saudi-imposed blockade.

“The Saudis and Emiratis have told us repeatedly that they want to weaken Iran, but they’ve actually empowered them,” a senior Pentagon consultant who works on the Middle East told me. The Saudi actions, this official went on to explain, have backfired. Instead of intimidating the Qataris, the Saudis have “thrown them into the arms of the Iranians.” The result is an uneasy, but emerging Turkish-Qatari-Iranian alliance backed by Russia. “This isn’t just some kind of Gulfie dust-up, where we can go out and hold everyone’s hands,” this Pentagon consultant says. “The Saudis have handed the Iranians a gift and we’re on the outside looking in.”

The official then shook his head. “Listen, I can certainly understand where Mattis and Tillerson are coming from. I mean, with friends like these, who needs enemies.”

Mark Perry is a foreign policy analyst and the author of The Most Dangerous Man in America: The Making of Douglas MacArthur. His next book, The Pentagon’s Wars, will be released in October. He tweets @markperrydc
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@The Human Q-Tip @gourimoko @King Stannis
 
czvo said:
You know, I've now seen Q make posts referencing numerous highly suspect sites like the one above, and it's fairly alarming. Q, I thought you were RCF's resident "level-headed" conservative? If this is where you're getting your information from, then we may be in far more trouble as a country than I anticipated.
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Jesus....

There's a video at the link of her speaking, and it is far from the only one. She recently called Trump Bush....She's 77, and it is hardly implausible that she may be developing dementia. It happens.

I even said if - I'm not trying to spout some conspiracy theory, but rather saying that if that is the case, I hope the Democrats ease her out.

I lost both my father and father in law to that disease, and it is unpleasant. I hope for her sake she does not have it, but if she does, I really don't want to see conservatives mocking her for screwing up if she actually has a problem.

That was my point -- it was not partisan or political.
 
czvo said:
You know, I've now seen Q make posts referencing numerous highly suspect sites like the one above, and it's fairly alarming. Q, I thought you were RCF's resident "level-headed" conservative? If this is where you're getting your information from, then we may be in far more trouble as a country than I anticipated.
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Highly suspect sites?... When has Q posted CNN articles?
 
caf said:
Highly suspect sites?... When has Q posted CNN articles?
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I only want articles about Nancy Pelosi's brain freezes or Hillary's coughing attacks.

Anything else is fake news.
 
BooyaCS said:
He is the one I would have a bug on with the FBI to see who he is talking to (especially if he is involved in foreign policy) what is he up to?
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Uh, the FBI can't bug someone just because they're curious as to what they are saying/doing.
 
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