Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Way back in 1973, conservative President Richard Nixon's Environmental Protection Agency's (Let that one sink in. He created it.My how times have changed!) Clean Air Act banned most spray asbestos products that had been used for fireproofing and insulation after it was found to be causing serious lung and respiratory ailments, including Mesothelioma, lung cancer and other chronic respiratory conditions. 3 years later, in 1976, the Toxic Substances Control Act gave the EPA the authority to restrict the use of certain toxic materials such as asbestos, radon, and brain-damaging lead-based paint.10 years after that, in 1986, the Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response Act made the EPA establish standards for the inspection and removal of asbestos from the nation's schools. In 1989, the EPA issued the Asbestos Ban and Phase Out Rule. The rule was designed to impose a full ban on the manufacturing and importation, and sale of asbestos products. Those were the days when we had an EPA that at least had a couple of teeth and, generally, compared to the decimated Trump EPA, saw it's mission as being a positive force, bureaucracy aside, for the environmental health of America and those who live here, but, the rule was never fully implemented. Hence, there was no outright ban on asbestos in America even though its usage, especially in private homes, was cut back for obvious safety reasons.

Still, more than 50 countries, including the European Union have banned the use of asbestos. Now, America under Senor Trumpanzee is not just maintaining the inadequate status quo, it is going, whole heartedly in the opposite and most dangerous and unhealthy direction as the Trump administration has thrown its support behind the asbestos industry's decades-long fight to spread its toxic product throughout our outdoors and indoors environments. Interestingly, shortly after Comrade Trump's one on one meeting with Putin in Helsinki, large shipments of asbestos began to be shipped from, you guessed it, Russia, into the United States. In a statement of cynical surreality, the incoming bales of asbestos even bear a wrapping that features the ugly mug of dear Comrade Trump. You can see a picture of this at the end of this post. The Russian statement on the bales translates to Approved By Donald Trump, 45th President Of The United States.

So what's next? Bags of potting soil from Chernobyl, complete with Comrade Trump's glowing orange face? None of this should surprise us of course. Trump and his party have long been the biggest pro-disease advocates, always willing to let a company dump some chemicals into a once lovely stream, ala Duke Energy, Dow Chemical, or any fracking oil company. Politicians from both parties have been guilty of looking the other way just for a bribe. What is stunning is the nihilistic fervor with which Trump makes himself a merchant of death, whether it's this asbestos crusade, sabotage of auto emissions standards, advocating the creation of more greenhouse gases, depriving areas at risk for wildfires the money for defenses, spending millions on a penis-compensation military parade rather than using the millions for the care of our veterans, abandoning Puerto Rico in its time of grave need, weakening NATO, kissing the asses of murderous dictators such as Duterte, Kim Jong-un, and his BFF Putin... I could go on and on but you get the point. Trump is a one man Bhopal disaster. Trump is all about willfully spreading disease, death, and any form of human misery his incredibly sick and disturbed mind can think of. It's who and what he is. His selection to head his party was inevitable. Now, if only he would tell his followers to drink some cyanide-laced grape juice. I bet he feels that is something he was born to do. If he did do it, he'd send a tweet the next morning boasting that Jim Jones was small time, a lightweight, compared to him.

How Many Americans Have To Get Mesothelioma Before Republicans Agree To Impeach Trump?

On his show Friday, Bill Maher, made a case that since Trump entered the White House his party's guiding premise is now just "some warped idea that the way to show strength is by being a dick. And that in a nutshell is what Republicanism has become. Looking at any problem and saying, 'what would a dick do?'" Obviously he soon turned to Trump's Pruitt-directed EPA-- okaying a pesticide known to cause brain damage in children and working to allow asbestos again. Asbestos, you know, the cancer-causing substance banned in 58 countries, including all 28 nations of the European Union. In Canada asbestos prohibition starts next year. During the Senate confirmation hearings into Pruitt Ed Markey noted that "More than 30 Americans die each day from diseases like asbestosis and cancer caused by asbestos." Since asbestos is responsible for something like half of all occupational cancer deaths, many senators were concerned that Trump is publicly on record as an asbestos fan, calling it the "the greatest fireproofing material ever made" during 2005 Homeland Security Committee testimony, blaming the collapse of the Twin Towers on 9/11, on the lack of asbestos in the buildings. Earlier, in The Art of the Comeback (1997) his ghost writer asserted that the anti-asbestos movement is a mob-led conspiracy, insisting that mob-related companies would do the asbestos removal." Senor Trumpanzee, environmental expert, claims asbestos is "100 percent safe, once applied."

The World Health Organization begs to differ-- as do all scientists who have ever studied the matter since asbestos is a well-known human carcinogen with no safe level of exposure. Pre-Trump, the EPA asbestos as a top-10 high-risk chemical for priority action, primarily because it causes mesothelioma cancer and causing approximately 15,000 deaths in this country annually. Trump and Pruitt will never allow it to be banned. Which brings us to a powerful fuck-off retirement letter last week from EPA employee Mike Cox to Pruitt.

“I, along with many EPA staff, are becoming increasing alarmed about the direction of EPA under your leadership … ” Cox said in a letter to Pruitt. “The policies this Administration is advancing are contrary to what the majority of the American people, who pay our salaries, want EPA to accomplish, which are to ensure the air their children breath is safe; the land they live, play, and hunt on to be free of toxic chemicals; and the water they drink, the lakes they swim in, and the rivers they fish in to be clean.”

...He can get away with being so blunt because he sent the letter on his last day on the job. Yet his views reflect the disgust and frustration among the agency employees he left behind. Interviews with staffers point to a workforce demoralized by President Trump’s and Pruitt’s statements that conflict with science. They are worried about a new, backward direction for the agency and nervous about proposed, drastic budget cuts.

They are also fearful.

Twice during an hour of interviews for this column, EPA workers in different parts of the country asked to communicate with me by using encryption software. All who spoke feared retaliation and would not allow their names to be used.

“It is pretty bleak,” one staffer, an environmental engineer, said about employee morale.

“It’s in the dumps,” said another.

“Pretty much everybody is updating their resumes. It’s grim,” added a third.

They and their colleagues are dedicated to EPA’s mission to “protect human health and the environment.” They fear that Trump administration policies will do the opposite.

Like Cox, they are upset with an administrator casting doubt on the central role carbon dioxide plays in climate change. “You will continue to undermine your credibility and integrity with EPA staff, and the majority of the public, if you continue to question this basic science of climate change,” Cox wrote.

Of course, Pruitt’s position is no surprise for a man who was appointed by a president who called climate change a hoax.

...Trump’s proposed EPA budget is the vehicle for his science-doubting policies.

His 31 percent budget decrease would be the largest among agencies not eliminated. It would result in layoffs for 25 percent of the staff and cuts to 50 EPA programs, the Washington Post reported Sunday. Lost would be more than half the positions in the division testing automaker fuel efficiency claims.

...Cox challenged the “indefensible budget cuts,” asking Pruitt “why resources for Alaska Native Villages are being reduced when they are presented with some of the most difficult conditions in the country; why you would eliminate funds for the protection and restoration of the Puget Sound ecosystem which provides thousands of jobs and revenue for Washington State; and why you would reduce funds for a program that retrofits school buses to reduce diesel emission exhaust inhaled by our most vulnerable population-- children.”

One EPA manager, aware that the Trump Regime intends to fire anyone and everyone at the agency who voices disagreement with its anti-environment agenda, told the Post that "people here are committed to the mission and not necessarily to a paycheck."