Forest Fires Target People Who Hate America

On my way to this computer, I rolled through the channels. There was Hannity trashing Joe Wilson and Valerie.

Da slime machine rolls on…

OK, let’s assume that what Beck really means by “people who hate America” is “liberals”. They’re also the ones who think that it’s worth paying taxes to get proper government services, like forest management and fire protection. Instead, we’ve been getting less of both thanks to the rampant deficits of the ’80s and ’90s that Clinton had to clean up, and the idiotic war that Son of Bush has gotten us into.

In other words, the people who believe that government is important to a working society are the people who are suffering thanks to the worthless half-wits who want to drown it in a bathtub. Half-wits like Beck in other words.

I’d ask how a brain-dead asswipe like Beck could be a commentator on a national news channel, but I already know the answer. It’s one of the many reasons I don’t have cable TV.

Same reason Rush, Hannity and O’Reilly are…the rightwingers don’t care; in fact, they love comments like that. They believe that they alone are right, and the rest of the rabble deserve what they get…

They hate New Orleans - they hate California, they hate NY and they hate San Fransico, they hate Colorado, they can learn to hate Tuceon too, but most of all Larry, as much as it tears me to say so. They just don’t hate certain states, they hate the foundation of America and all it’s beliefs.

They hate Blue states, and celebrate when harm comes to those states. That’s all I can gather from Mr. Beck’s statements.

Cheney said US “States that voted for Kerry were going to get hit” –

I have 3 cousins who live in the SD area. None of them were able to get in to the evacuation centers. Mark and Chris evacuated, and are now un-evacuating. They are both taking their families back; they could not find a place to stay. My Cousin Harry is luckily single and working in D.C., but he lives in San Diego. My cousin Bobby is working on his PhD in Physics and is from the Valley, but lives in Boulder, CO. He also works at the Ferme Labs in Chicago, so he’s very safe.

Ya know, but effing hell…………My family is twisted by the OK links and drought and wind, and we are twisted by the fires in So.Cal.

Forest fires are a preoccupation with Australia as well. It has been politically expedient to blame fires on one type of arsonist or another.

Greedy, rich property developers trying to clear protected land and botched back burning attempts have been the culprit more than once. Instead, the mass media loves to pick on them AlQaeda types as their source of theory.

BTW is there an index of smileys compatible with this board? Some of those guys can do more than a thousand words!

Naval air station, Southern California, Orange county anywhere near the fires? Did the homes of non-liberals escape the fire? Do wingnuts talk without thinking?

San Diego is the most Republican area in the US…I’m already seeing a reverse Katrina II here…there will be maximum help from Bush and FEMA and Gov. Arnold…just watch..talk about a white area..of course the county is totally subsidized by communist/socialist govt. welfare over the years– Defense and military welfare babies…the hidden lie of the fake “free market” nuttery. The rule is socialize the costs, privatize the profits..and you don’t notice the lie. Duh! US capitalism!

Mi Shi, am watching the people at that huge stadium (Qual-Com, or Qual-Choice or something) and what a different picture from that of New Orleans. Lots and lots of stuff - diapers, food, water, blankets, cots, etc. But the people there don’t look like the people who have homes in high-risk areas, homes that firefighters are trying to save. I wonder if they can fight the fires at the same time they try to save the (rich) homes.

I wonder how the people of New Orleans, wherever they happen to be at this point, think of all of this.

Someone’s going to make a lot of money from these events. Naomi’s book is surely relevant here.

Glen Beck? who is he? another balloon juice peddler?I didn’t know he even had ratings worth mentioning.

One can only hope karma is real

Memo on SoCal Fire News
1. boycott Glenn Beck, he might want to consider the conservative Republicans who live in the areas he’s talking about
2. forget national news outlets if you have an interest in the most up to date fire info because of friends or relatives you might have in SoCal

Possibly due to having the newest state of the art facility in Glendale/Burbank area,
local ABC channel 7 has the most current fire info. This is not a promotion, I just happen to have an interest in the most useful info because I live here.

We’re not out of the woods yet, and neither are the fires. National Weather Service includes a high wind warning predicting continued high winds with gusts peaking at up to 70 mph. Effective fire-fighting does not occur in high winds, so real progress won’t happen for at least another day or two when the wind start to subside. Many areas have a humidity level well under 5%, which my sinuses can attest to. Under these conditions, when a wind gust runs over a burning ‘hot spot’ the fire literally explodes.

National news is reporting evacuations in the 2-300,000 range, but locally across all of SoCal they’re being reported more like half a million. All hotels are full, Qualcomm stadium is packing them in.

In spite of all this bad news, don’t get the idea that the entire 7 county area is an inferno. Half a million is a very small percentage of the total here. I’m sitting here triangulated between where the fires are many miles away, and though very windy and smoke in the sky is visible, I really don’t have a fire problem, at least not presently.

San Diego is mostly GOP.

>>> San Diego is mostly GOP.

And that’s the LIBERAL side of San Diego!

They sure like that cheap, undocumented, paid-in-cash labor that sneaks across Otay Mesa (”Our ‘newest’ Americans”) trimming their shrubs and painting their houses.

When my daughter was at university there, she was invited to a Bund meeting…

OK, not really, but you get the picture. Whole lotta folks in LaJolla think that McCarthy was railroaded before Nixon, and that Lee Harvey Oswald is a national hero.

Just goes, once again, to show that God has a sense of Humor: Look at who She lets live on the beautiful real estate with the Perfect Climate.

When CNN hired this guy, I wrote them an e-mail saying they’ve gained a blowhard, but lost a viwer - me. I’ve been as good as my word. I won’t even watch a debate if they sponsor it.

One person makes no difference, of course, but maybe if more and more people called them up and said roughly the same thing, they’d realize they’re losing more than they’re gaining by giving him a platform.

Why they protect him, I have no idea. His ratings suck as much as he does.

Just shoot your TV.

I equate all of this to the crank caller. Every time you answer and engage them, they keep calling back. They love the audience.

In the case of the lamestream presstitute havens such as CNN or FOX and their spinoff channels, just stop watching them. I did. Months ago. It’s so much better now without them.

Also, if you “hang up” on them in droves, they’ll either start telling the truth by actually presenting news through the process of dissemination of information (ie journalism) and evicting the sublime they air as programming (entertainment as news) or they may just disappear altogether as a whole. Now, wouldn’t that be the best scenario?

None of you get it.
“Outrageous” comments get attention.
Attention gets ratings.
Glenn Beck is in the ratings business.
So much the better if he pisses off “progressives.”

Besides, much of the area where these fires are burning is basically uninhabitable - by intelligent adults.
It is desert covered with tinder, with houses built on slopes waiting for the next mudslide.

Gleen Beck muses: “I think there is a handful of people who hate America. Unfortunately for them, a lot of them are losing their homes in a forest fire today.”

I don’t get it– it’s a really bizarre non-sequitur.

I mean, there is a handful of people who think Glenn Beck is insightful. Unfortunately for them, a lot of them will die in car crashes.

What the fuck is this supposed to mean?

Glenn Beck Sees the Good Side of the Fires in Cali…

CNN’s Glenn Beck pointed out on his radio show, some of the victims of the fires in California actually got what was coming to them….

In broad strokes, the City of San Diego votes Democratic. The surrounding county votes Republican. And a lot of those folks evacuating are not wealthy.

Sign me, a native San Diegan.

As a p.s., it’s not surprising that the fire response has been fairly effective. First, there were many, many problems in the ‘03 Cedar Fire, which burned many of the same areas in San Diego. One hopes that they learned something from that. Second, this is California we’re talking about - California has had a lot of practice dealing with natural disasters and tends to respond pretty well.

I say we capture some of this intelligent fire and retrain it. Imagine Dick Cheney seemingly safe in his “undisclosed location” de jour. Suddenly there’s a lick of flames under the door, now the entire room’s on fire and there’s nothing Cheney can do about it. Richard Perle can run from the flames of justice, but he can’t hide. It gives a whole new meaning to the phrase, “Hot enough for ya?”

I suggest some San Diego area radio station with a wide listening audience just play GB’s remarks on continuous loop for days and days, and let it sink in to all the repubs in the region just how much loyalty and compassion the big rightwing celebs have toward their followers.

BTW, the number of evacuees is now up to almost a million.

i live right in the path of the witch fire…at 4:30am this morning,the wind was blowing towards us at 40mph and the fire was only 5 mi away……we were packed and ready to leave.

the wind died at 7am and reversed direction…..its now blowing back towards rancho sante fe,home of the super wealthy, mostly GOP supporters of duncan hunter.

the rice fire is burning thru fallbrook,which is heavily GOP.

karma is true….it will be interesting to see what bush has to say if he arrives here on thursday as scheduled.

for SD fire info see sosdfireblog.blogspot.com

This morning on Fox News, hosts of the show Fox and Friends blamed the wildfires in California on a new culprit: al Qaeda. They pointed to a 2003 FBI memo, which raised the possibility that al Qaeda may try to set wildfires around the western United States. They also noted that men in a “hovering helicopter” saw “a guy starting one of these fires.”

http://thinkprogress.org/

Q: how to take dramatic events in stride?
A: Peggy Lee “Is That All There Is”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-hiDMpcN9Y

We’ll need some relaxing music as we brace ourselves for the parade of the politico photo ops.

First on the agenda is comparison with Katrina, footage with Chertoff walking around with Governator, stressing how everything is going swimmingly; I guess to repair the image damage from Katrina.

How do I know this is all about image? Southern Louisiana is still an un-recovered disaster area, that’s how.

Apples and Oranges. Dealing with a hurricane for which there was no dress rehearsal is simply NOT the same as dealing with wildfires which we out here have faced every year since our earliest memory. California has simply had more practice in a live situation, with a much bigger population to answer to.

Next up, Bush arriving tomorrow. I suggest he land in Palmdale, and stay out of the way.

Bush says, “I wish we could control the wind”.

Well, can you imagine the disaster if he actually could? Since he can’t, I guess we all have a reason to celebrate Thanksgiving next month.

Don’t overlook the damage the Bu$h neocons have done to our govt agencies. Govt lands (a third of Calif) are managed by the US Dept of Forestry, (US Dept of Agriculture); and the Bureau of Land Management (Dept of Interior). The rivalry, pettiness and duplication are legendary. The Calif Dept of Forestry, CalFire, cannot fight fires on federal land until given permission by the Feds.

CalFire, OTOH, is agile. The Guvernator signed an executive order to put the DC-10 supertanker on contract back in May, and it was done in time for the start of offical fire season on June 15, which will run until Nov. 15. However, Feb was the only month in the last 20 months without a wildfire.

GB

Long Term: As is common knowledge, at least to some, fires are not new to CA. What is new is the exponentially increasing challenge of fuel management. This is not just CA, but across most forest areas of North America, not the least of which is the Great Basin. No wonder NIFC is in Boise ID.

For over a hundred years, wildland fires have been put out as quickly as possible, as often as possible, more so as urbanization moves in. The result is a backlog of forest fuel buildup, for which the practical removal solutions are overwhelming. All you need today is either dry lightning or a spark from anything, and you get a really big poof. Then in a high wind, a fire can travel consistently faster than a bicycle, and many times faster at peak moments. It’s an angry animal.

So just keep in mind, though today’s fire news will be tomorrow’s faint memory; the really big under-addressed problem in the forest is exponentially increasing fuel buildup, which the last-minute-managers in government have yet to come to grips with. 100,000 acre fires used to be rare, now they’re commonplace. Increasingly longer dry seasons don’t help either. Talk to Al Gore about that one.

A long time ago, the forests could take care of themselves because they were so big. Now they’re so much smaller, management is required. Example, there are only exactly THREE remaining places in the entire world where Redwoods still live; one in China, the other two in CA. That is IT. Do we reallly want to forever lose trees older than Jesus? And BTW, don’t forget the Amazon Rain Forest.