It is hard to even grasp the breadth of this wildfire – 105,000 acres is a tremendous area, and it includes a fairly substantial community:

A voracious five-day-old wildfire that has churned through more than 105,000 acres of mountainous brush across northern Los Angeles County showed little sign of slowing down this afternoon as it threatened 12,000 homes in suburban tracts and desert communities, along with a historic observatory and major array of television and radio transmission towers.

With afternoon winds picking up, the Station fire, the largest of eight burning in the state, was plowing through dense hillside vegetation and steep terrain toward residential areas of Sunland and Santa Clarita on the west.

As billows of white and black smoke danced ominously close, Chuck Horn ushered his family and his two prized collectors’ automobiles out of his home in the Sunland-Tujunga area.

“We took pictures, tax returns, insurance forms, the dog, the chicken, and that’s it,” Horn, 61, a retired L.A. County public works employee, said as he prepared to drive away in his baby blue 1931 Plymouth three-window coupe. Horn was next planning on moving his black 1911 Buick Model 33 away from the blaze.

My heart goes out to these people, trying to grab whatever they can, not knowing if anything will remain of their homes when they return:

To the east, firefighters were hoping that a concerted effort to cut fire breaks and lay down fire retardant would save the Mt. Wilson Observatory and a key complex of communications towers.

Because of the intensity and unpredictability of the blaze, which continued shifting directions, fire crews had to pull out of the mountaintop area today and wait for the firestorm to pass.

By 3 p.m. the southeastern edge of the Station fire had pushed south against the wind, into the upper west fork of the San Gabriel River drainage. This fire was near the base of Mt Wilson’s north side. Firefighters had begun back-burning brush at the juncture of California 2 and Mt. Wilson Road in order to protect structures, including an American Indian cultural center, from the advancing fire.

The drama of families having to flee their homes — or risking all to try and defend their property — played out repeatedly as searing heat and a generation of accumulated hillside growth fed the fires. In Gold Canyon, authorities scrambled to rescue five people who had refused to evacuate.

A Los Angeles County Sheriff’s helicopter was trying to locate the residents near Little Tujunga Road. They pleaded for help after becoming trapped by back fires set by crews trying to fight the blaze.

Sixty-five firefighters withdrew from Chilao Flats near the Chilao ranger station. “The intensity of the fire was too strong,” said L.A. County Fire Capt. Henry Rodriguez. “They were pulled off the lines and drove away in their vehicles. They’re safe and all OK.”

Another fire in San Bernardino County was spreading completely out of control and threatening 2,000 homes near Yucaipa.

Tragic. Just tragic, in so many ways, isn’t it? It encompasses a loss of life, loss of home, and loss of environment on a grand scale.

I have a neighbor who works for the Department of Fish and Wildlife. On more than one occasion he has gone out West to help fight these fires. It is amazingly hot, dirty, exhausting work, and the people who risk their lives to get these raging wildfires under control deserve our respect, and our thanks.

My heart goes out to all of the families who have had to leave their homes. I hope and pray this wildfire will be under control soonest…

And then there is what happens in the time after. You know, the time after the wildfire has done its damage, after it has been contained, after nature has had a chance to regroup.

This article was in my paper on Monday, From The Ashes. You probably didn’t hear about a huge (for us) fire in the Myrtle Beach area last year. But it was big, people lost their homes, things seemed bleak. But no more:

The bugs never stood a chance. Insect-eating plants were waiting.

Beetles came out like plague in the cinders of the Myrtle Beach fire earlier this year. They were so thick that if you stood in the forest you could hear them eating the trees, said Deanna Ruth, S.C. Department of Natural Resources wildlife biologist.
But the scorched forest was ready for them, little more than a month after one of the worst fires in the state’s history.

An astounding profusion of horror-movie-looking Venus fly traps emerged, opening their carnivorous, teethy spikes in a spectacular display of a plant so rare it grows nowhere else in the world natively. They came out in ribbons like runway carpets stretchingfor a half-mile at times along the edge of bogs in the Lewis Ocean Bay Heritage Preserve.(Photo by Just Caroline)

They were so thick biologists found six colonies they didn’t know existed.

Isn’t that incredible? It gets better:

Alongside the fly traps bloomed sundews, even tinier bug-eating plants that look like something you’d see in the Hubble telescope. Pitcher plants emerged, tulip-shaped bug eaters. They bloomed with white fringed orchids and indigo in an almost fantastic reclaiming of more than 7,000 burned acres in the preserve.

And the animals came out in numbers that the biologists hadn’t seen in years — deer grazing on the tender new shoots of grasses, quail and wild turkey, whose young feed on insects.

The April blaze that consumed 30 square miles of mostly pine stands and coastal swamps, or bays, didn’t kill the longleaf pine savannahs. It rejuvenated them.

“It burned. There was plenty of open daylight. (The plants) weren’t being droughted out. All the conditions were perfect for these plants to come back and thrive,” Ruth said. “It’s pretty amazing.”

Amazing, indeed! It is incredible how the planet is designed. That wildfires help to cleanse the area, to renew it. But not without a price:

The fire did $25 million damage to some 70 homes in subdivisions cut into the edges of those thick-growing, flammable wilds. Residents still are struggling to rebuild, but the woods already are recovering. And there’s a lesson in that for the Lowcountry, which also is home to miles on miles of “fire adapted communities,” woods and plants that evolved partly because of occasional wildfires.

“We need to make sure we burn periodically here,” said botanist Richard Porcher, a professor emeritus with The Citadel. “You have a normal fire, and everything comes right back. If you don’t (burn), when you do have a fire you have a holocaust.”

The recovery hasn’t been unaided. The nearly 10,000-acre preserve has been closed all season while logging crews tried to remove some 1,800 acres of burned trees so ruined that timber companies didn’t want the wood; the majority were sent to the chippers then sold overseas. The loggers managed to cut about two-thirds of that acreage.

Natural Resources plans to re-open the preserve to the public Sept. 16. Guided tours of the fly traps are held in the spring. The plants are a state species of concern, illegal to pick in the wild, Ruth said. Cultivated fly traps can be bought in specialty shops or online.

The fly trap is the piranha of the plant world, eerie and voracious looking. But the plants are so small that Ruth had to point out to a searching preserve visitor that he’s standing on them.

They are a wonder found natively only on the rims of isolated coastal wetlands in North and South Carolina, one of a number of rare plants that thrive at the edges of Carolina Bays. The bays themselves are an enigma — oval-shaped wetlands that pock the entire coastal plain in clusters with an eerie symmetry, each turned northwest to southeast. They are thought to be as old as 100,000 years, and nobody knows how they formed.

The preserve is dominated by one of them, the 786-acre Lewis Ocean Bay. Carolina Bays extend into Georgia, but Venus fly traps are found only as far south as the Santee River.

“Why they never came across the Santee, nobody knows,” Porcher said. “If you knew the answer to that you’d be a famous biologist.”

Isn’t this just incredible? I grew up in NC, and have lived in SC for a while. I never knew that the Venus Fly Trap grew in just this one, relatively small, area. That’s just cool. (I should add, I am a member of our local aquarium, and it has an exhibit on Venus fly traps. But I don’t remember it saying that the locale was so limited.)

It may be hard for those in the midst of this extreme wildfire in CA to even consider that now, and rightly so. They have far more pressing issues at hand, I hope and pray that this fire will be contained quickly, with no more loss of life, and little loss of home.

From the ashes indeed, comes incredible beauty, both flora AND fauna. Down the road, in time, Mother Nature will have the opportunity to work her magic. And if it is anything like what has happened in my state, it will be amazing indeed…

See the Update about how many of our Elected Officials will/not be holding Town Hall Forums at the bottom of the page.

Friend to NQ, Kathleen Wynne from HandCountPaperallotsNow made a suggestion after seeing the negative spin the MSM is putting on reports of concerned citizens calling out their representatives on the issue of health care reform, even if all they want is for them to READ the damn thing. Here are some of her suggestions:

After watching the reporting by the usual suspects in the media, who are turning these protests into orchestrated, manufactured outrage, it’s clear that having a number of town hall meetings where those reps either chose not to participate in one or who chose to have a conference call instead, will help prove that they are merely trying to discredit these protests and undermine the citizens true feelings about the health care legislation. Or how Senator Boxer ridiculed citizens voicing their concerns as trying to “hurt our president” and too well dressed for this NOT to be orchestrated

:

Another point that should be put out there for all to see is that during the primary and general election, it was Obama, himself, who told his supporters to have debates with those who did not support him and “get in their face.” Here is a reminder of Obama saying that, along with some other actions by his supporters

:

More importantly, we want citizens to realize how important it is for them to participate in democracy and recognize how important they are in making these reps accountable and to expose their total indifference to the citizens’ concern, not to mention their total lack of knowledge of exactly what’s in the bill. This is a pivotal moment to increase citizen involvement in “taking to the streets” and keeping the pressure on. The longer citizens stay engaged in these protests, the less the MSM can dismiss them as “astro turf” (i.e., not real grassroots concerns), as Nancy Pelosi refers to them in this clip

:

Ms. Wynne is:

asking citizens in those towns where the representatives have chosen NOT to have a town hall meeting or worse, canceled them, to “BE THE MEDIA” by organizing and conducting town hall meetings themselves and having a public discussion about what they don’t like about the health-care bill and any of the other bills that have been rammed down our throats and videotape the event. In particular, they should make it clear that they are having the town hall meeting despite their representative’s choice to not have one or to cancel one. That should be made clear at the beginning, and then say that they would not be silenced.

Then request that clips of these events be sent to NQ, here, and other websites of their choosing in order to make the people’s outrage at not being listened to be seen and heard by other citizens, so that we know that this isn’t just a group of fringe groups being sent out to disrupt town hall meetings.*

It’s an end-run around the MSM’s attempt to ignore and not report what the people are really feeling about the Obama Administration’s policies.

Now word is coming that unions are being sent in to counter those who oppose this plan. And videos are already rolling in, including footage of union members (SEIU) getting into it with Tea Party protesters.

This is our country, and we have every right to speak out, to dissent, to question. And we have the right to speak out without fear of harassment, violence, or intimidation by those in power or their surrogates. We have the right to demand accountability of those whom we have elected to represent us, and that they REPRESENT US. That is their job, after all.

So, are you game? If so, feel free to send this post to whatever sites you frequent, and let’s get this thing rolling.

UPDATE: Check out how many of our elected officials are NOT meeting with their constituents:

Transparency, said President Barack Obama in a memo not long after he took the oath of office, was going to be a “touchstone” of his administration. His advisors then gathered around, breaking into a paroxysm of giggles interlaced with assurances to each other that dumbbell Americans would actually buy this stuff.

What fun to have power, they laughed. What fun!

OK, true enough, I cannot vouch for any post-promise merriment, but I can vouch that it did not take all that long for the administration to emulate former Vice President Dick Cheney’s thoroughly castigated private meetings with top energy executives working with him on policy issues. The public did not learn what was said or who attended. Especially among liberals, suspicion of dastardliness was high.

Well, speaking for myself, I concur – I was pretty upset about Cheney’s secret meeting with energy executives to craft our energy policy. Amazingly, there is a correlation:

The Obama version was to meet secretly with coal executives while devising the content of a cap-and-trade global-warming tax, explaining that presidential communications are privileged and did not fall under the Freedom of Information Act. Judges had differed with that idea, and so did Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, which filed suit and, then, not too much later had reason to try again to get the names of people visiting the White House for sessions on the nation’s future.

This time it was health-care executives on hand to lend their ideas and expertise about health-care legislation. The administration at first resisted divulging the names, but finally did — which is hardly the same as saying we can now figure on the steadfast openness which once upon a time was guaranteed by Obama himself.

Oh, wait – did I write “correlation”? I meant, “correlationS.” Obama hasn’t stopped with just energy, obviously. Yep – health care people, too – and we are seeing how well that is going over right now.

Naturally, there is more:

Take a glance, for instance, at the Environmental Protection Agency. According to a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece, Alan Carlin, a senior analyst with EPA’s National Center for Economics, had the temerity along with a colleague to produce a paper casting doubt on global-warming theory and especially on the reliability of computer models predicting catastrophe down the pike. His boss made it clear that the thesis was contrary to policy and the paper would not be allowed out the door.

I missed the liberal outcry on this, as opposed, say, to what we heard when NASA’s global-warming alarmist James Hansen whined that his press releases might be reviewed before being released during the Bush administration. No such reviews ever took place, which hardly stopped one outraged commentator from complaining that we were now in an era reminiscent of Josef Stalin’s viciously controlling discourse in the Soviet Union. Hansen, the Journal piece reminds us, had given hundreds of speeches on the terror of warming, many of them during the Bush years.

Look next at what’s been happening in Congress: Votes on nation-altering legislation roughly as transparent as a stone wall is transparent, last-minute concoctions of 1,000 pages and more that not a single member of Congress could conceivably have had time to read. For that matter, few if any members could have had a grasp of any number of important elements in these bills even through the secondhand summaries, which is to say, the democratic process was rendered meaningless. Then-Sen. Obama had pointedly complained when Republicans did this sort of thing in the Bush years. Now, as president, he was cheering on rush-job legislating as crucial to the common good.

Obama is more nearly Mr. Obfuscation than he is Mr. Transparency, as he showed during the campaign when he failed to tell us anything much about his passport or medical records, his clients as a lawyer or his college records. Even if you hold hands with him on some of his secrecy then and now, a point to consider is that this is a politician like so many who talk one way and behave another, not someone refreshingly candid and different, just someone who is very good at an old game.

True enough. I like it: Mr. Obfuscation. I think that is a perfect moniker for Obama. The Obfuscator In Chief. Sure, works for me!

Actually, it doesn’t. What he is doing is working for a select, very select, group of people, not for US. And that is the problem with the lack of transparency, with the reneging on promises made, for all of us. Obama, and Congress, are serving the interests of a very few, the same complaint we had about Bush and Cheney.

Here we go again…

Then there’s the whole Obama v. Officer Crowley v. Gates kerfluffle. What the hell, already? Is this what they mean by a “bully pulpit”?? Because that sure seems to be the way Obama sees it. What a ridiculous, stupid, issue for Obama to engage in, especially when he doesn’t even know the facts of the case before opening mouth, inserting foot. American Girl in Italy pointed that out beautifully in her piece, “Obama: I don’t Know Anything About It Except The Cop Acted Stupidly.” Uh, yeah. Way to show some real decorum befitting your office there, Obama.

Are we all back in junior high school now or something? Holy smokes. The name calling, the cliques, the back-stabbing, stealing people’s lunch money (as in our pensions, jobs, and companies), and on it goes, like a pep rally for school spirit. Grow up already. Learn a little decorum, for crying out loud.

Obama is just wearing me out. And while the following Onion video could be all too true (both in terms of treatment of women and how we are all going to need to learn Chinese). for the moment at least, it is funny as hell:


Police Still Searching For Missing Productive, Obedient Woman

Oh, my. Can’t you just see that day coming upon us, especially after the sexism and misogyny of the past Primary/Election? I sure can…

And since the issue of Climate Change has been big in the news of late, there is this planet-saving initiative from Taco Bell (via The Onion):

Taco Bell’s New Green Menu Takes No Ingredients From Nature

Now that should make a difference, shouldn’t it?? Oh, yeah…

Damn, those Onion folks are FUNNY!

I’m off to enjoy my last full day with my awesome cousin who is here visiting until tomorrow morning (early). I hope you’re able to enjoy your day, too. At least now I don’t feel like my head’s gonna explode, and that’s saying something. Hope the same is true for you!

Here is the debate. Heavy equipment operators and demolition specialists make a living by blowing the tops off of the mountains in four Appalachian states. The people who live in these areas would like to see the mountains and streams remain mountains and streams. They don’t want their well water coming out of their faucets blackened with sludge. They don’t want their foundations cracking under the earth shattering blast quakes. They want to enjoy the tourists, hunters and fishers who visit their beautiful woods and pump more money into the economy than all the coal operations combined. They want their children safe. A child was recently killed when a boulder from an MTR blast crashed through his roof and crushed him in his bed as he slept. So it is a battle between jobs for a few and the quality of life for the many.

Maybe West Virginia’s political leadership wants this to be fought out in the streets — or, rather, along narrow, two-lane roads that wind through Boone, Logan and Raleigh counties. Given that the issue has been on the front burner for more than a decade, with little movement toward resolution, it’s probably understandable that both sides have reached this point. – Ken Ward

Public Radio interviewed mountain keeper and CNN Hero Larry Gibson on Monday. You can listen to the interview here. Here is some of his interview:

“We’ll hold stead and we’ll hold back and the violence will not come from the keepers of the mountains and the people who live in them, we will win this war. We fought a battle this weekend and we won because they didn’t get any violence from us.”

Larry did point out that not all miners act this way:

“I really don’t think this is a mindset at all of people who work in the mining industry as far as working people,” he said. “I think it’s just a handful of rogue miners who refuse to understand that there’s a better way to do this.”

Brace yourself. This is not related to the festival event but the local man quoted below was at the picnic and there is always room for a reminder of just how horrid this industry is. He watched an MTR bulldozer willfully plow under bear cubs that just happened to be in the way.

“Now I’ve heard a bear die, and it depends how they’re shot. But there ain’t nothing like hearin that momma bawl, knowin her babies are dying as she gets dozed in. Those cubs don’t even have their eyes open. They might have been old enough to crawl, but they weren’t old enough to escape. What I witnessed that spring, it bothered me. It hurt me. I feel something needs to be done.”

Amen

See also:

Blogger and author Jeff Biggers (HufPo)Two weeks ago, when anti-MTR activists peacefully protested a mine site the police arrested thirty of them, including actress Daryl Hannah, NASA Scientist Dr. James Hansen and former Congressman and author of the Clean Water Act, Ken Hechler.

For background information on Mountaintop Removal visit The Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition (OHVEC)

I’ve always considered myself something of an environmentalist. I don’t remember ever hugging a tree, but I hiked and backpacked in my youth. I’ve recycled since the early 80’s. I shunned the use of chemicals and railed against deforestation, over-packaging, and junk mail. I joined Sierra club, World Wildlife and Nature Conservancy in my twenties (and have been a member ever since). But I am far from an environmental purist. Mostly I’ve just tried to enjoy our natural environment and be a thoughtful and conservation minded consumer.

So when Al Gore came out proclaiming that global warming was upon us and would bring an end to life as we know it, I believed him. And regardless of whichever side of science and popularity is currently ahead in the Global warming debate, I still believe that the our current lifestyle of mass production, mass consumption and mass waste is unsustainable.

But a funny thing happened as environmentalism became “Green.” It some how became less real.

Suddenly green thinkers were everywhere, changing their light bulbs and carrying their eco friendly bags, while driving a Hummer and anxiously awaiting their chance to purchase the latest version of the newest best thing. Yes, they bought the marketing slogan to “Think Green”, but their actions lacked the conviction of a true convert. Their hearts and heads were more invested in the idea of a carbon footprint. Then the reality of it. But that was okay. Every little bit helps, as they say. And its true, we all have to make compromises.

Then the talk turned to “Cap and Trade”, and I just couldn’t seem to get myself on the band wagon. I just couldn’t see the logic of some people, companies, industries or states making sacrifices to conserve energy and cut pollution, so others could “buy” the energy saved and use it and/or “buy” the rights to add pollution. How does that get us ahead? And how is that fair?

If I am required by law to make sacrifices, I want every one else by law to make those sacrifices as well. And if my efforts are creating a surplus energy product or pollution “right”, then why wouldn’t that surplus and those rights mine to sell? Why wouldn’t I be the one to receive compensation for my actions? Why would the government or some other entity be making the decision as to whom could buy my energy or pollution credits? And why would they receive the payments for my efforts?

No it just didn’t make sense to me and it didn’t seem right. But I didn’t realize how wrong “Cap and Trade” really was, until I read Matt Taibbi’s latest article in Rolling Stone. And would it surprise you to learn that Goldman Sachs has found a way to make money – big money on “cap-and-trade”? From Taibbi’s The Great American Bubble Machine:

The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it’s everywhere. The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.

And that’s just Taibbi’s opening lines. I’ve written (here, here and here) and read about the Goldman Sachs connections to our current financial woes. But Taibbi shows that economic destruction on a massive scale is Goldman Sachs’ historical MO and even now it is actively working to set up its next round of victims and this time their funnel will be in everyones pocket. More from The Great American Bubble Machine:

…any attempt to construct a narrative around all the former Goldmanites in influential positions quickly becomes an absurd and pointless exercise, like trying to make a list of everything. What you need to know is the big picture: If America is circling the drain, Goldman Sachs has found a way to be that drain – an extremely unfortunate loophole in the system of Western democratic capitalism, which never foresaw that in a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy.

The bank’s unprecedented reach and power have enabled it to turn all of America into a giant pump-and-dump scam, manipulating whole economic sectors for years at a time, moving the dice game as this or that market collapses, and all the time gorging itself on the unseen costs that are breaking families everywhere – high gas prices, rising consumer-credit rates, half-eaten pension funds, mass layoffs, future taxes to pay off bailouts. All that money that you’re losing, it’s going somewhere, and in both a literal and a figurative sense, Goldman Sachs is where it’s going: The bank is a huge, highly sophisticated engine for converting the useful, deployed wealth of society into the least useful, most wasteful and insoluble substance on Earth – pure profit for rich individuals.

They achieve this using the same playbook over and over again. The formula is relatively simple: Goldman positions itself in the middle of a speculative bubble, selling investments they know are crap. Then they hoover up vast sums from the middle and lower floors of society with the aid of a crippled and corrupt state that allows it to rewrite the rules in exchange for the relative pennies the bank throws at political patronage. Finally, when it all goes bust, leaving millions of ordinary citizens broke and starving, they begin the entire process over again, riding in to rescue us all by lending us back our own money at interest, selling themselves as men above greed, just a bunch of really smart guys keeping the wheels greased. They’ve been pulling this same stunt over and over since the 1920s – and now they’re preparing to do it again, creating what may be the biggest and most audacious bubble yet.

In brutal detail, Tiabbi lays bare Goldman Sachs’ role in five bubbles that have rocked the US economy from 1929 to 2009 –

#1 – The Great Depression (of 1929)
#2 – Tech Stocks
#3 – The Housing Craze
#4 – $4 a Gallon
#5 – Rigging the Bailout

And then he goes on to explain their involvement in the bubble that’s about to start:

#6 – Global Warming

…If cap-and-trade succeeds, won’t we all be saved from the catastrophe of global warming? Maybe – but cap-and-trade, as envisioned by Goldman, is really just a carbon tax structured so that private interests collect the revenues. Instead of simply imposing a fixed government levy on carbon pollution and forcing unclean energy producers to pay for the mess they make, cap-and trade will allow a small tribe of greedy-as-hell Wall Street swine to turn yet another commodities market into a private tax-collection scheme. This is worse than the bailout: It allows the bank to seize taxpayer money before it’s even collected.

If you haven’t realized it already, this is a must read of the highest order. And it should be read in its complete form to get the full effect. For me to snip and paste more would not do it justice. Warning it will leave you shocked and more than a little sick to your stomach. The complete article.. And by the way, the global warming part is at the very end, but please read through to get there.

And as a warm-up, I thought you might enjoy this clip of MSNBC’s Carlos Watson discussing Goldman Sachs with Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone, Dillion Ratigan of Morning Meeting and Jean Chatzky of Today’s Money 911.

_____________________

Major h/t to “oowawa” for the link to Taibbi’s article and to “BGD” for the link to the video!

No Quarter’s American Girl in Italy has a great post including an excellent video explanation of “cap-and-trade” by the eco geek, here.

I am working on a story tentatively titled Ecocide – Is Obama the Worst Environmental President in Recent History? On May 15th the Obama EPA cleared 42 MTR permits, saying that blowing up tops of mountains and dumping the debris into nearby rivers and streams would not have an adverse environmental impact. While working on that piece from the relative comfort of my home some of my friends were out this past weekend getting arrested at a protest against Mountaintop Removal (MTR).

One of the protesters was 94 year old former congressman Ken Hechler, life-long advocate for Earth Justice and author of the original legislation that became the Clean Water Act. For some reason the police refused to arrest him, though he continued to lead the troops on with his bull horn during the arrests. This, just a week after coal country flooding left countless homes and lives in muck. The protesters were in the area because they were volunteering their time helping the flood victims. This is only going to get worse over the next four years.

Here is a note from one of the brave souls reporting on Saturday’s actions:

Seventeen courageous Mountain Justice volunteers were arrested Saturday, May 23 in a three-part civil disobedience action in our continuing movement to end mountaintop removal. Six are still in jail with bogus, unprecedented, $2,000 cash-only bail amounts, slowing their release. Many of them were arrested for the first time with clean records, and all they did was cross a line onto coal company property. We are raising $18,000 to get them out of jail as we move closer to defeating King Coal. Fundraising has bailed out three others since this morning. Thank you all!

The Kayford Eight were charged with trespass and conspiracy for walking onto the 12,000-acre-plus Kayford Mountain mine and locking themselves to a giant dump truck. Placing U-locks around their necks, they attached themselves to guardrails and the driveshaft of the truck after hanging a banner on the truck’s grill that read “Never Again!” Here is a statement from the Kayford Eight:

We locked down at the Kayford mountaintop removal site with mud from the Mingo County flood on our boots and now, with the dusty remains of Kayford Mountain on our boots, we stand in solidarity with our sisters and brothers jailed for their actions to oppose mountaintop removal coal mining.

This may seem like the extreme activism some remember from the 60’s. But it is the only way we can draw attention to this crime against humanity. Robert Redford asks you to spend just five minutes to learn about MTR. It is only five minutes. Please watch.

If you don’t understand our passion for fighting Mountaintop Removal just visit Patchwork Films or OHVEC. Coal companies are literally setting off each day more explosives than we used in the entirety of WWII. RFK, Jr. recently said:

“If a foreign enemy had done to this country what this industry has done to West Virginia, it would be regarded as an act of war.”

The coal companies blow off up to 1,000 feet from the tops of our mountains and dump the rock and dirt into the rivers and streams in the valleys. They call that dumping “Valley Fills.” It is literally killing our people.. your people.. young children. The hell with being upset with insults cast at Princess Pelosi and apologizing for how we treated 9/11 killers – This is RAPE! This is TORTURE! This is Baghdad in the Boonies. The suicide bombers here are the poor local folks who work as miners, killing their own for a sliver of a greenback nirvana handed out by the ass hole coal company executives who have been funded by the Washington War Lords’ billion-dollar subsidies for over eight presidential administrations.

If I sound pissed to you then you heard me right. I am downright fed up with this clean coal bullshit talk. If you don’t live here, you don’t see it. We care about TARP, Korea and H1N1 but we have a more pressing problem going down right now. We are being annihilated here. Back to the kids who came here and stood up for us.

Also before dawn, two brave women, donning hazmat suits and respirators, boated onto the eight-billion-gallon Brushy Fork toxic coal slurry lake and launched a 60-foot floating banner that read “No more toxic sludge!” They were charged with trespass and littering. How can you litter on a giant toxic waste dump? Massey Energy has a permit to blast within 100 feet of this impoundment, which sits atop a honeycomb of abandoned deep mines. In 2000, more than 300 million gallons of coal slurry broke through the bottom of Massey’s Martin Co., Ky., impoundment, and into the deep mines beneath, then exploding into two watersheds, smothering aquatic life over 100 miles of streams. “Someone in jail said something to the effect of ‘I actually work there, yeah that dam’s gonna break,’” Ethan, one of the 17, said. A Brushy Fork failure would be over 23 times larger than Martin County.

Saturday’s two backcountry actions were followed by a picket at the mouth of Massey Energy’s Marfork mining complex, which includes the Brushy Fork dam, where more than 75 Coal River Valley residents and supporters emphasized the deadly danger of that impoundment: the 72-foot peak depth of the sludge at the Head Start facility there should the dam break. Seven people crossed the line onto Marfork’s property and were arrested for trespass.

While the Kayford Eight were released the same day, the other nine fared differently. The two Brushy Paddlers and four of the Pettus Seven are being held for $2,000 each, cash only. We know you love and care about the people of Appalachia! Now is the time to demonstrate your support through a donation to help bail out these committed and passionate activists. We really need your support more than ever at this crucial juncture in the movement to end mountaintop removal mining!

To donate by paypal and get more information, please go to The Mountain Justice Web Site.

If you want a vacation this summer visit the Appalachian Mountains. (The above photo is a recent Will Gudmundsson shot of the Greenbrier River in Southern West Virginia.) It may be your last chance to see some of these rivers and hills because by the time the Obama administration is done they (these mountains) won’t be standing on this earth as we now see them, and the rivers will be filled with sludge.

The New York Times carried an interesting little story about what some vets are doing when they return home. It seems many have special skills that are being put to good use on the environmental front.

More and more veterans are entering the energy-efficiency sector. There are reasons for this. Many are experts at safety measures and running equipment, have engineering expertise, and want to work outdoors. There is even a new organization called Veterans Green Jobs that is training vets for jobs that work towards energy independence. Their website worth a peek.

Here is their mission:

Veterans Green Jobs is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization developing an unprecedented national initiative to offer creative and concrete solutions for three of the most urgent issues of our time: rebuilding a sustainable green economy; reversing deteriorating environmental conditions and climate change threats; and reengaging our nation’s nearly 2 million military service veterans who need meaningful new careers. The Veterans Green Jobs Academy™ provides job training and placement opportunities for military veterans in the emerging green industries. Veterans Green Jobs connects veterans with a wide range of complimentary resources to assist with establishing civilian careers.

The most prominent among the military personnel turned green is General Wes Clark who has been pushing for energy efficiency and a cleaner environment for years. General Clark currently co-chairs Growth Energy and in on the board of Juhl Wind. But it is also heartening to know that less-famous soldiers are headed for continuing their service to their country in a new capacity.

“If the American people could see what I have seen from the air and ground during my many trips to the coalfields of Kentucky and West Virginia: leveled mountains, devastated communities, wrecked economies and ruined lives, there would be a revolution in this country,” Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said after a recent tour of West
Virginia while filming his documentary, Crimes Against Nature. Kennedy described the environmental devastation as the worst he’d seen anywhere.

Mountaintop removal coal mining (MTR) is a radical form of strip mining used in the Appalachian regions of West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia. Every day, coal companies detonate 2,500 tons of explosives to literally blow off the tops of mountains in order to reach thin seams of coal beneath the earth. These explosions are equal to the power of a Hiroshima bomb dropping every week, annihilating some of
the most biologically diverse temperate hardwood forest habitat in the world, and destroying and displacing entire human communities.

People who stay in their homes and communities confront numerous problems including contaminated drinking water, damage to homes from blasting, flooding, coal waste impoundment leaks, the threat of coal sludge impoundment failures, and respiratory and other health problems related to mining activities. According to the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) 1,200 miles of Appalachian rivers and streams have already been buried, and 470 of Appalachia’s mountains have been permanently destroyed. The EPA also estimates that without a significant policy shift, mountaintop removal and other surface mining will destroy nearly 1.5 million acres in the Central Appalachian region by the end of the decade, an area larger than the state of Delaware.

Source: Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition

Robert F. Kennedy: The coal industry and the carbon industry in general are the largest contributors to the political process. So, you know, you have politicians who have essentially become indentured servants to these, and adopt the talking points of these industries.

In his interview with ABC News, conducted last week, Kennedy said, “you have very sensible politicians, including great men like Barack Obama who feel the need to parrot the talking points of this industry that is so destructive to our country.”

The opening Kennedy quote at the top of this article was captured by Filmmaker BJ Gudmundsson who travels into the coalfields and documents the devastation caused by mountaintop removal. She travels around the country presenting her completed works to anyone who will listen. On Thursday Night, 4/23/09 she gave a presentation at the Princeton (WV) Public Library. By coincidence, the coal association had a meeting in the same town, with major politicians invited. A local NBC TV station found the irony of the dichotomy irresistible. They sent a crew to BJ’s show and a crew to the Coal meeting. At 11:00pm they opened their newscast with the “show.”

Momentum is growing across West Virginia to stop mountain top removal mining.

Filmmaker B.J. Gundmundsson says she’s lived in West Virginia her entire life.

However, the day she first saw a mountaintop removal site, she was shaken to the core.

She made it her personal mission to take the public on a journey with her, through the mountains to expose the ugliness she describes as mountaintop removal.

“What had flabergasted me was that not all of West Virginia was not rising up in revolt against this.” Gundmundsson says. “I realized that people weren’t rising up because they can’t see it. You can’t get to it. You can’t just drive up to these places.”

Gudmundsson takes you on that journey in her film, Rise Up West Virginia.

She is now sharing her message and her film with other West Virginians and people around the country.

We’re not only loosing our freedom, we’re loosing our state! We’re being annihilated here! We’ve got the best politicians money can buy. – CNN Hero, Mountainkeeper, Larry Gibson.

WVVA – NBC TV

King Coal had to respond. They probably did not like the treatment their side of the story received. While they are talking about how great coal is the news producer laced images of blown up mountains into the story.

Anyway. Back to the Ross interview with Kennedy. This will tie together.

ROSS: So when you watched last fall with all the candidates, including President Obama talking about clean coal, what were you thinking when you watched all that?

KENNEDY: Oh, not only was I dismayed to see that, but also, if you looked at the presidential debates, the networks were allowing the coal industry to sponsor the debates. So that every single one of the presidential debates was sponsored by clean coal. So it’s not just that it’s corrupted the political process, but it’s corrupted essentially the American media as well.

Wealthy Politicians

ROSS: Have you seen the commercials they’re running now with President Obama, “Yes, we can” talking about clean coal? What’s your reaction to that?

KENNEDY: Well, again, I think it’s sad when political leaders feel that they are so indebted to these industries that they, and so fearful of them, essentially, that they have to endorse conditions that clearly are wrong.

ROSS: And you say that about President Obama?

KENNEDY: Yeah. Anybody who looks at this understands that the term “clean coal” is a dirty lie. That coal is neither cheap nor clean. It’s devastating to our country, it’s bad for our economy, it’s devastating towards our communities, and we have wonderful alternatives in this country if we’d only invest in them.

Final update on Princeton, WV. Before the filmmaker got out of town she heard, first hand, how political and angry this debate is. Princeton is raising money to build a new community library. During the film presentation the library director got a phone call from the Mayor. It seems a local coal baron was directing a matching fund to help build the library. He called the mayor and told him because the library was showing “that” movie, he was withdrawing the 50% match.

If you are following indentured servants, then where are you going?

ROSS: And do you think President Obama should reverse his course on this?

KENNEDY: Absolutely. There’s no such thing as clean coal, we’re destroying the Appalachians. And I guarantee you if we could get President Obama to fly over the Cumberland, to fly over the Appalachian mountains and see the destruction that’s occurring there, he would.

Note: Kennedy tried, after the ABC interview to back off the indentured servant comment. ABC then released the transcript of the entire interview. You can judge for yourself. Kennedy’s Backspace. and the full transcript.

I like Bobby Kennedy. He did not endorse Obama in the primary and he has been working to help stop the destruction of our beautiful mountains.

KENNEDY: My loyalties are to my country and not to any particular politician. And you know, I’ve been non-partisan. I’ve been 25 years as an environmental advocate, I’ve been non-partisan and bi-partisan. I don’t believe in partisanship. If somebody does something wrong, I’m going to say it whether they’re Democrat or Republican.

Many environmentalists believe that Obama broke his promise to halt mountaintop removal. That is not quite fair to him. He did not say he would end the practice. I heard his comments to the groups. He said it was wrong and that he would study it. And some hopey followers think that his presence in office is what prompted the EPA to start doing their job. That is not quite fair to the EPA. I talked to regulators last year. They were convinced that, no matter who won the election, they would be un-tethered. They are reviewing certain mining permits. The Army Corps of Engineers, who issued those permits, are fighting on behalf of the coal industry. This is not over yet.

Obama is still promoting Coal-to-Liquid technology. Basically you toss coal in a hopper and then burn some more coal in a furnace to produce the heat that turns to coal in the hopper to a type of liquid fuel. This fuel will burn cleaner than coal, true. But two times the coal is needed for this process. The first batch is burned just like it is at a power plant and it means twice as many mountains will forever be gone. U.S. News (not your average anti-business rag) is not convinced either.

So, do not buy into this clean coal crap. It is like thinking that you can wipe the poop off of a turd. Go ahead. Try it. The video below is just 30 seconds, no poop and it is a hoot.

Film clips courtesy of Patchwork Films.

Americans like their toilet tissue velvety, plump, and cushioned. But it turns out that soft paper has to be made from standing trees, and millions of them are culled annually from our own forests as well as those in South America and Canada just to satisfy our pampered American butts.

Leslie Kaufman reports on our obsession with comfort at a horrendous expense to our environment.

“In the United States, which is the largest market worldwide for toilet paper, tissue from 100 percent recycled fibers makes up less than 2 percent of sales for at-home use among conventional and premium brands…According to RISI, an independent market analysis firm in Bedford, Mass., the pulp from one eucalyptus tree, a commonly used tree, produces as many as 1,000 rolls of toilet tissue. Americans use an average of 23.6 rolls per capita a year.”

Doing the math, it takes only 42 people to …er…wipe out a fully grown, standing eucalyptus tree each year. And those 42 people will do in another one next year, and so on. Multiply that out, and you get the picture.

I hate to inflict insight, but leveling standing forests to make toilet paper seems obscene when you pause to think about it. Recycled paper seems quite good enough for that particular function.

I like my Charmin, but it’s time for Mr. Whipple and me to part ways. If people in so many other countries can toughen up their asses and use paper with more recycled fiber, so can I–if I can find any. How about you?

Who do you want making decisions as to which animal species remain protected and which will become endangered or let to go forever?

You have two choices:

(1) Scientists who understand ecology and the balances in nature, or

(2) Bureaucrats with urgent project agendas.

Well, guess what? In his few remaining days in office using “Midnight Resolutions”–the opportunity to sneak last-minute in changes before leaving office that Congress is not fast enough to deal with with so they pass right into law–President Bush has pounded another nail into the Endangered Species Act.

This time he removed a provision that requires Fish and Wildlife Service scientists to make sure that endangered species won’t be harmed by federally approved logging, mining, and road-building projects. So now the fate of any critters “in the way” will be decided by other federal agencies, like the Army Corps of Engineers or the Federal Highway Administration.

However, I have to be realistic and admit the anguished reality that not every living creature is going to survive the human takeover of the environment, including some forms of positive progress. Creating alternative energy sources, for example, will endanger some species. That’s just a sad fact. As Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger lamented on a recent 60 Minutes, environmentalists are upset with a solar project in the year-round hyper-sunny federally-owned land in California’s Mojave Desert. Why? Because the Mohave ground squirrel and the desert tortoise, both protected by state and federal law, may be adversely affected.

Here’s the problem. Many worry that non-scientists will tend to make decisions based only on moving along the agenda at hand. Build that road. Take down that forest. Strip that land. I like to believe that scientists would be more circumspect as they are trained to be—seeking truth rather than the answer someone else wants.

And here is where the big rub comes in. What can save lives and can keep our habitat balanced allowing for a sustainable planet is not always as it seems at first blush to the rest of us, including those now empowered to make decisions about which critters remain protected and which ones we will soon never see again, such as the lovely creatures portrayed in my toon.

Let me offer a couple of examples as to why non-scientists should not be making these decisions.

What is the most disgusting living thing you can think of? My choice is maggots. Without knowing more, people would probably be OK if they were extinct because they are ugly, useless and cause problems. Turns out they can greatly enhance the healing of burn wounds by attacking only dead tissue, and are especially useful when patients cannot tolerate antibiotics. MDT (Maggot Debridement Therapy) is saving lives.

Other critters that many see as disgusting or scary or annoying are essential and beneficial to our planet. Although not endangered (yet?), bats (unfortunately portrayed as frightening and evil, thanks to vampire fantasies in unending variety) provide an excellent example of critters that many see a unlikable and might not care if their numbers were reduced to zero. But bats are natural enemies of night-flying insect pests, and protect animals and us from such diseases as malaria, equine infectious anemia, and heartworms. Bats are pollinators of plants and are agents of seed dispersal, both of which contribute to the health of the environment. Bats guano is a nitrogen-rich fertilizer. Other examples include bees, worms, and bottom feeders of any sort that have their place as keeping planet life in balance. Even flies are second only to the bees and wasps, in the useful function of pollination.

The Union of Concerned Scientists has issued the warning: “Biological diversity provides food, fiber, medicines, clean water, and many other products and services we depend upon every day. Yet nearly one-third of native species in the United States are at risk of disappearing.”

Not good news for critters–or for us and our planet.

Guess ….

1. Research on and development of renewable energy supplies
2. Research on building new nuclear power plants
3. Research on ways to achieve energy independence
4. Energy conservation measures

5. Greenhouse gas emission control
6. Maintaining nuclear stockpiles
7. Cleaning sites to maintain nuclear stockpiles
8. Dealing with nuclear nonproliferation issues

Well, if you picked 6, 7, or 8, you would be right. Turns out the Department of Energy doesn’t have much to do with energy at all. A CNN report report by Steve Hargreaves reports that research on renewables totals only $640 million, less than 3% of the annual budget.

But, President-Elect Barack Obama (or PEBO to avoid that mouthful) has other ideas.

“Under Obama you’re likely to see an energy secretary focus more on energy rather than nuclear weapons,” said Paul Bledsoe, strategy director for National Commission on Energy Policy, a bipartisan research group.

Hargreaves reports that Obama will propose $15 billion a year to focus on such matters as researching and commercializing renewable energy technology, comprehensive urban planning, raising fuel efficiency standards, developing clean coal technologies, encouraging the production and use of conservation measures, and controlling carbon dioxide emissions.

This all sounds good. Long past due. Yipee!!

But will anyone still be watching those nukes?

I’ve just told Senor B. and Senorita A., my ferocious and voracious pets, that they will not get to go to Taco Bell anymore. (They like the kids’ meals, and the tater tot-ish potatoes.) My preference is Taco Time, but I will give it up as part of my duty to save the planet. The hardest: Giving up the Vegetarian Baked Beans I love to eat with my vegan hotdogs or sausages. (Tofurkey Italian Sausage is to die for! And nobody died to make it!).

I plead innocence, my lords. Many years ago, I was in New York City to visit my boyfriend, and stood on the floor of the American Stock Exchange as he traded options all day. Then a mutual friend picked me up out front, and we drove to what he told me was the best Jewish deli in NYC. I bought lox, bagels and cream cheese, of course. And sauerkraut, which I love. Well. I admit this without exaggeration: I was up all night long either pacing or sitting. I had NO idea that sauerkraut could do that to me. It was extremely, um, embarrassing as well. In a one-bedroom apartment, you know. Oh dear.

I beg for mercy. Consider this: At least you weren’t there. I wonder if that’s why it warmed up enough so that my plane home could depart Newark. Probably so.

Now, if I can admit that, so can you!

Oh, that BF? So not worth it. But it was a memorable trip, in many ways. It’s just that he was the least of the fun memories. I loved being with our mutual friend, his wife, and daughter. Neatest people.

ALSO: OPEN THREAD!

Buchanan: Move On claimed that Palin supported this “right-wing extremist” who is, they claim, a Nazi sympathizer. Palin supported Forbes in 2000, and worked on his campaign. She wore a Buchanan button when Buchanan came to visit as a sign of respect. For what it’s worth, this “right wing extremist” is supporting OBAMA. (HERE’S the UPDATE: There are some who are debating the validity of this claim. After Obama’s speech, Buchanan said this:

“I stand with Obama(emphasis mine)! It was a genuinely outstanding speech, it was magnificent. I saw Cuomo’s speech, I saw Kennedy in ‘80, I even saw Douglas MacArthur, I saw MLK; this is the greatest convention speech and probably the most important because unlike Cuomo and the others, this was an acceptance speech, this came out of the heart of America, and he went right at the heart of America. This wasn’t a liberal speech at all. This is a deeply, deeply centrist speech. It had wit, it had humor, and when he used the needle on McCain, he stuck it into McCain and it was funny. It was Kennedy’s speech in ‘80. I laughed with Kennedy when he was needling Ronald Reagan.”

Make of it what you will. He may be making positive remarks about Sarah Palin now, but this is what he said right after Obama’s speech.

And Charles Martin, who has been debunking Palin rumors left and right (H/T to Medusa!), has this at #24:

No, Buchanan doesn’t support her now; in fact he’s supporting Obama. (Buchanan did think her speech was amazing, but then so do 80 percent of the people who saw it.) Or maybe not. Buchanan sure doesn’t like McCain though.

Creationism: she does not want to teach creationism in school. She said if it comes up in a classroom discussion, then people should be able to discuss it.

Abortion: Palin believes in birth control as a way to prevent unwanted pregnancies. And she believes in abortion for the sake of the mother’s life.

Just for comparison, how many of you are aware that Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, is anti-choice? He is the most powerful Democrat in Congress. There are a NUMBER of anti-choice Democrats in Congress. To attack Palin on this one point repeatedly is hypocritical when so many Dems hold a similar, and in some cases, even MORE conservative positions. The bottom line is, a Pres. or VP, cannot take away a law. It is one that has been upheld repeatedly by the Supreme Court.

Then there’s Sen. Bob Casey of PA, a HUGE supporter of Barack Obama’s. We’ve heard all about him and his pro-life stance.

Environment: she does acknowledge that we need to make changes in energy, and has said clearly that we need to look into geothermal and wind energies. As far as the wolves go, and I say this as someone who has LONG been a member of “Defenders of Wildlife,” she supports culling the packs from the air because they kill so many caribou and moose, which people need to be able to hunt to survive.

Move On also slams Governor Palin for only being a governor of Alaska for 1.5 months. She was inaugurated in December, 2006. Since that time, and it is more like 1.75 years, Move On, she has enacted a number of reforms, as well as run a state the NY Times said is harder to govern than other states in the Continental US:

That said, by other measures, Alaska is harder to govern than a smaller, more settled realm in the Lower 48. With vast distances, large numbers of indigenous peoples and a narrowly based extraction economy — with a handful of giant multinational oil corporations dominating the game — some economists say a country like Nigeria might be an apter comparison.

“Alaska really is a colonial place,” said Stephen Haycox, a professor of history at the University of Alaska, Anchorage. “One third of the economic base is oil; another third is federal spending. The economy is extremely narrow and highly dependent. It’s not to say that Alaska is a beggar state, but it certainly is true that Alaska is dependent on decisions made outside it, and over which Alaskans don’t have great control.”

Add to that a sense that Alaskan governors are more accessible to their people:

Overlaid across all of that is a distinctly informal Alaskan style. At the annual governor’s picnic, usually held in July, the governor is expected to turn the brats and burgers on the grill — something Ms. Palin has done with gusto — with cabinet members in aprons rounding out the kitchen staff.

The article continues with information about Alaska I sure didn’t know, and which is important to consider when belittling Palin’s experience:

Alaska also came of political age recently, which has meant two crucial things to Ms. Palin’s rise and experience as governor.

First, the State Constitution concentrates power in the governor’s office more thoroughly than in almost any other state — a legacy of the late 1950s, historians say, when statehood and a simultaneous trend all over the country toward elevating executive authority coincided.

Alaskan governors can edit legislation and their vetoes are tougher for lawmakers to overcome. In the numerical scale of power devised by Thad Beyle, a political scientist at the University of North Carolina, only Massachusetts’ governor has a mightier tool kit.

Second, inch-deep history has meant that the leading lights of statehood are not mere names in history books but are in many cases still around and even still in power, like Senator Ted Stevens and Representative Don Young, both Republicans with decades under their belts in Washington. That old guard is still revered by some Alaskans, but it is disdained by others who have been on the lookout for fresh Republican faces.

It is in that densely layered Alaskan mix that Ms. Palin rose, governed and must be understood, academics and people in both parties say — not as merely a governor, or a woman, but as an Alaskan.

“The frontier mentality, whether myth or not, is still alive,” said Donald Linky, director of the Program on the Governor, at the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University.

Huh. Apparently being the Governor of Alaska actually counts for something after all!

And here’s a good one. This just goes to show what strange bedfellows Politics makes. It turns out that the reports of Gov. Palin moving to ban a bunch of books is bogus – yet another rumor concocted to demean her. We cannot stoop to these kinds of Swiftboat levels. So, I am being FORCED to use sources like Michelle Malkin. What the hell is the world coming to?!? But, even a broken clock is right twice a day. Ahem. Ms. Malkin had this article yesterday (and honestly, she has been debunking a lot of Palin smears, so it is worth a trip to her site to see what else is being said):

The Bogus Sarah Palin Banned Books List (Michelle Malkin debunks yet another Palin smear), MichelleMalkin.com

Palin Derangement Syndrome strikes again. This time it’s hysterical librarians and their readers on the Internet disseminating a bogus list of books Gov. Sarah Palin supposedly banned in 1996. Looks like some of these library people failed reading comprehension. Take a look at the list below and you’ll find books Gov. Palin supposedly tried to ban…that hadn’t even been published yet. Example: The Harry Potter books, the first of which wasn’t published until 1998.

The smear merchants who continue to circulate the list also failed to do a simple Google search, which would have showed them that the bogus Sarah Palin Banned Book List is almost an exact copy-and-paste reproduction of a generic list of “Books Banned at One Time or Another in the United States” that has been floating around the Internet for years. STACLU notes that the official Obama campaign website is also perpetuating the fraud. And it’s spread to craigslist, where some unhinged user is posting images likening Palin to Hitler. Here it is again.

The person who first spread the Palin smear is identified as “Andrew Aucoin,” a commenter on the blog of librarian Jessamyn West. West has done the right thing in keeping the bogus comment up and pointing out in her main post that “there appears to be no truth to the claim made by the commenter, and no further documentation or support for this has turned up.”

It’s a fake. Not true. Total B.S. A lie.

If it gets sent to you by a moonbat friend or family member, set ‘em all straight. Fight the smears. They’ve only just begun.

The bogus Sarah Palin Banned Books List(can be found) HERE.

From the Anchorage Daily News story that inflamed P.D.S.:
Back in 1996, when she first became mayor, Sarah Palin asked the city librarian if she would be all right with censoring library books should she be asked to do so.
According to news coverage at the time, the librarian said she would definitely not be all right with it. A few months later, the librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons, got a letter from Palin telling her she was going to be fired. The censorship issue was not mentioned as a reason for the firing. The letter just said the new mayor felt Emmons didn’t fully support her and had to go.

Emmons had been city librarian for seven years and was well liked. After a wave of public support for her, Palin relented and let Emmons keep her job.

It all happened 12 years ago and the controversy long ago disappeared into musty files. Until this week. Under intense national scrutiny, the issue has returned to dog her. It has been mentioned in news stories in Time Magazine and The New York Times and is spreading like a virus through the blogosphere.

The stories are all suggestive, but facts are hard to come by. Did Palin actually ban books at the Wasilla Public Library?

…Were any books censored banned? June Pinell-Stephens, chairwoman of the Alaska Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom Committee since 1984, checked her files Wednesday and came up empty-handed.

Pinell-Stephens also had no record of any phone conversations with Emmons about the issue back then. Emmons was president of the Alaska Library Association at the time.

Amazing the rumors that are coming out, and the lengths to which organizations will go to fabricate stories about Governor Palin. There seems to be no care for the damage these falsehoods will do the organizations’ own reputation in their haste to discredit this woman. It is remarkable. And remarkably stupid. It makes people like me question how in the world I was ever even a MEMBER of Move On. It lowers the level of discourse to ducking mud slinging all around. We can do better than that. I’d like to think we are BETTER than that. So, come out with the facts – let’s take a look, form our opinions, and have some honest discussion, not this constant smearing with any crackpot rumor that comes down the pike. Just a thought.