These people crack me up:
While Colorado burns, conservatives have looked for ways to blame it on President Obama.
Some of the same people who have bashed the president as a big government, big spending liberal now say a wildfire that destroyed hundreds of homes in the conservative stronghold of Colorado Springs can be blamed on the president because he has been too slow to spend money to beef up the federal fleet of air tankers.
The meme began more than a week ago when pundit Michelle Malkin, who lives in Colorado Springs, wrote a piece for the National Review Online titled “Obama Bureaucrats Are Fueling Wildfires.”
“The Obama administration’s neglect of the federal government’s aerial-tanker fleet raises acrid questions about its core public-safety priorities,” she wrote.
How about we end the Bush tax cuts, raise the capital gains tax, gut the defense department budget, and spend the money on things like fire prevention and new roads and the like?
comrade scott's agenda of rage
Here’s a great rant about how the fires around Colo Springs are the result of ALEC policies and the teatards:
dailykos.com/story/2012/06/29/1104410/-Colorado-Sprung-reaping-what-you-sow
Yes, it’s at the GOS but it’s still a great rant.
BGinCHI
Fixed for greater velocity.
dmsilev
Clearly, Malkin had the wrong sort of countertops to qualify for government-assisted fire protection.
Percy Percy
We might want to institute a carbon tax and throw some more money at clean energy, too.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@BGinCHI:
For the win!
shortstop
Remember, poor black people living in the Mississippi Delta should have been smart enough not to reside in a low-lying area in hurricane country. No reason the Feds should have bailed them out for their poor judgment.
Keith
Let the private sector compete to save Casa de Malkin. Alternatively, why should taxpayers who chose to live outside a wildfire zone pay for saving Malkin’s house?
Damn that knife that cuts both ways!
Jerzy Russian
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
Indeed it was.
tones
Pretty sure somewhere around 70 percent of Americans would agree…
[regarding John’s suggestions for funding]
Sentient Puddle
Take bets on how long until someone says that it’s Obama’s Katrina.
Litlebritdifrnt
@BGinCHI:
I literally LOL’d at that. Thank you.
Seanly
@BGinCHI:
While I like John’s version because fixing our crappy bridges would keep me gainfully employed, I am intrigued by your idea.
Weaselone
It’s not stupidity, it’s strategy. Whine about government inefficiency. Cut nonmilitary, discretionary spending. Government is less able to function. Repeat whine about government inefficiency. Repeat as necessary.
This is why it’s fairly easy to be a Republican politician. You can run on a government is bad platform and when you’re elected you can do things that prove it and then use the results to smear your democratic opponent.
Brachiator
Isn’t the standard wingnut rant that state and local governments can always do things better than the feds?
Morans always want to have it both ways.
And surely, these people could never, never, ever want the burnt areas to be declared federal disaster areas, right? Because if individual homeowners did not have fire insurance (or even if they did), why would they expect the feds to come along and bail them out?
BTW, on one conservative radio show in California, some callers bragged who lived in upscale areas vulnerable to high fire risk, bragged that they did not carry fire insurance. They said that it was too expensive, did not cover enough, and didn’t matter because they could always rely on the feds to bail them out.
And the same types complain about the individual mandate being unconstitutional.
Dennis G.
I loved the quote from Hickenlooper:
As they bring the crazy, folks supporting them have nowhere to hide. You cannot claim to be a conservative and a rational human being anymore. It just isn’t done.
Heliopause
Russia’s probably got a shit-ton of rusty old tankers that the citizens of Colorado Springs could have picked up for a song. Say, I have an idea, a federal program to give a $1000 voucher to any municipality toward the purchase of an air tanker. That keeps the decision-making at the local level. We’ll call them Freedom Air Tanker Vouchers. No, Liberty Air Tanker Vouchers. Or LibertyFreedom Air Tanker Vouchers.
Jerzy Russian
@Keith:
The lack of self awareness is breathtaking. I have got stop reading this fine blog while at work since the head-against-the-desk thing is starting to interfere with my productivity.
Comrade Dread
I’m afraid you just don’t understand freedom, John.
What we need are more tax cuts and to privatize the fire department.
Also, I find it increasingly bizarre that as we’re again setting record temperature highs across much of the country that there’s nary a mention of climate change. I know weather is not proof, but after a decade of increasingly higher temperatures and bizarre severe weather patterns, you’d think someone might stop and consider the possibility.
I’m starting to think that if got so hot that people started to burst into flames in the streets, that the lead on the nightly news would be about whether spontaneous combustion meant good news for Mitt Romney.
shortstop
It’s easy to imagine the trailing screech that would accompany Malkin’s path to orbit.
Rafer Janders
As I wrote about this in an earlier thread, the cognitive dissonance is just amazing:
Um, isn’t the federal government being slow to spend money supposed to be a good thing to these people?
Again, government getting leaner, tightening its belt, doing more with less in a time of scarcity: not a good thing, according to Malkin?
Well, then that manufacturing company shouldn’t have been so dependent on Uncle Sam, now should it? Let it go out into the private market and try to survive there, and if it can’t, it deserves to fail. Or have the rules suddenly changed?
smintheus
Meanwhile back on June 24 or thereabouts the Air Force got involved in fighting the fire, even though regulations permit it to be used for the purpose only when all other air resources had been exhausted. So it should be Obama’s fault presumably for circumventing those regs and putting DOD planes into action precipitously.
Lee
Posted this is another thread but worth another post since it brings the tears of wingnut.
Send this to your wingnuts
This is in 1956 Ike signs HUGE socialist program that we are still paying for.
Keep twisting the knife. Their tears are worth it.
Poopyman
It’s not news, of course, but Michelle Malkin is full of shit:
ETA: I’m ready to lift my embargo on the term “flaming asshole” imposed for this situation
Rafer Janders
If the government can force me to pay a tax to beef up the federal fleet of air tankers, what’s to stop them taxing me to pay for broccoli? Huh? Huh?
smintheus
@Poopyman: Yes, the C-130s went into action on Monday the 25th.
Lee
@Rafer Janders:
Just tell them that Obama sent the money elsewhere to more liberal states since conservatives have been declining all sorts of federal funds and figured it was not worth the fight to try and give them the money.
Rafer Janders
If the federal government can force me to pay to beef up the fleet of ari tankers, what’s to stop them taxing me to pay for broccoli? Huh? Huh?
NonyNony
@Rafer Janders:
Starve The Beast! Government is not the solution to our problem, Government is the problem!
Don’t they understand that this is what drowning the government in a bathtub looks like?
Probably not – the selfish never do understand anything until it impacts them personally. And even then they won’t understand exactly why their selfishness is a problem.
Mark S.
@Brachiator:
Ron Paul argued something stupid like that a while back. The cherry on top was him using the example of 6,000 people dying as why things were better back in 1900.
Hey Cole, are we ever going to get our buttons back?
Steve
@Rafer Janders: “A government with the power to force us to buy health insurance can also force restaurants to serve black people.” –Bruce Bartlett
Rafer Janders
@smintheus:
Not to to mention that the Founders never even authorized us having an Air Force in the Constitution!
scav
Horrors! Has anyone checked that their superdomes away from home are stocked with the correctly colored salts!
dmsilev
@shortstop: In space, nobody can hear
youher screech.Bob2
Malkin’s house might burn down?
MOORE AWARD MATERIAL
kindness
When did Malkin move to Colorado Springs? I thought she lived in Virginia. On the other hand, the religious nuts at CS are right up her crazoid butt.
Bokonon
This is just foul. It was flipping BUSH ADMINISTRATION who let the tanker fleet wither through attrition and grounding. They had other priorities (like the Iraq war).
And since then, it has been the GOP who has been pushing through large cuts in the appropriations for fighting wildfires – which have been reduced 15 percent in the last two years (over already reduced levels). And all of this has been in the face of efforts by the Obama administration to buy replacement planes.
Even better, Doug Lamborn, the GOP Congressman who represents Colorado Springs, has been vocally backing those budget cutting efforts, AND he has also attacking the President for declaring too many natural disasters … you know, wasting taxpayer money on sending FEMA in after tornados and stuff, to make the President look good politically.
So now they have a natural disaster on their hands, and the very same legislators who have been slashing funding are now blaming ineffective “big government” and Obama personally for the lack of firefighting resources?
Beautiful. Just beautiful. It would be nice if the media or the voters noticed, and drew some cause and effect, and asked for some accountability, instead of letting all that ancient history disappear down the memory hole.
Rafer Janders
@shortstop:
Easy, and oh so fun:
“I regret nothiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnngggggggggggggggggggggggggggg…………..”
Bob2
Clearly the old testament God is punishing Malkin for trying to deny the new testament God’s wish for the poor to have affordable healthcare
smintheus
@Comrade Dread: Weren’t conservatives recently cheering a decision in KY (?) to let houses burn down belonging to people who hadn’t paid up front a special firefighting tax? They were all for privatizing firefighting…except when the fire threatens their own property.
wesindc
I can envision Micheal Malkin out there spraying down her house with a garden hose while the local Fire Department passes her by because she didn’t pay the 70$ fee to the dept which she refused because its a TAX!!!!!! Pity her coal black based heart. Man I really think these people are truly delusional. If its not one thing its another to blame on the uppity black boy in office. Or until Micheal Malkin gets her fingers chopped off by a flying metal boomerang.
scav
@Bob2:
No more Water but Fire Next Time,
Pharaoh’s Army got Drown-ded,
Oh Mary Don’t You Weep!
Slugger
Instead of using federal equipment to fight the fires, we should organize prayer groups to intervene in this act to nature. Why does Obama always turn to socialism instead of the Lord?
Bulworth
@Rafer Janders: Totally. Let Michelle Malkin put out her own fires.
shortstop
@scav: All I know is that living in this superdome is going to work out pretty well for them.
(Did I get the creepy BB smile right?)
Valdivia
Isnt this the city that privatized all the services?
Valdivia+3
Southern Beale
@kindness:
She’s been there a couple of years….
Brachiator
@Mark S.:
And we might as well double down on one more bit of libertarian mind dribble.
If people want to live in areas that are vulnerable to wild fires, they should just accept the risk and handle any problems themselves, and not ask other citizens to help them out when there are disasters.
Because in libertarian cloud cuckoo land, we are all discrete individuals, not a nation.
Rafer Janders
@NonyNony:
Federal taxpayer-funded handouts for me, but not for thee.
Or, in other words, building luxe vacation home in Colorado wildfire country: rugged individualism which deserves to be protected by constantly updated fleet of federal fire-fighting equipment at taxpayer expense.
gbear
@shortstop: Why bother putting her into orbit? The catapult force should be earth orbit + 1.
Bubblegum Tate
@Bob2:
I think god is punishing Colorado Springs for giving refuge to Focus on the Family and Michelle Malkin. You know, Sodom and Gomorrah-style.
scav
@shortstop: I’d tell you but I’m hiding under the covers over here and given the heat . . . well, you can judge for yourself what it would take to drive me here.
Mike E
Just listened to NPR ATC where D Brooks shouted, “Turn those machines back on!” and EJ called out Scalia as merely being 4 racoons stuffed in a black plastic garbage bag.
Did we just win something?
Southern Beale
My last comment got eated. I’m not sure why.
Anyway, I wrote about this on Wednesday:
southernbeale.wordpress.com/2012/06/27/ive-seen-fire-ive-seen-rain/
Malkin and the rest are wrong, according to the New York Times, the fire fighting planes are owned by private contractors which the Forest Service contracts during fire season. Planes are old, some of them have crashed, etc. New ones are really expensive, so that’s why these PRIVATE CONTRACTORS have not rebuilt their fleet.
It’s the failure of the free hand of the market, not the gummint. Idiots.
Redshift
@Rafer Janders:
You don’t understand! First, you have to realize that most of your tax money is wasted, so that can be cut without affecting services at all. Next, they want the federal government to stop spending their tax money on undeserving people. They’re deserving by definition, even if they buy expensive houses in fire-prone areas, so that spending should never be cut. If it is, that means someone in government has it in for them personally.
BGinCHI
@Seanly: You should see my newsletter.
Flying Squirrel Girl
My wingnut relatives in Texas are comparing the Bastrop fire that claimed 2200 homes last year to the Waldo Canyon fire to PROVE that Obama doesn’t care about Texas burning as much as he cares about Colorado burning. When I point out that fucking NORAD is located in Colorado Springs, HELLLLOOOOOO????? maybe that is a little more important to protect than tract homes in the middle of nowhere??? I get that furrowed brow look that screams cognitive dissonance. Either that or they have no clue what NORAD is. I’m just waiting for one of them to bring up Santa.
smintheus
@Southern Beale: Was that one of the Bushies’ privatizing initiatives to outsource Forestry Service firefighting capabilities?
Reasonable 4ce
@Heliopause:
Call them Reagan-Liberty-Air Tanker vouchers.
Mark S.
Maybe Obama should send W off to play guitar for the victims. Remember how that raised everyone’s spirits last time?
shortstop
@scav: I’ll give you $10,000 of Mitt’s money if you come over here and walk my dog.
Rafer Janders
I seem to recall Mitt Romney also saying something recently about the proper level of firefighting resources. Ah, yes, here’s Romney’s statement:
“[Obama] wants another stimulus, he wants to hire more government workers. He says we need more firemen, more policemen, more teachers. Did he not get the message of Wisconsin? The American people did. It’s time for us to cut back on government and help the American people.”
shortstop
@Mark S.: Well, it WAS good news for John McCain.
GregB
@Mark S.:
Then for some cake with John McCain.
I miss those days when we had a real leader.
If Obama were to just fly over the burned out victims it would mean the world to them….
Jay in Oregon
@Southern Beale:
Michelle Malkin is factually incorrect? *faints*
piratedan
what I find amusing is this notion of “how dare you take advantage of this tragic situation to advance your ideology”….when the other side does it every fucking time. We’re supposed to be better than that they say, whereas fifteen minutes ago they were implying that we’re trash and drug addled and should know our place when speaking to our betters.
Saw this link in an earlier thread… bears reposting here:
alternet.org/visions/156071/conservative_southern_values_revived:_how_a_brutal_strain_of_american_ar…
It may not be a direct hit, but it isn’t off by much when categorizing the mentality.
shortstop
@GregB: Now, let’s not minimize the power of Bush’s belated words of encouragement in front of Jackson Square. Obama is too lazy and arrogant to do what the situation calls for, which is to appear in rolled-up shirtsleeves in front of a Denver landmark.
Steve
My understanding is that there’s a lot of dispute about whether these tankers are useful for fighting major fires anyway. A lot of people seem to say that they look impressive on TV and that’s about it.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Flying Squirrel Girl: I will have to look it up, but I believe there was also Perry not asking for help for a while.
The Moar You Know
Colorado Springs deserves everything they get. If I were Obama (and it’s probably best I’m not) I’d tell all the Fed agencies to stand down and let the self-interested Galtian brigades handle the problem in their own and undoubtedly superior fashion.
shortstop
Do any of John Roberts’ children live in or around Colorado Springs? It’s possible that Obama started these fires himself while threatening the family to get Roberts to support the ACA, and then things just got out of hand. We should check with neighborhood associations to see if any tall, skinny men in hoodies were WWB that night.
Just Some Fuckhead
Let the free market extinguish Colorado.
Southern Beale
@Jay in Oregon:
Ha.
And some of the wingers are blaming tree-hugging liberal environmentalists for preventing the use of slurry, but actually a) they’re using slurry, and b) there is debate about which is better: water tankers or slurry.
What people aren’t realizing is these fires are a bazillion times worse than your average forest fire. Climate change has caused extensive droughts and there’s just way more fuel and these fires burn way hotter than they ever had before.
Mnemosyne
You’d think that after the first two or three hundred times conservatives got burned (sometimes literally) by their insistence on cutting taxes to the bone that they would eventually figure out that tax money is needed for essential services.
Nope. I underestimated their capability for complete and utter self-delusion as they simultaneously cheer lower taxes and decry the known, predictable results of those lower taxes.
Martin
@Steve: Well, they do help depending on conditions. When you have strong winds, low humidity, and people not clearing their property or with wood roofs, anything short of dumping Lake Huron is pretty useless. We’ve seen fires jump a mile break out here. Nothing you can do at that point except hope your prevention efforts worked (which they do fuckall of in CO Springs because of Jesus and freedom).
When things calm down some, and it’s hard to get firefighters into remote areas, they help immensely.
The criticism is flying them during those high wind conditions. They really are just to make people feel better that something is being done, and they will save the occasional house, but they’re also wicked dangerous to the pilots. We have family friends who are forest fire fighters up in the mountains nearby – they say that when you get conditions like in CO springs, your best bet is to put everything into staging and prep so that the moment things calm down, you can do in and tackle it full bore, but up to that point, you just have to grab your ankles and hold on – and not burn out your resources.
Southern Beale
Oh fer fuck’s sake. After pissing and moaning all day yesterday about how liberals shouldn’t cheer the SCOTUS decision because the healthcare reform bill was a complete distruction of all liberal principles since forever, today I get this in my e-mail box:
Heckuva job Brownie? That guy? You fucking kidding me?
MikeJ
@Mnemosyne:
Yes, but they define “essential” as “useful for me”. If they get no immediate, personal benefit, that’s “wasteful spending.”
Ash Can
Dear Michelle Malkin,
Is everybody else supposed to pay for your nice house that you chose to locate in a fire zone? Quit whining and pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.
Sincerely,
all the millions upon millions of decent hardworking Americans you’ve dissed over the years
PS: Just what is it that you produce, anyway?
Heliopause
@Reasonable 4ce:
Yeah, I like it. Or, we call the tanker fleet the “Ronald Reagan Defense of Freedom Tanker Fleet” purchased with “Ronald Reagan Liberty Vouchers” from the federal government of “The Ronald Reagan Land of Freedom and Liberty (formerly the United States of America)”.
Martin
@Southern Beale: That’s awesome. It’s almost like the media is running a scientific experiment on how low they have to go before we’ll finally turn them off.
japa21
@Southern Beale: Not to mention that the current weather, (at least up until yesterday) has been ideal for rapid spread of a fire.
SatanicPanic
@Southern Beale: And I was also reading earlier that these tankers aren’t all that effective. I know in my part of the world (southern CA) about the only thing that works is running out of fuel.
R. Porrofatto
While some of the air tankers in service a decade ago were ancient and mothballed deliberately, Bush Administration budgets cut funding for firefighting, fire prevention, the rural fire assistance program of the Department of the Interior, and the aviation program of the Forest Service, among other things.
On the other hand, thanks to Ron Wyden(D) and the Obama administration, the US Forest Service just awarded expedited contracts for air tankers for wildfire suppression — a process begun last fall, and last February a Large Airtanker Modernization Strategy was funded in the President’s 2013 budget.
Meanwhile the Forest Service has 16 large air tanker and one super air tanker available, and can mobilize helicopters and dozens of smaller single-engine air tankers.
It’s a weird kind of awesome to watch conservatives fuck up everything and then bitch about everything being fucked up.
Richard Miller
@BGinCHI:
Did Michelle Malkin not get the message of Wisconsin that the American people do not want firefighters?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Sounds to me like Michelle Malkin is not demonstrating a proper regard for the necessary role of The Invisible Flames of the Free Market. Creative Destruction for thee, but not for me!
Southern Beale
@Ash Can:
Ha! Yeah, isn’t that what we hear every time there’s a fire in Southern California or a hurricane in the Gulf? “Why should MAH TAX DOLLAHS pay for YOUR … (fill in the blank)…”
Anyway, Michelle Malkin is an anchor baby who really should be deported to the Philippines.
Flying Squirrel Girl
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): Yes, there was much hand-wringing over how mean O was to Perry, and then the facts came out: Perry was berating Obama for not acting quickly enough before the proper forms had even been filed to trigger action. Thank FSM for Lloyd Doggett, the Bastrop congressman who set the record straight.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@R. Porrofatto: It’s also funny that nature keeps conspiring to prove Republicans wrong and Democrats right. It’s almost like theirs a bias in reality.
TheF79
@SatanicPanic: I was watching live news when the Flagstaff Fire SW of Boulder sprang up from a lightning strike. They immediatetly had the slurry tankers laying a line down on the crest of the ridge to prevent it from hopping into Boulder proper. Dunno if it was luck or the slurry, but that fire was nipped in the bud early
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne: Well, you have to see it their way. They’re opposed to the government spending their hard-earned tax money on services for other people, but can be convinced to support the government spending their hard-earned tax money on services for themselves, because they see the government as, at best, a cubbyhole system where the money they individually provide is stored in a little box. So, the way their minds work, the government ought to be using the stash in their separate little box to provide them emergency services — and it would work, too, if the government hadn’t emptied their box earlier to give free handouts to people with empty boxes.
The way it works is that the government COULD provide plenty of services for the people who anted up for them, but they blew it all on services for freeloaders. Cut off the freeloaders and everything will be fine!
Ash Can
@Southern Beale: Sounds to me like Sirota will do anything for a buck.
Flying Squirrel Girl
@japa21: There is also a pine beetle epidemic making matters much worse.
Soonergrunt
@kindness: she’s probably hoping to be able to jump higher in the thinner air.
H/T to Tbogg
tbogg.firedoglake.com/tag/gravity-hates-michelle-malkin/
qwerty42
From Sullivan:
The Tyranny Of Obamacare
Just remember, as Bruce Bartlett noted on his Facebook page,
A government with the power to force us to buy
health insurance can also force restaurants to
serve black people.
Be afraid.
Maude
@shortstop:
I’d put a wet bath towel over my head and shoulders and trot the dog about 50 feet.
We’re hot here as well, maybe four degrees cooler Monday. We don’t have the heart stopping heat you do.
Cathy W
@Flying Squirrel Girl: Would it help if you suggested that Obama is trying to protect Stargate Command?
SatanicPanic
@TheF79: The article was saying they’re useful for smaller fires, but ones that are already way out of control they don’t do all that much. But I’m not an expert and I can’t even find a link so take that with a grain of salt.
Davis X. Machina
@Comrade Dread, @Southern Beale:
None of this would be going on if we could just persuade a few liberal millionaires and their foundations to stop bribing climatologists, and what is worse, NOAA and the NSF doing the same thing with your tax dollars, that you earned.
ruemara
@Southern Beale: are you serious? He’s been hogging Randi’s bandwidth for the early part of the week, whinging on Obama and now he’s canoodling with Heckuva Job Brownie? What. A. Whore.
Joel
Serious question: If Colorado Springs suffers real damage from this fire, how do they pay for repairs? Isn’t this the place where they turned off the streetlights because people didn’t want to pay taxes for them?
The Dangerman
@shortstop:
Thus illustrating the dope-ler effect.
TheF79
@SatanicPanic: Sounds right to me.
evinfuilt
They privatized the maintenance of Firefighting planes, the private companies found it too expensive to maintain so many planes, so rarely used. Therefore they got rid of 2/3 of them, never mind that all the forecasts were for more fires, not less (the year us Coloradans had the earliest summer fire in memory, spring had barely started when they had to pull the planes out… months early.)
then the city burns… (couldn’t happen to a better place.)
Yup, privatizing everything is the sure bet solution for all problems. Right Mr Reagen???
I hope Boulder, where taxes are not a four letter word, keeps doing well with their fire. Looks nearly fully contained there. I do realize it was a smaller fire, but people there like government workers.
j
@Brachiator:
The Bush administration privatized most of the tanker fleet, and after a crash of 2 planes killed all aboard 20 planes were permanently grounded. The “newest” plane flying today is 50 years old.
One company has repeatedly failed to maintain their planes and so those planes have also been grounded due to not passing the safety and structural integrity tests.
It’s just “privatization” taken to its absurd extreme.
Here’s a wingnut take on it. Nohe how the problems all started last year and it’s all teh fault of Democrats playing politics against those God loving, Bible thumping people out West.
examiner.com/article/as-wildfires-rage-questions-abound-about-lack-of-air-tankers-to-fight-the-flame
Jay in Oregon
@MikeJ:
Ding, ding, ding!
mclaren
Silly Cole. Only liberals use roads.
knittingknots
It’s definitely not a new problem. A good article about the issue is here:
my.firefighternation.com/profiles/blogs/is-the-airtanker-industry
And the reason they got rid of many of the planes is the way they were built, there was a structural flaw in one of the planes being used that when it reached a certain point, the wings fell off. And they were old, and contractors were having trouble keeping them maintained. Kind of hard to keep flying doing that….
Svensker
Fascistic sockalism! Also, too, tyranny! And America hating.
Ash Can
@Joel: They’ll start by running to the state and the Feds, early and often. Take it to the bank.
@The Dangerman: I lol’d.
Chris J
@Bokonon:
The same Lamborn who’s traveling to Colorado today with the evil Obama. On Air Force One.
blogs.denverpost.com/thespot/2012/06/29/beltway-blog-lamborn-travel-colorado-springs-obama-today-air…
RaflW
It’s those pesky solar flares that are causing the fires. Really, it’s NOT global climate change.
And since solar flares are an act of g*d, well then Obama shouldn’t be expected to deal with them.
Ralph Spoilsport
@shortstop
I don’t need to replace my windows yet….
Caz
How about we keep the Bush tax cuts, gut the defense budget, and let local and state govts handle fire fighting? Let’s keep the federal govt to the 18 enumerated powers in the Constitution. Fire fighting is not one of the 18 things. Neither is health care.
Caz
How about we keep the Bush tax cuts, gut the defense budget, and let local and state govts handle fire fighting? Let’s keep the federal govt to the 18 enumerated powers in the Constitution. Fire fighting is not one of the 18 things. Neither is health care.
evinfuilt
@Southern Beale:
What a lot of people don’t realize is climate change is directly linked to the Pine Beetle outbreak (they have a lot longer viable mating season now.) With the Pine Beetle boom, we have a lot more dry tinder which is ready to burst into flame.
Sadly, the damage the beetles do looks as devastating as a fire. You can drive the scenic route from Denver to Colorado Springs, and pass by old fire, beetle infestation, fire, beetle, back and forth… Hard to tell at times which ruined that area.
RaflW
Overall, it is pretty fascinating, in a nauseating sort of way, to see what happens when Malkin has to come face to face with the impacts of GOP policies of starving government.
She seems like a poster child for type I terminal empathy-impairment, so I suspect that after the fire, she’ll go right back to being as nasty, compassionless and vituperative about the misfortunes of others and how a nanny state is so bad for the moral backbone of regular Americans.
Meanwhile, bring on the gubmit, taxpayer financed firefighters to save her hillside home!
PurpleGirl
@Southern Beale: Meaning that the private contractors could not charge enough to make a profit. Would Malkin be willing to pay what the private contractors would charge individuals to get their service?
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Lee: “Their tears are worth it.”
This morning I showered in wingnut tears, took a dump and flushed the toilet, which refilled with wingnut tears, drove to a client’s home with my windshield wipers throwing wingnut tears to the left and right, came back home and wiped the wingnut tears off of my feet before entering the house and now I’m looking out my window, watching wingnut tears fall from the gray skies. It’s wet as hell but oh so beautiful!
Is it possible that early wingnut tears were what led Noah to build and load his ark with critters?
Yutsano
@Caz: Ahem. General welfare. Dumbass.
PurpleGirl
@Ash Can: Hot air. (As if we need any more than we already have.)
Chyron HR
@Caz:
If you don’t like it, why don’t you take it to the Supreme Court?
Oh, right, because liberals control the Court now. Boo-hoo!
TheF79
@Chyron HR: Indeed. Given that the Forest Service was established in 1876, you’d suppose someone would have thought of that by now.
Roger Moore
@NonyNony:
They don’t want to drown all of government in the bathtub, on the parts that serve “those” people. It’s unfair when the parts of government that serve patriotic Real Americans(TM) like Michelle Malkin get shut down.
Mnemosyne
@Caz:
Sure, as long as you’re the one who gets to explain to Michelle Malkin and the other conservatives living in Colorado Springs that they don’t get to have federal assistance to keep their houses from burning down and they should have planned better.
Have fun with that.
Kerry Reid
@Southern Beale: To call Sirota a whore would be a slur against the many fine folks who provide necessary and honorable services as sex workers.
Citizen_X
Isn’t Galt’s Gulch in Colorado? Maybe they can fight the fires with trains riding on Reardon metal rails.
@Caz:
Um, because fighting large forest fires is the sort of low-incidence, high-cost activity that local and state governments could not afford to do well? But I know, I know, this is the Code of the West in action: leave us alone, Washington, and send us lots of money.
Roger Moore
@RaflW:
Aliens.
shortstop
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Crying libtard tears of laughter.
shortstop
@Citizen_X:
I don’t know that I’ve ever heard that put quite so snappily. Stealing this for sure.
Darkrose
@Cathy W:
Have no fear: Walter will be down there to the bitter end, calling out each chevron lock.
j
@NonyNony:
And burn the witch!
(But not her precious countertops.)
Anoniminous
@Comrade Dread:
Temperatures are within the range of historic norms but they’ve been consistently at the upper end of such for over 2 years now. Climate sets the boundaries within which weather and weather intensity occurs so what’s happening is entirely consistent with Global Warming* … which is more than what can be said for the ranting and raving of the deniers.
* Which in Science is about as good as it gets.
Ruckus
@SatanicPanic:
Used effectively tankers can at least slow the spread of the fire. But fire feeds on it’s heat to draw winds in which fan the flames building more heat. At some point you are correct no fuel is what stops it. Tankers can take some of that fuel out of the line of the fire. That can dramatically help. A big fire just has a life of it’s own.
Soonergrunt
@Caz: Those are Federal forests burning you dumb son of bitch.
Mnemosyne
@Ruckus:
IIRC from our various fires here in So Cal, the trick is basically to protect the populated areas and chase the fire into more remote areas where it can burn itself out. It’s pretty rare that they try to put it out altogether once the fire is burning strongly.
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne:
It’s not that they wouldn’t like to try sometimes to put it out as pointed out in the comment I answered, really you just have to run out of fuel. Or oxygen. Also fire can be really useful in cleaning out dried and dead timber. Unfortunately your house is most likely built out of dried lumber. So yea, steer it away from civilization if possible, try to stop it if it is not big yet or just hope that it runs out of fuel before it hits the ocean wiping out everything in it’s path.
mainmati
No need to speculate. My wife works for the USFS. They have been pleading for the HOR to upgrade the long outdated tanker fleet. The Rethugs mandated a reduction in the fleet during the Bush era and refused to increase it until an old plane crashed killing all firefighters aboard.
People, the GOP is a bunch of morally decrepit criminals. It’s just a shame that most Americans are so totally disengaged with their political responsibilities as citizens. If they were more engaged – at least informed, the GOP would rarely get elected.
j
@Bokonon: Sorry I was late to the thread…BUT
HELL YES!!!!!~
I hope that bitch has to live under a bridge for a spell!
And the entire Bush family will eat her scrawny ass if given the chance when the “free hand” takes over.
Fuck that anchor babny.
Hey, BITCH GO HOME (to the flame engulfed Nrvana YOU love so much.
We will spread your useless ass and ashes back to Hell. Where you were spawned.
(No offense to the Philippines. Her mother was 6 months preggers when they ILLEGALLY “onshored” their anchor bitch.)
HEY, Moocher Munchkin…WHY is your husband constantly UNEMPLOYED?
At first it was because of “MENTAL ‘stress'”, then it was something having to do with inappropriate behavior with a female subordinate.
Then y’all just decide to move away to “GOD’S (DAMMIT) COUNTRY” where your wingnut welfare checks aare a’plenty.
So, ij closing, you rotten bitch.
HAHAHAHA!!!!!
I hope you lose everything.
You already sold your soul, you bitch.
Oh, and just one small favor?
PLEASE run into the flames to save ANY picture of St. Ronny!
It don’t matter if you stole it from someone’s house. JUST RUN INTO THE FLAMES!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@shortstop: Sir, you just won the thread. Well played.
slag
I don’t understand. Is there a law against the formation of private fire departments somewhere on the books? If not, this sounds more like a failure of the Free Market to me.
Bobby Thomson
@Southern Beale: Look at it this way. They were able to find someone who made him look good by comparison. The antecedent to whom “him” refers is left as an exercise for the reader.
Citizen_X
@shortstop: Actually, I think I stole it from Marc Reisner in Cadillac Desert. Or maybe Wallace Stegner, somewhere*. One of those two. Whichever one it was, they said it snappier than I did.
*ETA: Probably would have been from Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs.
slag
@R. Porrofatto:
I did not know this. I’m intrigued.
Bobby Thomson
@tones:
Pretty sure around the same number would be down with BGinChi’s catapult idea, too.
Uncle Ebeneezer
Well if Malkin’s house does burn down, there’s a charming place that she seems quite fond of, where she can stay for a spell.
If only Jon Galt had focussed his energy on fire-resistant materials…
Joseph Nobles
People getting together in government and taxing themselves to provide for the common good such as up-to-date airplanes to combat and control wildfires IS personal responisibility.
Nethead Jay
@j: Now, tell us how you really feel ;-)
mai naem
Well, Michelle needs to ask Pat Robertson to pray for her and pray to her god to stop the fire from consuming her. Also too, if her house does burn down, she better not be asking for any federal monies. No, sirreee. You gotta be consistent Michelle. Stick to your principles. Frankly, I don’t see why Michelle doesn’t call some of her Chairborne 101st to come in with their planes and save her house.
amk
@BGinCHI: Better to make it a giant catapult and launch all those rwnj’s in one shot. Saves money which they’ll love.
Elias
@slag: Oddly enough, there are a couple companies providing such services. At least one that I know of, Firestorm (based out of Chico, CA). Their primary operation is as a federal contractor but they do provide some free market firefighting services. Unfortunately they do not provide a service very affordable to the hoi polloi like Malkin. Anne Romney’s horse on the other hand (and that would be a perfect tax writeoff… “spent $20k preserving our business horse”).
BTW none of these private companies, for all the money they charge, provide a service comparable to public firefighters. The guys who actually fight fires will routinely put themselves between your house and the fire (but not if the situation is hopeless). The privates will set up some sprinklers and spray some soapy water and skedaddle well before they ever see any flames.
BruceFromOhio
Fcking communist. There’s a party for people like you.