Hey Sean Hannity! Get your facts straight, you pathetic boob!
Sierra Club Statement on Southern California Wildfires, Senate Bill
The Sierra Club expresses deep concern and sympathy for the families who have lost loved ones and who have been put in harms way by the recent fires in Southern California and to the firefighters courageously working to protect homes and lives.
In the wake of this tragedy, there have been some people willing to place blame on environmental groups. There is no need to sensationalize this tragedy for political gain. Americans deserve better. The Sierra Club has long supported responsible fuel reduction around communities and fully supports any wildfire policy that makes community protection its top priority.
Experts agree that focusing on the area immediately around homes should be the first priority of any wildfire legislation, and the situation so many are facing in California today reinforces this need. The Senate is scheduled to vote today on legislation, based on the Bush Administration's "Healthy Forests Initiative" that falls short of this goal by failing to guarantee resources will be directed to the removal of small trees around homes and instead allows more logging far in the back-country.
The Administration's bill and current Senate legislation would not improve the situation in Southern California. The legislation does not address fire prevention on non-federal land, which is where most of these fires are burning. In addition, the landscape in Southern California is primarily covered by chaparral and other types of brush and grass while the President's proposal and pending legislation in Congress focuses on areas with valuable timber. In this case, the desire by Bush administration and others in Congress to protect special timber interests is compromising America's ability to deliver real relief to communities in need.
Finally, neither the Senate bill nor the House bill provides the level of resources needed for communities with high fire risk in California and across the West. Simply put, the pot of money is too small and no reallocation funds will fix that. In some of the areas in Southern California, local residents and local government officials have been asking for financial assistance yet have never received enough to protect their communities adequately. California's 17 national forests have to split a mere $46 million in annual fuel-reduction funds -- a fraction of what is needed.
There is a better way. We can all agree that removing brush and small trees immediately around homes and communities will help save homes and lives, and we must dedicate the resources need to do this most important work first. Firewise and Forest Service experts have shown that this can be accomplished. Now the Congress and the Bush Administration need the will to protect communities, not the timber industry.
Regarding claims that conservation groups are responsible for the current wildfires:
National Forests: Los Padres, Cleveland, Angeles,and San Bernardino. There were no appeals on any fuels projects for the last three years (through 2000). There was one appeal on the San Bernardino National Forest in 1999, the Bee Fire Salvage, which was appealed by Forest Guardians and San Bernardino Mtns. Group. This was the only appeal for all years listed (1997-2003) and this appeal was for a post-fire salvage, not hazardous fuels reduction. http://www.fs.fed.us/r5/projects/index.shtml
According to an October 24, 2003 General Accounting Office report (GAO-04-02):
Ninety-seven percent of the 818 fuel reduction projects proposed by the Forest Service during FY 2001 and 2002 went forward without litigation. The study also revealed that 95 percent of these 818 fuel reduction projects were ready for implementation within the standard 90-day public review period.
Of course the Senate voted down Sen. Dianne Feinstein's decent compromise. Now there is no money at all set aside for safeguarding communities, and that was the cornerstone of the Sierra Club plan. They called it "People first" and, unlike the garbage espoused by George Bush, the Club plan actually would have given money to stop fires from ravaging inhabited areas.
Why attack Sean Hannity? Because he was spouting his usual evil fiction, claiming that environmentalists were responsible for the So Cal fires because we had sued to stop all logging sales.
The facts are that a hunter started the San Diego
fire and that, as far as CDF can tell to date, arsonists started the other fires.
Buy Al Frankens "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them." It outs Sean Hannity and will make you feel
good because you know that you're right and Sean's
a lying liar. Nenner neener neener, Hannity, you
outrageous Beast of the 666 sign.
I dedicate the following non sequitur to my friend James K., who is almost daily driven mad by my non
sequiturs.
Reed College in Oregon plays its own version of basketball (meaning its not a pretty sight). They play a Christian college. When they play that school, the Reedies chant, "Two! Four! 666!"
Hi,
If you don't mind, let me give you some good advise.
If you want to achieve something by posting a messege on the internet, then perhaps you might want to refrain from insulting other people. If you don't agree with other people's opinion, then post an objective arguement. Perhaps that way someone will actually take you seriously.
Texas Association of Conservatives
Posted by: Texas Association of Conservatives on November 3, 2003 06:20 PMOh my dog, no, this cannot be happening! Someone from the Texas Association of Conservatives
(aka Jackasses) is twerped with me.
You're kidding, aren't you? You think I ought to listen to you, someone who is so weak-kneed you have to hide behind an association's name?
You're standing up for Sean Hannity? A man who apears to constitutionally incapable of telling the truth? A man who daily stoops as low as possible to bolster his freakish world view?
Sport, try this: I do not care what the TAC thinks of me and you don't know the difference between advise and advice.
Aside from that, if Sean Hannity crawled on bare hands and knees from New York to San Francisco, and
was whipped bloody before he daily admitted to all of his lies, I would still not forgive him for what he has done to journalism in this country.
Peace out.
Posted by: Jeannette on November 4, 2003 01:03 AMSorry Jeannette but Sean Hannity speaks more truth in one hour than all the democratic presidential hopefuls have been speaking since they started running their campaigns. I am amazed that people in this country don't see that.
Sean does say that the democratic hopefuls only attack the President and have no answers for homeland security or the economy. Wake up and smell the roses.
Dear Tony of no-last-name,
Sean Hannity is a liar, a bully, a shouter and a
true moron (and true morons are rare) when it comes to math, demographics, statistics and facts. His debate style is classic: Lie and shout. He appears to have learned one Latin phrase, "ad hominum", which he uses so often he gives himself away, both by misusing it and using it ad nauseam -- that means repeating it until he makes everyone in hearing distance barf themselves blue.
He is just another wealthy right-wing Republican who thinks that social Darwinism is the way to end the problems of this country.
Did you hear what Sean Hannity said when George Bush came to look at the devastation after the
San Bernardino et al wildfires? You know, when
Bush offered exactly ZERO help to those poor people? Tony? Tony? What did Sean Hannity say?
He said NOTHING.
This is the new Republican way. The Republican Government of the future is the same as a Libertarian government. People who have money will
almost always have inherited it, thanks to the repeal of the estate tax. Middle class jobs are being exported faster than you can say "No taxes!"
And as for government _help_? Are you nuts? They are systematically undoing everything since pre-FDR.
By the way, the Clinton administration offered
repeatedly to brief the Bush government on possible terrorist threats, but the Bush admin yawned.
The Bush admin is the one that failed us re homeland security Tony -- they were told 9-11 was
coming and they did nothing. The only reason we
were able to enter both Afghanistan and Iraq is because the Clinton administration had the military
up to speed.
Bush and the economy? He has done nothing except to
make the rich richer and the poor poorer.
*This discussion has been closed. No more comments may be added.*