Fires as predictable as the mudslides that will follow

When the Marine Corps directed me to report to Camp Pendleton, CA in 1979, I was delighted. Ahhh, cool ocean breezes, lush green parkways and wide open spaces - not anymore - awaited.

Shortly after arriving, I was assigned as Officer in Charge of the Las Pulgas firefighting platoon. I had visions of winning a commendation for dashing into a burning building and carrying the battalion CO out on my back.

“No sir. It’s not that kind of firefighting platoon lieutenant,” said the saltiest Gunnery Sergeant ever, an impossibly thin fit black guy whose name escapes me. “We basically sit around and wait for some shiftless commie bastard* to flick his half smoked butt out the window of his POV (privately owned vehicle) which in turn catches the surrounding desert floor on fire. Then, we quick get on line and stamp it out. See, loooootenant, California has only three seasons, the green season, which is what everyone sees on TV. Then there’s the brown season, which we have just entered. Soon will come the black season, which will be as soon as that shiftless commie bastard flicks his butt out the window and burns the countryside black. It happens every year.”

*Yeah, commie bastards were the threat back then. Ahh the good ol’ days, when the only thing we had to worry about was thermo nuclear annihilation.

So the SoCal countryside is once again ablaze and the only thing that has changed is the proximate cause of the fires. Back then it was shiftless commie bastards armed with cigarettes. Toady, according to Dems, it’s global warming and the war in Iraq.

Dopey Harry the runt Reid blamed the calamity on global warming. Odd the SoCal countryside was burning every year back in the 70s & 80s when we were debunking the global cooling hysteria. Then Babs Boxer and the CA Lt Gov. some dolt named John Garamendi, blamed the spread of the fires not on the yearly Santa Anna winds but on a lack of National Guard troops because of deployments to Iraq.

The head of the National Guard, General Steven Blum, as directly and forcefully as any military man will ever tell a pandering pol he/she is full of it, told Babs and Garemendi they were full of it. CA has 2,000 National Guard troop deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan combined, leaving 17,000 troops available to support the state in case of emergencies. The Gov has yet call up all of those troops.

Dems, for the most part, are shameless pandering dopes. You can start counting backward from 10 at the start of any event, from a school shooting to a failed garage sale somewhere, before Chuckles Schumer and other Dems push their way in front of the nearest TV cameras to declare the event a result of the war in Iraq, George Bush’s incompetence and not enough tax money for the poor.

The next yearly even in CA will be the mud slides that occur as a result of the lack of vegetation on hill sides burned off due to the fires and the winter rains. No doubt Harry the runt and other Dems will be declaring the mudslides the worse ever due to global warming and the war, Bush incompetent for not stopping the rain and the need for more taxes because rain and mudslides respond to such things.