What’s funny is the water they’re whining about has been turned on since June 30th. Somebody must have wrote a book entitled “Manufacturing Outrage For Dummies”.

In the past this was called yellow journalism. It isn’t new but because of the internet, the virus spreads so universally so quickly.

Some folks want the water so they sell it for more to southern California water districts. The Westlands Water District owes the Feds mucho dinero and they don’t want to pay it.

During the last awful drought a number of years ago we were getting instructions constantly on how to save water and it was all going to SoCal. There were a lot of news stories showing people in SoCal filling their swimming pools. NorCal people were furious and outraged. If that happens again we may go to war.

Who wants to eat the crappy genetically engineered tomatoes they grow in the central valley anyway? These “fruits” are engineered so that they can sit 20-odd deep in a truck without crushing in the hot valley sun as they are harvested. Yecch, that’s not a tomato.

There will be no “war’ in California, as we are too damn entitled and lazy to do anything but suffer the fools who run for office, especially the Hair Gel boy, Gavin Newsom. If we did to go war, it would only be war by press release.

I am having a conversation with Paul Rodriguez via email…

Full ViewRe: Paul Rodriguez email request
From: alan graham View Contact
To: Rodriguez Entertainment

——————————————————————————–

DUDE! They are using your name like I said they would.

Sean Hannity Spreads Dangerous Misinformation about California Water

His guests included comedian Paul Rodriguez, chairman of the California Latino Water Coalition, an agribusiness front organization; former Fresno Mayor Alan Autry and Representatives George Radanovich (R-Mariposa), Devin Nunes (R-Visalia), and Jim Costa (D-Fresno). While the crowd roundly applauded Nunes, many booed Costa when he spoke.

http://www.californiaprogressr…..ty_sp.html

——————————————————————————–
From: Rodriguez Entertainment
To: lizardalive AT yahoo DOT com
Sent: Monday, September 21, 2009 5:07:04 PM
Subject: Re: Paul Rodriguez email request

dude i am not blind they have an agenda so do i i only speak of water issues.. why wont the others give me a chance to speak,, only hannaty does so thats what i got to do.. but i am not there to bash obama or anything else the saying goes “the enemy of my enemy is a friend”..

——————————————————————————–

Name: Al Graham
Email: [edited by mod]
Phone: [edited by mod]
Comments:
Paul, I met you when you were starring in your sitcom back in the early eighties. You were flying back east with your attorney, we had a conversation about Larry Flynt and Jim Morrison.

I love your dedication to help the farmers in California, when I was a young man we all came out for Ceasar Chaven and the grape boycott. Unfortunately your are being used by Fox News and the anti immigrant forces. They offer sympathy but then talk of deporting all the illegals, who I believe, make up the majority of the workers you are trying to help. Gey your message out but do not think for one second Shawn Hannity is with you.

Sincerely Al Graham.
Wealthy White American
Coronado Ca.

http://www.ghostradionetwork.com

I understand it’s being banked in the San Joaquin valley, and most of the water doesn’t go all the way south anyway.

Los Angeles is restricting water use now. (IMO, they should have done it years ago. Or enforced the regulations they put on the books in previous droughts.) There’s a strong suspicion that the recent mess of broken water mains is related to the two-days-a-week lawn watering rule: the @#$%^&*s at City Hall decided to put everyone on the same schedule of days, instead of splitting it into thirds and spreading the load on the system.

This reminds me of the movie China Town..It’s all about the WATER..

Chinatown tells the story a detective, confidently played by Jack Nicholson, who gets embroiled in an investigation involving the mysterious murder (suicide?) of the head of the Water Board. During the investigation, he gets involved with Evelyn Mulwray, the wife of the murdered man who appears to want to get to the bottom of the mystery but during the course of the movie demonstrates that she is not telling the whole story and has something to hide

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071315/

One of the problems is the Fish and Wildlife Service protects the smelt found in the Sacramento Delta, on the oher hand the National Marine Fisheries Service protects the Steelhead and Chinook salmon. Cumulatively, these agencies have lead to irrigation delivery reductions of as much as 30% to farmers. The Senate is working on legislation but the bill does not order a National Academy of Sciences Study. Instead, Difi asked the Interior and Commerce departments to request the study be done. If no one can agree what to do, it’s likely nothing will be done. Where have I heard that before. Meanwhile Central Calforina’s unenjoyment rate climbs to 18.6%.

I actually do worry about astroturfers and their ability to spread misinformation in blog comment sections.

Only about 1% of readers actually comment, and a couple of well-paid astroturfers can come in and sway the discussion. But they stand out — the smart commenters figure it out pretty quickly — and it affects their opinion of the integrity of the discussion, and the community.

We watch for it really closely here. There are firms who specialize in this these days, and the pattern of those comments have certain hallmarks. But we have moderators who know our audience and interact with them on a regular basis so they know when something jumps out and can respond quickly, whereas other places just don’t have that ability.

It’s a problem and I don’t know that a lot of sites are awake to it yet.

It is all about the water.

And there is an easy way to find out real facts about what is going on California’s water world.

http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/…../programs/

The California Water Board, and the Regional Boards too, do fantastic hard work dealing with the countless and relentless demands on the state’s water. If ever there was an argument in favor of government, it is the California water boards.

In this citizen’s opinion.

Of course, going to the board’s website and actually reading stuff full of, you know, science is a lot harder than just watching an imported El Teatro Astrocampesino of know-nothings screaming mindlessly for a bottle and a blankie.

Farmers should have to abide by the same rules as all other business. If you can’t produce the product with what you have on hand, you shut down or go out of business. Instead, they are the largest welfare recipients in the nation, paid to not produce. I do not feel the least bit sorry for the farmers or the farmworkers. The Hannnity’s of this country do not seem to care that our whole manufacturing industry was shipped overseas at great cost to the middle class. Save the Salmon. I can always grow tomatoes or better yet, when I buy my imported TV,clothes,utensils and all of the other day to day needs, I will pick up some imported veggies..

To bad farmers, now you know what it is like for the rest of us.Or I hope that you will soon find out.

Don’t these people know? The California aqueduct is a socialist government-run program and should immediately be shut down so that farmers can buy water from private vendors in a free market.

ha — I just read Jane’s comment after leaving mine.

I can’t prove it, but I promise that I’m a real citizen of California. The reason I know about the California Water Board is, as a court reporter, (and a disinterested party) I have reported several hearings and meetings at the board.

Many of the parties in one matter show up in other matters. Everybody truly does want the water, and almost every party has a good reason for wanting it. It’s easy to mock the fish and pit their needs against the need to feed people — until you do the actual work of understanding ecosystems.

California in general does a fabulous job of putting all the data before its boards online for everyone to see. You can bet that agribusiness, water districts, and well-organized enviros use those links. You can also bet that “journalists” like Hannity do not.

An incredible movie.

Farming is unique. You can’t treat it just like any other business.

One of the things I see with the people who want more water shipped south (mostly for agriculture), is that they seem to think that the Delta is only useful as a water source. They don’t see the farms there, or the sport fishing, or the boating, or anything else, including all the critters that depend on the water to live: only the water is important and real to them.

It’s the same mindset that sees taxpayers as useful only for providing money.

Farming used to be unique. Now it is big business. And should have to operate by the same rules. Imports are imports. Cars, veggies or whatever walmart sells. Still imported

Getting “FACTS” from Hannratty?? Definition: Situations that could never co-exist in our plane of reality. NOT going to happen… ROFLOL…..

What hannratty left out of lie-filled diatribe is that the water was turned back on at the end of June this year..SO, as I highlighted earlier, hannratty and facts CANNOT, be definition, exist together.

The sun rose this morning, and Fox News and Republicans lie.

Just another ho-hum day in the wacky place we call the good ‘ole USA.

FauxNews knows that their viewers are buffoons and will not question anything they hear in the echo chamber. They exploit the imbecility of the sheeple without conscience. It is a very intentional misinformation campaign designed to move policy to the right by employing the willing morons to scream and shout in fear.

The best antidote is factual rebuttal: “Sunshine is the best disinfectant.” – Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis

However, there are some who are so stupid, that no amount of factual rebuttal will make any difference.

However, there are some who are so stupid, that no amount of factual rebuttal will make any difference.

Yep. I have friends who insist on trying to “just talk to these people” and maybe they will understand facts. Nope. Wrong. Never happen. Never.

There are millions, literally tens of millions of people, who only believe in the “who” and not in the “what”. What I mean by that, they only believe stuff based on “who’s” saying it, rather than “what’s” being said.

Ergo, if Fox News said it, it’s true. If anyone else said it, it’s false, until validated by Fox News. If a Republican says it, it’s true. If a Democrat says it, it’s false. Period. End of story.

You could grab those folks by the shoulders, force them outside on a bright clear day, lean them back and force open their eyes so they have to see the sky, and yet if Fox News told them the sky was green, green it is.

It’s a waste of time and effort to even bother IMO. We have to fight the monsters that did this, not the folks it was done to.

This sounds familiar. A similar stunt was pulled in southern Oregon in 2002. Water was diverted to screaming republic farmers. It didn’t turn out well. Klamath fish kill.

Months later, the first of an estimated 77,000 dead salmon began washing up on the banks of the warm, slow-moving river. Not only were threatened coho dying — so were chinook salmon, the staple of commercial fishing in Oregon and Northern California. State and federal biologists soon concluded that the diversion of water to farms was at least partly responsible.

Last summer [2006], the federal government declared a “commercial fishery failure” on the West Coast after several years of poor chinook returns virtually shut down the industry, opening the way for Congress to approve more than $60 million in disaster aid to help fishermen recover their losses.

Salmon go downriver to the ocean (that’s called going with the flow!) and after 4 years swim back upstream to spawn. Since so many fish died in 2002, there were no fish to return in 2006.

Thanks PW

Slanthead Hannity is a hack

The only people who will believe the steaming pile he spews about this, are the people in the rest of the country who don’t know any better

This is nothing but a plea for corporate welfare

First of all this is nothing but astroturf for the Westlands Water District – a nontraditional artificial agricultural area; i.e. federally subsidized irrigation for the last 60 or so years. Second of all this not so simple as fish v people; this is people v people. Third, there is no drought, we are in the second year of below average rainfall; an average of stats from the last 100 years or so, which is nothing in geological time (I’ll explain the shock doctrine in the sixth point). Fourth, the vast majority of these “farms” are corporate owned. Fifth, Westlands is getting 86% (fyi: 86% equals more than 120% of deliveries of even 10 years ago) of their artificial allocation while the largest of these “farms” (corporate) are getting 100% of their deliveries. Sixth, last Fall, prior to the whining by the dupes like Paul Rodriguez and Slanthead Hannity, using this shock doctrine of this so-called drought, the state (read: Ahnold) and Feds drew down the north state reservoirs and shipped as much water to the southern Central Valley as possible and stored in the Kern Water Bank, the Semi-tropic Waterbank and reservoirs such as Pyramid Lake (97% full) and Castaic Lake (92% full) [scroll down] after the draw down

I gave some links on one of Marcy’s threads awhile ago here

State and Federal water allocations

The state and federal governments in recent years have pumped record amounts of water out of the California Delta. Some of the largest annual water export levels in history occurred in 2003 (6.3 million acre-feet), 2004 (6.1 MAF), 2005 (6.5 MAF) and 2006 (6.3 MAF). Exports averaged 4.6 MAF annually between 1990 and 1999 and increased to an average of 6 MAF between 2000 and 2007, a rise of almost 30 percent, according to the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance.

As I said, Slanthead Hannity is a hack

Drought, or water heist?

[…]

The facts are that the past two years are only the ninth driest two-year period in the past 88 years, and that California routinely experiences such periods once every 10 years, according to the Department of Water Resources.

What happened last year is that water managers were betting on a wet spring. When it didn’t happen, many lakes were drained down to nothing in order to send water to L.A. and farmers.

[…]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/…..13N9LM.DTL

as I said, the Water Board’s site has a wealth of info:

http://search.ca.gov/search?q=…..t=ca_swrcb

Hi Linda

Thanks, I’ll check it out

Exactly. Which makes it triply mendacious.

I’m lucky in that I learned how to spot paid RNC trolls when I hung around Salon’s “Table Talk” message boards — one of the early spawning grounds of many prominent prog-bloggers — back in the days when TT was a wide-open lightly-moderated free-for-all. One technique I pioneered was the creation of “roach motels”: Threads that were designed specifically to trap the trolls therein while the legitimate commenters chatted away unmolested in other threads. (The key to making the Roach Motels work was to toss in the occasional red-meat comment to keep the trolls occupied, because once they realized they were just talking to themselves, they’d leave the thread.)

Seems to me I recall reading many years ago a comment by a member of the Flat Earth Society who, when shown a series of photos of the earth taken from space, remarked that “to the untrained eye, yes, it might appear to be round.” Something like that.

‘There’s nothing new under the sun,’ according to King Solomon several millennia ago. He never met Glenn Beck, though.