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

Thanks, I’ll check it out

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

[…]

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

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

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.

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.

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.