Free Republic

Bill Clinton’s land management rules and other liberal policies paved the way for future debilitating wildfires ... Zybach warned of potential disastrous wildfires shortly after Clinton signed a slate of rules in the mid-1990s that drastically reduced logging and road creation on federal lands. ... Shortly before leaving office in 2001, Clinton limited the ability of the United States Forest Service to thin out a dense thicket of foliage and downed trees on federal land... created a ticking time bomb ... “If you don’t start managing these forests, then they are going to start burning up. Thirty years later, they...

Four have been arrested on suspicion of arson in West Coast areas already under seige from major destructive and deadly blazes, according to reports. As wildfires continue to rage across three states, police investigated separate incidents near existing wildfires. Two men in Washington state, one man in Oregon and one woman in California are facing charges, according to the Daily Wire. The latest reports suggest that at least 20 people have died in California, eight in Oregon and one in Washington state as firefighters struggle to contain already deadly fires. Ashland, Ore., Police Chief Tighe O'Meara announced Thursday that a...

Far Left Liberal Progressive governor of California, Gavin Newsom, got in front of the cameras yesterday and made a ‘very serious’ statement about the raging wildfires currently plaguing their state. He said “The debate is over around climate change. Just come to the state of California, observe it with your own eyes,” a grinning Newsom told reporters while touring the fire-ravaged North Complex near Oroville. “It’s not an intellectual debate, it’s not even debatable.” Absolute rubbish, to say the least. Let’s begin a real debate, shall we? Always makes me laugh, seeing as most Liberals are either atheist or agnostic,...

We've got another one for your 2020 list... I'm going to file this under "I've never seen this in my career, but I probably should have expected it this year" as some of this thick smoke from the historic fires burning in Oregon and California is now getting sucked right into a Pacific storm. Watch:

In the face of a massive show of force by militarized police, "Freedom Day" protesters again on the streets of Melbourne, Australia where its Saturday. The protest in opposition to the strict lockdown.... A two week nationwide coronavirus lockdown is being envisioned by cabinet ministers in Israel..... In Canada a university professor telling his students in-class exams aren't mandatory because of: "the COVID fake emergency"..... One million acres burned (1,500 plus square miles and tens of thousands ordered to evacuate in Oregon in the face of massive wildfires.... Seven now confirmed dead with 60 believed missing..... A man in southern...

California and Australia share a common enemy: overzealous environmental regulation. In both places, the unintended consequences of a radical environmentalist agenda has been massive wildfires.California suffered from two horrible fire seasons in the last three years, one of which burned down an entire town. Australia has been battling fires for months. More than 135 fires are still burning currently. So far, the fires have scorched 12 million acres, killed 25 people, caused 240,000 Australians to evacuate their homes, burned alive an estimated half a billion animals, and caused $3.4 billion worth of damage.The big question isnÂ’t necessarily how these...

There’s a message in the raging wildfires that have scorched her home state of California as well as neighboring states, according to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “Mother Earth is angry,” the San Francisco Democrat said during an appearance Thursday on MSNBC. “She’s telling us -- whether she’s telling us with hurricanes on the Gulf Coast, fires in the West, whatever it is … that the climate crisis is real and has an impact.” As Pelosi spoke, the network split the screen, with Pelosi on the right and images on the left showing flames consuming homes and a “Children at Play”...

Source: Series of wildfires on the West Coast may be “coordinated and planned” attack A federal law enforcement source shared with Law Enforcement Today that the feds are looking into whether some of the cases are linked together… and warn there could be more “attacks”. “We are reacting to a coordinated series of attempts to start fires anywhere and everywhere in Oregon. Public and Private lands, incorporated and unincorporated areas. By all indications so far in the preliminary stages of these investigations there is a coordinated effort on the part of these individuals to start fires in areas that are...

Politicians like Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom blame global warming and President Donald Trump for California’s woes. Yet Newsom has cautiously moved to mitigate some of his state’s past policy missteps by increasing efforts to clear forests of fuel and allowing some natural gas power plants to remain open for a few more years to reduce the threat of blackouts caused by an overreliance on unreliable wind and solar power. Giving policymakers the benefit of the doubt—that they didn’t intend to promote policies that resulted in burned towns, scores of deaths, and widespread power outages—how did they arrive at this point?...

WEST COAST – A series of wildfires in Washington, Oregon, and California are now being considered arson – and sources tell Law Enforcement Today that they may be part of a “coordinated attack”. Law enforcement throughout the west coast is reportedly being put on alert to look out for “opportunists” and those who may have more sinister motives. A number of arsonists are already in jail, and there a few on the run, we’re told. (snip) On Wednesday, September 10, 2020, Troopers in Puyallup, Washington said they arrested a 36-year-old Puyallup man caught setting a fire in the brush. This...

This season's wildfires in California, U.S. have burned more than 809 000 million ha (2 million acres) of land by September 7, 2020, surpassing the all-time record of 793 180 million ha (1.96 million acres) set in 2018. Cal Fire began tracking the numbers in 1987. "We haven't even got into the October and November fire season and we've broken the all-time record," Cal Fire Capt. Richard Cordova told CNN on Sunday, September 6. In the San Francisco Bay Area, more than 14 000 firefighters are currently battling two of the three largest fires in the history of the state....

After years of advocacy work, cultural burning practitioners had a win in Australia when the government of New South Wales, the state hit hardest by last year's catastrophic bushfires, formally accepted a recommendation for an increase in cultural burning as part of their fire management strategy. An official report issued by the New South Wales government explains how Indigenous land practices can improve fire management in the wake of the deadly bushfires. As some of the most damaging wildfires in recent memory have raged through California, in the United States, this cultural burning knowledge is becoming more relevant than ever,...

So we enter another week enveloped in smoke, here in California. My thought for the day: Can you imagine the public and political reaction if this were caused by a private-sector activity? Imagine for a minute that Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg had a many thousand acre ranch in Northern California, but for decades they refused to do any proper management and let kindling pile up. Suppose that when massive fires erupted every year, they relied on heroic volunteers and prisoners being paid a few dollars a day to go try to put out the flames. Suppose this happened every...

A federal judge in Oregon denying a request by three Christian schools in that state to reopen... "vehemently opposed" That's what US Attorney General William Barr has to say about the notion of a pardon fro former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden..... The sentencing today for actress Lori Loughlin and her husband Mossimo Gianulli in the "college admissions bribe scandal". She sentenced to two months and he to five months by a federal judge.... California wildfires rapidly expanding today with Governor Gavin Newsom looking for help from as far away as Canada and Australia..... And California's Governor Gavin Newsom...

VACAVILLE, Calif. — How many things can go wrong at once? On Wednesday millions of California residents were smothered by smoke-filled skies as dozens of wildfires raged out of control. They braced for triple-digit temperatures, the sixth day of a punishing heat wave that included a recent reading of 130 degrees in Death Valley. They braced for possible power outages because the state’s grid is overloaded, the latest sign of an energy crisis. And they continued to fight a virus that is killing 130 Californians a day. Even for a state accustomed to disaster, August has been a terrible month....

The John Durham investigation into the origins of the Justice Department's probe of alleged Russian collusion involving President Trump and his 2016 campaign leading to a guilty plea in Washington DC today..... A pro-Syrian government grouo claiming responsibility for a rocket attack on a US military base in the eastern part of the country...... The Prime Minister of the Bahamas backing down from a seven day complete lockdown of New Providence, the country's most populous island where the capital city of Nassau is located..... The "Conservative' Prime Minister of Australia a close ally of President Trump and the United States,...

Pacific Gas & Electric said Monday it will plead guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter in connection with the 2018 fire in Northern California that killed 84 people and decimated three towns.Pacific Gas & Electric said Monday it will plead guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter in connection with the 2018 fire in Northern California that killed 84 people and decimated three towns. The utility said in a statement it will also admit to a single count of unlawfully starting a fire. Advertisement Under a plea agreement with the Butte County District Attorney’s office, PG&E will pay the...

California's wildfires are getting deadlier and more destructive each year. Naturally then, state politicians want to make it easier to get insurance in fire-prone areas. On Tuesday, Assemblymembers Lorena Gonzalez (D–San Diego) and Monique Limon (D–Santa Barbara) introduced Assembly Bill (A.B.) 2367. Their "Renew California" bill would require that insurance companies write new policies or indefinitely renew current ones for existing homes provided they meet yet-to-be-determined state standards for fire-hardening. Roughly one million homes in wildfire-affected areas are already covered by a one-year moratorium on non-renewals issued by the state's elected insurance commissioner, Ricardo Lara, in December 2019. Lara has...

Vineyards in Northern California began planting thousands of acres of new vines in 2016, and with more efficient harvesting methods, it has led to more bountiful harvests of grapes. Having more grapes to make wine sounds good, but if there’s not enough demand to support increased production, the surplus grapes go to waste. Jeff Bitter, president of Allied Grape Growers, told CNN that it’s possible for surplus grapes to make it to the secondary market, where they’re used for brandy or as grape concentrate. But that market doesn’t typically provide sustainable returns for growers. “The main cause of oversupply today...

The Bureau of Land Management has announced plans to fund 11,000 miles (17,703 kilometers) of strategic fuel breaks in Idaho, Oregon, Washington, California, Nevada and Utah in an effort to help control wildfires. The fuel breaks are intended to prop up fire mitigation efforts and help protect firefighters, communities and natural resources, The Oregonian reported Saturday. According to the BLM, wildfires are becoming bigger and more frequent across the Great Basin states. Between 2009 and 2018, more than 13.5 million acres of BLM land burned in the project area.