——————————————————————–

George is at it again. In an effort to remove the threat of forest fires, Bush is going to get to the root of the problem and remove the trees. Not all of them of course. This is a thinning project whereby his friends in the big lumber industry would come in and selectively log 1000 acre tracts that are deemed “fire prone”. It doesn’t seem to matter that mature trees are rarely the cause of these fires. You just don’t see spontaneous tree combustion. Rather it’s all the crap on the forest floor which seems to seed the fires. But companies aren’t lining up to come in and sweep. No money in that. Let’s also ignore the volume of research showing that fires are a natural and necessary part of the natural forest cycle, and trees are good for pollution and global warming. I’d like to think Bush is just stupid, but again, the evidence points toward him thinking we are.

I liked comedian Ed Helms’ comment that this was at least a consistent policy for Bush. In order to save something, you need to kill part of it first. It worked in Iraq, why not in the forest?