A Matter of Time (UPDATED)

Of course there'd already been muttering that this most recent round of SoCal wildfires was all the fault of those eco-nuts who prevented Bush from selling the forests to the highest bidders, who would then clear out those pesky ol' trees that are burning. (Oh, it's not old growth forest that's burning, it's mostly chapparal & scrub oaks? 'Scuse us.)

And those California Nat'l. Guard troops & equipment in Iraq & Afghanistan aren't any problem at all. Duncan Hunter, joke Republican presidential candidate, was just on Lardball w/ Chris Matthews, & between repeating the "Reaganesque" line "We're optimistic, we'll rebuild" about San Diego County (Remember Al Einstein's definition of crazy: Repeating the same action but expecting different results) he announced that firefighting is not done w/ a wall of bodies facing the flame, & if it were, the 1st Marine Division is right there @ Camp Pendleton. This has, of course, nothing to do w/ the Guard being trained & experienced in disaster relief, refugee assistance & so on (& we'll bet that some Guard members/units have some training & experience w/ wildfires) which is what was being discussed, but Hunter isn't one to let facts get in the way of the partisanship he decries in the left, yet practices himself.

But it was just a matter of time until the real concerns of the lunatic fringe right (not to be confused w/ the lunatic mainstream right) surfaced, & here they are, right on schedule:

As the embers cool, investigators in public and private will begin asking some hard questions, including how in blazes these fires happened: Were some of the purportedly wild fires scorching more than 600 square miles of Southern California this week set by border-crossing Islamist terrorists?

"How in blazes" indeed. Aren't we clever? Of course, they'd have to be "border-crossing" terrorists, they couldn't possibly have come in legally & overstayed their visas, because our highly efficient Dep't. of Homeland Security doesn't let that happen. By the way, how do these "border-crossers" get into Mexico in the first place? We continually hear that Mexico is very harsh on Central Americans trying to come into Mexico illegally, while pushing as many Mexican citizens as possible over the U. S. border.

An Oxford-educated engineer, bin Laden knows the power of asymmetrical warfare wherein a few matches and bottles of gasoline can cause millions of times their cost in damage to enemies, from military families in San Diego to morally-corrupting Hollywood stars in Malibu.

Yes, it would certainly take an Oxford education to figure that out. Although we swear to you we haven't gone any farther from the House of Bouffant than the 99¢ Only Store in the last two wks., the concept of setting Southern California afire for terroristic purposes during the Santa Ana Winds occurred to this reporter & one of his associates in schadenfreude & nihilism several yrs. ago, when we were glued to the tube watching the houses of the privileged go up in flames. (An annual Southern Cal fall ritual.) Neither of us have an Oxford education, though we're not not nearly as stupid or paranoid as Lowell Ponte. Added stupidity:

Although a new Osama bin Laden video was issued at almost exactly the same time these fires began, and might have contained a coded command to his operatives to carry out planned arsons, it makes sense that al-Qaida has claimed
no credit for the fires.
[...]
But bin Laden would probably be embarrassed, in the wake of his astonishing terrorist “achievement” on 9/11, to be seen resorting to mere fire setting around the homes of innocent people.

Well sure, because terrorism works so well when it's thought to be an accident or a downed power line. You might even think that Oxford intellectual Bin Laden would go ahead & claim credit for the fires anyway, just to get Ponte's pants even more piss-soaked. And it would take a "coded command," because no "border-crossing" terrorist could put the concepts of high temperatures, high winds, & dryness/drought together, especially after those power lines were knocked down & some fires started.

Other possibilities: the fires were all accidental, like the one north of Los Angeles reportedly touched off by a spark from welding equipment.

Or, perhaps, one or more of these fires were ignited accidentally by an illegal alien’s campfire, as has happened before in Southern California. Even if evidence points this way, do not expect the liberal media to report anything this politically incorrect — or this likely to give inconvenient fuel to critics of our liberal border policies.
[...]
TV and radio talk-host Glenn Beck deserves credit for having Competitive Enterprise Institute experts Chris Horner and R.J. Smith explain how radical government environmental policies under President Bill Clinton interfered with rational forest and brush management, and set America up for today’s catastrophic super-fires.

Extra credit to Mormon asshole Beck for his statement that people who hate America & live in Malibu are losing their houses to forest fires. And extra credit to Ponte for pointing out how Bush & the Republican-dominated Congress had six yrs. to establish a "No Forest Left" policy to "rationally manage" forest & brush (but didn't). That was Clinton's fault, too, right? It always is. As was noted on Sadly, No! by a member of the commentariat, Trilateral Chairman, Bush seems to like clearing brush, he could have helped.

Real credit where credit is due: J— commenting @ S,N! must've brought it to the attention of Gavin Sadly, who posted it at exactly the same time as we were asking if such a thing had happened two threads previous!!! Coincidence? We think not.

UPDATE (@1731 PDT): Just heard on MSNBC's Countdown that the Fox News Channel's morning show (Fox and Friends) was making a big deal (transcript) of an FBI memo from four years ago that indicated an Al Qaeda member or informant or a guy who lived down the street from a guy whose sister-in-law used to work w/ a dame who was married to an Arab once, only he was a Christian Arab, but really what difference does that make, told the FBI of an Al Qaeda plot to light simultaneous forest fires in Colorado, Montana, Wyoming & Utah during the summer. No confirmation of said plot, either, but it could be what's behind the current fires, the Fox tools implied. You certainly do have to get up early in the morning to put one over on Just Another Blog™.
Damn! We're just lucky that hurricanes, tornadoes & earthquakes can't be caused by human agency, we'd need more home-care workers to keep changing the Depends™ on these clowns. Volcanoes? Could go either way.

Further arson poop, from a self-proclaimed "voice of the resistance."