The view from Doug's house

The California wildfires are a topic of personal interest to me. The photo that you see was taken this afternoon (Tuesday, October 23) from my front window. The smoke that you see rising from the mountain is being generated from a location which is 7.6 miles from my house, perhaps 5 miles as the crow flies.

Being a full blown perma-cynic, I was convinced that it would only be a matter of time before this developing disaster began to be used for political agendas.

My ridiculously low expectations were met by self-professed professional water carrier Rush Limbaugh.

It took little more than 24 hours for Limbaugh to use the California wildfires as a means to lay into "environmentalist wackos", Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, "Al Gore acolytes", Hillary Clinton, "Meathead" a.k.a Rob Reiner, "the Hollywood crowd", and "the Hollywood elite" (High fives for anyone who can clue me into the difference between the Hollywood crowd and the Hollywood elite.-ds)

This comes from the transcript of Limbaugh's October 22 broadcast.

Guys are trying to keep flames from coming underneath the door in their garages and so forth. And the people that were noticeably absent were the environmentalist wackos. Where were Greenpeace, Sierra Club and where were their bucket brigades, where do these people show up in time of disaster like this? They just love the wilderness, don't they? It's what they always say, "Save the species. Save the earth." Well, Mother Nature turned a whole bunch of Southern California via a torch, and I didn't see one Algore acolyte out there trying to help out. I'm sitting there watching this and I wonder how much CO2 and particulate matter got belched into the atmosphere from one fire, let alone five different fires out there. Talk about carbon footprint, try charcoal footprint. Well, it's natural, but here's the thing about Southern California. The left is going to claim, and a lot of people are going to claim, this is caused by a drought. Now, I lived up in California up in the northern part. I lived in Sacramento for a while before I moved to New York. I would go to LA for business reasons. There were always signs in the hotel, "Use as little water as necessary." […]

…But, you know, Brentwood, where O.J. Simpson lived, that's not far from Malibu. It's not just a hop, skip, and trip, but it's not far from Malibu. It's close enough that people in Brentwood could have helped out if they wanted to. I'll tell you why I mention this, is that while fires were raging out there in Malibu, Hillary Clinton was celebrating in Brentwood at the home of Meathead, Rob Reiner, on Saturday night, who was singing songs to her. It was a preliminary birthday party. Her big birthday party is going to be some shuck and jive event here on the East Coast. So the Hollywood crowd wanted to give her a pre-birthday bash, which is really nothing more than a fundraiser for Mrs. Clinton. While millions of dollars worth of homes and businesses and family members were literally going up in flames, the Hollywood elite at Meathead's house, listening to him serenade Hillary Clinton. Actually, I made a mistake, folks. It wasn't for her, because we all know Mrs. Clinton doesn't care about money. The Clintons tell us this constantly. They don't care about money. This was for her campaign, and that means it was for the children.

So having Meathead serenade Mrs. Clinton on Saturday night in Brentwood, not a fundraiser, but for the children. (interruption) I don't think she did a flyover. I don't think there was one expression of — well, I don't know what was said inside there, but I haven't seen Mrs. Clinton comment on the fires… - RushLimbaugh.com

There is so much that could and probably should be said here, but I'll address just the following two points which render Limbaugh's irresponsible diatribe moot, then I'll get back to monitoring and possibly preparing for the developing situation that I'm watching out my front window - a situation that Limbaugh has the luxury of making ill-informed filibusters about from the comfort of his studio which is located near the Atlantic Ocean, not the Pacific.

• Limbaugh says "Guys are trying to keep flames from coming underneath the door in their garages and so forth. And the people that were noticeably absent were the environmentalist wackos. Where were Greenpeace, Sierra Club and where were their bucket brigades, where do these people show up in time of disaster like this?" I'll go on the record as saying that if those flames make the 5 mile trip to the door of my garage and so forth, I won't begrudge Greenpeace or the Sierra Club for not being first responders. I'll actually hope for trained firefighters instead. Heck, wouldn't it be ironic if any of those firefighters happen to be environmentalist wackos?
• While I admit that Hillary Clinton doesn't set my political heart aflutter, I do have to bring up a nagging detail. Limbaugh's criticism of Clinton's decision to participate in a fund raiser at Rob Reiner's house on Saturday night "while millions of dollars worth of homes and businesses and family members were literally going up in flames" fails the logic test because…the first fire began at 4:50 a.m. on October 21…which was Sunday.