Didn't John McCain win every county in OK? Enough said.

I think extending unemployment benefits is certainly helpful to people and the economy... Please take a look at my comments at:

Pork is bad.

Pork is not good.

Bridge to nowhere.

We have enuf forests... they burn anyway.

Or they get munched by beetle infestations.

Then they rot.

I hope someone reposts this when Coburn comes up for election and we can all contribute to his opponent.

Another equally relevant factoid: the Moon orbits the Earth. Enough said. And final fact: Kevin is a douchebag. Oh, sorry, Carla, he started it!

This wildersness disignation is misguided. Just because a large vocal group of uninformed individuals with support from domestic terrorist organizations such as the Club wants a wilderness area to remove access from a large portion of the population for their own use doesnt mean its what is best for the envoronment.

If advocates for wilderness deignation would educate themselves on how to properly manage forestland. Im not advocating the only solution is harvest but with over 100 years of agressive fire suppression its going to take another 100 years to get the forests anywhere close to the original fire regime that was present. This means some harvest/fuel reduction to get rid of some fuels then a succession of prescribed fire or continued fuel reduction for areas that put communities at risk.

This is the best solution we could hope for and better than walking away from any management that comes with wilderness designation.

This is the best solution we could hope for and better than walking away from any management that comes with wilderness designation.

And exactly what management tools other than bulldozers do you lose?

Chuck

When wilderness disignation happens it removes the ability to do anything witin that boundary such as fuel modification (to move the fuel model back to historical regime) This includes removel of fuels even through helicopter logging, prescibed burning and, in the event a fire gets established, the ability to suppress that fire with anything other than handtools. This removes chainsaws, water pumps and anything else that has a motor on it.

Most of the area under consideration is extremely fire prone and when (not if) the fire comes it will be a stand replacement event such as what we saw with the tillamook burns. Look at the B&B complex on the Willamette NF and see that the areas tha burned the hottest still do not have any new growth, it will come but not until enough soil has eroded to get down to the soil that has not been nuked.

Long story short, don't buy into groups like Bark-out and Oregon Wild that are against any thoughtful management and only support Wilderness designation as an overreaching way to protect a resource they want to linit public access to.

I am certainly an environmentalist who buys green power, drives an economy car, recycles, donates to OLCV, etc... I also grew up on a ranch near a mill town called Kinzua that did a good job of sustained yield logging in their fifty year existence, 1928-78, and provided a strong tax base for Wheeler COunty. I have seen first hand the economic downturn in rural OR with the decline of the timber industry. Outside of Portland Metro and college towns, this is still a big problem.

There might be valid arguments for this new wilderness, but with the federal government owning much of OR, with lawsuits precluding even the logging levels set by the CLinton compromise, and with county and state officials constantly begging for county payments from the feds in leiu of timber payments, I'm not quick to stand up and cheer for new wildnerness. I say this as someone who loves to hike in the Gorge and other protected areas and who realizes that we're never going back to the 70s logging levels, but who feels that we should think twice before totally shutting down more vast areas of our forests. I'm a Dan Goldy Democrat, if that means anything to anyone.

I don't like COburn's tactics, and don't like the filibuster in general, but we Democrats decided to keep it when we were in the minority.

From what I know, Coburn is in most ways a libertarian ideologue who loves the Grover Norquist starve-the-beast approach to (mis)governance. Of course, his libertarianism does not extend to women's wombs.

Coburn is a boil on the butt of the state of Oklahoma...and I say this as someone raised there and whose entire family still lives there. A lot of Okies hate him and that's saying something, believe me. I've called his office repeatedly and told them that it was bad enough that he helped screw up OK when I lived there, now he's messing around with my chosen home state of Oregon and I'd appreciate it if he'd deal with OK issues and keep his nose out of our business.

I'm up for the Oregonians against Coburn idea...but I think we could like with Daily Kos and make it Americans against Coburn, since he's blocked legislation that would be beneficial to other states as well.

I am curious to see how many Republican filibusters we will see while the are in the minority. I'm guessing the R's will use it early and often to protect the polluters and plunderers. How many Democratic filibusters did we see the past seven years to block horrible Republican legislation?

Several facts to consider in forming an opinion on the topic.

• Currently only 3.7% of Oregon is protected as Wilderness. You have to be an absolute extremist to think that's a balanced approach. The Mt Hood bill will up that to almost 4% if you round up(but it will protect some amazing Oregon icons).
• The claim that the majority of the proposal is prone to fire are totally bogus. The majority of the proposal is in very wet and soggy westside douglas fir forests that rarely burn. Playing the fire card is just more of the Bush fear mongering, not anything science based at all.
• Coburn is a hypocrite. He has supported spending billions in Iraq, and voted for the 700 billion spending stimulus bill.
• Any problems in the timber industry right now have nothing to do with environmental issues and everything to do with the economy.

• The Mount Hood Wilderness bill will protect some of the best hiking in Oregon. Let's hope congress can get it done first thing in January, it's way over due. Get the steamroller revved up, 'cuz it's time to start rolling Oklahoman hypocrites.

• In defense of Oregon Wild and Bark... both organizations seem to support thoughtful restoration thinning of forests that leads to good jobs. In fact both organizations won the Two Chiefs Award (from the USFS and NRCS) for this type of collaborative work to support restoration thinning in the forests in 2007.

Erik

Being a member of Oregon Wild, I've followed and supported their progressive approach to protecting Oregon's Wilderness. I've read about their work to restore some of the cut-over landscapes by thinning of plantations... pretty good stuff. Protections for Mount Hood are long over due. I for one am looking forward to the day when we can rest assured knowing that Mount Hood and the Columbia Gorge finally get the protection they deserve. What's the deal with the stat mentioned in one of the above posts that Oregon only has 3.7% of the state protected? How did that happen in "progressive" Oregon? J