All the farms in California have been shut down by Obama!

[Coventina]

This is the story I got from my hairdresser this morning. I wish I were making this up, but this is the level of paranoia that is being spread to the gullible:

Obama has ordered the closing of farms in California in order to save a species of minnow. Millions of farmworkers are out of work as of today. All the food that was grown in California is now going to be imported from China. The deals are already signed.

I calmly said, "I haven't heard anything about this."

His response, "I heard it just happened this morning."

I should have asked where he heard it, but I didn't and we changed the subject.

Oy.

[BeyondGeography]

1. Obama cares more about minnows than people

[Bigmack]

9. Shiiit... I care more about minnows....

than I care about lots of people I see on the news. You know the ones.. with the placard of Obama with a Hitler mustache.

[mikeytherat]

2. You should have told him, "Yes. They need the farmland for the FEMA concentration camps."

Then added, as you were leaving, "And I know for a fact your name is on the list."

mikey_the_rat

[Coventina]

7. LOL! I wish I were good at snappy comebacks. n/t

[butterfly77]

60. This is part of Slannity and his new agenda..

he did a show last night where he bussed in teabaggers and did an interview with Arnold Swarzenegger as though he was putting on the spot about water rights and jobs. I didn't watch the whole thing because I can't stand the lies and I don't want to help his ratings. The whole show was another Obama bash.

[KatyMan]

11. I do that

I always tell them they are absolutely right, we liberals are out to destroy the country and hand it over to 'illegals'.

[unapatriciated]

14. male hairdressers are first on the list

[BlueIdaho]

48. Along with the telephone sanitizers. nt.

[JVS]

16. LOL

[BlooInBloo]

24. Win.

[TxRider]

3. He heard it from Hannity

Supposedly the water for farms in the entire San Joaquin valley has been shut off to protect the delta because of a smelt minnow.

It's a real issue.

Farmers vs NW Fishermen.

[EFerrari]

6. The CA water wars are hundreds of years old. n/t

[Richardo]

8. ...and the water's been back on since July 1st.

Idiots.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=4066788&mesg_id=4066788

[Hell Hath No Fury]

15. The issue is --

the Central Valley is an arid area where farmers are growing crops that have no business being grown. Almost every bit of water they use is taken from Northern California, especially the delta. It is not really farmers vs. fishermen, it is primarily an environental issue -- too much water diverted south means serious environemntal damage up north.

As E.F. says, this issue has been going for practically as long as there has been a California. Southern/central CA is mostly arid/desert and has a huge population/industry that requires enormous amounts of water they simply do not have. Northern CA has the water that SoCal needs. The ever-present talk of splitting CA into two States has always been about the water.

And Hannity (surprise!) is completely wrong about the water being shutoff. I was just through the Valley this weekend -- crops and orchards were doing just fine.

[XemaSab]

44. The Delta is smack dab in the middle

of the Central Valley.

[Xithras]

18. Yeah, Hannity did a show from the western valley yesterday.

Totally misrepresented the situation.

And it's farmers vs. farmers, not farmers vs. fishermen. The southern valley farmers want to pull more water from the Delta, which will cause saltwater intrusion from the SF Bay, destroying up to a half million acres of farmland. The peripheral canal is supported by southern California water departments who want to increase their water draws, by the industrial farms in the Westlands who just want to make $$ at everyone elses expense, and by land developers, who know they'll be able to get ownership of the Delta islands cheap once farming isn't feasible there anymore.

Standing against them are Northern California farmers who want to preserve water for local use, businesses who want to preserve the hundreds of millions of dollars a year that Delta boating tourism injects into the regional economy (which will evaporate if the Delta becomes saline and kills off the freshwater species), and environmental groups who don't want to see the worlds only functional oceanbound inland delta ecosystem killed off.

It's also generally opposed by most northern Californian's who feel lied to. Back when the water projects were first started, the government assured everyone in Northern California that they weren't taking "their" water, but that the government was simply siphoning off the excess to help others. With these water proposals, they're now talking about doing just that...taking Northern California water away from Northern Californian's to send south to farmers and urbanites. Current farmland will go dry, and businesses will shutter, because the southern water thieves screamed louder.

[TxRider]

25. So how much of this is about farming

That is unsustainable on land that never should have been farmed?

Info on this issue is sparse and hard to find.

We'll likely be facing similar water wars in Texas in coming decades, they are already starting to heat up.

[Hell Hath No Fury]

30. It is almost ALL about ---

farming and development in an area that is just way too dry to sustain such activity. :shrug:

When you drive through the Central Valley -- especially headed south -- and you look at the undeveloped landscape, the natural vegetation is primarily scrub sage and grasses that grow in the spring and die off in summer. The area has a very limited rainfall that has only gotten worse with climate change and years of drought.

Now, you put water gobbling agriculture and farming like cotton and cattle, coupled with an explosion in population due to cheap, abundant housing into an arid area with no natural water source and you have created yourself one big fucking disaster.

Without water shipped in via the aquaducts, the Central Valley could not (should not?) exist.

[TxRider]

33. Then we should

Let it die, but provide funds for the families there to relocate to a more sustainable area or occupation.

[Hell Hath No Fury]

36. Unfortunately, agriculture is --

the engine that drives CA's economy. :(

I think wiser water use and smarter development could solve much of the problem we have here, leaving water for smart agriculture.

I am seriously getting into the water issue here in CA -- I am making plans and taking steps to completely change how I get and use water, from composting toilets, to xeroscaping, to rain gathering storage systems, to gray water systems.

Water gobbling lawns, swimming pools, car washing, cotton farming, cattle farming, McMansions -- all of this needs to go the way of the horse and buggy.

[XemaSab]

46. I put a xeriscaping link in the gardening group

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=246x11929

It's fun to play around with the different plant combinations, and your garden by no means has to look like a desert, especially near the coast.

I strongly suggest salvia species and grasses as the backbone of the garden.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask! :hi:

[Gold Metal Flake]

56. I'm gonna check this later.

I don't wanna keep growing Marathon fescue in the back yard. Thanks! :hi:

[Mz Pip]

51. The water wars in CA

have been going on since Obama was a teenager.

Over 30 years ago we had a really bad drought. One of the initiatives that got put on the ballot was to build a peripheral canal from Northern California to Southern California. Us folks in Nor Cal took the drought seriously. I remember putting the rinse water back in the washing machine to do the next wash and using the bathtub water to flush the toilet. The folks in So Cal continues hosing off their sidewalks, filling their swimming pools like all was well. The people in Northern CA came out in droves to vote against the initiative and it went down to defeat.

There are rice farms that must use an absurd amount of water. I do question the wisdom of growing rice in a region that is as dry as our central valley.

We just got back from a trip up north. Lake Shasta has fingers that are bone dry.

Lots of issues about water here and I can't blame the minnow for all of them.

[XemaSab]

58. To play devil's advocate

Rice feeds people.

The other three horsemen of the water apocalypse (cotton, alfalfa, and pasture) either don't feed people or are much less efficient ways of feeding people.

[Mz Pip]

61. that's true

but wheat, corn, oats also feed people and aren't the water hogs that rice is.

the rice and cotton crops seem to be a relatively recent addition to CA's agriculture. I certainly don't remember seeing the rice paddies 30 years ago, or even 20.

[Retrograde]

67. Rice doesn't have to stand in water

The traditional Asian way of growing rice in paddies helps cut down on weeds, but it doesn't require its feet to be wet all the time.

Left to its own, the Central Valley, especially the northern end, fills up with small ponds during the rainy season that provide habitats for wildfowls and enough water for the native plants the rest of the year. There's a weird coalition between duck hunters and rice farmers to encourage this "back to nature" approach: fallow fields fill up with water, the birds come and leave fertilizer, the hunters get some of the birds, the field goes into production the next year. As long as they don't use lead pellets, it's pretty much nature's cycle.

You think the peripheral canal was bad? There were plans in the 50s to dam the Golden Gate and send all that newly fresh Bay water south.

[Xithras]

37. You, like many Californian's, were lied to about that. The Central Valley is not a desert.

Read the writings of John Muir as he described the wildflower meadows that stretched for dozens of miles across the Central Valley, or the journals of John C. Fremont, written as he marched his men up the Valley in the early 1840's, and described a "paradise" with blackberry bushes that stretched unbroken for miles, and bird flocks so large that the ground was dimmed and the sky blackened as they took flight. Look up the tragic history of Lake Tulare, the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi, which once produced so many fish that the fish dealers in San Franscisco used to sell more "Tulare" fish than they did "Pacific" fish.

The truth is simple. The Central Valley doesn't get a huge amount of rain, but it is incredibly flat. Before man came, the water fell in the Sierras, ran down into the Valley, and pooled across its landscape. The water tables, first measured in the late 1800's, were only 2-5 feet under ground, and the marshes stretched for hundreds of miles. Even in the hot summertime, water was only a few feet underground, and the Valley supported immense riparian forests that tapped this groundwater.

Then man came. We leveed the rivers to keep the water from overflowing, we drained the marshes, we dammed the streams to hold the water back, we sunk wells to lower the water table, and we destroyed the natural water flow in the area. What was left, and what we have today, is an arid stretch of irrigated farmland where "paradise" once stood.

[Hell Hath No Fury]

40. Until we are willing to undo ---

100+ years of agriculture and development (which would be just fine with me), then the Central Valley is -- and will remain -- a desert that needs stupifying amounts of water to survive. :shrug:

[Xithras]

42. But we DON'T

We ONLY need the amount of water that nature provided for the area in the first place. Even with all of that engineering, there's plenty of water to go around in the Valley. If we turned off the pipelines that siphoned that water off into the Bay Area and LA, there would be no shortages for farmers or residents in the Valley.

The problem isn't the Central Valley, it's the withdrawals from the Valley waterways for the rest of the state.

Personally, I'd rather see 100+ years of development in the Bay Area and LA undone. Those population centers were developed in areas without sufficient water resources to sustain their populations. Our predecessors in the Central Valley at least had the foresight to build in areas where that wasn't an issue.

[TxRider]

43. Ok then..

Shut off the water heading out of the valley for LA..

[Xithras]

50. The Bay Area is actually a bigger problem.

Valley waterway exports to the Bay Area exceeded those of LA a long time ago. You have East Bay communities pulling from the Delta, draws from the Mokelumne and Stanislaus rivers, and of course the big one, the Hetch Hetchy which redirects 250 million gallons of water a day out of the Tuolumne River to SF. The Tuolumne was the major source of the water that once inundated much of the northern portion of the valley, which John Fremont described as "Paradise".

[donquijoterocket]

39. Texas is not alone

If the ogallala aquifer is over pumped for much longer large sections of Nebraska, eastern Colorado, and Western Kansas are going to be in a world of hurt as will the overall food supply of the country and the world.It's part of the reason why I've been gardening for the last few years in a square foot organic mode with a drip irrigation system that uses mostly captured rainwater and am thinking about erecting a small geodesic frame greenhouse.
http://www.growingspaces.com/.

[LeftinOH]

4. It has been said that Obama shut down all the farms in California to protect minnows-

Google bomb!

[mzteris]

5. OMG!

Are you sure he should be trusted with sharp objects?

[ddeclue]

10. OK that settles it. I'm gonna write an Obama random rumor generator to put up on my website

I feel sorry for FauxNews and all those wingnuts having to make this shit up day after day!

They need some software to automate the task!

:rofl:

[graywarrior]

12. He's turning them into Funny Farms for the Freepers

[HopeHoops]

13. I have a pet White Cloud minnow named Sweetie.

I LOVE my little fish.

"Good for Obama. SAVE THE MINNOWS! FUCK THE FARMS! WHO NEEDS FOOD ANYWAY! MINNOWS RULE!"

Sometimes you JUST have to get back in their faces and be as batshit crazy as they are. They are too fucking stupid to catch the irony, but it at least shuts them up and gets them to change the subject.

[The River]

19. I Do That A Lot

to a few RW idiots I see regularly.
I act surprised that they haven't been taken off to FEMA camps yet.
Or I ask if their guns have been confiscated yet.
Sometimes they admit to being wrong, but mostly not.

[LiberalAndProud]

17. If Chinook salmon are minnows, and Obama is Congress,

then this story is true.

[XemaSab]

47. +1

:D

[LeftyMom]

20. WHERE WILL I GET MY ORGANIC OLIVE OIL AND ARUGULA NOW?

:cry:

[HopeHoops]

21. Grow your own arugula - it is a weed.

The stuff takes over. As for the olive oil, I just buy the store brand.

[LeftyMom]

22. I think your sarcasm detector needs a new battery.

[HopeHoops]

28. Nah, I caught it.

Still, home grown arugula rocks - and the store brand olive oil is just fine. We grow all our own herbs too. The basil is threatening to take over Harrisburg in an armed revolt!

[XemaSab]

49. Um... go look on the bottle of store brand olive oil

and tell me where it comes from.

If it comes from Corning, CA, you owe me a dollar. :P

[HopeHoops]

62. Packed in Italy

with oils from Italy, Spain, Greece and Tunisia.

[and-justice-for-all]

23. Google the title...

"farms in California have been shut down by Obama"

The results of sources are not at all surprising...complete bullshit.

[slackmaster]

26. We'll all have to grow weed in our back yards just to survive

:scared:

[Cha]

27. I couldn't change the subject on that one..

I feel too intensely about the facts getting out..even if it has to be one person at a time.

The liars are taking over if we let them.

[spanone]

29. and he personally ate their children

[ohheckyeah]

31. Where did they hear it?

Fox News of course:

The Central Valley of California was once considered the bread basket of America. But now farms all over that region have been allowed to dry up. Now why? Because of a 2-inch minnow on the endangered species list.

Now, environmentalists claim that the fish was getting caught in the water pumps that provided the farms with water, so to protect the tiny fish, the pumps were turned off. And farmers, well, they were left high and dry, and entire communities are now feeling the impact.

Some towns in the area are now facing unemployment rates of up to 40 percent. And many residents are now forced to visit food banks. But the people of that great area, they've had enough, and they're speaking out tonight.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,539121,00.html

[Retrograde]

68. this is how it works: fabrications built on a germ of truth

California does provide much of the US's (and other countries') food. Not so much grain crops - that's the Midwest - but fruits and vegetables. So that's more or less true.

The next paragraph is a good example of taking a fact (fish do get caught in pumps, the state is trying to restore salmon populations by protecting the fry, water flow was reduced) and blowing it up way beyond reason.

The last one is worse: true, there are communities with very high unemployment rates, based on the number of unemployment checks issues. The Economist, not known for its left-wing outlook, did an article about one of them a few weeks ago. They looked at the town with the highest unemployment rate in the country, a farming community in Imperial County (far away from the Central Valley, on the Mexican border). What they found was a major change in the lifestyles of farm workers: they used to follow the crops, picking them in season. Now more are settling permanently in one place and working seasonally within the region. One consequence is that farm workers are now less likely to fall through the cracks and be ignored like they were a generation ago. OTOH, it makes unemployment rates spike since the system wasn't designed for this sort of seasonal employment. Whatever the case, it's not the fishies' fault.

[gmoney]

32. "Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown."

Always thought it was odd that one of the most famous movies ever was about municipal water policy... well, at least it was the McGuffin.

[trackfan]

34. Damn. I was planning to go to the Farmer's Market after work today.

They'll probably have to call it off for lack of goods.

[KamaAina]

55. I went on Wednesday when I was up in Sac.

Funny how all the stuff filling up the whole square seemed to be locally grown. :eyes:

[pipi_k]

35. I heard that next they'll be spraying poison over Florida to save the mosquitoes from the humans

If these dunderheads weren't for real, nobody could invent them in fiction and get away with it...

oy oy oy

:silly:

[flvegan]

38. I heard that Obama left the gun and took the cannoli.

[TNDemo]

41. Hey lady!

:hi:

[Coventina]

63. Hi! How are you doing?

:hi:

[anigbrowl]

45. I'm surprised you could let that BS go unchallenged

One needn't get into a fight, but a simple warning to not believe everything you hear can go a long way. Though I don't have one myself, I can't help noticing from observing my friend that having a smartphone with which you can easily call up the news and answer a question is an increasingly valuable tool.

[Gold Metal Flake]

57. It was the hairdresser.

Gotta be careful with your words when you suddenly find a freeper is elbow-deep in yer hair.

[Coventina]

64. He knows exactly how I feel. We've been talking politics off & on

for over 10 years now.

He's been an interesting case because he was a staunch Republican when I first became a client. Then he quit the Republican party over gay rights/marriage.

By Bush's 2nd term he was saying, "I'll never vote for another Republican again!" But he clearly disliked Obama from the start, so it doesn't surprise me that he believes every wild rumor about him.

[XemaSab]

52. Anyone interested in water policy in California should know

that Westlands now owns a fishing club along the McCloud (in Shasta county) and a ranch out near Sites (in Colusa county).

They're getting ready to pull a fast one on us.

Oh, and did I mention Westlands might be the lead agency for Shasta enlargement? :shrug:

[Cleita]

53. That's really ignorant. California is a huge state with all kinds of

agricultural land. To close it all down would empty grocery stores across the country. I don't think China could fill the void. Also, California supplies Asia with a good portion of its rice. That would be a disaster for Asia. I believe your hairdresser is referring to this. http://westernfarmpress.com/mag/farming_california_reels_savetheminnow/
Quite honestly draining all our waterways to water the Central Valley is proving to be an ecological disaster in the long run anyway. It's really meant to be a desert. However, the delta is a small portion of the whole area.

[Stephanie]

54. Hannity inspired hysteria

http://www.cbs47.tv/news/local/story/Sean-Hannity-Covers-Valley-Water-Crisis/sdGth3L_BkaNOTw2PdcjPA.cspx

[Yavin4]

59. I Thought That They Already Saved The Minnow

[IDemo]

65. They couldn't say it on the tubes if it weren't true

[Le Taz Hot]

66. May I now offer the REAL story?

Feds shut off water to California farms in controversial effort to help threatened species
By NewsWax | Aug 12, 2009

A farming town in California claims that it may disappear due to the United States federal government shutting off water pumps, though the government states the actions are necessary to save several marine species . . .

In July 2009, action by the Federal Bureau of Reclamation to protect threatened fish stopped irrigation pumping to parts of the California Central Valley causing canals leading into Huron, California and the surrounding areas and the farms that rely on them to lose their primary irrigation source. Unemployment has reached 40% in some areas as the farms have dried up.

<more>

http://mensnewsdaily.com/newswax/2009/08/12/feds-shut-off-water-to-california-farms-in-controversial-effort-to-help-threatened-species/

The issue comes down to jobs & food vs. environmental concerns. Both issues are of equal importance but, as I see people here (Fresno) struggling to provide food and shelter for their families, I have to believe there has to be a compromise. As a long-time environmentalist I appreciate the need to preserve as many species as we can; however, I try to reconcile that in my head as I watch families line up in a 1/2 mile que to receive 2 bags of groceries. These decisions have a HUGE impact on California families so, please, could we remember that every time we smugly say, "Well, the San Joaquin Valley wasn't meant to be an agricultural area anyway."

The largest portion of California income comes from farming and ranching and California is in DIRE straights right now. And just at that critical time, they turn off the spigots. :wtf:

The new slogan for the locals and I have to agree: "If you like foreign oil, you'll love foreign food."

That''s the other side of the argument.