So the Coast Guard gets a new weapon, wants to train, and the usual suspects open their mouths and prove beyond a doubt...
"We run the risk that terrorists have succeeded in getting us to poison our own lakes without ever having set foot in the Great Lakes basin," said Hugh McDiarmid Jr. of the Michigan Environmental Council.
That would be from an estimated 3 tons of bullets in the WHOLE GREAT LAKES SYSTEM...
"When people are thinking of where they're going to go fishing, are they going to go to the place that's quiet? Or the place where people are shooting?" asked Duluth Mayor Herb Bergson. "It's not a good tourism thing."
Dear Mayor: How many Lake Superiors ARE there Up North? Can you read a timetable?
"Canada is not harboring terrorists planning a marine assault on the United States across the Great Lakes," Green Party of Canada leader Elizabeth May said in a news release this month. "The notion is ludicrous."
You absolutely sure of that, Lizzie? Wanna play "peacemaker" in your rowboat if and when?
Coast Guard Capt. Bruce Jones made no apologies for a plan that has so many people appalled during a news briefing held last week at the Milwaukee Coast Guard station.
He said the guns are needed "to ensure that our crews are prepared to respond to any future threat or increase in threat level on the Great Lakes - including our 13 nuclear power plants, 22 high-capacity passenger vessels and ferries and 11 major ports."
Offhand, I'd say that that's a damn impressive list of targets, even if you take out the ferries.
...the Coast Guard would try to conduct the training in off-summer months when recreational boats typically don't ply the mid-lake waters but said the agency wanted to retain the right to use the firing ranges any time of year.
Coast Guard officials say they need to train on water in order for crews to learn how to safely and accurately use the guns in the real-life scenarios they may encounter.
And the Weenie of the Year Award goes to:
...Cameron Davis of the conservation group Alliance for the Great Lakes...
He worries the proposal could have a bigger impact on the future of the lakes than some people think.
"As far as the ecology of the lakes, there are much bigger issues than this," he said. "However, if people are scared to go out on the lakes, they won't love the lakes. And if they don't love the lakes, why will they care for them?"
He could also submit that inanity in the "Most Non-Sequiturs In One 'Graf" contest.
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5 comments:
Per anonymous sources, the nuke plants up here are surely not lacking in fire power to address any attack, be it by sea, air, or land.
Your sources say the same things mine do. The nukes are not "soft" targets at all.
BUT they are targets from Lake Michigan.
The perfect solution? Shoot the lead into a contained area of water, and then ship that to the folks who want to keep getting away from the lake by building farther and farther out in Waukesha, where the water is radioactive (which explains a lot about those out there who are so, well, out there).
And then we along the lakefront will look forward to concealed-carry, so we can come out to Pewaukee for a shootout. Shouldn't upset the little fishes there one little bit.
Actually, we moved West to get away from Anonymous, Henry Maier, taxes, crime, and crowding.
Not to mention limited parking availability for our two matching motor homes, 4 Lincoln SUV's and matched 500SEL's.
Three tons of bullets annually is more lead than the entire state of Michigan's industries discharge into surface water annually. They need environmental permits for their discharges. Methinks it's not to much to ask the military for a long-term study, since they are exempt from the environmental rules the rest of us live by.
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