Howard Dean is in Charlotte, NC today and it barely got mention--second page of the Local & State news section of the Charlotte Observer. And more than half of that small article was given to Republican response to the visit. Shows how much the Republicans have bullied the press into believing that the American journalists are the bad guys unfairly turning the public against the Republican leadership by "tainting everything with their liberal bias."
Giving into their bullying is only encouraging it and it is definitely hurting anyone with an honest but opposing point of view.
SO-O-O, get out your opinions and write your newspaper's editors--the elephants are in the ANWR again!

----- Original Message -----

To: opinion@charlotteobserver.com
Sent: Friday, April 28, 2006 10:17 AM
Subject: $100 "bribe" to the "addicts"

Unbelievable! Do I have this right? Now we "oil addicts" are being "given" a $100 for a couple "fixes," being thrown a "bribe" to look the other way while the oil and gas industry destroys our grandchildren's few remaining inheritances of one of the very last great places on the planet, one of the few inheritances we can be proud of, one of the few they won't hate us for?

This has Karl Rove written all over it. Is this really the best they can come up with? This is an answer? This is NO answer, this is them getting something they want under the guise of "somehow helping us."

I realize this hundred dollar bill is probably all that their corrupt spending policies have left us in the tax drawer, but this hundred dollar bill is NO gift, it was our money in the first place, and worse, it is NO help. Being cast a hundred dollar bill, probably less than the waiter's tip added to a very modest lobbyist's lunch with our Representative in Washington, is gone in a couple fillups, and that's if we buy both fill-ups TODAY. $100 as a solution in a long-term energy crisis is just pure insult.

But they don't stop there! They insist on adding real injury. For this pitiful pittance that will make no difference at all, we're supposed to hand over the keys to the last of God's wilderness mansions on the planet? And who are they giving the keys to? Why none other than our "pushers," to the oil and gas industry who have made "addicts" out of all of us and keep raising the price on the street?

Just how stupid do you think we are? Obviously, pretty stupid!

If by some miracle of lobbyists' luncheons this should be enacted into law, please save our Treasury the additionally incurred expenses of sending me my hundred dollar bill. Tell Mr. Rove, President Bush and the Republicans in Congress who fostered this insulting "bribe," to use my hundred dollars to start a Citizen's Fund for a non-political commission of real scientists and scholars (not just oil industry stand-ins) to tackle our energy requirements and come up with real answers we can all live with. If they can still remember how to do that and not just say they do.

And, in the shadow of the looming oil company profits, use what's left over of the $100 to hire a group of credible lawyers to write loop-hole-free legislation to protect ANWR until the 22nd Century when hopefully by then, we have survived this perennial threat of crisis and all kicked our oil habits.

And, oh, by the way, where are my manners? Thanks Republican Congress! Guess you think we are all as corrupt and as asleep on the job as you are. See you in November!!