World’s Largest Offshore Wind Farm Back on Track July 22, 2008

The world
’s biggest offshore wind farm was revived yesterday when German-based energy group E.ON and the Danish utility Dong Energy agreed to acquire Shell’s 33% stake in the 1,000-megawatt London Array.

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Immigration Letter to the Editor… July 22, 2008

A great letter;

This is a very good letter to the editor. This woman made some good
points. For some reason, people have difficulty structuring their arguments
when arguing against supporting the currently proposed immigration revisions.
This lady made the argument pretty simple. NOT printed in the Orange County
Paper …

Newspapers simply won’t publish letters to the editor which they
either deem politically incorrect (read below) or which does not agree with the
philosophy they’re pushing on the public. This woman wrote a great letter to the
editor that should have been published; but, with your help it will get
published via cyberspace!

SNOPES <
http://www.snopes.com/politics/immigration/newimmigrants.asp > claims Rosemay LaBonte’s letter is
FALSE. They are not saying she didn’t write the letter or that her husband
didn’t circulate it by email; they don’t agree with her opinions, therefore it
is FALSE!

From: ‘David LaBonte’

My wife, Rosemary, wrote a wonderful letter to the editor of the OC Register
which was not printed. So, I decided to ‘print’ it myself by sending it out on
the Internet. Pass it along if you feel so inclined. Written in response to a
series of letters to the editor in the Orange County Register:

Dear
Editor:

So many letter writers have based their arguments on how this
land is made up of immigrants. Ernie Lujan for one, suggests we should tear down
the Statue of Liberty because the people now in question aren’t being treated
the same as those who passed through Ellis Island and other ports of entry.

Maybe we should turn to our history books and point out to people like
Mr. Lujan why today’s American is not willing to accept this new kind of
immigrant any longer. Back in 1900 when there was a rush from all areas of
Europe to come to the United States, people had to get off a ship and stand in a
long line in New York and be documented. Some would even get down on their hands
and knees and kiss the ground. They made a pledge to uphold the laws and support
their new country in good and bad times. They made learning English a primary
rule in their new American households and some even changed their names to blend
in with their new home.

They had waved goodbye to their birth place to
give their children a new life and did everything in their power to help their
children assimilate into one culture. Nothing was handed to them. No free
lunches, no welfare, no labor laws to protect them. All they had were the skills
and craftsmanship they had brought with them to trade for a future of
prosperity.

Most of their children came of age when World War II broke
out. My father fought along side men whose parents had come straight over from
Germany, Italy, France and Japan. None of these first generation Americans ever
gave any thought about what country their parents had come from. They were
Americans fighting Hitler, Mussolini and the Emperor of Japan. They were
defending the United States of America as one people.

When we liberated
France, no one in those villages were looking for the French-American or the
German-American or the Irish-American. The people of France saw only Americans.
And we carried one flag; that represented one country. Not one of those
immigrant sons would have thought about picking up another country’s flag and
waving it to represent who they were. It would have been a disgrace to their
parents who had sacrificed so much to be here. These immigrants truly knew what
it meant to be an American. They stirred the melting pot into one red, white and
blue bowl.

And here we are in 2008 with a new kind of immigrant who
wants the same rights and privileges, only they want to achieve it by playing
with a different set of rules, one that includes the entitlement card and a
guarantee of being faithful to their mother country. I’m sorry, that’s not what
being an American is all about. I believe that the immigrants who landed on
Ellis Island in the early 1900’s deserve better than that for all the toil ,
hard work and sacrifice in raising future generations to create a land that has
become a beacon for those legally searching for a better life. I think they
would be appalled that they are being used as an example by those waving foreign
country flags.

And for that suggestion about taking down the Statue of
Liberty, it happens to mean a lot to the citizens who are voting on the
immigration bill. I wouldn’t start talking about dismantling the UNITED STATES
just yet.

FOR THE WRONG THINGS TO PREVAIL THE RIGHTFUL MAJORITY NEEDS TO
REMAIN COMPLACENT AND QUIET!!

LET THIS NEVER HAPPEN!!
I sincerely
hope this letter gets read by millions of people all across the nation!!

This was sent as an email…

O’Reilly Attacks Gore… July 22, 2008

O’Reilly Attacks Gore For Attending Netroots Nation: ‘The

Same As If He Stepped Into The Klan Gathering’»

On Saturday, former Vice President Al Gore made a surprise appearance at the Netroots Nation
convention in Austin, TX. In his speech, Gore praised the gathering of
progressives, saying that they are part of an effort to “reclaim the integrity of American democracy.”

While the attendees of Netroots Nation received Gore with enthusiasm, his appearance has caused Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly to declare that Gore has “gone off the deep end.”

On his radio show today, O’Reilly claimed that Gore was now
associating himself with the most “hateful group in the country.” “And
I’m including the Nazis and the Klan in here,” said O’Reilly.” He then
claimed that attending Netroots Nation was “the same as if he stepped
into the Klan gathering”:

O’REILLY: Al Gore now is done. He’s done. Ok. He is not a man of respect, he doesn’t have any judgment. The fact that he went to this thing is the same as if he stepped into the Klan gathering. It’s the same. No difference. None. K, he loses all credibility with me. All credibility.

Listen here:

It’s no surprise that O’Reilly is attacking Netroots Nation given his previous verbal assaults on its predecessor YearlyKos. Before the YearlyKos conference last year, O’Reilly compared it to “a David Duke convention.”

But O’Reilly exposes the hyperbolic shallowness of his name calling
when he claims that “these Daily Kos people” are worse than “the Nazis
and the Klan,” but then assures his audience that they won’t “come to
your house and hurt you.”

Note to O’Reilly: The Nazis and the Klan actually hurt people.

Transcript:

O’REILLY: Ok, now he shows up on Saturday at the most
hateful, there is not — and I’m including the Nazis and the Klan in
here — there is not a more hateful group in the country than these
Daily Kos people. Now, will they come to your house and hurt you? I
don’t know, probably not. But, do they want to hurt you? Do they say
terrible things about Tony Snow when he dies? All day long. Ok. Hateful
hateful hateful. The rhetoric that they use and the rhetoric that the
Klan and the Nazis use are the same rhetoric. It’s hate. Everyone knows
that.

Now why would you go to a convention sponsored by these people
when you know that currently on the Kos is stuff about Tony Snow, it’s
good that he’s dead, he’s in hell, all of that. But Gore did, Gore went
there. So did Nancy Pelosi. That disqualifies Gore from any serious
consideration by me in the future. Al Gore now is done. He’s done. Ok.
He is not a man of respect, he doesn’t have any judgment. The fact that
he went to this thing is the same as if he stepped into the Klan
gathering. It’s the same. No difference. None. K, he loses all
credibility with me. All credibility.

Published on the Think Progress Blog