Bush wants to take Bambi to Crawford and BBQ him!!!. Yeah, that's the ticket!
Mood:  incredulous
Topic: Kerry's Lies and Spin
There's a new attack ad paying for the evening news show on the local CBS affiliate. KCNC-TV, Denver.

(Update, Thursday, September 2nd: I didn't see the ad today. Out of money, or did their campaign backfire this soon after the Hayman Fire? Who knows?)

(2nd Update, Wednesday, September 8th: The ads are popping up sporadically and in Late, Late, TV Show World here in Denver. To paraphrase Dennis Miller discussing Michael Moore on the Tonight Show, it they seem to be "Trolling for Concubines.")

In this ad, suddenly the forests of America are under attack by who else, the Bush Administration.

Here in Colorado, this ad is probably intended to raise the blood pressure of local environmentalists, and get them to do something foolish like support John Kerry. Viewers who remember the Hayman Burn may feel differently on the matter.

This particular attack ad, however, didn't hand out the phone number of their intended victims' office. Instead, it directed the viewer to a Web site, ourforests.org - and being insatiably curious, I couldn't resist going there.

The site was standard Enviro-bunny cute, with lots of photos of purple mountain majesties and fir forests - and overheated, one-sided crap about how cutting roads into forests would lead to their total conversion into Wal-Marts.

No mention was made of the trouble we've had here in Colorado because our wonderful roadless forests have been so tinder-dry in recent years that they've burned in epic fires that have spread into populated areas and devastated entire neighborhoods. If major logging had been permitted to fell some of those trees BEFORE the drought, hundreds of homes and a good few human lives might have been saved.

No mention was made of the fact that if the natural gas under our public lands were available NOW, energy prices - including our power bills and the price of gasoline at the pump - would be lower as this natural gas displaced imported oil in our nation's energy economy. No, that would be an inconvenient truth, too.

The web site offers us the opportunity to send a letter to the Chief of the Forest Service and whoever our state governor happens to be (there was a form that I had to fill in to address the letter which apparently told the javascript of the Web Page where I live).

The letter - considerately pre-written to present the Web site's political views as my own:

"Dear [Decision Maker]:

Please accept this letter as official public comment for the roadless area management state petition proposal [Docket Number: 04-16191].

I strongly oppose this proposal to repeal the Roadless Area Conservation Rule. The Roadless Rule is a balanced policy that was finalized after years of scientific study, 600 public hearings and a record number of public comments, the majority of which overwhelmingly support protecting roadless areas through the rule.

The Roadless Rule is a vital tool for protecting our national forests from harmful and costly road-building and commercial logging. Our national forests need real protections because of the important role they play in providing fish and wildlife habitat, clean drinking water for millions of Americans, and endless recreational opportunities.

I urge you to abandon this misguided proposal and keep the Roadless Area Conservation Rule intact in the Lower 48 states and Alaska's Chugach National Forest and reinstate the rule in the Tongass National Forest.

Thank you for consideration of my comments on this crucial national forest conservation issue.

Sincerely,
[Your name]
[Your address]


Of course, I am a writer by profession and avocation, so I couldn't resist the Web site authors' invitation to "please edit the letter with some personal comments." These guys should know better than to leave me an opening like that.


My letter, complete with "added personal comments:"

"Please accept this letter as official public comment for the roadless area management state petition proposal [Docket Number: 04-16191].

I strongly support this proposal to repeal the Roadless Area Conservation Rule.

The current campaign to smear the Bush Administration's good name by ourforests.org and its Democratic Party allies is simply an attempt to prostitute environmentalism into another political weapon for the Kerry campaign.

I urge you to adopt this proposal and either repeal the Roadless Area Conservation Rule or amend it as necessary to ensure the health of our nation's forests by judicious logging, and the development of additional domestic energy sources within our borders to enhance our independence from unstable outside energy suppliers in the Middle East, Nigeria and Venezuela.

It is vital that in particular, natural gas fields and other energy-related mineral resources in our nation's public lands be made available to allow us to focus our foreign policy on destroying terror rather than placating foreign despots in order to secure access to their oil.

Thank you for consideration of my comments on this crucial national forest conservation issue."

Now, these people feel they need a million letters to make their point.

If you're reading this blog and feel strongly about the issues raised - or the ones conveniently NOT raised - by the covert Kerry political partisans at ourforests.org, why don't you help them out a little? I did and I feel fantastic about it!

ourforests.org's form to send a comment to the Chief of the Forest Service about the Kerry Campaign's latest try to smear the President

Have fun, people!

(Update - it's still not too late to help these worthies talk to the Forest Service about all those roads needed to do horrible conservative things like preventing mass forest fires and locating natural gas, coal and other alternatives to taking crap from Saudi Arabia. COME ON, LET'S WRITE SOME LETTERS!")