Tough Vets Saying Voting for Clean Energy Is Easy

Badlands Blue likes VoteVets.org's new video calling for passage of a clean energy bill. So do I:



"Every time oil goes up a dollar, Iran gets another $1.5 billion to use against us," says Iraq War veteran and Purple Heart recipient Christopher Miller (who I'm sure Bob Ellis will call a silly, petulant Marxist trying to destroy America).

Keeping money out of Iran's hands. Developing our own clean energy resources. Sounds perfectly patriotic to me. Toughen up, Congress, and pass clean energy legislation!

Vets to Thune: Stand up to Terrorists, Stand up for Clean Energy

VoteVets.org shows the left can throw the war-on-terror punch, too, to support its political causes. They remind Senator Thune that if we really want to beat al-Qaida, we need to stop buying the oil that funds them... and politicians need to stop taking donations from companies doing business with countries that support terror:



I dig this ad... but I wonder: is there a smirk button on Photoshop, or are there graphics folks who make their living combing through news footage searching for politicians looking momentarily dorky (as we all do in snapshots)?

Operation Homefront SD Collects Christmas Cash by Text

Senator Thune may no longer support the troops, but Patricia Stricherz at Operation Homefront SD still does. She drops a note in my inbox to let readers know Operation Homefront is collecting money by text to provide assistance to military families and wounded vets. If the snow kept you from blowing the last of your Christmas cash at the mall yesterday, maybe you'd like to send a little Christmas jingle their way. To make a donation, says Stricherz, "Text PATRIOT to 90999 and donate $5.00 to Operation Homefront South Dakota to help us stay within our mission of supporting the troops and helping the families they leave behind."

South Dakota's Dunn, Operation Free Vets Invade Copenhagen

Want climate change legislation done right? Send in the United States military... or at least the veterans representing Operation Free! USD's Volante reports that South Dakota Army National Guard veteran Leighann Dunn is traveling to the big climate conference in Copenhagen to make the case for stronger action on climate change and energy policy. A press release from Repower South Dakota noets that Dunn will be one of a dozen Operation Free veterans in Copenhagen raising awareness of the national security implications of climate change.

Folks interested in finding out more can put on their press hats and attend a press conference in Sioux Falls Monday, 11 a.m., at 335 N. main, Suite 200 (above Evan Photography).

The press release also includes this useful bio of Leighann Dunn:

Leighann Dunn is a 9-year veteran of the S.D. Army National Guard. She served in Iraq in 2003-2004 as a Bridge Engineer and served in Suriname South America as an electrician in 2008. Dunn has a B.S. in Communication Disorders from the University of South Dakota (USD) and is currently working on her Master's degree in Multicatagorical Special Education with an emphasis in Behavior Disorders and Autism. Dunn is the current President of the Veterans Club at USD, South Dakota team Captain of VoteVets and a disabled Veteran. She was recently named one of ten Outstanding Young South Dakotans in 2009. She also was one of three national recipients of a outstanding female veteran scholarship in 2009.

Communication Disorders... hmmm... maybe she can figure out what's wrong with Sibby and Bob Ellis, who seem to suffer a strange form of Tourette's Syndrome: in the middle of every other sentence, they suddenly blurt out paragraphs from WorldNetDaily.

Brookings Debate Alum Building Green Jobs for Veterans

A debate pal points me toward Veterans Green Jobs, an organization that helps our military men and women get good jobs in the private sector that will do little things like promote "America’s transition to energy independence, ecological restoration, community renewal, and economic prosperity."

Among their staff: Director of Operations Stacy Bare, veteran of both the U.S. Army (he served in Iraq) and the Brookings High School debate team, now working in Denver to secure America's future with green jobs. Good work, Stace!

Operation Free: Vets Discuss Climate Change and National Security Dec. 9 at USD

Failing to act on clean energy policy and climate change makes the world a more dangerous place and threatens America's national security. Just ask some veterans who've had to fight in Iraq for dinosaur energy:



Maybe Bob Ellis will have the guts to show up and question these veterans' love of country face to face....

Honor Your Vets, Save the Planet, Pass ACESA

Don't think Veterans Day should be political? Ask a soldier who risked her life in Iraq due to our political choices. LeighAnn Dunn, USD grad student and South Dakota National Guard member, applies the Bush "first-strike" doctrine as justification for passing climate change legislation:

This “first strike” standard also obligates our nation to another standard, which is to take extraordinary steps to prevent wars our leaders can see developing in the future. One threat we clearly see and can prevent is further damage from climate change. The U.S. Department of Defense, the CIA, the State Department and the National Intelligence Council see this threat and are all incorporating man-made climate change as a security threat into their long-term planning. Here are some climate change scenarios our nation’s top military minds are looking at:

Climate change dries up water and creates famine. Nations panic. Wars erupt. American troops get deployed.

Climate change makes sea levels rise, creating tens of millions of refugees. Refugee camps are ripe recruiting grounds for terrorist organizations.

Climate change fuels radical storms to occur more frequently. This stretches military resources from their primary mission: defending America against our enemies [LeighAnn Dunn, "Nation at the Crossroads This Veterans Day," letter to the editor, USD Volante, 2009.11.11].

When treehuggers and GI Jane agree, it's time to act. Support the troops: enact climate change legislation.

Photos: South Dakota Veterans Promote Clean Energy

My friends at Repower America get some photos from yesterday's Operation Free bus tour through South Dakota. Operation Free, you will recall, is a group of veterans and national security advocates urging passage of sensible clean-energy legislation, like the American Clean Energy Security Act. For these veterans, clean-energy legislation is as much about protecting the environment as it is about protecting the lives of American soldiers. Remember, if climate change causes more natural disasters, the United States Armed Forces will have to conduct more and more dangerous humanitarian interventions and peacekeeping operations in destabilized nations. And the longer we wait to kick our dependence on foreign fossil fuels, the longer we face the prospect of wars fought for oil.

The Operation Free bus stopped in Watertown for an afternoon town hall hosted by Vietnam vet Orrie Swayze from Wilmot, then rolled down to Sioux Falls for an evening town hall.

U.S. Navy Gulf War veteran Rick Hegdahl speaks to KSFY TV outside the Sioux Falls VFW during the Operation Free tour of South Dakota to promote clean energy legislation. Hegdahl served the Navy for 24 years. He now lives in Washington State.


South Dakota VFW Adjutant Quartermaster Rick Barg addresses the Operation Free town hall meeting at the Sioux Falls VFW Club. Barg is also the National VFW Inspector General. Also at the table is Iraq War veteran and USD student LeighAnn Dunn, who survived an IED explosion in Iraq.

Operation Free: Vets Support Climate Change Legislation -- Watertown, Sioux Falls Events Thursday

I suppose Bob Ellis will call these patriots evil liars, too....

It's easy for opponents of the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACESA) to portray supporters as whiners and environmental Kool-Aid drinkers who want to harm America. No faster way to prove your point by calling your opponents wimps... right?

Try that with the folks in Operation Free. Go ahead, look 'em the eye and say that.

Operation Free is a group of veterans and national security experts who support ACESA because it will make America safer and keep our troops out of harm's way. These aren't starry-eyed hippies; these are starry-shouldered generals like Wes Clark telling us that climate change and dependence on foreign energy will mean more natural disasters drawing U.S. military interventions, as well as more overseas adventures to secure foreign oil like the Gulf Wars. And hey, that's not just me shouting "No Blood for Oil!" That's soldiers who've given blood for oil, like Rick Hegdahl, a vet with South Dakota roots:

Another vet on the tour, Rick Hegdahl, said he got involved because of what he learned while serving in the Navy in Kuwait just before the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Hegdahl commanded a patrol boat that would keep watch on giant oil tankers waiting to fill up.

"It really dawned on me that the primary reason we were there was to control the shipping lanes for oil," he said. "I said, 'Something's wrong. Something's really wrong'" [Matt Hagengruber, "Veterans on Tour Will Warn of Warming Climate," Billings Gazette, 2009.10.12].

...and Chuck Tyler:

“I don’t want oil period,” said Chuck Tyler, a 10 year Army veteran of Operation Desert Storm and Operation Enduring Freedom. “As a threat multiplier, it doesn’t even have to come from overseas. If you put it in your car, if you burn it, it contributes to carbon disruption…it’s something that we don’t want to deal with and it’s something that 1.4 million people in uniform don’t want to have to deal with” [Rocky Kistner, "American Power Tour South Rolls into St. Louis," Operation Free, 2009.10.14].

Two busloads of veterans are touring the U.S. right now to promote support for action on climate change and energy independence. One busload of patriots will make two stops in South Dakota tomorrow, Thursday, October 15:

• Downtown Watertown, Goss Opera House, 100 E. Kemp Ave., 13:00 CDT (that's 1 p.m. for us civilians): public roundtable discussion
  
• Sioux Falls VFW, 3601 S. Minnesota Ave: Press conference at 16:00 (4 p.m.), public roundtable discussion at 18:00 (6 p.m.). And hey, this one's at the VFW, so you can buy supper there, too! (Maybe even buy supper for a vet.)

I'm not saying that you should support ACESA or any other clean-energy legislation just because big men who've carried guns and wave the flag and tell you to. But these soldiers have been to war. They have risked their lives in response to natural disasters and America's dependence on oil. The veterans of Operation Free have America's best interests at heart... and they are telling us we need a clean energy policy now.

Catch the vets' bus in Watertown and Sioux Falls. Shake these soldiers' hands, listen to what they have to say.