Bought and paid for, local news national headlines

It’s nice to know that McCain is already owned by big oil.  Four dollar a gallon gas is a blessing.

Standing before a room of oil company executives in June, John McCain flip-flopped and declared support for coastal oil drilling. Now the Washington Post is reporting that, within days, oil and gas execs ponied up nearly $1 million to elect McCain.¹ It’s another piece of evidence that in a McCain White House, oil companies will call the shots—just as they have with President Bush.

Yesterday, MoveOn members jumped into action in response to the Post story, placing “For Sale” signs on McCain headquarters in 10 battleground states to call public attention to it.² At the same time, McCain made our point for us, holding a photo-op yesterday in front of a California oil well and renewing his push for offshore drilling.³

McCain’s hoping to use gas prices as a wedge issue to win the election. That’s why it’s so critical that we keep spreading the message that McCain’s been heavily influenced by the oil companies—and so we can’t count on him to solve the energy crisis. When people think of Bush, they think “oil,” but that’s not true of McCain yet—even though his energy policy is almost identical to Bush’s and his campaign is literally run by oil lobbyists!⁴

There have been a couple local news stories making national headlines one serious, one hilarious. There have been a rash of coyote attacks recently where coyotes have attacked and killed small dogs and cats.  In some cases the dogs were attacked while being walked by their owners.  Well today there is a story of another coyote attack in East Naples however this time it is on video.  Evidently some woman had an extensive outdoor camera rig set up to catch vandals in her area.  Instead of vandals it caught footage of a coyote chasing a cat up a tree and later killing it and taking it away.  Stories like this remind people we live right in the middle of what used to be natural swamplands filled with various wildlife, some of it dangerous.  You can’t really blame the coyote, it’s just trying to survive.  If food was that scarce, I’m sure cannibalism wouldn’t be out of question for the human race.

The other story involves some Hungarian immigrant that stole 42 cents from a local mall fountain.  Yes, 42 cents and YES he was arrested. Yes it sounds totally ridiculous and the incident has blown up in the local papers with some local politicians chastising the police department for even making the arrest.  There is however more to the story than you would think as there is the possibility that this Mad Hungarian could possibly be here illegally although the arresting officer certainly didn’t know this at the time. And to be fair, the officer, a woman, indicated that she did not want to make the arrest but had no choice because the rent-a-cops at the mall insisted they wanted to press charges.  It’s all quite silly, unless you are the 42 cent thief.