El Phoenix Sun

When people say they “support the troops,” I understand it’s shorthand for honoring the 186,000 individuals in uniform serving in Afghanistan and Iraq. Shorthand is more efficient, but on Memorial Day I think longhand is more appropriate. The loss of a husband or wife, a brother or sister, a mother or father, a son or daughter, an aunt or uncle, a niece or nephew, a friend — is felt most intensely by individuals, not groups.

Pain, death and grief are written in longhand, and recognizing these losses should be in longhand, too.

For the rest of this article, click here.

The veterans’ group Vote Vets has released a clean energy PSA highlighting the use of the military in the Gulf. The Gulf of Mexico, that is.

From the group’s website:

Veterans for clean energy

“The new ad features a veteran of the Louisiana National Guard, who served in the clean up effort. In the ad, he says, ‘When I signed on with the National Guard, I did it to help protect America from our enemies… Not to clean up an oil company’s mess here in the Gulf of Mexico… But America needs a new mission. Because whether it’s deep-drilling oil out here, or spending a billion dollars a day on oil from our enemies overseas, our dependence on oil is threatening our national security.’

By passing a clean energy plan, we can cut our foreign oil dependence in half, invest billions in new energy technologies, and set up new rules that govern off-shore drilling. That’s a fight worth taking on.”

If you find their message compelling (we certainly did), please make on online donation (we did).

For more, visit their home page.

I’ll write more on this later, but for now I just wanted to ensure that this important bill (the Department of Defense Energy Security Act) received at least a mention here at El Phoenix Sun on the day it was introduced by Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ).

You can get more information on the bill here.