Less Than Zero

So I get this email yesterday:

-----Original Message-----
From: Senator Jim Inhofe inhofe@jiminhofe.com
To: UNDISCLOSED-RECIPIENT
Sent: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 9:56 am
Subject: I'm proud of my zeros.

Dear Friend,

Zero?!!

If I had come home from school with a zero on my report card, my mother would have been none too pleased! But these days I'm proud of my zeroes and other low scores.

That's because they aren't school grades, they're congressional vote ratings from various liberal special interest groups.

I think you'll agree getting a zero is a good grade... I've received zeroes from these ultra-liberal groups and others:
NARAL Pro-Choice America
the National Education Association
the American Immigration Lawyers Association
the Human Rights Campaign
Planned Parenthood

Of course, the opposite is also true. These are the scores that would have put a big smile on my mother's face...perfect scores of 100 from, among others:
the American Conservative Union
the National Right to Life Committee
the Christian Coalition
the American Security Council
the U.S. Chamber of Commerce
the League of Private Property Voters
the National Rifle Association (I got an A+)
Americans for Tax Reform
the Family Research Council

I don't stick my finger into the wind to decide how to vote. I don't look at polls or run "focus groups." I vote on solid, conservative principles: limited government, free enterprise, individual liberty, a strong national defense, and traditional family values.

If you agree with me on these issues, and if you agree a "zero" from these liberal groups is a good thing, please help me keep fighting for you by signing up to volunteer in my reelection campaign today.

Please visit http://tracking.technomania.com/cgi-bin/track.cgi?11-11448-205099-49015 to learn more and to join as the newest member of Team Inhofe. We need to build the biggest and best grassroots team to win, and I'm counting on your support.

Thank you for taking the time to read this email. If you are no longer interested in receiving contact from my campaign, please feel free to click the unsubscribe link below.

Sincerely,
Jim Inhofe
United States Senator

Paid for by Friends of Jim Inhofe

Well, you guys know me ... here's my reply.

Dear Senator Inhofe,

I appreciate your excitement at getting zeroes from certain groups. However, those are groups that I support either by being a member or by regular donations both of time and of treasure. I therefore don't agree that your zero grades from them are anything about which to be overjoyed.

I'm not sure why you would be ecstatic about getting a zero grade from the National Education Association. Our teachers are some of the hardest-working people in America, and they are in our schools with our children because they truly care about our nation's future (let's face it, they certainly aren't there for the financial rewards). I know several teachers in our school district (Deer Creek, one of the "richest" in the state) who regularly pay from their own pockets for necessary supplies and rewards to promote their charges' thorough comprehension of the subject material. America pays its sports icons more in a year than most teachers will make in a lifetime; isn't there something wrong with that? Our educators struggle with decreasing budgets to meet increasing test-score requirements, and yet you cheer at the NEA saying you support them less than nearly everyone else in the Senate.

NARAL promotes a woman's right to choose and have control over her own body; it, along with Planned Parenthood, fosters education with regard to contraceptives and choices, and supports the availability of birth control to women of all social and economic backgrounds. If abortion were not legal in America, hundreds of women would die each year as a result of botched back-alley abortion attempts. Until such time as legislators come up with a way to ensure that men meet the financial responsibilities that accompany parenthood without fail and without delay or subterfuge, criminalizing abortion shouldn't even be a topic of discussion. As long as the termination of an unwanted or dangerous pregnancy is legal, it will be safe. Just because abortion is legal doesn't mean every woman facing an unwanted pregnancy is rushing out to get one; it just means that the choice is available to them. It would not be completely outside the realm of logic to state that men should have no voice in an abortion decision until men are becoming pregnant and facing the choice themselves.

The Human Rights Campaign seeks the establishment and enforcement of equal rights for all Americans without regard to sexual identity or preference. All of us are human, Senator, and we all long to love and be loved. The continued oppression of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans is nothing short of unconscionable; it belongs in the past with oppression based on one's gender and the color of one's skin. Anything less won't do.

I'm sure by now you've determined that while I am one of your constituents, I am not one of your supporters. To be honest, Senator, over the last few years you've made rather vocal pronouncements that have made me cringe. The Republican Party is not what it was under Lincoln, sir, and America is dangerously off-course, due in large part to the GOP's "compassionate conservatives" who are certainly the latter but not at all the former. Surely the Christian Coalition is aware of the Commandment that Jesus proclaimed as the highest: "Love thy neighbor." For you to receive failing marks from the nation's educators, advocates of those who would become Americans, and a group seeking to ensure that everyone is free from oppression doesn't speak terribly well of you and suggests that you pay enough lip service to Christian values to get the Christian vote, but that you are ignoring the man for whom the movement is named.

Sincerely,
Donna Sowerby
Oklahoma City, OK

(I got a mailer-daemon ... guess he's not ready to hear from me yet. How very representative of his ilk, though ... "I'll stuff my views up under your nose so you can't help but know them, yet I'm absolutely not interested in what YOU think"!!)