Thursday, January 19, 2012

1-202-456-1111


That's the telephone number to leave a comment at the White House on 1600 Pennsylvania Ave in Washington, D.C. Somehow, it never dawned on me before today that I could call the President of the United States to tell him what's on my mind. Now, I carry his phone number in my cell phone's contacts list.

If you follow my Facebook page, you may have noticed yesterday that I publicly thanked President Obama for rejecting the permit to build the Keystone XL pipeline across the heartland of America. I did not merely agree with his decision, I stood up and cheered (1) for him doing the right thing for Americans and (2) for telling Big Oil to shove their political threats up their pipelines!

In the clear light of a new day...today...that somehow did not seem like enough, especially when you consider how much flak he is going to catch. So it seemed appropriate to look up the White House number and personally call to thank the President for his decision.

All things considered, I was surprised to be on hold for a mere 20 minutes or so...time enough to write up this posting and go to the White House website to fire off an email. The volunteer who took my call was very friendly, graciously taking down my 'Thank You' for action to stop Keystone XL.

"Let me be sure I've got this correctly," she said, soft laughter in her grandmotherly voice. "You want to thank him FOR rejecting the pipeline permit, right?"

I confirmed, laughing with her.

"Just wanted to be sure I got that in the appropriate column!" she added.

No doubt that other column is somewhat longer. So do me a favor, would you? If you, too, applaud the President for rejecting Keystone XL, call him up and say so!!

2 comments:

Peggy Browning said...

I love this post, Jim. It was very thoughtful of you to thank our POTUS. Just watched C-Span on that very same subject. After listening to that, it sounds like BHO made a sound decision.
Peggy Browning

JimTXMiller said...

Thank you, Peggy! I get POTUS, but what's a BHO?