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Donkey Added to Controversial Billboard

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By Tiffany Craig Special Assignment Reporter

M50o93H7pQ09L8X1t49cHY01Z5j4TT91fGfr Donkey Added to Controversial Billboard

Published: Fri, October 19, 2007 - 5:14 pm
Last Updated: Friday, October 19, 2007 - 7:29 pm

Tiffany Craig

A controversial billboard in Baldwin County will be tweaked, a little. Right now, the sign says "DON'T BUY GAS FROM THIS ASS" and has a picture of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez holding up a Citgo sign. Citgo is a subsidiary of the state-owned Venezuelan Oil Company.

Billboard owner John McCombs says he refuses to support Chavez and won't buy anything affiliated with him. "I don't trade with somebody that's Anti-American! They called Condoleezza Rice, Missy! Did you know that? They told all the gringos to go to hell! That's the four letter word instead of 3 letter word and they called my president the devil."

Workers at the BP station near the sign at I-65 and County Road 287 complained about the 3 letter word. They said kids shouldn't have to see profanity on the side of the road. They also believed that customers might confuse one gas station for another.

An official with the Baldwin County Sheriff's Department says there's nothing they can do. They checked the obscenity laws in Alabama and the sign is legal.

The story got national attention and the owner tells News 5's Tiffany Craig that he's willing to compromise. McCombs says in the next week or two, he plans to add the backside of a donkey over the 3 letter word.

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Citgo (PDVSA) currently operates 5 refineries in the USA:
# Lake Charles, Louisiana
# Corpus Christi, Texas
# Lemont, Illinois
# Savannah, Georgia (Asphalt)
# Paulsboro, New Jersey (Asphalt)
The refinery at Houston, TX has been sold to Lyondell’s Houston Refining LP. It is the products refined at Citgo refineries that should be avoided. Other refiners buy PDVSA crude oil and as of 24 September 2007 must pay for it in European currency to banks in Paris. All U.S. bank accounts of PDVSA have been closed.

Posted by Leonidas on 10/22/07 - 8:05 pm • Report Abuse

Good comments and research efforts, unfortunately some of Southeasterner’s facts are incorrect. Sunoco and Hess do not buy oil or refined gasoline from Persian Gulf sources. I will of course, continue to buy gasoline and whenever possible will buy it from terror free oil sources including Sunoco, Hess, Sinclair, County fair, Kwik Fill, Keystone and other Terror-Free Oil affiliated companies. You can find more information at http://www.terrorfreeoil.org We, the freedom loving citizens of this nation have plentiful American petroleum resources that can and will be better and more throughly utilized.

Posted by PersonalResponsability4myFreedom on 10/22/07 - 7:36 pm • Report Abuse

Southeasterner - Are you on drugs? If you support this Chavez and Citgo your sir need to move out of the USA. You call yourself an American, no way sir! You my commie friend are not an American. Period!

notmelshowers

Posted by notmelshowers on 10/22/07 - 7:33 pm • Report Abuse

Esteemed Mr. Southeasterner”
Please take an inventory of communist governments installed in the past seven years and add to that the “pro left” that have been bolstered since Chavez took power including Venezuela in that count. The issue here Mr Southeasterner is not only that “billboard”. The issue also is what goes beyond that personal opinion of Mr. McCombs.

Posted by Soldier of Democracy on 10/22/07 - 5:34 pm • Report Abuse

Thanks “Southeasterner” for your comments and the back up material that you have provided, it is very illustrating as well as informative.
It is not a personal hatred as you also pointed out in another post. That�s beside the point. This is a question of defending freedom from tyranny. Mr. Mc Combs is expressing his “national feeling” by expressing his way of thinking that it is universally shared even outside the USA.
The main point here is not only to boycot CITGO but also to rattle Hugo Chavez�s mind into commiting something stupid that will push him to his downfall and end the spreading of communism in the American Continent and the Caribbean basin that has caused a mainstream of refugees running into your country, some of them “illegal”. - This issue or subject matter encloses many issues within the USA and outside the USA since the root of all of them is Hugo Chavez. Can you understand that Sir?

Posted by Soldier of Democracy on 10/22/07 - 5:32 pm • Report Abuse

Also forgot to mention that Citgo has the all-time refining safety record from OSHA and that they use guidlines sent down from the top levels of PdVSA.

As a chemical engineer I’ll take the facts over someones personal hatered for Chavez because he thinks as highly of Bush as John Stewart and millions of other Americans.

Posted by Southeasterner on 10/22/07 - 3:17 pm • Report Abuse

I back up what “mari” says its true. After the oil strike of 2002-2003 by PDVSA employees who were later fired, over 23,000 of them who knew the oil industry and administration of it, the production has declined and some of the refineries have caught fire burning up the “cracking ovens” due to excessive heat.
Chavez has brought in Iranians and Lybians to run part of the refineries, but they do not speak Spanish or English, and what is worse they disdain “industrial safetty rules” labeling them as “Imperialistic ways”. They are so anti American that they also disregard their own safety in that respect.

Posted by Soldier of Democracy on 10/21/07

Since when were American Refining safety standards a good thing? We have the highest rate of refining fires and refining casualties in the World. We have had more refining incidents per working hour in the last 2 years then any other country (including Libya). If you want to complain about lax safety and environmental standards maybe take a look at Texas City or the domestic MTBE crisis that is contaminating our nations water supply, that we the tax payers are now paying for the clean up.

Posted by Southeasterner on 10/22/07 - 3:06 pm • Report Abuse

Why would Chavez care if you purchased gasoline directly from him anyways? He makes a couple of cents per gallon on retail gasoline but $60+ on crude oil he sells to the US.

If you really want to make an impact on Chavez you are going to have to boycott:
BP
Cargill
Chalamette Refining
Chevron
Citgo
ConocoPhillips
ExxonMobil
Flint Hills
Hess
Houston Refining Co.
Koch
Marathon
Shell
Sunoco
Valero
and 18 other who continued to import product and crude this year from Venezuela (even after some of them lost their upstream reserves). Note that ConocoPhillips is directly involved with Russia and is going back into Venezuela through Lukoil.

I’m also not sure why Saudi Arabia is any better than Venezuela or Indonesia when it comes to anti-Americanism. If you really have a problem you should have probably sold your car and started biking decades ago when we started relying on crude imports to meet our domestic demand.

Posted by Southeasterner on 10/22/07 - 1:46 pm • Report Abuse

I haven’t bought Citgo gas since 9/11/01 because the owner/manager of the local citgo where I was living at the time was celebrating, clapping and hollering after the world trade center was destroyed.

Needless to say he and his entire family were run out of town and that citgo (even with a new manager) was closed down due to the boycott.

Posted by imnoangel512 on 10/22/07 - 1:31 pm • Report Abuse

Thank you OG Paralegal for you comment on doing research. We are aware that “gasoline satations” are FRANCHISES owned by US Citizens, American TAX PAYERS who form part of the national economy. We in the Venezuelan opposition are not against any US Citizen or any other American franchise operator. We are simply going directly to CITGO, since we do not want its gasoline to be distributed. The owners of said citgo franchise can “freely change” trademarks, since that is allowed in your country the USA, a country looked up to as the SUMMIT of DEMOCRACY.
The issue here Mr. OG, is to stop this psychopath of Hugo Chavez from funding terrorism inside Venezuela and outside of it. Those of us here who struggle to get back to a real democracy and accomplis our “AMERICAN DREAM “ here in Venezuela, support Mr. McCombs on his crusade. This Mr. OG is what is called “assymetric warfare”, and we are at war against Hugo Chavez. That billboard and what it says is a weapon, a propaganda weapon.

Posted by Soldier of Democracy on 10/22/07 - 11:12 am • Report Abuse