Live Blog with Candidate ED FALLON, IA-03!
Live this Thursday 5/22, 1-2 pm et (noon-1 pm ct)
Join us for this special live blog prior to the June 3rd Iowa primary.
Howdy folks! Over at Docudharma we have cooked up this little campaign, and I am doing what I can to spread it through out the entire intertoobz...as well as greetings and felicitations in the interest of blogidarity! Please feel free to come visit us and post anything YOU would like to get a wider notice! Good to meet you!
Whereas; The Press, the Fourth Estate, is the gatekeeper of Truth in our country. If the Press does not report it, it effectively never happened as far as the all important reaction of the citizenry is concerned. Where the Press shines it's light, freedom follows.
Whereas; The Press during the Bush Administration has not only blinded its own light in regards to scandalous crimes, it has on far too many occasions, such as the lead up to the Iraq Occupation and on Domestic Spying, and in the latest instance of the Military Analysts scandal, actually aided and abetted in the criminal acts and despicable propaganda activities of the Bush Administration.
We have determined that in order to take our country back from those who have usurped our democracy, in order to bring to light their crimes, in order to expose their methods, and most importantly..in order to make sure that these crimes and outrages can never occur again, the first necessary step on the log road back to America is to reform and retake the Fourth Estate, to Free The Press.
Realizing that this monumental task cannot be accomplished in one fell swoop, but must be approached incrementally, in a series of small but achievable steps, we have determined that the first step is getting a fresh, objective progressive voice that has not been tainted by the past eight years on the air.
Rachel Maddow.
To this end we are starting an E-mail and Petition drive to urge and/or pressure MSNBC to give Ms. Maddow her own show...we have named this effort, The Maddow Movement
At 1pm et or 10 am pt, Iowa state legislator and candidate for Congress Ed Fallon will be joining us for a live blog. Get your questions ready and let's get the conversation going! First, I'd like to tell you a little about who Ed Fallon is and why myself and my fellow EENR bloggers support him for Congress.
One of the first candidates the bloggers of EENR decided to endorse was state legislator Ed Fallon running for Congress in Iowa's 3rd c.d. It wasn't a difficult choice. Ed Fallon is a progressive's progressive. In his 14 years as a legislator in Iowa's House, he never accepted PAC/lobbyist money. Fallon had his values in place long before it was the progressive thing to do to refuse lobbyist/PAC money. Here's a statement from Fallon about why he's running for Congress:
Our country needs and wants change. I'm ready to take on the corporate interests who have corrupted our federal government. I'm ready to give working families and the poor a voice in national politics. I'm ready to do what I can to see that environmental issues are taken seriously inside the beltway. I'm ready to apply what I've learned during 23 years of public service in Iowa and be a part of the solution in Washington.
"I'm quite confident we will be able to overcome this tragedy. I've tried to bring a message of hope to your people," Ban said earlier as he made an offering at the country's holiest Buddhist shrine, the Shwedagon Pagoda.
"At the same time, I hope your people and government can coordinate the flow of aid, so the aid work can be done in a more systematic and organised way," said Ban.
"The United Nations and the whole international community stand ready to help you overcome this tragedy."
Meanwhile pressure is building on the military regime to do far more to help the victims of the cyclone, and not all of the pressure is coming from outside the country:
Good evening my fellow night birdies. I'm back with a special installment of Twilight focused on Dick Cheney and parrots. Here we go....
Today Dick Cheney gave a speech in Connecticut before new members of the Coast Guard. Here's a snippet about his appearance:
Cheney, sporting a 10-gallon hat, said the troop surge in Iraq "has succeeded brilliantly."
"The war on terror is a lengthy enterprise, but it does not have to go on forever," he told more than 200 graduating cadets during the 127th commencement at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy.
"The only way to lose this fight is to quit. That would be irresponsible," Cheney said. "More than that, quitting would be an act of betrayal and dishonor."
I'm not sure what is more ridiculous, the things he said or the hat he was wearing. Tough call.
There's nothing like following up a story about Cheney with an adorable animal story. It's a good balance I think. Over in Tokyo Japan, an African Grey Parrot managed to escape from its cage. It was rescued on a rooftop and taken to a vet. Luckily, they were able to locate where the parrot lived because he told them.
There's a new political superstar in town and he's definitely getting his message out to the public. I'm not sure whether he's being paid in vegetables or crackers.
It's great to be back among loyal fans of John Edwards. Like many of you, I came to agree with John's statement that we could be the first generation to have our children fall behind their parent's standard of living. That's why I worked so hard for him here in Iowa, serving as Edwards' Midwestern Director of Policy and Outreach in 2004 and 2007.
I decided the best way to continue John's fight for economic fairness was to run for Congress myself. For the past 21 years I've fought to save the family farm, promote sustainable agriculture and protect the environment at the grassroots level.
It's time that we send members to Congress who stand up and fight for progressive values rather than falling sway to corporate lobbyists.
I'm just coming back in the office from planting (I'm a fifth generation family farmer) so I'm excited to being getting back to campaigning.
In just a couple hours Democratic candidate Kevin Miskell running for IA-4 c.d. will join us for a live blog here at EENR! Before we get going on our conversation with Kevin, I want to tell you a little about what Kevin Miskell.
Kevin Miskell is a fifth generation Iowa farmer from Story County, Iowa. When family farmers were facing an economic crisis under Reagan, Miskell became very involved in his community working to help save family farms. Here's a snippet from Miskell's website about his backround as a family farm advocate:
For the past 21 years, he has been active in grassroots politics across the state, promoting sustainable agriculture and fighting to protect the environment. During these past two decades, Kevin has worked with elected officials on both the state and national level on legislation relating to agriculture, rural economic development and renewable energy.
During the past four years, Kevin served as Vice President of Iowa Farmers Union, a grassroots organization that promotes the viability of small family farms and sustainable agriculture.
Since 2003 Kevin has worked on the staff of three presidential campaigns. In 2003, he worked for Senator Bob Graham. When Graham dropped out of the race, Kevin was hired by Senator John Edwards' campaign to serve as his Midwestern Director of Rural Policy and Outreach and worked again in this capacity in 2008.
Nov. 29, 2006 was a sad day. Larry Kissell conceded defeat to
Robin Hayes that day. It was the closest race in the nation with the eventual count being a difference of only 329 votes. As someone who lived in that area of North Carolina (US 8th District), I can tell you that many voters weren't happy with the outcome and there were a few who wondered if in fact the end result was correct. But as we voters have learned in elections since 2000, we 'grin and bear it'.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon is en route to Myanmar today, but already his presence in the region seems to have had an affect:
"We have received government permission to operate nine WFP (World Food Program) helicopters, which will allow us to reach areas that have so far been largely inaccessible," Ban told reporters in New York on Tuesday before departing for Southeast Asia. His announcement was not immediately confirmed by officials in Myanmar.
"I believe further similar moves will follow, including expediting the visas of (foreign) relief workers seeking to enter the country," Ban said, warning that relief efforts to save survivors of the May 2-3 Cyclone Nargis had reached a "critical moment."
"We have a functioning relief program in place but so far have been able to reach only 25 percent of Myanmar's people in need," he said.
Welcome to the Primary Election night Results Diary for Pundits and Elections Statistics Junkies. The intention here is just that and not a venue to argue or push certain Primary Candidates. Statistics freaks please pull up a chair and Enjoy the company.
Have not been to either State in my Lifetime. I know we've got EENR Editorial Team Members sarahlane & jamess living in Oregon and other Blog Members there and RDemocrat has been our Kentucky Connection providing us with Diaries on EENR endorsed Heather Ryan-D & Senate Candidate Greg Fischer-D.
People use lots of water for drinking, cooking and washing, but even more for producing things such as food, paper, cotton clothes, etc. The water footprint of an individual, business or nation is defined as the total volume of freshwater that is used to produce the goods and services consumed by the individual, business or nation. Now you too can figure out your water footprint using the calculator at waterfootprint.org. Additionally, they have a gallery of commonly consumed products and how much water it takes to produce them and case studies of water footprints of specific countries like China and Israel.
"Doctors for Senator Edward M. Kennedy Say He Has a Malignant Brain Tumor." as breaking news.
There is very little in terms of details, but I will update this post as soon as more is learned about his condition and prognosis.
UPDATE:
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy has a malignant brain tumor.
Doctors for the Massachusetts Democrat say tests conducted after Kennedy suffered a seizure this weekend show a tumor in his left parietal lobe. Preliminary results from a biopsy of the brain identified the cause of the seizure as a malignant glioma, they said.
His treatment will be decided after more tests but the usual course includes combinations of radiation and chemotherapy.
"For the vast number of Americans, if they just gave to some disaster far away and then another disaster happens, in their mind that's clumped as 'faraway disaster,'" Strahilevitz says. "So they will feel, 'I just gave to a faraway disaster.'"
It's no secret that Americans are feeling less fortunate than in previous years. Escalating gas and food prices, the mortgage crisis and a recent "economic recovery" that only positively affected the most wealthy among us have left families seeing their household budgets shrink.
But as tough as we have it, it is nothing compared with what millions of people are going through right now in Myanmar:
MSNBC reports that Americans have given $12.1 million to charities for Myanmar relief efforts, far short of the $1.92 billion the US gave to assist the victims of the 2004 Asian tsunami.
