Saturday, June 30, 2007
Michelle Obama: President Needs Strong Family
(Cross-posted at Carroll Daily Times Herald)
By STEPHANIE EIFLER
COUNCIL BLUFFS - It may have been a hot, muggy Friday in western Iowa, but that didn't stop about 200 people from cramming into a room in downtown Council Bluffs to greet Michelle Obama, wife of Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama.
Michelle entered historic Bayliss Park Hall to a standing ovation and immediately began speaking about the importance of family in her husband's campaign. She cited examples of how their two children Malia, 9, and Sasha, 6, are dealing with the high-profile life-style.
"We are always putting the girls first," Michelle said. "We want to keep them on target. We make sure that their lunch is packed and they are off to camp on time. It's critical for them to stay in their own world. This is important because if we want to lead this country, we need to put our family first and set an example in our own home."
To aid her family during her husband's campaign, Michelle is working only 20 percent of her previous hours as the vice president of community and external affairs at the University of Chicago Hospitals. In an interview with the Daily Times Herald, Michelle said the sacrifice is one she is happy to make.
"I'm not giving up my career because of my husband, but because I'm passionate about this," said Michelle. "You can't have a president of the United States without a family at his side. This is a family endeavor. Some-body's got to be a parent, and we're not going to sacrifice the health and well being of our children."
Read the rest of the story at Carrollspaper.com.
Hillary Clinton's Rooseveltian Performance Dominates Debate
(Cross-posted at Iowa Independent)
U.S. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton started off the Democratic presidential candidate debate at Howard University tonight like Ted Ginn Jr. did the national college football championship: she returned the kickoff for a touchdown.
Unlike Ginn's Ohio State, though, Clinton finished what she started, connecting emotionally with the largely minority audience, showing depth, detailed knowledge and spot-on timing in shifting from toughness to empathy.
In this the third debate, Clinton dominated. She looked and sounded presidential with whip-smart responses. Even the most oiled-down spin-doctors will have trouble greasing this one and persuading reasonable political observers that anyone but Hillary Clinton captured this debate.
Let's great right to the point: Hillary Clinton is running away with the debates. She is clearly qualified to be president and is building momentum with these showings. What Democrat wouldn't take his or her chances with Hillary Clinton against a Republican in a debate now?
Read the rest of the story at Iowa Independent.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Harkin: Lazy Is 'Inside Word' On Fred Thompson
(Cross-posted at Iowa Independent)
U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin today said that GOP presidential aspirant Fred Thompson appeared to be “bored” in the Senate and earned a reputation for being lazy.
“That’s sort of the inside word,” Harkin said. “That’s what people are saying. I mean, people who know him better than I are saying that.”
Thompson, a star of television’s “Law And Order” with a long list of movie credits to his name as well, is a former U.S. Senator from Tennessee. He was elected to the Senate in 1994 to fill Al Gore’s unexpired term and then cruised to re-election for a full term in 1996. But since his name began surfacing as a savior candidate for a largely dispirited GOP, the back story floating around on Thompson is that he’s as lazy as that hang-dog countenance of his would suggest. Slate ran a piece on Thompson called “Lazy Fred.”
In a conference call with Iowa Independent and other media Harkin, an Iowa Democrat who has been in Congress since 1974 (10 years in the House before his election to the Senate in 1984), said he knew Thompson and got along “all right” with him. But Harkin said he was never impressed with the actor’s work ethic on The Hill.
U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin today said that GOP presidential aspirant Fred Thompson appeared to be “bored” in the Senate and earned a reputation for being lazy.
“That’s sort of the inside word,” Harkin said. “That’s what people are saying. I mean, people who know him better than I are saying that.”
Thompson, a star of television’s “Law And Order” with a long list of movie credits to his name as well, is a former U.S. Senator from Tennessee. He was elected to the Senate in 1994 to fill Al Gore’s unexpired term and then cruised to re-election for a full term in 1996. But since his name began surfacing as a savior candidate for a largely dispirited GOP, the back story floating around on Thompson is that he’s as lazy as that hang-dog countenance of his would suggest. Slate ran a piece on Thompson called “Lazy Fred.”
In a conference call with Iowa Independent and other media Harkin, an Iowa Democrat who has been in Congress since 1974 (10 years in the House before his election to the Senate in 1984), said he knew Thompson and got along “all right” with him. But Harkin said he was never impressed with the actor’s work ethic on The Hill.
Romney Called For Cutting Farm Subsidies
(Cross-posted at Iowa Independent)
GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, the front-runner in Iowa, called for the "virtual elimination" of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and cuts to farm subsides in his failed 1994 U.S. Senate race against Ted Kennedy.
Romney opponents are now are citing a debate and several Boston news articles in which the former Massachusetts governor said, among other things, "I also believe we're going to have agricultural subsidies reduced."
Read the full story at Iowa Independent.
GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, the front-runner in Iowa, called for the "virtual elimination" of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and cuts to farm subsides in his failed 1994 U.S. Senate race against Ted Kennedy.
Romney opponents are now are citing a debate and several Boston news articles in which the former Massachusetts governor said, among other things, "I also believe we're going to have agricultural subsidies reduced."
Read the full story at Iowa Independent.
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Jack Black's 'High Fidelity' character would not be a Hillary fan
John Deeth of the Iowa Independent has a highly entertaining column on the selection of a lame Celine Dion song as a Hillary Clinton campaign tune. Deeth goes to a record store similar to the one in the movie "High Fidelity" to get some great feedback for his story.
Friday, June 15, 2007
If It Were Clive People Would Care
(Cross Posted At Iowa Independent.com)
American “Indians,” said the brilliant Native American writer and leader Vine Deloria Jr., are probably invisible because of the tremendous amount of misinformation about them.
That assessment from thee late Deloria, an Iowa State University graduate, is no
doubt one of the reasons you likely know more about Paris Hilton than what should be one of the biggest news stories in America.
Last Saturday, The New York Times ran a Page 1 story on Paris Hilton. Is she drunk? Is she in jail? Does someone have a new video of her giving it up? Is she wearing underwear?
Meanwhile, deeper in the newspaper, on Page 9 to be precise, there was a horrifying story about a suicide epidemic on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, only a few hours drive from Carroll, Iowa.
According to The Times, in the first 10 weeks of 2007 tribal authorities were called to three suicides and scores of attempts. On March 14 a state of emergency was declared.
“Since then, a woman in her early 20s killed herself with pills, and scores more young people have tried to kill themselves — a total of 144 so far this year, at doctors’ best count.”
The reservation has a population of about 13,000 people. That’s roughly the size of the Des Moines suburb of Clive.
Imagine if 144 white Clive kids had tried various means of killing themselves in a matter of months?
The Des Moines Register would be covering it with Pulitzer Prize eyes. Dateline would be camped here, and Larry King would be asking Dr. Phil to diagnose it all.
Schools would be shut down and some people in Clive might even stop going to Bed Bath & Beyond or Jordan Creek Mall.
But alas these are Native Americans.
There is no such alarm.
This Rosebud story is not isolated. The suicide rate among Great Plains Native American youth is 10 times the national average of 13 per 100,000.
“Plains reservations are among the poorest places in the country, with all of poverty’s consequences,” The New York Times reports. “But the why of the suicide phenomenon — why American Indian youth, why the Great Plains — is complicated, experts say. The traumas Plains tribes have experienced over the last 175 years — massacres like the one at Wounded Knee, the decimation of their land and culture — are part of it.”
There are no doubt many ways our nation can respond to this crisis. Health services on reservations are under-funded, and Congress has dropped the ball in that arena. Getting basic medical services and mental-health professionals in place would be a good place to start.
It might also help if the country gave a damn.
One white girl goes missing from a Target in Kansas and parents and the nation grieve as one. But more dead Indians? Who watches westerns anymore? Change the channel.
But we can’t look away from this. We must see the tragedy. We must add this up in our hearts.
“Officially, three youths at Rosebud committed suicide last year and 193 tried,” The Times reports. “But not all suicides or attempts involve calls to the police, officials here said.”
The Native American story is a national shame, and Rosebud is another chapter.
Aside from discussing the broken treaties and genocide that cleared the land of the native culture and made way for our homes and Wal-Mart Supercenters, there is another reason to respond in Rosebud with whatever resources they need.
Native Americans were there to save others centuries ago.
“When Indian people remember how weak and helpless the United States once was, how much it needed the good graces of the tribes for its very existence, how the tribes shepherded the ignorant through drought and blizzard, kept them alive, helped them grow — they burn with resentment at the treatment they have since received from the United States government,” Deloria wrote in his 1969 classic, “Custer Died for Your Sins.”
Monday, June 04, 2007
What Barack Obama gets about Iraq, rural America, that John McCain doesn't
One of the more disturbing elements in a king’s ransom of problems with the U.S. war in Iraq is the indisputable fact that rural Americans are doing a disproportionate share of the fighting.
Most of us in western Iowa, regardless of position on the war or political affiliation, just know this. We see it in our small towns, anecdotally — and the Associated Press and other reliable sources have documented it. Does John McCain get it?
Read the complete text of an analysis piece I wrote for Iowa Independent.com, a new Web venture from the Center for Independent Media.
Most of us in western Iowa, regardless of position on the war or political affiliation, just know this. We see it in our small towns, anecdotally — and the Associated Press and other reliable sources have documented it. Does John McCain get it?
Read the complete text of an analysis piece I wrote for Iowa Independent.com, a new Web venture from the Center for Independent Media.
What does Graydon Carter know about Hillary?
In the current issue of Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter says the media and Clinton haters are keeping their powder dry for a Mount St. Helens eruption of more stories on Bill Clinton's extra-marital activities (should HRC get the Democratic nod). Vanity Fair hosts the most popular Oscar party and Carter would seem to have inside track on some of this. Or does he?
Anyway, this is what he says in his editor's letter for June.
"Across the divide, Democratic steamroller Hillary Clinton is in denial over the rumored, er, friskiness of her husband, Bill. If journalists are aware of this apparent friskiness, you can be damned sure Karl Rove and the Republican intelligence machine know about it, too. They're just holding back in the event that Clinton gets the nomination. Should that happen they can grind her campaign into the gutter with all the lurid specifics."
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