John Edwards has picked up a respectable number of endorsements from Georgia state legislators and others from around the state.
According to the official campaign website, Edwards is going to speak on the Don Imus fiasco sometime today. You can check out the podcast and well as others on the Edwards podcast page.
A note from the far reaches of the right-wing fringes of the Internet where they are apparently increasingly bored out of their minds. Newsbusters is a site labeling itself as "exposing and combating liberal media bias." One would note that you can hardly be an objective revealer of bias when your stated intent is to get involved in the story. Beyond that, the news that is being "busted" today is John Edwards' haircut, the manufactured story from the right designed to keep the media from talking about important issues such as John McCain singing and laughing about bombing Iran.
So there you have it, todays liberal media bias being busted consists of the conservative obsessions with a mans hair. Oh, how can they not possibly see the irony? They mock him for caring about his hair, but who is the one obsessing over it, Edwards in a year old video, or right-wing bloggers dragging the story out for weeks on end?
Glenn Greenwald wrote recently on how the supposed "press" has been eating from the hand of conservative "issue" manufacturers over the Edwards hair story and how damaging it is to everyone who takes the bait when there are so many other more honest and important things to be reporting and writing about. I've woken up to a dose of it this morning while reading my news alerts, take this one for example from an Idaho newspaper.
First, Edwards' construction of a $5.3 million, 28,000-square-foot mansion in North Carolina made news that surely put him out of touch with Middle America voters struggling to meet mortgage payments and hold on to jobs that are vanishing overseas.
To insinuate that wealthy people are out of touch with middle America simply because of their social status is ridiculous, and if it had any merit, virtually every president and member of Congress in the past 30 years would be wandering bafoons.
John Edwards may have made a fortune as a very successful trial lawyer fighting for the victims of medical malpractice, but he's got nothing on President Bush, and unlike Edwards who earned his wealth on his own, Bush had everything he has given to him on a silver platter.
Does that mean Bush is hopelessly out of touch with middle America? No, even though he is, it's not because he's rich, it's because he's stupid. It's a dishonest personal attack that has no relevance on Edwards' interest in helping the poor get out of poverty. And I might add this is something Edwards is campaigning on, something Bush has never addressed in his life.
Now we're somehow supposed to believe that because Edwards is rich, that he doesn't care about the poor, even though he's campaigning on the issue unlike the entire wealthy and apparently uncaring Republican field? I don't know of a single top tier candidate on either side that doesn't have a million dollar home somewhere in the country, so this lame accusation makes them all incapable of addressing poverty.
Uh, no...not so much.
To me, it's rather like saying I can't identify with the problems women face because I'm not a woman (sexist) or African Americans because I'm white (racist.) They don't have a term as far as I know for the prosperity divide, but it's equally disingenuous.
Meanwhile, the Internet is alive with a videotape spoof of Edwards combing his hair with background music, "I Feel Pretty."
Created and consistently spread by right-wingers who want the obedient media to focus on this instead of Edwards plan to decrease poverty, create universal health care, and end the Iraq war. They want this because those are issues they can't win on. Just like during the 2006 elections, conservatives are scurrying to avoid having to debate the real issues because they aren't interested in solving real problems. They want power, period. War is the ultimate way to express that power which is why you don't find Republican anti-war candidates. It has nothing to do with right or wrong, it's all about who has the power.
Joe Trippi was the campaign manager for Governor Howard Dean, and was pretty much responsible for being the first in turning the Internet into a fund raising machine. Unfortunately, he also has the distinction of being blamed for Dean's poor showing in New Hampshire and Iowa for not spending enough money and other resources on the ground game. Either way I don't think it matters what it comes to fund raising because everyone is sucking the 'net dry these days.
According to the Times, Trippi is coming out of retirement because he believes there is too much at stake to fail now.
Mr. Trippi has worked in presidential politics nearly every four years since his first campaign in 1980, when he was an aide to Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts. But his rise to prominence, particularly among Democratic loyalists in the blogosphere, came during the Dean campaign, where he developed something of a cult following.
For Mr. Edwards, Mr. Trippi will be an adviser on media strategy and the Internet.
By integrating social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.com with traditional political campaigns, he said, the Web is shaping the 2008 race in far greater ways than it did four years ago.
Well, that's debatable. Having 1,000,000 friends on MySpace (50% of them are spammers, 25% are girls, the rest are guys pretending to be girls) doesn't mean anything unless you are converting them into voters first, and campaign volunteers second.
If that's all Trippi does, then I'm sure he'll be a great help the campaign. However, if there was a lesson to be learned from 2004 above all else, it's that the established practice of say nothing at all rather than the wrong thing is not something people want to get from their leaders. I suppose you could say that for nearly every race, but maybe this time they are finally getting a clue.
The Hotline has some quotes from the team on Trippi's arrival.
There are more tangible benefits to going green than cleaning up the environment that we all have to live in. More money means more research means more efficient technology. Cheaper for consumers, cheaper for energy producers, and better for the planet -- we all win.
The planet has gotten nearly 1 degree Fahrenheit hotter over the past 30 years and will get another degree hotter due to greenhouse gas pollution already in the atmosphere. The ten hottest years on record have all occurred since 1990.
Translation: it only takes a 1 degree rise in ocean temperatures to kill off almost all coral, which is the bedrock of all ocean life. Without it, we see a mass die off along with a significant drop in oxygen generation. Trust me when I say we don't want that to happen, and that the consequences are far graver than losing a pretty place to rec-dive.
On top of releasing his health care plan to the public so people can read for themselves what his plans are, also proving that he actually has plans and ideas once he gets into the White House, Edwards is ramping up other plans and letting people have a go at them. Speaking of health care, here is a message from Elizabeth Edwards that was sent out in February. Health care is extremely important when the richest nation on the planet has half its population unable to get medical insurance and go to a doctor when they really need it. Some candidates don't care, but we do.
Invest in Weatherized Homes and More Efficient Buildings and Appliances: Upgrading home furnaces, ducts, windows, and insulation can cut energy bills by 20 to 40 percent, year after year.
Good for consumers, not so good for profiteering utilities. On the other hand, states such as California that are reaching demand that outstrips supply could really benefit from this.
Reduce the U.S. Government's Energy Use by 20 Percent and Make the White House Carbon Neutral. The U.S. government is the nation's single largest energy consumer, with a $15 billion energy bill in 2005. However, its investments in energy efficiency have been cut in half since 2001. Edwards will overhaul federal buildings and vehicles to emphasize efficiency, reducing the use of energy by 20 percent, and expand the government's use of renewable sources. After taking energy efficiency steps at the White House, he will purchase carbon offsets to make it carbon-neutral. [DOE, 2006; Alliance to Save Energy, 2007]
That is a something that can be a huge difference, and a large portion of it can be done by order of the President without having to wade through Congress. It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world though if Congress wanted to take the lead on this issue. *Hint* *Hint*.
Read more on Edwards plan over at the official blog. Tons of solid ideas over there, go read!
According to Democratic pollster Geoffrey Garin, cancer isn't quite the taboo that it used to be. Via AP:
"The way voters respond depends very much on the specific illness involved and the extent to which they tend to think of it as being a risk to the candidate's long-term health," Garin said.
In the case of Democratic candidate John Edwards, the former senator and his wife, Elizabeth, called a news conference to announce that her breast cancer had returned in incurable form and spread to other parts of the body, but that it would not slow his presidential campaign.
This of course is a subject because of the recent announcement made by the Edwards' regarding Elizabeth's recent change in condition, though I'm not sure why that would influence anyone's vote one way or another, since she isn't the candidate. Maybe it plays to a persons honesty, who knows. Also recently diagnosed are Republican Senator Fred Thompson and White House Press Secretary Tony Snow.
I haven't been up on this issue since I was away when it was announced, but I would note that incurable doesn't mean untreatable -- that's very important to understand. The last I heard, the news was even worse for Snow, and even though I think the guy is a giant weasel (a requisite for being the Press Secretary) and hypocrite, amongst other things, I'm very sad to hear about this. Though misguided on any number of issues, I'm sure he is a genuinely nice guy, and I'd hate to see any of these people have bad things happen, and cancer is pretty bad no matter how you look at it.
"The interesting question that remains to be answered is: How are the people who vote going to look at this?" said Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society, who keeps a cancer blog on the Internet. "How all this plays out remains to be seen. I think it shines the light on a very important fact, which is that we have many more cancer survivors today."
Lichtenfeld, who is 60, recalls being smacked as a child for daring even to mention cancer to an aunt who had the disease.
I find the prospect of any disease being so taboo that it not be spoken of to be abhorrent. How can you possibly come to terms with something so deadly and misunderstood when people are literally abusing their children to keep them from speaking of it? How much more primitive can you get? Let's just take the next logical step and move back into caves for crying out loud.
Cancer is a top killer in the world and of all the things we could be doing to fight it and raise awareness for early testing, to have the possibility that we dare not even speak of it is just appallingly.
I'm not very keen on the issue. On the one hand I think the companies that own the backbones really ought to be able to do whatever they want with their property, yet it doesn't make sense in our society to allow one company to charge another for something when they have no active business relationship. It's kind of like a toll booth that not only charges cars to pass through, but also a company such as Dell, who owns the cargo in the back of a semitrailer that is passing through the booth.
The toll booth and Dell have no business relationship, but they want to charge Dell because their cargo represents 80% of the long haul traffic going through the gate. Yet they are already making money from the people who own those trucks, so how does such a wild idea make any sense?
Well, it doesn't, and that's what net neutrality is all about. AT&T can charge their own customers whatever they want, but they shouldn't be allowed to charge Google for sending traffic through their pipes when Google is already paying for that traffic with whoever is providing them with bandwidth.
"Information vehicles like YouTube, the Internet at large, blogging, video blogging, all these things are ways for democracy to flourish. They're ways for ordinary Americans to participate in the process," he said.
Let me do a bit more explaining. You request a video from YouTube, which is sitting on their servers. Your ISP is Comcast, while YouTube is getting their Internet access through Level3, but your ISP doesn't have a direct connection to Level3, so how does the traffic find its way through?
Big providers like Level3 and AT&T have agreements called peering, where AT&T will say "I need to connect to you, and you need to connect to me." So long as the amount of traffic flowing between the two is roughly equal, they will make these connections and often will do it for free, because it benefits them both. That's the deal, they both win. Then they both have their own customers that connect exclusively to them, and that's where they get their money. But now they have this bright idea that if tons of traffic originates from somewhere else on the Internet, but must traverse their own pipes, they'll charge the owner of the traffic since they can't charge their own peers.
"This goes to the heart and soul of democracy. Because, if Democracy is going to work in this country, then we want people to be well informed and we want a wide variety of diverse voices to be heard. And that's what is at issue with these media conglomerates … We really have to stay on top of this because what we see flourishing at the grassroots can be stomped on if we're not careful."
That's not what I want to hear on the issue, but it's a step in the right direction. The integrity of the network must be maintained at all costs, or it'll stop working altogether.
The campaign hit a significant rough spot while I was gone, one that saw a recurrence of Elizabeth Edwards cancer and the possible pullout of this sites candidate. Thankfully it looks like Elizabeth's illness is another step in the battle, not a movement "downward." Nobody, regardless of ideology, wants to see another person in pain or to have health problems.
Everyone ought to know by now that John Edwards isn't going to pull out of the race at this point, though it remains a distinct possibility should Elizabeth's health take a downturn in the future. I'm sorry I missed the deal, and I wish her a speedy recovery.
The last time I checked, Edwards was the only person to actually release a health care plan to the public from our side. Most candidates talk a good game, but it doesn't mean a whole heck of a lot compared to something like that. Health care is such a hit-or-miss deal in this country that not everyone who has cancer can get the treatment they need to stay alive. Edwards wouldn't say something like this, or use it as an issue, but I have no problem saying that if you ever wonder whether or not the expensive health care reform Democrats like John Edwards are always floating are worth the cost, just think about your wife, or your mother, father, brother, whomever.
Imagine if they found out they had cancer, and ask yourself if they could afford a couple hundred grand or more in medical costs. Ask yourself if they could afford the $2000 medical cans just to find out if they even have it or not, and then then you'll have your answer.
Not one to sit still for any length of time, I see that Edwards is moving on to pollution regulation. This is something that caught my attention in another capacity a few days ago, where I read that the Superfund was no longer collecting fees from industrial polluters. What this means obviously is that tax payers are now funding the cleanup of industrial toxic pollution instead of the companies who made the mess in the first place.
Edwards plan seems to revolve around taxing greenhouse gas polluters by the amount of gas they generate, with the intention of using those funds to advance clean energy technology.
"People ought to have to pay that want to generate greenhouse gases," Edwards said at a global warming rally that was part of a nationwide day of demonstrations. Edwards said charging polluters could generate up to $40 billion to invest in clean technology to "get us off our addiction to oil." He also said the United States should
That is no joke, if you stop and ask President Bush or practically any Republican what their solution to the problem of oil dependence, their answer is to stop being dependant on Middle Eastern oil. That's right, their solution is to stop getting oil from people that don't like us, rather than developing alternative energy technology that would get us off oil altogether.
The former North Carolina senator, who was John Kerry's running mate in the 2004 presidential election, said the U.S. needs to put a cap on carbon emissions, and should achieve an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2050.
We could take billions of tons of greenhouse gas out of the atmosphere (or rather not put it in there in the first place) by putting new fuel efficiency standards on the auto industry. It's understandable that Republicans don't want to do this because it will cost the auto industry money, and they are under intense pressure from foreign manufacturers as it is, but that's not the point.
We're killing our planet at a rate that accelerates every single year that we don't do the things we know we can do to start rolling back these problems. If we don't stop, the coming climate shift is going to kill off the auto industry anyway because half the continent will be buried under ice and snow. If cleaning up our planet means putting a hurt on an entire industry, then that's a hit we'll just have to take and deal with. Killing off our ecosphere is not worth increasing profits and competition, it just isn't.
