Edwards Victory in Iowa

A round up of reasons for Edwards supporters to celebrate:

Charlotte (NC) Observer: Edwards was "heavily outspent by his top rivals... Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York are each expected to have spent more than $20 million in Iowa. Reports suggest Edwards could end up spending less than $15 million."

Money aside ... [a] candidate who comes out on top -- or even provides the biggest surprise -- gets headlines and magazine covers across the country. All that "free media" can supplement a lot of paid advertising.

Kenneth Jarecke / Contact Press Images for TIME

Time Magazine:

John Edwards went into the Iowa caucuses last night a fighter and he emerges from them as scrappy as ever. In other words, don't assume, because he lost to Barack Obama, that Edwards is down for the count. After all, as his campaign advisers are quick to point out, by finishing second Edwards's David can claim victory over at least one Goliath.

"The person hurt in all this is Hillary Clinton," Joe Trippi, an Edwards senior advisor, told TIME minutes after his candidate claimed the silver medal in Des Moines. "The former president of the United States flew all around this state and so did she. They outspent us three-to-one at least. And we beat her."
* * * *
In Iowa he was limited to spending $1.5 million, though he benefited from spending by supportive unions and privately funded outside groups that ran television commercials on his behalf. "I have to be honest, I didn't think with a turn out of more than 200,000 that we'd be where we are in this thing," Trippi said. "We only had 42,000 hard count [i.e., committed voters], so to go from 42,000 to 65,000 or 70,000 — the message had to have been so strong that people got up out of their homes and went to a caucus without the campaign getting them there. Now the campaign that everyone thought was going to happen to or knew that was going to happen to was the Obama campaign, but it turns out that there were two of those campaigns." To be sure, Trippi was spinning the best-possible story for his andidate. But it is certainly true that a large turnout was expected, by many observers, to do more damage to Edwards' chances than to Clinton's.

Even as Edwards was speaking last night, member states of the Service Employees International Union that have endorsed Edwards were sending out a press release claiming victory out of second place and laying out their strategy to work for him in the upcoming contests. And you can be sure the same outside groups that helped Edwards in Iowa will appear in New Hampshire. Still, the tidal wave that Edwards' spoke of, at least for tonight, is not his own. It will take another tidal wave for Edwards to wrest the mantle of change — and a victory — from Obama.

JournalNow, Winston-Salem, NC: "If you would have told me a year ago that John Edwards would beat Hillary Clinton despite being outspent 3- or 4-to-1, I would have been very pleased," said Ed Turlington in a phone interview from Des Moines. Turlington, a Raleigh attorney, was the national chairman of Edwards' 2004 presidential campaign and is advising the campaign this year.

Edwards: closing the Iowa races with class, according to TIME.

US, China Gang up for Greenhouse Gases; World Boos

China, the country that tortures monks, and the US, the country that tortures just about anyone else, joined forces to protect those who pollute and poison the world's residents at the Greehouse Gases Reduction Conference in Bali this week.


When unauthorized parallel meetings were held
at the Conference of 187 countries, leader Yvo de Boer, not known for his emotion, was overcome by jet lag and obstructionism and burst into tears.


According to the UK's Daily Mail:

Officials from China, which feels Western countries should do more to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, accused UN negotiators of ignoring conference protocol.

Mr de Boer, distinctively dressed in a floral shirt, stepped up to the microphone to defend his staff - only to find that the words would no longer come.
As his unfinished sentences trailed away, he broke down and walked off the platform to supportive applause.

"He wasn't just wiping his eyes, he was in floods of tears," said one observer.
"Three colleagues - one of them a woman - formed a protective group around him and escorted him out of the hall. It was all very dramatic."
Mr de Boer's breakdown came after nearly a fortnight of squabbling over proposals to cut carbon emissions.

Then there was piling by the US, recently overtaken by China for the spot of World's #1 Greenouse Gas polluter. US delegation chief Paula Dobriansky , a pretty face with an ugly message, was booed for refusing to support the Conference goals.


One delegate, from Papua New Guinea, pleaded with the US to lead on the issue. "Lead, follow, or get out of the way."

More info:

NYTimes

Sunday Mirror

Telegraph here and full coverage here

Celsias

Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) is bad news for Maryland and for troops

BRAC concentrates traffic, funding headaches while removing our soldiers from communities around the country

• GAO: Military Base Realignments and Closures: Estimated Costs Have Increased and Estimated Savings Have Decreased, by Brian J. Lepore, director, defense capabilities and management, before the Subcommittee on Readiness, House Committee on Armed Services. GAO-08-341T, December 12. Highlights (pdf)
  
• Gazette: Navy Med expansion has issues: World-class medical center could be marred by traffic and unsafe intersections while money for potential fixes is uncertain
  
• WaPo: Naval Hospital Patients to Double: Move From Walter Reed to Bethesda Could Worsen Traffic, Add $70 Million in [unpaid] Road Work.
  

Resources for info:

• MDOT & BRAC
  
• Paying for BRAC (WaPo)
  
• Official BRAC - Home Page (MD); Montgomery County
  
• (Obsolete) State report (pdf)
  

American Lives are at risk

Congress has enacted 125 statutes giving the FDA new or expanded responsibilities since 1988, without any new funding to cover the extra work. HuffPo has the story.

An FDA advisory board concluded the situation is dire. "FDA's inability to keep up with scientific advances means that American lives are at risk," the report concluded. A report by the Institute of Medicine in 2006 reached the same conclusion, but the Republican-controlled Congress did nothing to improve the safety of the infant formula, pet food, toothpaste, spinich, prescription drugs and implants relied upon by millions of Americans.

In the wake of the scathing report detailing the dangerously poor state of the Food and Drug Administration, President Bush is threatening to veto much-needed funds for the agency.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-CT, who leads the House panel responsible for FDA funding, called on President Bush to lift his objections to the agriculture appropriations bill, in which there is a drastic increase in money for the FDA. Without the infusion of cash, DeLauro said, U.S. consumers would be at great risk regarding food and drug safety.

The FDA Alliance and the Coalition for a Stronger FDA have issued a press release alerting us that the nation's food supply is at risk, as are the regulatory systems that oversee the nation's drug and device supplies, according to a subcommittee of the FDA's Science Board in a report it presented on December 3. They conclude that this imbalance is imposing a significant risk to the integrity of the food, drug, cosmetic and device regulatory system, and hence the safety of the public.

The result of a year-long review by a distinguished panel of experts, the 300-page report concludes that the state of FDA's scientific and regulatory programs could not be separated from the lack of resources available to support the agency's scientific base, hire and train a broadly-capable scientific workforce, and build a sophisticated and modern information technology infrastructure. You can find the report here.

FDA's need for recall authority here

Stem Cell research and cures 20 years behind: millions suffer

Stem cell research relied on a few donations from fertility clinics that would otherwise be incinerated. Couples undergoing in vitro fertilization have an option when their treatment is finished to donate their embryos to other couples, and many do. But some just can't face the prospect of a genetic child of their own "out there," and yet still want to help others, for example, by making a contribution to cures.

Since Reagan stopped federal funding for stem cell research in 1987, scientists in the US were prohibited even from using the microscope in a lab that received a Federal grant to view stem cells. They had to waste time and money to create duplicate labs while patients died. Their colleagues left to research outside the US, slowing collaborations, while patients died. Research in countries like South Korea with weaker oversight infrastructure produced work frought with fraud while patients died.

While patients and their families suffered for 20 years, political opportunists conjured harangues and tales of woe, of embryos created merely for destruction.

Denying the existence of the same American ingenuity,
encouraged by government funding, that invented the Internet, built a trans-Continental railroad, and salvaged our environment from pollution, financed how to make penicillin, vaccines and other "wonder drugs" widely available, they somehow got away with draping themselves in the American flag.

Now scientists can make stem cells from skin. These cells can't yet do everything that stem cells can do, but the discovery is a breakthrough. Now that we are 20 years behind studying and understanding how these cells behave, grow, and contribute to curing terrible diseases.

Rick Weiss: The big next step is to find better ways of turning on the right genes to get cells to become embryonic -- ways that don't involve retroviruses. Many scientists are talking about using "small molecules" that can get to a cell's DNA and affect which genes are turned on or off. Also important: What other gene combinations can accomplish that (the two teams used four genes each, but two are different between them and other combinations with other genes may work, too). The thinking right now is that different genes in different doses might result in stem cells that have slightly different potentials to become different kinds of tissues. Then of course there will be years of safety testing, first in animals, then in people. And then, at least, some efforts to treat diseases. Meanwhile they will be used by many scientists to study diseases in lab dishes.

From WaPo editorial:

Congress should continue to consider legislation easing restrictions on the use of discarded embryos for research. After all, this breakthrough could not have been possible without research on embryonic stem cells. The potential gains from this science are so great that all avenues should be pursued until the new technology is proven.