Polk County Democrats passed along this e-mail from the Dodd campaign:

Please join Senator Chris Dodd as he brings his campaign for president back to Iowa to hold a statewide discussion on How to End the War in Iraq and Foreign Policy.  
 
Senator Dodd will exhibit the proven, bold leadership that he would bring to the White House as he lays out the only real and responsible way to end the war to a statewide audience.
 
There is only one way to end the war and that's for Congress to fulfill its constitutional obligation and utilize the “power of the purse.”  We can no longer give the President a blank check and expect him to bring the troops home.
 
This week in Washington , D.C. , Senator Dodd is planning to join Senator Feingold in cosponsoring an amendment on the floor of the Senate to end the war by immediately beginning to redeploy troops and bring an end to the war by March 31st, 2008.  Senator Dodd’s plan is the only plan by a Democratic candidate for president that sets a concrete deadline for total troop withdraw and redeploys the troops in a safe and responsible manner.
 
The hour-long forum will take place at Pomerantz Stage on the first floor of the Olmsted Center at Drake University at 12:00 PM this Friday, May 18th.  Groups gathered around the state will also participate in the forum by listening in via conference call or a live internet feed.  Polk Democratic County Chair Tom Henderson will moderate the event in Des Moines will ask Senator Dodd questions submitted by the audiences in Des Moines and across the state.
 
This is a unique opportunity to take part in a statewide event and directly ask a presidential candidate how he would actually end the war.

I checked the Dodd campaign's website and couldn't find any other events listed for this Iowa trip, but I will update if I learn of others he is planning to hold in the state.

Also, don't forget to check out Dodd's new tv ad running in Iowa and New Hampshire. You can find it in Matt Browner-Hamlin's diary on the right side of this page.

John Edwards has a new campaign website for Iowa, and I found details about these upcoming events there:

Edwards Town Hall Meeting

May 15, 2007 – 11:15 am

Des Moines Central Library

1000 Grand Ave., Des Moines, Iowa

If you plan to attend, go to this page where you will find a link to click to RSVP.

Or, you can RSVP by phone at 515-288-0766.

Update: Polk County Democrats have just sent out an e-mail saying that Tuesday’s town hall meeting is going to focus on “issues important to women.”

Second Update: Edwards campaign press release says the candidate will make “a significant new announcement about the organization and strength of the campaign in Iowa and discuss his detailed plans for improving the lives of women at work and at home.”

In other news, David Bonior, longtime congressman from Michigan who is Edwards’ campaign manager, will be in Dubuque on Thursday:

May 17, 2007 – 5:30 pm

Congressman Bonior will speak at the Dubuque County Democratic Party Hall of Fame Dinner

Happy’s Place

Rockdale Road

Dubuque, IA

If you can attend either of these events, please feel free to put up a diary afterwards. These first-person accounts are often more informative than the media coverage of the event.

This story is a couple of days old, but it’s still bugging me. An Orthodox Jewish U.S. Navy veteran says he has been repeatedly hassled by fundamentalist Christian chaplains and staff while being treated for kidney stones at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Iowa City.

David Miller is a former petty officer third class. He made the allegations at a press conference organized by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. Here’s a sample:

Miller, a divorced father with four sons, said his first two visits by chaplains involved attempts to convert him to Christianity. These visits occurred while he was suffering acute chest pains and was wired to a heart monitor, he said.

When he complained, he said a hospital official told him he simply needed to object more strenuously to terminate such proselytizing. Miller said he considered such a request to be ridiculous, considering his medical problems.

Over the past two years, Miller said, he has been asked over and over by the Iowa City VA medical center’s staff within its offices, clinics and wards, “You mean you don’t believe that Jesus is the Messiah?” and “Is it just Orthodox Jews who deny Jesus?” He said one staffer told him, “I don’t understand; how can you not believe in Jesus; he’s the Messiah of the Jews, too, you know.”

Click the link if you care to read more.

Now, as a Jew, I am generally not offended by proselytizers. I kind of wish they would spend their time and energy on something more constructive, like feeding the poor, but I figure that they are trying to do what they think is right, and they are doing me no harm.

When they approach me on the street or knock on my door, I usually politely decline their literature, saying that I am very comfortable with my faith.

In fact, the joke in my family is that my non-Jewish husband gets more offended by these people than I do. One time two missionaries showed up at our door offering me a copy of the Bible. I said thanks, but we already have our own Bible, prompting my husband to shout from another room, “And ours in is Hebrew!”

But proselytizing a patient in a VA hospital is a totally different story. This guy is ill and in pain, he can’t just walk away, and the chaplains are paid with tax dollars. If they feel their job is to convert non-Christians, then they should quit working for the VA. This guy served his country just like any Christian and deserves to be treated with some respect.

A chaplain working in the hospital who is an Assemblies of God minister declined to comment when contacted by the Des Moines Register.

A spokesman for the hospital said that administrators will look into Miller’s allegations, adding, “We will look into these concerns that Mr. Miller is talking about. The Iowa City VA respects the rights to religious beliefs for every patient. If they have a request for any kind of religious needs, we try to accommodate whatever those needs or beliefs might be.”

Here’s hoping the administrators will conduct a real investigation and make changes, if necessary.

I wasn’t a fan of Tommy Thompson as Health and Human Services secretary, and I didn’t think he stood out in the first GOP candidates’ debate. But I feel like defending him after reading Don’s post at Cyclone Conservatives about Thompson’s campaign stop in Le Mars on Thursday.

I always enjoy reading first-person accounts of campaign visits, so I appreciate Don’s efforts. However, I had to laugh when I read this:

Where I strongly disagreed with Thompson is when he talked about social security. He said that social security is not in crisis and that it isn’t headed for bankruptcy and seemed in suggest that anybody that says differently is lying. I actually was pretty unhappy by those comments and he seemed to think that just tweaking the current system would solve it. I couldn’t disagree more. This was the only downside to an otherwise steller event for Tommy.

This reminded me of a moment in Jon Tester’s debate with Senator Conrad Burns last year in Montana. Burns had what he clearly thought was a “gotcha” moment, noting that Tester agreed with his position on some policy (I think it was immigration, can’t remember).

Tester smiled and said something like, “Even a Republican can’t be wrong all the time.”

Tommy Thompson is of course correct that Social Security will be solvent for decades with only minor tweaking. Even two years ago when Bush’s big privatization push was in the news, Republicans were warning that trouble was looming for the Social Security trust fund as early as (gasp) 2037.

Notice that since Congress rejected privatization plans, you don’t hear Bush or anyone else warning about the looming Social Security “crisis.” It was primarily a PR ploy to bring about changes desired by Wall Street money managers and Republican ideologues who have never liked Social Security in the first place.

Medicare is where the real crisis awaits us, and Thompson surely understands this. In less than a decade we are going to have major problems funding Medicare, unless we make some big changes.

Bush and Congressional Republicans made matters worse by adding prescription drug benefits to Medicare while prohibiting Medicare from negotiating with pharmaceutical companies to lower drug costs (as the VA has done quite successfully).

Reading Don’s post, I felt sorry for Thompson. Here is he, mouthing almost every line conservatives demand to hear from their presidential candidates. Then he goes and makes them angry by speaking the truth on Social Security.

Just look at this anonymously posted comment under Don’s post:

If he can’t be straight with people about SS then he doesn’t deserve serious consideration. If he won’t call it the unworkable socialist Ponzi scheme that it is then Tommy can take that line of politician senior citizen panedering back to Wisconsin.

Voters of my generation aren’t buying that crap anymore. We know the score and we aren’t interested in being taxed to death paying for someone else’s retirement.

Never mind that the “unworkable socialist Ponzi scheme” has been functioning for many decades and is on track to keep working for decades longer.

Don and this anonymous commenter would do better to worry about the huge deficits that Bush and several Republican Congresses created with their unsustainable “tax cut and spend” policies. But no, they’ll stick with false GOP rhetoric suggesting that Social Security is the real fiscal problem facing the U.S.

I’ll be interested to see whether Thompson can get any traction in Iowa.

Greg Sargent had a great catch today at his TPM political blog Horse’s Mouth. He spotted an amazing article in the Journal-Eureka, based in Anamosa, Iowa (Jones County).

I would link to the original article, but the newspaper’s site appears to have crashed from all the attention Sargent’s piece generated.

Click through to read Sargent’s account, but here is the short version: Deb VonSprecken, who farms with her husband, donated to Giuliani and got a call from his campaign asking if they would host an event for him at their farm. They were excited and started preparing the event.

Then they were asked to call Giuliani’s campaign office in New York, where someone asked about their assets. They own a small farm. Afterwards, Tony Delgado at Giuliani’s Des Moines office allegedly told Deb VanSprecken, “I’m sorry, you aren’t worth a million dollars and he is campaigning on the Death Tax right now.”

The event was called off.

Sargent contacted Deb VonSprecken directly, and she confirmed the details of the story.

Great way to treat a supporter, Giuliani campaign staff! I hope you get hired by whoever does get the nomination (I can’t imagine that it could possibly be Rudy).

The new Bill Richardson “job interview” tv ads are the talk of the blogosphere today. If you haven’t viewed them yet, check them out at his campaign’s website.

Richardson used humor in some of his commercials when he was running for governor, so he’s apparently comfortable trying something out of the box.

I welcome the experiment, because I’ve long thought that humor is an underutilized weapon in political advertising.

The first “job interview” ad is going up on the air in Iowa. The second one has only been released online for now, and the campaign is soliciting feedback.

The merits of the ads were discussed at length in this packed thread at Daily Kos.

Over at Political Animal, Kevin Drum is unconvinced, saying the ads don’t address the problem of people having no idea where Richardson stands on the issues, but his commenters mostly disagree, saying the publicity will benefit Richardson when these ads “go viral.”

My undecided husband who is considering Richardson liked the first ad–funny and memorable. He didn’t think the second ad was effective as a way to communicate the high points of Richardson’s record. If this is any guide, the campaign was smart to hold off on running the second ad on tv for now. It will be interesting to see if they alter it significantly before airing.

They’ve got to do some kind of follow up, because the first “job interview” commercial ends with the words “to be continued” on the screen.

What do you think? Do these ads work? Or will they just attract a lot of attention without building support for Richardson?

John Edwards has put up his first television commercial in Iowa this cycle. The ad uses the same script as an ad his campaign put up in Washington, DC, last week, but it features Iowans speaking.

Noneed4thneed posted a youtube of the ad over at Century of the Common Iowan.

Meanwhile, Essential Estrogen liveblogged a media conference call with Edwards today. Click the link to read how he answered questions about the ad and his stand on Iraq generally.

If you’ve watched the ad, what did you think? I think it’s a good use of his money. Since he has campaigned so much in Iowa before, he has the luxury of not starting his advertising campaign with a biographical spot.

I’m late to the party, but I want to add my voice to those who detested the formats used in the first televised debates involving the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates. There were so many questions on so many different issues that it was hard to compare the candidates, and hard for them to answer any question in depth.

I thought most of the Democratic and Republican candidates did fairly well, given the dismal format. A particular tip of my hat goes to Ron Paul, who managed to project the most coherent ideological frame on the Republican side, despite the short amount of time he was given to speak.

How can these debates be improved? David Yepsen takes a stab at answering the question in his latest column, published in today’s Des Moines Register.

These are the points Yepsen makes that I agree with:

1. Hold fewer debates, and schedule them later in the season, when more people are paying attention.

2. Allow candidates to ask each other questions. (I think each candidate could be given one or two questions to ask any competitor.)

3. Limit the topics, so that each debate is focused on one issue area (e.g. foreign policy, economy, health care, environment).

4. Make the debates 2 hours instead of 90 minutes. With eight Democratic candidates and at least 10 Republican candidates, this makes sense.

5. Get better moderators. As Yepsen says,

Debates should be about the performance of the candidates, not the celebrity or actions of the moderator. Each candidate should be asked similar questions, and they should be kept short and simple.

Here’s where I disagree with Yepsen:

1. He wants to hold more radio debates so people will be less focused on how the candidates look. I would prefer debates to be televised and simultaneously broadcast on radio to reach the widest possible audience. Of course, if they do this it would help for the moderators not to ask questions beginning with, “Raise your hand if you think…”

2. He wants to allow opening or closing statements. He makes a valid point that candidates may be more responsive to questions if they know they will have a chance to state their top points in opening and closing statements.

However, I’m going to have to side with the majority of debate organizers who think these are a waste of time, especially with both parties’ fields as large as they are. I also think that candidates will continue to be non-responsive to some questions, because that’s a basic point of political communication: answer the question you want to answer, even if that’s not the question you were asked.

3. He wants to have separate debates for the top-tier candidates. If we had done this last cycle, Howard Dean probably never would have broken into the top tier.

Also, there may be a candidate who is top tier in some early states but not in others.

I think it’s a good thing to force the top tier candidates to make the case about why they are better than all the other alternatives. Let the viewers or listeners decide based on the full range of options.

4. Yepsen calls for using polls “to determine the issues people most want the next president to address, and then the candidates should be asked about those questions. Otherwise, moderators and candidates can easily get sidelined into the latest gaffe or news development in a campaign.”

But we don’t need to take a poll to know the important issues the next president will need to address. If the debate topic is health care, the important questions suggest themselves (covering the uninsured, reducing costs, providing prescription drug coverage, expanding preventive care, etc.). The same goes for the other big issue areas.

All we need is for moderators to show some intelligence and restraint.

Brian Williams and Chris Matthews both did poorly in selecting questions to ask, but that doesn’t mean that professional journalists couldn’t come up with better questions without relying on polls.

Take the poll, and elaborate on your opinion in the comments section if you like.

Take the poll, and elaborate on your opinion in the comments section if you like.

Now that the legislative session is over, it’s time to put up another set of these leadership polls.

Take the poll, and elaborate on your opinion in the comments section if you like.

I was for Ed Fallon in last year’s gubernatorial primary, and one big reason was Ed’s advocacy of an economic development strategy that did not rely on corporate welfare.

With that in mind, I was relieved that Chet Culver beat out Mike Blouin in the primary. Blouin in the governor’s mansion would have meant four more years of stressing the “Iowa Values Fund,” with exaggerated claims about the jobs created by the large corporations that got the money.

I was further reassured about Culver’s stance on economic development when he put Mike Tramontina in charge of the Iowa Department of Economic Development and called for a $1 million increase in funding for the the Main Street Iowa Program. The Main Street Program involves relatively small grants that help revitalize city and town centers.

The Iowa Senate reduced the budget increase for the Main Street Program to $500,000, and on the final day of the session the House Appropriations Committee further reduced that figure by another $100K. Still, we ended up with a $400,000 increase in funding for the Main Street Program, and I can’t imagine that would have happened under a Governor Blouin.

That said, Culver’s emphasis on the $100 million Power Fund to promote renewable energy did concern me. Not because I am against renewable energy, but because I feared that most of the money would go to subsidize ethanol and biodiesel at the expense of other technologies, such as wind, solar, and geothermal power. Culver has touted the economic benefits of the Power Fund mainly in connection with biofuels.

But this great letter to the editor published in the Des Moines Register’s Sunday edition indicates that the biofuels industry is not creating nearly as many jobs as we have been told.

The author of the letter is ISU economist David Swenson. He takes issue with the claims of the Renewable Fuels Association (RFA), a trade association promoting ethanol and biodiesel. Culver has claimed that the biofuels industry has created 53,000 jobs in Iowa, and it’s the RFA that has been pushing that number.

Swenson objects that this number is misleading because it includes 21,700 corn and soybean production jobs:

To claim that they were “created” is quite odd since they were already here. Biofuels does not “create” new farmers.

Also, that figure includes 22,300 temporary construction and related jobs (a very optimistic figure at best) and it treats those jobs as if they were part of the annual economy. They are temporary, and when this industry is fully deployed in its current corn-based manifestation, they will evaporate.

The true net gain in jobs to the state is likely somewhere less than 7,000 if we are simply auditing what is new to the Iowa economy during this decade and measuring those impacts with conventional economic impact procedures.

Investing in renewable technology makes sense for Iowa, but before we put all our eggs in the biofuels basket, we need a realistic idea about the economic benefits that industry brings to Iowa.

Thanks to Professor Swenson for reminding Register readers that we can’t take numbers produced by the RFA at face value.

I feel compelled to defend Chris Dodd after reading this post on Radio Iowa. (Hat tip Deeth).

Radio Iowa notes that Dodd keeps telling the same joke at every campaign stop about being the only guy in the race who gets mailings from both the AARP and diaper services. After seeing Dodd speak before a group of young Democrats, Radio Iowa had a chance to ask a question:

As Dodd was walking out of the restaurant where he had just given his 20-minute speech, followed by about 20 minutes of answering questions, I began asking about the joke.  “You always tell that joke about the AARP and diaper services,” I started.

“They hadn’t heard it,” Dodd quickly interrupted, referencing his noon-time audience.

“But I’m wondering how a guy tells a joke like that, obviously exhibiting that he has the coin for a diaper service, and how he squares that with his discussion of how the middle class is being pinched,” I continued.

“It was a joke,” Dodd said.  He laughed and walked away.

Cut the guy some slack–every candidate gives basically the same stump speech, including the same jokes, at every campaign stop.

I must have heard Chet Culver’s joke about his daughter and the letter-carriers’ endorsement half a dozen times last year. (Short version: Chet is tucking in his daughter, going through the bedtime ritual of talking about something nice that happened that day. Chet mentions that he got endorsed by the Letter-Carriers’ association. Daughter asks what that means. Chet says it means the people who deliver the mail are going to vote for him. Daughter asks, “Even the guy who delivers Nussle’s mail?”)

John Edwards has talked about being the son of a mill worker so many times that he added a joke to his stump speech about how the audience may have heard once that he is the son of a mill worker.

Now, if Radio Iowa’s complaint is that people in Iowa don’t use diaper services and can’t relate to the joke, that’s partly true, at least concerning young voters. As a mom of two kids in cloth diapers, I can confirm that there are no cloth diaper laundry services in Iowa (only some cloth diaper sellers, like this one and this one).

If Radio Iowa’s complaint is that someone who can afford a diaper service may seem out of touch with middle-class concerns, I disagree. People who remember the days of diaper services could tell you that they were affordable for middle-class families. It wasn’t a luxury service that only the wealthy used.

On the contrary, wealthier people were among the first to start using disposable diapers when they became more widely available in the 1960s. Plenty of parents from an older generation have told me that they couldn’t afford disposable diapers when their kids were babies.

But I digress. Please don’t hassle candidates for telling the same jokes over and over this year.

And if you’ve got babies or are planning to have babies in the future, be aware of the environmental and health benefits, not to mention the cost savings, of using cloth diapers. If you want to learn more, click here for the Real Diaper Association website.

Or, if you live in central Iowa, e-mail me at desmoinesdem AT yahoo.com and I will tell you when and where the monthly “cloth diaper crowd” meets.

I already posted information about Biden’s town hall meeting in Ankeny this morning, Here are more details about his scheduled appearances in Iowa over the next couple of days:

Saturday, May 5

10:30 AM  SEN. BIDEN TO HOLD IRAQ TOWN HALL MEETING WITH ANKENY AREA DEMOCRATS

  Ankeny Area Historical Society
  301 SW Third Street

  Ankeny, IA

1:30 PM   SEN. BIDEN TO ATTEND HOUSE PARTY IN FRANKLIN COUNTY

  Home of Mildred and Ben van Hove
  121 Windsor Boulevard

  Hampton, IA

4:30 PM   SEN. BIDEN TO ADDRESS IOWA BROADCAST NEWS ASSOCIATION’S SPRING CONVENTION

  Best Western Holiday Lodge

  2023 7th Ave. North

  Clear Lake, IA

7:00 PM   SEN. BIDEN TO HOLD IRAQ TOWN HALL MEETING IN CERRO GORDO COUNTY

  Borealis Gourmet Ice Cream Palace
  316 North Federal Ave

  Mason City, IA

Sunday May 6, 2007

12:00PM  SEN. BIDEN WILL ATTEND A HOUSE PARTY FUNDRAISER WITH STATE SEN. JEFF DANIELSON 
  IN BLACK HAWK COUNTY

  Home of Nick Powers

  3335 Santa Maria

  Waterloo, IA

2:30 PM  SEN. BIDEN TO HOLD IRAQ TOWN HALL MEETING WITH STATE SEN. BRIAN SCHOENJAHN AND  FAYETTE COUNTY DEMOCRATS

  Dancing Lions Dance Hall

  110 S. Fredrick

  Oelwein, IA

5:30 PM  SEN. BIDEN TO HOLD IRAQ TOWN HALL MEETING IN LINN COUNTY

  Longbranch Hotel

  90 Twixt Town Road
  Cedar Rapids, IA

Monday May 7, 2007

6:15 PM  SEN. JOE BIDEN TO ATTEND BBQ DINNER HOSTED BY STATE SEN. JOE SENG

  Home of State Sen. Joe Seng

  901 Treemont

  Davenport, IA

If you attend any of these events, please consider putting up a diary afterwards with your impressions, or just attach your thoughts to the comments section below this post.

The Des Moines Register reported on Friday that Florida’s decision to move its primary to January 29 (the same date that the South Carolina primary is scheduled) may prompt New Hampshire to schedule its primary a week earlier.

Since Iowa and New Hampshire have agreed that the Iowa caucuses will be held eight days before the New Hampshire primary, that means the caucuses would be held on January 7, instead of on January 14 as tentatively scheduled.

As a precinct captain, I hope that this does not happen. You can’t do any serious GOTV work during the week between Christmas and New Year’s. People will be returning home on January 1 or 2, or going back to work, or recovering from holiday stress. It’s a hectic time, and I don’t imagine it being a time that people would welcome phone calls or door knocks from volunteers trying to get them to vote.

My husband pointed out that very few college students would be back in time for the Iowa caucuses if they were held on January 7. That’s got to be bad news for Barack Obama, but possibly also for John Edwards, since he is likely to have strong support on college campuses as well (I expect Ed Fallon to help his campaign with this crowd).

Of course, even on January 14 there may be quite a few college students who are not back from their winter breaks.

I’m sympathetic to Chris Bowers of MyDD, who has advocated this calendar instead:

December 10th (Monday): Iowa

December 18th (Tuesday): New Hampshire

January 19th (Saturday): Nevada

January 29th (Tuesday): South Carolina, Florida, Michigan

February 5th (Tuesday) National Primary

He sees the advantages as follows:

New Hampshire and Iowa placated. They still get to go first–in fact, they get to go a lot earlier relative to other states in the current calendar. There is no way any state moves into a window that includes the holidays.

New Hampshire and Iowa reduced. The two “traditional” states will take place so much earlier than any other state, that whatever “momentum” candidates derive from those states will be significantly muted over five weeks later.

Diverse groups play important, early role. Nevada, South Carolina, Florida and Michigan will effectively function as a second set of early contests to immediately precede Super Tuesday. This will allow for significant, early state voting representation for African-Americans, Latinos, union members, Jews, and ever region of the country.

Frontloading significantly eased. In this calendar, the primary / caucus season lasts for fifty-eight days, instead of twenty-three. This will give voters more time to decide, and give candidates more time to build up a national operation. In 2004, Kerry was severely lacking in nationwide staff after his early victories, including in states like Ohio and Florida, and this deficit might have cost him the election. At the same time, the primary season was over pretty much the same day it began in 2004, but with this calendar, from the start of the campaign until Super Tuesday voters would have a lot more time to make up their minds.

Almost everyone gets a voice: The national primary on February 5th will give more people a real say in determining the nominee than at any nomination process in two decades.

Nominee still decided early. With nine months between Super Tuesday and Election Day, there is plenty of time to rally around the eventually nominee.

This has a lot going for it, except that I wouldn’t look forward to working my precinct right after Thanksgiving. People get so busy in December with shopping, holiday parties, kids’ programs and recitals. I think it would be even harder to talk marginal voters into coming out for an hour on a Monday night.

It’s too late to fix this cycle, and perhaps Iowa will never get to go first again, so it won’t matter. But I would support pushing the start of the primary season way back to mid-February, like it used to be in the 1980s. I don’t like the idea of holding the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary during or shortly after the holiday season.

It’s not Iowa political news, but since all of us here use computers, I thought this Greenpeace campaign would be of interest to the community.

Greenpeace has been ranking mobile and personal computer manufacturers on “on their global policies and practice on eliminating harmful chemicals and on taking responsibility for their products once they are discarded by consumers.”

Click through to read more details about the criteria Greenpeace uses for their rankings. The idea is to get the corporations to remove the most toxic chemicals, such as PVC, from their products:

Substituting harmful chemicals in the production of electronics will prevent worker exposure to these substances and contamination of communities that neighbor production facilities. Eliminating harmful substances will also prevent leaching/off-gassing of chemicals like brominated flame retardants (BFR) during use, and enable electronic scrap to be safely recycled. The presence of toxic substances in electronics perpetuates the toxic cycle – during reprocessing of electronic waste and by using contaminated secondary materials to make new products.

After hearing from 20,000 people, Apple became the first company to respond to the Greenpeace campaign, announcing plans this week to produce a “greener” Apple:

Apple has declared a phase out of the worst chemicals in its product range, Brominated Fire Retardants (BFRs) and Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) by 2008. That beats Dell and other computer manufacturer’s pledge to phase them out by 2009.

Click through for more information; Apple could still do much more to promote recycling of the company’s products, especially outside the U.S.

If you want to join this Powerbook user in taking action on this issue, or if you want to learn more about Greenpeace’s online campaigns, click here.

I got an e-mail from the central Iowa chapter of the Sierra Club publicizing several upcoming volunteer opportunities, nature hikes and other events.

Join me after the jump if you care to learn more.

We don’t turn on the tv until after kids are in bed, so I’ll need to watch later.

Who screwed up?

Who did well?

Who scared you?

Who made you roll on the floor laughing?

Updated with more information about Chris Dodd’s campaign events.

Friday, May 4

8:30am  Ottumwa Community Kitchen Table
  Location: Riverside Family Restaurant
  1317 E. Mary Street

  Ottumwa

12:00 Noon   Mt. Pleasant Community Kitchen Table
  Location: Hy-Vee Lunch Counter
  1700 E. Washington

  Mt. Pleasant

2:30pm  Tour of the Tri-City Energy Biodiesel Plant
  With Mayor David Gudgel

  Location: Tri-City Energy
  410 Johnson Street

  Keokuk

5:30pm   Jobs and Energy Town Hall Meeting
  Location: Iowa Hotel
  Common Room

  401 Main Street
  Keokuk

Saturday, May 5

9:00am   Burlington Community Kitchen Table
  With Senator Tom Courtney
  Location: Laura’s Restaurant and Dairy Bar
  1717 Summer Street

  Burlington

12:00 noon  Cinco de Mayo Celebration
  Location: Ron-De-Voo Park
  Third Street (Downtown)

  West Liberty

1:15pm   Renewable Energy Town Hall
  Location: Hoover House
  102 W. Main Street

  West Branch

4:15pm   Meet & Greet
  With Representative Nate Reichert
  Location: Strawberry Farm Bed & Breakfast
  3402 Tipton Road

  Muscatine

A while back I linked to noneed4thneed’s call for people to ask the candidates where they stand on permanent bases in Iraq.

Tim Tagaris of the Dodd campaign sent me this link, which contains a write-up from an interview with Dodd, as well as an audio link. Dodd is firmly against permanent bases in Iraq.

So if you get a chance to ask him a question this weekend, you might want to focus on a different issue.

John Deeth says he will probably cover one of Dodd’s events.

If you are able to attend any of them as well, please put up a diary afterwards. First-person accounts are always interesting.

Just got this e-mail from the Biden campaign.

Town Hall on Iraq with Senator Joe Biden

Senator Biden will be making his fifth trip to Iowa since announcing his candidacy for President in January, and as part of this trip he’s coming to Ankeny this Saturday, May 5th for a Town Hall with local Democrats. All of the details are below, and hopefully you will be able to attend.

Senator Biden Attends an Iraq Town Hall

Hosted by the Ankeny Area Democrats

Saturday, May 5, 2007

10:30am-11:45am (Doors Open at 10:00am)

Ankeny Historical Society, (515) 965-5795

301 SW Third Street, Ankeny

They’d like RSVPs either by phone to Gary Schmidt, (515) 333-4184 or by e-mail to TimEmrich AT JoeBiden.com.

If you live near Ankeny and can attend this event, please put up a diary afterwards. My Saturday is packed already.