John Edwards is doing a grass roots fundraiser tonight in San Jose. Tickets are $15. In the invitation, they rightly state that you shouldn’t have to pay $2500 to get to meet a presidential candidate and that this sort of thing shouldn’t be reserved for the sliver of our country with nine digit paychecks. I agree. I just wish the damn thing were at 6:00 or 7:00. You shouldn’t have to be a stay at home person or someone who can set their own hours to meet a presidential candidate either. The fundraiser is from 5:00 to 6:00pm. With freeway traffic being what it is down here, the likelihood that I could get out of work at 5:00 and even make it down there, get parked, and get inside before 6:00 is pretty tiny.

is threatening migratory birds. Warmer winters, shrinking wetlands, and less predictable weather is making it hard for migratory birds to find sources of food and threatens their population levels.

An interesting article at USA Election Polls shows that John Edwards’ numbers nearly double in the south if Al Gore is left out of polls. A lot of the folks currently holding out for a Gore candidacy will support Edwards if Gore stays out. The biggest effect is in the south, but Edwards gets a significant boost nationwide if Gore is left out of the polls. Edwards is probably the Democrats best shot at winning in the south. As we’ve seen in the last four presidential elections, Democrats need to take some southern states in order to win the presidency.

I’ll go one further than what I’m seeing in the polls so far. Let’s be blunt for a second. John Edwards is the leading white male candidate among the Democrats and he’s running for a job that’s only ever been won by white males. I think it’s a fair question to wonder how much of Hillary Clinton’s support and (perhaps especially) Barack Obama’s support in polls comes from people who think it sounds good to tell a pollster they’d vote for a woman or an african american, but who won’t do it when it comes time to pull that lever.

I now have to admit to having an iota of respect for John Ashcroft.

There’s a new study in the peer reviewed journal Climate Change that is predicting far hotter summers for the eastern U.S. in future decades. Discovery News has a good article that summarizes it. This study is under debate, but the premise behind it is that current models overestimate the number of rainy days we’ll have in the eastern U.S. as the planet warms. Rainy, cloudy days aren’t as hot. More dry days will bring hotter average temps and unbearably hot temps on the really hot days.

I have nothing more than my gut instinct to back this up, but I think John Edwards is Howard Dean’s candidate. I need to start finding a way to pay closer attention to things that may back this up. Edwards has certainly taken up a lot of the Dean 2004 campaign’s issues, the most high visibility one being Edwards’ stance as the most full throttle anti-war candidate in the top tier or even the top two tiers. The style and feel of this campaign and the way it is trying to create a community is very different from Edwards in 2004 and very similar to Dean’s. Lastly, Howard Dean took his campaign lists and used it to form a new organization in 2004 called Democracy For America. When Dean took the job as Chairman of the DNC, his brother took over DFA. Although they’re careful to stay neutral this far out, the DFA people seem to be very keen on Edwards.

If you haven’t seen Bill Moyers’ new program yet, here’s a great place to start: he does a 30 minute sit down interview with Jon Stewart.

“Giuliani says Iranians took one look at Reagan and released the hostages.”

I was asked about that one. Giuliani kept harping on the same couple of themes that slit talks about in this post. Any question that could be tied back to Iraq or the um, what are we calling it now, the global struggle against islamic radicalism, had Rudy going on about how electing a Democrat would put us on the defensive, make us weak, etc, etc. I believe that specific comment was in the context of saying that we need a president who will project strength and who can give the Clint Eastwood eyes to the bad guys and make them pee their pants. He was essentially repeating the myth that the Reagan administration perpetrated during its tenure that Iran agreed to give back our hostages in January of 1981 because they were afraid that tough guy Ron would kick their asses. The implication is that our own strutting little five borough fascist would be the best guy to scare the world’s terrorists from messing with us, but if it couldn’t be him, then it had to be a Republican because all the Democrats are effete little pansies whose very weakness would invite an attack.

I didn’t exactly liveblog the Republican debate, but I did make occasional notes as I watched it. Here they are. If you want me to expand on any of them, let me know here or in the comments at the Livejournal RSS feed.

Tom Tancredo says any threat to the existence of Israel is a threat to the existence of the US.

Giuliani says Iranians took one look at Reagan and released the hostages.

Jim Gilmore says that during the Cold War, the US represented the aspirations of peoples throughout the world.

Tancredo is a nutball. When asked about shortage or organs for donation, immediately jumped to talking about how we shouldn’t be cloning or growing organs for donation.

Giuliani flubs “roe v. wade” overturned question

Ron Paul is one of the least articulate libertarians out there.

Tommy Thompson in favor of letting business owners fire gays over “morality”.

Gilmore wouldn’t answer whether or not he’d keep Rove in the white house.

Giuliani implies that current estate tax creates some kind of incentive in year 2010 when the tax is 0% and goes up to 55% in 2011.

Three of the Republican candidates don’t believe in evolution.

Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney are most impressive speakers of the bunch. McCain, Giuliani least impressive.

McCain proud to have Alito & Roberts on the Supreme Court.

Giuliani seems shrill, one note.

This article suggests that we have underestimated the ability of plants and the ocean to soak up carbon. You know that talk about “carbon sinks”? Yeah, not so much. By 2100, the planet could be nearly 3 degrees (F) hotter than most of the predictions we’ve been hearing in recent years.