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A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
Yesterday before a mixed crowd of college students and community members at Ashford University in Clinton, presidential candidate Barack Obama read from a foreign policy speech that calls for an immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq to be completed by the end of next year.
During his “Comprehensive Plan to Turn the Page in Iraq,” the senator from Illinois mentioned President Bush many times. The speech outlined “a surge in diplomacy with all of the nations of the region” to confront mounting humanitarian disasters in Iraq, something he said Bush was unwilling to do.
He went off-script to repudiate the testimonies of Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker before the Senate this week. “We are at the same level of violence now that we were in June 2006. That is the improvement that has been made after an additional 30,000 troops and billion dollars have been spent in Iraq … there may not be immediate, constant warfare on the streets of Baghdad but nobody believes that the dynamics of sectarianism have changed there.”
Another impromptu moment came during his call for more money to aid displaced Iraqis. When one man in the audience demanded attention for global AIDS funding, the senator finished reading his line and then patiently reminded the man, “We’re not talking about global AIDS today, we’re talking about Iraq.”
Near the end of his speech, Obama added “global AIDS” to a list of challenges that could be met, “when we end this war in Iraq.”
In this two-minute video, Obama talks about some of the details of his plan to “Turn the Page” (below the fold).
The Illinois Senator was introduced by Zbigniew Brzezinski, a foreign policy analyst and former U.S. national security adviserr. The event began with a speech from Iraq War veteran John Melvin.
Obama continued his campaign day in Davenport and will speak at Tom Harkin’s Steak Fry Fundraiser on Sunday.
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