Top Stories

Open letter to readers: Today and tomorrow

By Lynda Waddington | 11.17.11

Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.

ACS lockout continues; plan emerges to repeal sugar protections

crystal_sugar_80
By Virginia Chamlee | 11.15.11

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.

Cain campaign: Farmers know more about regulations than EPA

hermancain_80x80
By Andrew Duffelmeyer | 11.15.11

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.

Mathis wins, Democrats maintain Senate control

Liz Mathis
By Lynda Waddington | 11.08.11

The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.

Press Release

PR: Nation should work to address veterans’ challenges

By Press Release Reprints | 11.11.11

BRUCE BRALEY RELEASE — As US involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan ends, it’s more important than ever that our nation works to address the challenges faced by the men and women who fought there.

PR: Honoring veterans, help in hiring

By Press Release Reprints | 11.11.11

CHUCK GRASSLEY RELEASE — A difficult job market is challenging the soldiers, sailors and airmen who have protected America’s interests by serving in the Armed Forces.

PR: In honor of America’s veterans

By Press Release Reprints | 11.11.11

TOM LATHAM RELEASE — No one has done more to secure the freedom enjoyed by every single American than our veterans and those currently serving in the armed services.

PR: Honoring and supporting our nation’s veterans

By Press Release Reprints | 11.11.11

DAVE LOEBSACK RELEASE — Veterans Day is an opportunity to reflect on the service of generations of veterans and to honor the sacrifices they and their families have made so that we may live in peace and freedom here at home.

King doesn’t trust Obama because of his upbringing

By Douglas Burns | 10.29.08 | 2:10 pm

Saying he is “uneasy” about Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s background, U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, speaking in Spencer said a baby being groomed for national leadership should grow up like George W. Bush, not Obama.

At the Spencer event in August, of which a video is available from Think Progress, King talked about how the Bush family is a better model than Obama’s. (The video was just posted on YouTube Oct. 26.)

“I look at this and I ask myself, if I had a baby and my charge was to raise that baby to be the president of the United States, I could see handing that baby over to, let me say, George Herbert Walker Bush and Barbara, because there is multiple generations of American service there,” King said. “They must know how to do something. Look at how their kids have succeeded.”

King said there is much to learn from the Bush family.

“This is the way that we should raise future generations of children,” King said.

King said he has read some of Obama’s writings and is “uneasy” about his background. He then made a creepy reference to “briefings” King said he received about Obama.

“I have received briefings on the life of Obama,” King said.

Comments

  • Netter

    We can only hope this man, whom we really don't know very well, is what he is CURRENTLY claiming to be. My gut tells me not to trust Obama's leadership. My head tells me, we'd have the right checks and balances in place to head the totalitarian extreme off at the pass. I would find much more comfort in Barack's leadership if we didn't have Pelosi, Franks, and other misguided Dems filling the Congress with their form of extremism and contribution to our economic vulnerabilities. We need CHECKS AND BALANCES. It really bothers me that our FBI would not give clearance for an agent with Obama's past. Yet we will adopt him into our American republic to govern as President – he has so little invested in American heritage compared to McCain. Dear Citizens, vote with your heart AND mind. Keep your emotions in check! Let's come back to Obama when the time is right?!

  • Netter

    Imagine, a politician with an 'undisciplined mouth'? Hmmmm…..wonder where we've seen THAT before? Oh, that's right—Senator Joe Biden!

  • Netter

    The antithesis of Obama's educational justice for our black citizenry is this:
    “Political issues are a distraction,” he says, “from personal, psychological issues—things that happen in our households.” The problems of his community are “not about racism,” he insists. “They are about deep emotional deficits. Our young men are growing up dysfunctional, and instead of trying to help them, we blame white people. We champion the problem and call it a virtue. If you're not angry or psychotic, you're denying your blackness.”
    http://www.city-journal.org/html/5_3_a1.html

    Instead, Obama's values and yes, upbringing, have led him onto the Annenburg path, where young blacks are 're-educated' using:
    “Rites of Passage
    To learn what the rites of passage movement was all about, we can turn to a sympathetic 1992 study published in the Journal of Negro Education by Nsenga Warfield-Coppock. In that article, Warfield-Coppock bemoans the fact that public education in the United States is shaped by “capitalism, competitiveness, racism, sexism and oppression.” According to Warfield-Coppock, these American values “have confused African American people and oriented them toward American definitions of achievement and success and away from traditional African values.” American socialization has “proven to be dysfuntional and genocidal to the African American community,” Warfield-Coppock tells us. The answer is the adolescent rites of passage movement, designed “to provide African American youth with the cultural information and values they would need to counter the potentially detrimental effects of a Eurocentrically oriented society.”

    The adolescent rites of passage movement that flowered in the 1990s grew out of the “cultural nationalist” or “Pan-African” thinking popular in radical black circles of the 1960s and 1970s.” — Wright 101, S.Kurtz

  • 10judykading10

    I can't imagine King thinking that there is only ONE way to raise a child to become a public servant! The Bush family is extremely wealthy. Are we to assume from King's comments that the only people capable of serving in public office are the elite of our country??? President George Bush had serious alcohol problems until his late '30's when he became a born again Christian. I hardly think that alcoholism and seeking treatment, religious or otherwise, are necessary for a president of the USA.

    This assertion is similar to most of what I hear from King. He combines stereotypical thinking with prejudicial remarks and passes it off as an absolute truth because he said it!

  • primus

    King is a Nutjob and a disgrace to Iowans,He is a racist pile of Cowdung.

  • Swami_Binkinanda

    Now who is the elitist party? King Dingdong, apparently.
    AS for checks and balances, they didn't stop George W. Bush and Dick Cheney from building their own international gulag, where the president can designate anyone an enemy combatant based on nothing-no facts, no court judgement, no habeas corpus, no right to respond. Abolishing the first and fourth amendments. And the American Taliban supports the right wing anti-law party because they are committed to a perverse anti-Christian version of the bible that relies heavily on Old Testament Law and rejects the forgiveness, equality, and love of Jesus, in essence rejecting him as the Christ. Who will you follow? The old tyranny dressed in 150,000 of new clothes, or a humble man of the people who has risen above his station and chosen not the path of wealth, but of service? Obama is the answer. McCain is the status quo, a suicide note for American democracy and rule of law.

  • andrewwang

    Speaking of George Herbert Walker Bush:

    What if basically all racial-minority people would subscribe to the interpretations that George Herbert Walker Bush committed monstrous, racist, hate crimes while he was the President of the United States?

    It will eventually come out: it is only a matter of time.

    Respectfully Submitted by Andrew Yu-Jen Wang, J.D. Candidate
    B.S., Summa Cum Laude, 1996
    Messiah College, Grantham, PA
    Lower Merion High School, Ardmore, PA, 1993

    (I can type 90 words per minute, and there are thousands of copies on the Internet indicating the content of this post. And there are at least hundreds of copies in very many countries around the world.)
    _________________
    “If only it were possible to ban invention that bottled up memories so they never got stale and faded.” Off the top of my head—it came from my Lower Merion High School yearbook.

  • andrewwang

    Speaking of George Herbert Walker Bush:

    What if basically all racial-minority people would subscribe to the interpretations that George Herbert Walker Bush committed monstrous, racist, hate crimes while he was the President of the United States?

    It will eventually come out: it is only a matter of time.

    Respectfully Submitted by Andrew Yu-Jen Wang, J.D. Candidate
    B.S., Summa Cum Laude, 1996
    Messiah College, Grantham, PA
    Lower Merion High School, Ardmore, PA, 1993

    (I can type 90 words per minute, and there are thousands of copies on the Internet indicating the content of this post. And there are at least hundreds of copies in very many countries around the world.)
    _________________
    “If only it were possible to ban invention that bottled up memories so they never got stale and faded.” Off the top of my head—it came from my Lower Merion High School yearbook.

  • andrewwang

    The user deleted this comment.

  • andrewwang

    The user deleted this comment.

  • Guest

    The user deleted this comment.

  • Guest

    The user deleted this comment.

Switch to our mobile site