Newscoma

An early birthday present to me from Jeffraham Prestonian.

Bigfoot, zombies, Batboy, Bigfoot and an alien autopsy all being overseen by Larry Elvis. What a GREAT gift.

Thanks, JP. I LOVE IT!

Now run that cat for president.

Across the stateline, as Hooterville sits right on the Kentucky border, an interesting grassroots effort is occurring.

Grassroots efforts by a 24-year old activist in Western Kentucky has proven a huge coup in landing democratic presidential candidate John Edwards’s giving Columbus Belmont Park in Hickman County a visit by the former senator and vice-presidential hopeful from 2004.
Shawn Dixon told “Wired” Magazine the reason why he helped coordinate the effort was that he wanted rural voters to have a voice and to be “engaged” in the political debate.

Dixon used the social networking platform on Eventful to rally a town of 229 people to win a contest to bring John Edwards to their community. Edwards held a contest called “Demand to be Heard” and Columbus actually logged in more votes than Los Angeles, Denver, Dallas and San Francisco.

Here’s why Dixon is pretty cool. He lead this charge by mobilizing all of Western Kentucky. A student at New York University School of Law, he grew up in Columbus.

His objective: “the needs of rural America.”

He said to Wired:

On Eventful, Dixon described his hometown this way: “Columbus, Kentucky is a small town in Western Kentucky that boasts a population of 229 people and is about a 50-minute drive from the closest McDonalds. Like many rural communities across the south, job loss in the face of rising healthcare costs and education costs have crippled the economy.”

A visit from Edwards would provide a rare opportunity to highlight important issues facing rural America, he wrote.

“We want to see John Edwards come to real rural America and address the problems we face and hear his plan for revitalizing small American communities like ours!” he wrote on this Eventful post.

So Edwards will be at the park on Thursday.  Yeah, it’s a tour stop and political spin, I’m not naive, but it still neat to see that grassroots efforts can still be effective.

And yeah, there’s free barbecue. Welcome to small-town America, which sometimes isn’t so bad.

But here is the thing that has got me thinking the most. Social networking campaigns brought a presidential candidate to a small town. We are talking really small town.

And, it also makes you look at the value of social networks and puts a greater value on them, in my opinion.

To quote the guru and voice of my generation, Ferris Bueller: Life goes by pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. 

Congressman John Tanner’s bill will be voted on the House floor sometime day. It will also be televised on CSPAN.

Here’s the release:

Congressman John Tanner’s bipartisan bill on Iraq is scheduled to be debated and voted on in the full House of Representatives Tuesday evening.

 

H.R. 3087 requires the Administration to report to Congress within 60 days on the status of its planning for redeployment of U.S. troops in Iraq, and then update Congress every 90 days thereafter.

 

“We can no longer approach the discussion on Iraq as a partisan issue,” Tanner said. “Our soldiers, sailors, Marines, airmen and Guardsmen aren’t fighting as Democrats or Republicans but as Americans. It is time we work together as a Congress to engage in oversight of the Administration’s plans for what comes next in Iraq.”

 The bill is here for your perusal.

Of course, this isn’t a withdrawal bill, but more of an oversight plan on structured strategy for deployment.

Wonder how it will go.