Campus protests are hugely impactful

Posted on May 3, 2024 by Ed Fallon

In my view, the campus protests are historic and will profoundly impact both policy and politics. Already, officials at three universities — Brown, Northwestern, and Minnesota — have agreed to address students’ demands to divest funds from businesses enabling Israel’s annihilation of Gaza.

This enlightened response represents a stark contrast to what’s transpired at Columbia, UCLA, and many other universities — where heavy-handed intervention by law enforcement has resulted in over 2,000 arrests.

Politically, though Democrats want me and other honest commentators to shut-up, the protests are hurting President Biden’s reelection prospects. Badly. If the administration insists on staying its course of lip-service criticism while funding the war, Biden will lose in November.

Democrats need to learn from 1968, when in response to the Party’s support for the Vietnam War, Richard Nixon was elected president in a landslide and Republicans picked up seats in both the US House and Senate.

It’s not too late for Biden to do the right thing… Continue Reading →

Addressing the housing crunch

Posted on April 25, 2024 by Ed Fallon

Last week, I cleaned our chicken coop. It was a dirty, dry, dusty deal. An intelligent person would have worn a mask. Me, I chose to land a sinus infection.

Why am I telling you this? I barely had enough voice to manage two segments of this week’s program. Thus, the other two segments are reruns: conversations about walking across the Mojave Desert, and why America needs another coast-to-coast march to address the twin perils of climate change and nuclear war.

I was glad to have architect Mark Clipsham as my guest during the first segment of this week’s program. One reason: It’s easy to get Mark to do most of the talking. That gave my voice a bit of a break. Continue Reading →

Flawed study claims urban ag bad for planet

Posted on April 18, 2024 by Ed Fallon

Did you know that growing food in cities is more damaging to the climate than industrial farming? Six times worse, in fact!

That’s the absurd conclusion advanced in a recent study — and promoted by the mainstream media. So, city folk, quit trying to feed yourselves. You’re destroying the planet. If you gave an actual dang, you’d drive to Walmart for your trucked-in fruits, veggies, eggs, and meat.

THE STUDY. “Comparing the carbon footprints of urban and conventional agriculture” was funded by Springer Nature (more on them in a bit). It purports to compare the carbon footprints of urban agriculture and conventional agriculture.

WHAT’S “URBAN AGRICULTURE?” The study defines three types of urban agriculture: “urban farms (professionally managed, focused on food production), individual gardens (small plots managed by single gardeners) and collective gardens (communal spaces managed by groups of gardeners).”

The study examined 73 operations in the US and Europe. Apparently, only the first type is considered food production. I guess we home gardeners are just in it for entertainment.

WHAT’S A “CONVENTIONAL FARM?” Who knows! Incredibly, the authors never provide a definition. If by “conventional” they mean big and industrial, then we’re talking about all kinds of heavy machinery, tiling, confinement buildings, lots of energy to heat and cool buildings, massive lagoons for manure storage, society’s cost to clean up any messes, etc. No carbon footprint there, folks. Continue Reading →

Biden will lose if he fails to stop the genocide in Gaza

Posted on April 12, 2024 by Ed Fallon

Given the Israeli military’s atrocities against a civilian population and the mounting presence of widespread starvation, why won’t President Biden freeze military aid to Gaza? Great question. Let’s dig into it.

First, just how bad are things? Dr. Fozia Alvi, a Canadian physician who’s treated Palestinian children in southern Gaza, said, “This is not a normal war. The war in Ukraine has killed 500 kids in two years and the war in Gaza has killed over 10,000 in less than five months. We have seen wars before but this is something that is a dark stain on our shared humanity.”

On March 18, an Oxfam official reported that “the catastrophic levels of hunger and starvation in Gaza are the highest ever recorded in terms of number of people and percentage of the population.”

These horrifying truths make the words of Congressman Tim Walberg (R-MI) even more appalling: “We shouldn’t be spending a dime on humanitarian aid. It should be like Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Get it over quick.” Continue Reading →

Repealing hard-earned rights: How far will Republicans go?

Posted on April 4, 2024 by Ed Fallon

It’s heart-wrenching to see the governor and Republican lawmakers target the LGBTQ community with a barrage of hurtful legislative proposals — some blatantly biased, others more subtle. It’s encouraging to see most Democrats, some Republicans, and a lot of rank-and-file Iowans speak out against these proposals.

One such bill just signed by Governor Reynolds is the so-called “Religious Freedom Restoration Act.” Really? Show me where there’s been a loss of religious freedom in America. I’m waiting. Tap, tap, tap.

So, what’s this bill really about?

As Heather Matson (D-Ankeny) points out, the bill “weaponizes religious beliefs to justify discrimination.”

No doubt. My deeper concern is that this bill, and others of its ilk, are part of an effort to establish a theocracy in America. Nothing could be more antithetical to the founding principles of our country than a government of, by, and for “the church” — meaning the narrowest, most biased interpretation of what it means to be Christian.
Continue Reading →

Republican hypocrisy on local control

Posted on March 29, 2024 by Ed Fallon

One blatant lie that has persisted for decades is that Republicans support local control. Even a casual glance at the track record makes it clear Republicans only support local control when it aligns with their big-business/Christian-nationalist agenda.

That’s why, in the 1990s, when Iowa City required lawn care companies to inform neighboring properties in advance of a chemical application, Republicans rushed to defend the chemical industry by passing a bill taking away this right.

That’s why, also in the 1990s, when big national mobile home companies complained about cities requiring parks to build a storm shelter, Republicans passed a bill stopping them — immediately after a tornado killed eleven people in a mobile home park in Oklahoma City.

Maybe an Iowa county or city wants to ban plastic bags, as over 500 cities across the US have done? Too bad. In 2017, then-governor Branstad signed legislation outlawing it.

That same year, after four Iowa counties enacted living wage ordinances, Republican lawmakers came to the aid of big business and took away a city or county’s authority to do so.

Managing erosion from construction sites. Siting of hog confinements. Use of traffic cameras. Where fireworks can be sold. How libraries are funded. These are just a few of the many, many local government functions that Iowa Republican lawmakers have struck down or proposed to strike down. Continue Reading →

Why I got thrown out of an Irish pub

Posted on March 22, 2024 by Ed Fallon

About being tossed out of a pub … It was 1979, and I was living with my uncle on our family’s farm in County Roscommon. I needed a break from haymaking and cutting turf, so I hitch-hiked to Roscrea in County Tipperary to spend some time at Mount Saint Joseph Abbey.

There, I met two lads from the North — Jerry Ward and Jerry McGurk. McGurk was a survivor of the horrific Ulster Volunteer Force’s bombing of his family’s pub, which killed his mother, sister, and thirteen others.

The other Jerry was, well, a bit unstable. Ward saw himself as one called to reunite the Protestant and Catholic communities in the war-torn North — a noble goal, but one accompanied by delusional tactics.

The three of us had many a great talk during our time at the Abbey. Toward the end of my stay, we decided a trip to one of Roscrea’s pubs was in order. There, we enjoyed a rollicking, boisterous time chatting it up with other lads in the back of the pub. Continue Reading →

Honey, I froze the kids!

Posted on March 14, 2024 by Ed Fallon

Regarding our conversation at the 20:50 mark, Charles says: In light of the Alabama Supreme Court decision regarding frozen embryos as “extra-uterine children,” commentators at publications such as the Washington Examiner, Epoch Times, and National Review rushed to flatly state that “life begins at conception.”

In the recent Alabama Supreme Court endorsement of fetal personhood, we were treated to a treatise on the topic based on those well-known scientific tomes: the Old and New testaments. Even though Republicans are quickly abandoning efforts to ban in vitro fertilization (IVF) in an election year, undoubtedly they’ll be back at their misogynistic program once they’re past this November’s voting. Let’s take a look at what fetal personhood would look like when it’s revisited in the near future. Continue Reading →

Are Americans mean?

Posted on February 29, 2024 by Ed Fallon

But let’s talk about mean people. On this week’s program, Charles and I discuss David Brooks’ column, “How America Became Mean.” It’s an extensive, thoughtful ramble — over 6,500 words — and appeared in The Atlantic last September.

Brooks points out various contributors to America’s plague of meanness. Social media. Personal isolation. Shifting demographics. Economic inequality.

But that’s not the main cause, he insists: “We inhabit a society in which people are no longer trained in how to treat others with kindness and consideration. Our society has become one in which people feel licensed to give their selfishness free rein.”

He adds, “For roughly 150 years after the founding, Americans were obsessed with moral education.”

Really? Obsessed to the point of justifying slavery? Slaughtering the Native population? Irradiating the land and water of South Pacific island nations with nuclear testing? Subjugating entire small countries to serve the economic interests of US corporations? Creating a domestic workforce of “consumers” beholden to the rich and powerful? Continue Reading →