This is my first diary on Daily Kos. It is great to be here.
In 2006, with almost no money and no paid staff, I defeated a party endorsed candidate in a five-way primary. Then, although I was outspent by more than 3-1, I went on to defeat two-term incumbent and multi-millionaire Jeb Bradley. I am immensely proud that my election proved that politics can be done differently in America. If someone tells you that the people power of community organizing isn’t strong enough to win elections, point them to NH-01.
I made my decision to run for Congress after volunteering for more than a month in the Katrina-ravaged Gulf Coast, and seeing the tragic results of absent or ineffectual government. I was intimately familiar with my opponent’s abandonment of the middle class because I spent the years leading up to 2006 fighting to call attention to the fact that the middle class has been stumbling and the poor have fallen, that our Constitution is endangered and that our disastrous policy in Iraq is costing our country in immeasurable ways.
On Sunday I attended a Vets BBQ at the Sweeney VFW post in Manchester, NH to support the re-election of Carol-Shea Porter (D-NH) to the US Congress from the first district. An overflow crowd, they even ran out of hamburgers, greeted CSP and her guest in NH that day, Congressman Chet Edwards (D-TX) from the 17th district which includes the village of Crawford which is currently missing the idiot that is currently and woefully living in the White House, most woefully.
The two have become fast friends in DC as Congressman Edwards, Carol's new BFF down there, is the chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Military Construction and VA (MILCON/VA). He came to NH to see what's up first hand. He was impressed with the turnout at the event, so was I.
Carol's remarks were brief and focused on the outrage that NH is currently the only state in America that does not have a full service VA hospital. Follow me below the fold for all the remarks because as Carol told us all in attendance: "There is no excuse."
My name is Andrew Sylvia, and I am proud to be a Democratic candidate for the New Hampshire State House of Representatives from the district of Hillsborough 19, consisting of the town of Merrimack.
I've been sharing my stories from the campaign trail at several local blogs, but I wanted to share with people from on the national stage of Daily Kos what it's like to be a candidate at the bottom of the ticket in the state with the widest bottom of the ticket in the country.
I look forward to sharing the stories I gather from my race to get to Concord this fall. In the meantime, please visit my website at www.andrewsylvia.com
Last week I had a huge influx of readers interested in my piece on Eric Cantor. Seems I'm not the only one thinking McCain might just pick Cantor. I think it's a longshot, but possible.
Things are getting very hectic personally. This may be the last newsletter for a few weeks or more. We will be on vacation in California for a couple of weeks and I will have Grand Jury duty after that. Plus work is exploding for me and Joy's dissertation is overdue. Even politically, I will need to put some extra effort into my friend, Devin Cohen's primary election September 9th. But this newsletter I cover some pretty critical stuff.
Birds such as the red-tailed hawk pictured here are not an uncommon sight. They come in great varieties; the ones we saw in New Mexico were very different in appearance from the Eastern variety, and this can be confusing for birders. They do, however, have a fairly consistent field mark in all their morphs. The dark lines visible on the birds "shoulders' (this is technically the patagium) are a definitive marker for the red-tailed hawk and can help birders differentiate them from other bird varieties. In this post, I'm going to examine different species of predatory birds and talk a little bit about my experience with them. I'm going to focus this diary on the birds you can find in the Northeast, though a few of the photos are from New Mexico.
I'm going to start below the fold with the American Kestrel, the smallest falcon we have in the United States.
I posted a diary a couple of days ago with this request but I guess my timing is uniquely bad. I also decided that I lumped too much into it so I'm going to break it out to two separate diaries (today and tomorrow).
I've included my Email address in my profile if you can help!
One of my favorite subjects to photograph is hummingbirds. They represent a real challenge: they move very quickly and do not stay in one place for long, plus they are smaller than any other birds I photograph.
This means that successfully photographing them requires a good combination of skill, careful planning and just plain dumb luck.
Most of these are smaller versions of images that will take you to a larger one. The image shown on the right, however, will take you to two animated images; one is of a ruby-thraoted hummingbird feeding one of her young (it's a 1.6mb file) and the other is a smaller file of a rubythroated hummingbird feeding from our nectar feeder.
After the fold, I'll present quite a few more hummingbird photos, most of which are of ruby-throated hummingbirds but one of which is of a rufous hummingbird, a rare visitor to the Northeast whom I was fortunate enough to get to spot during its brief visit here.
Some major developments this week involving corruption and domestic terrorism. Shootings, anthrax, and indictments. I have been talking for quite some time about Republican corruption and Ted Stevens of Alaska is somoene I declared as the most corrupt politician in America. Well, this week he was indicted. I have also been writing for some time about right wing fanatics in government and on talk shows inciting intolerance and violence. Well, we had another example of right wing terrorism in Knoxville, TN, quite possibly inspired by right wing talk shows.
Meanwhile, speculation about who Obama and McCain will pick for the VP spot is is the current rage. Everyone has tips, inside info and rumors to share. Well, I have no idea who either will choose, but one possibility for McCain was mentioned to me that would be interesting: Eric Cantor, Congressman from Virginia who makes Joe Lieberman look liberal. I discuss him this week. I also review my past coverage of Republican election fraud in Florida and Georgia. I am sure we will see the same kind of fraud in both states again this year. Plus I have been trying to flesh out my state-by-state coverage.
Apparently civil unions are not leading to the decay and destruction that conservatives had predicted as less than 500 ceremonies have been performed to date in New Hampshire so far this year.
The story, which appeared in the conservative Lawrence Eagle-Tribune, was published to rebut claims in bordering Massachusetts that gay marriage would boost that state's economy by roughly $40 million a year. The problem is the article compares apples to oranges as Massachusetts permits gay marriage while the Granite State only permits civil unions.
John McCain is a small, petty man who takes comfort in other people's distress. How do I know that? It's what I oberved during his so-called "Town Hall" at the Rochester, New Hampshire Opera House this week.
Even Bush is sick of the Iraq fiasco...he has been mumbling about pulling out troops and about a "time horizon"...yes, "HORIZON," not a timeline, for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. Don't know about you, but I have never heard anyone talk about "time horizons" before. Makes me think of an event horizon around a black hole...which is an ominous comparison.
Remember, though, Bush's shifting to withdrawal is not by any choice of his. The Iraq government has told him in no uncertain terms that we have outlived our welcome and they do not want us there permanently.
A while back, in a newspaper article detailing the woes of the current Republican House and Senatorial Campaign Committees, one Republican official commented that he and his colleagues could not wait for 2008 to be over so that they could get on to 2010, where, in their hopes, Republican prospects will have improved.
There are a bunch of really good reasons why looking at potential races in the 2010 midterms in 2008 is a waste of time (and I’ll enumerate some of them herein), but, really, "waste of time" describes a great deal of what the average political junkie does on time, and it’s fun. Speculating is more or less unavoidable, and it’s always fun to look back at old predictions to see how wrong (or, occasionally, right) you (or, better yet, other people) were. So, without further ado, let’s put some carts before some horses.
Mad as I was about Obama's FISA vote, I kept my promise to canvass in New Hampshire today, and I'm glad I did. The night before, I laid awake thinking about a McCain presidency and the fate of the Supreme Court, and the war we're in and all the wars we could be in under another reckless Republican. I write this in the hope that it will shake other angry critics of Obama into re-thinking the "I'm sitting this one out" mentality.
On Sunday I attended a Vets BBQ at the Sweeney VFW post in Manchester, NH to support the re-election of Carol-Shea Porter (D-NH) to the US Congress from the first district. An overflow crowd, they even ran out of hamburgers, greeted CSP and her guest in NH that day, Congressman Chet Edwards (D-TX) from the 17th district which includes the village of Crawford which is currently missing the idiot that is currently and woefully living in the White House, most woefully.
