Politics on the Hudson

And she’s supporting Barack Obama.

Casey Knowles, now 17, is the little girl in Hillary Clinton’s television ad that depicts sleeping children as viewers are left to question who they’d want in the White House if there were a national emergency at 3 a.m.

Knowles was interviewed by Matt Lauer on “The Today Show” this morning and spoke about how the footage was taken years ago for a different commercial. The image was then sold and Knowles said she realized she was the little girl after seeing the ad on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.”

Knowles said she is a “fervent Obama supporter” and that she was a precinct captain for the Illinois senator during the caucuses in Washington state.

“I don’t think that this ad was the most classy move on her part,” Knowles told Lauer today, calling the ad a “fear-mongering message.”

U.S. Rep. Nita Lowey, energetic and seemingly humbled by the attention her fainting spell earned her earlier this month, reassured reporters today that she was back to normal.

Lowey, who was in Congers to call for an end to the freeze of medical benefits on Priority Group 8 veterans, attributed her fall at a Clinton rally to a combination of being on her feet for several hours straight after eating bad airport food and not drinking enough.

“I feel great,” she said. “I’m rip-roaring and I’m going back to Washington on Monday.”

Lowey was also planning a stop this afternoon in West Haverstraw to meet with senior citizens and check the progress of federally-funded sidewalk project on Eakman Drive.

For more information on Lowey’s press conference check out At Ease!, LoHud.com’s new blog on veterans and veterans issues.
(Photo by Vincent DiSalvio/The Journal News)

One day after Rockland for Obama opened its Rockland headquarters in Spring Valley, elected officials and community members are planning a gathering to show their support for U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton’s presidential run.

The group will meet at 4 p.m. tomorrow (Thursday)  on the steps of the Allison-Parris County Office Building at 11 New Hempstead Road in New City.

New York voters pick their presidential candidates in the Super Tuesday primary next week.

Okay so he personally won’t be working out of the Spring Valley location, but Barack Obama’s supporters say having a headquarters will allow them to reach more people before Tuesday’s primary.

The official opening of the Rockland for Obama will be held at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday at 250 Route 59 in the village.

In a news release issued today, Rockland for Obama  director Howard Megdal said that supporters of the Illinois senator would be using the office for phone banking in the next week.

Clinton’s Rockland supporters will be rooting for their candidate during the Jan. 31 debate and raising money to put her in the top spot on Super Tuesday.
Doors to the debate watch party open at 7 p.m. at Riverspace Arts in Nyack, an hour ahead of the 8 p.m. start of the Democratic debate. Tickets, which include a campaign briefing by New York State Director Karen Persichilli-Keogh, are $25 per person for general admission and $100 per person for premium seating.

Riverspace is located at 119 Main Street in Nyack. This is the final debate before the state’s Feb. 5 primary.

For more information visit the “Hillary for President Web site.”:https://contribute.hillaryclinton.com/events/rockland0131.html

U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-New York, visited the U.S. Military Academy at West Point today to tour the campus and eat lunch with nine of the cadets he sponsored for entry into the academy.

When he arrived (45 minutes late) he was ushered into the superintendent’s conference room, where he requested Sweet’N Low for his coffee. OK. So the senator watches his sugar intake.

But then he launched into a story about the history of Sweet’N Low and how the company, based in Brooklyn, had to fight off claims that it caused bladder cancer in lab mice.

With the superintendent, Lt. Gen. Franklin Hagenbeck, sitting nearby, Schumer continued, going into details about how the lab mice were fed large quantities of the substance and that when the crystalized saccharine rubbed against the lining of their bladders it caused cancer.

U.S. Rep. Eliot Engel, D-Bronx, returned to his district a few days ago after spending nearly a week in West Africa visiting tribes that make a living harvesting cocoa beans.

Engel was in Cote D’Ivoire, Ghana and Morocco as part of an initiatve he has worked on for the last several years to get children out of the fields and into classrooms.

On July 1, per an agreement signed seven years ago with major players in the U.S. chocolate industries, 50 percent of the cocoa-growing region must have surveys in place that detail the work of children.

The issue isn’t just one of exploitation, Engel said today, but of tradition.

“We went to the most remote areas of the region,” he said, describing one village in Cote D’Ivoire that had no running water or electricity.

As animals such as goats and pigs roamed freely, the villagers tried to tie clothes on Engel and the others so they looked like them.

“They know that we are trying to help them,” he said.
Engel traveled with Sens. Tom Harkin (Iowa)  and  Bernie Sanders (Vermont.)

Rockland County Legislator Patrick Withers, D-Suffern, has requested a meeting in Rockland regarding the Port Authority toll hikes so residents can voice their concerns. In a news release issued Thursday by Withers, he noted that with rising property taxes and other financial burdens, Rockland residents need a break from continuous government increases.

There are two hearings scheduled on the toll hikes at 5 p.m. on Dec. 18 in Manhattan and Teaneck, N.J. For more information on those meetings, visit the “Port Authority Web site.”:http://www.panynj.gov.

Presidential candidate and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani will be coming to Rockland on Oct. 31 for a fundraiser, according to Jeff Barker, Giuliani’s Northeast communications director.

Barker said Rockland County Executive C. Scott Vanderhoef, who has been tapped by Giuliani’s campaign to build support among New York’s county executives, is helping organize the event.

While Barker did not disclose the time or location of the fundraiser, saying they were generally private, Rockland Republican Committee Chairman Vincent Reda, who has been named the Hudson Valley leader of Giuliani’s campaign, said the fundraiser would be a luncheon held at the Rockland Country Club in Sparkill.

U.S. Rep. John Hall, D-Dover Plains, along with U.S. Reps. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., and Tim Walz, D-Minn. met in New Windsor today to listen to the stories of four veterans who have struggled to receive the benefits necessary to their recovery from service-related illnesses and injuries.

They gave two men a standing ovation. One was Sgt. Eddie Ryan, the 23-year-old Ulster County Marine who was shot twice in the head during friendly fire in Ramadi in April 2005. More than two years later, Christopher and Angela Ryan continue to fight with the Department of Veterans Affairs to get Eddie the therapy he needs to continue his recovery. Dressed in camouflage and wheeled in by a police sergeant from his hometown of Ellenville, Eddie Ryan told the congressmen that “I’d do it again.”

His parents told Hall and the others of the infected bed sore their son suffered at the VA hospital in Virginia, a result of laying in his own feces. They successfully lobbied to get Eddie moved to the Helen Hayes Hospital in West Haverstraw, where he spent nearly a year before being discharged last year. Now they are fighting to have his therapy sessions restored after they were nearly cut in half this summer.

“We are always on the opposite side of the VA,” Christopher Ryan said. “Our question is, ‘Why?’”

The three congressmen were from the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs subcommittee on Disability Assistance and Memorial Affairs. The focus of the testimony today was the claims backlog, which Hall said totaled around 600,000.