(Radio Iowa) – C-N-N has announced it will host a debate on January 10th in Des Moines for G-O-P presidential candidates who have at least 10 percent support in three polls — and one of the polls must be of likely Iowa Caucus-goers. Three of the candidates who debated last (Wednesday) night in Alabama are heading to Iowa to campaign. Nikki Haley, who’ll speak a

“There was no question that the fellas came out with attacks on me and I appreciated it,” Haley says. “…I mean we are surging. They know it. They see it in the polls.” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy criticized Haley for accepting campaign donations from Wall Street donors, including a Democrat who founded LinkedIn. Haley says they’re just jealous of her new donors. Haley says voters are most concerned about how candidates will fix the economy.

“We have got to get congress to where they stop all this reckless spending,” Haley says. “We saw it happen with Trump with $9 trillion in four years. Now you’ve got Republicans and Democrats spending like drunken sailors and so I’ll stop the spending, stop the borrowing. We’ll eliminate the earmarks and I’ll veto any spending bill that doesn’t take us back to pre-COVID levels.”

Haley, DeSantis, Ramaswamy and Texas pastor Ryan Binkley are scheduled to be in Sioux Center Saturday for an event Congressman Randy Feenstra is hosting.

(Greenfield, Iowa) – A man who was just a teenager in high school back in 1969, is reflecting back on his experiences with Director Norman Lear and the production of “Cold Turkey,” in Greenfield. Lear died Tuesday at the age of 101. E.E. Warren Cultural Center Board Member Dan Dickinson says he was a member of the Greenfield High School Band, and performed in one of the last scene’s of the movie.

He says the experience was “pretty neat.”

Being an Extra in the film gave Dickinson some spending money and a chance to talk with the film’s stars.

Dickinson said Norman Lear was very attentive to detail, but he never saw him upset, even if things weren’t going according to plan. Lear wrote, directed and produced the movie.

He said Lear was always “Down-to-earth guy,” and always held Greenfield and Iowa close to his heart.

Dan Dickinson says the last time Lear was in Greenfield was in the late 90’s, when they had a “Cold Turkey” Reunion. He said Lear “Was a great man, and it was nice to be a small part of his career.” In 2014, the Warren Cultural Center named its theater in honor of the famed producer.

(Radio Iowa) – An Iowa rail line has been sold. The Canadian National Railroad announced it has reached an agreement to acquire the Waterloo-based Iowa Northern Railway. Iowa Northern has some 275 miles of track that runs from Manly to Cedar Rapids, with branch lines from Waterloo to Oelwein, and Forest City to Belmond.

Iowa Northern Railway map of its line.

The Iowa Northern website says it has 110 employees and serves 20 grain elevators, two ethanol plants, and two mineral processing facilities. The terms of the deal were not disclosed, and it must be approved by federal regulators, which is expected in 2024

(Radio Iowa) – Iowa Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst have joined their G-O-P colleagues in a procedural vote that has blocked a bill to provide U-S aid to Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan. The bill also would provide funding for U-S border security measures, but Ernst says that’s not sufficient.  “We actually need to change the border policy,” Ernst says. “The policies that are in place right now are actually not addressing the migrant flow that is coming in.”

Ernst says the bill is an acknowledgement by the Biden Administration that there’s a border crisis. “They are the ones that wrote the package and it addresses funding for the border, it addresses funding for Ukraine, for Israel and the Indo-Pacific,” Ernst says. “They tied all four of those things together.”

Biden says he’s willing to make significant compromises on border security if that’s what it takes to get the 110 billion dollar package through congress. U-S military aid for Ukraine will run out by the end of the year and Biden warns that if Russia takes Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin won’t stop there.