Monday, May 22, 2006

EARLY RETURNS FAVORABLE

Monday's announcement by Doug Harpool -- he's running for state senate against Norma Champion -- has already drawn good early coverage across the state.

Jo Mannies at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch notes in her Political Fix blog:
[Harpool] says he is making another try for the state Senate because he is concerned that state government is responding "only to lobbyists and people with money," and ignoring everyone else.

Harpool says he’s also running because he’s "morally offended" by last year’s Medicaid cuts.

Among other things, Harpool’s ethics platform calls for next year’s state Legislature to restore the campaign-donation limits that this year’s Legislature just voted to abolish (Gov. Matt Blunt plans to sign the bill.)

Harpool contended that the Legislature could easily have passed a measure that eliminated or restricted the "committee-to-committee transfers" that have become a key problem, without tossing out the donation limits for individual candidates.
Tony Messenger at the News-Leader offers this on his newspaper's blog:
Early handicappers would give the nod to incumbent Norma Champion, and I'd say that's fair, but she has a legitimate opponent in Doug Harpool, a former member of the House of Representatives. I met Harpool for the first time over coffee this morning. We share a similar background, having both been high school debate champions. It's clear Harpool has found an early wedge issue with the so-called ethics legislation passed by the General Assembly and supported by Champion. Attorney General Jay Nixon is advising Gov. Matt Blunt not to sign the bill. I don't often agree with Nixon, but he's absolutely right on this one. As for Champion and Harpool, it's good to have two strong candidates for an important seat. Let the campaigning begin!
Randy Turner at The Turner Report also has a write-up on the Harpool candidacy. True to his fact-loving soul, Turner also has a blurb up on a report that Rep. Roy Blunt has gotten more than a half-million dollars from lobbyists since 1998. Congress has been very, very good to Roy Dean.

21 comments:

Anonymous said...

If Harpool wanted to make ethics an issue, he should have run against Roy Blunt. Still, I hope he beats the ethics drum because there is so much there to talk about with the Blunts and the GOP delegation in Jeff City.

Anonymous said...

Why limit it to Blunt? ALL dirty politicians should be called on the proverbial carpet... that reminds me, I've got to mail a box of tinfoil to Cynthia McKinney and William Jefferson. They can split it... that wide roll of heavy-duty Reynolds Wrap goes a long way.

Anonymous said...

Speaking of the GOP, the online News-Leader notes those swingin' Springfield Metro Repubs are sponsoring a community forum on June 1 to discuss illegal immigration. Guest speaker is a Fed from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. What the News-Leader doesn't mention is the other guest speaker-a representative (yet unnamed) from the vigilante Minutemen folks.

Just thought I would post this in case others might wish to show up with their white hoods and torches.

Anonymous said...

Vinny Davey Jerk-Oh has been pushing to form a Minuteman chapter here. Evidently, our borders with Oklahoma, Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska and Kentucky are far too porous. Perhaps we need to build a wall.

Anonymous said...

I'd be all for a wall if it meant taking down some of those obscene Branson/Silver Dollar City billboards that ruin our countryside and make southwest MO look like Tiajuana anyway

Anonymous said...

Not only did they cut Medicaid last year, but the Republicans, seeing how it hurt folks, promised to reinstate the MAWD (Medical Assistance for Workers with Disabilities) portion of Medicaid this year.

Had tons of steam, passed the House and then stalled and sat in the Senate.

Anonymous said...

There's no way to compare the Minutemen to the Klan. Big difference.

Sorry, Mrs. Howell, but I just don't understand it when people do this. IF the Minutemen were to start burning crosses and stringing up black folk, THEN I'd say you have a point. But, just as there will never be another lynching in Springfield, neither is the above scenario ever going to happen. The freak in Aurora, Glenn Miller... now, *that* SOB would be the type.

Anonymous said...

Hmmm... a columnist from St. Louis has a story on the announcement, but the News-Leader runs nothing in today's paper. What gives?

Anonymous said...

St. Louis has a real newspaper.

Anonymous said...

[Sorry Ron-I swerved off topic. Lovey promises to try to do better]

Just shades of gray, Lib. Most of them are cut from the same cowardly, evildoer mold.

The following was taken from the Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Report:

Arizona Showdown
High-powered firearms, militia maneuvers and racism at the Minuteman Project
By David Holthouse


COCHISE COUNTY, Ariz. -- The predominantly Hispanic towns of Douglas and Naco are connected by the aptly named Border Road, a 20-mile stretch of rocky dirt that runs parallel to a ragged barbed wire fence separating the United States from Mexico.
The night of April 3, armed vigilantes camped along Border Road in a series of watch posts set-up for the Minuteman Project, a month-long action in which revolving casts of 150 to 200 anti-immigration militants wearing cheap plastic "Undocumented Border Patrol Agent" badges mobilized in southeastern Arizona. Their stated goal was to "do the job our government refuses to do" and "protect America" from the "tens of millions of invading illegal aliens who are devouring and plundering our nation."

At Station Two, Minuteman volunteers grilled bratwursts and fantasized about murder.

"It should be legal to kill illegals," said Carl, a 69-year old retired Special Forces veteran who fought in Vietnam and now lives out West. "Just shoot 'em on sight. That's my immigration policy recommendation. You break into my country, you die."

Carl was armed with a revolver chambered to fire shotgun shells. He wore this hand cannon in a holster below a shirt that howled "American bad asses" in red, white and blue. The other vigilantes assigned to Station Two included a pair of self-professed members of the National Alliance, a violent neo-Nazi organization. These men, who gave their names only as Johnny and Michael, were outfitted in full-body camouflage and strapped with semi-automatic pistols.

Earlier that day, Johnny and Michael had scouted sniper positions in the rolling, cactus-studded foothills north of Border Road, taking compass readings and drawing maps for future reference.

"I agree completely," Michael said. "You get up there with a rifle and start shooting four or five of them a week, the other four or five thousand behind them are going to think twice about crossing that line."

With a grilled sausage in one hand and a cheap night vision scope in the other, Johnny scanned the brush in Mexico, spitting distance away.

"The thing to do would be to drop the bodies just a few hundred feet into the U.S. and just leave them there, with lights on them at night," he said. "That sends the message 'No Trespassing,' in any language."

Anonymous said...

Southern Poverty Law Center, now they're bound to give you a non-biased view!

Anonymous said...

I tried to find the information about the immigration meeting in the online news leader, but no luck, where and and when?
I wanna go

Anonymous said...

IMO, a "racist" is what I see when David Duke makes the press (thankfully rarely), or when I see Louis Farrakhan on C-SPAN. Or reading the tripe from our erstwhile Congressional candidate down southwest of here - I'm still having "Martin Lindstedt" flashbacks.

IMO, the Minutemen is kind of like the civilian air watches of the WWII era; civic duty to help out the authorities. Should there come a day when the MM do dastardly, though, I'll be just as disgusted with them as they deserve.

We now return to the topic... guess I'll have to see if Harpool is the lesser of two evils v. Aunt Norma. At least Harpool is willing to debate - still a sore point with us over Roy Blunt, who never would debate Burlison. Cowards with perpetual jobs rarely risk such intellectual stretches.

Anonymous said...

Champion- even though she has a Ph.D. in communications- will not debate Harpool. Kind of ironic huh?

Anonymous said...

Champion has no excuse. She's led six campaigns for office in Jefferson City and has a record to stand on. Oh that's right, she hasn't done anything in that time except grab credit for "passing" the SMSU name change. She is pitiful.

Anonymous said...

Aunt Norma the Champion of children? HA Gimme' a break. She is the Champion of every kook that inhabits the halls up there in Jeff City.

Example: There are a set of disgusting people I call the anti-vax liars. They claim that childhood vaccinations cause all sorts of horrid things, and thimerisol, a perservative found in many vaccines causes autism, cholic, bed wetting, and lib'rulism. So she passed a law last year prohibiting the use of childhood vaccines that contain thimerisol.

Most childhood vaccines have not contained any since 1999. However, there are some exceptions. Flu shots for example. If a pandemic as deadly as in the past breaks out Missouri children will have to run to Arkansas!!!, fer christsake, to be vaccinated.

Aunt Norma is an idiot.

Anonymous said...

Incidentally, we may now have the first cases of human to human transmission of avian flu in India. Four members of the same (extended) family in India out of the six who got sick died. Patient zero has been identified as the mother of two children who died, as did the children and an uncle.

The concern is growing. I think it is inevitable. One can only hope that the virus will become less deadly as the disease progresses.

The worldwide capacity for vaccine is 60 million doses/year. That means that 240 million Americans, along with everyone else in the world will be totally unprotected.

Anonymous said...

Lobbyists are free to give money to anyone, the fact that Roy Blunt has received money from lobbyists is no big deal. Lobbyist money is only a concern if it ends up buying the votes of Congressmen, and their is no evidence that has happened with Blunt.

Anonymous said...

Guess those lobbyists are getting ripped off then, huh? Why do you think they gave Blunt a half-million clams? Because they like his trophy wife? "No big deal." Riiiight.

Anonymous said...

Hogwash Anon. He into'd a rider to a bill that would have given huge breaks to Phillip Morris in one of those middle of the night sessions on the day he was named majority whip. Think his wife didn't have anything do do with it??? Mail me some of what you have been somokin' sounds like really good shit ...

Anonymous said...

Blunt and Ted Kennedy both need to find better things to do... that don't involve running the country.