Miscellaneous

This evening, bestselling author and nationally syndicated columnist David Sirota will visit St. Louis to discuss his newest book, THE UPRISING: An Unauthorized Tour of the Populist Revolt Scaring Wall Street & Washington.   The event will be held at 7pm at Left Bank Books (399 N. Euclid, St. Louis, MO.) at Euclid and McPherson in the Central West End.

Sirota, a longtime Congressional committee advisor to Wisconsin Democrat Dave Obey and consultant to Dem Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer, has a new book that looks at populism on both the Right and Left and how it is shaping American politics. 

David Sirota will join State Senator Jeff Smith at a reading, Q&A and book signing sponsored by Fired Up Missouri, the Young Democrats, the Midwest Coalition for Responsible Investment and the Missouri Progressive Vote Coalition.  

We interrupt this political season to announce that TODAY is SaveAB.com day.

Wherever you are today, please take a moment to raise your voice in concern over the hostile takeover attempt by the Belgian company, InBev.

Sign the online petition today at www.SaveAB.com.   Mark your calendar for the SaveAB.com freedom rally on July 5th at Al Hrabosky Ballpark Saloon next to Busch Stadium.

And please pass this information along to a friend. 

New Report reveals abuse/torture of detainees. "The report is prefaced by retired U.S. Major Gen. Antonio Taguba, who led the Army's investigation into the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal in 2003. There is no longer any doubt that the current administration committed war crimes," Taguba says. "The only question is whether those who ordered torture will be held to account." (http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/06/18/gitmo.detainees/index.html)  Story Continued »

Last week we told you about how the Missouri Republican Party, through an auxiliary organization, has subsidized a political blog called MOPNS which spends much of its time bashing Republican gubernatorial candidates and elected officials.  That site is run by a man named Christopher Arps, we explained, even though Arps refuses to claim credit for it.

In fact, following our post, MOPNS went to great lengths to deny that that Christopher Arps has anything to do with the site, with the author claiming that Arps was simply his 'friend' and that he doesn't deny getting the idea for MOPNS from Arps' OKPNS blog (for which Arps does claim credit).

But yesterday Arps dropped his guard for a moment and let the cat out of the bag on his little charade.   As you can see from the screen captured from the MOPNS site, in the midst of a post slamming Chris Koster, Arps clearly forgot which of his sites he was writing on and referred to the blog as OKPNS.  Oops!

Of course, Arps recognized his mistake after a while and made a post facto change (evidence of guilty conscience, I'd say) and the accidental reference to MOPNS as OKPNS is now scrubbed from his site (click on the photo to see the "corrected" post).  It wasn't scrubbed from history, though, as you can plainly see above.

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According to the ‘Marshall Democrat News’ (03/25/08) Commissioner Becky Plattner announced she is seeking the office of lieutenant governor and filed Friday, March 21, to be on the August primary ballot. In the announcement she stated: "I'm not going to run a hard campaign,” I am committed to serving the people of Saline County. I just want to get my name in the hat….”  Story Continued »

In a dramatic shake up of the political landscape in Missouri, Fired Up has learned that a new bipartisan mega political consulting firm will be announced later today. 

GOP operatives Jeff Roe and John Hancock will be joining forces with Democratic superstars Joyce Aboussie and Richard Martin to form a single powerhouse firm to provide consulting services to both campaigns and corporate clients.

The firm will charge a hefty fee for consultation, or for twice the fee, they'll agree not to work for your opponent. 

John Hancock, who will serve as the mouthpiece for the new firm tells us, that in a concession to the Democrats in the new firm, even if the deal runs into anti-trust problems, the firm will not employ John Ashcroft to try to help them resolve their problems. 

For more info on the new firm, click here.

Gotcha again.  Happy April Fool's Day!

Many thanks to all of you who took a few minutes over the last few weeks to participate in the Fired Up! Missouri Reader's Survey.  More than 330 people embarked upon the online survey.  Those of us who serve as administrators for the site were surprised by some of the data and impressed by the comments many of you submitted in response to the open-ended questions.  

For those of you who care about numbers, here are some of the interesting quantifiable results from a few of the survey questions...

Fired Up! readers are self-identified political animals.

When asked to rate their own interest in politics on a scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 being highest), a whopping 77.7% of respondents rated themselves as an 8 or higher.  Fully 30% of respondents admit to being "obsessed" with politics and rated themselves as a 10.

Shocker: Readers are very politically involved.

99.2% of respondents are registered to vote (Somehow, 2 of the 242 respondents to that question slipped through the registration cracks).  72.5% of survey respondents volunteer on political campaigns --either every cycle or when they have a candidate in whom they really believe.  45% of Fired Up readers who responded indicated that they have made political contribution online.  The median survey respondent has given in the range of $101-250 in political contributions over the past 12 months.   

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Mitch Hubbard --the guy who the GOP recruited to waste ink and ballot space in the Secretary of State race-- has yet to open a Missouri Ethics Commission campaign finance committee.  But really, who could find the time for that when it only subtracts from the hours in the day available for shaking hands at the dry cleaners?

The incumbent members of the Three Rivers Community College are boasting they spend $1,000,000 dollars of the college's $17,000,000 budget (5.9%) on athletics. 

While this figure may be disputed, the incumbents who are running the college into the ground seem to suddenly have amnesia when asked, "How much does Three Rivers Community College spend on attorneys' and legal fees?"

When asked for copies of the budget under the sunshine law the board members suddenly seem to get angry.

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From today's Kansas City Star: 

Voters should skip this petition

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Sam Graves gives thanks to Bush and Cheney for making him the ONLY Congressman in the country to have them both come in to help raise money.­

Let's show Kay Barnes that we have her back.

Wishing all the best to Senator Carnahan, co-founder of this tremendous site, as she celebrates her birthday today.

Feel free to leave your birthday wishes for the Senator in the comments.
 

This is the question that Kay Barnes is asking on her website right now.

Anyone want to take bets on how long it takes Sam to clean up his financial reports? 

 

When you've had your fill of turkey, pumpkin pie, and politely listening to Aunt Edna's detailed descriptions of her newest ailments...it's time to fire up the family computer for this year's hottest new game.
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