20 Pounds Of Headlines

Politico: Santorum Eyes Missouri Primary

kmbc9blogz — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 20:14:06 +0000

Politico is reporting GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum is looking for greener pastures and Missouri is one of them.
"The campaign is paying special attention to Missouri’s Feb. 7 primary, ‘Politico’s report says. The Missouri primary is a "beauty contest". No delegates are at stake but the reports Missouri remains attractive to Santorum’s forces.
" Gingrich failed to get on the ballot there, so the state offers Santorum a chance to demonstrate that he can do well when matched head-to-head against Romney," according to ‘Politico’.
The report continues, "Even if he finishes in the back of the pack in Florida, Santorum says he will continue to run, hitting Nevada, Missouri, Colorado, and maybe Arizona – cheaper states where delegates are claimed proportionally. And then he says he will go on to super Tuesday on March 6.

"This race is changing every few weeks," Santorum says in his stump speech. "It’s going to change again. And what we need to do is to be out there sounding a very strong, consistent message, compete in every state, and that’s what we’re doing."

"You keep out there, you keep your name out, and lots of things can happen between now and August and we’re going to be in a position to take advantage of that," he says.

Flordia Jumps the Gun With Its Primary and It Pays Off, Why It Might Reshape the Campaign Map

kmbc9blogz — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 15:29:31 +0000

A lengthy piece in ‘Ppolitico’ on how Flordia Republilcans ignored the RNC and got away with it:
Most of the ballots are still uncast in Florida’s presidential primary, but already Republicans here are declaring: mission accomplished.
It’s not that they suffer from an overabundance of confidence about defeating President Barack Obama in the general election. For Florida Republicans, the early primary is a victory in itself – the culmination of a long campaign to upset the presidential nominating calendar and seize huge influence over the selection of a 2012 nominee.
In order to hold a January primary, they defied Democratic and Republican party rules, invited penalties against their delegates at next summer’s convention and infuriated party leaders in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.
Now, Florida party leaders say they have every intention of making sure their unofficial status as the first mega-state primary becomes a permanent feature of presidential politics – not a one-off decision to crash the 2012 calendar, but an irreversible blow to the traditional early-state monopoly.
“We’ve achieved the goal of maximizing Floridians’ voices and impact on the election,” said Florida House Speaker Dean Cannon, who supported the Jan. 31 primary date. “Whether we’re always specifically fourth or not is not as important as acknowledging that Florida is so diverse – demographically and economically and geographically – that makes it a great proving group and potentially decisive state in parties choosing their nominees.”
Cannon said the goal was never to blow up the party-sanctioned 2012 calendar, but rather to ensure that Florida is the first state where candidates are forced to run a “national-level, quality media campaign with radio, TV, et cetera.”
“We tried to show complete respect to the traditional early primary states that went before us. They give the candidates the chance to demonstrate their retail skills,” said Cannon, a former Rick Perry supporter who’s now neutral in the primary. “I’m hopeful that the parties will recognize that this is a smart and good way to go about it.”
Respectful or not to the Iowa-New Hampshire-South Carolina axis, Florida’s decision to hold its primary on Jan. 31 openly flouted Republican and Democratic National Committee rules saying that only the three longtime early states, plus Nevada, could vote before March.
When a commission empaneled by the Florida legislature chose to keep the Jan. 31 date – the same day Florida Republicans voted in 2008 – it forced Iowa and New Hampshire to move their elections forward and ended up overshadowing Nevada’s long-suffering caucus.
Missouri’s February 7th primary is mandated by state law. But the non-binding ‘beauty cntest’ has attracted almost no attention by the GOP candidates.
Ask virtually any Florida Republican why the state deserves special status and you’ll get the same answer: it’s huge, heterogeneous, soon to be the third-largest state in the country and it’s critical to the general election.

Perhaps most importantly, strategists in both parties say, by confronting the early states and their national party, Florida Republicans pointed the way for other states to do the same in 2016. Already, Republicans in Arizona and Michigan have decided to follow suit, holding their primaries on the less provocative, but still rule-breaking date of Feb. 28.
The state GOP will pay for its defiance – sort of. Florida’s delegation to the convention in Tampa will be cut in half and their delegates will be docked certain privileges and perks there. The state could be headed for another convention smackdown when it tries to seat its delegates on a winner-take-all basis. Primaries held before April are supposed to hand out their delegates proportionally – another rule Florida has declined to follow.
Read Moore: http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=A3E531C3-AD55-4ACE-8839-395CA6A75A34

Cain Endorses Gingrich

kmbc9blogz — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 15:10:00 +0000

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Herman Cain endorsed Newt Gingrich for president here on Saturday, injecting some energy into the campaign with two days to go until Florida’s primary.
The former presidential candidate and pizza executive called Gingrich the right person to address the “crisis of leadership in the White House.”
“I hereby officially and enthusiastically endorse Newt Gingrich for president of the United States,” Cain told the cheering crowd here. “Speaker Gingrich is a patriot. Speaker Gingrich is not afraid of bold ideas,” he said.
“And I also know that Speaker Gingrich is running for president and going through this sausage grinder — I know what this sausage grinder is all about. I know he is going through this sausage grinder because he cares about the future of the United States of America.”
Gingrich thanked Cain and said he’d be a co-chairman of a commission on “jobs, economic growth and taxes” should Gingrich become president. He promised that “this little thing” known as Cain’s 9-9-9 tax plan would be part of the national conversation.
“This is a real job creator who’s actually managed a company,” Gingrich said of Cain. “He’s going to be a great asset.”
Cain’s endorsement may not provide a major bounce for the former speaker. But it could infuse some energy into a campaign that’s now trailing Mitt Romney in Florida polls after a lackluster debate performance and scathing attack ads against Gingrich by Romney and his super PAC.

Missouri GOP Nominates 10 to State Senate Redistricting Panel, Including Former USA Graves & Bradshaw

kmbc9blogz — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 14:59:32 +0000

Missouri Republicans have nominated two former Western Missouri District US Attorneys to be on a 10-person State Senate Apportionment Commission,.
They are former USA’s Jean Paul Bradhaw and Todd Graves.
Other nominated for the panel by the Repulibcan Party are; Steve Ehlmann St. Charles; Marc Ellinger Jefferson City; Catherine Hanaway Ladue; Jerry Hunter St. Louis; John Maupin Creve Coeur; Nick Myers Joplin; Lowell Pearson Columbia; Mark Richardson Poplar Bluff.
The state Supreme Court recently threw out the first state senate map. Time is a factor in re-working the lines because filing for Missouri offices for the 2012 elections is scheduled to open on February 28.
Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, however, raised the possibility recently the filing scheduled could be changed because of the problem of getting the lines re-drawn and approved.
Governor Jay Nixon will pick five people from the list to serve on the panel. He’ll do the same when the Democrats submit their list.

Bill McClellan’s P-D Column on Going Out With ‘Legalization’ Canvassers

kmbc9blogz — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 14:45:32 +0000

From the Post-Disptach columnist Bill McClellan:
“Bernice and Wylie Williams walked along Delmar Boulevard in the Loop in University City late Thursday morning. Because they approached everybody they saw, they seemed, at first glance, to be panhandlers.
But unlikely panhandlers. Respectable-looking. Kind of old for that sort of thing, too.
They were trying to collect signatures on a petition to put a measure on the November ballot that would legalize marijuana in Missouri.
They are unlikely activists in this cause. Wylie is 73. Bernice is 69. They grew up in Texas and met at Texas Christian University. They married after Wylie graduated in 1961.
Let me explain something to young people. What we now call the ’60s did not start until 1966 or 1967.
In other words, 1961 was part of the ’50s. Had Wylie and Bernice been in college during the ’60s, they would have been exposed to marijuana. By the time the ’60s started, pot was everywhere.
As it was, Wylie and Bernice never heard of pot. Well, maybe they heard of it, but it was something exotic, maybe something that jazz musicians smoked.
Wylie had been in ROTC, so when he left TCU, he went into the Army. He and Bernice bounced around to various duty stations. They even went to Germany.
In 1968, Wylie was sent to Vietnam. He was stationed at Long Binh, a huge Army base near Saigon. Presumably, there was no shortage of weed at a place like Long Binh, but Wylie stayed away from the stuff. “I was an officer,” he said. “I didn’t want to do anything wrong.”
Meanwhile, Bernice and their young son moved in with her parents in St. Charles. Her dad was in the aircraft industry and had moved here to work for McDonnell Douglas.
When Wylie left Vietnam, he decided to get out of the Army. He joined Bernice and their son in St. Charles and got a job as an English teacher in Jennings.
It was during his time as a teacher that he had his only experiences with pot. He was at a couple of parties where people were smoking — this was in the early ’70s, which were still part of the ’60s — so he took a couple of hits. It didn’t do anything for him.
Bernice was at the same parties but didn’t smoke.
“I’m a goody-two-shoes,” she said.
Wylie left teaching after 10 years and opened a stereo store. They moved to University City. Their son went to University City High School. Did he smoke pot?
“We have no idea,” said Bernice. “He was not very communicative.”
“He was into Dungeons and Dragons,” said Wylie.
He eventually earned a Ph.D. in physics and now teaches at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
So how did two non-pot smokers get involved with the petition drive to get a measure to legalize marijuana on the ballot?
They had a sense that the War on Drugs was not working. At least with pot.
So when they heard that Show-Me Cannabis Regulation was having a meeting at the county library on Tesson Ferry Road to discuss an effort to get a measure on the ballot to legalize pot, they went. They agreed to collect signatures.
Approximately 150,000 signatures are going to be required, including at least 5 percent of registered voters in six of the state’s nine congressional districts.
Bernice and Wylie were pleasantly surprised with the response they received as they tried to collect signatures. Young people seemed charmed that these senior citizens were collecting signatures to legalize pot. Older people also seemed sympathetic to the cause.
Bernice decided to call me because she remembered a column I wrote in November 2010 after the voters of California rejected a measure that would have legalized pot in that state. This gives us a chance, I wrote. We can be the first.
What will happen to the first state that legalizes pot? For one thing, tourism will boom.
We could be on the ground floor of the pot industry. On the day Prohibition ended, who was ready to sell beer? St. Louis. For the next 75 years, we were the beer capital of the country.
Let’s do the same thing with pot, I wrote.
So we met Thursday morning in the Loop, and I followed at a discreet distance as Bernice and Wylie sought signatures. Several young people waved them off and claimed not to be registered voters. A more mature man in business attire listened to their appeal, then nodded and signed the petition.
Although most historians would say that the ’60s ended around 1975, for some of us, the decade lives on.”

Read more: http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/columns/bill-mcclellan/mcclellan-finds-unlikely-crusaders-canvassing-for-pot/article_3b6a77f5-fb89-58bd-bc33-52a3294e07c6.html#ixzz1kr7Jkwna

Cleaver Stops Car, Helps Woman Lying Ill in a Ditch Near Troost

kmbc9blogz — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 15:39:48 +0000

KC Star:
U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver came to the aid of a woman in distress on Friday.
The congressman was in Kansas City to attend a meeting regarding the Green Impact Zone and was riding in a car near 44th Street and Troost Avenue before 10 a.m. when he spotted someone waving a hand from a clump of weeds on the other side of the road.
Cleaver’s spokeswoman, Michele Rooney, said he alerted his staffer to stop the car and they both ran across Troost to investigate. Someone in another car behind them, who had attended the meeting with Cleaver, called 911.
Rooney said the woman, who may have been in her 40s or 50s, was frothing at the mouth and appeared to be going in and out of consciousness.
Cleaver removed his coat and placed it over the woman to help warm her and called 911 a second time.
“He was afraid she was dying,” Rooney said.
Cleaver and the others stayed with the woman until paramedics arrived. It was unclear how long she had been there because other motorists may not have noticed her.
Rooney said that Cleaver and the staffer were a bit shaken afterward and that the congressman was reluctant to take any credit for assisting the woman.

Farmers Complain About Flood Benefits Deadline in the Midst of the Flood

kmbc9blogz — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 15:36:11 +0000

(Hamburg, Iowa AP photo)
Columbia Missourian via johncombest.com:
KANSAS CITY — Farmers whose land was damaged by Missouri River flooding expressed frustration Friday that a missed deadline will keep them from sharing in $215 million from one federal disaster program.
Farmers and communities had to apply for the aid by June 30, but many still had land under water then and couldn’t do a required damage assessment. Water didn’t recede from many farms in Iowa, Nebraska and Missouri until late September or early October.
The money is part of $308 million in funding the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced last week. It is distributed through the Emergency Watershed Protection Program, which requires a sponsor such as a city, county or drainage district. The money is meant to be used to clear drainage ditches, fix levees and structures and reshape eroded banks.
Officials couldn’t say Friday how many farmers missed the chance to apply for help.
About 1,200 of Bruce Biermann’s 2,500 acres in northwest Missouri flooded last summer. He said he should be planting this year’s crop in about 60 days but that will be tough to do without help with repairs.
“It certainly is disappointing that we can’t have access to funds that are basically earmarked for disasters like this,” he said.
The flooding started in June when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began releasing massive amounts of water from upstream reservoirs filled by melting snow and heavy rains. The deluge continued for months, overtopping levees and turning farms into lakes. When the water finally receded, farmers found tree limbs, trash and, in some places, 2- to 3-feet of sand covering their land.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said the application deadline set by Congress led to the money being primarily focused on disasters that happened earlier in 2011 but that didn’t mean farmers who suffered later damage wouldn’t get help.
“I don’t think it’s accurate to suggest that the folks in northwest Missouri aren’t going to get help and assistance,” he said during a visit to Kansas City to tout President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address. “We will continue to work with our existing programs to give them as much help as possible.”
The deadline for the next round of funding is Jan. 31, but it’s unclear how much money will be given and whether it will come in time to help farmers and communities make repairs before this spring’s planting season.

Is This Going to Have Legs?

kmbc9blogz — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 15:30:30 +0000

Politico:
• Reaction to the Jan Brewer encounter is still bubbling, with some black commentators now suggesting the image of the Arizona governor wagging her finger at the President of the United States has touched a nerve in the African American community.
On MSNBC Thursday, Al Sharpton posited that Brewer’s treatment of President Obama was another example of disrespect in a list of many for the nation’s first black president. His guest, Sirius XM host Joe Madison, said such incidents show that there are people “who cannot stand the fact that this is an African-American who is now one of the most powerful individuals on the planet,” Mediaite reported.
An NAACP official went a few steps further in an interview with POLITICO Friday, saying the tiff played on age-old and discriminatory stereotypes of whites being superior to blacks. Hilary O. Shelton, senior vice president for advocacy and policy at the NAACP, said he was particularly disturbed by Brewer telling reporters afterward that she “felt a bit threatened if you will, in the attitude that he had.”
“What were you afraid he would do, steal your purse?” Shelton said.
Brewer has said she was taken aback when the president brought up the way she wrote about him in a recent book. She said when she met Obama on the tarmac, she asked for a meeting and he responded that she hadn’t treated him very cordially in the book, in which she wrote that the president was “patronizing” during a White House meeting.
In any case, the topic does not appear poised to disappear any time soon. Shelton will be discussing it on TV One’s Washington Watch with Roland Martin Sunday. Also joining the discussion will be American Urban Radio Networks White House Correspondent and Washington Bureau Chief April Ryan.

Politico Posts Radio Clip With Spence Saying the Stimulus “Saved Our Bacon”

kmbc9blogz — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 19:06:33 +0000

The orginal headline on this was misleading and has been changed. Nonetheless, Missouri Republican gubernatorial candidate Dave Spence is raising some eyebrows with this clip from a radio interview posted by Politico:

Spence Campaign Says Stimulus ‘Saved Our Bacon” Clip is Out of Context

kmbc9blogz — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 18:35:31 +0000

Dave Spence’s gubernatorial campaign says a piece of tape where Spence says in a radio interview the President Obama’s federal stimulus program “saved our bacon”, is taken out of context.
Jared C caraighead of Spoence’s campaign called the snippet posted on Politco, a “Democrat attack”
Craighead says Spence was attempting to make the point that Democrat incumbent Jay Nixon has not done his job improving Missouri economy. Spence said in the January 18 KSGF interview the federal stimulus “masked the problem”.
Here is more of what Spence said in the interview.
“You know, we’ve taken in close to $4 billion in stimulus funds in the last three years. This masked a problem. And, it is over. The gravy train is over”, Spence said on the air..
A moment later he adds, “And the Obama jammed it down everybody’s throat. And it saved our bacon, to tell ya the truth. However, that’s over. And now we have some stark realities of a big budget hole. And I think you have to look in the mirror and make some really tough decisions going forward.”
Here’s the clip as it was posted on Politico: