From Attorney General Chris Koster's campaign, a new hard-hitting ad aimed squarely at his opponent, Ed Martin.

"Missouri's top law enforcement job isn't where beginners go to learn."

OUCH.

Note: The perspective below is grounded in facts interpreted by a skilled and active intellect. In soliciting input from a person who knows what he's talking about, I am deliberately resisting the Romney campaign's insistance that voters do not want to hear such things. We are not a mob. As I have been suggesting for a couple of weeks now, this election should not turn on political party allegiance, but rather on the degree to which our collective reason is tempered by empathy. And now, please welcome Doctor DeBunk.

Thanks Inda for inviting me to share a few thoughts.

I'm a practicing general internist, the primary physician for about eight hundred people from all walks of life who live in and around Boston, Massachusetts.  I do this job in part because I love people.  At this point in my career I'm very connected to my patients and even on my most hectic, hair-pulling-out days my spirits are buoyed by the privilege it is to help them work at maintaining and improving their health.

What's great so far about the Obama administration's initiatives on health care is that they have twin goals squarely in their sights:  Better care and lower cost.

Fighting hard to keep the high and mighty healthy!

Fighting with a smile to keep Big Government in your daughter's pelvis!

Today in the National Journal: "[Todd] Akin backers claim that Republican Sen. Roy Blunt, who organized that effort [all living former GOP senators calling on Akin to step aside], also unsuccessfully pushed in recent weeks for the Missouri Farm Bureau to drop its endorsement of Akin." 

This is what passes for leadership during the reign of Birther Tim, newly-elected Speaker of the Missouri House of Representatives. Name calling at its finest. Here's the article that's apparently sent Jones over the edge, calling on Jones to "open his eyes to corruption" in Jefferson City and Missouri.

This latest outburts remindes me of a rhyme my first grade teacher taught us to recite back to bullies when they picked on folks: "I'm rubber, you're glue. Whatever you say bounces off of me and sticks to you."

While we await Doctor DeBunk's update from the medical front (he's on call this weekend), please use the link below to print out voter registration forms. Print out one, make a bunch of copies, and initiate face-to-face encounters. The deadline to drop them off at election boards is October 10th.

Hint: Keep a few in your briefcase, satchel, handbag, backpack, dossier, wheelie, binder, glove compartment, and kitchen drawer. You never know who hasn't found time to get this done, and this is the season to cheer and engage the body politic. 

http://www.sos.mo.gov/forms/elections/MVRA_PC_231-0169_042007.pdf

Dear Doctor DeBunk:

Thank you for commenting on my response to the MIssouri legislature's override of SB 749. Because you are a physician, I am interested in hearing your perspective on the possible outcomes of this election with respect to health care. What's going on here? 

Yours very truly,

Inda Schaenen

Another thing I love about Missouri is the fact that we once sent a man named Sempronius H. Boyd (1828-1894)  to represent us in the U.S. Congress.  Look at those dates. Sempronius H. was alive and active when Missouri was aflame with rancor that divided towns, families, and friends. Like now.

In 1863, in the middle of the Civil War, the War Between the States, he was elected from a party called the "Unconditional Unionists," a loose alliance cobbled together from pro-union Republicans, pro-union southern Democrats, and a few Whigs.

The perspective of a man like Sempronius H. Boyd was shaped by the range of his life experience. He had seen something of the world. He was a teacher, a gold prospector, a court clerk, a lawyer, an infantry colonel, a railroad builder, and a wagon-factory owner. He served as mayor (of Springfield), as a U.S. Congressman, and as ambassador to the nation then called Siam (now Thailand).  Boyd was able to represent multiple perspectives because he occupied multiple roles. Teacher, adventurer, capitalist, soldier.

Bearing Sempronius in mind, and with 50-something days left until we get to weigh in, I ask: Who's representing whom here?

Let's not pretend that the vaguely expressed ideas suggested by Romney, Ryan, and Akin are in the best interest of the teacher in Taney County or the grandma in north city here in St. Louis. Not when the voices of reason, including a Nobel-Prize winning economist, have been writing for years about the failure of the Republicans' fiscal and monetary policies to improve the lives of most Americans.

Emphasis on most.