Roy Blunt has been ignoring the actual Republican primary in favor of laying down the gauntlet to likely Democratic nominee Robin Carnahan.

Carnahan’s spokesman responds:

I was quite surprised to receive a voicemail message earlier today from Rich Chrismer of Congressman Blunt’s campaign, who expressed a desire to discuss a plan for candidate forums.  Assuming he had the wrong number, I returned his call and left him a message in which I offered to provide him with a telephone number for Sarah Steelman.

I also told him that Robin Carnahan looks forward to debating whoever is the Republican nominee about the serious and important issues facing our country.

As Secretary of State, Robin Carnahan has helped small businesses by cutting millions of dollars in costs and red tape.  She’s cracked down on big financial institutions and small time scam artists, and protected the life savings of thousands of Missourians.

Secretary Carnahan will gladly compare her record of standing up for Missouri’s families with that of the Republican nominee after the voters of their party have chosen their candidate. In the meantime, Secretary Carnahan looks forward to talking with the people of Missouri about the challenges facing our families, our state, and our country, and about the solutions that will get us back on the right track.

Hi, don’t forget to check out the discussion board if you’d like to get involved in some of the exciting upcoming St. Louis primary races.

This week’s events:

Monday – Thursday is Eating Disorder Awareness Week at SLU with events every day at 7 PM.  Get the full details at this link.

Monday, Feb.23, 6:30 PM.  The Young Dems. monthly membership meeting is at Crown Square, 2720 N. 14th Street.  RSVP here.

Also Monday,  a group of people are meeting to discuss how they can prevent Mann School from being closed.  The meeting is from 7 to 8:30 PM at the Mann School Gym, 4047 Juniata Street, and you can find out more at their facebook page.

Also Monday, the Interfaith Committee on Latin America is having a dinner and discussion on El Salvador from 7 to 9 PM at the Community Arts and Media Project on 3022A Cherokee.

Monday is also the 2nd installment of the . City Primary Discussion at the Royale, 3132 Kingshighway.  This week’s installment is called “Race and the Race,” and starts at 8:30.

Tuesday, February 24, Every Step Counts is hosting “True Love Doesn’t Hurt,” a discussion of domestic violence.  The event is from 11 am to 2 PM at Forest Park Community College (5600 Oakland) in the Highlander Lounge.

Also Tuesday, the Royale is hosting a Resume Clinic and Access Health Care Clinic from 2 to 5 PM.

Also Tuesday, the Literacy for Social Justice Group is hosting an educational forum on “Developing a Report Card on Education: Obama’s First 100 days” at the Carpenter Branch Library, 3309 South Grand Blvd.  Find out more at this link.

Also Tuesday, Health Care for America Now is hosting a Training and Informational meeting on Health Care Reform, likely to be one of the most important political fights of our lifetime.  The training is at the SEIU Building on 5585 Pershing from 6:30 to 7:30, and you can RSVP here.

Wednesday, February 25, from 7 to 8:30 PM, Keep a Child Alive at SLU is hosting the premier of “Alicia in Africa,” a documentary about Alicia Keys’ tour to see the effects of HIV and AIDS.  The movie  will be at the Busch Student Center.

Thursday, Feb. 26th, If someone holds a drinking event in the city, and Vanessa Carroll isn’t there, can that event legitimately be called “Drinking Liberally?”   This is just one of the many things you can discuss at this months Drinking LIberally St. Louis City.  The event is from 6 to 11 PM at The Church Key, 4127 Manchester.

Thursday is also the opening night for “A Song for Coretta,” a play about five fictional African-American women waiting to pay their respects to Mrs. Coretta Scott King.  Get more details at the facebook page.

Also Thursday, the WashU College Democrats and the Pride Alliance are hosting Roy Zimmerman.  He’ll be performing at the Gargoyle from 10 to 11 pm, and you can find out more here.

Friday, February 27, from 6 to 8 PM, the American Indian Student Association and the Environmental Social Work Initiative at WashU are hosting “Homeland:Four Portraits of Native Action.”  The event is in the Goldfarb Commons of the Brown School of Social Work. 3

Also Friday, The St. Louis Open Studio and Gallery is holding a POP Trivia Night Fundraiser at the Mad Art Gallery (2727 S. 12th street)  from 6 to 11 PM.  Find out more at this link.

Friday is also the WashU Pride Alliance’s annual drag show at the Gargoyle from 7 to 10 PM.

Friday through Sunday is the Webster University edition of the Vagina Monologues.  The Friday and Saturday shows are at 8 PM at Stage III of Webster Hall, and the Sunday show is at 2 PM.  Proceeds benefit Women and Girls of the Democrat Republican of Congo.  Find out more here.

Also Friday, LiveFeed, a group dedicated to fighting hunger, is hosting the final performance by Dean Henry Biggs and Headmess.  The show is at the 560 Music Building at 560 Delmar, and starts at 8 PM.  RSVP at  this link.

Saturday, February 28 at 1 PM.  Check out a Youth Performance of Dr. King’s message at the Vaughn Cultural Center, 3701 Grandel.

Also Saturday, from 7 to 10 PM, if you didn’t get your fill of trivia yet, check out the Discovering Options Trivia Night at the Carpenter’s Hall at 1401 Hampton.  Discovering options provides at-risk students with supportive and life-enriching programs to prevent drug-abuse.

Sunday, March 1, from 3 to 5 PM at the Schlafly Tap Room, is the Annual Meeting for the Missouri Coalition for the Environment.  The featured speaker will be Nancy Jackson, the executive director of the Climate and Energy Project.  RSVP at this link.

Have a fun and meaningful week!

Steve Walsh over at Missourinet (if that is his real name) singles Jeff Mazur out as one of the only bloggers at Fired Up Missouri deserving of praise. Not for any particular post he’s written, mind you, but because Jeff signed his own name to his posts!

What is known is that while so many of the contributors to Fired Up! Missouri cowardly hide behind pseudonyms and anonymity to launch their ad hominem attacks against political opponents and reporters (including this reporter) … Mazur has been up front about it … putting his name out there.

How boring. For starters, Walsh (again, if that is his real name) cites The Source in the same piece for a bit about Mazur, “The Source” being a pseudonymous political operative. There’s nothing particularly cowardly or courageous about the decision to sign your name to a post. Writers throughout history have turned to a pseudonym for any variety of reasons – Paracelsus was a controversial German scholar in the early 16th century, but his adoption of a Latin pseudonym was common among scholars of the time, contentious or not. Ben Franklin’s career was largely based on one pseudonym, “Richard Saunders,” although he used others. The Founders argued the merits of federalism via pseudonymous debate, women have posed as men to ensure publication of their work, and Steven King even wrote under a pseudonym to see if he could sell as many books without the famous name (he couldn’t.) The most famous Missourian in history was known for his pseudonym, not his real name (and no, I’m not talking about Harry Truman.) In particular, online culture is replete with pseudonyms. I suggest reviewing this article if you’re unfamiliar with the history and diversity of the use of a pseudonym.

For my own part, I don’t write under a pseudonym because I want to verbally lash out at others without retribution, but rather because I want people to focus on what I have to say rather than who I am. That’s one reason I have a completely banal nickname like “Clark”, although it was also my nickname back when I was a bartender. (I think it had something to do with sometimes wearing glasses and sometimes not; Clark Kent became Clark.) There’s nothing exceptional about that, and as long as people don’t start delving into sockpuppetry, I could care less if they write pseudonymously.

Today the St. Louis Post-Dispatch quoted Roy Blunt’s take on the Obama stimulus package:

“I guess you can’t be Franklin Roosevelt if you don’t create a depression,” he said of President Barack Obama.

Did Representative Blunt never learn that the Great Depression began in 1929, well before FDR was elected in 1932?  Certainly, the Post-Dispatch reporters either did not know or did not think it necessary to supply a correction to Blunt’s assertions which they presented as “pointed criticism.”

I suppose, though, that such claims just prove that it is hard to be a Republican in this day and age. After years of working to reverse the reforms enacted during the New Deal, what Republicans have given us is a failed economy and a sadly eroded middle class.  So what do our friends on the right do to deflect their descent into irrelevance?  They pretend it just isn’t so and make up a nice alternative fantasy.

I am not, of course, attributing any actual originality to Roy Blunt, since he seems to be picking up a meme that is floating around out there in Republican land. Republicans have enjoyed some success on the cable news stations pushing the story that the New Deal was a failure; this success seems to have inspired some, Roy Blunt among them, to the even more bizarre claim that FDR created the Great Depression with New Deal spending.

One does wonder why these revisionist wannabes aren’t a bit embarrassed  that their claims are so blatantly untrue.  The facts about the origin of the Great Depression are easily verifiable along with the important role of of the New Deal in  ameliorating the Depression–which finally ended, according to Robert Reich, thanks to the granddaddy of all stimulus spending packages, the Second World War, which

pulled the nation out of the Great Depression because it required that government spend on such a huge scale as to restart the nation’s factories, put Americans back to work, and push the nation toward its productive capacty.

Once upon a time, Kit Bond (R-Lame Duck) cosponsored a constitutional amendment to limit US Senators to two terms. Now near the end of his fourth Senate term and the end of his career in elective office, Kit Bond has flipped on term limits.

Couldn’t have anything to do with the possibility of Democrats closing the current 15 seat gap in the Missouri by picking up open seats like the ones held by Republicans like Steve Hobbs or Therese Sander (to name two close to where Kit grew up).. could it? Term limits were great in the eyes of Republican politicians when they turned a 15 seat Democrat majority into a Republican Majority in 2002.

At least term-limited legislator Gayle Kingery’s idea for 16 year “limits” isn’t totally shameless. If there were no limits, how many legislators would really serve 16 years? And how many of them propose 32 year limits in the year before the 16 year limits were going to take effect?

Term limits have been a pawn used by politicians (such as when Newt backed 12 year House limits, in year 16 of his House tenure). Now that term limits are a nuisance instead of a benefit to their ambitions, some Republicans want to go back on that idea.

Who’s going to call the Fish and Wildlife Service to tell them that the Missouri Republicans who believed in term limits are disappearing one by one as the next generation of term limited lawmakers are about to step out the door?

Good luck trying to get the electorate to repeal or modify term limits in 2010. You’ll need it.