This Saturday is the state convention of the Missouri Democratic Party in Missouri.  At this convention the 8 at-large Clinton and Obama delegates will be chosen by the delegates who were elected out of county and other local elections.

This is my first convention.  I am an Obama delegate who will try to be one of the four at-large male Obama delegates.

We will also be electing the Missouri members to the DNC.

Unfortunately, I am unable to make the reception Friday night, but I have some questions.  I would like your input.

Josh Marshall has posted the following exchange McCain had with AFL-CIO trade union workers in 2006.  Marshall used it to suggest McCain has no knowledge of economics.

Now, my friends, I'll offer anybody here $50 an hour if you'll go pick lettuce in Yuma this season and pick for the whole season. So -- OK? Sign up. OK.

You sign up. You sign up, and you'll be there for the whole season, the whole season. OK? Not just one day. Because you can't do it, my friend.

Josh notes that if such work was paid at $50/hour the worker would be making over $100,000 a year!

The blog of the Kansas City Star is reporting that the Missouri Democratic Party has picked its last two superdelegates today.

One is the State Auditor, Susan Montee.  Montee, to my knowledge, was the earliest statewide officeholder in Missouri to endorse Obama.  I know she was for Obama before McCaskill.

The other superdelegate is the the Attorney General, Jay Nixon, who will be the Democratic candidate for Governor.

More after the fold.

Last night I participated in the Fourth Congressional Distict delegate selection.  It was held in the Warsaw, Missouri Community Center.

We met to elect three Clinton delegates (two female and one male) and two Obama delegates.

The members of the district meeting had been chosen in county  meetings several weeks before.  There were just over 60 Clinton delegates, and just under 50 Obama delegates.

The Fourth Congressional District is one of the most Republican districts held by a Democrat, Ike Skelton, Chair of the Armed Services Committee.  It runs from the west and southern far suburbs of Kansas City to Jefferson City on the east and goes south boarding Ray Blunt's district.  

There are just a handful of Missouri House seats in the district held by a Democrat, and I think only one State Senate Seat in the District held by a Democrat.

It is not the reddest part of Missouri, but it is not very purple either.

More after the fold

The National Review was influential in creating the modern conservative movement.  I read it because I want to get some sense of what the right thinks and cannot stand reading the right wing blogs.

Today's editorial on the NRO on Obama's Philadelphia speech, "Obama's Evasions" is instructive what it tells us about the mainstream right and what we can expect in the fall.

More after the fold.

I just got your e-mail asking me to donate to your wife's campaign. I would like to have sent you this personally, but I  can't find a return e-mail address. I just can't give Hillary any money or support and I think you should know why.

Bill, you write:

You and I know Hillary can win. We have a strategy in place and a clear path to the nomination. All she needs is for you to keep standing up for her every single day.

Last night I attended a fundraiser for the local Democratic Party in Sedalia, Missouri (about 100 miles east of Kansas City).  There were about 60-70 people in attendance.  The local leaders of the party thought is was a good turnout.

The main speaker was Ike Skelton, Chair of the Armed Services Committee.  Skelton is was a very conservative Democrat. (He knows me and knows I am considerably to the left of his politics.  I recognize he could not be elected in his district with my Chicago Lakefront Liberal politics.
(No Democrat for national office has won his district for decades.)  Last year he wasn't sure whose politics are changing: his or mine as we seem to agree more and more.  

He has always been concerned about the state of the military.  He talked about two major problems facing the military: we have no ready reserve and we are losing Afghanistan.  Of course, reducing our troops in Iraq helps to solve both of those.  He did not mention that publicly, but I get the feeling he knows this.

More below the fold.

I teach at a regional university in Missouri, the University of Central Missouri.

One of my colleagues, Jim Staab,  has written a book on Scalia. Staab argues that Scalia is Hamiltonian.

As a consequence of this book, Scalia is coming to my campus.  This is a bit unusual because we don't have a law school.

Today is my birthday.

A connection with Dan Quayle that I wish I did not have, but I'll take the connection with Rosa Parks, thank you.

Being born in the middle of the century really makes me feel like a child of the 20th Century.

For reasons I put in this diary, I can't do what I want to be doing: getting out the Obama vote in outstate Missouri.

I am so fired up about what is happening in our country today!

What I really, really want for my birthday is a huge Obama win tomorrow!

This evening, at the age of 82, my stepfather, Bill Gettman died. There will be one fewer vote for Obama in Illinois this Tuesday.

I post this here because he and I attended the AnnualKos in Chicago last August. Our time in Chicago will be one of my lasting memories with him.  We went to a Cub game (the one that put the Cubs back in first) and the Obama breakout session.  At 82, he had to have been one of the oldest attendees.  

He was energized. We sat next to the correspondent from Le Monde during the Presidential debate. We had a bottle of Scotch with us and one evening we sat outside and shared it with other attendees. He enjoyed talking to those much younger who shared his passion for politics.

(My mother tells me this was one of the last things he talked about yesterday before he was not longer lucid.)

I wish he had been my biological father. He was my father.

In 2004, I was a supporter for Dean because of his opposition to the Iraq War.

I'm now listening to Clinton on Meet the Press.  (OK, it's a mistake.)

You need to know two things:

1. I am a committed Obama supporter.

2. I will support whoever gets the nomination.

Today, Clinton is not remembering what we knew about Iraq before we launched Shock and Awe.

With all of the candidate diaries, I want to share with the Kos community my thoughts on who I will support in November, 2008.

I have had the good fortune of seeing all of the Democratic nominees twice: in August in Chicago at THE convention and in September at the Harkin Steak Fry.  So, I have had a lot of input on who I will support in November.

I am well aware that an anecdote is not data, but I am convinced that Obama is clearly the candidate of those under 30.

In a mock poll at University of New Hampshire, Obama got 890 votes, Clinton 275, and Edwards 206.

I teach at a regional state university in Missouri about 55 miles east of Kansas City.  To my knowledge, I have the only Obama lawn sign in my town and I have an Obama bumpersticker on my car.  I wear an Obama button on my coat and have one on my book bag.

After the fold some of my experiences.

I'm doing some agritourism in the apple growing area along the Missouri River in Missouri. The area is about 60 miles east of Kansas City. The crop was badly damaged this year by a late frost in April and the harvest is just about over.

As I am checking out, I notice a flyer announcing a fundraiser for an 18 month old baby who needs a number of treatments for leukemia.  In my part of Missouri, this is not unusual.

I lose it.  I point at the flyer and say very loudly, "We should be ashamed that we have to have fundraisers for an 18 month old child to get appropriate health care.  In no other industrialized country in the world is a fundraiser necessary for a child to get health care.  This is what next year's election will be about."

The reaction to the customers and the checkout clerk below.

OK, so on the day before Labor Day none of the Sabbath Gasbags devote themselves to the state of labor in the US.  

NPR did have a nice interview with Andy Stein Stern, who made some of the same observations about the changing state of labor that he made in Chicago at Yearly Kos.

Turner Classic Movies is usually a good place for doing themes, but nothing on labor tomorrow.  (You will get to see Burton and O'Toole in Beckett.)

Although there have not been a lot of films on labor themes, there have been enough to put together a decent festival.  

Some suggestions below the fold.

Last week a front page story reported how a Republican State Senator in Missouri, Kris Koster, switched and became a Democrat. I live in that district.

Yesterday, he came to an ice cream social sponsored by the Democratic Club and Democratic Central Committee in Johnson County.  

More below.

As a college professor, I read the National Review's Phi Beta Cons, which provides clear evidence that there is a lot of "con" in conservative.  There is an entry about a recent study, reported in the NY Sun that college professors are more religious than many believe.

However, our good friends at the NRO's Phi Beta Consquestion these results because the survey did not ask what political positions those religious college professors subscribe to.

I plead guilty to reading the National Review Online. Fred Thompson has columns regularly appearing there.  A recent column in Salon, detailing how Thompson is positioning himself to run for the Republican nomination, suggestions Thompson may not be writing them:

[Thompson] began signing his name to columns in the National Review on topics like gun ownership and the need for Western civilization "to get a little backbone."

Today's column titled "Remembering the Past," discussed after the fold, is on the need for military courses in universities (a topic that has been discussed on NRO's Phi Beta Cons forum on the state of American univeristy).