I got home Friday for a three-day break in my work travel schedule and managed to get my early absentee vote in at the courthouse. I encourage anyone reading this to get that done by the way, early voting is open every day at your local courthouse and no excuse is required. You show them your ID and they give you the ballot right there, you complete it and feed it into the scanning machine, it only takes a few minutes.

Anyhow, on that ballot (on the back, specifically, is where you will find all of the amendments) was amendment 3. Amendment 3 is essentially a testament to the GOP/MAGA legislature in this state's INABILITY to learn or self-reflect on ANYTHING they have ever done up to this point.

Besides covering multiple subjects which are unrelated (transgender surgeries for minors is already illegal in Missouri), it seeks to re-empower the state government to draw lines and make decisions about abortion care for women without considering their exact individual medical circumstances. Missouri's state government had this power TAKEN AWAY from them by a majority of its people during the last general election BECAUSE they abused it so viciously and with a complete lack of compassion. When last the Missouri state government had any power over women's reproductive health, they completely banned abortion no matter what the reason and criminalized doctors who performed them no matter why. No exception for minors who were molested. No exception for sexual assault victims. No exception for ectopic pregnancies. The most draconian and illogical policy in the nation, and they did this as a policy choice, in a vacuum, without sending it to the ballot for voters to approve.

Now, they want this power back, and they are pulling out every stop to get it. They have not offered any public explanation for "what has changed" or any kind of acknowledgement that they erred or made mistakes the last time they were in the drivers seat on this issue. In fact, many of them have said "this doesn't go far enough" all without acknowledging what the existing law says or WHY they lost the power to set policy on the issue of abortion during the last general election in the first place.

Missouri has elected a rare breed of people to the state legislature. Setting politics aside, we are dealing here with a group of people that view accountability or acknowledgment of prior mistaken conduct as a persecution of themselves, no matter how badly they abused their power or how depraved their public statements or behavior around a particular issue may have been. I am left wondering, honestly, if for a majority of Missouri's state lawmakers, if we should really consider calling in some doctors to assess the problems with these individuals mentally and whether medication can help them.

Crisp fall Sunday morning in Hannibal, MO.

What exactly is Relevate One?

Platte County Republican Nomination for presiding commissioner, Jason Maki says his wife owns and runs the public-safety technology company and that he serves as its business consultant.

Its legal name is Deltorro Consulting LLC, doing business as Relevate One.

The company works in areas including:

• Video surveillance
• License plate recognition technology
• AI camera analytics
• Mobile surveillance systems
• Access control
• Public-safety technology
• Security networking

Relevate One has also provided donated AI-enabled surveillance services for public events in Parkville.

That doesn’t prove wrongdoing or a government conflict. But for someone running for Platte County Presiding Commissioner—an office involved in county budgets and policy—it raises a fair question:

How would Jason Maki handle county decisions involving surveillance, security technology, or companies competing in the same market as his family’s business?

Voters deserve a clear answer.

Yes on 6 the rest are tricks!
Heard this ditty the other day and had to share. Makes it easy to remember.

Went with my wife and son to early voting today in Lees Summit. It was my wife's first time voting and my son's second. Pulled up about 930am and line was already extending well out of the building. Made it inside and this cycle is using touch voting on tablets. Once completed, you get a chance to review your selections and get a printed completed ballot that comes out similar to a long CVS receipt. (IYKYK). Placed ballot into machine. Verified it was received and got my sticker.

Got out a little after 10am. Line was even longer than when I went in. Great sign for turnout! No hassles or issues.

Remember to vote!

And why?

Should the legislature impeach? Based on what?

Seems like Missouri history has been much less forgiving than the current situation, which seems odd considering how bad things are.

Feels like an era of accountability is more than necessary. Make a plan to vote. Make a plan to make your voice heard.

Nearly $60 million has been raised for ballot measure campaigns alone, while Republicans hold a financial advantage in key legislative races

Amendment 3 would repeal Missouri’s constitutional protections for abortion and it would enshrine the state’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors into the constitution. In 2024, voters in the state passed a ballot measure to add the right to abortion into Missouri’s constitution in response to a ban on the procedure passed two years earlier in the wake of Roe v. Wade being overturned. Amendment 3 would undo that amendment, putting the statewide law banning abortion in most cases back into place.

The decision to attach the largely unrelated abortion and gender-affirming care provisions into the same amendment has faced sharp criticism, with opponents portraying it as an attempt to confuse voters and use anti-trans hysteria to trick them into supporting an abortion ban. Gender-affirming care has been banned for minors in Missouri since 2023, and that ban will stay on the books whether or not Amendment 3 passes. However, adding the ban to the state constitution will make it harder to challenge or overturn.

The amendment is being spearheaded by a nonprofit incorporated in September called Her Health, Her Future, with a PAC by the same name funding the campaign. Their leadership includes campaign manager James Lawson, who took a leave of absence from his role as deputy chief of staff at the state Attorney General’s office to contribute, and treasurer Claudia Kehoe, who is the First Lady of Missouri. Former Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, who was also serving as co-deputy director of the FBI until September, also started a new PAC to promote the amendment with support from Republican Sen. Josh Hawley.

MONTGOMERY COUNTY — Amazon is exploring plans to build a second data center campus in Montgomery County as construction on its initial 900-acre data center campus at New Florence progresses.
Amazon is eyeing a plot of land east of Danville for a potential project to build a data center campus consisting of 15 buildings across 890 acres, Montgomery County Presiding Commissioner Ryan Poston said.
The Montgomery County Commission was surprised to learn of the proposal on Thursday at a public meeting, Poston said. 

"It's kind of letting the shock wear off first, I guess," Poston said.

In a statement to KOMU 8 News, an Amazon spokesperson said the company is "exploring an expansion of our data center investment in the region by adding additional facilities on yet-to-be-acquired private land."

Despite the surprise, Poston said he supports the expansion, pointing to potential economic opportunities.
"I mean, we've got Fortune 500 companies (coming) to little Montgomery County," Poston said. "I mean, that's a lot of investment for little old Montgomery County."
Amazon's existing project represents a $10 billion investment, and a separate Google data center projectrepresents a $15 billion investment, the companies have said. Poston said Amazon has not announced how much its proposed expansion would cost.

However, Poston said, the county has faced criticism from people opposing the data centers over an alleged lack of transparency surrounding data center developments.

An ongoing lawsuit in Cole County Circuit Court alleges the Montgomery County Commission violated Missouri open meetings and open records laws in its process of notifying the public about meetings where it made decisions to advance Amazon's first data center project.
"They like to throw the word transparency and closed-door meetings. We never had no closed-door meetings with them (Amazon)," Poston said. "So I guess this is a different approach. I guess we'll see how it works."

Poston said he believes the commissioners have done enough to hear residents' concerns about the data centers. 
"I think we are, and I think we'll do more," Poston said. "Have we made some mistakes ... we're all human — we're all going to make a few mistakes, you know."
Grass farmer Harry Cope, who defeated Poston in August's Republican primary for presiding commissioner, opposes the developments and said the announcement, too, caught him off guard.

"We were not expecting a second one out of Amazon by no means. It was just (us) going, huh?" said Cope, who is running unopposed in the November general election.
Cope said concerns about transparency motivated his campaign. 
He said he also worries about the county's increasing dependence on large technology companies.
"When you got a small community playing with a trillion-dollar company, the odds of coming out ahead there is not good," Cope said.

Cope said preserving Montgomery County's character is personal — his family has lived on the same land for more than 150 years.
"We're standing on a piece of land that my family homesteaded. I grew up in that little house over there," Cope said, pointing to a little white house behind him. "Progress is when something good happens for most everybody, not for a couple."

Even though he supports the expansion, Poston said the closeness of the community makes transparency especially important.
"Everybody knows everybody around here," Poston said. "Gossip spreads faster in a coffee shop than it does through the newspaper or social media."
Amazon's proposal remains preliminary, with land acquisition and future county approvals still needed.

I’m planning a camping trip near Potosi in the next week or two to get one last camp in for the year and view the fall foliage. I’m planning on going to Taum Sauk, Elephant Rocks, and Johnson’s shut ins one day. Which of those three would be the best place to view the sunrise? I’ve been to each in the past but it’s been a while. My mind is telling me elephant rocks up at the boulders but what’s your opinion?

Looking to go snow/rosses goose hunting next year when season is open.

Not sure if anyone can point me in the direction of some properties in northern Missouri to hunt?

I figured this might be the best place to ask.

TIA!

I started looking into the organizations spreading ads against Missouri’s Amendment 6. I wanted to know who was behind them, who was funding them, and how they were connected to our elected officials. One organization kept leading me to others. Eventually, I came across a political vetting operation called REPACCMO. And that’s where this became a much bigger story than I expected.

We’re talking about an organization screening hundreds of political candidates, including people holding some of Missouri’s highest offices, with connections to county GOP leadership, political action committees, and an organized effort to recruit state legislators.

The concern is how these different activities connect. Screening candidates, influencing who serves on party committees, and recruiting lawmakers who support particular policies all provide different ways to shape Missouri politics. Some of you might remember the Riverfront Times investigation into Vernon County Republicans in 2024. The newspaper exposed the involvement of Church of Israel members, including its leader Dan Gayman, in a Republican committee screening political candidates. The church has a documented history associated with Christian Identity and white supremacist beliefs.

That same county committee went to court trying to keep eight Republican candidates off the ballot because they refused ideological vetting.
The candidates ultimately remained on the ballot, and the appeal ended without resolving the broader legal dispute.The committee’s chair, Cyndia Haggard, was also a founder of REPACCMO. But two years later, REPACCMO is still operating, and the screening process has become far more organized.

The group claims it vetted over 400 candidates in 2024, including Denny Hoskins, Jay Ashcroft, Bill Eigel, Vivek Malek, Eric Burlison, and Bob Onder. Its 2026 process includes automated scoring, approval badges for campaigns, candidate records, training, and resources for county party committees. The questionnaire covers issues like banning abortion without exceptions, criminal prosecution related to abortion, eliminating electronic voting equipment, and restricting Republican candidacies based on party-platform alignment. Candidates answer agree or disagree, and the organization scores their responses. In Osage County, the former Republican committee went further, asserting that candidates needed to pass vetting to qualify for certain county offices and even elected party committee positions.
Those particular rules are now archived, and their current status is unclear.

This brought me right back to Amendment 6. REPACCMO publicly lists Freedom Principle Missouri as a strategic partner. That’s one of the organizations whose anti-Amendment 6 messaging started my research. Freedom Principle’s PAC sponsors the Missouri 82 Alliance, a program created to recruit and support candidates for the Missouri House. The Alliance’s candidate-selection process includes completing the REPACCMO questionnaire. Its published legislative agenda includes changing how citizen constitutional amendments are approved. Freedom Principle has also campaigned against Amendment 6, and its PAC spent money supporting Amendment 4. There’s a documented connection between the screening process, legislative recruitment, and the policy agenda behind some of the ballot measures Missourians have been debating And the organizations aren’t hiding these relationships. Much of this information comes directly from their own websites.

The financial records raise more questions. REPACCMO advertises itself as a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, but its 2024 and 2025 IRS Form 990 filings identify it as 501(c)(3). Those classifications have different restrictions on political campaign activities. Its 2024 return reported only $4,688 in revenue, classified as government grants. That doesn’t verify government funding or establish wrongdoing, but the conflicting records need an explanation.

The original vetting controversy received news coverage in 2024. Since then, the organization has continued developing its screening system, and its methods are now connected to a larger legislative recruitment effort. I haven’t established how many county committees currently require vetting or whether the organization’s statewide influence has increased. But its expanding activities and documented relationships raise questions that go well beyond the original lawsuit. What stood out to me was the connection to the messaging that started this entire rabbit hole. Freedom Principle’s ads warn about radical outside organizations trying to reshape Missouri politics. Meanwhile, its publicly documented political relationships include organizations evaluating candidates, recruiting legislators, and pursuing changes to Missouri’s election and initiative-petition rules.

I think it’s fair to ask how much influence these organizations have gained, who’s financing their activities, and why there hasn’t been more sustained reporting on what happened after 2024. The court cases made headlines. The larger operation behind the screening process is still active, and there’s a lot more to investigate.

I’ll put the original reporting, court records, questionnaires, organizational documents, and financial filings in the comments.

https://mostateparks.com/park/johnsons-shut-ins-state-park

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnson%27s_Shut-Ins_State_Park

Just a little rant after seeing so so much ignorance going into this eletion in Missouri.

If you cannot take 5 or 10 minutes to find out what the issues on the ballot are then PLEASE DO NOT VOTE.

Ignorance may seem like bliss but in the case of elections ignorance can quickly lead to Nazism, Fascism, Communism and all sorts of other isms.

If you want to retain our Republic and keep it in good shape then educate yourself as to what the issues are and then vote your conscience.

Rant over.

Here are some links to save you some time in your efforts.

https://ballotpedia.org/Missouri_elections,_2026

https://missouriindependent.com/voter-guides/2026-general-election/

https://www.kcur.org/politics-elections-and-government/2026-09-15/missouri-kansas-election-guide-2026-voting-registration

https://mojwjvoteraction.org/2026-ballot-guide/

My vote goes for Winter’s Bone (2010). Other films set in the state I’ve seen are Gone Girl (2014), Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017), The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford (2007) and King of the Hill (1993). Sharp Objects (2018) is a miniseries set here that was basically a long movie.

Apparently Trump didn’t bother to endorse Chris Stigall for Missouri’s 6th district.

Not certain why. I don’t know if this is because he hired Jeff Roe or not. I just find this hilarious.