Thank you for visiting...have a nice day

I got mentioned in the local newspaper TWICE this week. See, I live in one of those small towns where the newspaper comes out once a week. The big city up the road has a daily paper but they don't pay a whole lot of attention to anything that goes on down here.

So why did I make the paper, you ask? Well, one mention was my failed bid at the Health Department Board of Trustees. Thanks to some last minute block campaigning by those who are already on the board, they were re-elected. Congratulations guys. I hope you do a good job.

If you'd like to see them in action, they meet on the 2nd Thursday of the month at 7:30 AM at the health department, 301 E. Brick St., Ozark. It's a public meeting. A little early but when I've gone I've had time to catch breakfast before the county commission meeting.

If you wonder what I mean by "block campaigning," well, they got some folks who were already working the polling places for other candidates to hand out cards with the three of their names on them. The cards didn't say what those guys stood for or why they should be re-elected. Nope, all it said was their names. When the woman handing out these cards at Ozark South Elementary was asked why the other candidate (me) was not on the card, she said she'd heard Ms. Hall has an agenda.

Yep. That's right. I had an "agenda," a PLAN for what needs to be done in the health department.

She should know all about my "agenda" because I e-mailed it to her. She's on my contact list because I've been working with her on a community back-to-school event.

Here's my e-mail, the one I sent to everyone in my address book who lives in Christian County:

Subject: Please vote for Konni Hall tomorrow

I've had a couple of people ask me why I'm running for the Christian County Health Department Board of Trustees. Here are a few of my reasons:

1. The current food code and the proposed updates to it tend to be unfair to farmers. I don't believe the government has any business in a private transaction between two individuals, whether it takes place at their home, business or at the farmers' market. If an adult wants to choose to buy raw milk or homemade banana bread or home grown tomatoes, they should be able to do that without government regulation.

2. Much of the health department budget has to be spent in certain mandated ways. I want to make sure what the department is doing is truly beneficial to citizens of Christian County and look for revenue sources without strings attached. The board should not be there to merely "rubber-stamp" whatever the administrator brings before them.

3. I am a registered nurse with a bachelor's degree and part of my coursework was community health. I want to make sure our health department is fulfilling it's mission of improving the health of the citizens of Christian County without overstepping the boundaries of privacy and personal responsibility.

I would appreciate your vote tomorrow. Also, in races where you can select more than one candidate (as in my race, where you can pick three), if you only know one of the people running, it's beneficial to that person to only vote for them. Many a tight race has been lost because of voting for two or three people instead of just the one you know.

Feel free to pass on to any other Christian County voters.

Konni Hall

That's my agenda. I'm still trying to figure out what's wrong with it.

My other newspaper mention hopefully will lead more people to this blog because it mentioned both me AND my blog by name (spelled correctly, I might add, no easy feat when your name is "Konni"). The parliamentarian of the Christian County Republican Central Committee wrote a guest editorial about the behavior of the minority contingent of the recent county caucus to rebut the article about the group that contested the caucus delegates to the district and state conventions.

He said I called Republicans "old and middle-aged, gray haired, retired, Bible-thumping fuddy duddies."

I actually said, "The GOP ain't so grand, but it sure is old. And no, I don't mean "old" as in it's been around for awhile. I mean old, as in...full of gray-haired retirees and middle-aged fuddy duddies. Not that there's anything wrong with either of those, if you still have an open mind and some common sense."

And, "But his stances on limiting freedoms of Americans are popular with the Bible-thumping social conservatives who have taken over the GOP, not only in Christian County, but in Missouri and much of the United States. He wants to limit the freedoms most Christians find distasteful." (I was referring to Rick Santorum).

C'mon Steve, at least get the quote and the context right!! Thanks to Miss Clairol my gray hairs are colored, I'm 38 so I'm smack in the middle of middle-aged, and just ask my kids, they will tell you I'm quite the fuddy duddy. I read my Bible almost every day, I go to church almost every Sunday and I do occasionally thump one of my kids upside the head with my Bible if they need it.

So I guess my string of "insults" was directed at...myself? I spent a lot of time in a therapist's chair getting over my own self loathing. I refuse to undo the good Dr. E did for me.

I'm not insulting anyone, Mr. Stewart!! I agree that those things can certainly be worn as a badge of honor. But to go along just to get along and to continue to support candidates who don't support what the Republican party is SUPPOSED to stand for will only get us four more years of Barack Obama. When people vote, they want to have a choice. Big government is big government, whether there's an "R" or a "D" after the name. The Dems and the Reps may be going after different "freedoms" but they both continue to figure out ways to separate We the People from more of our money to give it to those they deem more deserving and control what we can and cannot do.

My point is this...the GOP has Libertarian roots. Once upon a time Republicans stood for smaller government and more freedom. Yet under our last "Republican" president, our government grew by leaps and bounds (No Child Left Behind and Medicare Part D) and curtailed our freedoms out of fear (Patriot Act). Those are only a few examples of "Republicans" acting like "Democrats."

On the other hand, our last "Democratic" president cut the welfare rolls (Welfare to Work) and balanced the budget.

Did Bush or Clinton do any of these things alone? Of course not. And you could certainly correctly argue that raising taxes and borrowing from Social Security didn't fix our budget problems. But neither of them stayed true to their party platform.

All I want is for the GOP to get back to what it once was instead of parading around like wolves in sheeps' clothing. That's it. And I know that by standing on the outside complaining I won't make a difference at all. So I show up and try to work to make changes within the party.

If you want to see the Christian County Republican Central Committee in action, they meet on the 3rd Tuesday of the month at 7 PM at the Christian County Courthouse, Room 201 (old courtroom). That's next Tuesday. I'll be there :-)