Monday, October 23 is...

Chulalongkorn Day (Thailand)
Memorial Day (Hungary)
Peace Treaty Day (Cambodia)
National Canning Day

So if you needed an excuse to make it a 3-day weekend, there's four of them.

Three reads this morning:

A Bonobo at the Great Ape Trust pulled the fire alarm, and the Register was there. That's why they're the newspaper Iowa depends on. My favorite quote from the story:

"This is the first known case of an animal setting off the fire alarm in Des Moines," fire spokesman Brian O'Keege joked. "We will ask the Great Ape Trust to educate the occupants of the seriousness of their actions."

Neighborhood associations and other groups are all up in arms over the possibility of the new homeless shelter being located near them, which is why I find it enfuriating that no one has seen fit to make this point until now: It's working in Davenport.

Finally, campaign disclosure reports came out on Thursday. I haven't written about them because there's really not much to say that I haven't already said. But this Register story has led me to feel the need to say three things:

1) It's true that Jack Whitver outraised Ako in the last fundraising period. It's also true that none of his $6,285 raised in the last period came from his district. It's also true that if you remove $500 he gave himself, he only raised $400 from the entire city of Des Moines. To be fair, Ako also raised $0 in his district during the period.

2) While Whitver took no PAC money, Ako took in $4400 from PACs, 87.8% of his total.

3) Ako received donations from just nine individuals in the last reporting period, and I'm one of them.

After the primary but before CIETC, I was curious about Ako and didn't know much about him. So I took an invitation and attended his birthday party. I was one of the first people to arrive, and as such I got to spend a good deal of time talking to him, and left with a positive impression. As such, I left a check in the donations basket on the way out. Afterwards, CIETC broke, and the Creative Visions audit came up, and I haven't done anything else for any of the candidates in the race since. With that said, now that the audit is over and found nothing, I don't feel nearly as bad about it.

KL