KC Confidential

They called her Blonde Ambition…

At the dawn of KC’s Baby Boom political gold rush – back when characters such as Carol Coe, Joe Serviss, Henry Lyons and Steve Glorioso roamed the floors at City Hall – a small town cheerleader, pep club prez and homecoming queen named Claire McCaskill launched a soon-to-be-storied political career, right there in the wilds of Jackson County.

And over the course of more than two decades McCaskill transformed herself from country girl to local household word. She raised a family in the Midtown neighborhood of Coleman Highlands, repped for Brookside in the Missouri legislature in 1982, made a name for herself as Jackson County Prosecutor and famously squeaked past Todd “legitimate rape” Akin for a senate seat in 2012.

During those many years McCaskill relied on a glib personality and hardball, behind-the-scenes political manuevering to dodge any number of bullets that might have decimated the careers of less schmooze-worthy pols.

It didn’t hurt that she had the blessings of the liberal leaning Kansas City Star.

Take the time when her husband of 10 years – a ne’re-do-well named David  Exposito got busted in 1994 for smoking pot while accompanying McCaskill on a promotional riverboat cruise to promote legalized gambling.

Naturally prosecutor McCaskill had no idea her hubby was a pot head and the newspaper didn’t press the issue.

She dumped him the following year and 10 years later Exposito was found murdered, a case that has never been solved.

Or how about the time McCaskill got busted for not paying property taxes on her Lake of the Ozarks resort property?

Instead of coming clean with a “my bad,” she explained it away by blaming her younger brother (who’d been crashing there) for not paying the taxes.

Again the Star let it slide. Continue reading →

Downtown KC is on the upward move to be sure…

The apartments are on fire as far as rentals and prices have skyrocketed. Places that were $1000 a month are now $1500-$2000 for a nice one bedroom. Parking remains an issue though.

Stanford’s at 813 Walnut is on a nice street with condos, apartments, restaurants and many new businesses. Daytime traffic is brisk – not crazy – but double what it was a few years back.

There are now plenty of local bars and restaurants and new banks and financial institutions. Most of the new folks living downtown are younger and have moved to KC from area smaller cities to work here at the new financial businesses.

The new downtown crowd is mostly upper middle class and well behaved.

The streetcars are fairly busy, however with little tourist traffic they seem a bit over the top, mostly clogging up the already busy downtown streets.

And as usual, there’s way too much street work going on all the time which makes travel a bit tough.

The nightlife scene is better but pretty quiet after say 9 p.m.

And I notice that most of the bars and restaurants are not that busy even at lunch..most workers seem to opt for fast food and Starbucks while walking to and from work on their lunch hours. Continue reading →

For years Hearne had the best Super Bowl party in town…

No mas.

Everyone who was anyone was there – from the Mayor of KC to the editor and publisher of the Star to me. They were classic. Only a few people like me actually watched the game – most folks ate, drank and talked. That’s how those parties go.

Those of us who enjoy sports are blessed again this year to have the pleasure of watching the greatest quarterback of all time play in yet another world championship, No 8.

Too many people hate the New England Patriots because they always win and are the New York Yankees of the 2000’s.

Those damn Yankees.

And Tom Brady is the Pat’s Babe Ruth, the best who ever lived.

I can’t help but pull for Brady, his likeness may never come again. Continue reading →

Pitch editor / writer David Hudnall

Nothing like getting convicted of the same crime twice…

That’s what happened to Westport businessman Bill Nigro when  he walked into a neighborhood meeting Thursday and found out the hard way that new Pitch editor David Hudnall had slipped him the sausage on the zine’s website.

“I got blindsided, I went to a neighborhood meeting and everybody was like, ‘Hoo boy, the Pitch doesn’t like you, do they?'” Nigro says. “And I was like, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ And it was written by the editor of the Pitch. They wrote a story about our street privatization and what a jack-off I am and didn’t even contact me – didn’t even try to contact me. Where did he go to journalism school? I mean, if you’re going to crucify someone you might as well ask for a comment.”

Ostensibly, the story was about Westport’s efforts to keep guns out of the party zone, but instead of addressing the subject in the lead, “They shoved it up my ass in the first sentence,” Nigro says.

Hudnall began by screen grabbing a couple of out-of-context quotes from a four month-old, lame newspaper story, then trashing Nigro for “running his mouth in the Star.”

“Well, I’ll tell you one magazine I won’t be running my mouth in and that’s the Pitch,” Nigro quips. “All I was really saying is that the history of 3 a.m. hip-hop clubs here is bad. They’ve had a lot of violence. And both the the Star and the Pitch – especially the Pitch – took my quotes out of context and made me out to be a racist.”

By not bothering to do any of his own reporting, Hudnall exaggerated an already misleading characterization of Nigro based what he had told the newspaper.

“The Star reporter asked me several times why Westport didn’t have more black nightclubs and why weren’t we playing more hip-hop music,” Nigro says. “So I told him the history of the 3 a.m. liquor licenses in Kansas City and that when they first gave them out there were over 30 of them on the east side of town. And that because of the violence outside of them and complaints from the neighborhoods they started eliminating them. Now there’s only like five.”

Unfortunately that part of Nigro’s quotes didn’t make the cut since it didn’t fit the writer’s narrative of musical discrimination and the branding of Nigro as a country music loving racist.   Continue reading →

Indeed there are mixed emotions on the trade of Alex Smith to the Washington Redskins…

Many Chiefs fans still believe he’s a Super Bowl quarterback.

I don’t…at least not here.

The Skins had to move on from Kirk Cousins who just wanted too much dough and was not even getting Washington into the playoffs. So don’t cry for Alex, he is set to get a minimum of $70 plus million and up to over $90 million for four years, perhaps five. He will pocket $300 million dollars for his entire NFL career assuming this is his last stop. Cousins is 29 and Smith is 33, but Alex had better numbers this year than Kirk.

The Chiefs also got a likely all pro corner from Washington and a 3rd round draft pick.

That opens up draft space saving most of Alex Smith’s $20 million dollar salary this season on the trade.

More importantly, Smith never won a big playoff game and Patrick Mahomes seems to be the Chiefs answer to that problems

We shall see. Continue reading →

The Grammys are worthless, despite what Bono extemporaneously said…

The big winner this weekend was Chris Stapleton. Who has not only been anointed god of country music, but our single hope for rock and roll and guitar-based tunes.

Not only for his victories, but his appearance on Saturday Night Live with Sturgill Simpson. He’s not afraid to share the spotlight – he got the hip-hop memo and he’s got sales/consumption too.

Stapleton is real music and he’s the toast of Nashville.

What could be wrong with that?

And despite trying to keep Ed Sheeran down, he won for Best Pop Solo Performance and Best Pop Vocal Album.

And Portugal The Man won for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance.

Yet there were so many faux pas and guffaws it was mind-bending.

Do the Foo Fighters win whenever they’re nominated? Is their retread rock the only known entity in this moribund field?

Speaking of which, what kind of bizarro world do we live in where Leonard Cohen wins the Best Rock Performance.

However the greatest crime of all was Bruno Mars‘s victory for Album of the Year. “24k Magic” is utterly meaningless, well-honed pop for the mindless. Not challenging, not cutting edge, not as good as what came before, but he’s safe enough to play the Super Bowl twice so let’s give it to him.

HUH??????

Talk to NFL players, THEY ALL LISTEN TO HIP-HOP!

I would have been angry if Jay Z beat out Kendrick Lamar, but this is positively INSANE!

They’ve got a #metoo segment – the Grammys get all touchy-feely – and then they end up being RACIST??? Continue reading →

In 2006, Arizona Cardinals coach Denny Green famously screamed, “THEY ARE WHO WE THOUGHT THEY WERE!!!”

Green had just had his ass handed to him by the Chicago Bears in a painful, but not unexpected loss.

According to National Public Radio 97% of political donations from Department Of Justice employees go to Democrats.

“THEY ARE, WHO WE THOUGHT THEY WERE”.

For a moment let’s forget about hard core social justice warriors on the progressive plantation and hard core right wingers (like me) who live behind the Breitbart barbican.

Many millions of Americans ride the fence politically undeclared with their compos mentis firmly in tow. People who have at least a cursory interest in facts as opposed to emotion.

They should be worried because a coup d’etat is under way.

In my opinion, reasonable Americans with a grasp of the now available facts and an IQ north of a turnip, can assume that highly placed, unelected bureaucrats in the FBI and the Department of Justice have engaged in sedition and treason in pursuit of a Kleptocracy intended to negate the last Presidential election. To usurp the power of the electorate and divert the stated will of the people in that same election.  Continue reading →

As usual Tom Brady proved why they call him THE GOAT…

His fourth quarter comeback went down like clockwork – 24-20 Patriots – complete with killer big plays from Brady to Danny Amendola and the big swat from the Pat’s corner to seal the deal late in the game. Blake Bortles had the game of his life but still lost to Big Tom.

Hey Alex Smith, that game maybe killed your trade to the Jags for a low first round pick and nice payday.

Blake earns the Jags starting job for next year!.

So sports fans and media, you got your wish; it’s Tom Terrific again in another Super Bowl.

Number 8! Continue reading →

Okay, so you’re not a big Tom Brady or New England fan…

The Super Bowl needs them both.

Why? Ratings.

Without the marquee super star and his seven Super Bowls, leaving fans the Jags and Who Cares? in the big game advertisers will not be happy. Viewership will fall dramatically. Brady is not only the GOAT – as in  GREATEST OF ALL TIME – he’s the superstar of the show.

Sure we’ll still watch, even if its two nobody cares teams, but we might concentrate on the bean dip more than watching the game…if we watch at all. Ratings could dip 15-25% without BRADY.

Oh, his hand is hurt; Tom and Bill aren’t getting along; we’re tired of seeing the Patriots in the Super Bowl. Yeah, and I have a sandlot to sell you in Arizona. Brady is the Super Bowl. Period.

The network wanted to see a Tom Brady vs. Drew Brees game but the Vikings messed that up. So now it’s all about Tom.

What do I think? Continue reading →

The Big 12 may have its best conference group in decades…

With more than four teams in the Top 10 right now…yes including Kansas. KU won a mega big game on the road at West Virginia last night on ESPN’s game of the week.

KU had lost four in a row at W.Virginia the last several seasons, but won the Big 12 title anyway. Kansas was a decided underdog and trailing by 17 at one point. It was their biggest comeback since they did it to West Virginia last year at home.They did it again but this was much bigger on the road to a team that was just ranked No. 2 in the nation to KU’s No. 10.

And yes, it was probable All-American Devonte Graham that who led Kansas back late with his defense. The entire KU squad gave it their all down the stretch to do what looked nearly impossible. Kansas looked like dead ducks in the first half with little chance to even lose a close one let alone win the game. It was by far their most impressive win this season after losing three home games – two at KU and one at Sprint.

A loss to Bob Huggins and his outstanding team would have surely brought in the cry “not this season.”

 That in regard to a possible 14th record conference title. Kansas and UCLA are tied with the longest run at 13, a 14th for Kansas could last a lifetime or more in the record books for Bill Self and KU.

So why the alarm? Continue reading →

We have four games this weekend before the AFC and NFC title games and Super Bowl…

It’s no secret that NFL observers for the most part like New England and Tom Brady.

How could they not?

Brady is the best quarterback in NFL history with 7 Super Bowl games and 5 wins. He played well enough to win all seven. So it’s hard to pick against the Pats.

Today we have Atlanta at the Eagles with the Falcons a 3 point favorite.

Why? Simple, the quarterbacks.

The Eagles Nick Foles vs.Matt Ryan. We all watched Foles in Kansas City two seasons back. He was not impressive. The Chiefs had hoped he would be here a few years, perhaps replace Alex Smith at some point but nope.

The Eagles have a solid defense and a great new coach, former KC guy Doug Peterson. Foles has played well but I like Atlanta with their super bowl experience from last season.

New England plays the Chiefs victor Tennessee today as well.

The Pats are a 13 point favorite. I don’t like the spread and would have to tease these two games. All the talk about dissension between Brady and his coach over Tom’s ‘trainer’ issues and more, but I don’t buy it. Bill Belichick is the man in the NFL.

I see the Pats winning a closer game. Continue reading →

Some might call it timely…

Others will point out that things haven’t changed much since the Richard Nixon era.

Whatever your politics, you may find a fascinating insight into our s0-called freedom of the press  in producer-director Steven Spielberg‘s new historical drama, THE POST.

The political thriller pits Katharine Graham, the first female publisher of a major American newspaper against the Nixon administration after the competing New York Timeshad first exposed the so-called Pentagon Papers –a secret study and cover-up of our involvement in Vietnam..

To say that Nixon was furious would be an understatement as he threatened imprisonment of the Times‘ management if it continued to publish the secret papers.

Well the Times caved to the threats leaving the Pentagon Papers to be leaked instead to The Washington Post.

Would its management fold as well?

Guess again. Continue reading →