KC Confidential

The debate whether the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election was fairly conducted has been so bitterly and so viciously waged that it’s hard to see how the truth will ever come out…

(It may take 50 or 60 years if the 1960 election is any indication.)

Neither side has exactly covered itself in glory in that regard, with wild claims and allegations that call into question those who made them’s credibility.

It’s the electoral equivalent of the run up to the First World War, with all the participants so recklessly escalating their rhetoric that it made it difficult to stand down.

In fact, it was uncomfortably close to the kind of disputed election outcomes, complete with threats by the military to intervene, that we see in Third World countries.

I see two issues in considering the fairness of how the election was conducted.

The first is whether it was rigged by those in authority to get the outcome they wanted. Rigging means “to arrange in a dishonest way for selfish advantage; manipulate fraudulently; fix;/ to rig an election.” Webster’s New World Dictionary (1982), p. 1225.

It’s hard to claim that this didn’t happen after the victors openly bragged about doing it.

In a Time Magazine story published February 4^th   – The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved The 2020 Election – liberal journalist Molly Ball indulged in an extended gloatathon on how a “conspiracy” or “cabal” (her words, not mine) of “well-funded powerful people” were able to get “the desired outcome” to the 2020 election.

Virtually every significant American institution from the AFL-CIO to Silicon Valley, to the Chamber of Commerce, to Black Lives Matter and every other left-wing group under the sun were united in this crusade to “save” not just the 2020 election but American democracy itself.

At this point it’s necessary for the unitiated to get out your Captain Midnight Decoder rings to understand what’s being said:

When a Democratic candidate for President loses to a Republican that means democracy is threatened. After all, a small “d” democracy is only truly healthy when the big “D” Democratic Party wins all elections and holds all power.

According to Ball, the anti-Trump Resistance got states to “change voting systems.”

That’s a euphemism for eliminating safeguards against election fraud; like photo I.D, signature requirements, and showing a chain of custody in the handling of ballots. Conversely, we’re told that the Resistance fought “voter suppression” lawsuits, which translates as any legal effort to prevent time honored Democratic methods like vote harvesting, e.g. paying party workers for each ballot collected from nursing home residents.

Ball also brags that the Resistance plotters “successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder stand against ‘disinformation’ and used data-driven strategies to fight viral smears.” 

This is, of course, code for stopping coverage of stories damaging to the Biden campaign like the Hunter Biden laptop expose in the New York Post by blocking it on Twitter.

What is the most surprising disclosure is her boast that the anti-Trump cabal funneled hundreds of millions of dollars in public and private funds to local election officials to “ensure the proper outcome of the election.”

What if wealthy conservative billionaires like Robert Mercer and Tim Mellon had funneled such sums ($500 million) towards efforts to get out the GOP vote? Democrats and/or liberals would have been outraged.

Private money should not go to election officials to get the results the donors want, any more than private money should go to state court systems, local prosecutors’ officers, or state attorneys general to ensure legal outcomes which benefit the donors and harm the donor’s adversaries. 

I’m sure there are a lot of people who don’t like Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates but we can’t just write checks to the U.S. Department of Justice Anti-trust Division to go after them as monopolists. So why should Mark Zuckerberg get to pay state and local election officials to bend the laws to defeat Donald Trump?

Of course, Molly Ball would say that these average, every day, Silicon Valley and Wall Street billionaires were not really working to defeat Trump.

The “desired outcome” they were working to ensure she repeatedly insists (through the deeply noble, public-spirited left-wing activists she quotes at length in her article) was a decisive, clear-cut result so that the country might be spared a divisive, protracted election dispute.

Funny, I seem to recall these same people not dropping their outrage over the 2000 Florida recount for at least a year after the election. Continue reading →

It’s not easy dodging those “woke” bullets…

Take Dwight Sutherland of Sutherland Lumber fame, who was minding his own business two weeks back at a quaint Westwood coffee klatch just off the Country Club Plaza.

“I was at Hi Hat Coffee  on State Line talking with a friend about the Chiefs – and there’s no mask requirement there – and a guy comes up to me and says, ‘I’m going to splatter your brains all over the wall – he said it twice – he was a young guy in his 20s or 30s and looked like the kind of guy you would see in Westport.

“I didn’t say anything to him, but I went outside to try and get the license number on his car. And he saw  me and figured out what I was doing, so he started backing up State Line really fast so I couldn’t get a look art his license plate. And he’s driving 40 miles an hour – like Starsky & Hutch – and peeling his tires. He made so much noise that George Brett‘s wife came out of her flower shop next-door and said, ‘What in the hell’s going on?’ ”

The bottom line:

“This is the kind of stuff that goes on these days,” Sutherland says. “Because the inmates are running the asylum and this guy is absolutely ‘woke’ to the max. You know, if you don’t do exactly what they say, you’re an anti vaxer or a Trump insurrectionist or terrorist.”

So much for not wearing a mask in public…

“So I said to him, ‘Look, I’m socially distanced and I’m double vaccinated and my friend told him we were talking about the Chiefs, not him. ‘We weren’t talking about you’ – he thought we were talking about him.”

” ‘You’re breathing down my neck,’ ” the guy said. ” ‘You’re trying to give me herpes – I ought to splatter your brains all over that wall.’

Not that the dude wasn’t weird enough already, Sutherland says. Continue reading →

007 Shows up with daughter at No Time to Die premier

Nothing lasts forever, right?

Honest presidents, cheap gas, movies with actual actors and story lines,  as opposed to over-the-hill actresses winning Academy Award for pooping into buckets.

That said, COVID delays aside, at least we still have James Bond…for now.

I checked out the new Bond flick No Time to Die on opening night – the one that took nearly two years to find its way to movie theaters, after having an announced opening more than a year ago.

And, any…?

“I did like it,” says KCC movie maven Jack Poessiger. “In spite of the fact that it’s two hours and 46 minutes long.”

Speaking of which…

“I recommend you go to the bathroom first,” Poessiger says. “Because once it starts you won’t want to have to get up.”

Incidentally, here in Arizona, next-to-nobody hardly ever goes to a movie theater these days. Still they snagged around 50 people at my opening night 7:20 pm screening.

Which was a new record, since every other movie I’ve seen a movie was like a ghost town.

I checked on some of Kansas City area theaters and they were doing far better, but looks like we have a way to go to try and catch up to the pre COVID movie era.

Will movie theater moviegoing return to the good old days?

“I’ll grant you, a lot of theaters will go away,” Poessiger says. “There won’t be as many of them as we have now.

Also going away: the current James Bond, actor Daniel Craig.

“The talk is, there’ll either be a black Bond or a female Bond next,” Poessiger says.

Hold it right there…

There already is effectively a female Bond of sorts – Lashana Lynch – in the just released movie.

The schtick being, Bond had retired and Lynch was given his 007 designation.

But since Craig won’t be returning, movie rights holder Barbara Broccoli is already on record that the next James Bond will remain a dude…

English actor Idris Elba – who is black – is who Poessiger thinks might take Craig’s place.

Although buy the time the next JB movies hits the screen, he’ll be 50.

Lynch’s 007 will be back for the next film, but the jury’s still out on if she’s gay or straight.

Such are the times we live in… Continue reading →

People tend of mellow oftentimes as they grow older…

Take former KC Star bad boy (and rival columnist) Jason Whitlock.

Ah, but the artist who-called-himself Big Sexy has bounced around plenty since leaving the newspaper a year or two after I did 10 or so years ago. He’s managed to land some reasonably sexy gigs on ESPN and Fox before parting ways – usually somewhat  abruptly.

More recently, the middle-aged Whitlock has been plighting his trough at conservative firebrand Glenn Beck‘s Blaze Media. That after making several appearances on Fox News’ Tucker Carlson and other conservative media shows weighing in on sports and conservative politics.

On one of Whitlock’s recent podcast / online shows – Fearless with Jason Whitlock -he decided to purge himself of some of the vices Star readers knew him best for.

“One of the things that has really bothered me in the last couple of years – it’s like this Lizzo, this singer Lizzo, comes out of nowhere and she looks to be 300, 320 pounds or so. And I’m looking at mainstream media and the left try to normalize her obesity.

“Obviously, I have an obesity problem and I don’t want this normalized. I don’t think it’s healthy. And it’s like, everything they seem to be pushing seems to be connected to death. The lifespan of ever weight people, much shorter – that’s just a fact – so I don’t understand why there would be any motivation, how someone could see it as healthy. Hey, let’s tell overweight people that this is great and they shouldn’t feel any sort of way about it. And you should feel good about being overweight. And you go girl and you go Jason. It’s crazy.”

Remember those stripper chicks with Jason that were posted online? Continue reading →

Former KU basketball coach Roy Williams said it first and arguably best…

After suffering an uninspired home game crowd, Williams said, “The place should never be described as a wine-and-cheese crowd, and that’s what it sounded like out there tonight. If you don’t want to cheer for us, keep your big butts at home.”

Well, in the wake of Oklahoma and Texas announcing that they’re bailing on the Big 12 conference for the SEC (with Mizzou and Texas A&M),  KU’s “big butts” are back.

And it’s high time we call it like it is…

Referring to KU’s big butts as a “wine and cheese crowd” is pretty close to being accurate, but these days they’re more of a “whine and cheese” crowd.

Seriously.

After having lived in Lawrence, Kansas for much of the past decade, I can confirm that KU sports fans – basketball fans primarily – are little more than spoiled snobs.

Having hired basketball deity Bill Self – who has long since mastered the art of what amounts to cheating by most traditional college sports standards – all they really care much about outside of their families, personal wealth and health – is how close the Jayhawk basketball team can get to winning the Big 12 and into the Final Four.

And that’s pretty much it.

Sure, they’ll glom onto the Royals in the rare event that Kansas City’s baseball team halfway matters – and  who wouldn’t get behind Chiefs superstar Patrick Mahomes team?

However, it’s Self’s men’s basketball team that lends Lawrence its primary, claim-to-fame and identity.

Outside of that, they’re just a hipper Kansas college town because they’re closer to KC, not stuck in the middle of Nowhere, Kansas like K-State.

And now that the Big 12 has been diminished by the pending loss of its two highest ranking football teams, it’s become one of those last man out, turn out the lights affairs.

Yet for like 10 years KU has refused to play basketball and football games with Missouri, after MU jilted the Jayhawks and Big 12 by bailing for the SEC. That’s only recently begun to thaw.

Mizzou were little more than traitors, having left Kansas trapped in the precarious and uncertain position of maybe belonging to a conference on the verge of taking a dirt nap.

So out of spite, KU trashed the oldest college football rivalry west of the Mississippi.

Now it’s KU’s turn to leave the other Big 12 conference schools in their dust.

That after a very successful effort to add four new major colleges to get the Big 12 back from 10 to an actual dozen schools. And on the day last week when the big announcement was made that Brigham Young, Cincinnati, Houston and Central Florida would be coming aboard – and everybody involved was celebrating wildly – KU’s newest athletic director was busy letting the world know that the Jayhawks were still trying to get in the Big 10.

Classy… 

So after a decade of trashing Missouri for being  a cheating spouse, turns out imitation is indeed flattery after all.

What’s left of the Lawrence Journal World‘s missing in action sports staff Matt Tait told 365 Sports earlier this week that KU is still kinda committed to the Big 12.

“And I think they are committed to making it as strong as it can be -because the future or the other options are all uncertain right now and nothing is given. So as much as the fan base up here really, really wants to see KU in the Big 10, it may never happen.” Continue reading →

Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition!

“I come to bury Pastor Bob, not to praise him.”

“The evil that men do live after them.”

   (With apologies to William Shakespeare)

I generally subscribe to the maxim “de mortuis nil nisi bonum” – concerning the dead, say nothing except good…

However, in the case of the Right “Reverend” (sic) Robert Meneilly I’m willing to make an exception, given the legacy of hatred and division he left behind.

No one in the history of Kansas City did more to split the community along racial and religious lines.  He was particularly adept at stirring up fear and resentment of evangelical Christians among Jews.  He was almost as skilled at encouraging rich WASPS to regard working class conservatives as intellectual and social inferiors who could be put in their place by their betters voting for Woke Democrats.

Perhaps the most repugnant aspect of Pastor Bob’s church militant was his ability to twist words in a form of thought control.  For example, politics was no longer defined as the contest of liberals versus conservatives. Instead, according to Meneilly and company, it all came down to “Moderates” (the Mainstream Coalition) against “Right Wing Extremists” (anyone to the right of Kamala Harris).

Thus, by definition there could be no such thing as a left-wing extremist because everyone left of center was effectively redefined by Meneilly as a “moderate.”

I think the best indication of this “champion of love and compassion’s” true character was a cartoon from the Mainstream Messenger.  It mocks Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition’s dispute with the IRS, comparing it to Christ’s suffering and death on the Cross.

This is not only blasphemous—particularly by a minister—but it is viciously, sadistically cruel.  Continue reading →

On the night of February 27, 1933, the Reichstag in Berlin, where the German parliament met, was set ablaze…

Four weeks earlier Adolph Hitler’s Nationalist Socialist (Nazi) Party had formed a minority government at the request of President Paul Von Hindenburg, with Hitler sworn in as Chancellor, i.e. prime minister, on January 30^th.  Hitler had immediately asked Von Hindenburg to call new parliamentary elections for March 5^th.  He had also sought the enactment of the “Enabling Act,” a special law which gave him as Chancellor the power to enact laws without having to get legislative approval.

In the meantime, the Nazi’s campaigned on a pledge to stop Communism by giving them an outright majority in the parliament and total control of the government.

On the night the fire broke out, Nazi officials and the Nazi controlled press immediately blamed the Communists, arguing that the burning of the Reichstag building was the signal for a nationwide insurrection, which had to be preemptively suppressed if Germany was to be saved from the Bolshevik menace.

An emotionally disturbed Dutch teenager, Marinus Van de Lubbe, with ties to a Communist street gang  was swiftly arrested, tried and executed.  Historians have debated for decades who actually set the blaze.

Regardless of who was to blame for the arson, Hitler and his henchmen like Hermann Goering and Joseph Goebbels used it as an excuse for an even harsher crack down on the opponents than any they had been calling for prior to the incident.

At Hitler’s insistence, Von Hindenburg signed into law “The Reichstag Fire Decree,” which eliminated freedom of the press, of speech, of free association and freedom from arbitrary arrest.

All this was combined with the rounding up of thousands of Communists, and the intimidation of any remaining parliamentary opposition and resulted in the destruction of Weimar Germany’s fledgling democracy and Adolph Hitler’s assuming total control as dictator.

The Trump supporters that trespassed on government property on January 6th in the hope that it would somehow stop the certification of the election should bear the full weight of the law.

This does not mean that they lose all legal rights.

Right now, four hundred people are being held in sordid conditions in solitary confinement in a D.C. jail.  They have been denied bail and access to counsel.  The sainted Attorney General Merrick Garland, martyred at Mitch McConnell’s hands in his quest to reach the Supreme Court, has announced a nationwide man hunt for everyone who was on the Capital grounds on January 6^th and considered a nationwide no fly list for political opponents of the Democrats.

The Biden administration has enlisted the help of the credit card companies to contact anyone who made charges in D.C. on or around January 6^th, even if they had no connection with the Capital riot.

People have been subject to dawn raids by the FBI because they bore a passing resemblance to people who showed up on security cameras in the Capitol that day.  Once more, Democrats have the inestimable advantages of trying these political enemies before liberal D.C. judges and juries.  This has no practical difference from civil rights activists being tried by white jurors in the Deep South circa 1962. Continue reading →

After a year of awfulness, is it really any surprise that the beat still goes on…at least in California…

For starters, consider this.

I’m so far removed at this point, having returned too my former high school and college stomping grounds, buying a new house; having a garage fire one month in; succumbing to a bizarre case of COVID and playing a post-fire game of chicken with the insurance company.

Now I’m in California for my wife’s oldest daughter’s wedding and considering the true meaning of California Ken Doll, governor Gavin Newsom‘s screwed up state.

About the only thing as lame is wondering around the southern part of the state pretending it’s not June of 2020 in the Monkees trying to sell concert tickets to a “Farewell Tour” at the Uptown Theater with that Davey Jones and Peter Tork long dead and the remaining Mohicans right up there with Biden in terms of age.

In other words, tres lame….

The people who live in the Golden State today have been immersed in a bubble so long they have no idea what real life actually is. Continue reading →

Sir Jason

Don’t wanna bore you, but my January garage fire soap opera is nearing an end…

Meaning, I’ll soon have more time to help you guys limp through this ultra lame time in which what passes for straight-down-the-line “news” is virtually impossible to find.

I digress…

The latest: former 435 Magazine changed its name late  last year (I think) to Kansas City Magazine (possible jinx?)and is offering “11 Ambitious And Offbeat Ways To Make Kansas City A Better Place To Live” in its April issue.

About time, right?

Actually, 435, er KC Mag, has been doing a decent job job (maybe even financially, considering Covid.) Its April issue for example is 100 pages in length with about 35 pages of ads (50 to 60 being the sweet spot).

And while its tongue-in-cheek cover story is replete with zany stuff like Kansas City becoming “the Detroit of flying cars,” tiny homes revolutionizing homeless shelters and an “eye in the sky” to slow down homicides, it also gives a shout out to the know-it-alls at KC’s newspaper of record.

“What if Somebody Bought The Star And Turned It Into  A Nonprofit? it begins.

“The McClatchy Company, owner of The Kansas City Star, declared bankruptcy last year. The paper was then sold to a hedge fund,” it continues. “It’s early to say definitively how that will impact the Star, but we know what’s happened in other cities where hedge funds bought metro dailies. They aggressively cut jobs in an attempt to maximize short-term profits, then discard the corporate carcass once there’s no more cash to squeeze from it. The city is left with a hollowed-out institution no longer capable of keeping its citizens informed.”

A fairly harsh – probably realistic – assessment.

Which goes on to remind us that the Star has already shed plenty of staff – about 90 percent by my measure.

“Print advertising is in rapid decline due to a permanent change in consumer behavior, and the digital advertising dollars that were supposed to offset those losses are being hoovered up by tech platforms like Facebook and Google. Who wants to pay for a subscription when the paper keeps laying off staff?”

KC Mag’s solution: Go non profit like the Philadephia Inquirer and Tampa Bay Times.

Just one problem; the jury’s out on whether either of those dailies will survive the switch. Continue reading →

If it’s fair to cancel people for what they said years ago…

Why not have a little reality/accountability for our new racially in tune pals at KC’s newspaper of record?

Take the recent passing of fiery former KC City Councilperson and attorney Carol Coe.

Coe and I had a special bond that transcended her difficult relationship with most of the  reporters and editors at the Kansas City Star.

It’s hard to say which came first – the chicken or the egg – in terms of who disliked who the most.  This much I can assure you though:  prior to her stroke, Coe took as many shots from and suffered as much disrespect as the Star could dish out. Which in all likelihood resulted in her being a one term  City Council person

Return with me now to my early days running the KC Pitch when Coe was representing embattled KC fire chief Gilbert Dowdy  – soon to be convicted of heading up an allegedly $50 million a year drug ring with crack cocaine.

You won’t find this story on the Pitch website as it went down in 1990, years prior to the alt weekly’s foray into the Internet.

How huge was the story in KC at the time? Continue reading →

Greetings from the Wild, Wild West…

Long time, no see. Ah but after a tiny garage fire that resulted in two months of living at a local resort waiting for things like the power and water heater  in my house to be fixed and/or replaced, I’m finally back in my new Oro Valley abode.

Don’t get me wrong though.

My life is still pretty much upside down, waiting for new a garage door and front door and a complete repainting of the interior of the house. That and a host of other remedies still being sorted things out with the insurance company.

But the end appears near…

At which point we can finally begin unpacking stuff, hanging pictures, hooking up audio-video systems, getting in  new furniture and basically what passes for real life.

Then and only then can I set aside time to comment on the state of things Kansas City.

Most of which appears to be something of a mess, with the Kansas City Star pursuing a full-time course of action to eff with all things conservative and traditional in its quest to follow the New York Times, CNN and MSNBC is talking down to people with anything short of a far left overview of life today.

It really is amazing to see how topsy turvy things have gone, where even red necks like Star editor Mike Fannin have been forced to disguise who they really are so as not to risk getting cancelled or laid off.

Hey, it’s not as if they are alone in following this path. Continue reading →

One of the biggest complaints I’ve had for years was for referring to KC as a Cowtown…

Dates back to when I was growing up and locals lamented people on the coasts and in larger (presumably hipper) cities thinking of Kansas City as a “flyover” town with little to no sophistication or couth.

I never fully understood that at first – nor did it matter – but I grew into understand it better, after I began promoting concerts and writing for The Pitch and Star.

Thing is though, its never really took hold with me.

Guess I bought into all the arguments about us having the Nelson Atkins Museum, the Chiefs and Royals football and baseball teams and an “international” airport.

Oh, I was more than willing to look down on neighboring towns and cities like Topeka, Wichita and the like while thinking highly of all the cool stuff KC had.

Shoot, I graduated from high school and attended college in Tucson and most people here that went to the University of Arizona conceded that Tucson was a far better city, but if you wanted to get ahead in life, you moved to Phoenix.

When I went public and started writing I had to defend myself for jokingly referring to KC via its rural roots.

At which point I noticed many locals were obsessed with pointing out people who made it big and had connections to Kansas City.

OK, Walt Disney is hard to argue with – less so Rush Limbaugh, Pay Metheny or Mancow Muller.

I even remember when Don Cheadle was beginning to make it big.

Can’t say for sure, but maybe in the late ’90s I remember local movie marketer Jody Rovick hyping it based on Cheadle being a former KC guy.

Well, guess what? Continue reading →

It’s a strange kettle of fish…

On one hand KC newspaper of record loves the Kansas City Chiefs now that they’re on top of the world. Reminding us that the expression, “everybody loves a winner” is alive and well, even among the most jaded among us.

The only thing the Star loves more is bagging on folks with conservative views and cultural outlooks.

For example the newspaper has ridden hard and trashed up-and-coming Republican pol Josh Hawley from the get go. And now that Hawley had a high-profile lapse of judgement, the Star can’t bag on him enough.

Has there even been the slightest hint of fair-and-balanced coverage ever – before, during and or after Hawley’s current predicament? Of course not.

Saying even the most benign positive thing about anything Hawley would be the equivalent of devil worshiping, rooting for the old Oakland Raiders or supporting child pornography.

It’s not gonna happen.

Don’t get me wrong… Continue reading →