Beating Owen Morris to the Punch - Top 10 Kansas City Foods to Eat Before You Die

Over at Fat City, Owen Morris is offering his take on the "Foods you must east before you die" meme, and he starts if off with a panegyric to the old-school Lamar's twist. I'm not ashamed of stealing a good idea and improving on it, so here's my top 10 list, all in one post, and all available today, not solely in the mists of memory. Mind you, this is my take on 10 foods that exemplify Kansas City's food culture - not necessarily my favorite foods in Kansas City, but foods that somehow have a Kansas City flair.

10. Povitica. You don't find this other places - yummy polish bread swirled with sweet fillings. Beautiful to look at, teeth-achingly sweet to sample, this is a treat from Kansas City's immigrant community. Back when immigrants were European, nobody complained when they kept their traditions and even published newspapers in their own language. Thank goodness that back when the Polish were coming to America, Bryan Pratt was not around to pass laws attacking them.

9. Winstead's Burger. Winstead's burgers are simply the Kansas City classic. Everything else there lives up to the classic diner standard - fries, onion rings, even malts. I've found better burgers, but this is the one that really screams Kansas City.

8. Chicken Spiedini. Sure, Mike Garozzo came to Kansas City from the Hill in St. Louis, but his signature dish, chicken spiedini, has earned a place in Kansas City's heart. Laden with garlic and toasted bread crumbs, nothing says old school Italian like chicken spiedini at the original location at 526 Harrison in the old Northeast.

7. Jess & Jim's Playboy Strip. Miles from the stockyard but on the railroad tracks, Jess and Jim's is an old-fashioned steak joint. Decades ago, they were written up in Playboy Magazine, and that faintly scandalous fame carries them to this day. It's really not the best steak in town, and the decor is anything but regal, but Jess & Jim's is the solid favorite in Kansas City's cholesterol-choked heart. You don't need to wear a tie or put up with waitstaff attitude to enjoy a great steak at Jess & Jim's.

6. Dog Day at Hooper's. For a buck and a quarter, you get a great hot dog covered with toppings. It's a Saturday classic, and even the irritable people who don't like kids in bars have to smile at the neighborhood atmosphere and kids in shin-guards fresh from a Brookside Soccer League game enjoying cokes with cherries and shuffleboard. The hot dogs are great - plump, juicy and just salty enough, but the feel of the place is what makes it a part of Kansas City.

5. Murray's Ice Cream. I know, all cities have great ice cream these days, but Murray's is something special. Maybe it's the quirky hours, maybe it's the location off the beaten path of Westport, or maybe it's some sort of drug they mix into their home-made ice cream, but Murray's Ice Cream is more "Kansas City" than any other ice cream place could ever hope to be. Go there for the ice cream, sit outside in the sun and eat it - wow, I can close my eyes and imagine a whole day spent wandering around Westport.

4. Manny's Chips and Salsa. Kansas City is blessed with a strong Mexican-American community, and, as a result, we have a fantastic assortment of great Mexican restaurants. Manny's is, in my opinion, emblematic of the group, though I agree that there are others that put out better, more authentic food. Manny's, though, serves all of Kansas City, with melted cheese and zesty but not spicy salsa. It's not real Mexican - it's Kansas City Mexican. Sitting there, chowing on the second basket of chips and dripping salsa onto your shirt - that's a piece of Kansas City.

3. Bread Pudding for Breakfast at the Classic Cup. Simple decadence. Breakfast at the Classic Cup is a place to see the powerful grabbing a bite before work, and sitting on the patio is both relaxing and exciting. Doing it with bread pudding with pecans and caramel sauce is beyond wonderful. Cares melt away.

2. Beef Sandwich at Bryant's. Don't even start with the arguments about Oklahoma Joe's or LC's or Gates or whatever. Say all you want about great barbecue places in Kansas City, Bryant's is the home of Kansas City barbecue. It simply is. There's really nothing left to say.

1. McDonald's Happy Meal. It hurts me to do this, but many argue that Bob Bernstein, a local ad guy, came up with the Happy Meal. The claim is disputed, but Kansas City's love of corporate, mass-produced crap food is beyond any dispute. I can insist on local restaurants all I like, but the truth is that the drive-throughs of Our Town are clogged with Kansas Citians looking to buy a meal they saw on TV. If you want to have Kansas City's top ten foods to eat before you die, you really ought to eat the one that we have brought to the world.

All Things Considered - Council's the Source of the Embarrassment, and Yael Expects No Gatekeeper

I winced when I heard that NPR's All Things Considered was going to be doing a story on the saga of the Volunteer Ordinance. I feared that they, like the local media, would mischaracterize the story as being about something other than the a power grab by the City Council in a misguided attempt to decide how the Mayor should run his office.

NPR got it right, but I'm still wincing. Our City Council was shown to be the source of the problem, interfering with a Mayor's decision to work with his spouse. NPR even went further and gave Yael Abouhalkah enough rope to hang himself, quoting him as "a columnist with The Kansas City Star, [who] says city residents don't need a gatekeeper in the mayor's office."

Really, Yael? You, in your infinite wisdom, have decided that Mark doesn't need a gatekeeper? Even though every Mayor since Henry Kumpf has had a gatekeeper of some sort? (Confession - I really don't know if Henry Kumpf had a gatekeeper - I just looked back at some historical KC Mayors and picked one with a funny name.) It takes guts for a columnist at the Star to issue such an opinion, sitting in an office shielded by more plexiglass and paranoid guards than a payday loan shop at two in the morning.

In the big picture, though, NPR saw that the City Council is at fault here. Mark clearly states that he just wants to be left alone to run his office and focus on the real city issues. The City Council, though, wants to play around with staffing decisions that aren't theirs to make. The KC Star is annoyed that Mark doesn't maintain an open-door policy that they themselves don't emulate.

Meanwhile, we had 21 murders in August, and the City Council wants to play games.

Last Thursday, I saw Alvin Brooks talk about a local murder, and he challenged each of us to think about how the blood of a hopeless young man is on our own hands. 5 or 6 Council members were there, fresh from their override of the Mayor's veto. Sadly, I doubt that any of them even thought about how their silly, unconstitutional game-playing was a part of the problem.

Instead of being on the national media for innovative crime solutions, we're on NPR because our City Council doesn't like the Mayor's wife. Our Council has chosen to focus its attention on the feisty Italian in a cubicle rather than the poor kids shooting each other, and that's what NPR found worthy of broadcasting.

How embarrassing.

any man's death diminishes me

21 deaths in the month of August. 21 living, breathing human beings turned into insensate lumps of cooling flesh through the violence of others. On Sunday, the Star took the time to write about them as a group, and try to draw statistics together with portraits of the victims.

I wasn't one of them. Nobody who looks much like me was in the group.

21 bodies, and not one of them was a middle-aged Caucasian. Sure, lots of middle-aged Caucasians died during the month of August, but we died from stuff like heart attacks and car wrecks. Hot lead doesn't go ripping through our bodies.

Does that lessen the impact of crime on our community? Would we be handling things differently if half the victims were middle-aged whites? What would we do?

Mayor Funkhouser, You MUST do your Duty

Mark, when you started out on this effort, you knew this time was going to come. You knew that the forces that have controlled the city to their own advantage were going to attempt to seize control of the Mayor's office. The time has come - not a time of your choosing, not the issue of your choosing, not even the opponents of your choosing. But you knew that it would come about like this - fighting an awkward fight on a tilted battlefield.

You must fight.

The City Council has quite literally sought to dictate who may speak to the mayor, and under what terms. The ordinance they passed has specifically included giving advice as a forbidden activity. They did so even though it had been pointed out to them that forbidding unapproved contact with government officials is not only undemocratic, but unconstitutional.

Sadly, the City Council seems to think this was simply about your wife. Indeed, they sought to hide that fact when they started on the twisted, secretive journey to passage of this ordinance. They claimed to be imposing a volunteer ordinance that applied to all volunteers, but were forced to strip away provisions that applied to the Parks Department, then to other departments, and finally passed an ordinance that was, as you wisely pointed out all along, drafted to apply only to your wife. It was sad to see how they stabbed Beth Gottstein in the back, leaving her hanging out to dry when she made the unfortunately false claim that the city council would not be so small as to draft an ordinance aimed at your wife. Even as she uttered her hopeful words, her fellow 4th District Councilperson was in a backroom boiling the ordinance down to its poisonous essence. They are ruthless, even to each other.

But, even though the ordinance was aimed at your wife, it was never about her. With all due respect for Kansas City's first lady, she was merely a cruelly chosen target for serious people with a deeper agenda. Gloria is a tool they are using to cause you pain, but, if it weren't her, it would be something else entirely. This is about power. This is about who controls the Mayor's office. More centrally, this is about money.

Dirt and concrete - not bare feet and most definitely not words between former friends - are the reasons the council has acted as it has. As you knew when you started this whole effort, Mark, there are people who make money, huge money, staggering money, based upon the decisions of the Mayor's office. For decades, those people have controlled the Mayor's office. Mayors Cleaver and Barnes, in particular, saw that things went smoother when they made sure the very powerful were kept happy. And smooth sailing for the powerful meant smooth sailing for the politicians who kept them happy. To be fair, they accomplished much that was good while they were appeasing the powerful. They were talented politicians.

Dirt and concrete - real estate holdings and construction dollars - are very, very serious matters, as you well know. Those persons who control the valuable real estate (and their lawyer hired hands and other servants of power) in our city expect to see money spent on them, and taxes abated for them. Where many of us view political involvement as a civic interest or even a hobby, these people are in it for the deadly serious money. If they dream up a new project that enhances their holdings, the Mayor is supposed to be enthusiastically behind it, even if it means taking tax dollars away from our schools, and resources away from our poorer citizens on the East side, the West side, and the Northeast. Those cops patrolling the Cordish properties are not patrolling the areas that are seeing drive-by shootings and drug dealing. Why? Because the high dollar dirt and concrete are focused on Return on Investment, not returning hope to the urban core.

The citizens of Kansas City have very few opportunities to sit at the tables of power. In fact, they have none. Nobody is going to genuinely seek citizen input on whether we should gold plate the doorknobs on the latest Cordish fantasy. Nobody expects the public to have a voice when the powers that built the fantastically expensive convention center now say it is incomplete without a fantastically expensive hotel to go with it. Nobody was supposed to discuss development tools for the East side, or pledge to pursue TIF projects that benefit the areas that are genuinely blighted.

You are that nobody, Mark, and you have the chattering and monied classes in an uproar. So those people have manufactured an issue to knock you down a notch. They want to reach into your office, indeed, into your very marriage, and tell you how and when and where your wife can give you advice. The city council is willing to do that because, in the eyes of the real estate developers and the insiders, family values evaporate in the face of real estate values.

You are at a crossroads, Mark. You can allow the city council to wildly overstep its boundaries as set forth in the Charter and attempt to tell the Mayor how to do his job. You can ignore the unconstitutionality of their sloppy, treasonous little ordinance. You can go along and get along. You can act as though this ordinance is just a little bump in the road for your relationship with the council. You can even use this as a fresh starting point, and begin a rebuilding process to become the ribbon-cutting, cheer-leading, credit-claiming Mayor that this city chose to eschew when it voted Orange. In short, you can join in the reindeer games with the council and be one of them, all to your personal benefit. If you do that, you may retire after 8 years with a solid gold watch and a send-off party sponsored by the bluest of Kansas City's blue bloods.

But I don't think you can do that. Certainly not if you are the man I hope you are.

As I said above, this is most definitely not about cross words between former friends. This is not about one of hundreds of lawsuits pending with the city. It's not about Gloria, or volunteers.

It is about power. The powers that be want to control the power that wants to be. They have convinced members of the City Council to pass an unconstitutional power grab, and even gotten them to lie about their motivation along the way. The fact that many of the majority are fundamentally good people who are acting in this manner shows just how deeply the control of dirt and concrete runs in this town.

I leave it to you and your legal team to figure out exactly how to challenge the ordinance. But I call on you, as my Mayor, as my representative at the tables of power in this city, to stand up and carry on the fight. I can't be certain whether you will win, though I firmly believe that our judicial system stands as our most steady bulwark against the corrosive effects of money, power and influence.

The powers that be, acting through their influence on a too-easily-swayed council, want to dictate who may speak to the Mayor, when, and where. It is, of course, an outrage, and it was accomplished in a back room while committee members shamelessly ignored the public speaking against it.

If you fight and win, you will have struck a serious blow in favor of Democracy.

If you fight and lose, you will have provided an example of integrity that may inspire others to continue to fight.

If you do not fight, you will gain the peace and quiet and respite of the morally dead.

CCO and the Tom & Pat Sweeny Family

Last night, I attended a fundraiser for the CCO at the breathtaking Scottish Rite Temple on Linwood. The CCO (now "Communities Creating Opportunity", formerly the "Church Community Organization") is an inspiring organization, formed by faith communities in an era of white flight. Since that time, it has become the go-to community organization in Kansas City for grass-roots involvement. Chances are, you've never heard of them, but chances are even better that, if you live in Kansas City, your life has been improved because of their work.

This year, though, the event had a particularly memorable and touching moment. The plan was to honor longtime civic activist and dedicated attorney Tom Sweeny with the Phyllis Bahner Legacy of Leadership Award - a well-deserved recognition for a man who has been at the heart of Kansas City's most important social issues since the 1960s, when he marched for civil rights, through this decade, when he addressed voter suppression. I, like many in the crowd, was looking forward to applauding this lion of a man.

But Tom Sweeny was unable to attend. He's battling with the aftermath of a 2007 stroke, and simply could not make it to the event.

What happened, though, was hauntingly inspiring. When it came time to give the award, they asked one of his sons to accept it. Symbolically, the award could not have been handed to Tom Sweeny any better had he himself been able to tap dance up to the podium and accept it. Tom Sweeny, for all the good he has accomplished in his life, is most proud of his next generation, and many of his 9 children were there for the celebration. They include some of Kansas City's most dedicated and determined volunteers - and they will continue to impact our community for decades. If you've ever gotten involved with a project that has lofty goals and solid practicality, you've probably worked with a Sweeny.

The Sweeny clan's patriarch was at home resting last night, but his involvement was very much present, multiplied by the children he raised and the lives he's touched.

Well done, Mr. Sweeny. Kansas City took a moment to applaud you last night, though the good you've accomplished is just beginning.

Can Kinder/Page Poll Become Meaningful?

Sam Page is, as I've written several times before, a new kind of candidate for Missouri Lieutenant Governor. Unbeknownst to most of us, the Lieutenant Governor position has real duties, and many of those duties would be better served with an experienced physician fulfilling them. Who would you rather have working on affordable prescriptions for seniors - a do-nothing political hack or a bright, sincere young doctor with a passion for public service? It's kind of like having Dr. Carter from ER running against Mayor Quimby from The Simpsons. The choice is clear.

Missouri appears ready to choose Dr. Page. A recent poll shows that Sam Page, in a race against an incumbent Republican, has jumped out to a slim lead, despite being heavily outspent by an entrenched Republican with better name recognition.

The key to understanding the poll, though, is not in focusing on Sam Page's surprising 38/37 lead. The key is in paying attention to the 23% who are undecided. That is where the race will be decided, and money will be absolutely critical in helping those people make the right decision. If you want to invest in a statewide campaign where your dollars will make the biggest difference in chasing a scandal-racked Rove Republican from office, PLEASE visit this page and make as large a donation as you can afford.

It would be a shame if this encouraging poll turned out to be a false positive . . .

Single Issue McCain Calls a Time-Out

Honestly, when I first saw the breaking stories that McCain is suspending his campaign to come to DC and address the "fiscal crisis", I wondered if it was some odd "Half-way to April Fool's Day" joke.

How is it helpful to the process or to McCain? He's not on the committee handling the legislation, he's not an expert in economics (that's not a partisan attack - that's a self-assessment), and the last thing anybody needs here is more false urgency as the guys in suits gravely tell us we need to give them money quickly so they can help us.

Is anyone on earth somehow feeling better about McCain because he feels he cannot possibly give this issue the attention it deserves while continuing on with his scheduled activities? In a McCain administration, will the United States have only one issue facing it at a time - will we have a season for making sure Wall Street rich people remain sufficiently "incentivized", a season for national defense/Halliburton, a season for energy policy/Exxon, and a season on tax reform? (But not a day for environment or civil rights, of course.)

I like to think that the next president of the United States will be able to walk from a briefing on China to a policy meeting on immigration to a press conference on corporate governance to an international summit on Greenhouse Gases without hitting overload on his intellectual capacity.

McCain can't do that.

When McCain announced his suspension, he called a metaphorical time-out on third and debate. Like a quarterback looking across the line of scrimmage and seeing the linebackers preparing to blitz, he buckled under the pressure. One linebacker was named Palin's Faltering Image. Another linebacker was Voter Memory of the Keating 5. Another linebacker was Increasing Worries About His Health. 100 Years of Iraq was another linebacker ready to lay a hit on him. And the biggest linebacker was Obama, looking fast and healthy and ready to sprint in and toss him for a bone-crushing loss as soon as the debate whistle blows. It seems like there are too many players on the field!

No wonder he called time-out. Today, he gets to go huddle with his Head Coach, George W. Bush, and maybe regain his nerve. But eventually he's going to have to face that snap. He's scared, he's weak, and he can't hand the ball off to anyone.

He's out of time-outs, and the opposition is ready to swarm him. In the real world, you can't only focus on one issue at a time.

Blogger Appreciation: The Agonist

The Agonist is an internationally-focused news blog that I first happened upon for its superior war coverage. Since then, I've found it to have great analysis, up-to-date news, fresh perspective and top-notch writing.

But that's not why I mention it today.

This is a post from yesterday, and I hope we all can feel the pang of jealousy and spark of hope that it sent through me.

The Adventure Of A Lifetime Begins

Tomorrow morning when I awake, walk out of my flat and head to the bus station I will begin the adventure of a lifetime. I will get on a bus and head off towards Malaysia and the famed spice trading city of Malacca. After that I do not know where I will go, nor do I care. And neither do I know how long I will be gone. Six months? A year? Longer? Does it matter? The world awaits.

All I know is that the road is before me and it calls. It calls me from a deep place in my soul, a place I thought I could control, a place I thought I had pushed it down into where it would never come out again.

There's much more, and I encourage you to read every word.

Maintaining the Infrastructure

I just updated the rankings of the 99 Bottles of Beer on the Blog series, and changed a lot of the links in the Blogroll. If you're not in the blogroll but want to be, email me at dan@gonemild.com. If you're in the blogroll but I have your link wrong, email me at dan@gonemild.com. If you see a link in the blogroll that is no longer functional, email me at dan@gonemild.com.

99 Bottles of Beer on the Blog - Dogfish Head 120 Minute IPA

I've been wanting to try this beer for months - it's a beer-lover's beer. It was the favorite beer of homebrewers in a recent poll, and I've never been disappointed by a Dogfish Head beer. So, when Sam came home for the Bruce Springsteen concert, I asked him to bring a couple bottles. It was $11.00 for a twelve ounce bottle. Tonight, I popped one open.

This is a BIG beer. It tips the scales at 20% ABV - that's 40 proof. The brewers boil it for 120 minutes, and add hops every single minute. Then, after it finishes fermenting, they add more hops to the fermenter every day for a month. 450 calories. Extreme brewing, indeed.

It pours out cloudy and orange, hazy with hoppy complexity and malt sweetness. The first sip was truly surprising - almost lemony and sweet. The lemon comes from the citrusy American hops, and the sweetness is more alcohol than malt. The hop bitterness is not at all overwhelming; in fact, I'd say that Samuel Adams Hallertauer Imperial Pilsner is actually a wilder ride on the hop train.

The mouthfeel of this beer is velvety rich. Its head is thin, but lasts through the entire glass - there's a lot of malt protein to support a head, but plenty of alcohol to thin it out.

This is definitely a sipping beer - at 20% ABV, it's nothing you would want to chug after mowing the lawn. In fact, it is probably something to be shared with a friend, but I'm home alone this evening, so I'll have to make do.

Dogfish Head Brewery makes great, interesting beers. Whenever you see something from them, give it a try - you'll be tasting the leading edge of American brewing. They started out with a ten gallon system - not much different from my own - and they, more than any other commercial brewery, retain the excitement and experimental spirit of homebrewing. They make historical brews based on Egyptian recipes, they make freaky Belgian stuff, and they make one amazing Imperial IPA.

Despite its critical acclaim, this is not my favorite beer ever. It's a hell of a beer, mind you, and it sets an outer limit for what an IPA can be. This is serious beer to be enjoyed by those who are looking for a truly different experience - at a little less than a buck a fluid ounce.

Gloria Squitiro Having the Last Laugh?

Lately, City Councilmembers have been so twisted up inside with their seething need to run the Mayor's office that they even missed the humorous irony in their complaints that their own bogus volunteer ordinance is creating a circus atmosphere. When they're not threatening each other or behaving unprofessionally, they're whining and manipulating and pointing fingers.

Not a fun bunch to be around.

That's why it was so refreshing to see this light-hearted exchange between the always-controversial Richard Tolbert and Kansas City's favorite First Lady, Gloria Squitiro. In it, Mr. Tolbert proposes marriage, and Gloria accepts, with a letter to Mark explaining her decision. "He's a much more experienced politician than you are, and to top it off, he's much less controversial." Of course, if Mark and Gloria split up, there's an additional twist - "You are now free to hire me to work in the Mayor's office. That is, if you think you can afford me."

It's good to see that someone in City Hall still has a sense of humor and an ability to rise above the sniping and lying. No wonder Mark Funkhouser wants her in his office. I wish each of our City Councilmembers had someone like her around. It might do them some good.

Financial Services Crisis Explained at My Poker Table

First off, if you want a good, solid explanation of what in the world is going on, go here and read this brilliant and relatively concise explanation. It has the statistics, the names of the legislators and the economic terms laid out in a readable article - unlike anything you would find in your newspaper or other the dead-tree media which, not coincidentally, are suffering through a different financial crisis.

But even that article is so mind-blowing that I need help in bringing it down to my own terms. I've never seen a trillion dollars, a billion dollars or even a million dollars. I don't really understand how, one day, the economy is trudging along with nothing more than the typical clouds on the horizon (Republican deficit, energy prices, stagnant Bush stock market) and then suddenly, with nothing changing in my world, we're talking about a trillion dollars for companies that don't even make anything. It's the metaphorical piano falling on a pedestrian. Where the heck did that come from, and why?

On the other hand, I do understand friendly nickel ante poker games, and, believe it or not, this whole thing can be put into those terms. Here goes:

It's a Friday evening, and I invite a few of my buddies over for nickel ante poker. It's the same old game as always - we all know and like each other, and at our stakes, we're looking at maybe winning or losing $10 or $20. Most importantly, though, this game is not taking place at a casino, with all their strict loss limits and regulations - my dining room table is like the financial services industry in a post-deregulation Republican administration.

Now, everything is going along great, but I start having a bad run. Next thing you know, I'm almost out of chips, and I start what looks like it will be my last hand with only a couple bucks left. Sure enough, I get dealt a great hand - a natural royal flush. Unbelievable! And there's no way I can stop betting on this hand with only a couple bucks in the pot. So, I look to my buddy Les, and say "float me". He knows me well enough to know I'm good for it, so he nods and I'm in for the rest of the hand. He doesn't need to actually put the chips in - the other players know he'll cover if I lose. I bet the limits, win the hand, and the game continues on.

What Les gave me was the equivalent of a credit default swap. They are like crack cocaine, crystal meth and Skittles rolled into one - an addictive jolt of energy that can destroy a poker game or an economy.

Now that the concept of "floating" has been introduced to the game, the game gets a little wilder. First off, why do we really need bet limits? In a normal game, we hold ourselves to quarter bets, with a limit of three raises, but that seems a little too tame now, so we agree that we can play no-limits.

Second, the "float" grows in popularity. I did it when I had a great hand, but Jim saw that it worked, and that doing the transaction actually enhanced my credibility. So, the next time he wants to bluff, he puts all his money in and asks me to float him another $10. I do it, the others fold, he wins, and his bluff never even gets discovered.

Here's where it starts getting crazy. Another guy gets a hand, smiles, and puts all his money in. Then he looks at me and asks me for a hundred dollar float. A hundred dollars is a lot of money to me, and my wife will kill me if I lose it, but I'm not going to leave my buddy hanging, so I nod. Then another guy raises him, and gets a float from Jim. Suddenly, there are hundreds of dollars being traded in floats around my little, unregulated, nickel ante poker table. The hundred become thousands quickly, since there's no real cap on money we're not really holding.

And we all know that we can't afford this nonsense. But we're all in over our heads at this point, and the first one to admit it will be ruining the game and exposing himself to be a fraud.

So we continue on. It's late. My wife comes in around midnight after a night with her friends and asks how I'm doing. "Umm, fine," I murmur, but I'm not really sure. It's tough to keep track of all the floats we've been using. Jim owes me $5,000, but I owe Les about the same. I honestly don't know who's backing Jim, but I'll be alright if Jim is able to pay, which I know depends on the ability to pay by the guy who is backing him . . .

Folks, in a nutshell, that is the crisis that is going on right now. The financial service industry has been giving each other floats, and it got crazy. Right now, those floats total to more than the GDP of the entire world! Nobody can pay up, and everybody knows that the game has to end sometime soon.

So now the American public is being asked to pony up. We weren't invited to the game. We sure as hell weren't going to be given a portion of the pot had the game continued. If the bill winds up being only a trillion dollars, that is $3,278 for your share. If you're married, your spouse is in for the same amount. If you have children, they're in for the same amount. Your old mother, trying to get by on a fixed income? Yeah, she is on the hook for the same amount, too.

Supposedly, this game is too big to simply break up, and let the players absorb their losses. Personally, I'm not convinced.

But, for Bush and Treasury Secretary Paulson, these are their friends playing the game. And that's no metaphor - the people who have done this are their actual friends - the people they yacht with and travel with and went to Yale with, and they've been asked by their friends to do a float. And they want to do it with your money.

Are you all in?

Call Congress Today - NO to Bail-Outs

I can remember a few years ago when the Bush Administration was begging for authority to act rashly, and the case to support the action was wrapped in secrecy and fear. Congress went along, and America has suffered because of our trust.

Now, the administration wants to launch the most expensive program EVER, without time for debate and without explaining its plans.

Does it make sense to pay higher than market prices for bad assets purchased by people who ought to know better? Is anyone else struck by the handwringing and lack of empathy from Republicans when we were talking about extending unemployment benefits, in contrast to the rush to compassion for the country club Republicans we're seeing now? Why do our schools need bake sales, when $700 billion was available for a compelling need like broke bankers? Why was this money unavailable for the uninsured?

It's bad policy. But it's going to happen if you don't pick up the phone and call Congress and tell them you don't want this to happen.

Here is a site that gives you the contact information for your elected representatives. I will be calling mine today - and, to make it even easier for you, here are the numbers for:

Kit Bond: (202) 224-5721
Claire McCaskill: (816) 421-1639
Emanuel Cleaver: (816) 842-4545

Do NOT assume that any of these individuals will vote the way you expect or hope they would on this matter. In fact, each of them has shown a tendency to favor banking interests over Missourians in the past. They need to hear from you today. Be polite, but be clear. We do not want to shower $700,000,000,000 of our tax dollars on an undisciplined financial services industry.

City Council - "Then don't do that"

City Councilmembers are making themselves look terribly foolish with their complaints about the circus atmosphere their own volunteer ordinance is causing.

Reminds me of the old "Doctor it hurts when I do this" joke . . .

Spain? Is that where the Spics come from?

John McCain is acting like a very old, befuddled man.

Very old.

Very befuddled.

And he "never felt the particular need to e-mail", even though he invented the Blackberry.

Folks, we can't afford 4 more years of Bush's befuddlement or policies, and that's what McCain offers. Or maybe fewer, which is even more frightening.

NASCAR Fans Watching the Trash Truck

Steve Kraske on last week published an article showing that he is finally catching on to the open secret of the Funkhouser administration - he doesn't really care whether the inside crowd likes his leadership style. A quotation from the article confirmed what I wrote about him a month ago (Does Funkhouser Know What He's Doing) and almost 6 months ago (Subtle Brilliance - Funkhouser's Triumph of Leadership). Kraske writes, “'To me, I have no desperate need to be seen as leading,' The Funk told me."

That's the sort of thing that makes insiders' heads explode. He's refusing to play their game, and they scream about how badly he's playing their game. I think the best analogy is NASCAR fans watching the trash truck. They can't understand why any professional driver would drive such an ungainly vehicle and refuse to put fancy decals on it. They can't understand why the driver would let others ride along and accomplish work along the way. They miss the speed and the noise. They know how things are done, and he's doing an absolutely terrible job of satisfying their need to watch a race.

And it really frustrates these cognoscenti to see that Kansas City's homeowners don't share their disdain for Funkhouser. Oddly, they seem to prefer the modest, hard-working, self-effacing Mayor and his focus on citizen satisfaction. Already, several of the insiders are lining up their pit crews and polishing their race cars to defeat Mark in the next "race", confident that they can whup the man who fails to put himself in front and make sharp left turns at full speed when they shout.

Civil service isn't the same as racing, though I'm not sure our current group of insiders will ever catch onto that fact, even when Funkhouser wins the next "race".

Do Republicans Get This Kind of Email?

Campaign rumors run rampant on the internet, and one of the recent ones circulated about McCain's undervetted, inexperienced Veep nominee was that she fired her librarian in a spat over Palin's desire to ban a long list of books. One email purported to list all the books that Palin sought to ban - a lengthy list, including many classics.

It wasn't true. Someone somewhere took a list of frequently targeted books and claimed that Palin went after all of them. She didn't.

What happened next, though, illustrates the difference between the right and the left in American politics. Literally within hours of receiving the list of banned books, I received an email from a leftwing source highlighting this article, disavowing the list of banned books, telling us not to forward it, and effectively shutting down this falsehood. The subject line of the email was direct - "Don't Forward that List of Palin Banned Books."

The reason that you haven't been treated to a press cycle questioning why Palin banned "My Friend Flicka" is because the left did an effective job of self-policing.

Republicans have no such self-discipline. When a lie springs into the conversation, the Republicans have learned to encourage it and make certain that it becomes part of the accepted truthiness of the world. Gore never claimed to invent the internet, but it is probably his best-known alleged claim.

It's so bad that the Democratic Party has found it necessary to create a "Count the Lies" website, listing 52 lies from the McCain campaign itself. These are all documented falsehoods, and you don't see anyone on the right circulating any emails telling people not to forward them.

It's discouraging sometimes to see how broadly and brazenly the right wing spreads malicious falsehoods, and it's even tempting to play a tit for tat game. But, in the long run, I'm proud that the left wing bloggers have a firmer grip on reality and a higher ethical standard than those who would have us believe that Palin rejected the Bridge to Nowhere.

(Note: We don't know which books Palin sought to ban, though it's true she inquired about how to go about banning books. She claims to have fired the Wasilla Librarian because she "didn't fully support her". Personally, I think it's creepy enough that Palin thought she was entitled to full support from a librarian.)

Big Money

Years ago, some brokerage outfit used to run ads with a curmudgeonly old man in a clubby atmosphere bristling with patrician condescension intoning, "We make money the old fashioned way; we EARN it."

It was probably the most effective ad ever done by a brokerage house. Using an old white male to voice the superiority of those who live off investments, the ad was a nuclear bomb in the class wars of America. Who doesn't earn their money? Those lower class peons and welfare queens, with their silly concepts of labor and taxes chewing away at the edifices of capital. How is money properly earned? Through investments, of course. Investing, you see, is "hard work". Old fashioned work, for old money.

This week, as in the weeks preceding and following, financial powerhouses are dropping like hotdog stands on a rainy day. Unlike hotdog stands, though, the Big Money Players aren't content to close up shop and go find another way to make a buck. Instead, they are turning to the rest of us and begging for help. And, because they make their money by holding on to ours, they have us over a barrel. Bail them out, or face macro-economic fallout that we cannot begin to fathom.

Kruschev told us "We will bury you". For a while, it seemed we had proven him wrong. But now, the West is controlled by men who use torture in secret gulags. Now, the West is controlled by those who spy on their own citizens, and seek to detain people indefinitely without charges. Now, the world financial struggle is controlled by those who happily seek state bail-outs and even nationalization.

When Kruschev threatened to bury us, most of us thought he was speaking on behalf of the proletariat. We were fools. Kruschev never represented the working class. He represented the same class of person that Cheney and Bush represent. And, folks, we're being buried. The old fashioned way. By big money.

"Taste of Olathe"?

It's unfair how much I enjoy making fun of JoCo. And I can't begin to list the wise-ass comments that came to mind when I saw a fundraiser entitled "Taste of Olathe" scheduled for next weekend. White bread and white zin, anyone?

But my sarcasm doesn't help out deaf children, and the Taste of Olathe does. So, if you're out in JoCo next weekend, you really ought to take advantage of an opportunity to try food from 20+ Olathe restaurants.

Another Serving of Humble Pie

Yesterday morning, I admitted I was wrong in failing to recognize Margaret Donnelly's strength as a candidate for Attorney General. I'm almost never mistaken on political matters, so it represented a kick to the self-esteem. The kick turned into a full-fledged stomping, though, at the Record Bar's weekly trivia contest last night.

I had no idea who the back-up quarterback for Tampa Bay is.

I forgot that Rosalind Shays fell to her death down an elevator shaft.

I was completely worthless in the "Director Cameos" category.

And, sadly, my team wasn't much better than I was. By midway through the first round, the other teams realized it was sound strategy to shift any reasonably challenging question to us, and garner the points when we failed to answer.

Despite the humiliating exposure of gaping holes in my intellectual data bank, I got to sit around with friends, drinking good beer (it was my first sighting of Bob's 47 this year!), and laughing a lot.

I never realized that the trivia world has its own circuit, but I ran into a friend there who says he plays several times a week at different bars.

Yet another thing I didn't know . . .

Despite the blows to my self-esteem, though, at least I get to feel a lot smarter than a dozen other Kansas Citians who voted yesterday for an unconstitutional ban on regularly giving advice to elected officials. That was really dumb.

AG Race Result to Be Decided Today

Robin Carnahan is expected to announce the results of the Attorney General recount today, and it sounds like Chris Koster will retain his victory over Margaret Donnelly for the Democratic nomination.

I was wrong on this election - way wrong, and I deeply regret it.

I thought Jeff Harris was the one who had the best chance to defeat Chris Koster. Bright, friendly, experienced, and endorsed by people from all over the state, he ran a good campaign, though he was heavily outspent. Polls showed him leading by double digits. (My first line in that post seems cruelly on-target today - "Only fools take polls very seriously, but I'm foolish enough to be blown away by AG candidate Jeff Harris' showing in the recent poll released by the St. Louis Post Dispatch.")

When I met Margaret Donnelly, I wrote "Margaret Donnelly seems like a fantastically dedicated and fine Democrat. She is not, however, a particularly good candidate for Attorney General." That "not particularly good candidate" defeated my candidate by more than 30,000 votes, and came with around 780 votes (we'll know the true number later today) of defeating Chris Koster.

Could my endorsement and enthusiastic support have made a difference? When the margin is that slight, every tiny facet plays a part. While I don't blame myself for supporting Jeff Harris, I do blame myself for dismissing Margaret Donnelly.

It appears that, later today, Chris Koster will finally grab AG nomination for the Democrats.

Will I support him? I need to ponder that one . . .

Personal Branding - Not Just for People with Gas Stoves and Bent Hangers

Ramsey Mohsen, Kansas City's most recently famous blogger, focused his attention on "personal branding" early, early this morning. In a nutshell, everything you say or do, online or in person, builds a "personal brand", which can be made weaker or stronger by its level of consistency in the delivery of quality, tone and presentation.

It's one of those insights that makes me vacillate between "Duh" and "Wow". Developing a reputation is something we face all our lives, and have for generations. The ability to achieve a heightened level of notoriety, intentionally or otherwise, is broadened in the internet age.

I had an interesting day populated with fascinating people yesterday. I met a guy who has been falsely accused of a crime and is concerned about the fact that a google check on his name will deliver an account of his "crime", and what impact that may have on his future life. I had coffee with a thoughtful politician, who pondered whether bloggers change the "gotcha" atmosphere of life in the public eye, or whether they merely amplify it. I sat and chatted with an up and coming political insider, who thanked me for not directing even positive attention in their direction, because it would have generated more notoriety than is sought.

3 people, each dealing with new media and its impact on their reputations. In each case, the new media seems destined to present a shallow, cardboard version of the truth. In the case of the latter two, much of their success lies in manipulating images, but they struggle with the fact that they don't control their own brand images. In the case of the non-criminal, he just wishes he wasn't a "brand" in the first place.

Ramsey Mohsen writes that "Personal Branding is about building and managing the associations/images the public has in regard to yourself about a specific field(s) or topic(s)." He's wise to focus trying to build and manage your own personal brand, but that is only a portion of the picture. In many, and perhaps most, cases, the building and managing is done by someone else entirely.

McCain's Choice of Location (For My Out-of-Town Readers)

The other day, I received a call from the McCain campaign inviting me to attend today's McCain/Palin rally out at John Knox Village. (I don't know how they got my name - maybe they thought I was a Big Oil Executive.) While Kansas Citians will recognize the location, I thought that my out-of-town readers might be interested in knowing that John Knox Village is a fancy "Retirement Community" designed for the well-off.

So, yeah, the 72 year-old McCain is making his appearance at one of the few places where he won't stand out as being particularly, umm, "up there".

Bad Legal Advice, or Decent Political Advice?

I've been genuinely puzzling over the Marcason meltdown and the weirdness surrounding the volunteer ordinance being pushed by the Kansas City Council. Something has been "off" about the whole affair. Most of the potential explanations go part-way toward explaining the situation, but come up short or presenting a satisfactory picture.

I have had the pleasure of meeting and talking with Jan Marcason. She's not a rude person, in normal circumstances, but the video shows her turning her back on good citizens and ignoring them in favor of a back room. (Update: The video didn't catch the walkouts, as the camera stays focused on the speaker.) She's not someone who would, in normal circumstances, threaten a fellow council member, but Sharon Sanders Brooks blew the whistle on a hasty, whispered threat. She's not a sneaky person, in normal circumstances, but suddenly we see her sneaking a hidden ordinance into the committee so that she could ramrod it through without giving the public an opportunity to comment. She's not a metaphorical backroom politician, in normal circumstances, but the video shows her, quite literally, resorting to the literal backroom for a place to play politics outside the public eye.

Clearly, these are not normal times. I have way too much respect for Jan Marcason and most of those who supported her to believe that I am seeing the complete picture. Something made Marcason melt down, and I refuse to believe that it was simply an ego-driven, petulant reaction to people refusing to accept her ordinance on her schedule. Something else is going on. For Jan Marcason to threaten Sanders Brooks with a refusal to support projects in the urban core, it had to be something pretty major.

It could be something related to the Bates lawsuit. Clearly, the ordinance does not directly impact the Bates litigation, so the arguments about "protecting the city from liability" don't really add up. That argument also fails in view of the fact that Marcason's last backroom draft of the ordinance excludes 99.9% of the volunteers used by the city.

Furthermore, the lawsuit simply does justify such extraordinary reaction. Even it it went to trial, and a jury found that every claim of the plaintiff was true and unmitigated by other factors, financial damages in this case are difficult to demonstrate, and punitive damages are an unlikely prospect. Certainly, the case was unlikely to ever cost the city anything near the millions of dollars that Marcason had been willing to spend on consultants to provide countless hours of expensive training for thousands of volunteers.

One alternative method for the ordinance to become very much related to the Bates litigation, though, would be if it was somehow tied to a proposed settlement agreement. This does make a modicum of sense. Ms. Bates and Ms. Squitiro were, all agree, former friends, and it is not hard to imagine that a settlement of a case arising from a broken friendship would include an attempt to "settle the score" beyond mere money. This explanation also would encompass the near panic level of urgency that Marcason brought to the ordinance - most settlement proposals include an expiration date.

It's speculation on my part, but it's the only thing that explains the meltdown, the urgency and the willingness of Marcason to toss out every detail of the ordinance until it focuses exclusively on one person. All that other nonsense about trying to create broad volunteer guidelines in line with other organizations - methinks someone was making that up, and regrets spinning that line of malarkey in hindsight.

But, still, even if it is a part of a settlement agreement, it doesn't make a whole lot of legal sense. As described above, the Bates case, even on its best day, wouldn't justify the expense that Marcason was proposing to spend on consultants and criminal records checks. A quick look on Casenet shows that there are almost 800 cases of various types pending in Jackson County with "City of Kansas City" included in the parties. It would be bad legal advice, indeed, to agree to pass ordinances every time someone sues the city.

But legal advice is different from political advice. It would be a mistake to confuse good political advice with bad legal advice.

Kicking Gloria out of City Hall makes political sense for certain members of the council. It would be a way of undermining the Mayor, reaching into his office and making staff decisions for him. It would deprive him of his most trusted and important advisor. It would even be a bit of an embarrassment for him, and perhaps even be something that a councilmember with Mayoral ambitions would like to use during the next race. A settlement of the suit would also prevent a public airing of any defenses or explanations by Ms. Squitiro, such that only one side of the story would ever gain the public's attention - again, weakening a Mayor who is out to change the way things are done in our City.

It's even possible that the councilmembers believe they would gain the appreciation of a certain blogger, and get favorable treatment in the next election cycle.

Clearly, the Kansas City public does not know what is going on with this ordinance. Clearly, there is more afoot than simply trying to come up with a good volunteer policy, and we are being kept in the dark.

What happened in that back room? Until someone comes forward and explains it, concerned Kansas Citians are forced to speculate.

What's Behind the Weirdness?

Why did Jan Marcason go overboard and threaten Sharon Sanders Brooks if she didn't support the anti-volunteer ordinance NOW, as opposed to waiting a week? Why was it so important that the ordinance get passed before people had a chance to read it? It doesn't make sense if Marcason was really only trying to pass the ordinance . . .

Which leads us to the overwhelming question - what WAS going on in that backroom?

Will we ever find out?

Shamelessly Stolen from BlogCCP

BlogCCP has really come into its own lately, and I anticipate it being the top source of local progressive perspectives on the coming campaign season. During the convention, it had two writers providing content fresh from Denver - great stuff!

Yesterday, it provided the following gem:

Quote of the Day
Sarah Palin mocked Barack Obama for leaving the comforts of a big firm and becoming a community organizer. "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a ‘community organizer,’ except that you have actual responsibilities."

Quote of the Day - "Or, you know, maybe someone needs to remind Sarah Palin that Jesus Christ was a community organizer and Pontius Pilate was a governor."

5 Words for Our City Council

Yesterday morning, three members of the Kansas City Council's Finance and Audit Committee voted for new restrictions on volunteers in Kansas City. I would love to link to the language of the ordinance, because, as citizens of this city, it is your right to know what is happening, but the drafters of this ordinance are far too embarrassed and timid to put their backroom-drafted ordinance into the public eye.

Since they have hidden the new ordinance, the actual words of the ordinance are unavailable to this blog. So, it's up to us to come up with our own words this morning.

No single word accurately and completely describes the actions of councilmembers pushing this ordinance, and yet so many words apply to aspects of their behavior. So, I'm going to offer up five words which I think are near the target, but I'd really appreciate your help in choosing which one is best. Or choose your own . . .

1. Arrogant: Please watch the videotape of the behavior of the Finance and Audit Committee. Have you ever seen such arrogance at this level? Come on, Councilpeople, at least act like you care what the voters think! Obviously, the only action that the majority cared about was going on in the backroom, out of the sight and hearing of the lowlife citizens who dared to intrude on the precious time of the majority. Wow. Some of us knew those council people when they were mere mortals . . . I wonder if the ghost of Pendergast was holding court in that back room?

2. Fraudulent: While we elected a Mayor who has sought to be smart with the money, somehow our council has decided to be dumb with the money. The Fiscal Note attached to this ordinance claims that the only expense it generates will be up to $100,000 for police reports. That was never true - it was a lie covering up the vast amounts of money (millions?) which the council could have directed to their consultant friends to pay for all the training volunteers would go through. But now, according to the paper, they have restricted their ordinance to apply only to volunteers for elected officials, though it still apparently requires the City Manager to make all department volunteers to go through training. How much is this costing us? That's the dirty little secret that the majority keeps hidden. Why?

3. Cowardly: As described before, the genesis of this ill-conceived effort was the constant drum-beat of a single, repetitive blogger. Yesterday, the blogosphere chortled at Tony's victory. Tony has proven himself a stronger influence on Kansas City than any single councilperson. And certainly much stronger than the voice of reason. (As a blogger, my hat's off to Tony. That was honestly impressive. What will your next trick be? Can you get them to stand on their heads?)

4. Intellectually Dishonest. Was this ordinance focused at Gloria Squitiro? One admits "yes", one says "of course not". They claim that this is an ordinance focused on protecting volunteers, but first excluded the largest user of volunteers, and now are (apparently) excluding virtually all volunteers. Would you please make up one story, and stick with it?

5. Ineffective. The funny thing is, they have accomplished absolutely nothing. They've gone through all these contortions, and they won't get the change they want. They sought to regulate volunteers, and now they've excluded virtually all the volunteers from the ordinance. They sought to eliminate Gloria Squitiro (No, they didn't! Yes, they did!) from City Hall, and to run the Mayor's office, but it's not going to happen. All they've done is waste a lot of time and resources that could have been spent on real Kansas City priorities. While they're playing around with a dishonest ordinance that regulates volunteers but doesn't, all the priorities they were elected to address remain on the table.
_______________

Well, I could probably come up with more words than 5 to describe the debacle in the Finance and Audit Committee, but 5 will have to suffice. Fortunately, these councilpersons are not really the corrupt and inept cowards that they behaved like yesterday. These 5 words are intended to describe their actions yesterday, not their personalities nor their typical behavior. Yesterday, they behaved as I describe them, and I suspect they'll do the same thing today. They deserve our condemnation, and they will, I assure you, come to realize that they've made a mistake, just as they know they made a mistake in foolishly extending Cauthen's contract.

When they regain their sense, and look around, perhaps this will be the time that they realize that Mayor Funkhouser was right again. Their volunteer ordinance is a sham. Their extension of Cauthen was a mistake. And Funkhouser was right on both counts. It's not too late for them to start learning from their mistakes.

Kansas City Deserves Better From Its Council and For Its Volunteers

The Finance and Audit Committee is meeting this morning to hold its second hearing about the Anti-Volunteer Ordinance that the nine council members introduced a couple weeks ago. It meets at 8:15 in the morning, assuring that it will only hear testimony from insiders and the self-employed. The good people who work all week and volunteer in various capacities in their off-hours are effectively shut out from the process.

That exclusion is made even more complete by the legislative sleight-of-hand I understand is being cooked up for today in the back offices of the City Council. While the self-employed and privileged are invited down to testify this morning, they will be handed a NEW, REDRAFTED ORDINANCE when they get there. Good luck in preparing your thoughts and analysis ahead of time! Good luck doing any research to respond to the potential new flaws in the redraft of an already flawed ordinance!

(It should also be noted that the Fiscal Note for this ordinance is horribly flawed. It admits that the ordinance will cost $100,000 for criminal checks, but includes no provision at all for paying current staff or contractors for providing all the orientation and training surrounding "Anti-Discrimination/Harassment, Policy Against Violence in the Workplace, Drug & Alcohol Misuse Testing Policy, Policy Against Nepotism and instruction on conflicts of interest, confidentiality and proper use of City equipment and electronic communication devices". Somehow, that just happens for free.)

On the one hand, I'm pleased that the Council has seen the light and agreed with me that the ordinance they came up with was horribly flawed. It's refreshing to see that they realize that they made a mistake, and are endeavoring to fix it. In all seriousness, they had enough people cosponsoring the original, deeply flawed ordinance that they could have simply passed the flawed original if they truly didn't care.

But, in this case, redrafting the ordinance is simply insufficient. Is a good deed, half done, necessarily a good deed?

The Council is keeping its new ordinance under wraps until the hearing. Those of us who submitted thoughtful commentary on the original version are excluded from even knowing what will be in today's version. Given the muddled history and contradictory statements made by the cosponsors on what, exactly, this ordinance is attempting to accomplish, Kansas Citians have no reason to believe that this ordinance is much better than the version the council is now backing away from.

In this day of email and websites, there is no reason in the world for the Council to spring a new ordinance on an uninformed public at the same time it accepts testimony from that public. Volunteerism in Kansas City is an important issue, and an ordinance restricting volunteerism warrants complete and thoughtful attention.

This morning, we will get to see what the Finance and Audit Committee is up to. If they submit a new ordinance and seek further comment, then they will demonstrate that the good of the city is at the top of their agenda. If they dodge meaningful public comment and ramrod through an unexamined ordinance, they will be responding to an urge somehow deeper than presenting the best possible ordinance to the entire council.

We get a clear result this morning.

McCain Checks Out His Veep

Nearly 6 months after he became the presumptive nominee, McCain announced the results of almost half a year of vetting and analysis and careful interviews and hard work. It was Sarah Palin, an untested, unknown, unvetted who will probably be announcing her refusal of the Veep seat within a few hours.

What could have been on his mind?

Maybe we can figure that out . . .