Spend a Couple Dollars Tonight - It's Bargain Night in Politics

Want to make someone happy for $25 or $50? Tonight's your night.

Like some sort of third world currency, the value of your political dollars varies month-to-month, even day-to-day. Right here in Kansas City, your political dollar is at a peak, but the value will come crashing down before the end of the week.

Why? Because the June 30 reporting deadline is today. What a candidate receives today will show up in a week or so when the campaign filings are done, and political insiders will dissect those reports not only for total figures, but also for depth, breadth and identity of support.

It's about intimidation. A candidate who shows early strength in fundraising looks formidable. A candidate who turns in a lackadaisical fundraising report looks vulnerable. It's still early enough that potential opponents still think they could take on a vulnerable candidate, so tonight's the night that could determine the difficulty of the 2010 elections for a lot of candidates.

Your small check tonight could save a candidate tens of thousands of dollars down the road.

Not surprisingly, there are fundraisers aplenty tonight. If you're wanting to help out strong young Democrats, you should seriously consider dropping by Wine., 112 West 63rd Street, tonight, where Kevin McManus will be launching his campaign to succeed Kate Meiners after she is termed out, or coming to the "Party on the Porch" being thrown by "lots of fabulous women" for Jackson County's best legislator, Theresa Garza Ruiz.

I hope to make both. I love a bargain.

24 Bad Beers

Yesterday was my final class in preparation for the Beer Judge Certification Program Exam. I have less than two weeks until my knowledge of beer and tasting/judging ability will be put to the test.

Since much of the job of a beer judge is to recognize, indentify and articulate what is wrong with beer, yesterday's class was devoted to off-flavors. Jackie and Alberta Rager doctored samples of Bud Light (chosen for its lack of flavor) with chemicals provided by the Siebel Institute to three times the normal detectable levels. So, in a nutshell, I spent yesterday afternoon drinking Bud Light that was not only bad, but three times as bad as it needed to be.

The flavors ranged from butyric (rancid butter) to papery (like chewing up paper to make spit wads in grade school) and earthy (smelled and tasted like the container of nightcrawlers you'd buy at a bait shop). In order of tasting, we tried butyric, mercaptan, ethyl acetate, indole, grainy, caprylic, papery, infection, diacetyl, acetaldehyde, DMS, lactic, metallic, earthy, isoamyl acetate, geraniol, spicy, ethyl hexanoate, acetic, hefeweizen, vanilla, bitter, and almond. While not all of these flavors are flaws, all can be if they are inappropriate to the style of beer being targeted. But, really, most of them are always bad, and spending an afternoon intentionally drinking one after the other is grueling.

I never thought I would complain about a Sunday afternoon spent drinking beer . . .

Sunday Poetry: Lines, by John Ciardi

Lines

I did not have exactly a way of life
but the bee amazed me and the wind’s plenty
was almost believable. Hearing a magpie laugh

through a ghost town in Wyoming, saying Hello
in Cambridge, eating cheese by the frothy Rhine,
leaning from plexiglass over Tokyo,

I was not able to make one life of all
the presences I haunted. Still the bee
amazed me, and I did not care to call

accounts from the wind. Once only, at Pompeii,
I fell into a sleep I understood,
and woke to find I had not lost my way.

- by John Ciardi
___________________________________________________________

John Ciardi has a Kansas City connection; he taught at the University of Kansas City for a few years before moving on to Harvard. He's generally regarded as a "B list" poet, more famous for his translations and his book "How Does a Poem Mean?" (which was widely assigned as a textbook) than for his poetry. His most famous poem, Most Like an Arch This Marriage is an old-fashioned, tedious, artificial wreck of an attempt to recreate Donne and Shakespeare in the modern world. Sadly, because his name was attached to a textbook widely assigned to unwilling and closed students, and his most famous poem exhibits all the attributes that lead many people to loathe the form, Ciardi may have done more to render poetry irrelevant than anything other than recorded music.

But I digress. I came here today not to bury Ciardi, but to praise him.

For me, this poem celebrates the weirdness that makes the world exciting. There are bursts of "Holy mackerel, this is wild!" that have struck me in my life, though by most standards, my life has been fairly mundane.

Even more astonishingly, Ciardi's poem reflects the chronology of some of those moments in my life. When I was a boy, it was nature that jolted my urban world. Days spent running wild on a neighbor's uncle's farm in Gillespie, Illinois, fishing, chasing frogs and finding snakes. Bees, birds, and the wind are all ecstatically beyond comprehension if you are open to their miracle.

And "Saying hello in Cambridge" - the gathering of friends and the start of relationships. Who could have foreseen the impacts that our friends and lovers would have on us? As Ciardi says, "I did not have exactly a way of life". Reading "way" to mean a path, who among us has not had their "way" turned into a delightful wander because of those we have said "hello" to?

"Eating cheese by the frothy Rhine" to me speaks of the ridiculous pleasures that life has brought. Whether it was my mind-blowing dinner at Bluestem or the contraband Blue Vinny that came as part of a Ploughman's lunch in Dorset, I've had those perfect moments of gustatory astonishment that can transport me almost like Proust's madeleines, and they have made my life more than the mundane.

And leaning over Tokyo - to me it recalls those moments in travel when you simply cannot believe that you are where you are. I've never leaned over Tokyo, but I have stood in a field a half day's journey away from my summer-baked driveway, and seen elk grazing in snow. I saw a storm blow in over the Andes. I saw the water gathered from most of a continent rush past me all at once in the Mississippi in New Orleans. I have stood inches away from paintings by Van Gogh, right here in Missouri, and seen the depth and breadth of the brush strokes left by his hand in wet paint.

And so, when Ciardi wakes and finds himself in Pompeii, the disorientation he feels does not bring fear. He knows he has not lost his way, because he knows he has not exactly had a "way". Just as he has not been able to "able to make one life of all
the presences I haunted", and just as he has been amazed by bees, he calls on the reader to remain open to those glorious moments that make us more than what we seem.

Ciardi tells us in "Lines" that our lives are not straight lines, and that we should be open to the bees, hellos and moments that shake and delight us. If you have exactly a way of life, you will miss much, and may well wake up in Pompeii to find you have lost it.

Are Soccer Fans the Most Obnoxious People on Earth?

What the hell is it with those people?

The World Cup games in South Africa sound like they are being played inside a hornets' nest, with a constant drone of horns continuing throughout the entire game. The horns are vuvelezas - cheap plastic trumpets that any clear-thinking person would blow only during moments of celebration, if at all. But, unfortunately, the South African crowds deem it clever to blow the things as a constant noise, no matter what is going on down on the field.

But my scorn isn't reserved solely for the vuvulezas and the South Africans. Closer to home, what is the deal with people throwing junk on the field? After every goal, knuckleheads in the crowd will throw rolls of toilet paper onto the field. You'll have a dozen or more long streamers of toilet paper polluting the field, even at a Wizards game. And they don't stop play to have the crew clean it up, or for security to throw the throwers out of the stadium.

What the heck? You don't throw stuff onto a field of play! If you do, you get kicked out of the place. (Ice hockey's an exception - hat tosses happen everywhere, Detroit sees its share of octopi, and don't ask about Sweden.) There's no reason to TP the stadium just because your team scores a goal - it's visually distracting for the rest of the game.

I hope this blog post will help football (soccer) fans worldwide do a better job of living up to my expectations.

Wrestling with Pigs - Advice for Local Politicians

The political season is warming up again, and new candidates are jumping into the pool. And, happily, there are some great ones - Jay Swearingen in the 31st District and Kevin McManus in the 46th District stand out as fresh faces ready to run great campaigns. Both have kicked off their efforts with successful fundraising and meeting lots of people.

As a blogger, I have a few words of advice for Jay, Kevin, and any other first-time candidates. Ignore us.

Here's a true story of why. A couple election cycles ago, I had chosen to support a primary candidate in a hard-fought state rep race. As is often the case, the partisans on both sides were getting kind of nasty in blog comments, while the candidates themselves were staying above it all.

One fine Saturday morning, when the weather was picture-perfect for door-to-door campaigning, the candidate I was supporting was out meeting people and asking for their votes. Around noon, though, the other candidate posted a long, passionate comment on my blog, way at the bottom of 80 or so comments. The candidate had obviously spent the morning on a computer instead of a sidewalk.

I knew the race was over right then. Shaking hands, asking for donations, putting yard-signs up - that's the way for a candidate to spend a sunny Saturday morning during campaign season. Worrying about what a few, mostly anonymous, commenters are saying is not. A few of that candidate's supporters told me after the election that they lost their optimism when they saw the comment, because they knew the candidate was not disciplined enough to stick to priorities. When the votes were counted, the candidate who spent Saturday morning going door-to-door clobbered the one who spent Saturday morning writing a comment on Gone Mild.

You will not win or lost your campaign by what is written on blogs. Another anecdote - back in 2006, another local candidate ran the most effective blog-based campaign I had ever imagined. He ran a first-class blog, participated in conversations in other blogs, and basically won the hearts and minds of everyone in the blogosphere. I sincerely thought he was going to win. He got crushed.

My point is that the blogosphere in local politics is a raucous scene populated by anonymous agitators who will say just about anything under their cloak of anonymity. Don't confuse them with the people you need to persuade.

If a blogger posts something factually inaccurate about you, go ahead and email the person and politely explain where he or she is mistaken. Most bloggers I know do try to stick to the truth, and the majority of us will print a correction. But ignore the comments, and don't try to win a battle in the comment section of a blog.

George Bernard Shaw wrote, "I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it." While there are some tremendously thoughtful and fair blog commenters out there, the analogy fits.

Who Wrote It? Yael Claims Authorship of Botched Diuguid Column

Things are breaking down over at the KC Star. Yesterday, a column published under the name of Lewis Diuguid was promptly hijacked by Yael Abouhalkah and posted prominently on Abouhalkah's "recent posts" page of the Star's Midwest Voices. Meanwhile, Diuguid refused to post the amateurish hatchet job on his own page at Midwest Voices.

The controversy over the botched column is understandable. It blithely repeats a false explanation of why the Recall Petitioners backed away from their failed petition drive, repeating the lie that the group gave up because of lack of funds. That lie was exposed on this blog, and the petition folk will acknowledge the money was not the problem.

Factual sloppiness is nothing new for the Star, though, and the real reason that confusion reigns concerning authorship of the column is the utter lack of thought or writing skill it demonstrates, along with the lack of a clear voice.

If it were really Abouhalkah's work, it would have more of a strident and hysterical tone. Abouhalkah has been unable to write about the Mayor without bitter emotions boiling up - failed dreams of walking through green fields hand in hand with the Mayor he so lovingly supported during the election. When it turned out that Mark prefers to hold hands with his wife, Abouhalkah felt scorned, and has repaid the slight with every bitter word Roget can provide.

On the other hand, the column could not possibly have been written by Lewis Diuguid. It does not include a single "I", or even a "we" - the hallmark of everything written by Mr. Diuguid. Surely, Diuguid had written this column, it would have included a couple paragraphs about him talking with his Hispanic friends at a bodega, or what the old black gentlemen had to say at the barbershop. It's his schtick - it's what he does.

Obviously, the webmaster at Midwest Voices was confused by this bland piece of poorly written bias, relying on falsehoods and old complaints. Who can blame him/her for going ahead and tossing it into the Abouhalkah bin despite the Diuguid byline. When it's factually wrong, wildly biased and tediously written, it just seems more like Abouhalkah than anyone else.

McCaskill Switching Parties?

After voting as a Republican on war funding, FISA, free speech, and opposing important environmental work in the Everglades, Senator Claire McCaskill (?-MO) has announced her intention to vote with the Democrats and to support a public option. And it seems pretty clear: "I support public option for health care reform. I want people to have a choice between public and private."

Of course, the votes have not yet been cast, and it's entirely possible that McCaskill will rejoin her Republican colleagues, but, as of now, it looks like she may be putting her Tiffany WWJTD (What Would Jim Talent Do?) on eBay. Stay tuned . . .

Hell Yes I Want Socialized Medicine

"Socialized medicine" is the "scare" part of the latest scare tactic - favorite right wing tool for any public debate. They want us to believe that the passage of health care reform with a public option will turn our country's health system into a 1970s version of East Berlin, complete with gray walls and old ladies waiting in line for a loaf of moldy bread.

Grow up and stop with the quivering lips, Free Market Zealots (FMZs, from now on). The public option is coming, and it's high time we got back to it.

History has never been a strong suit for the FMZs. While they try to paint themselves as conservatives longing to return to the glory days of pre-regulatory capitalism, those days never really existed, because, whenever attempted, the flaws in laissez-faire economics arise more quickly than pimples on a teen in a chocolate factory. Like most fundamentalists, the FMZs want to roll back societal progress to a happier day that has never existed.

In the health care context, we are currently stuck in a historical accident of economic evolution. Traditional medicine dates back to tribal caregivers, but began to evolve as a "scientific" approach gained dominance, primarily through the wonderful "laboratories" provided by more and more horrific wars. When the rise of hospitals and their increased capital costs made medicine something beyond the scope of the genial doctor or helpful Public Health Nurse (a sadly under-appreciated part of the health care equation, but that's another blog post), charities - not entrepreneurs (other than patent medicine purveyors, but that's yet another blog post) - jumped in and tried to fill the gap.

Now, through a series of historical accidents and skillful insurance company manipulations of the marketplace, we are left with a system that illogically ties health care to employment and converts healers into profit centers.

The irrationalities of the current system are too numerous to catalog. The misery and inefficiencies are hidden in bankruptcy filings and coverage denials that are ignored by the public, because they are merely contractual disputes between a sick person and an insurer with a PR department.

Indeed, the lack of a public rallying point is the greatest tool for the status quo. Can you imagine the public outcry if a state bureaucrat denied coverage as heartlessly as a Coventry claims manager? Can you imagine the letter you would write to your government officials if you were forced to wait in a state-run waiting room as long as you've spent waiting in your current waiting room? If a public health option were to deliver exactly the same level of care that the current fragmented system delivers, we would have public agitation for greater efficiencies and improved results.

A public health option will not be a shangri-la. Mistakes will be made, as they are now, but they will draw corrective attention, rather than insurer indifference. Costs will continue to rise, though the enormous cost of multiple conflicting billing systems will be reduced.

Most importantly, though, we eliminate the incredible inefficiency of the uninsured visiting emergency rooms for unchecked chronic conditions. We can prevent the upper-middle-class family being reduced to bankruptcy because they choose to keep their child alive. We can allay the concerns of the single mother listening to her child cough and weighing whether a co-pay will force a missed meal for her other children.

Less soft-heartedly, we will also free the would-be entrepreneur who is chained to a job she must keep in order to maintain health care benefits, rather than starting her small business. We could, if we make the system broad enough, free our employers from the hidden tax imposed by insurance companies that are draining their profitability and dampening their ability to compete in a global marketplace. We would free up the cadres of people who are paid millions of dollars to produce, review, reject, approve and argue about medical bills.

It's time, people. Don't let some made-up story about some Brit who had to wait a month for hip surgery make you forget about Tracy Pierce, who died right here in Kansas City. Don't let fear of spending time in a waiting room blind you to the fact that every thirty seconds you currently wait in that room, another person is filing for bankruptcy due to medical bills they probably thought were covered.

I'm not falling for the scare tactics, and I hope you won't either. If they want to label the public health option as socialized medicine, I don't care, and I won't flinch. "Socialized" may be a naughty word in some circles, but the status quo is obscene.

Sunday Poetry: My Papa's Waltz, by Theodore Roethke

My Papa’s Waltz

The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother’s countenance
Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.

- by Theodore Roethke
___________________________________________________

Pay attention.

This poem rewards the attention you pay to it with warmth and pain, fear and joy, and a portrayal of rich reality.

At my first reading of this poem, I saw it as a sweet poem of nostalgia for a silly moment of family goofiness. Little children dancing with clumsy fathers, little feet on big shoes - a classic of family moments.

And it is all that. There is nostalgia and warmth in this poem.

But a more careful reading of the poem shows that there is more - the little boy in the poem clings like death to waltzing which is not easy. His ear is scraped and time is beaten on his head by a hard, dirty hand. His mother frowns, and the father's breath reeks of whiskey. This is not a Norman Rockwell painting.

It's important that this poem is told from the point of view of the child. What would the poem be like from the father's perspective? That feeling of being so capable of unintentional pain, of being too big and clumsy to hold the child you love so deeply, the sense of being out of tune with your own family - those are part of the fatherhood experience. You never know what thoughtless quip or accident might ring for decades in your child's ears.

Roethke dares portray for us a real scene of fatherhood. It's flawed - deeply flawed. It's even kind of frightening, while it's also kind of warm and comforting. It's a touch of fun in dysfunctional.

If your father was always wise and gentle and strong, you were incredibly blessed. If your father was an abusive monster, you have my sincere sympathy. But if your father was a clumsy man who occasionally scraped or bruised you while wanting with all his heart for you to be happy, think warmly of him this Father's Day.

Best Meal I've Ever Had in Kansas City

Yesterday evening, to celebrate our 27th Anniversary, we went out to Bluestem. I had only been there for drinks before, so I knew that it was an upscale foodie spot, but I had no other expectations. I came prepared for a generic gourmet meal - probably a few new ingredients, and fancified favorites.

Bluestem blew me away. The service was gracious and prompt, the food was creative and amazing, and they even had an intelligent beer list. The whole experience was 3 hours of decadent pleasure.

Bluestem offers diners a selection of course - you can order 3, 5 or 7 courses, or even a chef's tasting menu of 12 courses. After the waitress assured us that the courses would not present an overwhelming amount of food, we each chose 5 items - two "appetizer" type dishes, two proteins, and one dessert pick.

The highlight of my appetizers was troffie pasta with crab, garlic, chili and prosciutto. Big chunks of sweet crab meat played well with the heat of the chili.

My bride's favorite appetizer was a gorgeous bowl of spring pea soup, with preserved lemon, creme fraiche and orange tuile. It tasted like the first warm day of spring distilled into a creamy soup.

From the protein side, my favorite was a few slices of piedmontese strip, served with light whipped potatoes lit up with horseradish. I hesitate to order steak in a restaurant, because I can usually grill up a better example at home. My faith in the Bluestem kitchen was rewarded with a perfectly textured, wonderfully presented sample of richly flavored beef.

The woman who met me at an altar 3-cubed years ago wrought her revenge on the creatures who have destroyed her hostas by ordering rabbit. It was the best item to show up on either plate - tender like pounded chicken, sweet like pork, and complex like duck. It was served atop a bed of sweet pea spaetzle, which were a wonder in their own right.

I ended my meal with a great selection of cheese and crostini, while she ended hers with bright cherries and milk chocolate cream puffs.

Bluestem delivered the best meal I've ever had in a Kansas City restaurant - even better than the memorable and impressive Justus Drug Store. Speaking of which, I appreciated the waitress' vocal admiration of other great local restaurants - she gushed about Room 39 and said that she can't wait for her first trip to Justus Drug Store. It was a touch of class in an evening that was suffused with class.

Downtown Indianapolis

Just got back from a few work days in Indianapolis. Their downtown was impressive - lots of people and night life, without the phony, dress-coded corporate feel of a Cordish strip mall. There was a great blend of local restaurants and bars along side the expected chains, and most were located in genuine old buildings. It was great.

I started to ask around about how it all happened - what kind of tax breaks were given to whom to spark such a vibrant downtown? Unfortunately, I don't have the answers yet, and, even more unfortunately, I realized I don't really care that much. Kansas City's ship has sailed. We have what we have, and we're never going to have what Indianapolis has.

Indianapolis has downtown Indianapolis. We have Kansas City/Daytona/4th Street/Philly/Power Plant/Woodbine Live!, thanks to the "leadership" of our prior Mayor and council.

Something's Fishy With the Recall Excuse

The Recall Group is claiming that the only reason it is not seeking a recall in court is because they don't have $10,000 to bankroll a lawsuit. The Star does its best to bury the smelly corpse with the remarkably gullible claim that "In the end, the effort to recall Mayor Mark Funkhouser simply ran out of money."

Folks, I don't think they're telling us the whole truth.

First off, there's no way they couldn't find $10,000 if they really thought they had a chance in court. Friends of other candidates would find a way to make it happen overnight. Barring that, they could have gone back to the streets and raised the money in a couple weekends. Not even counting the bogus signatures, that would be less than a dollar each. This thing has been headed up by a real estate lawyer and an experienced campaign professional - no way in hell are they giving up because they can't raise $10,000.

Second, they had a lawyer right there. Harris Wilder, their long-winded spokesperson, is an attorney in good standing, fully capable of typing up a petition and filing it. Dividing the $10,000 by $200 per hour (a fairly low rate for experienced attorneys), they're ballparking the thing at 50 hours of time - a long week of work, perhaps, but dwarfed by the hours other people put in on this whole misguided effort.

Third, there wasn't a deadline here. If they thought they had a valid claim, they could spend the time they need to raise the funds for the suit. Why would they throw in the towel so quickly? Remember when, a few weeks ago, they made a big deal out of hiring an experienced Civil Rights lawyer to give them legal advice?

And that, friends, is the fly in the ointment.

They've received their legal advice, and they know it's time to exit the stage. They failed to gather enough signatures, and no lawyer can change that fact. On top of that, I imagine those volunteers who submitted bogus signatures begged for this thing to go away as quickly as possible, in the hopes of avoiding criminal charges. When you ask someone for $10,000, they ask smart questions, and I imagine every donor lost interest the moment they saw the legal grounds proffered.

By pretending that their effort is shutting down because they could not raise $10,000, the Recall people are refusing one last time to admit the truth. They failed, plain and simple. $10,000 was not going to bring them any success, or they would have their $10,000, and plenty more where that came from. But they don't have to admit that to themselves if they can point the finger at someone else for failing to rescue them from their own failure.

Sunday Poetry: The World is Too Much with Us, by William Wordsworth

The World is Too Much with Us

The World is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours
And are up-gather'd now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.—Great God! I'd rather be
A pagan suckled in a creed outworn
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

- by William Wordsworth
_________________________________

I spent the weekend with friends at a lake. Last night, we saw stars like we never see in the city, and heard the sound of a Whip-poor-will in the night. Campfire and conversation made it all complete.

It had been almost a year since I was outdoors in the woods at night. It will probably be a longtime before it happens again. There's always too much stuff to be done - parties to go to, work, and so on. Even down there, an internet connection threatened to bring my daily world back to my laptop.

Way back at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, William Wordsworth felt the same thing. The daily struggle of commerce and stuff to do - getting and spending - made him feel out of touch with nature. He yearned to be excited by nature - he wanted to feel the power of nature, and have his imagination pushed to seeing ancient gods at work in the universe.

The poem is in the form of an Italian, or Petrarchan, sonnet. The first 8 lines raise a problem, and the final 6 address the problem. In this poem, the first 8 lines state the problem that we are out of touch with nature, and the final six lines are Wordsworth's fantasy that he could step out of the modern world and back in time to an age where people saw the power of gods in nature.

Like a Shakespearian sonnet, the Italian sonnet is 14 lines of iambic pentameter. The difference lies in the rhyming scheme. This Italian sonnet is ABBA ABBA CD CD CD (though other Italian sonnets have different rhyming schemes for the final 6 lines), and the Shakespearian sonnet is typically ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. While both forms have served as the skeleton for fantastic poems, I generally prefer the Italian variety, since, too often, the final couplet of a Shakespearian sonnet comes off too sing-songy, like a punchline.

But enough with the technical talk. Reread the poem, and think about how the world is too much with you, late and soon, and how the best parts of you - your creativity, your wit, your joys in life - are reigned in by an alarm clock and bills. Sympathize with Wordsworth, and think how different where you are right now was 202 years ago, when the poem was written.

It felt good to be out in the woods, and live, even for a weekend, in a tribal arrangement of friends who cooked, played and drank without much regard to the rest of the world. I'm not ready to give up central air and my iPod, but the stars were incredible.

Recall Petitioners Came Up Short With Cheating??

I was surprised to see how close the Recall petitioners came in their attempts to force a half-million dollar election on a city strapped for cash. While I had accurately predicted that the effort would fail, I had expected them to come up with fewer than they turned in. It turns out that they inflated their totals with bogus signatures.

How sad is that? What's the point of cheating if you're not even going to do enough of it to win? That's kind of like hiding a deuce up your sleeve in a poker game, instead of an ace.

It's also kind of disappointing that the recall organizers are changing their story now that violations of the law are coming to light. A few short weeks ago, they were crowing about how their percentage of valid signatures would be much higher in the second batch of signatures they turned in, because they had screened and checked them. Now that the excrement is headed toward the cooling unit, they are claiming they didn't provide their volunteers any formal training on how not to cheat (why not?), and that they did not review all the petitions.

To be crystal clear, there's no way, in my opinion, that any of the organizers of the recall movement actually condoned any cheating. Some of their followers drank too deeply of the anti-Funk kool-aid and went too far. Given their failure to train their volunteers and the fact that they turned in bogus petitions, I think it's time, however, that they stop wasting everyone's time and money.

If they file a lawsuit to force a recount of their bogus petitions, I hope that the judge is wise enough to insist that they, not the Kansas City taxpayers, be forced to pay the costs.

Parental Controls Don't Work - Video Games Try Parental Fear-Mongering

Go read about the new racing game's "No Seat Belt" option at Hardcasual.net.

Blogger Appreciation: Logtar's Blog

Logtar's Blog breaks all the rules of blogging success. He hasn't chosen a narrow focus - his posts range from what he named his Wii to Democracy vs. Capitalism. He doesn't post all that often - he averages around 5 or 6 posts a month. He isn't an awe-inspiring wordsmith - English is his second language, and his posts are written in the simple and direct language of everyday life.

Most shocking, however, is his honesty. He writes about being bullied in High School, and does so in a way that reminds those of us who weren't "tough" of the frustration and humiliation. He writes about family problems, and family support. Every day that I write, I make choices about what I will reveal about myself and what I will not speak of; Logtar shares more deeply than most, without swerving into the genre of self-psychoanalyzing navel-gazing. He lets down his barriers enough to make you think, but not so much that you squirm.

Reading Logtar's Blog is like sitting down with an old friend for a beer. You don't know if the conversation is going to be raucous and funny, like challenging Twitters to a Whirlyball match, or if he has something heavier on his mind, and you're going to wind up talking about the real meaning of the Golden Rule in today's society.

I've had the pleasure of chatting with Logtar, and his wonderful wife, Bea (who also has a fantastic blog). When you meet him, you can see that the blog is pure Logtar. He's funny, compassionate, thoughtful, and madly in love with his wife. He's one of those great guys you look forward to seeing, because his directness and honesty makes the world seem a little easier to understand.

6 Years of Blogging

I missed my own anniversary of blogging. 6 years on Monday. Thanks for reading.

Shake Up at Pitch's Fat City??

Maybe I'm just a cynic, but my BS meter is on high alert. Last week, CJ Janovy posted an item on Fat City claiming to be looking to hire "another" Fat City blogger. Now, I think the world of CJ, but methinks she's stretching the truth here. No way, in the newspaper business, in this economy, is the paid staff expanding at Fat City.

I think either Charles Ferruzza or Owen Morris is on the way out.

Owen Morris has brought us fresh stories about all kinds of topics from drinking blood to what it's like to go through culinary classes, while Charles Ferruzza has fallen back on photographs of icons and reworded press releases. While Morris is out exploring the world of Christopher Elbow's sweet-corn ice cream, Ferruzza is appearing with Walt Bodine and grumbling about how you just can't find a good meat loaf sandwich these days.

Fat City just isn't big enough for two such divergent voices.

So who's going to win?

I'm putting my money on the old guy. Surely, hanging around with Walt Bodine has to give some insight on endurance.

DJ Jazzy Jeff, Rationality, and the Myth of Corporate Decision-Making

It appears fairly unanimous among the bland white oracles of Kansas City that the P&L District must be in the clear on this whole DJ Jazzy Jeff situation. Indeed, the Baron of Bland, Mike Hendricks, has decided from his Johnson County perspective, that there's not a racial narrative to be seen here. Move along, folks.

There are four main points he makes, and I'll address them in the order he makes them.

1. Nobody is stupid enough to hire a hip hop performer and not expect a hip hop performance, so DJ Jazzy Jeff's claim that the nature of his music is what caused the shut-down is baseless. This is certainly the spin that most defenders of "the way things are" have accepted. The unstated assumption, however, is that the corporation is rational, while the black performer is not. Nobody questions that DJ Jazzy Jeff would be perfectly happy to blow out a sound system and ruin his own reputation among booking agents, because, well, he's just a stupid black rapper. "They" do that kind of thing, don't they? But a corporation would never have one division (security, perhaps) disagree with a decision of another division (booking, perhaps). Anyone who has ever worked in a corporation knows that speaking of Cordish as though it is one rational decision-maker is insane. It is entirely plausible that the person who booked DJ Jazzy Jeff did so enthusiastically, while the security patrol on duty that night was horrified at the look and sound of the performance. It's also implausible to me (though I am no sound engineer) that Cordish would blow my tax dollars on a sound system that doesn't have some sort of system to prevent such overloads.

2. The black dude is being childish because he couldn't have everything his way. From his privileged suburban perspective, Mike Hendricks is perfectly willing to assume that Cordish is a model of effective decision-making, but he cannot conceive that the black people involved are telling the truth. Instead, it seems way easier to conclude that they were being immature and that DJ Jazzy Jeff was acting out his "huge ego". Notice that the guy who has managed to build a career catering to mostly white venue-owners is the irrational one with his ego out of joint, not some rent-a-cop working Saturday nights. You need to put your faith in someone, and it's clear that Hendricks, like much of the rest of the opinion-makers, prefers a paler, more corporate brand of truth.

3. "This being Kansas City, some are trying to turn this into a racial thing. . . . So until there's more proof to say there was anything more to this than a dispute over the sound system, everyone needs to calm down." Yes, friends, that is a direct quote. "Some" people want to turn stuff into a racial thing. This may be the most infuriating line of Hendricks' nonsense, but it underlies the thought-process of all of us who want to tuck this incident safely into a non-racial category. If there's not absolute proof that there was racism involved, we give the white, corporate people the benefit of the doubt and instead accuse those crazy black people of being bomb-throwing, over-reacting race-baiters.

Sorry, but a hip-hop concert at the P&L District is "a racial thing", whether anything happened or not. The very fact of DJ Jazzy Jeff playing on Cordish turf has more racial angles than a geometry book, and for Hendricks to try to strip this incident of its racial overtones is the height of blindness brought on by white privilege. Shame on him and on any person who wants to act like it is black people trying to make this into a racial thing. It is a racial thing, through and through. Even if the shut-down was motivated by absolutely pure motives, this was a "racial thing" from the git-go.

4. Blacks don't matter as much as greens. Fortunately, this is not a direct quotation, but Hendricks flat-out argues that potential money is more important than potential racism. Read it again for yourself, just in case you missed it:

It's not funny, though. Kansas City needs the Power & Light District to succeed.

So until there's more proof to say there was anything more to this than a dispute over the sound system, everyone needs to calm down.

Mike Hendricks is telling people to "calm down" about a potential tax-payer funded incident of racism because we need Cordish to make more money. He fails to state clearly what level of potential profitability we need to see at the P&L District before we should again care about racism in our community, but I'm sure he'll let us know when they reach it. Until then, calm down about racism, okay?

Most of Us "Just Don't Understand"

Of course this is the way it goes, every single time. I've read about DJ Jazzy Jeff getting kicked off the stage at the P&L District, and I'm concluding from the competing stories that truth favors the District's side, and the DJ side is spin, misunderstanding, or a gambit for some publicity. It just doesn't make sense to me that the District would hire him for a Saturday night and then shut him down in front of all his fans for performing his music unless he was in danger of damaging the sound equipment.

And with that simple analysis I can ignore everything important I could learn from this snafu. Instead of gaining any understanding, I manage to retrench myself into the "us" position in an "us vs. them" world.

My ability (?) to coolly analyze the facts presented shields and protects me from having to face more challenging truths. How shocking is it that the conclusion I'm reaching favors the power structure?

First off, I wasn't there. I stayed home Saturday night and watched a movie on TV. I like to think it's cool that I live in the city, but the truth is that Saturday night I lived the life of someone living in the furthest reaches of suburbia. I may live a few blocks from Troost, but my geographical proximity means little in comparison to a lifestyle that more closely resembles Blue Springs.

Second, I wasn't there. I'm relying on statements from others who were, and I am internally making judgments on credibility based on my prejudices. Even though the leaders of the P&L District have lied to us at every step of this tax-advantaged boondoggle, from opening dates to free parking, I continue to give them credibility. Why? Because the people on the ground are the corporate and middle-management types I live among. I need to believe that the spokespeople for the P&L District are trying to be truthful, because if I don't, I'm undermining the aura of trust and respectability that I need to feel comfortable in my zone.

Third, I wasn't there. I have no idea what the decibels were. The decibel level is a fact - an important part of objective information that could help determine who is at fault for the situation. The P&L people say it was too high, and the Jazzy Jeff people say it wasn't. Here in my living room on a quiet Monday morning, how am I to know? Was the decibel level actually measured by the P&L people? Wouldn't a taxpayer-financed sound system have dampers built into it to protect it from getting loud enough to hurt itself? Isn't it possible that somehow the hip hop of Saturday night seemed a little louder than music more in the comfort zone of the decision-makers.

Fourth, I wasn't there. I don't know who said what to whom, and neither do you. Like a game of "pass the secret", it's entirely possible that somebody said "Shut it down because of the volume" and, by the time the word got to the stage, the message had morphed into "Stop the hip-hop". Both sides may be telling the truth here, but it makes it easier for me to choose one side or the other to believe. "Us vs. them", and I'm on the "Us" team again. Huh.

Fifth, finally, and in a deeper sense, I wasn't there. I've never been there as a black man. I've never seen the second level of scrutiny directed my way when I walk toward the entrance of the P&L District. I've never had the officials at the P&L District target a dress code at the things I like to wear. I walk in there, and I feel all kinds of welcome. So, if the District shut down a concert by a group preferred by people like me, I would have no real reason to suspect there was an ulterior motive. But if they made it known to me that I wasn't really welcome, and this was not really my turf, I might feel like there was more to the story than decibel levels.

It's easy to sit here on Monday morning, read conflicting spins, and decide to believe the P&L District's version of things. That version has the irresistible virtue of NOT including racism as a factor in what happens in our society every day. And, frankly, that's the version I prefer, because racism is ugly and disturbing, so I'd prefer to pretend that it's rare, okay? Okay?

Sunday Poetry: The Great Black Heron, by Denise Levertov

The Great Black Heron

Since I stroll in the woods more often
than on this frequented path, it's usually
trees I observe; but among fellow humans
what I like best is to see an old woman
fishing alone at the end of a jetty,
hours on end, plainly content.
The Russians mushroom-hunting after a rain
trail after themselves a world of red sarafans,
nightingales, samovars, stoves to sleep on
(though without doubt those are not
what they can remember). Vietnamese families
fishing or simply sitting as close as they can
to the water, make me recall that lake in Hanoi
in the amber light, our first, jet-lagged evening,
peace in the war we had come to witness.
This woman engaged in her pleasure evokes
an entire culture, tenacious field-flower
growing itself among the rows of cotton
in red-earth country, under the feet
of mules and masters. I see her
a barefoot child by a muddy river
learning her skill with the pole. What battles
has she survived, what labors?
She's gathered up all the time in the world
--nothing else--and waits for scanty trophies,
complete in herself as a heron.

- by Denise Levertov
_________________________________________________

This poem reminds me a bit of The Lake Isle of Innisfree, by William Butler Yeats, and its lulling phrase, "for peace comes dropping slow". This poem seems to be about peace and calm, but it is not.

Russians, Vietnamese, war, labors, battles, Hanoi, "under the feet/of mules and masters" - those are not peaceful images for one who was alive during the era of the Vietnam war, as Levertov, a passionate anti-war voice, was well aware. The voice of the poem describes herself as more typically walking through a pathless wood, introducing a further element of disorder to a poem which appears to be about peace.

The peaceful final image is particularly and wonderfully deceptive. Herons do not stand still by ponds to serve as ornithological yard ornaments - they are hunters. When a small fish, frog or other "scanty trophy" appears in range, it jabs it long bill into the water and kills it. Levertov's choice of a "black heron" reinforces the death imagery - true black herons are African birds, and are an unlikely choice for a North American poet who wasn't trying to bolster a point.

This poem is not about peace - it is about endurance and strife appearing to be peace. She celebrates the woman not for her peacefulness, but for her strength, tenacity and survival.

What is With You Kids?

Why do people pay money to get into a bar that is featuring entertainment and then stand around and talk loudly so they can be heard over the music? I went to the "Found Magazine" performance last night at Crosstown Station, and the singer had to beg unsuccessfully for quiet during one emotional song.

What the heck? There are plenty of good bars in the area - if you want to catch up on the gossip of what Justin said to Cara or why Tiffany can't live at home anymore, take it to the Czar Bar around the corner, or the Cigar Box, or Willie's. (By the way, the fish tacos at the Czar Bar are great.)

I know, I know, this post officially labels me as a grumpy old man, but I didn't pay a cover charge to hear you talk about your new clothes.

Bill Corrigan - St. Louis County Gets a Great Republican to Run for County Executive

Bill Corrigan has finally announced a run for public office. I've seen it coming since 1982, when Bill and I started law school together, and we were both elected as 1l representatives to the student bar association.

Bill Corrigan is a good man. I got to know him well in Law School over Booche burgers and pitchers of beer at the Heidelberg. I got to know him better when we served together on the Missouri Bar Young Lawyers Section Council, and I worked with him when we were both on the Missouri Bar Board of Governors. Since then, we've stayed in touch through occasional phone calls or meals in each others' towns.

Bill is devoted to public service, and always has been. I remember in the summer of 1993, when flooding struck hard in Missouri, and the Missouri Bar Young Lawyers stepped up to coordinate free legal assistance in Disaster Assistance Centers in all affected counties. Bill was chair of the YLS at the time, and the leadership of the effort fell on his shoulders.

He did an outstanding job, both in the nitty-gritty detail of keeping up on which DACs were open in which counties for what times, and in the politics of making certain that the best possible support was available despite the efforts of some officials to turn the tragedy into a self-promotional photo-op. While others made sure to get their pictures taken with a sandbag or two, Bill was up early every morning for weeks, participating in conference calls, reporting on shifts filled, and collaborating on form legal documents and background briefings for volunteer attorneys. It was an incredible demonstration of serious public service over and above the time and energy pressures faced by a young attorney trying to "make partner" at a large law firm.

None of this even gets mentioned on his resume.

Of course, the vast majority of the reasons I think Bill would be great for public office don't show up on any resume. Instead, they are the sorts of things you learn through working with a guy and seeing first-hand his compassion, energy, intellect and spontaneous humor. I've had my share of disagreements with Bill on dozens of issues, and he has always been respectful, rational and well-thought-out.

I don't know Charlie Dooley and I don't like supporting Republicans, but Bill Corrigan is a truly great guy I've admired for a quarter century. If Dooley's campaign believes that he is "another lamb for slaughter", as they've claimed, I can understand how they could be misled by his kind personality. But Bill Corrigan is a serious force who gets things done. I know Bill well, and I can assure you that he has a plan to win this thing, and that, when he does, he will be effective and wise in his governance of the County.

Fencing Liberty Memorial? Is the Civic Irony Meter on the Fritz?

You need to be a hyped-up brand of clueless to propose a fence surrounding something named for Liberty, but the private Liberty Memorial Association wants to spend $1.4 million to do exactly that. (Yes, these are the same people who reacted to a minor spending cut by threatening to "douse the flame" on the Liberty Memorial.)

To justify their ironic request, they cite a fear that "undesirable activity" could take place at the park. They also claim that "the memorial, as a national historic landmark and home to the National World War I Museum, deserves the protection of a fence." If anything "deserves" fencing, I doubt that Liberty leads the list.

The open approach to Liberty Memorial, when viewed from the North or the South, is one of the visual splendors of our city. For a private group of elites to rob Kansas City of that vista just so they can keep out "undesirables" is an affront to common sense, good judgment and liberty itself.

Making Beer Dark

Beer snobs will often sneer at neophytes who claim that they don't like dark beers. They correctly point out that the color of a beer does not necessarily indicate that it will be bitter, or strong, or even particularly flavorful. Blindfolded, many of those who eschew dark beers would certainly choose a near-black New Belgium 1554 over a golden India Pale Ale.

Darkness of beer is simply a function of what grains are used. A beer made with loads of pale malt will be much stronger, and may (or may not, depending on the brewer) hold much more bitterness from hops, than a beer made with a handful of blackened malt added to a modest amount of pale grains. Darkness has little to do with the amount of alcohol; a glass of Guinness is much lighter in alcohol than a glass of Stella Artois.

All that said, there's a grain of truth in what the neophytes say. Darker beers tend to be made with darker roasted grains, and dark roasted grains tend to have more of a "bite" to them. It's kind of like the difference between toast and burnt toast, or a golden marshmallow and one that has served as a short-lived tiki torch. While a dark beer does not necessarily have a strong roasted flavor, it usually has at least some of that roasted malt bitterness.

I recently brewed a Schwarzbier, which is a dark German lager. I wanted something very dark, but I didn't include quite enough roasted malts in the recipe, so it came out a good deal closer to brown than black. That's not necessarily a problem for the style guidelines, but it wasn't what I was shooting for.

Fortunately, Sinamar is a special malt extract that functions like a black food coloring for beer. Because it is made from malt, it actually complies with the Reinheitsgebot - the German beer purity law requiring that beer be made only from water, hops and malt (yeast had not yet been discovered). It should bump up the color without adding much flavor at all, leaving me with a smooth dark lager that will surprise those expecting that a dark beer is a harsh, bitter beer.

If you are one of those who thinks that dark beer is too intense or heavy, you should try something other than stout, like Samuel Adams Black Lager or the schwarzbier served at Gordon Biersch. As mentioned above, 1554 from New Belgium brewery is a very drinkable dark beer. A few such experiments could broaden your palate.

Kraske Loses Chance at Redemption

(Kraske's latest effort inspired me to offer a similar analysis.)

Steve Kraske, a writer for the Kansas City Star, has survived the rounds of lay-offs that have claimed better, more useful writers in those hallowed halls.

Steve Kraske, there went your best chance.

One final shot to start all over again and give this writing thing a fresh start.

It's an enormous irony. You've held onto a job at a paper with dwindling circulation and influence approaching zero. A significant victory, this is not.

This coup was staged by a rag-tag group of bloggers with little money, toiling away on folding chairs, in basements, living rooms and kitchens throughout the region. And they've bested you. When you've made off-base predictions, they've been correct. When you've asked foolish questions, they've asked insightful ones. When he has failed to produce any news worthy of publications, they have scooped him time and time again. When they have predicted a rising Democratic Party, he saw the Democrats as "doomed in November".

So, you survived, but in a strange way, you still lose.

Because getting fired from the Star offered you that last chance.

Here's my thinking: If the Star fired you, you had an opportunity to start up your own blog, and have one more time to face the naysayers and beat them into the ground. You could have tried to form an audience based on merit, rather than proximity to the sports page or comics.

You could have showed 'em, Missouri-style. You could have built traffic and been a real part of the thriving part of the media world. You could have rubbed the bloggers' noses in it when you were right. You could have built a monumental readership that would have demonstrated that you're a worthy commentator.

Now?

Now we have more of the same. The Big Muddle, I call it.

That is, just more of the same at the Star: More turmoil. More uncertainty. More off-base analysis and more discord. More aimless drift out of your column, just as things have been since virtually the day you took over.

Don't breathe too easy yet. The newspaper industry continues to suffer, and a columnist who continually produces analysis that is weaker than that produced by at least a half-dozen local bloggers is not in a safe position. Day after day, week after week, smart, informed analysts are publishing better stuff than you. Meanwhile, McClatchy continues to look at ways to cut costs.

Maybe you'll get that shot at redemption after all.

Why The Recall Recount Will Probably Fail

In an earlier email exchange concerning the statement of reasons for the recall of Funkhouser, I was assured by one of the organizers that "the petition and affidavit document are on the same page of paper in a large portion of the petitions printed later in the recall effort." He further explained, in a comment to this blog, "Did you examine the document, maybe even flip it over to see the affidavit is printed on the other side of the petition to save paper?"

Uh-oh.

From the City Code:

Sec. 730. Signatures to petitions.
The signatures to an initiative, referendum, or recall petition need not all be appended to one paper, but to each separate petition paper there shall be attached an affidavit of the circulator thereof as provided by this section. Each such petition paper shall consist of sheets of uniform size, printed and signed on only one side.

If the organizer was accurate in his claim that a large portion of the petition printed later in the recall effort were printed on both sides, then it seems that all those petitions should be rejected for violating the clear provisions of Section 730.

I don't know - maybe there are sufficient signatures on one-sided petitions to carry the day, and I'm not certain whether the double-sided petitions were rejected in the initial count. Judging from what the recall organizers have publicly stated, though, it appears the recall recount ought to fail.