Hearne: Lawrence’s Ugly ‘Homeless’ Situation

Homelessness is hitting close to home in Lawrence…

And it’s not pretty. Downtown has long been a refuge for trendy locals and Kansas Citians with a penchant for the hip lifestyle. Forget KU basketball, think upscale small town living, a stones throw from KC.

Now set aside those idyllic images, and get your head around the hundreds of ‘homeless’ types descending on a post COVID college town. And they’re taking a toll on Lawrence’s charming downtown.

To the extent that wooden pallets are now in play to create what they’re calling a pallet shelter village to house some of the scary-looking transient types that have taken up residency in small settlements like the one behind the original Johnny’s Tavern in North Lawrence.

By day, they’re largely invisible, but as evening approaches they drift onto Mass Avenue unsettling downtown merchants, and leaving drugs and bodily fluids in their wake. So much so, that the fabled downtown toy store installed a water spigot to hose down its sidewalk out front.

And while winter temps may send many of them south and west, the city appears reluctant to enforce laws on the books that might prevent loitering, littering and licentiousness. Activities that are scaring off a number of the clean cut family types.

One local – who asked his name be withheld – thinks the problem is out-of-control.

“I don’t think, I know,” he says. “Because I’m reading people on Facebook talking about how unruly they are. The transients use the free local busses to go places where they can panhandle or scout out places to crash. Last week around 2 p.m. this homeless guy walked into our office building into a restroom off the lobby, and took his shitty pants off and tried to clean himself. He left his underwear on the floor and then walked out.”

“And there was a woman panhandling outside the entrance to Dillon’s with a bunch of kids. And the next day, a different woman was there with the same kids, and there was some guy in a truck or a van watching them. I’m telling you, the police are too busy to deal with it all.”

Word on the street is that people in California and places where homelessness runs rampant are telling people to come to Lawrence, the businessman says. Continue reading

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Hearne: Whatever Happened To The Hereford House Pyro?

Time flies when you’re having fun…

That said, chances are, for  convicted Hereford House honcho Rod Anderson it’s been crawling…slowly.

That’s because 10 years ago, Anderson was sentenced to 15 years slam time for setting the original Hereford House downtown ablaze. That after launching failed eateries in both Westport and Lawrence and the downtown location was a run down money loser.

So heralded was Anderson as a civic leader at the time, the judge who sent him away all but apologized to him at at his sentencing.

That is, until prosecutor Jess Michaelson put things in perspective by chastising Anderson for not taking a plea deal and saving taxpayers the expense of trying him for five years. And for not admitting his guilt, and continuing to profess his innocence years after his dastardly deed.

The “funniest:” thing I recall:

When Anderson sent the dudes in to torch the place, he told them how to disable the antiquated burglar and fire alarm. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to Anderson, a Hereford House staffer had recently installed a state-of-the-art alarm that busted them royally.

Anyhoo, while Anderson was trying to wriggle out of  his conviction, he got legions of civic leaders to write letters to the judge about what a prince among men he was.

And when he tried to appeal his sentence two years later, it was revealed he’d injected nearly $400 grand into the dilapidated, old building and tried to collect $2.4 million from the insurance company.

Not the stuff civic leaders normally do.

But wait, now that I’m back in KC, I went to the popular Shawnee Hereford House to get an update on Anderson. After all, 10 years into a 15 year sentence – maybe being a boy scout in prison – was he’d be able to secure some sort of parole deal.

Or maybe not.

Because Anderson was “sentenced without parole.” Meaning he’s got like five more years before his get outta jail free card matures.

Shortly after Anderson’s prison time began, KCC reported his wife Camellia had taken the Hereford helm and was running things. Yet some woman named Mary Holland is identified online as the owner?

Calls to Camellia at various Hereford Houses and its corporate office were not returned. Continue reading

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Hearne: Life After Death In Mayfield, Kentucky

I had to see it first hand…

More than a year after my old, home-away-from-home Mayfield, Kentucky was all but wiped off of the map I got around to going there last week to relive my earliest days in business. That, and to witness first hand how badly the infamous December 2021 tornado had ravaged my tiny former town.

The second anniversary’s coming up in four months, but in general, around 1,300 “homes, businesses and places of worship” had been destroyed in Mayfield. Including most of the quaint, all-brick downtown where I worked, shopped, learned how to drink moonshine and eat delicacies such as country ham and  “brains and eggs” – in the “dry county” of my lost youth.

The news reporters were long gone, and the remaining rubble was mostly under control. However, arriving late at night I got totally lost searching for a town that was no longer there. My hotel, the Wingfield Inn had plenty of rooms available, and its pool was open, despite that half of its giant sign was still missing – the half that faced the entrance I drove in on – and it still had funky-looking padlocks hanging on the doors of its lobby entrance.

Mayfield Milling – the grain elevator I learned how to grade grain at and hang with farmers is still standing – but closed – with workers busy removing the twisted remains of giant grain bins that bit the dust in the storm,

There really wasn’t that much left to see, so back I went to the quaint Mayfield Country Club – where I’d encountered my first “beer machine” in the early 1970s – to find out first hand what had happened from locals. Continue reading

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Hearne: All’s Foul In College Football

I interrupt this divorce to bring you a message about the sad demise of the Pac 12

Most local followers of the Big 12 Conference seem to be besides themselves with joy over having swiped on Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah at the expense of the once-mighty, century-old sports conference on the West Coast.

I get it, chalk one up for the flyover crowd.

Because after losing Texas and Oklahoma two years ago and flirting with death for the second time in recent years – after Missouri and Texas A&M bolted  theBig 12 for the SEC and Nebraska for the Big Ten and Colorado for the Pac 10 – the shoe was finally on the other foot.

That after college football powerhouse USC and hoops icon UCLA told the Pac 12 last year they’d be leaving after this year for the Big Ten.

The bottom line: Money talks and tradition and ethics walk.

At long last the good guys in the Big 12 – had a chance to, not just survive, but profit from the current chaos.

Those chickens came home to roost late last week when football powerhouses Oregon and Washington left the PAC 12 for the Big Ten and our Big 12 landed Utah and the Arizona schools.

Huzzah!

“The Big 12 is now the Big 16, let’s go, we did it!” crowed KCMO 810 AM morning show host Pete Mundo. “After months of drama, months of rumors, months of speculation, the Big 12 reportedly is picking up this week, Arizona, Arizona State and yes, Utah…Here’s a conference that over the last 15 years, if you’re a Big 12 fan, you have watched this conference be called dead, on death’s doorstep – it was going to cease to exist – and now the Big 12 Conference is solidly in the No. 3 position of power conferences. This truly amazing stuff. And it’s one of those things, if you’re a Big 12 fan, that makes you want to pinch yourself.”

Trouble is, Mundo’s wet-dream-come-true, comes at the expense of smaller schools like Oregon State and Washington State, that like KU after Mizzou bolted for big bucks in the SEC, found themselves unwanted by the Big Ten. Not that long ago, KU chewed its fingernails to a nub over how long the Big 12 might survive. And now those Pac 12 schools are facing an even worse fate.

That, after their longtime traditional rivals fled the Pac, leaving them in a financial crisis.

In other words, Mundo’s joyous celebration comes at the direct expense and loss to four colleges that like KU a few years back are not just worrying about their futures calamities, they’re living them out in real time. Continue reading

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Hearne: Tale of Two Cities Dying Newspapers

Thumbing through Wednesday’s Arizona Republic I found myself a bit stunned…

For starters, the Republic is based in Phoenix which is five times the size of Tucson and more than double Greater Kansas City.

And that kinda math matters.

That said, the once mighty Kansas City Star was once one of the country’s most profitable newspapers – prior to McClatchy taking it over and failed leaders like Mark Zieman and Mike Fannin ran it into the ground.

Make no mistake, they aren’t the only newspaper dudes to suffer the harsh realities of going from being wildly successful to becoming red ink machines. Then again, it’s not like they did a killer job of bucking those downward trends.  Quite the opposite.

Take  a haunting trip down memory lane with me on this fairly fat print Republic.

It has four reasonably large sections.

An A section has the expected gaggle of headlines like, “Trump enters not guilty plea;”  along with “Book tells of water’s power over people;” “Two Valley restaurants cited for numerous health violations;” “Body found in remote area near Saguaro Lake;” “Utility found liable in Oregon Wildfires;” and “Actor Treat Williams dies after motorcycle crash”

Twelve pages and not too bad.

The Valley & State section has only six pages, but is still respectable with stories ranging from a hotel in Mesa that looks pretty average, but for three years has been doubling as a refuge for “people experiencing homelessness.” It also houses an “Opinion Section” with stories like, “Headlines wrong on Ariz. water future” and “Fuzzy math is just one problem for school vouchers.” And the killer headline, “What made politics so toxic? Blame this little-known divide”

Not too shabby. Continue reading

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Hearne: Out Dammed Desert, I’m Heading Home

This just in…

Hold on to whatever you wish, I’m heading home.

So get ready.

After three years in Tucson (Oro Valley), I’ve had enough. I shoulda known better when I packed up my stakes, sold my house in Lawrence and moved to KC in preparation for a return to the Arizona desert.

Some of you may recall I graduated from an all-boys school in Sabino Canyon and went to the University of Arizona. Then I got a super low draft lottery number and joined the U.S. Navy as a Seabee.

Afterwards, I retuned to the Kansas City Board of Trade and my family firm, and spent a year in Mayfield, Kentucky (the infamous tornado town) learning how to grade grain, run a grain elevator, party with farmers, drink moonshine and eat country ham

But when COVID hit, I returned to Tucson.

I’d always loved Tucson and wondered if I’d missed my chance in life to embark on an Arizona adventure. Instead I followed in my father’s footsteps, before veering off on my own, running a local record rag called The Pitch, then stepping into a larger limelight and writing a highly read column at the Kansas City Star.

I had a ton of fun, put the grabs on a six-figure salary with expenses and worked hours of my choosing, where I could pick topics that were edgy, newsy or just plain dumb.

It was a dream job and I will forever be in debt to former Star publisher Jim Hale and fledgling editor Art Brisbane.

Anyway, three years ago the time seemed right, so I came back to Tucson, just in time to catch what my wife swears could have been a fatal bout of COVID, a few days before Christmas 2020.

Other than being a bad flu – I was in bed for seven or eight days, and out of it – I had none of the widely reported fatal COVID symptoms…although I did pass out when it first hit.

In January 2021 we had a nice garage fire in a brand new home that resulted in us living at the nearby Conquistador resort for a couple months. Later, when I got around to looking into car selling jobs here with Honda, VW, you-name-it, I found out the hard way; that even as a halfway young-looking oldster, I could not get a job.

They don’t want people dropping dead in 115 degree heat on a hot parking lot.

Because between May and  late September, chances are you’ll be out sitting under a tiny umbrellas in high 100-plus heat, and dealers prefer to hire younger dudes, like Brandon Leftridge. That despite that I had a heckuva sales track record at BMW, VW and Honda as usually the top or No. 2 salesman.

Long story short, that hurt…

I didn’t move here to retire,  I came to work, and I really like cars and car sales.

There’s more… Continue reading

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Leftridge: A Nextdoor Tour

Let me ask you something…

Well, a couple of somethings. 1) Have you ever been on nextdoor.com? And 2) Why? 

Started in 2011 ostensibly as a place for you to connect with neighbors, Nextdoor is now available in 11 countries and had revenue exceeding $200m in 2022. It is also the internet’s preeminent site for posting pictures of your lost cat, posting pictures of a cat you’ve found, asking what all the cops were doing around ______, reporting that “suspicious” vehicle you noticed on your block (always a painter or handyman), or, if you’re an old white person, reporting someone walking around that you don’t recognize (hint: it’s never another old white person). 

It’s also a great online space for digital people watching. My Northland neighborhood is never without its share of drama, triumph, and missives that sometimes make you wonder if the poster is having some sort of medical emergency. 

Let’s take a look. Continue reading

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Hearne: Anatomy Of A Bad Election

Countdown to a meaningless election, anyone?

On June 20th, uninspiring KC mayor Quinton Lucas will take on – wait for it – mayoral wannabe, Clay Chastain.

That’s how far Kansas City’s political fortunes have fallen.

We have a mayor who accused a black woman opposing him in the primary of racism for daring to criticize one of his political positions. Running against a dude who, way-back-when lived here but has been hiding out in Virginia for decades, while vying for the title of KC’s top gadfly.

How lame is that?

So lame that iconic Westport businessman Bill Nigro didn’t even recall that Chastain had cut his teeth here as the “savior” of Union Station. That was long before Chastain left town with his lawyer wife Valerie, and began to hassle KC mayors like Emanuel Cleaver about his Light Rail plans and running for mayor from a different zip code.

And so lame that, Quinton was so abhorrent to Nigro he wrote in talk show host Pete Mundo for mayor in the last election. This time out though, Nigro says he plans to vote for Quinton. That after Chastain’s suggestion six months back – following a shooting in Westport – that its bars close at midnight.

“I’m just saying that everybody who votes for Clay Chastain is somebody who doesn’t like Quinton Lucas,” Nigro explains. “Last time he got 20 percent of the vote, but now probably everybody in Westport isn’t going to vote for him.”

Once upon a time Chastain was viewed by some artsy types as an idyllic dreamer. Continue reading

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Leftridge: Crap for Sale on Craigslist, Memorial Day Edition

This gallery contains 10 photos.

With Memorial Day on the horizon, you’re probably thinking of throwing a party… And why shouldn’t you? When it comes to honoring people who’ve died, nothing says “I’ll remember you forever” like shooting a Roman Candle at your Cousin Jake’s … Continue reading

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Hearne: Lord Of The Rings Redux

Guess what?

A very special treat is about to arrive in the form of an early Christmas gift. One of your all-time favorite KCC columnists – Brandon Leftridge – is suiting up again.

And believe it or don’t, he is poised to become the HIGHEST PAID KCC columnistof all time. Let’s get real; if I could dig up The Scribe, obviously I would. A Ouija Board being out of the question – and Brandon still  being alive – was choice was obvious.

Sure there are plenty of ink-stained loser types I’d love to lasso. Dudes like Steve Vockrodt, what’s left of Paul Wilson , Mancow, Joe Miller, Matthew Donnelly and David Scott Whinery to name a few.

But guess who was 1st on my list of past, present and future KCC MVPs?

You got it.

And now, we all got it.

Speaking of which, can we please have a moment of silence for that Tony guy? Love that boring, uncensored comments section, but let’s try and up the ante a bit.

 

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Hearne: Buttering Martha’s 81 Year-Old Muffin W/ Gates BBQ

About Martha Stewart being on  Sports Illustrated’s annual swimsuit issue…

Face it, she’s an octogenarian – yet there she is in the flesh – with plenty of cleavage, a carefully revealed amount of leg flesh and a soft focus covering her however many facelifts and beguiling, sexy smile. Enough  to make any number of red-blooded dudes think twice.

Or as Fox News puts it…

“Martha Stewart’s Love Life Heats Up After Poising in Daring Swimsuit For Sports Illustrated Cover. Stewart, 81, recently made history as being the oldest woman to cover Sports Illustrated Swimsuit.”

Ah, but this isn’t Stewart’s first trip the sexy lady plate.

And the fact that there are four (count ’em) SI cover models for this year’s swimsuit issue doesn’t take away from her accomplishment. One of the cover models is a trans dude and the other two appear to be more traditional swimsuit cover grrrrls.

In point of fact, in June of 1999 I interviewed fabled local BBQ icon Ollie Gates of Gates B-B-Q after he made an appearance the Martha Stewart Living show.

And I gotta tell you, Ollie was smitten.

That was 24 years ago and Ollie – who’s turning on 92 in July – was 68 to to Stewart’s 57.

So how smitten was KC’s BBQ legend?

“She stuck her finger in the bowl and licked it and said it was great,” Gates told me.

Stewart’s rib-eating technique was anything but a turnoff for Ollie, I replied.

“She picked them up like a lady and very delicately started to eat – very delicately, very sexually – she knows how to eat ribs. You know, I’m telling you, she makes it look very sexy.” Continue reading

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Hearne: How Former Mayor Kay Barnes Screwed KC

There’s a dude in Westport who’s been itching for this…

And he’s far from alone, so get ready, here it comes.

Former Kansas City mayor Kay Barnes has taken her fair share of bows for helping now-deceased, under-the-table, political wheeler-dealer Steve Glorioso reverse engineer the T-Mobile Center and Power & Light District.

To their credit – for starters, anyway – both projects still exist and are popular, despite just about everything bad imaginable happening subsequent to their 2008 launches. That includes recessions, COVID, Black Lives Matter, urban unrest, you-name-it.

But lest Barnes bask too fully in that limelight, note that many of the promises made (or strongly implied during their selling stages) remain unrealized.

Things like Kansas City being on the verge of snagging the Nashville Predators NHL team that reportedly wanted to move to KC; an NBA expansion team; the near death of the once-mighty Kansas City Star; and former business section cheerleader Kevin Collison‘s imaginary “downtown ballpark.”

None of those ever materialized – just the bad stuff.

Yet 15 years after those sexy projects were unleashed, the average dude here is unaware that Kansas City is taking it up the shorts trying to pay off Barnes’ dreams.

Or as Wikipedia puts it, “While the (P&L) district was originally projected to generate enough tax revenue to pay for the bonds that were issued to finance it, the city has instead needed to rely on its general fund and refinancing to make debt payments.” Continue reading

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Hearne: Cowtown Party Zone Icon Poised To Move On?

Nigro parties with “The King”

At some point, even died-in-the-wool party people have to throw in the towel…

So it is longtime Westport business leader Bill Nigro is contemplating cashing in his party chips and moving on to less politically charged (and hopefully greener) pastures.

For the several years Wild Bill has complained about Kansas City mismanaging and mistreating Westport, while kow-towing to downtown’s newer, glitzier party zone, the Power & Light District.

And as age starts to set in, he’s toying with the possible sale of some of his Westport real estate properties, such as the former Torres Pizza home (4112 Pennsylvania), Buzzard Beach (4110 Pennsylvania) and Federal Storage (4021 Pennsylvania).

In recent years Nigro has battled with Kansas City over the costs merchants must pay to pay for “civil rights monitors” to oversee the “metal detector checkpoints” at entry points to Westport on weekend nights. According to the city, the monitors are there to prevent so-called racial profiling.

Which Nigro calls BS,

“Everybody walks through the metal detector,” he told Fox 4 last year after three people were shot by Johnny Kaws bar. “It’s impossible for us to profile because everybody walks through.”

Instead of wasting six figures on racial profilers, Westport could add more security that might have helped prevent the shooting, Nigro says.

“I think it gives us the ability to put more people on the perimeter and scare people off,” he told Fox 4. “Having security out there is a deterrent to crime.”

That wasn’t Nigro’s first trip to the plate fighting city hall on crowds and violence. Continue reading

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Dwight: More Racial Arson From The Kansas City Star

Valentine McClatchy

The Kansas City Star has a long, dishonorable tradition of race baiting…

Following the lead of its founder – the bush league Citizen Kane known as William Rockhill Nelson – for three generations the Star delighted in patronizing the black residents of Kansas City.
However, when the Star was acquired by McClatchy, I had no idea this represented the confluence of two of the most racist news organizations in the history of American journalism.
Valentine McClatchy was the son of the founder of the eponymous newspaper chain. Using his wealth and influence as a publishing heir, McClatchy launched a crusade to keep Asians out of the United States. After 40 years as publisher of the Sacramento Bee he sold his interest to his brother and devoted the last 15 years of his life to an omnibus committee (California Joint Immigration Committee) dedicated to excluding all non-European immigrants from the country, encompassing Japanese, Chinese, Koreans and Mexicans.
Under his influence the flagship McClatchy paper, The Sacramento Bee, ran upwards of 90 racially demeaning anti-Japanese editorial cartoons between 1906 and 1945. Even though Valentine McClatchy died in 1938, there is no doubt that his views were instrumental in the decision by the Roosevelt administration (aided and abetted by moderate Republican governor Earl Warren of California) to round up and intern Japanese American citizens during World War II. (The year before he died, McClatchy lobbied to strip Japanese-Americans born in the U.S. who were sent to Japan to study or visit family for an extended time of their citizenship if they had stayed in Japan for more than a year. No more Mr. Nice Guy.)
Here we are 85 years later and the KC Star/McClatchy legacy of racial demagoguery soldiers on under the able stewardship of present-day Star journalists.
The Star issued a lengthy mea culpa in 2020 for its anti-black racism of the past. (No apology for its racist McClatchy heritage though.) It now seems to be trying to overcorrect by focusing on stirring up black rage and white guilt by inventing allegations of white racism against its political opponents.
The latest example is the unfortunate event in Clay County three weeks back.
A retired airplane mechanic, 84 year old Andrew Lester, lived in a typical suburban home in Clay County north of the river.
A 16-year-old black man, Ralph Yarl went to the wrong house (he wanted to go to a house on 115th Terrace North East but went by mistake to the house on 115th Street North East where Mr. Lester lived).
After Mr. Yarl knocked–he was coming to pick up his younger brothers–Mr. Lester shot through the door with a pistol. He wounded Yarl in the head and then shot him in the arm.
The only real factual issue in dispute is whether Yarl started to open the storm door when he thought he heard someone coming to let him in. If this is true it is a totally understandable action on Yarl’s part and does not excuse Lester’s acts. However, it may help to explain the shooter’s panicked reaction. By the way, this occurred at 10:00 p.m.
The only fortunate aspect of this terrible event is that young Yarl was released from the hospital within a day or two and is expected to make a full recovery.
Immediately the black grievance industry, both locally and nationwide, went into overdrive and made it seem like this was a new Emmett Till case. (The young black man lynched in Mississippi in 1955 for supposedly whistling at a white woman. Ironically, his accuser, a white woman named Carolyn Bryant, died last week April 25th, 2023.)
The Star immediately swung into action, along with all the other racial grievance hucksters.

Continue reading

Posted in Dwight D. Sutherland, Jr. | 7 Comments

Hearne: Is Mrs. Mahomes The Wicked Witch of the Midwest?

Who among us married types doesn’t have an unsavory in-law?

Comes with the turf…

That’s the bad news, the good news is mostly, who cares?

No such luck for Chiefs superstar Patrick Mahomes.

Mahomes lives in a glass bubble where just about any and everything he does is on display or open to public criticism. Lucky for him, he’s good at handling the limelight, with an open, down-to-earth personality most folks find refreshing and likable.

Unfortunately, his high profile little brother Jackson and wife Brittany are far less gifted, and seem to be following in the footsteps of Jimmy Carter‘s beer swizzling brother Billy and Joe Biden‘s infamous son Hunter .

Such is life…

And while Jackson Mahomes gets most of the bad PR – as evidenced by his recent arrest for sexually assaulting on camera the owner of an upscale Overland Park restaurant, Brittany Mahomes is fast becoming similarly unlikeable.

The Chiefs and Patrick appear to have been – prior to Jackson’s recent assault charge – successful in keeping things on the down low, but managing Brittany is also proving to be a challenge.

Take her advice to locals on Jackson’s high profile arrest.

“They are ignorant. (Jackson) is a human just trying to live his life and find his way and until you walk a day in his shoes – which no one ever will – you have no right to say shit about him. So it’s just best to shut up.”

Maybe she should consider taking her own advice.

Uh, no such luck… Continue reading

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Hearne: Mahomes Rocks (Almost) But Not Whataburger

Everybody has an Achilles heel or two…

I won’t bore you with mine, but Chiefs star Patrick Mahomes has a few that I think are interesting. Beyond his droll wife, loser brother and – now – questionable taste in fast food.

Face it, we are what we eat, right?

I grew up thinking Winstead’s on the Plaza was god’s gift to hamburger lovers. My earliest dating skills were forged in its parking lot, backing my Datsun 1600 sports car into its spaces. There I unfurled my early-on, crude – albeit tasteful – romantic skills on Winstead’s so-called car hops.

But before you lose any sleep over Brittany Mahomes clumsy missteps or Jackson Mahomes bizarre bad behavior, check this.

While some Chiefs fans are going out of their way to sample and savor Sir Patrick’s’ favorite childhood chomp, Whataburger, based on my experience, it’s a major whiff.

Mahomes helped bring Whataburger to Kansas, so it deserved to be tried and I did.

 That’s right, my Whataburger take: Much ado about nada.

As for it being a “Lone Star staple” – in other words, a basic or necessary item of food – seriously?

No offing way; more like, all hat and no cattle, in my opinion.

So I sampled Mahomes’ Whataburger fave, the Numero Uno, a single with cheese, ketchup and pickle only.

The verdict: pretty dad gum bland, as Roy Williams might say.

Okay, it was OK…

 It was served up in a gigantic, boring box, with a five-inch diameter white bread bun, sans much in the way of look or flavor.

No where near the taste – for comparison’s sake – of the wildly-popular-but-unavailable to Cowtowners In-N-Out Burger.

Though far larger in terms of quantity, far lesser in terms of taste. Continue reading

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Hearne: Hollywood Madame Loves Mahomes, Not Mizzou

Heidi Fleiss + Tom Sizemore

 

Once a Hollywood Madam, always a Hollywood Madam…

Although Heidi Fleiss is years removed from her colorful past – including her turbulent romance with actor Tom Sizemore, who died recently at the age of 61 – the thought of her moving to the Show Me state near Little House On The Prairie namesake Laura Ingalls Wilder makes for a jarring vision.

Face it, a woman whose Wikipedia page has the headline, “Prostitution and Tax Evasion,” moving to tiny Mansfield, Mo. to open an exotic parrot preserve is an eyebrow raiser.

Yet while practically everybody in the free world was on that story one year ago, it never happened, and Fleiss’ next move remains to be learned…

That is, until now.

“Missouri sounded great – like so many acres of forest for my birds – but then I went there and it was right next to a trailer park – and it was decrepit,” Fleiss says. “I put $50,000 down and got $40,000 back, but the seller kept 10 grand for lost income from her rental cabins that were like Unabomber shacks.”

So what exactly drew the former Hollywood Madam to Mizzou?

“I happened to find Missouri beautiful,” she says. “And from my limited research, I didn’t notice that the temperatures fell below zero, but when it gets down to 18 degrees here in Nevada, my birds love it. I have a little over 30 now and most of them are at the end stages of their life.”

Macaws live an average of 60 years – 35 to 50 in captivity – and up to to 100.

Fleiss post Mizzou plan? Continue reading

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Hearne: Hollywood Madam to Mizzou As Ex Checks Out?

Heidi Fleiss

Would it surprise you to find I spent a day hanging with Hollywood Madam Heidi Fleiss?

You remember her from 20 years ago when – as Wikipedia puts it – “She ran an upscale prostitution ring based in Los Angeles and is often referred to as the Hollywood Madam.”

Appearances promoting her book Pandering brought Fleiss to the Cowtown in 2003, presenting an opportunity for me to spend serious quality time with her.

I recall her as being attractive – though her “horse teeth” were a bit off-putting – and quite friendly with lots to say about the newly deceased actor Tom Sizemore, who she had dated for like three years but was extremely afraid of.

The latest: Fleiss, now 57 – according to news reports – had been poised a year ago to move to a small Missouri town with her parrot menagerie and X-rated memories.

A little background…

Fleiss prostitution pedigree is quite formidable, starting in the late 1980s and continuing through her arrest and conviction on pandering charges in 1993. She was sentenced then to seven years slam time, did 20 months, and later toyed in 2005 with opening a “stud farm.” She also ran a R-rated laundromat called Dirty Laundry, and reportedly owns a small airport in Pahrump, Nevada.

Ah, but it was Fleiss’s love of animals that lead her last year, to relocating to tiny Mansfield, Missouri (population 1,193), three hours south of KC. It’s best known as the childhood home and museum of Laura Ingalls Wilder, of the fabled children’s book, Little House on the Prairie.

The reason for the move: someone killed one of her beloved Macaws with a BB gun.

The idea of a Hollywood Madam hiding out in nowheresville Missouri with upwards of 40 giant parrots is both weird and noteworthy. In part because Fleiss no longer needs to worry about running into a drunk, drug addled, abusive Sizemore.

But earlier this month, the grizzled Sizemore checked out at the ripe young age of 61.

Among his dirtbag debris, he’d had been “kicked off the set of the film Born Killers in 2003 for allegedly sexually molesting an 11-year-old actress” and was convicted that same year of domestic violence against Fleiss.

So can locals add a visit to Fleiss’s “parrot sanctuary” to their Little House visits?

In a word, no. Continue reading

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Dwight: Back To The Future

One of the most terrifying aspects of life in a totalitarian society is the way the State demands that loyalty to the regime and its ideology takes precedence over all other human bonds…

    In Stalin’s Soviet Union the government relied heavily on mutual surveillance; urging families to report on each other for disloyalty. The Whisperers: Private Life In Stalin’s Russia. BBC broadcast, 12-22-2007.
      So important was this idea that there arose a cult of martyrdom around a 13 year-old boy named Pavlik Morozov. Morozov was a member of the Soviet youth group, the Young Pioneers, in 1932, when he turned in his own father for the heinous crime of hoarding grain.  (This was during the period when Russian agriculture was being “collectivized,” i.e. the peasant’s land being taken over for government collective farms.)
After Pavlik’s father was taken to a labor camp by the secret police (the GPU) and executed, Pavlik’s family members supposedly murdered him out of revenge. 
   The Soviet government quickly used this incident to start a propaganda campaign enshrining the youngster as a true hero of the Soviet Union. Morozov was held up as a model for emulation for all patriotic youth and his memory enshrined through schools and youth groups renamed in his honor.
     It was only 60 years later, after the fall of Communism, that the truth came out, i.e., the whole story was fabricated. Stalin’s allies in the press and among intellectuals had eagerly promulgated this myth because it suited the purposes of the regime, i.e. to keep the populace frightened and compliant for fear of being betrayed by their own families.
Fast forward from 1932 to 2021…
     We now have dozens, if not hundreds ,of American Pavlik Morozovs who have been lauded by the Federal government and the American news media for betraying family and friends for their participation in January 6th. (A dedicated web site has been set up for informants to contact the F.B.I., fbi.gov/us capitol.) 
The following stories appeared in American news outlets following January 6th:
*** Dozens of Capitol rioters were turned in by childhood friends, family members, colleagues and ex-lovers who watched them storm the building. CBS News, 3-9-21
*** The people who turned in their parents for their role in the Capitol attack. The Guardian, 1-7-22
*** A son explains why he turned in his father over the January 6th attack. N.P.R., 3-3-22
*** Pushed to the edge by the Capitol riot, people are reporting their family and friends to the F.B.I. Washington Post, 1-16-21.
*** Capitol rioter sentenced to 7 years in prison was turned in by his teenage son, which broke up his family. Business Insider, 8-2-22.
*** A Mass teen reportedly spotted her family at a MAGA event prior to the Capitol riot. He decided to call them out. The Boston Globe, 1-13-21.

There are a number of other stories in the same vein.

George Orwell
press pic

What is striking about all such accounts is that nowhere is there any doubt expressed on whether we really want to have a society where informing on family and friends is considered the highest form of patriotism. In fact, the authors of these accounts undermine their own credibility by making lame excuses for these acts of betrayal:
1. ‘Family members who turned in January 6th protesters were no different than Unabomber Ted Kaczynski’s brother, who turned him into the Feds.’
Sorry folks, the Unabomber killed or maimed thirty-two people before he was arrested. None of the 968 people charged for January 6th have done anything remotely comparable to Kaczynski’s actions.
2. ‘Family members were driven by concerns over their loved ones increasingly radical extremist beliefs. ‘I thought the protesters were prosecuted for their actions on January 6th. Is challenging the outcome of a presidential election, which is, after all, based on an opinion or belief, now an indictable offense?
3. ‘The January 6th protesters were predominantly white so asking for equal treatment with the George Floyd protesters is to highlight the racial tension inherent in their arguments, since the Floyd protesters were more diverse. ‘How dare you ask for equal treatment under the law, you white supremacist! (Never mind that a large percentage of the January 6th protesters were non-white, with Asian-Americans particularly numerous.)
4.’ The January 6th protesters were just the latest and worst manifestations of white nationalist extremism.’ The  problem is that the liberal press has since learned that the January 6 protesters did not match the profile of members of right-wing extremist groups. Those arrested and charged were older (average age 40), better educated (professionals and business owners, as well as retired military) and not members of recognized extremist groups. Of course, this just makes them more dangerous, according to liberal pundits!
5. ‘The January 6th protesters were different from the Floyd protesters in that the latter wasn’t an attack on the very core constitutional processes, nor were they an attack on the United Sates Congress.’ Kent Greenfield, a professor at Boston College Law School.
Reuters news service ran the following story:
‘The FBI has found scant evidence that the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol was the result of an organized plot to overturn the presidential election result.The FBI at this point believes the violence was not centrally coordinated by far-right groups or prominent supporters of then President Trump.” Reuters, 8-21-2021.
If there was no organized plot or conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election by those who entered the capitol, how was this a direct assault on American democracy?
       By contrast the BLM movement started in 2014 in the wake of the Trayvon Martin incident.There were numerous protests over black men allegedly murdered by the police in the years before George Floyd’s death, e.g., Eric Garner, Freddie Grey, Michael Brown, etc. (BLM had representatives traveling with Hillary Clinton as part of her 2016 campaign, i.e. Mothers of the Movement). Within three days of the news of Floyd’s death, there were protests in 75 cities and the next day in over 120 cities.
        Eleven policemen have been killed during BLM protests and a thousand policemen injured. Twenty-five other people have died. 1.5 billion dollars in private property has been destroyed. Government buildings have been fire bombed; including a police station, a federal courthouse and an ICE office. All told, the damages due to the George Floyd protest were 1,000 times greater than the damages to the Capitol on January 6th, 2021.
      14,000 rioters were arrested during the Floyd protests. So far less than 1% of them have been tried and convicted, i.e., 120 people all told. The Guardian, a British publication not noted for its right-wing bias, stated: “The vast majority of citations and charges against George Floyd protesters were ultimately dropped, dismissed or otherwise not filed according to a Guardian analysis of law enforcement and media reports in a dozen jurisdictions around the nation.”4-17-21. By contrast, almost all the January 6th protesters have been zealously pursued and prosecuted, with suspects still arrested every day and the government vowing to arrest another thousand people so that everyone that was at the Capitol will be criminally prosecuted. 475 of the 968 arrested have already been prosecuted and convicted, fully fifty percent of those apprehended versus less than 1% of the Floyd protesters.
In short, there is no comparing the two events, a protest that got out of hand but was quickly suppressed (January 6th) and a planned series of riots that went on four months but only stopped at the express direction of BLM’s allies in the media and among Democratic office holders (the Floyd protests).
See The Secret History of the Shadow Plan to Save the 2020 Election, Molly Ball, Time Magazine, February 4, 2021.
While the BLM/ANTIFA toll of violence and destruction has been deliberately suppressed, the aftermath of January 6th has been exaggerated and blown way out of proportion.
    There’s nothing surprising about that, given that any semblance of objectivity has long been dropped by the national media. What is surprising, as I noted earlier, is that no individual journalist has expressed any qualms about family members, work colleagues, and childhood friends being turned in for political reasons.
In fact, some commentators took it as hilarious that ex-spouses or romantic partners were turned into the authorities, i.e. ‘I will never find it not hilariously funny that over 300 insurrectionists were turned into law enforcement by their ex-wives.’
       This awkward and pretentious gibe has been made into a meme on the internet, found hilarious by the feeble minded, hateful woke propaganda from the Deep State. I’m sure that all these ex-spouses and romantic partners were driven solely by worry about Our Democracy. Personal animosity or revenge didn’t play into their motives at all! Nor did the $42 million dollars paid out in 2021 by the FBI to tipsters!
    FBI Field Agent Anthony D’Antuono, not coincidentally involved in the Whitmer kidnapping hoax ,made the following announcement right after January 6th:“Even your friends and family are tipping us off. So, you might want to consider turning yourself in instead of wondering when we’re going to come knocking on your door-because we will find you.”The Independent (U.K.) 1-28-21.
All this was anticipated more than 75 years ago by George Orwell in his book, 1984.
     The protagonist, Winston Smith, is being tortured to confess to a series of political crimes(you  know, like believing misinformation or engaging in election denial). His interrogator, known only as O’Brien, and he have the following exchange:
“How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?’
Winston thought: ‘By making him suffer? ‘,he said.
‘Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. We have cut the links between child and parent and between man and man and between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer’.”
Orwell’s dystopian future – based on an authoritarian present he personally lived through – has finally arrived.
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Hearne: Should The Chiefs Change Team Name?

In the words of  Ronald Reagan, there they go again…

And you thought the Kansas City Chiefs season was behind you. Not so fast, because the politically correct powers-that-be on Facebook are back.

They dug up a two year-old story about, “Understanding Native American perspective about KC Chiefs potential name change.”

Sound familiar?

“If I’m being honest, I had never given any real thought to a need for a new team name,” writer Lyle Graverson begins. “The term Chief isn’t derogatory like Washington’s former name (Redskins) and their insignia isn’t a racist image like the now retired ‘Chief Wahoo’ of Major League Baseball’s Cleveland Indians. So why would it ever need to change? I’m certainly not someone that’s quick to jump on the ‘cancel culture’ bandwagon just because it’s trendy.”

Then again…

“I often complain that one of the biggest problems with our society these days is that nobody listens to each other,” Graverson continues. “Social media has made everyone really good at stating their beliefs and criticizing the beliefs of others, but there is a severe shortage of people who are willing to really listen to and think about views different than their own.”

Fair enough…

So should the Chiefs change their name and if so, why?

“Hell, no, because it’s endless and it’s not about the changes themselves,” says Sutherland Lumber scion Dwight Sutherland . “It’s about forcing people to abide by laying a guilt trip on them. They have to keep atoning, atoning, atoning – and there’s no end to it. This is a sick, racist society, so get your checkbook out. Although even that won’t buy you redemption.” Continue reading

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