Irwin Allen Promotional Stunt Gone Awry

It's only months after the premier of the TV show 'Lost In Space' and 'Star Trek' debuts that fall.

The NASA Gemini manned-space program was in full swing and an increasing number of young people were also beginning to experience the "ground Control to Major Tom" effect.

In that vein, this snippet was noted in a historic time line of the northeastern KC suburb of Excelsior Springs, MO. http://www.exsmo.com/museum/timeline.html


1966 Police received reports of UFO's over the city. Flying Saucer Watch Parties were organized, and more than a thousand sightings were reported.

The Backs Some Candidates Ride To Reach Mayorville

Yours truly may be one of the best in the Metro for gathering & reporting breaking SPOT news.

However, I consider the governmental & political news just as if not more important.

Local bloggers are literally tearing the fabric from the established news media in this town.

A fine example is the expose of KC mayorial candidate Becky Nace and her closet supporters/contributers posted on the BlogKC site - http://blogkc.com/archives/2007/01/becky-bartle/.


NOTE: Groucho does NOT trust career politicians, lawyers or ANYONE associated with Matt Bartle - including any pets he may have.

Forty Years Ago - The Orrick, MO Tornado

It was the early afternoon of January 24, 1967 when this deadly twister struck the small community of Orrick in the eastern Kansas City Metro.

Here is a description of that day from my yet-uncompleted book on Kansas City MetroRegion Tornadoes:

"Weather conditions more like April than January that day contributed to a noteworthy tornado outbreak over the Central U.S. and western Great Lakes states. Noteworthy it was ... at the time it was the furthest north a tornado outbreak in winter had occurred in recorded history. Thirty-two tornadoes were reported in Missouri, Iowa, Illinois and Wisconsin. Two of the tornadoes during the outbreak reached F-4 intensity. Four of those twisters ... in MO, IA and IL ... were killers.

The first killer tornado of the outbreak touched down in the noon hour about 20 miles east of Downtown KC,MO ... in JACKSON County ... then moved northeast into southwestern RAY County MO, striking the high school in ORRICK,MO..
The thunderstorm that would spawn the tornado formed about 30 miles southwest of Kansas City just before noon. The storm quickly became severe as it moved northeast near 40 m.p.h.. Around 12:25 p.m., straight-line winds estimated near 60 m.p.h. caused damage to the-then under contruction Metcalf South shopping center at 95th Street and Metcalf in OVERLAND PARK,KS.
The storm moved through southern PRAIRIE VILLAGE, northern LEAWOOD,KS, into KC,MO around 83rd Street and State Line. At Southeast High school across from Swope Park, winds estimated at 50 m.p.h. chased a boy's gym class from outdoor fields. The storm moved on, passing over the Blue Ridge Mall area. Reports of hail up to quarter size began to be received as the storm moved over southern and eastern INDEPENDENCE. There were also scattered reports of damage to trees and power lines there, and at least one unconfirmed report of a funnel cloud near the Lake City munitions plant at Missouri Highways 7 and 78.
At 12:40 p.m., the funnel dropped to the ground about 3 miles southwest of BUCKNER (present-day eastern INDEPENDENCE). The tornado spared a direct hit on BUCKNER, damaging outbuildings and barns in the nearby rural hills. The funnel then moved into the Missouri River plain, just missing the small community of SIBLEY..
As the tornado moved across the river into southwestern RAY County, it reached it's maximum F-3 strength. Around 12:50 p.m., the estimated 250-foot wide tornado with winds as high as 200 m.p.h. slammed into the high school in ORRICK, a town less than a few hundred people shy of 1,000 on Highway M-210.
The winds lifted - then collapsed - the roof of the gym as well as the upper walls of the building. This caused another part of the school's roof to collapse. Debris blew in and rained down onto the more than 200 students and their instructors taking cover in interior hallways, killing two of the students. The number injured was officially reported as 18.
At least three other homes were either damaged or destroyed in town where the remainder of the injuries were reported. Dozens of police, fire units and ambulances responded from a three-county area to assist in rescue and treatment of the injured in ORRICK that day.
The tornado continued on for about another 20 minutes, taking out more barns and outbuildings until it lifted 4 miles west-northwest of RICHMOND in central RAY County."


The ORRICK tornado ... rare as it was that January day ... was not the deadliest. That distinction went to an F-4 twister that moved northeast through the western and northern suburbs of ST. LOUIS,MO., just missing the city's Lambert airport.

Oh Come ON! Please, Give Us A BREAK!!

While I (purposely) missed Bush's talking to the walls - er - HALLS of Congress, the following paragraph in the Associated Press review caught my eye:

"Bush also called on Congress to address the looming financial problems facing Medicare and Social Security, a task made all the more difficult by Bush's failed attempt to create individual retirement accounts two years ago."

Did Bush REALLY say that? The GALL of the man.

Bush: What about the BILLIONS you've spent and continue to spend on this sorry-assed foray of yours into horribly-flawed foreign policy (Iraq "war")?

Ok, ok. I'm not being fair there (HaHa).


Then let me address his empty rhetoric about a "domestic energy policy."

On September 11, 2001 as the World Trade buildings burned, I mentioned to those watching with me that NOW and I meant RIGHT NOW was the time to start a COMPLETE and COMPREHENSIVE energy policy that "gets us off the teat of Middle Eastern oil."

You see, contrary to a stupid-assed anti-drug commercial that ran around that time, it is OIL not illegal drugs that provide a huge percentage of cash to terrorists.

Bin Laden (where IS BL???) is related to Saudi petro sheiks, not Tommy Chong or any of HIS people.

Six years later and nearly out of his 2nd and last disasterous term (there IS a God? No- a constitutional amendment)- Bush NOW mentions that kinda maybe they ought to DO something.


Please refer to the title of this post for this Libertarian's response to that and virtually anything Bush said or says.

Example 1,363 Why The KC "News" Media Fails It's Citizens

VERY interesting article posted by local blogger Joe Miller on TIF's (welfare for the wealthy developers and their friends) titled "more tif" at http://kansascitysoil.blogspot.com.

No Health Insurance? Get Convicted.

Yet another sad commentary on our society, compliments of the Associated Press.

GKM


State Inmates Outlive People on Outside

Jan 21, 5:21 PM (ET)


WASHINGTON (AP) - State prison inmates, particularly blacks, are living longer on average than people on the outside, the government said Sunday.

Inmates in state prisons are dying at an average yearly rate of 250 per 100,000, according to the latest figures reported to the Justice Department by state prison officials. By comparison, the overall population of people between age 15 and 64 is dying at a rate of 308 a year.

For black inmates, the rate was 57 percent lower than among the overall black population - 206 versus 484. But white and Hispanic prisoners both had death rates slightly above their counterparts in the overall population.

The Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics said 12,129 state prisoners died between 2001 through 2004.

Eight percent were murdered or killed themselves, 2 percent died of alcohol, drugs or accidental injuries, and 1 percent of the deaths could not be explained, the report said.

The rest of the deaths - 89 percent - were due to medical reasons. Of those, two-thirds of inmates had the medical problem they died of before they were admitted to prison.

Medical problems that were most common among both men and women in state prisons were heart disease, lung and liver cancer, liver diseases and AIDS-related causes.

But the death rate among men was 72 percent higher than among women. Nearly one-quarter of the women who died had breast, ovarian, cervical or uterine cancer.

Four percent of the men who died had prostate or testicular cancer.

More than half the inmates 65 or older who died in state prisons were at least 55 when they were admitted to prison.

State prison officials reported that 94 percent of their inmates who died from an illness had been evaluated by a medical professional for that illness, and 93 percent got medication for it.

Eighty-nine percent of these inmates had gotten X-rays, MRI exams, blood tests and other diagnostic work, state prison officials told the bureau.

---

Bury The Utility Lines

Tens of thousands residents of Oklahoma & Missouri remain without power after last weekend's ice storm.

Another storm threatens these same areas this weekend (the Kansas City Metro should see 3-4 inches of snow).

Untold millions of dollars have been lost by the stricken utility customers. The utilities themselves will bear a huge cost to restore services.

Overhead utility lines are succeptable to many kinds of severe weather and accidents. Trees along powerline routes have to be trimmed or removed. Not to mention a spaghetti of utility wires are simply unsightly.

Ask St. Louis metro utilities how much three severe storms since last summer have cost them. My bet is that those utilities could have buried hundreds of miles of lines for what they have spent to restore the downed ones.

With buried lines, weather-related problems and their accompanying disruptions are virtually eliminated. The public then needs not be concerned with downed lines as the lines are already down - underground.

The cost of the initial burial of the lines could virtually be recouped after a few severe storms move through a utility's service area.

Granted, the cost of burying utility lines would be prohibitive in lesser-populated and rural areas.

However there is no excuse for utilities serving large cities to not strongly consider and/or implement a program of burying their service lines.

Live Holed-Up & Die

Holed-Up Tax Protester, Wife Convicted

Jan 18, 5:54 PM (ET) By PHILIP ELLIOTT


CONCORD, N.H. (AP) - A man who has holed up with armed supporters in his cement-walled house for most of his tax evasion trial was found guilty Thursday, along with his wife, of failing to pay federal income taxes for a decade.

Ed Brown has said he will defend himself against capture if necessary.

U.S. Marshal Stephen Monier said Thursday that members of his staff continued talking by telephone with Brown and had no plans to confront him.

Ed Brown's wife, Elaine, a dentist who earned most of the couple's income, has been staying with a son in Massachusetts and attended the trial.

The Browns, of Plainfield, contend the law does not require them to pay federal income tax, while the government says the Browns owe more than $625,000. The Browns stopped paying income taxes in 1996 and stopped filing returns in 1998, a prosecutor said. They could each face decades in prison.

A jury decided they employed a scheme to hide their income and avoid taxes in part by using postal money orders in increments just below the reporting threshold to pay for their hilltop compound. Courts have routinely rejected similar attempts by other taxpayers.

Marshals now have to consider how to seize the Browns' assets. The jury was deliberating whether the Browns should lose their home.

"We've established a good line of communication, all of our conversations have been amicable and friendly, and that's how we expect they will continue," Monier said.

Ed Brown stopped attending court midway through the trial, which began Jan. 9. His wife remains out on bail pending the couple's April 24 sentencing; she has said she loves her husband, but that his way of handling the case is not hers.

A man who answered the telephone at the Browns' house Thursday afternoon said Ed Brown could not come to the phone, but had expected a guilty verdict.

"He's here at the house, and he's not leaving of his own free will," said the man, who identified himself only as Bernie.

Ed Brown, a retired exterminator, has said he stayed home to protest a system that had already convicted him.

"Most Americans would cower and cringe and raise their hands and surrender like a good little slave," he told reporters at his home this week.

"I won't. Under no circumstances. I do not tolerate cowardliness, oppression, bulliness, and I certainly don't tolerate a federal agency that has absolutely zero jurisdiction in my state, never mind in my county, in my town."

Another Bullet for Bannister

Today, a new taxpayer-supported (TIF's) Wal-Mart opened on the site of the old Blue Ridge Mall at 43rd Street & Sterling.

By the time this is posted (6 pm), Wal-Mart closes their store in the 9000 block of Hillcrest, caddy-corner from the ghost-like Bannister Mall.

That stretch of Hillcrest from 87th Street to Bannister now resembles the aftermath of a neutron bomb explosion.

I propose renaming that stretch of Hillcrest after Chuck Eddy, the KC councilman who would want to be mayor.

That way people would be constantly reminded of just how effective Eddy was in keeping what once was one of the city's most bustling retail areas from becoming a ghost town.

A Cuppa Kansas City Whine?

Yeah I know, this is the Internet and anybody can basically say anything, whether it's true or not.

I read the piece posted below on fellow local blogger Tony's Kansas City http://tonyskansascity.com site.
It is a response to an article Tony posted on T.I.F.'s (Tax Increment Financing) and other forms of governmental welfare for wealthy land developers and their friends.

After sleeping on the words this commenter had to say, Frank Zappa's masterpiece "It Can't Happen Here" came to mind.

The wake-up irony is that it damn well CAN happen here and maybe, just maybe, what is posted below - exactly as it was posted there - has some merit and justifies further journalistic investigation.


GKM


hip critic said...

Lets talk about Bartle Hall, Tony. The expansion project has experienced some serious, very costly mistakes. For instance, they have a minority contractor (who the city always uses) doing the HVAC system who has no idea what he's doing; concerning HVAC that is.

Example: He bids higher than hell and receives the job... EVERYTIME. In this particular case he bid the job for like 10 guys. He sent around 4, 1 whiteboy doing most of the work. When they quickly fell behind (had every other trade waiting on them, sitting by the way) the City came in saying ...SHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. *holding hand over the minority contractors mouth*

The city paid another contractor to come in (out of cities pocket and not deducting money from contract of minority firm). They paid this other contracting firm (non-minority by the way) BIG money to catch this other firm up so the sheetrockers, and every other trade could get back to work, instead of sitting for a third month straight while these other guys wandered aimlesssly towards the end.

Let me break it down, we have:
(1)Bartle Hall Expansion way behind schedule.
(2)Minority HVAC contractor allowed to not fulfill contractual duty to city. Not only allowed, but is given incentive to not fulfill.
(3)City paying a "ghost" company to stand beside this company in catching up so the other trades could begin working again after 2-3 months of sitting on the sidelines.
(4)Never having made this public.

I am pissed and you should be too. Not as pissed as my "whiteboy" friend who allowed them to shine as long as they did by being the only one working though. They said he had a big mouth. I wish I could tell you more but he refuses to talk anymore about it until he sues the fuck out of the city for allowing this to transpire. Not only allowing it, but encouraging it.

The sad part: Funkhouser has yet to say anything about it and this firm will probably have future contracts and may currently be pulling the same SHIT at the Sprint Center. I told you fuckers it would get bad before the Elections. That aint shit either.

Funkhouser (as former auditor or whatever!) you have knowledge of this. Surely. If you continue to fail to point these things out you will be placed on my political suicide blog, where Chuck Eddy is getting very lonely. You could have athreesome later tonight with Weaver and Eddy.

*winks at Tony*

1/10/2007 11:42:53 AM

Burn Baby Burn - Johnson County, Kansas firefighting motto?

This is my critique of the Overland Park, KS. fire department and their 3-alarm fire in the 7900 block of Santa Fe Drive Tuesday morning (January 9).


First I will qualify my opinions - I was trained and spent 5 years as a firefighter for Kansas City, MO in the mid to late 1970's. My respect for the profession is and remains immense. We were trained to attack structure fires at their source - which was more often than not - inside the structure.

What I saw taking place in downtown OP that morning did not seem to befit a highly-trained and lavishly equipped (sub)urban fire department.


The initial alarm was sounded around 6:50 am and within 10 minutes came the first pictures from KSHB's television news helicopter. There didn't seem to be all that much smoke and only a small amount of flame coming from a roof vent in the about 30-foot-wide and 80-foot long business in a strip-type shopping center.

There didn't appear to be any firefighters on the roof of the burning liquor store nor did there appear to be any crews inside nor trying to get inside the structure.

Soon, there were two aerials raised on the east & west sides of the fire building. Two streams from handlines could be seen throwing water from an alley on the backside of the building. The aerials began playing their master streams onto the still-small fire on the roof - then - reportedly because of water supply issues - shut them down for about 10 minutes. There was still no visible attempts to make access to the interior of the building with handlines to attack the seat of the fire.

Forty-five minutes after the initial alarm was sounded - the small flames had engulfed much of the eastern third of the roof and blossomed out of openings in the rear of the building and heavy gray-black smoke billowed southeastward in the gusty northwesterly wind. Around this time, a 3rd-alarm was sounded. When that section of the roof collapsed - the aerial water streams finally made headway on the flames.

At one point - even a FOX-4 news anchor remarked about how the fire which seemed so small & containable early on had gained so much ground on what seemed to be adequate firefighting resources.


This fire is in line with another firefighting fiasco I witnessed in Olathe in 1983 or 1984 - when fire virtually destroyed a plumbing fixtures business. After that fire - I actually obtained my OWN firefighting equipment for our home - not trusting my family's life & property to the OFD.

In addition- I was told by a longtime friend who is a retired KC-MO chief fire dispatcher of another incident while he was on the job.
In that incident- KC-MO fire companies had been called to assist a Johnson County, KS. fire department on a structure fire and those KC-MO crews made entry to the burning structure to attack the fire. The JOCO chief ordered the crews out but those crews - according to my source - resisted leaving as they had nearly "knocked down" the flames.
That resistance reportedly created some "issues" between the JOCO chief of that fire's operation and KC-MO's department.


The Metro's 'big-city' fire department only engages in "surround and drown" fire-fighting tactics as a very last resort.

Frankly, if I lived in or had a business in Johnson County, I would want - no - PREFER the KC-MO fire department and their rapid and professional fire-fighting tactics to respond.