Subject: Barack Obama

• President Obama issues statement on the killing of George Tiller

  Saw this on KMBC: The White House released a statement from President Barack Obama late Sunday afternoon."I am shocked and outraged by the murder of Dr. George Tiller as he attended church services this morning. However profound our differences as Americans over difficult issues such as abortion, they cannot be resolved by heinous acts of violence."

  May 31, 2009

• Daily Briefs: What condition my condition was in

  By CHRIS PACKHAM Now that America has elected Barack H. Obama as its President, America has come together as One People, united in a sense of common purpose, like for instance, the belief that Barack Obama is going to take away our guns, y'all; he is totally going to do that with his ATF shock-troops just as soon as he gets access to the Presidential speed-dial. So, anyway, I got a payday loan "nest-egg" from the King of Kash, and once the seven-day waiting period is over, I'm spending the whol

  November 14, 2008

• Stealing Time: Special Super Obama World edition

  By JUSTIN KENDALL I concede that my Super Mario skills no longer exist. This morning, I discovered Super Obama World, a knockoff of the Mario Bros.Nintendo franchise in which you play as president-elect Barack Obama, crossing the infamous Bridge to Nowhere into Alaska to battle on the Palin estate and try to return hope to America. All the while avoiding pigs, Russkies, greedy lobbyists and a snow machine riding Sarah Palin. Yeah, I really suck.

  November 14, 2008

• Stealing Time: Obama, KCTV, JoCo GOP, Erin

  By JUSTIN KENDALL Brilliant at Breakfast is not happy with the "liberal" Wichita Eagle for attaching a photo of Barack Obama to a story on George Tiller's pre-trial hearing. Obama isn't a part of the Kline-Morrison-Tiller hate triangle, but he is considering repealing a global gag on overseas family planning groups, one that denies them U.S. funding if they mention the "a" word. "First Newsweek calls him the Antichrist, and now this?" Brilliant at Breakfast asks. "Has the entire journalism pro

  November 19, 2008

• Who will be the next American Idol?

  You may not give a hoot about David Cook, but for many of your fellow Americans, his contest with David Archuleta was the biggest race of 2008. (Sorry, Obama.) Cook, the guitar-totin' Blue Springs native, brought the KC metro a little notoriety when he beat out teenage sissy boy Archuleta last year on the seventh season of How to Be a Cheesy Pop Star, er American Idol. If you'd rather not hear the off-key squawking of a whole new crop of would-be Idols, don't turn on Fox tonight at 7, when Seaso

  January 13, 2009

• Breakfast Buffet: Friday, 12/26

  I'm looking forward more to inauguration than New Years and the new food policy Obama might bring. [NYT]Speaking of the FDA, it currently has several problems with Diet Coke's label. [WSJ]So now that Christmas is over will the real deals finally begin. [WSJ]Arnold Schwarzenegger is not cooking in the back of a Planet Hollywood and Emeril Lagasse isn't in the back of his umpteenth restaurant. Here who is. [Forbes]-- Owen Morris

  December 26, 2008

• Breakfast Buffet: Thursday, 01/08

  Odds are President Bush had a low-fat hot dog for lunch yesterday when he met with Obama and three other presidents. No word what Obama ordered but it probably wasn't the southern sampler. [WSJ]Air India does not take kindly to heavy airline attendants and fired ten for being overweight. Not that it's a defense but at least they're being honest about why they fired them. [Economist] Along with Wal-Mart, another recession-proof company is Domino's. They had stellar sales as more people ate in. Ap

  January 8, 2009

• Watch Obama on Harry Truman's big screen

  President Harry Truman is throwing a party from beyond the grave tomorrow to celebrate the inauguration of Barack Obama. The Harry S. Truman Library and Museum (500 W. U.S. Hwy. 24) in Independence will broadcast CNN's coverage of Obama's swearing-in ceremony on its "theater-sized screen" at 10 a.m. Sorry, MSNBC and Fox News fans. The party lasts until 4 p.m.Fun fact from our friends at the museum:The 2009 Inauguration is expected to be the most expensive on record. On Jan. 5, T

  January 19, 2009

• Stealing Time: Midtown Miscreant grounds expectations for Obama's presidency

  Midtown Miscreant tries to temper expectations for Barack Obama's pending presidency. Otherwise, Obama will be the next Jimmy Carter. A great post from one of Kansas City's best bloggers.

  January 19, 2009

• Didn't make it to D.C.? Local inauguration parties galore!

  So you're in KC, not D.C. That doesn't mean you have to ring in change all by your lonesome. Come yell "Yes we did!" with the cool kids at these hot spots:

  January 19, 2009

• Move, Bush.

  We post this video to mark the end of the Dubya era. After all, last June, Barack Obama told a Rolling Stone reporter that he listens to Ludacris on his iPod. (Then again, it was later reported that Obama uses a Microsoft Zune. Then again again, many Zunes malfunctioned after New Year's 2009, so Obama could be back on the 'Pod.) According to a friend who was in D.C. on election night 2008, a crowd gathered outside the gates of the White House to serenade #43 with this song. Maybe they substit

  January 20, 2009

• Watching the inauguration at Sportsmen

  The classical supergroup sounded its final note on the inaugural stage. "Now. Now can we do this?" Randolph Byrd, a barber at Sportsmen House of Coiffures on Swope Parkway, asked impatiently.This was the swearing in of the 44th president. Work at Sportsmen came to a halt as Barack Obama took the oath. Even the UPS guy stopped and watched.As Obama swore to defend the constitution, Byrd stood by his chair, arms locked with fellow hair stylist Mary Bryson. Byrd said he was sorry that his mother had

  January 20, 2009

• Brownback: Forward to the 1940s! And the 1980s!

  Catching up on my reading over the weekend, I spent some time with The Kansas City Star's 14-page special section commemorating Barack Obama's inauguration. Headlined on the cover "For America, a New Day," it contained reports on the historic day in Washington, a transcript of Obama's speech, comments from random Kansas Citians, an Associated Press report on the first couple's fashion choices and lots of cool photos.I was most interested, though, in the thoughts of a handful of leaders that the

  January 26, 2009

• Guess what Phill Kline blogs about?

  It rhymes with smushmortion. Last Friday, Phill Kline weighed in on President Barack Obama with his first blog entry at Stand With Truth.Kline, now a professor at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, says it's fitting that Obama was sworn in with the same bible as Abraham Lincoln. Of course, Kline is comparing abortion to slavery. He notes that Obama didn't mention "abortion" in his inaugural address and likens it to President Franklin Pierce ignoring slavery in his address.

  January 26, 2009

• McCaskill wants to cap salaries of bailout recipients

  If the federal government's bailing you out, then you're not going to make more than President Barack Obama. At least if Sen. Claire "Bear" McCaskill has her way. She's introducing a bill right now -- on CSPAN 2: The Deuce! -- that would cap pay for employees of private companies taking federal bailout money. Employees couldn't make more than Obama's $400,000 salary until their company stopped receiving federal dollars. McCaskill's people say the salary cap would also include bonuses and stock o

  January 30, 2009

• White like him: Tim Wise at JCCC

  This is the kind of guy we love. Last time we checked Tim Wise's MySpace page, we were greeted with the warning:"Hate mail, while neither appreciated nor desired, will be graded for form, content, spelling and grammar."Wise is a white guy who writes about white racism; he's also a frequent speaker on the college lecture circuit and sometimes he's a teacher (last year, he was a Distinguished Visiting Scholar for Diversity Issues at Washburn University in Topeka). I fell for Wise last summer, when

  February 16, 2009

• SCHIP will not ruin cigars

  Enjoying the lovely weather this weekend, I found myself smoking a cigar. It's a habit I picked up from my high-school graduation party when a friend's dad gave me a Cuban as a present. I smoked half of it because he practically yanked it out of my mouth. "Anymore than that and you'll feel sick later," he told me. He was wrong. I felt sick from just that half -- but not enough to give up the practice. Back then cigars were rare treats, but for the last couple of years they sat in a sweet spot. W

  February 9, 2009

• "Mad Dog" McCaskill on Meet The Press

  Claire "Mad Dog" McCaskill's media tour continued on Sunday morning's Meet The Press. The fighting senator from Missouri defended the economic stimulus package and President Obama's nomination of Tom Daschle.

  February 9, 2009

• Daily Briefs: No one has ever exclaimed, "That Pontiac Grand Am... SO BEAUTIFUL."

  Some guys is gotta win and some guys isn't. Welp, President Hussein Moqtada Al-Obama signs an economic stimulus bill into law today, after three weeks of negotiation with Congress and a struggle with Minority Republicans which people keep saying Obama lost. All the beltway pundits say Obama "has a lot to learn," and Republicans like Sen. John McCain insist that Obama is "off to a bad start." Politico ran an article on Sunday called "The 7 stimulus lessons for the Dems," because after passing a p

  February 17, 2009

• Barack will not bogart that joint

  Flickr: Toronto JimIf you happen to live in one of the 13 states that allow medical marijuana, President Obama is cool with that. For all intents and purposes, pot is de facto legal there now. In case you're wondering, Kansas and Missouri are not two of those states. But neighbor Colorado is.Last Wednesday, Attorney General Eric Holder, discussing some bigger news about a Mexican pot bust, smoothly slid in the news that the DEA would no longer conduct raids on medical marijuana dispensaries. For

  March 2, 2009

• In case you missed it video: Obama nominates Sebelius for HHS

  I was in a meeting yesterday, so I didn't get to watch President Barack Obama's nominate Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius for secretary of Health and Human Services. Also missed the news last night. I was with Harper at the Modest Mouse show. I finally found highlights from the presser this morning on the Associated Press' YouTube site.

  March 3, 2009

• KCP&L will either raise your rates, or raise your rates.

  LET LIVE FOREVER IN THE PEOPLE'S MEMORY THE UNPARALLED ACHIEVEMENT OF THE OBAMIST GUARD OF OCTOBER, YOU GUYS! The Barack Hussein Obama Adminstrative junta has put forward a radical plan whereby people -- also known as DEATBEAT JOBLESS DEFAULTING LOSER BUMS -- get to keep their houses. The newspapers call it a "$75 billion loan modification program," but I think we all know a communist manifesto when we hear one denounced, loudly, on the AM radio. Electricity, ee-leck-triss-ity: Here's the dea

  March 4, 2009

• Breakfast Buffet: Friday, 3/06

  No surprises here. Older drinkers have a hard time distinguishing between being a little tipsy versus three sheets to the wind. Moral of the story: Don't let grandpa drive. [Time]Which is sadder: Childhood obesity has reached such an epidemic that we don't have seven-pronged approaches to curing it or the fact that one of the steps is gastro-bypass surgery for kids? [Scientific Blogging]Wait, aren't people supposed to be drinking like mad during a recession? It can't be a good sign that liquor g

  March 6, 2009

• Daily Briefs: I may need to be kidnapped and deprogrammed.

  Despite all my rage, I am still just a salivating dog in a cage: Here's how I know that President Barack Obama's first term is going to be -- well, I was going to say "a cakewalk," but I have no idea what that is. Maybe it's actually something really difficult, like factoring equations! Plus, "a cakewalk" sounds like something from 1900 that an old person like Harrison Ford could tell you about. So, here's how I know that Barack Obama's first term is going to go down smooth, like lightly carbo

  March 13, 2009

• Picketing AIG won't help, but being part of an angry mob would feel good

  As I'm sure you've all heard by now, AIG is using an estimated $165 million of its government bailout money to hand out bonuses to the assholes who helped hobble the economy. You have to retain talent, right? I've been thinking and I would like it if you all would consider, just for a second, meeting me outside their offices. I'll explain my reasoning after the jump.

  March 17, 2009

• Breakfast Buffet: Tuesday, 3/24

  Wedding cakes are a surprisingly good barometer of how culture changes over time. Still this wedding cake from the mid-'90s hold up today. [Simmer Till Done]Bottled water sales aren't just declining -- they're plummeting. They were down 9 percent this past year. [Independent]Team Obama orders up new greener coffee cups. Every little bit helps. [Chicago Tribune]Coffee purists warn customers to stay away from a resurgence of "grade b filler" coffee also known as robusta. [NYT]

  March 24, 2009

• Legalize it! (And then invest in it)

  More and more I hear arguments for legalizing marijuana. Joe Klein and Andrew Sullivan are two people pushing especially hard for it right now, although President Barack Obama has blown off the issue -- and for good reason. If Obama made a huge deal about legalizing pot he might make gains among a percentage of people who probably already support him, but he'd lose plenty more voters. But what if pot were to be legalized without becoming legal?That appears to what's happening. Two weeks ago, Att

  April 6, 2009

• Presidential Review

  February 19, 2009

• Dance for Obama

  January 15, 2009

• Big-Screen View

  January 15, 2009

• Murs makes a symbolic bid for office on his positively progressive new album

  November 20, 2008

• Teabaggers party at phallic WW I memorial

  You know what pisses me off about tea party protesters? These motherfuckers had no problem cashing the economic stimulus checks that President Bush handed out last year. No one was in the streets throwing a hissy fit and burning their stimulus checks then. But I'm never surprised by people who protest against their best interests.  Kansas City's tea party protest takes place at the Liberty Memorial at 4 p.m. Let's get this straight. There's going to be a bunch of people talking about teabag

  April 15, 2009

• High-speed rail, right here, in Kansas City

  President Obama is talking high-speed rail, right here, in Kansas City. See, we're even on this nifty map. KC would be part of the "Chicago Hub Network." Obama sounds hopeful that the $8 billion in the Recovery Act and $1 billion a year for five years in his budget will get the project started. Obama said:There's no reason why we can't do this. This is America. There's no reason why the future of travel should lie somewhere else beyond our borders. Building a new system of high-speed rail in Ame

  April 16, 2009

• Bishop Finn declares war on behalf of the 'Church Militant'

  Bishop Robert Finn declared war on behalf of pro-life activists at last weekend's Gospel of Life Convention. Bishop Robert FinnFinn, of the Kansas City-St. Joseph archdiocese, apparently doesn't care much for abortion rights or gay marriage or contraception or Notre Dame's invitation to President Obama to speak at the campus -- a decision he called "scandalous, discouraging and confusing to many Catholics." Finn called himself and his supporters "warriors" and members of the "Church Militant." B

  April 20, 2009

• Daily Briefs: Emm Oh Enn Ee Why

  Daily Briefs is now for sale: Let's say you're a rich guy, or a big rich corporation, and you keep all your cash overseas in offshore havens, safely protected from U.S. taxes, thereby freeing you up to collect Lipizzaner stallions and priceless chandeliers. Pretty sweet life you've got there, Thurston, now have your man bring the car around so you can drive to your Jew-restricted golf club and eat the sandwiches of rich people, club sandwiches. As regards your offshore tax haven, Pres. Barack

  May 6, 2009

• Is this what the U.S. has come to? Dijongate?

  Lots of people buy burgers every week without creating a controversy. It's hard to see how you could create controversy by ordering a burger. But Barack Obama has managed to. First people griped that he ordered his Hell Burger medium-well. But now there's a true outcry because he ordered mustard on the hamburger he got with Joe Biden last week. Did you hear what he said? He didn't ask for Joe-everyman-yellow-mustard. No he asked for dijon mustard and as everybody knows dijon mustard is elitist!Y

  May 8, 2009

• Think he's smoking something other than lettuce

  This past Friday, Congress smacked down the cigarette industry. Having raised taxes on tobacco earlier this year, a new bill allows the FDA to regulate tobacco advertising, banning terms such as "lite" and "low tar" along with ads that may "suggest" that certain cigarettes are not as bad as other ones. It bans sponsorship of sporting and entertaining events and makes the warning labels even bigger than they were. (But still short of the European-style fire and brimstone warnings.) The bill passe

  June 15, 2009

• Workers to protest more abundant paychecks

  Working Americans have a few opportunities to express confused outrage at the government this holiday weekend. Tomorrow at 1 p.m., a freedom rally/tea party will be held at the Center for God, Family and Country in Lee's Summit. On July 4 at 9 a.m., a rally for responsibility will take place along Highway 45 in Parkville.The tea parties staged across the U.S. on April 15 protested government spending, particularly the $789-billion stimulus package. Of course, the "taxed enough already" crowd mig

  July 2, 2009

• Is the Obama as Joker sign racist?

  At Saturday morning's protest, when several hundred people showed up at U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver's regular coffee with constituents to either demonstrate against health-care reform or counter the anti-healthcare demonstrators, one hardy protester (she's the woman at the end of this video, who tells someone in the crowd that if they want socialized medicine they should go to Russia and "get the hell out of my country") stood in the same place for nearly three hours, holding up a printout of a si

  August 11, 2009

• A sick, toxic summer of health care ends in a trip to the surgery center

  September 3, 2009

• School's out! Rightbloggers decry Obama's Hitler speech to schoolchildren

  ​ Roy Edroso's Rightbloggers: Exploring the right Wing Blogosphere appears courtesy of our sister paper in New York City, Village Voice.Several days ago, the White House announced that President Obama would address kids returning to school via the internet. As he told an 11-year-old in a press opportunity, his September 8 speech would be about "the importance of education, the importance of staying in school, how we want to improve our education system, and why it's so important for the countr

  September 8, 2009

• Sebelius previews Obama's speech to Congress

  President Obama​After addressing schoolchildren yesterday, President Obama will address a group that only acts like children tonight in the prime-time hour when he tells Congress about his plans for health-care reform. In anticipation of the president's speech, Health and Human Services Secretary -- and former Kansas Governor -- Kathleen Sebelius released an audio preview. Listen to Sebelius' monotone delivery yourself or here's the transcript (highlights mine): "On Wednesday night, President

  September 9, 2009

• Man will shout at Mo. Lt. Gov. Kinder until he professes love for Obama

  Fox 4's Lori Patterson tried to interview "Very Important Person" (and Missouri Lt. Gov.) Peter Kinder live about the Tour of Missouri, but the guy in red started yelling "Tell 'em we love Obama" and flapping his arms. Here's the blow-by-blow.  Uht-oh. This isn't going to end well. ​"Tell 'em we love Obama!"​Kinder doesn't look like he loves Obama. ​

  September 14, 2009

• Rightbloggers see Chicago's Olympics snub as Obama's foreign policy crisis -- which they cheer

  ​ Roy Edroso's Rightbloggers: Exploring the right Wing Blogosphere appears courtesy of our sister paper in New York City, Village Voice.Last week rightbloggers were outraged when President Obama struck a conciliatory tone in his address to the U.N. General Assembly. They didn't like that, nor did they like Obama's warm reception there, and predicted this love-fest would only encourage our adversaries, with dire consequences for the United States.Time will tell. But this week a different intern

  October 5, 2009

• Bill Ayers jokes about writing Obama's book; Rightbloggers become punchline

  ​We're not sure where all the birthers went, but we can tell you where they're going: some of the same folks who questioned whether Obama was really born in the U.S.A. and eligible to be President have started flocking to blogger Backyard Conservative's claim that famous radical Bill Ayers told her something that proved what rightwing conspiracy theorist Jack Cashill has been saying all along: that Ayers did write Dreams of my Father, a book supposedly written by Barack Hitler Obama, whom ever

  October 7, 2009

• Rightbloggers defend America against dangerous Nobel Peace Prize

  ​Roy Edroso's Rightbloggers: Exploring the right Wing Blogosphere appears courtesy of our sister paper in New York City, Village Voice.This week Time magazine had an interesting feature on the Obama Administration's alleged realization that it needed to strike back at "what the White House believes to be misleading or simply false claims..." You have to wonder what took them so long -- and whether such a counter-attack could possibly do any good.As we've shown here ceaselessly, the rightblogge

  October 12, 2009

• Man claims he was fired for voting for Obama

  Barack Obama​A salesman claims he was fired for voting for Barack Obama.KSHB Channel 41 reports that Elliott Snell is suing KK Office Solutions in Wyandotte County, claiming that his boss sent out an e-mail saying if Obama was elected that "the last few people hired should clean out their desks" because "Obama would give them free healthcare, food stamps, and let them stay in their homes even if they couldn't afford the mortgage." Snell tells 41 that he was fired two weeks after the election

  October 14, 2009

• Fake but accurate: Obama 'thesis' proves his treason even after it's debunked

  ​ Much has been written in recent days about the White House's War on Fox News, in which Administration officials have called the Republican-friendly network "the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party" and such like, excluded it from the President's media tours, and even tried unsuccessfully to remove it from pool interviews of other officials.This cold-shouldering is generally seen as a mistake even by reporters presumed sympathetic to the Administration. We've had so

  October 26, 2009

• NAACP wants apology from Kansas' 'RedNeck Rapper'

  Jolly elfin state legislator Bill Otto says he won't apologize for his "RedNeck Rap," which has been called racist for criticizing President Obama and then proclaiming the deliciousness of "opossum the other dark meat." Now, the NAACP is demanding an apology, according to KSHB Channel 41. Otto promised to do another rap -- one that praised Obama. Take it away, MC Otto.

  October 30, 2009

• KC panel to President Obama: Stop being so nice and start causing a ruckus

  If a combination of national crisis and personal character define a transformational president, Barack Obama is squandering his historic circumstances by being, well, too nice. That was the mostly disappointed analysis from three political and media experts who visited Kansas City for the Harry S. Truman Library Institute's third annual "Forum on the Presidency." At last night's discussion about "Presidential Leadership in Transformational Times," Robert Kuttner best summed up the panel's per

  November 2, 2009