Daily Briefs: Funkhouser’s Finances; Our Magnificent Airport; a Satanic Economic Forecast
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By CHRIS PACKHAM
• State ethics officials have been looking into Mayor Mark Funkhouser’s campaign finance reporting, but papers reviewed by The Kansas City Star are so completely without interesting malfeasance that reporters Michael Mansur and Dave Helling spend the bulk of the article entertaining each other with the filthiest language I’ve ever seen in public affairs journalism. No, I’m kidding — it’s exactly as boring as it sounds! What is the exact opposite of News of the Weird? The 4 a.m. farm reports or this.
• Two Kansas City police officers were injured when one patrol car slammed into the back of another during pursuit of a carjacking suspect on slick roads.
• Kansas City International Airport ranks third-lowest on a U.S. News and World Report misery index that tracks the percentage of delayed flights and crowds. People love our airport!
• Do you remember the restored scene in the 25th Anniversary Edition of The Exorcist when the kid came spider-walking down the stairs upside down? And how unbelievably scary that was? Larry Elliot, economics editor of The Guardian, explains the coming global economic collapse to similar effect. Like any good economics reporter, I was going to post a picture of Linda Blair, but I just remembered that I already did that yesterday. Instead, here is a picture of the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference at Bretton Woods in 1944:
• As the corporate headquarters of Sprint, Overland Park has the distinction of being the bad-customer-service capitol of the entire planet. It’s a real point of pride for the company, based on the duration and consistency of its service. The Consumerist has this hilariously awful story in which a man’s new contract is quadrupled and his bank account drained, all during the course of a weekend when — of course — the ordering department is closed.
• Look, I enjoy Dario Argento movies, violent auto collisions and comedy derived from inhuman cruelty as much as the next diagnosed borderline personality. But I’m not made of stone, people. I’m flesh and blood, just like you — I can be killed by fire, tornadoes and bullets and absolutely destroyed by a 3-year-old kid explaining the plot of Star Wars:
