Hospital buys Savoy for $450,000

OK, Let me describe it this way. I have been to some horrible, horrible bars in my life. The Savoy Lounge is one I was always afraid to enter.
The Springfield Hospital Group, Community Mercy Health Partners, has decided they want to own this health code violation waiting to happen. This is not testimony to what hard asses the Springfield medical community are, and the place isn't worth $10,000. They just want to tear it down. Bad.

By Kelly Mori
Frogtown Noose Son
Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Community Mercy Health Partners, parent corporation of Springfield Regional Medical Center, has taken ownership of the Savoy Lounge property for $450,000.
The property, which abuts Ohio Valley Medical Center, the soon-to-open downtown surgical hospital, was originally purchased for Community Mercy by a third party. However on Wednesday, Nov. 12, Community Mercy spokesman Jim Senese said "a decision was made in the spirit of transparency to take full ownership of the property."
The purchase intensified the tension between Community Mercy officials and Ohio Valley surgeons, who announced nearly two years ago that they were going to build their own hospital.
The Turner Foundation had promised to try to acquire the land for Ohio Valley when the surgeons agreed to build downtown. However Ohio Valley officials, said on Wednesday the property is not critical to their operations.
Community Mercy, which is building a $230 million acute care hospital about two blocks north of Ohio Valley, has no immediate plans for the property, Senese said.

A protest in favor of equal marriage will occur at Cincinnati's City Hall on Saturday, November 15 at 1:30 p.m. Local students, activists, and community members lead this event as part of a day of national protests in reaction to the passage of Proposition 8 in California, re-banning equal marriage in that state.

www.jointheimpact.com/
Cincinnati contact queercincinnati@gmail.com

The church is supposed to operate outside the political arena. Recently, in California, Catholic groups backed with Mormon cash (not from CA) promoted a law banning same sex marriage. This circumvents the authority of religious organizations (churches) and prevents them from doing what should be in their sole domain.
That specific religious groups would force their beliefs on others is anti-American.
This is not much different from previous bans on inter-racial marriage that most of us would consider un-American and racist.
Churches should be allowed to marry who they want and should not be compelled to marry same sex couples or inter-racial couples or inter-faith couples or people who just don't conform that faith's beliefs. Churches should create standardized marriage contracts that can be modified to regional standards as they see fit and can have leeway for individual concerns as well. The first line for divorces should be through the church that performed the marriage and the courts should not be enlisted but as a last resort.
The only role of the government should be through the courts to enforce the contracts.
ok, I'm not a lawyer and I am sure real lawyers can bollox the whole thing up, but that's my plan. :-)

While most of SW Ohio goes blue, Clark County gets redder.
Democrats are at a loss to explain (surprise) & cite, possibly, independents. That is kinda weird, since the Dems were the ones "Getting Out The Vote" and the Republicans spent all their time "Consolidating The Base" (whatever that is in the splintered party).
Republicans appeared similarly clueless (more surprises) as to the results, citing the great job Republicans have done over the last eight years having influenced the outcome.
Final unofficial results for the county were 31,821 McCain and 29,122 Obama.

Noose Son story here.

The Damn Dog
One of Obama's campaign promises was to get a family dog, primarily, at his daughter's, Malia's, request.
Thanks to Bush's pup, Barney, biting a reporter, this promise has been brought to light. Thanks, Barney, for holding the press' feet to the fire to hold the president elect's feet to the fire on this burning issue.
Now they just have to pick a pup.

....oh god....
Because many people would refer to Mr Obama as a "half breed", he has to be careful about his choice. Because he is a liberal and has to appease crazed liberal animal rights groups, he needs to decide if he should get a traditional purebred dog or a new combo breed or a mutt. because Malia has allergies, does he get a hairless or.....
Apparently, Malia wanted a Cockapoodle, which is supposed to be a good choice for owners with allergies. Animal rights activists, who hate, despise, and loathe the notion of purebred dogs and consider anybody who breeds them to be the embodiment of Cruella De Vil, have succeeded in convincing Mr Obama to get a "rescue". No idea if this means a Cockapoodle is out. I would hate to see the kid's hopes dashed by cockamamie political correctness run amok.
I feel sorry for these guys and the hoops they are going to have to jump through and the BS that is going to be slung at them over what should be a very personal family decision.
FWIW, I like "mutts". I have allergies and like dogs - LOVE cats. You get used to 'em after awhile allergywise. In a place that will be as impeccably maintained as the president's, 16 cats and platoon of pups shouldn't be much of a problem.
I am sure Malia will grow to love whatever she ultimately gets. I would only suggest a female, so the kids can experience their pooch having a litter of puppies. Shouldn't be too hard to give away some presidential puppies.
oh wait - HSUS & PETA will need to stick their noses into it.....

LA Times story here.

The Cost
Ohio votes Dem and America gets it's first non-white president.
But at what cost ?
Toledo is nothing but smoking ruin in the aftermath of the election.
Tooleedoo Blade story here.

Happy Guy Fawkes Day
Or as it was referred to in colonial America, Pope's Day.
Colonial America was almost entirely Protestant Christian. Anglicans to the south and Puritans to the north. One of he things they had in common was hatred of the Catholic Church. On the 5th of November they celebrated the failure of Catholic terrorist Guy Fawkes to murder the royal family of England in 1605. The celebrations included bonfires and burning the pope in effigy.
During the Revolutionary War, General George Washington needed every man he could muster to defeat the British army and Catholic recruitment was kinda rough with a majority of the soldiers being as openly anti-Catholic as much as anti-British and going around burning the pope's effigy on 11/5 every year. Washington forbade the practice amongst the soldiers and that was pretty much the beginning of the end of the celebration of the day in America.
Even, after the Revolution, Catholics didn't have full rights in America. Today, Catholicism is largest Christian denomination in the US and Catholics enjoy all the rights any American might enjoy.
John F. Kennedy was the first Catholic president of the US. Yesterday we elected Joe Biden as a Catholic vice president.
Right wing fundamentalist politicians have stacked the Supreme Court with a majority of Catholics, largely in a singular effort to restrict women's reproductive rights. Catholic politicians generally gain much support from these groups, too. In California Catholic groups have banded together to deny homosexuals marriage rights under Proposition 8.
Boy, have we have come a long way !
Happy Guy Fawkes Day, everyone !

Independnts & 3rd Parties Need Not Apply ?
Linda Johnson of Urbana writes about how her efforts to be a Champaign County poll worker were stymied since she refuses to be a drone of the corpo-political system.
"I was politely informed that each precinct was bipartisan, staffed by two Republicans and two Democrats.
Never content with, "No." I tried logic, "As an independent, I would have no agenda, who could be more fair?"
The board employee could not sanction my reasoning.
I tried a slightly different tact, "What about the other parties? The Green Party, the Libertarians, the Socialists or Communists? They aren't represented?"
"Nope. Just Republicans or Democrats.""
Moral: Don't Think For Yourself.

Noose Son story here.

Quimbob's Endorsemens
This is primarily for the 45223 zip.
For President of the US - None of the Above
No presidential candidate deserves my or your vote.
US Congress, Dist 1 - (holding nose) Steve Chabot
Driehaus doesn't offer much more than Chabot and Chabot has some seniority ranking at this point. A major sticking point with Chabot is reproductive rights but I don't see any improvement with Driehaus. Chabot voting against the bailout and for the Delta Queen are pluses.
State Representative Dist 32 - (in the category of anybody but Dale Mallory) Theo Barnes
Theo Barnes seems to be a goofball but Mallory seems to be a ghost when he is not getting impeached or having charges filed against him. He couldn't even be bothered to fill out the LWV SmartVoter form.
Judge Court of Common Pleas - (in the category of anybody but Pat DeWine) Norma Davis
County Commissioner - Ed Rothenberg
County Commissioner - Chris Dole
Pat DeWine, Todd Portune and Greg Hartmann are all part of the unholy pact made by the local Republican and Democrat parties to rig the elections. I endorse all their opponents. Rothenberg is a joke, Davis seems ok and Dole actually looks pretty good. Honestly, is the county being served best by the 3 Cincinnati lawyers on the Hamilton County Commission ?
A Crosby Twp trustee and a Realtor® sound like good alternatives.
issue 1 - NO
Issue 1 makes it harder for citizens to get initiatives on the ballot. (notice I am voting against most of those - go figure)
Issue 2 - (holding nose) YES
Issue 2 issues bonds to fund environmental projects that need to be done. We will still have to pay back these bonds in the future. Here's hoping the economy is better when they are due.
Issue 3 - YES
Issue 5 - NO
Issue 5 The restrictions on
"Payday Lenders" are too severe. This is too lenient. A compromise is needed.
Issue 6 - NO
Issue 6 Casinos are no answer to anything.
Issue 7 - NO
Issue 7 Red Light Cameras are a use of technology that frees up valuable human resources and deals with people with bad to malicious driving habits who threaten the lives of people daily. Concerns about their implementation can be addressed.
This is not a vote to use or not use the cameras. This is a vote to amend the city charter to disallow the use of a technology for all time. This is an inappropriate bit of legislation to be added to the city charter.
Issue 8 - NO
Issue 8 Instant Run off voting is not needed, it is expensive and the effort to implement it is pushed by people with racist and fringe social agendas. It might have been valid when we transitioned from a ward based government to an at-large government but it provides no benefit today to the general public. The efforts by non-residents to promote this and the not too ethical methods used in the campaign are also disturbing.

Information about the cndidates and issues can be found at the LWV's Smart Voter.

Halloween Gone Wrong

I received this in a recent newsletter:
Mother Holle’s Halloween Adventures
$40 per day/per child
Halloween can be a very confusing and even scary time for the young child who is completely bombarded by Halloween hype.
Miss Chris and Miss Vicki are offering a lovely alternative experience to this based on the story of ‘Mother Holle’, a classic Grimm’s Fairy tale. Children 4-6 year old will travel on a magical journey that frees the imagination and gives a sense of accomplishment for their good work at the farm during this time of harvest. The children will engage in an artistic project, gather apples from the orchard, collect firewood to feed the dragon (oven), and bake a feast of apple dumplings and pumpkin bread to share as a reward for their service and hard work.
OK, here's the story of Mother Holle.
The story cites a great work ethic, even in slavery is rewarded with material wealth.
It also equates physical beauty with good values and ugliness with poor values.
First of all, that's weird and second of all, it has nothing to do with Halloween.
Since the Holle sisters are charging parents to submit their kids to slave labor, I guess it all kinda makes sense. Dunno what it has to do with Halloween, tho. Seems like more of a neocon indoctrination drill.
Folks, there's a reason for the season. Take your kids to the cemetery and celebrate your ancestors. Celebrate the harvest and eternal life.
Halloween isn't about Mother Holle - it's about the Queen of Disks.

Zombie Hop - Zombina & the Skeletones

It's All Gray on the Inside

Zombie Pinup Calendar
Zombie chicks are just hot !
ok, technically more like ambient/room temperature or something like that.
The whole zombie scene is hot. A search on Blockbuster.com's website for "zombie" came up with several pages and over a hundred hits for zombie movies. Many were made in the last few years. It's amazing and amusing. One of the the aspects of the zombie craze is it's popularity amongst the womenfolk. Girls, all over, are taking to painting themselves ghastly shades of blue and gray and spattering themselves with blood and gore.
And curse me for being a weird-oh, BUT I LIKE IT !
Probably the closest thing to a zombie Miss Kitty was Ed Harris' comic book character, Grub Girl, published by Glenn Danzig's Verotik Comics.

Grub Girl was a drug addicted STD infected hooker who, after being zapped with radiation, died and came back to life as an de-addicted, disease-free zombie and proceeded to take charge of her new life. She crushed her pimps skull with a toilet tank and ate his guts. Later she went on and found a nice zombie boy and settled down. As hollywood likes to use comic books for movie projects, a porno house hired Brittney Skye to take the part and totally fucked it up. Skye seemed to actually like the concept and was the only thing good about the movie.
I am fairly baffled as to the popularity of the shambling brain craving zombie and why itseems to appeal to girls so much but, hey, I am all for it.
So, if you are an exsanguinated, semi-rotten female zombie who enjoys quiet groaning and long shambles in the moonlight, eating brains and drinking blood
and are interested in a long term relationship or just dating a warmie, please contact me.
kids - ok
especially if they are milk fed

West Hollywood Misogynist Out in the Open

LA Times is reporting his name as ChadMichael Morrisette.
Link
There are no words that can express my level of disgust at this "man". I wonder if he went to the Obama rally and was welcomed?
Yes, Cincinnati, there is open sexism in West Hollywood. Yes, there is open sexism in the city too, just nothing we've seen this bad. What I fear we will get from many from the left wing is not defense of what he says, but his right to say it. All of that without forcefully condemning the pure hate Morrisette has.
Related Story

VOTE NO ON 7
Well, after nearly getting clobbered by a red light runner at an intersection I was crossing, I decided it was time to make another post about red light cameras and Issue 7
Red light running is rampant from my perspective. I see people run red lights every time I go out at almost every intersection I cross. Something needs to be done.
The cameras are pretty good at recording violations and the photographic evidence is always reviewed by a police officer before a citation is issued. Citations can always be challenged. Dangerous police chases are avoided.
10 cameras operating 24/7/365 vs paying police to do the same task ?
The cameras are installed for free and maintained at a set rate. They catch every violation. Valuable trained, skilled police officers and their expensive to maintain vehicles doing the same task would cost over $3,000,000 a year and wouldn't catch even half of the violations since they have to chase and write out citations on the spot - taking them away from their monitoring position. Their patrol cars burning gas the whole time.
Since the cameras were introduced, their use has improved.
Evidence suggests that a minor increase in rear end collisions may result from the use of the cameras as motorists have last minute second thoughts about running the light and slam on their brakes causing the driver behind them (who, presumably has not left a safe and assured distance between himself and the guy in front of him) runs into him. Blaming the camera for this would be the same s blaming someone crossing the street and causing the motorist, intent on breaking the law, to slam on his brakes.
Other arguments against the cameras tend to involve paranoid fear mongering.
Overall, the majority of studies show the cameras lead people to modify their behavior and the instances of very dangerous "T-Bone" collisions are reduced.
The damage wrought by collisions caused by running red lights are more extensive, cause more injuries, permanent disabilities and death than by any minor increase in low impact rear-end collisions one tries to blame on the monitoring devices.
Vote for safety. Vote for fiscal responsibility.
Vote NO on issue 7.

Fuck China
As much as I dislike Micro$oft for crappy business practices regarding competition, they certainly have the right to profit from their work and should not be ripped off. China is probably one of the worst countries in regards to rampant piracy and ignoring intellectual copyrights. They can bitch about M$ofts anti-piracy measures all they want. They need to crack down on criminal, unethical behavior amongst their own people. If they think the price of the Windows OS is too high, well, welcome to the club. But if they paid their workers a decent wage and charged American companies, like Wal Mart, a logical price for goods, then, maybe, more Chinese could afford the product. If they still don't want to pay, load up Ubuntu and make do.
To actually sue Micro$oft is insane. Sue the charlatan who sold you the pirated software, dumbass.

El Reg story here.
Yahoo story here.

I dunno, maybe I will vote for Nader. This is pretty cool. There's gotta be a reason Halloween, elections and Guy Fawkes day are all at about the same time.

The Porktown Fishwrap has a page, here, dedicated to explaining how to watch a political debate.
They have tips for what to do before after and during the debate. They explain what a debate is and offer some blather about the importance of the political debate in American history.
Here's my advice. Get drunk. Get fucked up as hell. Use whatever ya got. Get wasted and sit in front of your TV in your underwear and scream and holler at the damn box. Feel free to heave empties at the thing. You might consider putting some chicken wire up in front of the screen if you have an expensive set or just use a cheap old TV that you won't mind smashing or throwing out the window.
It's just not that difficult.

Faith and Politics forum at Wittenberg University
"On Sunday, Oct. 26, representatives of the local Christian, Muslim and Jewish community will join a multi-generational panel to discuss how people of faith form political world views, frame issues and support candidates."
I guess it's just for mainstream religions. I can't imagine Wittenberg won't have a Luthie rep & being held in the Shouvlin center, a Catholic rep would be in order.
I guess that, even with the rise of India and China as major economic world powers, there is no reason to invite Hindus or Buddhists. Considering how Martin Luther's split from the Catholic church kinda opened the floodgates on a lot of occult teachings previously hidden from Catholic scrutiny, there is still no reason to have any occultist/Kabbbalist types. Hell, just the timing being so close to Halloween, you'd think they would want a witch.....
oh well, it's free and open to all.

Noose Son story here.

Avetec opens in NextEdge Applied Research and Technology Park in Springfield, Ohio.
On Oct 20, Springfield business leaders gathered to watch Congressman Dave Hobson (OH-R) cut the ceremonial ribbon on the doors of Avetec’s new $9.9M National Center for Advanced Modeling and Simulation.
Avetec's goal is to conduct modeling and simulation research that aims to reduce the cost and time it takes to design, develop and test new jet turbine engines for commerce and the military.
Rep. Hobson claims it is probably the only place in the state that has a similar technology park, connected to the national labs and doing high performance modeling and simulation.

Noose Son story here.

Has the "Bailout" ushered in a new socialist era in America and signalled the end of capitalism as we know it or is it just another step along the way ?
The "10 Planks" from Karl Marx' Communist Manifesto:
1. Abolition of private property and the application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralization of the means of communications and transportation in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state, the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries, gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equitable distribution of population over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production.
Looks like we were well on the way already.
1. 30%
2. 100%
3. 30%
4. 50%
5. 70%
6. 100%
7. 50%
8. 30%
9. 30%
10. 100%

OpenOffice 3 Native on Mac OS X
OpenOffice.org has been released to run natively on Mac OS X Intel computers with the release of version 3. There is also a PPC version but it seems kind of unofficial. Previous versions of OpenOffice required Mac users to use X11 and it was slowernHell. NeoOffice worked natively just fine, tho. A quick and dirty startup test had OpenOffice 3 running a tad quicker than NeoOffice 2.2.3 on an old 450 G4 x2/1G RAM.
OpenOfffice is an office suite like Micro$oft Office with a word processor, spreadsheet, database and presentation application. It opens and saves most of the MS file formats and has PDF and Flash export built in. It is freely available for Linux, Mac, Solaris and Windows.

You can download the Intel and PPC versionshere

Wall Street Investments That Pay Off
An article in The American Conservative outlines how Wall St's FIREmen (Financia, Insurance and Real Estate lobbyists) investment in our elected officials paid off.
The hard lesson here will be that hard lessons are for chumps who can’t afford otherwise.
and
The finance/insurance/real estate (FIRE) sector has given approximately $180 million to House and Senate candidates in the current election cycle, and $116 million to presidential candidates, including $25 million to Barack Obama and $22 million to John McCain.
yeppers, we got the best democracy money can buy. it's no wonder the legislators who voted for the initial bailout plan were the ones receiving the most FIRE money.

American Conservative article here.