The Challenge
About 3 years ago radio comedian Willie Cunningham disparaged the Cincinnati neighborhood of Over the Rhine, told listener & blogger & photographer Gordon Bombay that he was nuts to think the neighborhood could improve. Cunningham challenged Bombay (about 6:15) to go down to the area & report on what he saw. He did and reported it here. Cunningham remained silent.
3 years & 1 month later have made a bit of a difference. Now Cunningham, endorsing Hamilton County Sheriff hopeful Sean Donovan, is singing the praises of the progress being made in the neighborhood.
Now the question arises, how important is the endorsement of a guy who is pretty much the living embodiment of Krusty the Clown.

What Has Kid Monzel Accomplished ?

When Chris Monzel ran for Hamilton County Commissioner, the "son of the suburbs" (who has left Cincinnati, BTW) promised us he would "find efficiencies" in the county budget.
Well, he hasn't & the recent downgrade of the county's bond status will just make the cost of doing business that much more expensive.
At least the county administrator he rammed through is making the streets of Cincinnati safer. Wonder how his florist is working out?

Fishwarp story here

Which Way Charlie?

Cincinnati Councilman Winburn is promoting paying $10M to give away Music Hall to an independent non-profit organisation. But, about a year ago, he was all about wresting control of The Gamble House from an independent non-profit organisation. Dude really seems to want the city to live out the turmoil in his schizophrenic mind.

Poking around Bloggersville, Cincinnati, I came across some interesting poop. Well, to me that is.
UrbanCincy notes that Downtown Cincinnati is on the rise. In kind of a companion piece a WCPO article picked up by The Urbanophile, says the same thing & points out that a lot of the new residents of the downtown area are from out of town.
Meanwhile, over in COA T land it's pointed out The Cincinnati Enquirer has lost 17% of it's subscribers. While the thrust of that article is about their print mouthpiece not disseminating their propaganda to their satisfaction, the numbers don't lie - readership is down.
So this brings up my question - How many of these new downtown residents read the Enquirer?

Life

Mershon's Under Investigation?
The Ohio Highway Patrol descended on Mershon's World of Corvettes in Springfield, OH, Thursday. They wanted to check serial numbers & such. Is the premiere sports car dealership under investigation? I'm guessing the Highway Patrol is just dealing with a formality.
Mershons, in business for 31 years, was recently involved with the sale of a 1965 Shelby Daytona Cobra for $7,250,000 - at the time the highest price ever paid for an American car.
UPDATE
UPDATE

Robert Moog

Today would have marked Bob Moog's 78th birthday. Best known for the Moog Synthesizer made popular in 1968 with the album Switched On Bach by Walter Carlos. He got his start in electronic music building Theremins while in high school. His legacy, Moog Music lives on today making synthesizers, theremins & other high quality electronic music apparatus.
Google has also made a Moog Google Doodle in honor of the guy.

Horror Sells - The Endless Saga

From the Horror Sells series.....
Dunno how this stacks up to the ApocalypseEV-1. Neither appear to have weapon mounts and the Volt doesn't have solar panels but is likely more comfy in cooler & rainier climates.

Johnny Sunshine

As grade B/C/D movies go - this'n wasn't bad.

Rating the Blogs
A story on NPR about Congressmen Talking like 10th graders got me interested so I went to Readability Score dot Com & plugged in some posts from some Cincinnati area blogs. Well, we're averaging about 10th grade, too.
The dense UrbanCincy came in last place on readability with a 44.8, altho they came in at the top grade level at 12.8.
While this list has amateur writers, literature buffs & published authors, I included the Cincinnati Enquirer Politics Extra Blog to see where the pros came in. Kinda in the middle on readability with a 62 & at the bottom on grade level with an 8.2 - lower than a prepress tech, database admin, a DJ & a boy band singer…..
FWIW, none of the Dean's posts were sampled at the Cincinnati Beacon, I just grabbed some of the latest posts.

Blogging isn't Cool
Readability - 56.2
Grade level - 10.68

COAST
Readability - 59.4
Grade level - 10.55

The Cincinnati Beacon
Readability - 61.6
Grade level - 8.9

Cincinnati Blog
Readability - 66.7
Grade level - 8.8

Cincinnati Enquirer Politics Extra
Readability - 62
Grade level - 8.2

The Cincinnati Monocle
Readability - 56.8
Grade level - 11.1

A Blog About Reading Marcel Proust
Readability - 64.7
Grade level - 9.7

Stacked
Readability - 65.9
Grade level - 8.4

UrbanCincy
Readability - 44.8
Grade level - 12.8

The Republican Party is Dead

The party of Lincoln? Roosevelt? Eisenhower? - gone.
What wears it's clothes and bears it's name is just the right wing of the old Democratic party. Ronald Reagan is who they purport but it's more the party of George Wallace and Strom Thurmond.
The Democrats started hemorrhaging defectors around 1948 and it's been a steady flow resulting in the rise of the neocon/tea party movement. They exhibit all the tactics of the Progressives, forcing the majority of the society to their narrow vision and chipping away at people's liberties day by day. The term "conservative" might as well be "sweet potato" since it has nothing to do with the philosophy of these people.
Their popularity in decline and ardent popularity is close to only 7%.
Their base is heavily weighted white but the white population is proportionally shrinking. Pat Buchanan asks, “Has the bell begun to toll for the GOP?”
What poses as the Republican party today is like the demonic possession of a semi rotted corpse bent on imposing a worldview of that demon's twisted hell.
but, hey, whadda I know?

Road Rage
This case reminds me of the Zimmerman/Martin case. Over in Zionsville, IN, a motorist, Brad VanHowe, passed a cyclist, Jeremy Steiman and then promptly slammed on his brak in an attempt to, I dunno, rattle/injure/kill Steiman who proceeded to whip out his trusty .45 & squeeze off a few rounds. I get it. I thought about fashioning a frame mounted holster at one time.
As in the Zimmerman/Martin case VanHowe was harassing Striman when the victim turned the tables on his harasser with potentially lethal force. Fortunately, nobody was killed this time.
Inexplicably in this case, however, VanHowe, who admits to reckless endangerment wasn't charged with anything - just his intended victim who fought back. Steiman claims to have been assaulted by motorists in the past and cited that as his reason for carrying a gun & acting proactively. Now Stieman stands to be assaulted by the courts.
yay

WISH story here

Does riding a bike in traffic freak you out? Are even parks too much for your delicate sensibilities? Then this is for you. Through October Spring Grove Cemetery will be closed to cars from 6-9PM on Tuesdays. You can walk ride, presumably skateboard & ride horses and rent Segways on their gravely 45 miles of roadway in parklike serenity.
Find out more at the Spring Grove Cemetery website

96% of My City Was Gone !

This pretty video was created for a CEOs for Cities event in Cincinnati by Lauren Edward, Andrea Sisson, Peter Ohs, Zach Beutler & Drew Klein.
It's nice ~but~ what happened to the other 96% of the city?
-----------------------
Now this is how you sell a city….

Ohio Native Finds Roots in Slavery & Rule of Law

John Legend and Wanda Sykes on PBS' Finding Your Roots
I usually don't watch this show & I seriously don't like John Legend (& I'm lukewarm on Wanda Sykes) but I found the Legend segment of this episode interesting. It gets into the nature of the relationship of slaves and masters outside of the typical liberal caricature and it gets into interstate law regarding people and property. Ohio & Kentucky come out looking pretty good (except for some KY scumbags) but VA comes off pretty lame. They were, of course, one of the original American states that demanded slavery be legal in "the land of the free" & blocked recognition of our Caribbean neighbor, Haiti.

The Bizniz Courier reports:

[The Music Hall Revitalization Corp.] wants the city to install buffers to protect Music Hall from vibrations from Cincinnati's new streetcar that will pass outside the structure. The nonprofit's engineering tests indicate those buffers will cost $75,000. MHRC also wants the city to place $150,000 in an escrow account in case it's needed to address further vibration problems caused by the streetcar.

This report indicate however, the streetcar should not have an impact greater than what already exists. This guy says some towns are having issues with their streetcars being too unobtrusive!
Another opportunistic money grab attempt?

You're Going to Burn
well, if you want - and more and more people do. Cremations are becoming more and more popular in America with over 40% of all deaths being handled by cremation. Just 50 years ago that number was 3.5%. Could all the cheesy zombie movies produced since then be a reason?
To deal with this change, Springfield's 240 acre Ferncliff Cemetery has installed a crematory - only the second in town.
As more and more people are opting out of burial other options for dealing with your dead ass are being explored like alkaline hydrolysis (liquifying). Now we need to look at open air cremation as well. With about 110,000 dead Buckeyes a year, we should have every available option for our remains.

Frogtown Noose Son article here.

Everybody Wins
well, almost...

Given the proximity of the Hamilton County jail and the new Casino in Downtown Cincinnati, it seems that marrying the two could raise some much needed revenue for the governments, the casino & cut down on the jail population at the same time.
yep, gladiatorial fights to the death using prisoners! Folks could wager on the outcomes generating revenue for the city, county, state & casino owners and half of the contestants would get slaughtered mercilessly for the enjoyment of the spectators. It ties in with Roman roots, it's a proven draw, it adds to the variety of sports in the town, it reduces recidivism…
folks, this has gotta be a winner!

The Hamilton County GOP, with nothing to run their own candidate on, has launched an attack campaign on incumbent Hamilton County coroner, Dr. Lakshmi Sammarco. The canpaign for on Ohio county's coroner position isn't a really big money type of campaign & Sammarco asserts her husband updated her website incorrectly and that the correction was done in a matter of hours. Desperate Hamilton County GOPers were vigilant, as they should be, and snagged a screenshot of the mistake as quickly as it was posted and a little quicker than it was corrected. (If only they were so vigilant of their mouthpieces, the Cincinnati Enquirer & WLW.) Then, in the blink of an eye, filed frivolous complaints with the Ohio Elections folks.
What I found interesting about this faux indignation was that it is right out of Quintus Tullius Cicero's handbook of campaigning that he wrote for his brother Marcus Cicero back in 64 BC. In it, the general suggests that his politician brother produce any kind of scandal that might intimidate or injure his opponent - that he need not take his opponent to trial, but that the accusations would stick and do harm regardless.
I guess sticking to a 2000+ yera old political handbook is kinda "conservative". It might also be likened to zombism…
Regardless, it is the strategy of a party with no vision, no ideas & no direction of it's own.

Howard Wilkinson's blogpost here

UPDATE: so, apparently, the clowns at the HamCo GOP didn't even file their frivolous complaint correctly & it got tossed out. Trianitfilou blusters & Burke moans.
The latest on this juvenile BS from the Fishwarp

Reckless driver commits hit & run gets no charges - but the guy the victim voluntarily bought some dope from is facing 7 years.
well, hell yeah - GO HAMILTON COUNTY !!!!
Deters - drivers are good people, pedestrians are bad, very bad. Wonder how Steve Chabot's kid would have fared in Hamilton County. oh wait, I know.
Travesty of justice semi documented here

North Carolina Joins a Majority of U.S. States Abandoning Spirit of the Constitution
North Carolina voters have decided that the notion of the state not interfering with the freedom of religious practice is just so much hooey. In restricting churches from performing marriages the way they choose, they have abandoned the intentions of our founding fathers and basic tenets of conservatism. How long before they ban Catholics from performing mass?

Al Jazeera story here

Nevada Issues Student Permit for Driverless Cars
The permit still requires, not only one, but, two people sitting in the car - presumably eating Cheetohs & surfing the intertubes. What will be interesting, as more of these things hit the road, is how traffic accidents will change. Likely things will get better. Of course some lawyer will probably jump out in front of one of these cars so he can mire the whole technology in years of lawsuits.
Lost Vegas Son story here

Happy Sinkhole of Mayonnaise Day
aka Free Comic Book Day

the elusive "girl in a comic book store"
Saturday, May 5 is Free Comic Book Day. You can celebrate locally at:

• Up Up and Away
• Queen City Comics
• Comic BookWorld
• Maverick's Cards & Comics

Wump Bucket Puppets will be at Maverick's @ 11:30AM. BTW, this is more likely what you'll find:::
The 5th of May is less traditionally celebrated as Mexican Independence day, but of course it just celebrates a military victory by the Mexicans over France. Tacos vs. crepes? Beans vs. butter? Seriously, how could there have been any doubt?
It will be celebrated in Cincinnati's Northside neighborhood with a pig roast by the neighborhood's newest restaurant (so new it doesn't even exist yet) Django Western Taco at Mayday (which actually does exist). />

Fannie & Freddie Fuck Us Again
After Clinton killed Glass-Steagall, we had an 8 year perfect storm of Republicans fighting finance regulations, Democrats promoting schemes to get home loans into the hands of the "poor & disenfranchised", traders getting involved with mortgages & investments and Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac buying as many shitty loans as possible knowing they would never be held accountable if the whole thing went belly up - the shit hit the fan.
Now cities across America, like Cincinnati, are saddled with a huge number of abandoned vacant houses that blight neighborhoods, invite crime & pests and lower nearby property values.
The cities can't afford to maintain the homes, neighbors can't legally maintain them (they'd be trespassing) and the banks who have evicted the owners who defaulted on their loans won't take care of them even though they're flush with taxpayer money.
Cities have passed laws requiring the banks to maintain the properties they claim (when convenient). Now the fattest whores at the party, Fannie & Freddie are suing Chicago in a test case to see if they can squirm out of such laws. If they prevail in Chicago, towns like Cincinnati will follow & banks like Wells Fargo & Deutsche Bank will follow Fannie's & Freddie's precedent.
Maybe we can issue them licenses to kill, too.

NPR story here

Fishwarp story talking about the problem back when it started here

Speedway

I thought this ad was pretty wack but with gasoline sales & total auto mileage down, it appears the business inside Enon. Ohio's Speedway stores is ticking along rather nicely with a 13% bump from sales from this quarter last year.
Like the JS said, "you know the people come around for a reason".

Noose Son story here

Post Apocalypse Pizza Delivery in France

Apocalypse Pizza

Reeking of Desperation
Hamilton County Commissioners are selling off assets to pay the monthly bills. How long before they start selling their blood & pimping out their wives?

Fishwarp story here