John Cranley in His Own Words

Bad to BizarreIf you didn't think John Cranley was a gibbering idiot this interview with Rob Richardson leaves no doubt.

Cranley and Qualls Wimp Out

Cranley and Qualls have agreed to debate but not til after the primary so they won't have to contend with any "outside the box", or in Noble's case, "outside the astral plane" ideas.
One appears to be a private affair for affluent businessmen on 9/17 & the second to be televised a couple weeks before the election on 10/15.
While my druthers are pretty obvious in this contest, this really smacks of elitism & Porktowners really deserve more than a 1 hour debate with these relatively conservative candidates.

Not much more at the Courier here

UPDATE: Sandra Queen Noble sums up the debates & Berns quits the race in protest. Noble to mayoral debate organizers:

Fuck you man. The two motherfuckers burn, Queen Noble is being robbed of the elections thanks to motherfucker such as yourself seeing the future and shit. The fuck you mean debate after the election robbing primary. It's a rip off for the incumbents in it self (sic).
Dirty motherfuckers are backed by dirty motherfuckers cheating the public out the best candidates so fuck you and the primary election. Queen Noble will debate now asshole.

More at City Bleat here
And the Fishwarp, here

Home Schooled Jock? Let the Public School System Pay

Another gem in the latest Ohio budget that begs one to ask, WTF?
If you opt to keep your kid out of the clutches of the public school system, you can still dump your kid off on 'em when it's convenient to play sports. Even though the state provides greater subsidies for the poorer performing charter schools, the public schools can cover the cost of your kid risking his back playing on their football team.
Now parents can cheer for their kid's team, the Panthers and friends.
Can the Ohio legislature get any weirder?

StateImpact article here

Rethinking Fountain Square

This stunning image of what Cincinnati's Fountain Square could look like if the city leadership had any guts is just inspiring out the wazoo.
If you're not acquainted with the work of Billy Tackett, get the fuck off your ass & get acquainted NOW.
Billy Tackett Studios

John Cranley's Campaign Song

Pretty much sums up Cranky's campaign strategy - hopefully Patti won't let him use it.
Anyway the interns at the Fishwarp are soliciting your ideas for mayoral campaign slogans. As usual they omit half the race. Berns could do "Free Tomatoes".

How Can Columbus Screw Ohio Cities Again ?

In light of the state of Ohio wanting to ban traffic cameras, communities have pointed out that efficient, inexpensive technology saves lives, decreases catastrophic injuries, frees up law enforcement & EMT personnel and generates revenue to hire more police & EMT personnel. In some communities the ban might result in laying off these important safety personnel.

Opponents of the ban, including police groups, say cameras should be regulated to weed out bad actors, but not shut off entirely.

While this doesn't seem like an unreasonable stance, it's completely ignored by stalwart political whores like Ron Maag and Dale Mallory who continue to throw out the babies with the bathwater.
Springfield notes that citations, as well as crashes have declined since the implementation of the tech.
Springfield city manager, Jim Bodenmiller, noted:

if it was about revenue, we would have them everywhere and we wouldn’t have signs up warning people about it

Of course the obvious solution to the whole "profit is evil" argument is mandatory jail time, but, again, it's just political whoring.

Noose Son story here

BiC Scoops Fox 19 by 4 years

The crack investigative reporting staff at FOX19 just concluded a month long investigation into who owns property along the Cincinnati streetcar route.
Seriously?
Blogging isn't Cool had it's crack investigative staff on it one morning in August, 2009 and, trust me, 3CDC didn't own as much property as they do now. Back then populist muckrakers were trying to pillory Towne properties. In fact there were hundreds of property owners along the route directly & hundreds more on the cross & parallel streets.
oh well…..

State of the Streetcar

The Cincinnati Business Courier sums it up very nicely on the subject of the Cincinnati Streetcar.

Complaining about the streetcar, bad-mouthing it, trashing it – these now become selfish and petty activities.

Will obstructionists like Winburn & Smitherman now try to help make the thing work instead of just saying, "no"?
Will Smitherman & Finney quit filing lawsuits and coming up with confusing ballot language?
doubt it
Will they take credit for any successes?
probably
Maybe for Halloween, they can paint up the cars with blood spatters so we can all enjoy our "bloody streetcar"!

Article Learn to stop worrying and love the streetcar

Annual County Fair Rants #1With the Clark County Fair starting up July 19, the local paper, The Springfield News Sun is starting in on it's positive press campaign in the birhplace of the 4H. Today, they brought up Fair Food

Springfield resident Cathy Delk enjoys the animal shows and a few other things, too.
"Love the 4-H kids showing their animals," she said. "Love all the food served by the FFA groups and the Clark County Producers. Fair food in the midway is fun stuff, but the local stuff is the best!"

"But Quimbob, you're a fat slob who probably lives on coneys, cotton candy, taffy, caramel apples, those crispy waffle things with powdered sugar on 'em, cones of ice saturated with brightly colored artificial flavoring, root beer floats & such. What's the big deal?"
Well, while the Fishwarp writers are looking up synonyms for 'hot', 'boring' & 'old' and the executive staff is in the Fishwarp basement sacrificing pigeons in obscene rituals meant to induce some kind of violent sensation at the Hamilton County Fair - they are not alone in their disdain for the local fair. And I'm not even talking about the elitist Hamilton County 4H. No, out of the 49 bazillion restaurants in Cincinnati & Hamilton County - a fleet of food trucks that would make a US mechanized infantry division flinch - out of all the foodies & pop up kitchens in town - with one of the largest grocery chains in the world headquartered in Cincinnati - NONE of 'em go to the fair. Cincinnati, fuckin' Chilitown USA and you can't get a coney at the fair. Pizza from Pizza Hut?
Here's the straight dope Hamilton County food vendors - go to the fair, you will have a captive audience and no competition.

John Cranley's Legacy Bites Cincinnati in the Ass

John Cranley, chair of the Cincinnati City Council Finance Committee, introduced structurally imbalanced budgets to the city & the city has never looked back. This year, Cincinnati might have actually had a structurally balanced budget were it not for the treachery of Columbus.
When the city wound up with $50M from the sale of Anthem stock, Cranley opted to spread the wealth around - an obvious vote buying ploy, instead of using to plug a budget gap nor to put some of it into pension funds even though a portion really belonged there.
Now Moody's, who saw nothing wrong with bundles of bad home loans in the past, has downgraded Cincinnati's bond rating making the cost of capital improvements in the city a bit more expensive. One thing cited was state pensions which are beyond the city's control but they also cited the underfunded city pension fund & the structurally imbalanced budget - 2 of Cranley's legacies.
We clearly cannot afford John Cranley in the mayor's office.

WCPO Bond Rating story here.

Fishwarp Anthem story here

Cincinnati Blues

Pigmeat JarrettHard to believe there was ever any decent blues in Cincinnati given the lame offerings & the mediocre annual blues festival, but old Pigmeat used to rock out. The UTube page talks about him playing riverboats but I always saw him on solid ground.

ContrastsThe differences in the handling of the cases of Pat Mahaney in Ohio and Trayvon Martin in Florida are interesting. With the recent passing of Mr Mahaney, the comparisons are clearer - sort of.
Mr Mahaney's death may or may not be attributed to his savage, pointless attack perpetrated by a pack out for blood. HamCo Prosecutor Joe Deters has requested an autopsy.
Mr Martin's death, while physically apparent, was due to either murder or self defense.
While the prosecution of Mr Zimmerman has bent over backwards to make a case against him that even the police department felt had no merit, the prosecution of the juvenile pack that beat Mr Mahaney to within an inch of his life, and maybe further, has bent over backward to give the vicious thugs another chance.
Now we are warned of riots/rebellions if Mr Zimmerman is acquitted. There was a peaceful protest regarding Mr Mahaney's beating staged by Five members of National Alliance. It was met with a rowdy counter protest 7 times greater in number with one counter protester getting arrested for his disorderly conduct. Source
What brings the courts, media & general populace to such wildly different conclusions & strategies? God have mercy on us all.

We Don't Need no Stinking Bridge

Why saddle everybody with a $6 BILLION bridge when people who need to cross the river can just shell out for a vehicle that can cross water on it's own? Sure, it might take a little longer but people have already said they will take a longer trip to avoid paying a toll.

Kid Monzel Fails to Get It - AGAIN

While HamCo Commissioners Hartman & Portune are ok with the Cincinnati Zoo putting a levy in the ballot, Kid Monzel says he wants to hear public input on the issue before he signs off on it.
Isn't an election "public input"?
Of course the GOP in the County frequently cares little about the public's voting, so…..
The Kid probably just wants some more publicity to remind folks he is still there.
WVXU story here

Media Bridges Announces Closure

Media Bridges, the public access venue for Cincinnatians on Time Warner Cable is calling it quits. Originally funded by cable vieweres like you, that support ended due to the original agreement or Time Warner just weasling out - I forget. The city provided funding for awhile & they did some fundraising but Cincinnati had to withdraw funding due to budget constraints. Now their fundraising efforts have fallen short & they're throwing in the towel.
With outlets like blogs, YouTube, Vimeo & such, local access TV is kind of an anachronism, I guess but Media Bridges also offered some training & gave people a chance to use a control board with 3 cameras, mics , titles & telephones to do live shows with live calling - yes, a chance to fly by the seat of your pants. The archival nature of blogs & video don't exactly provide for that live experience and, while the info is out there, it's nice to have a teacher you can bounce questions off of.
oh well - wonder if Ed Rothenberg will figure out YouTube….

UPDATE: Fishwarp clarifies how cable companies lobbied state governments to allow the cable companies to weasel out of paying for local access here

Speed Kills

It's estimated that excessive speed is involved in 1,000 fatal motor crashes every month nationwide. 100 years ago, when not every fool had a car, there were about 4,000 traffic fatalities in an entire year.
Ohio's strategy? Cut funding for police departments, outlaw traffic monitoring technology & raise speed limits.
UPDATE: But some people think speeding is their right.

Frogtown Noose Son story here

The 10¢ Tour of the Top Secret BiC HQ

Due to the high demand, the crack Blogging isn't Cool video staff put together this kick ass comprehensive tour of BiCHQ just for all you great fans.
Cheese & Reason
I think my mom might be putting codeine in my gruel again.....

More Goodies Hidden in the Ohio Budget

yup, homage to an illegal alien. Gotta love the Ohio legislature. Besides being an illegal, he is a liberal vigilante who works for the lamestream media.

Gem City News article here

Horror Sells - Better Than Cookies

Because bake sales "were a bust", Rochester students set up a musical zombie car wash. Customers listen to songs on their radios in their cars while healthy masked students dance, growl & wash the damn car.

Kal El story here

10,000 Days

Curses suck in more ways than one...

You can keep your civil war re-enactments

Civil War re-enactments are fairly lame. For starters, once the shooting starts, you can't see anything with all the smoke. This annual re-enactment of a Dacian / Roman battle from 101-106 and detailed on Trajan's Column leaves nothing to the imagination. Well, ok, blood, guts, smashed noggins & severed limbs…
But other than that, it looks pretty fun.
Dunno what anybody is saying but the Romans had a heckuva time getting across the Danube River (Ister) to get on with the invasion in the first place. For months the Dacians & Romans just walked up & down the river shouting obscenities at one another. That might be a fun re-enactment for Romanians & Bulgarians, too.

Romanian Insider article here

High Maintenance Stiffs

Cool looking place, hope they can get it sorted out.
So, now Blogger requires that I use their title doohickey - FINE

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With Friends Like Rebloodlicans, Who Needs Enemies ?The lone Republican mayoral hopeful for mayor of Cincinnati is out - she failed to collect enough signatures. This seems odd given Rebloodlican stalwarts at CO having such a great track record of collecting signatures with their pals a the NA CP. Did they help at all? I mean, hell, Sandra Queen Noble got more signatures than the major party candidate. The guy that thinks big red orbs grow on marijuana plants got enough signatures. The clown with no vision, no plan & no ideas got enough signatures. Looks like the Rebloodlicans will have to settle for legislating from the courts while likening their opponents to Nazis (original).

Fishwarp article here