Marek Tyszkiewicz v. Brad Wenstrup LWV Debate

An extremely high tech recording of the Tyszkiewicz / Wensrtup debate hosted by the League of Women Voters. Both appear affable. Both appear intelligent. Wenstrup's solutions seem a little more party line rhetoric than Tyszkiewicz's. Wenstrup's wrap up is fairly over the top, cue the patriotic music & fireworks while Tyszkiewicz's are pretty weak.
be nice to have something in between but who cares? District 2 will go with the Rs no matter how useless they are.

http://www.electintegrity.com/debate">debate videos
tip for Mr Tyszkiewicz, Vimeo allows longer videos.

HamCoGOP Announces Cincinnati City Council EndorsementsThe local GOP announces 4 ~ count 'em ~ 4 candidates for city council. 1 incumbent, 2 losers & a newbie.

• Sam Malone
• Amy Murray
• Melissa Wegman
• The Windbag

Malone has served on council before & lost reelection as has Amy Murray who never actually won an election. The Windbag is a Republican even The Fishwarp can't endorse. And Wegman appears to work for her family's business. She cites her notable qualification as living west of I-75 (by a couple miles). Malone & Winburn were in cahoots in Winburn's prosperity theology Encampment Church that dissolved as soon as the Windbag got a gig on council. Malone can't seem to stay out of trouble. When he isn't beating the crap out of his kid, he's driving around town like a maniac.
Wegman hasn't got much on her website other than "we can't build a streetcar" & the populist "I support ALL the neighborhoods" crap. malone & Winburn are just pointless retreads. I couldn't find a Malone site. I'd had high hopes for Murray and even voted for her but she turned out to be a party shill with no real ideas. I can see why they don't want to run a mayoral candidate. Dunno why they didn't endorse Smitherman, technically everybody runs as an independent.
Pretty sad, all in all.

The Face of Voter Fraud
Dunno if this chick is just simple or off her rocker. She should definitely never work a poll again and should never vote again. Jail? Dunno, I'm kinda thinking mental institution.
What blows me away about this case, however, is that absolutely none of the measures taken to combat voter fraud & improve voting would have had any effect on her. Moving poll locations, changing hours, tedious ID requirements and poll worker gag orders - none of it would have changed a thing.

It Just Keeps Getting Better

Gestapo training ground, Riverbend Music Center, known since 1984 for being the summer home of the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra & aging, second tier pop acts like Styx, Ted Nugent, Stevie Nicks, Chicago ,etc….. has taken a bold step forward. Their "lawn seating" with crappy sound, no view & no protection from the elements will now no longer even offer a real lawn.

"concertgoers will encounter a lawn consisting of five layers: 120,000 square feet of non-flammable plastic turf; 660,000 pounds of non-toxic, acrylic-coated, round-grained, bacteria-resistant sand; two layers of crushed limestone; and 1.04 miles of drainage pipe"

I love the sound of hobnailed jackboots goose stepping on non-flammable plastic turf in the evening.

Fishwarp story here

It isn’t Kasich’s fault
It’s Kasich’s fault
It’s public workers’ fault
It’s the legislature’s fault
It’s everybody’s fault
It’s the Republicans’ fault

The headlines for a slew of Letters to the Editor at The Fishwarp 2/21/12
pretty good…..

What to do With a Dead Golf Course ?
How about filling it with dead golfers?
Well, it needn't be golfers but how about a body farm? The city is wondering what to do with the Dunham Golf Course in West Price Hill. 14 acres of green space would be great for a body farm for Criminal Justice students to use for forensic studies and the cost to establish it seems pretty nominal. Currently, locals have to travel 100s of miles to visit one of these facilities. Between the various schools with criminal justice programs in the area, the College of Mortuary Science, The Champion company up the street in Springfield & the FBI in the swank NE suburbs, it seems we could have plenty of demand for such a facility here. Add the economic impact of these guests on chili parlors, hotels & entertainment to the fees they would pay to use the farm & we could make out like rats.

Fishwarp story here

Cincinnati Grand Prix ?
The Fishwrap reports that an attempt at bringing grand prix racing to Cincinnati was all a scam.
Too bad.
While the idea of racing cars through downtown is kinda crazy, other streets, like River Road, Madison Road, Columbia and Victory Parkways might be pretty cool. I am not a racing fan nowadays, I know nothing of the business ($$$), politics & stuff. All I know is the movie Grand Prix with James Garner (my grandma took me). But from the standpoint of promoting the city, images of a race along the river, on the parkways & on the Ohio River bridges could be pretty great.
That being said, I have to wonder at what point does the city decide to do background checks on these promo guys?

I want a Cinerama monitor

A Tour of OTR With Johnny Cash
and Eli Wallach


Friday would have been Johnny Cash's 78th birthday. I celebrated the guy's life watching The Pride of Jesse Hallam, a made for TV movie filmed on location in Cincinnati around 1980. I have babbled here about watching old movies & TV just to watch the backgrounds before. Route 66 is super duper megacool. A film called Wanda, shot in Pennsylvania around 1970, is another gem. This movie is fairly low budget & the disk is made from a pretty crappy print. It's out of print but is available from second hand dealers (cheap).
It's filmed in OTR (Eli Wallach has a stand at Findlay Market), Hyde Park, Clifton, Mt Lookout, Downtown & the riverfront. Some places have changed considerably, some look exactly the same. I moved to Cincinnati a couple years after the movie was made. The scenes around Findlay Market show a market with a very different vibe than what is there today. It had a much more "old world" thing going on.
It's not a great movie, it's ok & the backgrounds are a lot of fun.