Tuesday, January 27, 2004

Playing to the Ignorant Crowd?

I know the Enquirer is trying to appeal to the suburbs, but are they trying on purpose to appeal to extreme religious groups who embrace myth and try to make it into a faux-science, a step below pseudoscience. Answers in Genesis does not need the press, what it needs is critical journalism. All this article does is provide a tourism advertisement to a den of theocratic indoctrination.

Secret Service Say's No to City

The U.S. Secret Service will not review the 1998 video of a police officer being interrogated when he allegedly used the "N-word." There reason for no helping was that they do not want to establish a precedent of examining information for something not involved in a criminal investigation.

Blood, Blood, Blood Makes the Ice Red

Miami University sports teams get little coverage here in Cincinnati. The Miami Hockey program get even less. It is great to see my classmate Enrico Blasi and his team get good press.

Monday, January 26, 2004

White House Admitting Failure?

Well, no, but they appear to be facing fact, no WMD will be found. Now the spin begins.

'Thesuraus-palooza'

I watched the premiere of Dennis Miller's show. His opening rant was typical Dennis, heavy on the cadence and the obscure reference. I like Miller's use of words is his best bit of his comedy. I was just listening with a sense of, huh? How can he sit there and say he is liberal on social issues, but then say he not only will vote for Bush, but likes him, supports him fully in what he is doing. Now, if you are a social liberal, or rather you care about social liberity, then how can you vote for Bush? Dennis seems to have been stricken with fear from 9/11, a panic and sense of doom that I really don't fathom. Miller is in line with Glenn Reynolds and Jeff Jarvis. Locally Miller and Mike McConnell would be like peas in a pod. Miller I don't think ever was a liberal. He was or is a libertarian. What is odd about that is his shilling for the GOP. McConnell bashes liberals and democrats most of the time (poorly 2/3rds of the time), but does not follow the Republican party line across the board. He just follows it most of the time.

Miller's interview with California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was a joke. It was a commercial for Schwarzenegger's Propositions 57 & 58. The level of soft ball questions make Larry King look like Nolan Ryan.

Miller's news rundown just sucked. It was really bad. It was a cheap attempt to steal a little from SNL and from the Daily Show. His timing was off and the lack of an audience to play off when the joke is flat hurt big time.

His little diatribe against FOX News was odd. I was left thinking was it either a personal jab at FOX for not giving him a show, or he was trying to establish that he was not a FOX clone.

Varsity Panel: David Horowitz, Naomi Wolf, and David Frum. Two HARD right conservatives and one Moderate Liberal. Talking heads that spin the spin. There was no value to listening to any of them. Hannity and Comes are more cutting edge, and they are pointless to watch.

Overall Dennis needs to work on the show. His pace was way to slow and lacked focus. He is trying to be Bill Maher, but just can't pull of the fine line Bill did. It was overall of course a put down liberals/Democrats show. Nothing was original and nothing much entertaining.

Dick Cheney Liar?

Kevin Drum shows Dick Cheney lying about WMD's. If Cheney is not lying, then I think his last intelligence briefing was about 4 months ago.

A Snow Plow, a Snow Plow, My Kingdom for a Snow Plow

Does the City own any? I barely was able to get up Beechmont Hill last night. I had to drive from the Colerain area late yesterday afternoon and I have never seen major roads, like I-275 and I-75 so poorly kept. It was bad enough on the major side roads, which is understandable, but why the Federal highways were not plowed by 4PM yesterday is just nuts. I hope road crew managers understand that 4 hours after the heavy snowfall starts is a good time to be done with your first full plowing of the MAJOR highways. After you finish your first go, you do it again. I don't know who gets that blame, ODOT, the county, or the municipalities, but no one knows how to battle snow around here.

For the record I grew up in a town about an hour south of Buffalo, NY, so I am used to snow and a bigger snow clean up department. I would not be shocked if my town of 40,000 had more plows than the City of Cincinnati.