New Blog: OhioFirstPolitics

OhioFirstPolitics will be covering the Ohio 1st Congressional district race. Give it a read.

I Wanted a RED Pony!

There is no pleasing the Enquirer, especially the headline writer for this article Too many restaurants?. What the article lacks is a comparison of how many restaurants used to be downtown and how many are there now. It also incorrectly lumps in dinner restaurants and lunch restaurants in its "analysis." Lunch places like Potbelly and Ingredients are not anything for Jeff Ruby to worry about. I wonder how much of this story stems from talking to Ruby. In the article Ruby sounds like he has no clue what is happen downtown. He tries to be cute with the "San Quentin theory", which fails to recognize that Downtown is growing and more people are eating dinner every night of the week.

Also either Menelaos Triantafillou's is talking about making Downtown a full "neighborhood" where you can get the dry cleaning after dinner or he has never been downtown:

“The number of restaurants is one question, but more important, what else is there? If people go to dinner, and they want to do something else afterward – which is what humans do – there needs to be something else to see: shops or theater. There needs to be synergism,” said Triantafillou. “You see it now around the Aronoff, with Nicholson’s, Nada, the Contemporary Art Center. Think of other cities or, for example, Clifton, where there are all the amenities you need to enjoy a nice night out. That’s what downtown needs.”

Has Menelaos been downtown before? You have over 4 very popular nightclubs, the poison rooms, 4 live theatre companies (and Playhouse up the hill), Arnoff, Taft, Fountain Square, the Blue Wisp. You could drive to Mt. Adams or NKY if you prefer. There are tons of things to do after dinner downtown. That is clearly not an issue. If the guy means there is not a movie theater, than I am going laugh my ass off. Seriously, people don't go to Nada and then want to see Rambo.

Fifth and Race: Back to the Drawing Board

Once again, Eagle Realty has failed to deliver on promises for the Fifth and Race site. This time, it appears that the City is unwilling to grant it another extension, and Eagle will no longer retain the development rights.

Eagle looks to blame the City for its failure to come up with $3.8 million in funding. I'm curious about the nature of that money. Surely it isn't the case that Eagle had secured $96 million in funding, and the City wouldn't close the remaining gap to get to $100 million, is it? Or is this one of those situations where an initial $5 or $6 million was needed at the outset, Eagle wanted the City to foot half or more, and there was no guaranteed source for the balance of the $100 million? Anyone have the details?

Cranley Doesn't Get It

john Cranley has never understood urban transportation. If it doesn't get him votes on the Westside, then he's going to "question it". If the Streetcar plan included rebuilding the Price Hill incline, John likely would vote twice to approve that.

If you want to know about the streetcar, how it will help the city, how it will work, check out www.cincystreetcar.com.

Art or Exploitation?

I know I'm having a strange day when I think something, and then read almost the exact thought printed in Peter Bronson's column. So today is a strange day.

Bronson was at the media preview of "Bodies . . . The Exhibition" at the Museum Center. He discusses it today. Included in his column was this:

I looked at another corpse throwing a baseball and wondered how it was so
different from the so-called "artist" photographer who was caught posing corpses
with keys and dolls in the lurid Hamilton County morgue case. They called that
desecration of a corpse. We call this educational.

How is the Museum Center exhibit any different? Diplaying posed bodies in the absence of the consent of the deceased (pre-death) or a family member (post-death) should not be cause for celebration in a civilized society.

If that creepy photographer Thomas Condon had put an exhibit of his morgue photographs together, I wouldn't have gone to see it. I doubt I'll be heading to the Museum Center to see "Bodies," either.

[Post edited by author to remove language suggesting the exhibition shouldn't be "tolerated" by our society.]

Waterboarding Would "Feel" Like Torture If You Did It To Me

So says the Attorney General of the United States today in response to a question by Senator Kennedy. But the Attorney General of the United States cannot admit that an "enhanced interrogation technique" that has been deemed "torture" by this country for most of its history and by almost all of the civilized world is, in fact, torture. Why is that? Because to admit this will be to admit a very dark truth ---- that over the past six year, despite its Constitutions, despite its rich anti-torture history, despite its laws, and despite its historic acceptance of the Geneva Conventions and other treaties banning torture, the United States has become a nation engaged in torture. Perhaps President Bush should have explained that to us in his final (Thank God!) State of the Union address as he weakly attempted to articulate a legacy out of an utterly failed presidency.

Perhaps someone should ask the Attorney General or the President whether we should any longer find torture shameful. As John McCain, the now presumptive Republican nominee for President, said back in October, "They should know what it (waterboarding) is. It is not a complicated procedure. It is torture. . . . . All I can say is that it was used in the Spanish Inquisition, it was used in Pol Pot's genocide in Cambodia, and there are reports that it is being used against Buddhist monks today."

Patricia Corbett, arts patron, dies.

Patricia Corbett, who together with her husband J. Ralph Corbett, supported arts organizations from CCM, to the Cincinnati Ballet, Music Hall, and countless others, died today in her sleep. She will be missed, but I'm sure her influence will be felt for years to come.