2010 Bockfest Sausage Queen Competition Dates Set

Few events capture the history of drinking in Cincinnati better than Bockfest and once again you can get your fill of frivolity with Bockfest early with the prilimiary rounds of the Sausage Queen contest. Think of these events as warm-ups, giving you a chance to get your Bockfest tolerance a bit of a Spring-Training.

The Sausage Queen has few qualifications other than being 21 and likeing Bock beer and Sausage.  Additionally, there is more innuendo at these events than can fill your mouth. (You know, fill it with ground up meat inside a casing.  What else were you thinking?)

Anyway, this year's event branches out to Northside and Covington, so be sure to get your friends to enter the contest.  I think if you pretend there is a prize, like say a year's worth of bock beer, you might get your really cute next door neighbor to take part.  Seriously, costumes earn more points.  And I can tell you that points matter in a really serious event such as this.  The bribes have been known to go way beyond free beer.  People bring baked goods!  Yes, a clear violation of all things that are holy, but hell, all's fair in love and war and the Sausage Queen competition. 

The preliminary events are:

Friday, February 12, 9PM, The Comet, 4579 Hamilton Avenue, Cincinnati

Thursday, February 18, 9PM, at Arnold's, 210 East 8th Street, Cincinnati

Friday, February 26, 9PM, at the Blue Bar, 266 Pike Street, Covington

Saturday, February 27, 9PM, at Milton’s, 301 Milton Street, Cincinnati

The Finals will be during Bockfest on Saturday March 6th, 8PM at Bockfest Hall.

For more information, check out www.bockfest.com.

COAST Caught Lying Again

Truth and honesty are two elements that the person posting on COAST's Twitter account just doesn't understand. How do I know this to be a fact? Well, by first reading this COAST Twitter Post:

DITTO. RT@amybsells:Challenging to come up with new ways to tell [CITY] to stop spending and start saving if they want to buy a [TROLLEY].

Then if you simply link on the profile of the person they are re-tweeting, you can read this:

Finding it challenging to come up with new ways to tell people to stop spending and start saving money if they want to buy a house.

So a house equates to a "Trolley" and people equates to the "City?"

COAST has being cherry picking Twitter post looking from anyone and everyone complaining about any rail service problems. You can find people complaining more often about highway traffic and road conditions, but COAST will ignore anything that does not fit their agenda. I guess today they couldn't find any posts about some kid pissed they missed their train and instead COAST just TOTALLY changed what a person was talking about and tried to pass it off as a call to the City, thinking that using [] will be enough to fool people into thinking this person was agrees with COAST's desire to kill any and all public transportation.

This is what we in the sane world call Lying. It is nothing new for COAST, so for those who know what the group has done before, this will just be more of the usual.

If any politician associates with this group, they are working with liars, out to mislead the public. Their credibility was dead long ago, this is just being pathetic.

"So You Want To Be A Rock 'N Roll Star"

'Taking the Stage' the MTV reality show about students at Cincinnati's SCPA is totally manufactured, if you hadn't already guessed. Producers for the show brought in 5 kids to the school from different areas around town and 1 kid from out of state.

I hope people understand that this is nothing but exploitation of a school for benefit of no one but MTV. It will not make the careers of the students. This is really looking like a mistake for CPS.

The School gets attention, nationally. That is a win, but is it enough? Is it worth it? Does the SCPA really want to attract new students here with the false hope that they can have their break and be rich quick? This is not the way I would want to begin the next school year in a new building. We need our schools to be about all of the students and not about outside production schedules.

Jim Tarbell Running For Commissioner

Howard Wilkinson of the Enquirer posted on Twitter this morning that former Vice-Mayor Jim Tarbell will run for the Democratic nomination in the Hamilton Count Commissioner's race.

This is very interesting news. If he wins the primary, would he get a Charter Committee endorsement? I'm not sure how Jim will play outside the city, but he should far well within the city, and would counter both Ghiz and Monzel strongly.

UPDATE: I guess we now may know why Cecil Thomas is not running, after he said he was considering it.

Was this CityBeat Article Actually Meant for the Enquirer?

In this week's CityBeat I was very surprised to read the article entitled: Pregnancy Center More Than Just 'Anti-Abortion'. The surprise comes with the balance of the article. The article gives many instances of contrary viewpoints from critics of the "Pregnancy Center," namely from Planned Parenthood. That's not the problem. The problem is that the article in total gives deference to the subject. The Pregnancy Center make statements about what they do or don't do, but they are taken at their word that they actually are being honest about their counseling practices and don't have an alternative agenda. This deference is like the natural bias the Prosecution gets in the eyes of the jury, when it often thinks: why would they bring a case at all if they guy wasn't guilty?

CityBeat is a liberal/progressive paper and more often than not it chooses subjects that would not present a positive viewpoint of an 'anti-abortion' organization. For example, a question that I would have asked the group, and I think most of the CityBeat staff would as well: Does the Pregnancy Center provide contraception? A follow-up question if they said 'no': If part of your mission is to prevent abortions, why would you not take the simple action of giving people the means to prevent unwanted pregnancy? That question may have been asked, but it wasn't in the article. If the group had said they do give out condoms or birth control pills, then that would earn the headline it got.

This story is something I would have expected to read in the Enquirer. This is how the Conservative bias of the paper comes through, especially with the headline used. The article has balance, but gives the subject, one the print readers of the Enquirer favor, a positive spin it likely does not deserve.

Add this to a pro-marriage insert this week and you would think there's a spy over at CityBeat's offices!

Layoff the Magic Mushrooms, Brinkman

Tom Brinkman would appear to like charging at windmills. Of all Republicans in Democratic clothing to challenge, he is thinking about taking on Dusty Rhodes for County Auditor. Why not just get certified as a police officer and take on Si Leis for sheriff while you are at it, Tom? There's about as much chance of that happening as him beating Rhodes.

Dear Freeman McNeil: Where Was the Black Vote?

During the recent controversy inside the Hamilton County Democratic Party Freeman McNeil is quoted on Cincinnati.com as saying:

“Black folks in Cincinnati make this a Democratic city,” McNeil said. “We have not received anything in return.”

Two points Mr. McNeil may want to consider: 1)The Hamilton County Democratic Party is more than just the City. 2)Where were the black votes in the 2009 council election?

In 2008 there was a huge turnout in predominately African-American Wards in the city proper, yet in 2009, those same wards saw a decline below the 2005 voter turnout, even with a Mayor, who happens to be black, up for re-election against a white Republican. The Democrats lost a seat on council, so the failure to get the out the vote falls on whom? If most of the black members of the HCDC's executive committee claim that blacks are responsible for the City being Democratic, then why did the ballots cast drop in most of the predominate black city wards in the 2009 city elections?

Ward		Neighborhoods		Change in Registered Voters 09-05	Change in Ballots Cast 09-05
0		City Wide		13,478	-91
1		Mt. Washington/California		384	730
2		Madisonville/Oakley		563	231
3		Evanston		307	-373
4		Hyde Park		-22	253
5		Mt. Lookout/Linwood		379	400
6		Downtown/OTR		1,248	226
7		Roselawn/Bond Hill		532	-351
8		Mt. Aburn/Mt. Adams		270	-77
9		Walnut Hills/E Walnut Hills		221	-154
10		OTR		588	-43
11		Clifton Heights		366	-115
12		CUF		958	-105
13		Avondale/North Avondale		341	-650
14		Pleasant Ridge/Kennedy Heights		452	46
15		Clifton		808	-68
16		Queensgate		225	0
17		West End/OTR		816	-117
18		West End		87	-194
19		Sedamville/Sayler Park		167	202
20		Price Hill		562	-20
21		South Fairmount		180	-86
22		Northside/Camp W/S. Cummingsville		527	16
23		College Hill/Mt. Airy		1,045	-29
24		HartWel/Carthage		532	74
25		Price Hill(Covedale)		833	-18
26		Westwood		1,109	131

I'll get called names for pointing this out.  I know certain people (like guys who wear capes around town) will surly call me all sorts of things for daring to put numbers back into the face of black Democrats using the race card to get someone a job. I'm doing it anyway, and it's not the first or last time.  I'll survive.

It could have been so much easier. Instead of handling this with wisdom and discretion, it was put out in the press. Division and discourse plays right into the hands of Republicans. Instead of playing games race, why not look at the qualifications of executive director, Caleb Faux?  Here is the ED of the party who just over a year ago help steer the county Blue for the first time in decades and for a black candidate as well. Having over 117,000 non-city residents vote for Obama is a big deal.  He didn't do it on his own, but as the ED, he gets some of the credit.


Now, its time to get past this and sing a happy tune.  There are elections to be won this year.