Winburn Stunt Backfires: Streetcar Support Shines!

Cincinnati City Council Member Charlie Winburn's stunt backfired Wednesday night when Cincy Streetcar supports turned out in great numbers to politely voice their support for the Streetcar and for the city as special council session called by Winburn and other Council Republicans. Social media reports indicated that 40 out of 45 citizen speakers were in favor of the Streetcar project. Several attendees reported on Twitter that many of the the small number of Streetcar opponents were disruptive and all anti-streetcar speakers yelled into the microphone and spoke longer than the two minutes alloted.

Another report indicated that alleged candidate for Cincinnati City Council and local NAACP president Chris Smitherman had a confrontation of some type, possibly with security in council chambers.  If the political reporters are not paying attention and don't report on his antics, then they are propping up his candidacy just to attract readers or viewers.

The clear message was the Streetcar has strong support from Cincinnati and the handful of people who are against it couldn't muster up enough suburbanites to drive downtown at 6PM on a Wednesday. We also saw Charlie Winburn comes across like a fool, playing a game instead of doing his job. All that's left to see how the mainstream media butchers the story in favor of the nut cases (like COAST and Smitherman) or of the Republican Council members who played more for contributions and Westside votes than they did actually constructively discussing the issue.

UPDATE:  Here's the Enquirer Story with more on Smitherman's apparent angry reaction to getting his picture taken.  Other than covering the Smitherman outburst, the article gives the usual bias against the Streetcar by given the opposition to the Streetcar more ink than to view of supporters the overwhelming number in attendance.  It isn't balanced when you report the number of supporters, but quote a small percentage of them, while giving 2 of 5 of the anti-streetcar speakers opinions in the article, adding to it the anti-streetcar Republicans comments and you get a biased story.  What we have come to expect from the Enquirer on this topic.

Golf Rankings Clearly Are Worth the Time of a Political Reporter

I for one am 'totally ecstatic' that the Enquirer's Washington based political reporter blogged about the golf handicap of John Boehner. That has relevance, surely it does. Golf handicaps are a 'true' measure of political power and everyone in the world knows this. How do you think the seating arrangements work at GOP National convention!

At least the reporter mentioned that although Boehner has a much better handicap than President Obama, VP Joe Biden crushes them both. Gotta be impartial, exept when it comes to the focus of the story, because it appears people in West Chester want to read about the Speaker of the House only in a positive or human interest sort of a way. Gotta be a 'Homer" after all and you can't make the Speaker of the House look worse than the VP, except in the order of succession.

I think the Enquirer can just fire all of its Sport reporters, since they were scooped by the political beat with this Earth shattering blog post.

I am so much better off for knowing all of this. I can't count the ways that my political knowledge has grown. I can't think of any other political stories that could possibly be more important. Zero. None. Nada.

DougScout Of The Dance...

Help the Know Theatre pay for DougScout's dance classes or he's going to dance at your wedding and he's not going to be drunk!

Winburn Uses Council Meeting For Campaign Stunt

Council member Charlie Winburn wants to have a Council Meeting during his Campaign Stunt. So he's gotten the two appointed Republican council members to help him create a faux council meeting to use a prop in his Campaign for city council. This meeting takes place Wednesday evening (May 11th) at 6PM, so if you have time, go down and ask Charlie Winburn why he is using a council meeting as a prop in his Campaign stunt. I'd also advise asking him why he sent out a pdf flier about his campaign stunt disguised as a Council meeting with his picture on it with a doozy of a quote, which reads:

“Although I do not support the streetcar, I think we need to hold the Mayor, City Manager, and City Council accountable for wasting $99 million of taxpayer money.”

So, first, what a poorly written quote. It reminds me of using the same word more than once in a sentence. Like: The fast lemming moved really fast over the cliff. Secondly, what kind of an ass emails this kind of thing from his council email? It is tacky. It is a waste of time and resources and it's only purpose is to give Winburn (and his GOP accomplices) a platform to campaign for council.  It doesn't appear to break any obvious rules, but it certainly was designed to skirt the law and promote his candidacy.  Here's what it looked like:

A classless act, but it's nothing new from Winburn.

Slow Local News Day or is WCPO Just Saving Money?

This morning I opened WCPO's Website and found that four of the seven top stories on their Front Page were Not local stories. Here's how it looked:

The three local stories are:

1.  A weather story
2. A wedding story with a Royal Tie in
3. A story about the report that a bid move is to be filmed in the Cincinnati area

So, nothing important appears to be happening in Ohio or the Cincinnati area that is not the weather, human interest, or entertainment.  We must have a perfectly run State Government that is not trying to gut funding for a huge list of schools.  We must not have an election for City Council taking place in a few months.  We must not have a search going on for a new Police Chief.  We must not have a Casino project under threat from the Governor.

Those stories may have a story buried on the website, but they are not important enough to have stories on the front page to get your attention.  Instead, you get weather, fluff, and stories with good pictures or about something that may in some minor way affect your kids.  Exurbanites appear to be kid obsessed, so get their attention and you have them hooked. None of these non-local stories cost anything extra to WCPO because they were written by a non-local journalist.  They are cheap and catch the eyes of the non-engaged reader who might care about reading topics that they could get on many national news outlets.

Yes, local TV news sucks.  This isn't a rarity, this is what it does.  If a local story is big enough, it takes the lead, otherwise the rest if filler from affiliates with stories that matter more other places or belong on national outlets.  This is NOT a plot to keep people ignorant, this is what the masses consume.  You, the reader, don't care much about local news, so no one tries to sell you on it very often.  Our willful desire to be ignorant about what is happening in our communities helps create horrible local journalism.  If you want Walmart, that is what you will get.

Chris Bortz Is Running For Council

Cincinnati City Council Member Chris Bortz will seek another term on council, his last before being term-limited.

The Charter Committee endorsed candidate had been on the fence about running, but has publicly made his decision to run.

Bortz has strong backing and likely will do well in the election. He puts a dent into the chance of adding new faces to City Council. All current officer holders are running, so no open seats are up for grabs, but three current officer holders are unelected appointees and will face stiff challenge from several candidates.

Osama Bin Laden Is Dead: Justice.

The criminal Osama Bin Laden has been killed by American forces. The death of any human being is never something to be joyous about, but this is justice. This was necessary. This was an honorable act. The horror this man caused was unfathomable by most people, less the few who lived through it or had a relative or friend killed by this murderer. The only thing more satisfying than his death would have been to parade this criminal into a courtroom to put him on trial for his crimes against humanity, but this evil man likely would never have been taken alive.

I applaud our government and the American forces who took action to ride the world of this criminal.

Bin Laden's death will not end terrorism in the world and will not end al Qaeda, but this is a blow to those who seek to murder the innocent in a delusional effort to push forth a twisted ideological/religious stance on the world.