Saturday, August 16, 2003

Commissioner Dowlin to Run Again
The 73 year old will seek another term next year for Hamilton County Commissioner. Dowlin is anti-rail and it would be nice to get someone not as set in his ways, yes you can read old in that comment. Age is not a factor, but when based on age you don't wish to change, that becomes a problem. This fellow thinks "Even though he opposes light rail, he says were it adopted today it would take 30 years to implement and he was[sic] other, faster alternatives." Just because he will not alive to enjoy a rail system is not a reason for it not to pass.

This announcement will surely piss off some Republican upstarts from the Northern Suburbs, who are surely itching to run.

UPDATE: The Enquirer reports that Dowlin will likely face a democratic challenge from former state Representative Wayne Coates. The Post reported that the GOP chairman Mike Barrett felt there would be no competition. Barrett thinks Dowlin's name will carry him through. What name? Sure, his has the advantage of incumbency, but it is not like his name is Luken, Deters, or Heimlich.
More Power Outage Fodder
It is not newsworthy, but the rain yesterday knocked my power out here at the palatial Griffin Estate. I was at work at the time, but I had to reset a clock and my stereo was on "demo," a sign the power was out.

Giz over at afternoon.para-bellum.net reports of some more significant power outages recently in Delhi, but still relatively short. Giz's blog needs permalinks. Both incidents are noteworthy for local news, not national news. 50 million people losing power is national news and demands coverage. Some talk radio folks were scolding the media for making to much of this. I guess they don't know anyone in the area's hit. This was huge news and it got big coverage in part do to the simple fact that the TV networks are headquartered in the affected areas. When news is close to home, human journalists are opted to give it more attention. That is in part why Detroit and Cleveland's troubles got little attention. This power outage makes it clear that local news coverage is not well served by national networks. The Ohio News Network (ONN) did a good job here in Ohio with Ohio specific news, mostly carrying feeds from Toledo and Cleveland TV stations.

The Cincinnati Post has the typical "are we ready" story. Here's the Enquirer's story.

Lawmakers are "demanding" answers. Give it a rest folks. Let the water pressure build up before you start the blame game. Both Democrats and Republicans in Washington are playing this game, so if anyone tries to say one side is worse than the other you might want to correct their ignorance.

UPDATE: Ethan Hahn has some thoughts.

Friday, August 15, 2003

Not MY Bag
I am sure to be pressured by my co-workers to try this, but I will not join the insta-date group described in Maggie Downs' latest column. I hate first date chitchat and doing it over and over again in one evening is about as appealing as having my teeth drilled. I will stick to randomly meeting women in bookstores. Judging a person by what they read and how they drink expensive coffee is more my style of date screening. I guess I better start setting foot in bookstores more often, and keep my nose out of my book. I have had no luck with this approach, but hey, it beats having to expose one's inability to socially interact with other human beings. (I have to work on that inner monologue.)

Follow-up: Couldn't I have found a better cliché than "having my teeth drilled?"
Hispanics vs. Whites
Here is the problem with this article about housing discrimination. I am 1/8th Latino. My Great Grandmother was from Panama/Columbia. She was "white." So, like most others out there, the Enquirer wants to paint Hispanics/Latinos as one monolithic group to compare with monolithic whites, a nice simple "black and white" story. I would surmise that most of the Hispanics in question were Mexican, and were mestizo (mixed Amerindian and white). So what are we trying to compare here, ethnic groups or races? There is no "Hispanic Race," and comparing race is really a no win action. Ethnic discrimination would have required the disclosure of the white people's ethnic groups, unless they are some how considered falsely blanketed as "ethnic Americans." I therefore find this report to be comparing apples and oranges. I would consider without much evidence that Mexicans and other Latin-American ethnic/nationality groups are treated poorly by landlords and often discriminated against. I wonder how many non-white landlords treated the Hispanic people differently than white landlords.

UPDATE: Similar treatment in the Post.

Thursday, August 14, 2003

FOX News is a Sucker for Power (Blackout Story)
FOX News just reported they had reports that the power was out in Dayton and even Cincinnati. At this point no one else is reporting Dayton, and none of the Dayton outlets are reporting that. I can surely testify that Cincinnati's power is working fine. Rumors really have no place being reported on a story as big as this. People in this part of the state clean out Kroger’s when an inch of snow is forecasted. If even a few ignorant souls believed the faux reports, it might turn tragic. Jumping the gun is a fault of most Cable News Outlets, and FOX is known for hyperbole.

UPDATE: WLWT-TV is reporting no local outages. A Dayton TV station did report a report in Middletown, Ohio (between Dayton and Cincinnati.

UPDATE #2: The Enquirer is reporting there was an unrelated power outage in Middletown that cut power to the south side of town due to a transformer going down after 5 PM tonight. This outage was not related to the larger outage affecting NYC.
Theocracy Today, Theocracy Tomorrow, Theocracy Forever
Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore is refusing to comply with a Federal Court Order. The difference now as opposed to 40 years ago is the President in the White House. Bush wants a country like Roy Moore wants: One Nation, One Religion: No Exceptions. George Wallace veiled his beliefs under "states rights." Will Roy Moore do the same? Religious bigotry is growing in this country, and those who don't bow down will find it more difficult to live as they choose. Roy Moore and his allies will likely veil their actions under the banner of victim hood, the poor Southern Christians can’t seem to rid themselves of those Northern Heathens. History repeats itself, and the culture wars will wage on in earnest. I plan on defending mine, but I wonder why I have to. Why does my culture worry Mr. Moore? I don’t share his religion, and I legally can’t be judged under his religion in a government court, so why does he seem to think otherwise? Rule of Law is a bedrock of our society. It does not bend for a religious zealot.

Wednesday, August 13, 2003

CityBeat Sells Out?
Ok, I read this letter to the editor in today's CityBeat and I had to re-read the editor's response a couple of times to make sure I read it straight.

Where's the Love?
I'm writing to ask you to please reinstate Savage Love in your weekly print edition. This was one of my favorite columns in your paper.

I'm disappointed to learn you have made this a Web-only column in order to increase traffic to CityBeat's site. Dan Savage's column is available online at many Web sites and will not necessarily increase traffic to your site.

I wrote a protest letter to Kroger when they removed your paper from their stores because of the addition of Savage Love. Asking your readers to jump through this extra hoop now seems unfair.

-- Charles Mitchell, Mount Washington

Editor Responds: Yes, we're making Savage Love a Web-only column in order to increase traffic to our site, but it's been moved from the paper primarily in order to help us increase CityBeat circulation.
I read this and it says to me that CityBeat pulled the Savage Love column from the print edition in order to get the newspaper back into Kroger stores. Savage Love is a syndicated love/sex advice column run in many alternative weekly newspapers across the country. It's content can be "graphic "at times, and I mean graphic in the sense that most parents would not want their young kids to read it. Removing the content that might be considered "objectionable" would make the publication more retail friendly.

I am floored that CityBeat would basically admit that they removed the column in order to increase circulation. Are they positioning themselves to better compete with the Enquirer's weekly? The new Enquirer weekly will surely be available at Kroger's and every other grocery stores in the tri-state area. Compromising content for the sake of sales is the best way to maintain your market position. The activist friends of CityBeat call it selling out.
A Sting, Not a Plot
Josh Marshall writes on the arrest of weapons smugglers and points that there was no "plot" against America, this was a sting operation. There were no terrorists involved, just faux ones. Now, where is the righty bloggers attack on the media for spinning the story?.........I am waiting.............opps, my bad. The story that was spun favors the Bush Administration and favors the positions taken by rightwing bloggers, so we can't expect them to cut off their own heads now, even though it would mean good journalism. Consistency in reporting is subjective so, we can't expect them to point out everything now can we? They spend their time watching to see if the New York Times' spelling is correct, so facts in other outlets are just as important as spelling at the Times.

I wonder if the righty bloggers are going to post on the Franken-Fox story. A few of them have made comments, but if CNN was suing Ann Coulter, war would be declared and Ted Turner would be burned at the stake. Yes, even though he no longer works for CNN or AOL-Time Warner. It would be that big of a deal. Blogging history would be made. Blog Harbor? Bridge Over the River Blog? I can see the movie version now. Andrew Sullivan battling Aaron Brown in a space station with laser pointers.

Tuesday, August 12, 2003

Is Convergys Pulling a Fast One?
Per reader Sam: The Salt Lake Tribune is reporting "Convergys Corp. a week ago confirmed plans to move at least 100 technical support jobs at its Taylorsville call center to an overseas center." Taylorsville is in Utah just to keep it in perspective. What does this mean for keeping jobs here in Cincinnati? The jobs going overseas are mostly professional jobs. What kind of jobs are they planning on adding downtown? Only call center jobs? I am sure people will be happy to get any job they can get, but that will not add as much to our tax base if they are only hourly jobs, with significant pay limits. Call center's in downtowns are difficult to keep staffed. The costs of getting downtown and working downtown are often prohibitive for lower level jobs, which make up the bulk of call center staffs. It sounds as if Convergys’s promise to increase the number of employees downtown will not create new jobs, it will just be a transfer of staff from the Norwood Convergys call center. Who's the sucker now? (We are, We are)
Following My Lead?
The Enquirer and the Post have similar stories about Larry Flynt's hearing being scheduled after the special California election. I seem to recall that I mentioned that very fact yesterday.

Advantage: Blogs!

Monday, August 11, 2003

Solidarity!
"Eschaton - Fair and Balanced" walks arm in arm with Al Franken and his FOX News troubles. Some one at News Corp has really lost all sense of reality. I would like to see FOX try and prove they are "fair and balanced." That would be a miracle worthy of a saint. [LINK via Calpundit]
Larry Flynt
Well at least the hearing date for Larry Flynt is after the special California election. Nothing should hold Larry back from winning 1% of the vote. That 1%, could make the difference in a field of 200 people.
Talent for a Melee
I don't understand how this kind of thing can happen again. How is there not enough adult supervision to control a crowd of teenagers that large from getting out of control? I think the venue chosen for the "talent show" put on by a group called "Putting' Cincinnati on the Map" was poorly chosen. High School Dances are not held in a public square where the kids can come and go, and any troublemaker can get in. Poor planning led to a disgraceful outcome. I wish the kids were better behaved, but who puts on such an event in the middle of downtown? I hope planners of the Black Family Reunion learned from their mistakes last year. All statements indicate they did and will be prepared to handle the kids. I hope so. Image is a shallow thing, but it can matter, and a wild bunch of kids running through town is not a good image for a Family Reunion event.

Why didn't the Enquirer have an article on this story?
UC News Record
It appears the Enquirer(3rd story) and WXIX know how to write a more accurate headline than the Post, or at least they know how to check a website for some basic information. The News Record now has the story as well.
Scribble Jam
I do not know much about what this event was about, but it looked interesting. I wonder how it got elevated to Vandelism.

Sunday, August 10, 2003

Bronson has Been Drinking to Much Wine
Peter must have been drunk when he wrote this. Now, when you are drunk often one tends to let down their guard and speak one's mind freely without limit. Here Peter is doing two incredibly stupid things. First he is letting his bigotry out with a vengeance. How can a man who is supposedly educated and an informed person state the following?
The Catholic Church can't seem to connect the dots that link homosexual priests to sexual assaults on boys.
Peter, you need to for once look up the difference between homosexuality and pedophilia. You will note they are not the same thing. They are not linked. Bigots who wish to attack homosexuals try to link them, but offer no factual data to support their unfounded claims, which sounds like what Bronson did. Peter then exhibits his own ignorance about his own religion wit this statement:
The Bible is unambiguous: Homosexuality is a sin like adultery.
Did Peter rewrite the Ten Commandments? Are the Ten Commandments now not the highest Christian dogmatic law? Where is the reference to homosexuality in the Ten Commandments? I can find the commandment on adultery in there. That is clear. Homosexuality is not a comparable sin to adultery. First of all it is not even treated the same in most churches. When was the last time a minister or a politician or any individual denied rights or kicked out of a church for committing adultery or for getting a divorce? Adultery is not considered a big deal to people like Bronson, if it was he would never have supported Ronald Regan. Homosexuality is a footnote in the bible. There are plenty of other rules, no pork, how you grow crops, circumcision, and killing adulterers that are not practiced by nearly all Christians. Those rules are just as clear as the homosexual decrees, yet I bet Peter Bronson does not comply with all of those requirements. If I see him at next month’s Oktoberfest eating a Brat I will be sure to shun him for "breaking God's law."

I am not the only one with an opinion on Bronson's column. City Council Candidate John Schlagetter sent me a copy of the email he sent to Bronson:
Peter: whatever happened to "hate the sin but love the sinner?"

Opinion pieces are one thing; these unrelentingly uninformed and poorly-constructed assaults upon the Enquirer's readers' intelligence are growing tiresome.

As I understand it, the Bible contains half a dozen remonstrations against homosexual "acts" but over two hundred against heterosexual acts- what's the bigger problem here?

Your comparison of homosexuality to adultery is logically flawed. Homosexuality is a state of being; it can exist without volitional action. Thus we have homosexual (and heterosexual, et.al.) virgins. One is homosexual simply by virtue of sexual attraction or affectional preference for others of one's own sex. Age here is not an issue unless the attraction is acted upon.

By contrast, adultery cannot exist without the commission of an act. One cannot be an adulterer without first committing an act of adultery.

Once again, your attempt to causally link pedophilia to homosexuality is beyond the pale. Yes, pedophilia and ephibophilia (I'm not bothering to
spell check this morning) are problems in the Catholic priesthood. Is the incidence rate of pedophilia higher in this population than the general
population? Possibly. Is this causally the result of homosexuality? Of course not, no more so than different-sex pedophilia is causally the result
of heterosexuality.

Two points come into play to refute your argument (hysterically shared by CCVers et.al. which they find necessary for effective fundraising):

1. Pedophilia is not about sex, it is about power. It is about the ability to control and manipulate one who lacks the emotional and intellectual development to consent to sex with an adult.

2. The incidence rate of same sex behavior will of course be higher among single sex populations: prisons, the military, et.al. This will have much to so with the use of sexual substitutes, "making due." You've also reported on the problem of rape in prison, to your credit. Of course rape is about violence not sex and does not comport with this discussion. Others may be "gay for pay," intrinsically heterosexual but willing to perform mechanical sexual acts for compensation. Thus the incidence rate of "gay sex" must be considered separate from the incidence rate of homosexuality per se.

Should homosexuality ever be generally accepted (different from behavior tolerance) as what I characterize "common cause variation," a one to two percent incidence rate in the otherwise statistically normal heterosexual population, then maybe closeted and conflicted individuals will be more comfortable openly pursuing healthy and consensual adult relationships rather than pursuing what they might consider "easy marks" (the young) or furtively skulking about public restrooms (many closeted men, including those who are married, are too afraid to be seen in known gay-friendly establishments to socialize, seeking instead short-term gratification concommitant with risky and socially unacceptable behavior).

As "common cause variation," homosexuality is never going away. We are hard wired this way; this is the crux of the "nature" argument. Compare this to the reparative or restorative therapy camp believing that homosexuality can be "unlearned." They believe homosexuality is "special cause variation," existing outside the statistically normal process of sexual orientation and that it can be done away with; this is the "nurture" argument confounding same-sex behavior with orientation. The inability to distinguish between the two dooms this approach.

If the Church were generally to relax its restrictions on the ability of its priests to marry or otherwise engage in healthy consensual adult relationships, I predict the incidence rate of same sex pedophilia in the Church would plummit. Be sure, I am not excusing any such misbehavior, I simply think there are intelligent ways to reduce it rather than pounding sand about the "menace" of homosexuality.

As our friends in quality management remind us, "Fix the problem, not the blame."

Hope you a great vacation!

Regards, J.

John Schlagetter


Peter's second stupid thing, is his embrace of the Vineyard as the next generation of Christian Churches. I don't know much about that church and its teachings. I would on the surface make one judgment about it. I think they might not care much about homosexuality, and they might even welcome homosexuals, without the worry about "changing" them. They might even ordain gay/lesbian ministers. I don't know this as a fact, but their website really is not concerned about putting forward a fundamentalist Christian Agenda, and I would surmise they at a minimum don't share Peter's crusade against gays.

Bronson still must be in vacation mode.

Saturday, August 09, 2003


My latest XRay column is now online: "Cheerleaders, Tanks, and Blogs, Oh My: The Good, the Bad, and the Propaganda from the War."
The Ballad of Hannity and Livingston
Last night Sean Hannity appeared at Xavier University. Not much has been reported on what happened. All I could find was the following quote from the front page of 55KRC's web page:
Sean Hannity and 55KRC Thee Talk Station would like to thank everyone who made the night a complete success. Neither rain nor protests (8 protestors...WOW!...that proved a point. Nice job Nate!!) could keep us down. Thanks from 55KRC Thee Talk Station
8 protestors sounds about right. I was hoping for a little more action. When you put two groups of buffoons together (Boycott B and Hannity Fans) at one venue, one would have expected some fireworks. Well, I guess it was the weather that kept the conflict to a minimum. I am sure the Boycott B group were there with the usual racist rhetoric, and Hannity's brand of theocracy was surely being preached with the usual fire and brimstone and bigotry. If these folks were all the same race they would fit in like syrup and pancakes.
Fascist is as Fascist Does
Yes, I do use the word Fascist a whole hell of a lot. I use it generally as an adjective, not as meaning "one who practices fascism." It seems the right wingers are a little pissed about liberals using the word so much. Well, when conservatives stop using communist and socialist incorrectly on any liberal who is not in favor of capital gains tax cuts, then maybe I will give a rat's ass. Until then, and likely even after, I will use fascist where it fits.
UC News Record Former Editor Arrested
Dale F. Smith, editor for the 2002-2003 school year, was arrested for stealing thousands of dollars using a credit card processing machine from the UC News Record. Smith is not the current editor, which was not clear from the headline of the Post. This is a blow to a vibrant publication. I hope at least some of the money can be recovered or at least in this case the News Record will not be held liable for the missing money. If found guilty, I hope Smith sees jail time.