CinWeekly: Go Miami

If you scroll down on Cinweekly's "You Tell Us" page, the "Brian G." mentioned might be someone I know.

LaShawn Pettus-Brown Googled into Custody

LaShawn Pettus-Brown is not a professional fugitive. He went on a date with a computer literate women who maybe saw right through Pettus-Brown's act and thought that maybe he was to good to be true. She decided to Google him, and that led her to the FBI. Score one in the fight against crime to Google.com.

UPDATE: This made a Guardian column.

Luken and Miller Sitting in a Tree

Greg Korte writes today about Mayor Charlie Luken sitting next to Dennis Miller at the SOTU. A coup for Korte for getting this scoop on "hot" topic, at least on my blog. I could take this as a joke on me, but with Dean being the Blog candidate it still makes perfect sense beyond my myopic view of the world:

But when the speech started, Miller cheered like a blogger at a Howard Dean rally. "He must have stood up 70 or 80 times," said Luken, who said he himself only stood up half as often.

Greg also showed Councilman Chris Smitherman continuing his rookie mistakes. I think Smitherman has a bit of an ego and over worked sense of self-importance. Pointing out Smitherman's lack of explanation regarding why he needed to know what High School each police officer attended is something that I wish more local media would pick up. It would be very interesting to learn why Smitherman needed to know that less than 60% went to Cincinnati area schools. The line referenced Chris's father being the principal of the #2 school was classic and I think the Whistleblower had it first too.

New Miami Prof Media Blog

Christopher S. Kelley, a professor at Miami, has a media watchdog blog called "Media Watch." I will be checking it out and may add it to my roll.

Cincinnati Post Editorial

The Post comes close to calling out the President on where the WMD's are. Will the Enquirer do the same? I will guess they will stick to their spin from last year. They were ahead of the Bush spin by a few months, or were just willing participants to ignore the WMD issue from the start. I guess being lied to is something journalists are used to, and they discount it, even from a President.

Missing Questions for Jack Espelage

Mr. Espelage: Have you forgotten about WMD? Or do the ends justify the means and getting Saddam was worth it? I wonder when we invade North Korea to free their people. How about China? How about Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria? How about half of the former Soviet Republics?

Bottom line for Jack: Yes getting Saddam was a positive for the world, but the means to do so were not good in the long run. We could have waited 6 months or more to act, but politics prevented that from happening. We did not need to fight this war. Bush chose to fight it. You can like that choice, but you will have to ignore the misinformation you were given about Iraq's WMD's and ties to "terrorism." If you like being the manipulated fool, doing the bidding for your dear leader, that is your right. I would suggest you understand that the rest of us don't like being lied to, and Ted Kennedy was right to shake his head at Bush during the SOTU.

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.

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.

Smitherman vs. Elder High School

Greg Korte has a story about Councilman Chris Smitherman's early weeks in office. I am so far not impressed with Smitherman. What I see so far is someone making trouble for trouble's sake. I don't mind someone making politics entertaining, but Smitherman's tone is arrogant. His motives appear good, but his tone comes across like holier-than-thou preacher. He acts like a crusader, bent on bringing down the police chief. He also appears to be wasting the City Manager's time. If Korte's description of his memo writing is true, then I think it might be useful to limit it to one memo a day. If they are information requests, then a large one once a week might go over better in the Lemmie's office. It would really go over better out here in the public if Smitherman did not try and keep his requests quiet. If you are going to rattle cages, then you had better do it out in the open. Otherwise it looks like a shakedown.

Korte was able to get a look at the Elder High memo response. We learn that Elder is indeed the local high school with the most Alumni on the force, but only 76 of the 1,044 officers attended Elder.

Rank/Local HS/No. of PO/Rate
1: Elder - 76 - 7.28%
2: Western Hills - 69 - 6.61%
3: Oak Hills - 46 - 4.41%
4: Withrow - 39 - 3.74%
5: Woodward - 37 - 3.54%
6: Aiken - 36 - 3.45%
7: Roger Bacon - 35 - 3.35%
8: Hughes - 32 - 3.07%
9: Colerain - 27 - 2.59%
10: Walnut Hills - 25 - 2.39%
11: LaSalle - 24 - 2.30%
12: Purcell Marian - 23 - 2.20%
13: Mount Healthy - 22 - 2.11%
14: Seton - 20 - 1.92%
15: St. Xavier - 16 - 1.53%
15(Tie): Princeton - 15 - 1.44%
16: Anderson - 15 - 1.44%
18: Forest Park - 14 - 1.34%
19: Northwest - 13 - 1.25%
20: Moeller - 11 - 1.05%
20(Tie): McNicholas - 11 - 1.05%
Total - 606 - 58.05%
Total of PO - 1,044
Non Cincy HS - 438 - 41.95%

The 606 total might include some duplicates of officers who attended more than one high school. These numbers blow out the Elder myth. The only "fact" that drives the myth is that the number of senior officers who are Elder grades is most likely higher than the rank and file of the force.

Dennis Miller's Darkside Conversion

Dennis Miller has a new show coming on CNBC and according to this AP report he will not say anything negative about Bush:

"I like him," Miller explained. "I'm going to give him a pass. I take care of my friends."

So basically Miller will just do what FOX News does?

I will find it hard in the future to watch Miller if his attacks sound like they are Rush Limbaugh talking points with a thesaurus treatment. In this article he attacks Peter Jennings for not liking Bush. He LOVES George Bush so much that he will give him a "pass" and he wants people to take him as anything more than a shill? If you want to do pro-Bush humor, fine do it, but you have to rely on the Talk Radio or FOX News audience for any ratings. I don't know if they will come to CNBC, but who knows. I am most amazed in reading that Miller's new show will only air once a week. I guess Dennis has a whole lot more things to work on.

UPDATE: I was wrong, and did not read the website correctly, but he is on Monday through Friday plus Sunday.

'You don't live in CLEVELAND'

Well, at least not any more if you are one of the laid off Cleveland Police Department officers who move to Cincinnati if the reported plan by Cincinnati City Manager Valerie Lemmie to hire some of those out of work officers works out. This plan actually is the best thing to come of City Hall in a long time. I don't see anyone questioning the plan, unless you don't like cops or think we have to many now. There are a few activists who will whine about it, but they whine about everything unless it puts money in their pocket.

Ethan Hahn and Greg Mann comment on this issue, and both agree that it is a good move.

Temperament

Uberblogger Atrios links to a video made to look like a commercial. It is a partisan and harsh presentation made by an individual person, but it shows where the media has failed in it's attack on Howard Dean's "temperament" and whether he is fit to be president, let alone dog catcher. Bush’s “temperament” got little discussion back in 2000, but seems to have been all but forgotten. The Bush part of the video is documented at the Smoking Gun, which is generally accepted to be a credible source.

First Kay, Now Powell?

Is Colin Powell coming to his senses? Well, the BBC news reports paints that picture. CNN and the AP reports don't have the same shade as the BBC, but all point out the basic element, Powell is backing off his UN claims about WMD. Will the media wake up? Will the New Hampshire circus drown out this story?

FBI Has Found Lashawn Pettus-Brown

The FBI has confirmed they have Lashawn Pettus-Brown in custody in New York City.

Kay: No WMD Stockpiles

Kay stated regarding stockpiles of WMD:

"I don't think they existed," Kay told Reuters in a telephone interview. "What everyone was talking about is stockpiles produced after the end of the last (1991) Gulf War and I don't think there was a large-scale production program in the '90s," he said.

Kay said he believes most of what is going to be found in the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has been found and that the hunt will become more difficult once America turns over governing the country to the Iraqis.

Bush in the 2003 SOTU:

Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent. In such quantities, these chemical agents could also kill untold thousands. He's not accounted for these materials. He has given no evidence that he has destroyed them.

U.S. intelligence indicates that Saddam Hussein had upwards of 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents. Inspectors recently turned up 16 of them -- despite Iraq's recent declaration denying their existence. Saddam Hussein has not accounted for the remaining 29,984 of these prohibited munitions. He's given no evidence that he has destroyed them.

From three Iraqi defectors we know that Iraq, in the late 1990s, had several mobile biological weapons labs. These are designed to produce germ warfare agents, and can be moved from place to a place to evade inspectors. Saddam Hussein has not disclosed these facilities. He's given no evidence that he has destroyed them.

So I think we can all say there were not any WMD (at least no significant amounts) in Iraq at the start of the war. No more obscure maybes. The question should be asked, why did the President think there was. I believe that the intelligence Bush referred to in 2003 was not good and that at least Bush's advisors knew it, if not Bush and Cheney themselves.

This is as big a sign of incompetence and or deceit that an Administration can have. Will the media, will the Democratic nominee have the ability or the courage to call the President on this? If handled correctly this would be a point raised and raised again in a debate that would be undefendable for Bush. Winning the debates is not going to win the election, but they do matter.