Ram23

Apparently, you get what you pay for when using fake Uber: https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2017/11/02/mother-car-during-road-rage-incident-feared-her-childs-safety/828042001 Investigators say 29-year-old Jasmine Cheatham was the driver in the car that was hit, and a mother along with her 3-month-old son were in the backseat... Police said Cheatham jumped out of the car and started shooting at the silver car that hit her. ... She said she doesn't know Cheatham, but heard she was running a fake ride share service through a friend and called Cheatham to run a few errands for her son's birthday party this weekend, who will be turning two.

^^ The advertising company may have ordered the flyers but they aren't the ultimate source, someone paid them to run these ads. I don't see what Winburn's motive would be here - whatever beef he has with Cranley, he has far more political disagreements with Simpson, why would he want to help her to increase black voter turnout? I think the same color scheme and template as "Black Agenda" is a better lead to follow up on. Though, for some reason I don't think we'll find out who paid for these until after Tuesday.

As a wise man once said “They (China) have trains that go 300 miles per hour. We have trains that go chug … chug … chug.”

It's now become a whodunit: PX: Who's behind mystery mailers attacking Mayor John Cranley? Whoever's behind the anonymous and likely illegal fliers that surfaced this week smearing Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley, be warned: The Ohio Democratic Party is hellbent on finding you. The party plans to file a "John Doe" complaint Friday with the Ohio Elections Commission regarding three fliers that did not list a disclaimer saying who paid for them, a violation of state elections law. The fliers throw gas on an already nasty mayoral race between Democrats Cranley and Yvette Simpson. The fliers do not mention Simpson, who is African-American. Simpson's campaign said it had nothing to do with the fliers, nor does it know who put them out but did not disavow the message... ...The fliers all have a color red-and-white color scheme and template similar to the one the Black Agenda used to announce its slate of endorsed candidates in the mayoral and city council races. The group is led by former Mayor Dwight Tillery, who has turned on Cranley since supporting him in 2013. Black Agenda endorsed Cranley's challenger, Yvette Simpson.

^ No, I don't see anything in her statement that admonishes the content of the flyers, indicating she's fine with it. And while that one sentence is a denial of involvement, but it's preceded by an entire paragraph that's a big deflection - a classic "whataboutism" - claiming she's the real victim of attack ads. That's what's most suspicious, her campaign could have just denied involvement but instead they wrote a whole paragraph that essentially spelled out their potential motive for going dirty.

So someone is spreading around flyers painting Cranley as a racist: Anonymous flyers accuse Cranley of racism, mismanagement Simpson's campaign's response is strange. It leads me to believe that someone in her campaign, or someone close to is, knows what's up with the flyers. I don't particularly like either candidate, but this type of stuff out of Simpson's campaign is really getting old (I'm talking specifically about her response, not the ad itself). She really should have just said they have no involvement and admonished the flyers instead of deflecting.

^ I believe the OTR Conservation Guidelines say neon signs can be approved on a case by case basis, but I'm not sure what the history of approvals is in OTR - it's possible they are de facto banned if they are rarely or never actually approved. Internally illuminated signs are banned. The real problem is the size limitation - projecting signs can only be 3' x 6' max. Compare that size to the "PAINT" sign on Kaze, which looks like it's about 30' tall. Having a few more of those around would be nice, IMO.

Right, the ballots do not list party affiliation and I imagine for every one of us, here, who know which candidates belong to which parties and will factor that into the decision, there are ~5 people who walk into the voting booth, have no idea at all, and vote based on name recognition.

The two situations really aren't comparable. As I recall it, the Banks got a ~ $2.75 million loan from the city to help pay for retail tenants, some of which presumably went to Toby Keith's, but that was all paid back by the developer by 2013. The restaurant failed, ultimately, and I think left behind a small amount of unpaid sales tax, but it really didn't cost the taxpayer much - the biggest losers were the developer and employees. Liz Rogers, on the other hand, got a $600,000 grant and a $300,000 loan. The city ultimately excused $200,000 of that loan, and will (hopefully, some day) recover $100,000 of the nearly $1 million they wasted. So far as I know, this type of handout quickly turning into a total failure is pretty unique. It reminds me of the LaShawn Pettus-Brown snafu, another huge waste of tax dollars that I think Cranley was heavily involved in.

We've been getting a surprising number of Republican mailers, several a day. They are all very specific in that they want people to only vote for the 3 endorsed council candidates and no one else. They do not mention the mayoral race at all but a few of them did point out that "Democrats" tried to kill all of our children (in so many words) by extorting Children's Hospital, which I took as a subtle hint that Republicans should vote for Cranley.

During the forum blackout, the Enquirer had a few interesting pieces on various races in Cincinnati. This one, calling out Cincinnati City Council candidates with tax liens was popular: Cincinnati City Council candidates faced tax liens More than a third of those running for Cincinnati City Council faced tax liens in the past, an Enquirer review of court records found. Among those still paying back outstanding liens: Councilman Wendell Young. In addition to Wendell Young - Kelli Prather, Tonya Dumas, Tamaya Dennard, Ozie Davis III, Lesley Jones, Brian Garry, Michelle Dillingham, and Erica Black-Johnson also have faced recent tax trouble.

^^^ What was really nuts is that it was the same two starting pitchers as game one, which was a pitcher's duel that lasted only 2:28, making it the fastest world series game since 1992.

^^ I think 11'-0" is the sidewalk width, the land that's being freed up looks closer to 15-25' wide (it varies by block). These are still small slivers of land that would be impracticable to build upon by themselves, but in terms of square footage they are valuable given the location. I'm just curious if the city is selling the land at market rate or for $1 each (or something in between). There are only a handful of property owners along the south side of Liberty, though, so maybe they're all on board with a fair price. It looks like 15th And Race LLC is the big winner as they are set to gain all of the land west of Race Street, which is the widest swathe.

Who will own the new property created when the ROW is reduced in width? Is it given to the existing adjacent property owners? I know it's a sliver of land that really couldn't be a parcel in and of itself, but it's still quite valuable.

The endorsements say a lot about this issue. A comprehensive list can be found here: https://ballotpedia.org/Ohio_Issue_2,_Drug_Price_Standards_Initiative_(2017) There's not a whole lot of support for Issue 2, but there is a whole lot of opposition. A lot of the organizations in the coalition against it seem to be professional medical organizations, as well.

^ "Midwest" in the sentence below should be "cities:" "Certainly Cleveland exhibits it, Detroit does, and many other Midwest do as well, both large and small."

Fox Sports paid $200 million to outbid ESPN for 2018 World Cup broadcast rights in the US. They must be really regretting that decision now, I bet the ratings are going to be absolutely terrible without the US team. Apparently Telemundo has Spanish language broadcast rights in the US, they'll probably end up with more domestic viewers than Fox Sports.

OTR needs a building like this one. The neighborhood, in places, is beginning to look too contrived. It could use some flair here and there, lest it become sterile.

^ In the wake of that, I noticed that sometime this week CPD rolled out those huge, very bright lights and placed them strategically all around Calhoun/McMillan. Today, I saw this announcement: So they will be closing the same stretch of street again this weekend. That whole area has really become a sight to see on weekend nights. It has to be a huge headache for UC administrators. They've invested so much into those few blocks and on weekend nights the whole area is complete and utter bedlam. I can only imagine the phone calls these 18 year olds living in the fancy apartments overlooking this must be making to their moms, who in turn must be calling in complaints to UC on a near nonstop basis.

Yvette has routinely let her campaign get bogged down in nonsensical situations, which to me illustrate a complete lack of awareness, experience, and leadership. Be it the “Stale Pale Male” debacle, the Bockfest Body Shaming, Columbus Day, Children’s Hospital, etc. These are topics that reflect poorly on her and they should not, and would not be issues if she hadn’t made the mistakes that created them. These are attempts to virtue signal / appeal to subsets of her base but each time she alienates more people than she appeals to, and she gives her opposition easy headlines. I think the Children’s issue is probably the single biggest item, at this point, to come out of an otherwise uneventful campaign that has no major point of contention like the streetcar in 2013. Cranley and Simpson each have their platform and talking points, but none of that is grabbing any headlines and we all already knew what those platforms were. It’s pretty obvious to me that Simpson’s last second motion was an attempted political stunt, but it went terribly awry. She might as well have walked into the hospital and ate the pudding cups off of sick kids' lunch trays. She’s lucky it happened early enough that some people may forget it by November, but if no other headline grabbing story comes up between now and then people are going to remember it.

One of the things soccer has going for it over football and baseball is the short length of the game. There's a pretty small variable at the end, but for the most part everyone knows the entire thing is going to be over in 2 hours. Baseball and football are another hour longer than that, and college football is even longer. That makes a big difference for families, especially on weeknights. Everyone can be at home and in bed by 10:00 after a 7:00 soccer game. Chances are you'll still be at GABP at 10:00 if you try to watch a full Reds game that starts at 7:10. Both the NFL and MLB are aware of the game length problem, and have taken steps to shorten games in recent years.

Hartwell is a well kept secret, IMO. It's right next to Wyoming, where houses of a similar quality and size sell for 5X as much just a few blocks away. I think schools are the primary factor, there. Wyoming is typically one of the best districts in the state, whereas Hartwell is Cincinnati Public Schools, one of the worst, so it doesn't attract many families.

^2013 was really the Reds last shot, for awhile. They lost the wild card game in the playoffs and everyone sort of knew that was the end of that run, and that it would be 5-10 years before they were decent again. I had always gone to 10-25 games a year, and listened to the games on the radio every day even in bad years, but since the end of that 2013 season it's been more like 5 games or so and I think I've only listened to a handful of games this year. These long "rebuilding" periods create a lot of apathy in general. I'm pretty fickle when it comes to sports, too. If the teams I like start sucking I stop caring. I treat it like anything else - if I had a restaurant I really liked and their quality took a huge, sudden nosedive, I wouldn't keep eating crappy food just to support them.

While some NFL players continue to disrespect the country with their poor behavior during the national anthem - Bryan Price sets a great example by pausing his heated argument with umpires to stand at attention for "God Bless America:" Patriotism saves Bryan Price from ejection http://www.cincinnati.com/story/sports/mlb/reds/2017/09/10/patriotism-saves-bryan-price-ejection/651959001/ As Price does many times when a Reds player is ejected, he quickly exited the dugout to argue in favor of his player. The problem was timing. Gennett’s strikeout had ended the top of the seventh, and the Reds were playing on a Sunday. In ballparks across the country, that’s when the normal progression of the game is halted for the playing of God Bless America...

Ohio is switching to the 2017 building code this year, which is based on the 2015 IBC. Don't quote me on this because I haven't poured through it yet and its not a type of project I ever work on, but I believe the new code will allow for multi-story "podiums" of type 1A construction. So it may be possible for this project to use a 3 story concrete base, with 5 stories of wood frame above. Previously that was limited to a one story base with 5 stories of wood frame, which is what you see practically everywhere around CUF (and really, all around the country). The 5+1 buildings already seem pretty massive in CUF and add a lot of density so this will be a nice addition for the purposes of density.