Opinion

We’ve all heard of the old axiom about aging “like a fine wine.” Of course, in Ohio politics hardly anything is aging finely these days, including our recently-rendered-useless amendments to Ohio’s Constitution that attempted to curtail hyper-partisan gerrymandering, passed respectively in 2015 and 2018. Another thing on this list of items that “haven’t aged well” in Ohio politics is our feckless Governor Mike DeWine, who has ducked and dodged almost every difficult political battle he’s faced since taking office in 2019. He’s also seemingly always surrounded by corruption as the ever-growing HB 6 scandal gets closer and closer to his door. In fact, the name DeWine has grown so unpopular with Democrats, Libertarians –– and even Republicans –– that it’s hard to see exactly how our Governor wins reelection.

Paris 75 Cafe in Olde Dublin is a quaint and simply adorable boutique teeming with European flair and fascination. It’s not a dine-indoors restaurant experience, however they have a patio, a few tables, and chairs to sit on outdoors and snack on the several foreign foods they offer to eat or drink: chocolate bars that offer either non-vegan and vegan milk (almond-based) and chocolate - yes, not the usual dark chocolate. 

Other treats include: handcrafted French macaroons and other pastries (non-vegan, but some are dairy-free and gluten-free); fudge (both non-vegan and three vegan options which are vanilla, rum raisin, and salted-caramel; a cashew nut-based vegan craft cheeze brand from Spain with seven uncommon flavors in the US/vegan market to choose from including bleu cheeze, pimento, onion, white, quince, truffle, and blueberry; as well as delicious pumpkin-based vegan jerky, vegan mayo, vegan pesto, and an herb spread by the same company.

By Nobel Peace Prize Watch, April 28, 2022

Honorable Prime Ministers of the five Nordic countries, Magdalena Anderson, Mette Frederiksen, Katrín Jakobsdóttir, Sanna Marin, and Jonas Gahr Støre

The war in Ukraine once again shows that the world is like a city with brutal gangs constantly roaming the streets, looting and fighting with loads of heavy weapons. No one will ever feel safe in such a city. The same applies at the international level. No amount of weaponry can make us safe. No country will be safe until also neighboring countries can feel safe. The present international system is broken, to avoid future wars we need deep reforms.

Thousands of out-of-towners and Angelenos flocked to attend the 13th annual Turner Classic Movies Classic Film Festival, which featured a panoply of motion pictures from across the decades, talents, parties and panels celebrating – and analyzing – the cinema as an art form and “that screwy ballyhooey Hollywood,” where the fete took place on location April 21-24.

The cornucopia of screenings included 1982’s E.T. The Extraterrestrial at TCL Chinese Theatre IMAX, with the Turner Classic Movies channel’s host Ben Mankiewicz interviewing director Steven Spielberg onstage at the fabled movie palace, renowned for its courtyard with stars’ footprints/handprints in cement, where Lily Tomlin was thus immortalized at a Festival ceremony attended by her co-star Jane Fonda. Other extravaganzas shown on the big screen at this venerable venue formerly known as Grauman’s Chinese Theatre included: 1956’s Giant, starring James Dean, Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson; 1939’s The Wizard of Oz with Judy Garland; 1952’s Singin’ in the Rain starring Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds; and 1973’s The Sting, featuring Paul Newman and Robert Redford.

"Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”

I truly wish these words of Ike, uttered seven decades ago, were no longer quite so relevant. Perhaps what he should have called it was a “cross of irony.”

Just in time for the primary election on May 3, Homebound Entrepreneurs Against DeWines is putting its quirky political ad “Meet Mike DeSwine” on TV news channels around Ohio this week, while the PAC’s second ad “Tax Hike Mike” will be heard on conservative radio stations across the state by the weekend.

The PAC’s launch video “Meet Mike DeSwine” –– which debuted earlier in April –– received thousands of views on social media and featured the voices of Morgan Hughes from #SaveTheCrew and comedian Corey Ryan Forrester. The "Tax Hike Mike” ad slams Governor DeWine for keeping Ohio’s gas taxes high and features narration by podcaster Ben Kissel.

Part One

The shame of the city

What happened to the University District?

The area adjacent to The Ohio State University in the middle of Columbus, Ohio, was once a distinctive, mixed neighborhood of owner-occupiers and their boarders and renters in small, scattered, private rooming houses and single-family homes. Over several decades it was transformed into the dominance—numerically, culturally, socially, politically, and economically—of large, for-profit landlords with young-adult student tenants. For 18 years I’ve been co-owner of a 107-year-old, architect-designed house in the district whose history partly reflects this transformation; it morphed from dual-family to multiple student renters and back to single-family status. The 2021-22 period crystalizes the 40-year history of this landmark neighborhood’s decline.

I don’t know if it’s supply and demand. I don’t know if it’s Covid. I don’t know if Trump, and his friends are waging economic sanctions within our country for criticizing the January 6th attack. I don’t know if someone wants to punish Chairman of the Budget Committee Bernie Sanders for tweeting criticism of wealthy companies by name. I don’t know if this correlates with the raised wages at places like Kroger, and Walmart.

I don’t know if this correlates with the fact Russia invaded Ukraine. Our country is supplying Ukraine with weapons which appears there is some sort of conflict between our country and Russia.

I don’t know if Republican Governor Abbot blocking agriculture shipping which cost our country $240 million dollars had something do with it.

http://www.cnn.com/2022/04/17/opinions/greg-abbott-texas-border-policies...

Texas governor reversed this costly block which Texas Agriculture’s Commission called "Political Theater."

As the war in Ukraine makes front page news, a new documentary and film festival are shining a spotlight on this Eastern European nation that has been the setting for three of the greatest productions of all time. Sergei Eisenstein’s 1925 Battleship Potemkin (https://www.imdb.com/video/vi1065917209?playlistId=tt0015648&ref_=tt_ov_vi), about the mutiny aboard one of the warships in the czar’s Black Sea fleet and the mass strike in the port city of Odessa during the 1905 Revolution was shot and set in Ukraine. The famed “Odessa Steps sequence” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xP-8r7tygo), which still jolts the senses, with the senseless barbaric cruelty of the czarist troops and Cossacks massacring frenzied, fleeing, unarmed civilians – baby carriages, amputees, stone lions and all.

A friend, a young journalist in Gaza, Mohammed Rafik Mhawesh, told me that food prices in the besieged Strip have skyrocketed in recent weeks and that many already impoverished families are struggling to put food on the table. 

 “Food prices are dramatically surging,” he said, “particularly since the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine war.” Essential food prices, like wheat and meat, have nearly doubled. The price of a chicken, for example, which was only accessible to a small segment of Gaza’s population, has increased from 20 shekels (approx. $6) to 45 (approx. $14).

 These price hikes may seem manageable in some parts of the world but in an already impoverished place, which has been under a hermetic Israeli military siege for 15 years, a humanitarian crisis of great proportions is certainly forthcoming.