So even without adjusting for inflation, during the three minutes that your local FM voice-tracked DJ spins Soulja Boy's tall tales of "super soaking" young women, about $368,000 has been spent on a military action which most of the country believes needs to come to a swift and decisive conclusion.  

On a cloudy day in the early spring, Austino Lewis sits at a table in a sleepy Arby's in South Fairmount before taking two busses to cover his shift as a cook at a local nursing home.  

John McCain spoke to a Spanish radio station today, explaining how he became a war hero, spited fellow Republicans by supporting abortion rights and then ran for president by mocking and then using his opponents' catch phrases.   

Maija Zummo: Mark Twain might be one of the greatest American literary figures ever, and he’s funny and all, but there’s another classic Cincinnati quote I’m fre quently attributed as saying, which is “Bring it, 2012. This place rules!” And it does.   

Foodie Jason Klapfish has traveled the world, including the Arctic Circle and half of Mexico. Not one to settle down, Cincinnati is the only place he keeps coming back to.   

For Kendall Fisher, adjusting to her first month as Women Helping Women’s executive director felt like deja vu. She’d been the organization’s associate director from 1996 to 2001, and coming back this July was “like a homecoming,” she says. Fisher supports a women’s advocacy agency for victims and survivors of violent crimes and stalk ing.   

The Cincinnati Human Relations Commission (CHRC) is sort of the local equivalent to United Nations peacekeepers. Their community mon itors, decked out in royal blue CHRC T-shirts, work to mediate argu ments and diffuse racial tensions at public events and street festivals.