Everything is Insane and Boring
Just another day in the state we all love to know.
It’s with a heavy heart I report I had to relieve my son Stinky of his fact-checking duties for not catching my false claim in yesterday’s dispatch that Punta Canta is in Mexico and not the Dominican Republic.
Turns out five days in Mexico wasn’t enough to become an expert on the country so I’m thinking I may have to go back later this month — Tulum is that your music, playa? — to continue my investigation since I can’t take my moldy bologna carcass to the Caribbean countries on account of having read Jamaica Kincaide’s A Small Place.
It may seem extreme to fire my cat but Americans are known worldwide for their intricate geographical knowledge and somebody had to take a fall for the blunder and it sure as Hell wasn’t going to be the only fella in this establishment who can work a keyboard.
THE MOST COMMON THREAD IN MASS SHOOTERS
One thing you can almost always take to the bank when an insufferable nerd with social anxiety murders dozens of strangers is that there is a misogynistic component to their world view.
So it’s of no surprise to find out that despite claiming to be a leftist the Dayton fuckhead who is burning in piss had terrified women starting in high school when cops arrested him for having a rape/kill list which seems like a thing that should disqualify you from weapons of mayhem for a long time.
It only got worse from there.
From Kaitlin Durbin of toledoblade.com:
Ms. Johnson said that at first, she found Betts charming and intelligent, but eventually there were several warning signs, leading her to end their brief relationship in a text message in May.
On their first date in mid-May, Ms. Johnson said, he showed her body camera video footage from a mass shooting at a synagogue. He would brag about how much he knew about such acts of violence. At the time, Ms. Johnson believed he took interest in the topic from a psychology standpoint — the subject he was studying at Sinclair Community College in Dayton.
“Do you know tragedies from every city?” Ms. Johnson asked him by text once.
“A fair bit of them! :D [smiley face],” he responded.
Hindsight is always 20/20 and young people make mistakes every day but I feel like it’s a good rule that if somebody brags about their knowledge of mass shootings and gleefully shows body camera footage of a massacre during Date No. 1 there should be no Date No. 2 no matter their major.
Dayton’s police chief said it “defies believability” that this fat-headed fuckface might have targeted his own sister who died in the shooting. To me, the guy who knows everything, it doesn’t seem far fetched considering misogynists kill, maim, and intimidate women in their families every day.
Governor Mike DeWine will debut his gun control plan later today. I’m not holding my breath on anything considering Ohio Gun Owners and other murder machine fanatics control the legislature and they believe something 90%+ of Americans agree is a good idea is actually one step away from sending gun owners to re-education camps:
I doubt radical anti-gun activists are as THRILLED as gun manufactures when mass shootings happen considering they have liability immunity and gun sales always spike before the blood of innocent civilians has dried in the street.
ONCE AGAIN THE PRESIDENT CAN’T DO THE BARE MINIMUM
All our wet president had to do yesterday was walk into a room and read a speech he didn’t write off a screen and he couldn’t even do that without fucking up. (Side note: His chronic case of the sniffles makes me believe the rumors he spent the 1980s high on cocaine and the 1990s snorting cheap speed.)
I worried his writers and editors hadn’t noticed the glaring error before putting it on the teleprompter but it turns out it was just the behavior we’ve come to suspect for a criminal grandpa losing his mind to dementia:
This is par for the course from a man who is incapable of empathy, but at least he did better than Joe Biden who lamented the shootings in “Houston and Michigan” only a day prior.
Somebody please tell the Cincinnati councilman to wake me when President Deals denounces white supremacy and the support of anyone who believes in it at one of his rallies. Anybody who is tipping their cap to him after yesterday’s performance is acting in bad faith or has been in a coma for the last 2.5 years.
OHIO GOP WOULD LIKE CANDICE KELLER TO GO AWAY TO CLEAR THE WAY FOR A CANDIDATE WITHOUT AN ADDICTION TO POSTING
Rep. Candice Keller (R-Middletown) made national headlines this week when her addiction to shitposting spurred her into publicly blaming mass shootings on gay dope-smoking atheist NFL players who advocate for drag queens and hate cops.
This is the kind of thing many elected Republicans believe even if they won’t use such florid language:
Like Becker, Keller is seeking a promotion to the State Senate. Unlike Becker, Keller is facing a primary challenge from an establishment-preferred candidate.
So it’s no surprise only one caught the ire of Ohio GOP chairwomen Jane Timken.
From Mariel Padilla of newyorktimes.com:
“Candice Keller’s Facebook post was shocking and utterly unjustifiable,” the chairwoman, Jane Timken, said in a statement. “Our nation is reeling from these senseless acts of violence and public servants should be working to bring our communities together, not promoting divisiveness. I am calling on Candice Keller to resign.”
Calls and emails to Ms. Keller on Monday evening seeking comment were not immediately returned.
Michael Ryan, the Republican vice mayor of the city of Hamilton, which is in Butler County, said on Twitter that Ms. Keller’s post was “a ridiculous statement to make.”
“This isn’t a time for politics,” he said. “This is a time for grieving, coming together and healing.”
It’s hilarious Timken thinks in the age of Trump this will do anything but help Keller in a Republican primary in southwestern Ohio. It’s less hilarious that nothing will change in the Ohio Republican party when Keller wins by double digits.
DEMOCRATIC TRAITORS AND BIG LABOR GET PLAYED LIKE A FIDDLE BY AMORAL CORPORATION
The nine Democrats in the Ohio House who voted for the Republican-led effort to gut Ohio’s clean energy standards and tax everyday Ohioans to finance a handout to a corporate conglomerate said they voted that way to protect good-paying union jobs considering First Energy swore the impending union negotiations were all but a done deal.
But now that the bailout is law First Energy has immediately looked to shred the union contract with power plant employees.
From John Funk of utilitydrive.com:
On the same day in July that Ohio lawmakers approved state-wide customer charges to give FirstEnergy Solutions a six-year $1.1 billon nuclear plant subsidy, the company told a bankruptcy court it could not honor existing contracts with unions representing power plant employees and intended to negotiate completely new bargaining agreements once it emerged as a reorganized company.
That revelation emerged Friday in an objection to the company's latest reorganization plan by lawyers representing locals of the Utility Workers Union of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. The unions were among more than half dozen parties in the case filing objections.
In a reference to the FES reorganization plan filed July 23 — less than 12 hours after House Bill 6 had been approved by the legislature and signed by Republican Gov. Mike DeWine — the unions argue that the company intends to use the court to emerge from bankruptcy without its union contracts. And that contradicts the testimony of David Griffing, the company's vice president of governmental affairs, the union filing to the court charges.
Griffing assured lawmakers in April before an Ohio House subcommittee that "that new [collective bargaining agreements] were in essence agreed upon … Both parties … believe the negotiations were acceptable." But Friday's filing on behalf of the union locals indicates that the company has neither agreed to assume the existing contracts nor reached new ones with the unions at two of the three FES nuclear plants, Perry, east of Cleveland and Beaver Valley, near Pittsburgh.
This is the company that “pro-labor” Larry Householder used to finance his return to the speakership of the Ohio House. Big Labor went to bat for the passage of HB6 on behalf of protecting union jobs.
I’m embarrassed for the stooges in this situation. And if this law goes into effect in 2020 I will be shorting my energy bill by $3 every month until I die or move some places where I don’t know the intricacies of political corruption in state government.
FRANK LAROSE CALL YOUR OFFICE
Secretary of State Frank LaRose campaigned as a Republican squeamish about wanton purgers of voter rolls. I’m starting to think he lied to Ohio voters.
From Rick Rouan of dispatch.com:
Franklin County election officials canceled the voter registration of 123 people who should have remained on the rolls earlier this year, and they then mistakenly sent last-chance notices in July to an additional 1,128 people who will remain eligible to vote as local boards of election purge Ohio’s rolls.
The Franklin County Board of Elections will reinstate the registrations of the voters who were improperly purged and will mail follow-up notices Tuesday to alert them that they are eligible to vote, spokesman Aaron Sellers said.
The board sent similar notices on Monday to the 1,128 registered voters who mistakenly received last-chance notices saying they must respond or update their registrations to avoid cancellation of their registration on Sept. 6.
Opponents of Ohio’s purge process said Monday that the problems that have surfaced in Franklin County raise questions about whether other registrations have been improperly canceled in the past.
1,128 voters might not sound like a lot but if you expand half that number through 88 counties over the course of a decade you have enough purges to swing a statewide election. In a normal democracy we would stop the purges until we could be sure this was a one-off mistake that just so happened in a Democratic stronghold by a total coincidence or something more nefarious.
Kudos to whatever worker at the Franklin County Board of Elections that caught this error, because it sure as hell wasn’t anybody in LaRose’s office.
ASSHOLE OF THE DAY
I worked at a gas station for a couple of months in college. The amount of characters you witness and the bullshit you tolerate on a day-to-day basis is mind-boggling.
Thankfully I never dealt with an asshole that poured a drink on me for doing my job.
From go.tiffinohio.com:
Eric S. Franklin, 38, of Tiffin, was charged with criminal trespassing and disorderly conduct Monday morning, according to Tiffin Police.
Franklin allegedly entered the Circle K at 272 N. Sandusky St. and was “behaving erratically,” according to a source familiar with the situation.
An employee then asked him to leave the establishment, when Franklin took the Styrofoam cup he just filled up with soda and poured it all over the employee.
Prison for Eric S. Franklin! Prison for Eric S. Franklin for 100 years!
THOSE WMDs. What’s going on with Lindsay Lohan and the crown prince of Saudi Arabia?… In defense of hometowns… The trove of ancient monuments in Columbus’ backyard… The fundamental link between body weight and the immune system… Labor puts candidates on notice: “Let’s be honest about the Democratic Party’s record.”