Pigs to the Slaughter
We're going to let a bipartisan coalition of freaks put a bolt-gun through the back of our skulls.
The official number is 5,827 dead of coronavirus in Ohio. That is almost assuredly an undercount considering this is the current state of our fight against the invisible bat virus, from myfox28columbus.com:
COLUMBUS, Ohio (WSYX/WTTE) — The Ohio Department of Health said Wednesday's complete COVID-19 numbers are being delayed, but there are more than 6,300 new cases with thousands of reports still pending.
As of about 7 p.m., there are 6,385 new positive COVID-19 cases, 55 new deaths, 371 new hospitalizations and 30 new hospitalizations, but the ODH said there are thousands of reports still pending confirmation by epidemiologists and local health department officials.
Even with thousands of pending reports, new cases, deaths, hospitalizations and ICU admissions are all above the 21-day average.
Compare that to Cuba, a country with roughly the same population as Ohio. That failed Communist state has suffered only 126 deaths in that same time frame.
I remember asshole sports journalists would hold up their article and say, “Well, I managed to piss off both sides with this gem! I must be doing something right.”
That’s the kind of thing that sounds good to your old-school journalist who got paid $80,000 a year in 1986 to file three 800-word columns every week.
Let’s see how that strategy has played out for Governor Mike DeWine in Ohio, where he has managed to infuriate everyone across the political spectrum except wine liberals who only watch MSNBC:

I’m obviously not a mastermind political operative, though I do role-play as one on the internet.
That disclaimer aside, I wish the goddamn governor would ask me “what can we do?” for the weary workers worried about paying bills during another shutdown.
I would say, why, that’s easy governor. Are you sitting down for this one? Good, here’s my plan you cracker-ass elf:
YOU TAKE SOME OF THE $3 BILLION RAINY DAY FUND AND YOU PAY THE WORKERS AND THE OWNERS (IN THAT ORDER) TO KEEP THEIR ASSES AT HOME THROUGH THE NEW YEAR.
Instead DeWine chose to go the “holistic route,” which is that of the high school classmate who is now trying to recruit people into a ponzi scheme centered on hawking healing crystals to cancer patients on Facebook.
Could you imagine if we had a Democrat governor and lived in a Communist bastion like California where rent is outrageous and work commutes are routinely two hours both ways? God, I wish I lived in California. Or so I thought.
From Thomas Fuller of newyorktimes.com:
SAN FRANCISCO — It was an intimate meal in a wood-paneled, private dining room in one of California’s most exclusive restaurants. No one around the table wore masks, not the lobbyists, not even the governor.
Photos that surfaced this week of a dinner at the French Laundry, a temple of haute cuisine in Napa Valley where some prix fixe meals go for $450 per person, have sparked outrage in a state where Democratic leaders have repeatedly admonished residents to be extra vigilant amid the biggest spike in infections since the pandemic began.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, who attended the dinner with his wife, has apologized, calling it a “bad mistake.”
Imagine how easy it would be as a governor to meet mask-less with healthcare lobbyists in the middle of a raging pandemic and not get caught? Governor Newsom can’t even handle that. The motherfucker just can’t get enough of lecturing his constituents and violating the rudimentary health protocols he placed on the rest of his state.
And he expects others to listen to a hypocritical leader like that? He should walk into the Pacific Ocean and go live among the noble sea turtles. He might learn some humility.
[Image via the indispensable Tyler Buchanan of Ohio Capital Journal, whom you should follow on Twitter.]
The Ohio House voted 75-11 yesterday for House Bill 621, a GOP bill (supported by 19 servile Democrats) that would prevent the Ohio Health Department or governor from closing any protocol-following business during a pandemic.
Shoutout to the 19 Democrats. Any time you can agree with pandemic luminaries such as Jon Cross, Nino Vitale, Niraj Antani and Larry Householder… you simply have to do it.
Let me show you why this is a bad bill. Here is campus-area bar Three’s last night:
Now, I’m not shaming anyone in this video. Though I try to avoid scenes like this, I have spent more time than I should’ve in sparsely populated dive bars during the pandemic.
While this video probably appalls people who have stayed inside their house for the last eight months, there is nothing egregious about it according to Ohio’s current COVID standards.
Sure, the parties might not be totally six feet apart, but nobody has to wear a mask in that picture because they’re sitting with their parties and either eating or drinking.
This is probably a less riskier scene than most bars throughout the state.
Will any of that matter if one or two of those patrons are asymptomatic? Not at all. Everybody they unknowingly sicken will be at their peak infectious just in time to travel back home and unwittingly infect their loved ones, only finally showing symptoms after the Thanksgiving gathering.
Whoops! Sorry, Nana. Hope you asked Santa for a ventilator for Christmas.
Let the Ohio House have its way and the government won’t be able to shut Three’s down no matter how much the pandemic worsens.
Other issues tackled by the Ohio House yesterday include taking cues from a fourth-grade class on naming an official state butterfly, the monarch. (We truly live under a dictatorship of the children in this state; we let them ghostwrite legislation; we let them design tourist posters; we let them design the “I Voted” stickers; hell, we let them pick our goddamn state butterfly.)
I realize this is routine legislation and doesn’t mean the House spent time arguing the merits of which butterfly should reign supreme. But these are not routine times. It would be nice to see some goddamn urgency about direct aid to the people instead of sucking the penis of Big Business.
Again, we won’t get out of this mess by voting for any yahoo off the street with a (D) next to their name.
California legislators decided to retire to Maui for a conference call as their state surpassed one million coronavirus cases and 18,5000 deaths.
Again from Thomas Fuller of nytimes.com:
This week state lawmakers came under fire for their slow response in explaining how they ended up at a conference held at a resort in Maui, Hawaii, just as California issued explicit guidance on avoiding “nonessential travel to other states or countries.” The conference was organized by the Independent Voter Project, a nonprofit organization, and asked lawmakers in attendance, including 14 from California, to focus on the theme of reopening economies amid the pandemic.
The Independent Voter Project is funded by John Moores, the former owner of the San Diego Padres who has a net worth of $850 million.
It’s not hard for me to imagine why a “philanthropist” wants to bribe lawmakers with a free trip to Hawaii to discuss the impossible dream of reopening the economy amidst a global pandemic with no vaccine yet available.
It’s because he has no problem bringing sheep to the slaughter if it means a few extra gold coins in his pocket before the King of Zion calls his number while he’s shitting on his toilet, which will hopefully happen next Tuesday.
One of my favorite novels is The Jungle, published by socialist Upton Sinclair in 1906.
My public education taught me that the book was about the gruesome conditions in turn-of-the-century meatpacking plants that caused a moral outrage in America and was a large part why I could purchase a pound of beef without dying of salmonella.
I didn’t understand until years later when I actually read the book that it’s much deeper than that narrative ordained by my local Republican School Board.
The book is actually about the bankrupt American Dream, and how it was used to lure immigrants to the country only to then exploit them in every way: from housing to working conditions to wages.
For every immigrant success story, there were many more who were sucked dry of any productivity they had and mercilessly thrown into the street.
You might think things have gotten better since 1906. Assuredly they have for a lot of people. But the capitalist system is even more entrenched now than it was back then.
From Clark Kauffman of iowacapitaldispatch.com:
A wrongful death lawsuit tied to COVID-19 infections in a Waterloo pork processing plant alleges that during the initial stages the pandemic, Tyson Foods ordered employees to report for work while supervisors privately wagered money on the number of workers who would be sickened by the deadly virus.
Earlier this year, the family of the late Isidro Fernandez sued the meatpacking company, alleging Fernandez was exposed to the coronavirus at the Waterloo plant where he worked. The lawsuit alleges Tyson Foods is guilty of a “willful and wanton disregard for workplace safety.”
Fernandez, who died on April 20, was one of at least five Waterloo plant employees who died of the virus. According to the Black Hawk County Health Department, more than 1,000 workers at the plant — over a third of the facility’s workforce — contracted the virus.
These ghouls were managing a meatpacking plant. As good a job as any, but my god, it’s not like they’re the ones pulling bricks of gold out of that place. The plant could function without the supervisors; it could not function without the workers. All the supervisors do in a place like that is walk around and tell other people to get to work before going back to the office to suck the toes of their boss.
The supervisors have more in common with those workers than they ever will with the executives who are undoubtedly safe at home while working remotely. In fact, I can almost guarantee those executives look down on the plant managers as swine who are forced to toil alongside the undocumented laborers on a day-to-day basis.
The supervisors’ livelihood depends on those workers. Yet their capitalist brain poisoning is so rotten to the core that they think of those workers are just as replaceable as the pigs they slaughter.
And judging by the actions of the our government leaders throughout this pandemic, that’s exactly how they look at us, too.