Andy Brenner is the Dumbest State Senator Alive
Oh, yeah, there's also a football draft tonight. Remember those!?
I’ll make odious “left-of-center” Democrats this deal: We both know Joe Biden ain’t got the heart to go the distance. Hell, he can’t even draw more than 5,000 souls for a streaming event during a pandemic. Don’t show me any poll, either. None of those numbers matter until 72 hours before the election.
I’m sure we have both heard rumors of the geniuses at the Democratic National Committee swapping Biden at the convention for somebody that can form a complete sentence, didn’t allow their family to profit off their name throughout their career or has been credibly accused of sexual misconduct at least seven times.
I know you wouldn’t tolerate Bernie Sanders since he actually has convictions. I propose a compromise: We swap Joe Biden for, uh, this comedian I discovered 12 hours ago:
Please wake me when Joe Biden shows that much passion for the plight of working people. This man would win in a landslide over President Business Deals. You can’t convince me otherwise.
For once in my life I’m thankful for the NFL’s eternal thirst for more money. I’m at the point where I might drive to Youngstown this weekend, order some takeout from whatever mobbed-up local establishment my Twitter followers recommend, eat it on the hood of my car, take a few pictures for Instagram, and then drive back to Columbus just to have a semblance of a simpler time 30 years ago when weekends meant different routines from weekdays.
The NFL Draft is as close as I have gotten to the Super Bowl as a Browns fan. I haven’t had Tito’s Handmade Vodka in nearly three weeks. I also can’t remember the last time I watched a draft sober. I might need to keep something up my sleeve in case a Ukrainian teenager hacks our draft and submits a dick pic as the 10th selection of the 2020 draft. Knowing our luck the vein cane will belong to our franchise quarterback.
The draft starts at 8 p.m. on ESPN. Jokes aside, I am looking forward to a night of normalcy while we all tweet like the 2020 season will actually happen.
ICYMI, The Factory of Sadcast pre-draft extravaganza:
There *might not* be a dispatch tomorrow. It’s all in the Browns’ hands now. Should that stop you from throwing rubies at my feet during a pandemic for five dispatches a week? Absolutely not. Take 30 days for free to allow me to prove myself:
PLEASE LAUNCH THE BRENNERS INTO THE SUN
Ohio is the most gerrymandered state in the country. That means Republicans are only accountable to primary voters. This was bad news for the state before the era of Fox News, Donald Trump and the proliferation of conspiracies like “Bill Gates plans to put microchips in the coronavirus vaccine.”
Republican primaries often boil down to whom can be the biggest nutjob. It’s a race to the bottom since, unlike Democratic voters, Republicans don’t get their marching orders from party elite.
We live in a state where fringe fraudulent ideas like “vaccines cause autism” hold sway within the halls of the Statehouse.
One of dumbest people with power to pass laws is State Senator Andy Brenner. He and his wife have a marriage in which they tag each other in social media posts like they aren’t sitting next to each other in quarantine. You probably know the type.
The most relatable thing about the Brenners is they can’t stop posting their batshit insane ideas to Facebook and Twitter.
The Brenners did that famous thing — “taking to Facebook” — which if any media outlet ever describes posting to Facebook like that, you know shit is about to get real.
From Tyler Buchanan of ohiocapitaljournal.com:
A Republican state senator took to Facebook on Holocaust Remembrance Day to pledge he would not allow the Jewish Ohio Department of Health director to turn Ohio into Nazi Germany.
State Sen. Andrew Brenner, of Powell, made the comment Tuesday evening in response to a post from his wife, Sara Marie Brenner. Her post included a photo of Dr. Amy Acton and was in response to the state government’s shutdown order due to COVID-19.
Sen. Brenner has been denounced by the Anti-Defamation League, by the Republican president of the Ohio Senate, and by the leader of the Ohio Republican Party. At least one Democratic lawmaker has called for his resignation.
After receiving backlash, Sara Marie Brenner deleted her Facebook post and with it her husband’s response.
The post read, in part: “With a German accent, in your head say ‘Show me your papers’ … This actually feels like Hitler’s Germany where you had to have blond hair and blue eyes to be able to function anywhere, and you were damned otherwise. When are people going to say enough is enough?”
Brenner is no stranger to a good Nazi comparison. It’s somewhat disturbing because the Brenners are the arch-types of people who would join a Neo-Nazi movement because the American Hitler would inevitably swap that loser-ass Swastika for White Jesus and a Cross.
Gotta say, though, even for people who routinely post insanely racist shit to Facebook, saying a 50-year-old Jewish woman wants to enact the Fourth Reich on Holocaust Remembrance Day is a bridge I didn’t even know they would cross.
It makes you wonder what kind of things they say in the privacy of their own home, which I assume is nestled in a previously unknown circle of Hell.
Here’s a hilarious Brenner story from his State Rep. days, sent from a former Statehouse staffer:
I’m laughing to the point of almost having to go to the hospital while imagining Brenner smugly leaning back in his chair thinking he ethered a troll with a Sound of Music GIF only to realize he spammed his colleagues and their staff with a beastiality video.
Fun fact: Ohio didn’t outlaw beastiality until 2017, and I’m convinced this is the reason why they finally got off their asses and did something.
Donald Trump taught Republicans never to apologize for anything. So it’s telling everyone from Chairwoman Jane Timken, Governor Mike DeWine, Attorney General Dave Yost and Senate President Larry Obhof all had to put out a statement saying they didn’t think Dr. Acton was a Nazi sympathizer. That’s how low the bar is for these guys.
Brenner offered no sincere apology. He originally tried to claim it never happened. Then, when he got reminded screen shots exist, he cowardly only apologized for “how the comments were reported.”
Apparently personal responsibility only exists for the unwashed bogeywomen of his anti-abortion hysteria. If he had any decency he would resign.
BUSINESS OWNERS APPARENTLY DIDN’T SAVE FOR A RAINY DAY
Mike DeWine put May 1st as a potential date for the partial re-opening of Ohio’s economy. Then he act surprised when people wanted details on what all that would mean.
That was last week. We have yet to hear any of those details. That doesn’t matter to the people who actually run this state… wealthy business owners.
From Andrew J. Tobias of cleveland.com:
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- A group of influential Ohio business groups is pushing Gov. Mike DeWine to begin rolling back his coronavirus closures, citing what they call the “dire state of Ohio’s economy and the urgent need to re-open businesses.”
Meanwhile, DeWine and Lt. Gov. Jon Husted, while keeping details of their specific plans quiet, have begun privately briefing state leaders about what to expect May 1, when DeWine has said he will begin re-opening the state economy.
In a Tuesday letter to DeWine, the business groups urged him to begin re-opening the economy in phases on May 1. Describing an “alarming” briefing they got this week from JobsOhio, the state’s private economic development arm, they said they expect state unemployment claims will exceed 1 million by the end of the week. They said small businesses are facing “irreversible devastation and bankruptcies under prolonged ‘non-essential’ stay-at-home scenarios" if stay-at-home orders remain in place.
“We have no illusion that things will go back to ‘normal,'” reads the letter, signed by representatives of the Ohio Business Roundtable, the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, The Ohio Manufacturers’ Association, The Ohio Council of Retail Merchants, the Ohio Farm Bureau and the National Federation of Independent Businesses of Ohio. “We believe our state is capable of a deliberate, phased opening in a closely controlled manner with strict protocols that enable a responsible reopening where employee and customer safety is first.”
If you want a who’s who list on who has systemically crushed workers’ rights in this state (save for Right-to-Work, which they tried and would have succeeded had they also not tried to cuck police and firefighter unions) you couldn’t do much better than the organizations that signed their name to this document.
Again, none of these executives will be forced into the meat grinder. Don’t take my word for it. Take the word of a physician on the front lines in New York City.
From Rivka Galchen of newyorker.com [brackets mine]:
“It’s become very clear to me what a socioeconomic disease this is,” [E.R. doctor Hashem Zikry told me. “People hear that term ‘essential workers.’ Short-order cooks, doormen, cleaners, deli workers—that is the patient population here. Other people were at home, but my patients were still working. A few weeks ago, when they were told to socially isolate, they still had to go back to an apartment with ten other people. Now they are in our cardiac room dying.” Zikry, whom I have spoken to regularly in the past month, has extraordinary resilience and good humor; on this day, he sounded despondent.
Business executives in this day and age don’t feel human emotion. If you showed them that story they would be incapable of feeling empathy. They can only feel emotion through their pocket books. And they’re showing their fangs to the general populace so they can continue their posh lifestyle.
WHAT HAPPENS TO BUSINESS OWNERS WHO BREAK THE LAW? NOTHING, REALLY
I’m sure we all have friends that have been forced to work due to their boss’ loose definition of the word “essential.” Not only do these businesses risk the health of their workers, they also risk their customers’.
So what happens to rogue business owners who continue to do business? Nothing, really. Perhaps a sternly written letter.
From Nick Evans of wosu.org:
So far, the wave of complaints hasn’t translated into a flood of punishments. Columbus City Attorney Zach Klein says it’s just the opposite, in fact.
“Roughly 400 joint investigations done, 23 warning letters have been sent, and only one business in the city of Columbus has been elevated to my office for review for possible charges,” Klein ticks off.
He won’t name the business sent to his desk until the investigation concludes, but he said it’s a bar on the West Side that allegedly continues to serve customers.
“Multiple flagrant violations at this point of knowing that you can’t have patrons drinking beer at the bar in the middle of this pandemic,” Klein says. “I think is fairly well known by darn near everybody in the United States, if not in the city of Columbus, so we’re a little concerned about the fact pattern as alleged. We’re going to look into it, and if it warrants charges certainly we’ll bring them.”
It would seem that’s a pretty easy investigation that would definitely warrant some sort of charge or fine. Why else would other businesses stay closed if their competitors get away with skating against the law?
As shown by the lack of wage theft convictions registered by Klein’s office, it’s clear being a business owner is a politically protected status even under Democratic district attorneys.
JUDGE DOES WHAT THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT ALREADY SHOULD HAVE
Aaron DeShawn Campbell, a 31-year-old inmate, smuggled a phone into Elkton Prison earlier this month and leaked a harrowing video to Vice News in which he pleaded for help and showed sick inmates were basically being left to die.
Two weeks later, a federal judge has ordered the prison to free vulnerable prisoners.
From Sam Allard of clevescene.com:
A Federal district court judge in Cleveland has granted an injunction requested by the ACLU of Ohio which compels officials at the Elkton Federal Correctional Institution to identify and release medically vulnerable inmates due to the spread of COVID-19.
Judge James Gwin agreed that the threat of COVID-19, which has already claimed the lives of six inmates at Elkton, was sufficient cause to release or relocate inmates who were susceptible. He has ordered that officials identify all inmates over the age of 65 and those with medical vulnerabilities. Once identified, those inmates are to be released or relocated to other facilities.
The ACLU's class-action lawsuit, filed last week, argued that social distancing was impossible at Elkton given the facility's "dorm-like" living arrangement. It also said that the relative scarcity of tests meant the extent of the virus' spread was not known and that the costs of treatment and intensive care, borne by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, was "likely multiples of what it would have cost to test each inmate and guard."
This is a massive win for the ACLU. You may have your critiques of the fabled civil rights organization. There are few organizations with the muscle to go to war for incarcerated people.
This should be a model that Mike DeWine should replicate immediately for state prisons. Otherwise these outbreaks will inevitably spill out into isolated rural communities that are especially vulnerable to this virus due to dire lack of healthcare infrastructure.
FINALLY, SOME GOOD NEWS
BALD EAGLES ARE BACK, BABY, AND THEY’RE HAVING A MOMENT IN GOD-FORSAKEN 2020!
From Benjamin Duer of cantonrep.com:
A bright spot amid a deadly virus gave state and wildlife officials a reason to smile Wednesday.
Gov. Mike DeWine proudly announced during his daily briefing the results of a census for bald eagle nests in Ohio, which found 707 confirmed locations in 85 of the state’s 88 counties, an 115% increase from the 2012 census. Stark County has four nests.
The 2012 census recorded 281 nests.
“We’re really excited about the numbers,” said Bob Berrodin, a North Canton resident and eagle enthusiast. Berrodin volunteers at the observation deck at Walborn Reservoir near Alliance, home to one of the Stark nests.
I, for one, welcome our new eagle overlords. They can’t be worse than the last regime.
THOSE WMDs. We don’t need as much protein as we consume… The doomsday glacier… The yeast supply chain can’t just activate itself… A belief in meritocracy is not only false: It’s bad for you… Why does a paper cut hurt so much?