Rooster: We're All CBJ Fans Now
Rooster: We're All CBJ Fans Now
Teens brawl over stolen hot dogs, man throws an iguana at a Perkins manager, and more.
The older I get, the more I realize the smart money in sports is being a fair-weather fan. Why sit through years of excruciating losses and misery so you can brag about being a “real fan” to people who couldn’t give a shit during a championship parade?
Take the Columbus Blue Jackets. I like them, but I’m too old to dedicate nearly three hours watching them play however many games NHL teams play in a regular season.
That changes in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. If you don’t like playoff hockey, you might be dead. I’ll ride for the CBJ, even if they had yet to win a playoff series entering this season.
Most Jackets fans I knew lamented an unfortunate round-one draw against the Tampa Bay Lightning, the No. 1 seed having an historic season.
Turns out the Bolts got the raw end of the stick. Columbus sent Tampa’s social media guru to a very, very dark place:
Not to be outdone, the Lightning fan behind the Buffalo Wild Wings Twitter account attempted to troll the town that founded the franchise:
C’mon, man! It’s almost like you don’t read The Rooster Newsletter. If you did, you would know I did naked cartwheels down High Street when Urban “retired.” Same thing I’ll be doing when Boomer rises from the grave to carry Lord Stanley’s Chalice through the Arena District.
EXPERTS NOT KEEN ON OHIO’S PRESIDENTIAL BELLWEATHER STATUS
Ohio has one of the best records in the country for picking the president. Hopefully that changes in 2020, because the experts say the Buckeye State leans more Republican every day.
From Ben Peters of rollcall.com:
While Ohio is becoming more diverse, it’s still whiter than the national average, with a lower percentage of residents with a bachelor’s degree. The state also has an above-average share of white working-class voters, who have been steadily growing more Republican, according to political analyst Kyle Kondik, author of “The Bellwether: Why Ohio Picks the President.”
Beyond the “steady, plodding demographic shifts,” the loss of industrial jobs in northeast Ohio has also contributed to increased GOP popularity, said Paul Beck, professor emeritus of political science at Ohio State University. Trump won several ancestrally Democratic counties in the region in 2016. Trumbull County, for example, backed him by 7 points — after voting for President Barack Obama by 23 points four years earlier.
…
Relative to other states in the eastern Midwest such as Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan, Beck maintained that Ohio is still “Trump country.”A March survey by Morning Consult gave Trump a 45 percent approval rating in Ohio, with 51 percent disapproving. That’s still better than Gallup’s national poll for the same month that found 39 percent of voters approving of his job performance with 57 percent disapproving.Kondik uses a statistic called the “presidential deviation” to calculate how far states deviate from the national popular vote in a presidential election. In 2016, Ohio moved 5 points toward the Republicans. It marked the furthest the state has deviated from the national popular vote since 1932 when Franklin D. Roosevelt won his first term, Kondik said.
It’s depressing considering Barack Obama, the first gay Kenyan muslim president of America, whipped war-hero John McCain and business-knower Mitt Romney in back to back cycles.
But Obama was perhaps the greatest campaigner not named “Warren G. Harding” in presidential history, and none of the current crop of Democratic hopefuls have proven his equal. To make matters worse, there are better targets than Ohio for Democratic SuperPACs.
I plan to work like hell for whoever wins the nomination. Sadly, Joe Biden would probably offer the best chance at turning the state blue. Seeing as I write this newsletter to combat my depression and not to mire myself in it, let’s move on.
DO WHAT YOU GOTTA DO TO FINISH THE RACE
Running a marathon makes my head spin, as does the fortitude displayed by an Ohioan who completed the Boston Marathon earlier this week.
From ohio.com:
The photographs and videos showed the Marine veteran from Tallmadge crawling across the finish line of the Boston Marathon on Monday.
But Micah Herndon said he was never alone, even though his legs refused to hold him upright anymore.
The memories of fellow servicemen and his fallen Marine friends were with him through it all and were what kept him from quitting.
…
Herndon, a graduate of Southeast High School in Portage County, then did what he always does when he needs to summon inner strength and resolve — he began repeating the names “Mark Juarez, Matthew Ballard and Rupert Hamer” over and over again.
Herndon is 31. He was 13 when the United States invaded Afghanistan.
HOW INSANE MUST YOU BE TO GET DISINVITED FROM THE MOST INSANE ABORTION BAN PASSED IN STATE HISTORY?
Republicans made sure to stress they were not inflicting their religious beliefs upon the 5.1 million women in Ohio when they passed the unconstitutional heartbeat abortion ban last week.
To preserve that fallacy, Governor Mike DeWine disinvited the cause’s original crusader from the signing ceremony.
From Julie Carr Smyth of talkingpointsmemo.com:
Absent was anti-abortion activist Janet Folger Porter, founder and president of Faith2Action, the group she used to originate and champion the heartbeat legislation for a decade.
“Being disinvited to the bill signing by the governor, it stung. But I’m keeping my eye on the big picture,” Porter said. “And the whole point of the last 10 years of my life was to bring the killing to an end.”
…
Porter crowded lawmaker’s offices with heart-shaped balloons and teddy bears, staged Statehouse demonstrations and flyovers and arranged “testimony” via ultrasound by an in utero fetus and appearances by grown “abortion survivors.” Porter also questions Barack Obama’s citizenship and more recently served as spokeswoman for Senate candidate Roy Moore as he faced pedophile allegations.
All that helps explain why DeWine and other more moderate Republicans would want to steer clear, said Case Western Reserve University law professor Jessie Hill.
“Maybe it’s an attempt to make this look like a mainstream piece of legislation,” Hill said. “But I don’t think they’re fooling anybody. It’s still pretty much the most extreme law anywhere on the books, or as extreme, as anywhere in the country.”
Welcome to Ohio, where a pedophile-defending conspiracy theorist played a key role in the passage of healthcare legislation.
OHIO MAN WEAPONIZES IGUANA IN PERKINS
Most people go to Perkins for a nice, affordably priced meal in the company of senior citizens. One Painesville resident, however, had different plans.
From Jen Steer of fox8.com:
PAINESVILLE, Ohio-- A man is facing charges after a bizarre incident inside a Painesville restaurant.
Officers were called to the Perkins on Mentor Avenue just before noon on Tuesday.
Police said a 49-year-old man removed an iguana from his shirt and swung it around his head by its tail. The suspect then threw the lizard at the manager, according to Painesville police.
Officers found the suspect a few blocks away.
Police took the iguana to the humane shelter to be checked for injuries. I don’t think the suspect will be allowed back in Perkins regardless if he’s convicted or not.
NOT SURE WHAT’S WORSE: STEALING A HOT DOG OR FIGHTING OVER A STOLEN HOT DOG
I would rather starve than eat a hot dog.
Apparently they feel differently in Akron, where a grown man is willing to square up with a gang of rowdy teen girls to defend the honor the Speedway they had just looted for a hot dog that had been baking under a heat lamp for at least two hours.
My question is: HOW STRONG IS THAT GIRL WHO RIPPED A GAS PUMP OUT OF THE TANK? I’m surprised ol’ dude didn’t end up in a coma.
THOSE WMDs. How Big Tech built the iron cage… World’s most infamous bouncers tell all… Pataskala church apologizes for video of kids spitting on and hitting associate pastor… Maybe rich liberals don’t hate Bernie Sanders because they fear he can’t win, but because they’re rich… Drug-makers seek info on millions of Ohioans in opioid lawsuits.