Rooster's February Mailbag

Did Intel scam us? What's going on in Cincinnati? Can Jim Tressel beat Donald Trump's endorsement? And more!

That’s right, folks. The February Mailbag is here, with only two days to spare in the month. I enjoy mailbags because readers always have a fun, eclectic mix of questions that make them a different kind of read than the standard dispatch.

Per usual, free subscribers will hit a paywall about a third of the way through the questions. If you’ve been on the fence about joining, I’d be honored if you took the plunge to become a rank-and-file member of the Patriots Caucus.

But don’t take my word for it! Here’s one satisfied customer to pitch the benefits:

But that’s not all!

Starting on March 10th, subscribers can redeem a free, one-of-a-kind tour of the Statehouse from yours truly. Of all the official tours over the years, I promise that mine will be the only one to feature the phrase “pervert parlor.”

With benefits like that, you’d lose money by not joining the Patriots Caucus today.

Click the image to join the most feared cabal in Ohio politics.

Now, with the self-promotion out of the way, let’s get on with the show.

As always, questions from readers are in bold, and my responses are in standard text.

I apologize if your question wasn’t answered; over 100 were submitted, and many good ones got left on the cutting room floor, for brevity’s sake.

I’ll try to answer a couple more in the Rooster in Review article, which will hit your inbox on Friday afternoon.

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Can you take a minute to explain all your nicknames for public officials?

Sometimes, I feel like I'm newer to the blog, and I don't always understand them. I'm thinking of Sleepy Tea, Domestic Terrorist Huffman, but I know there are more, and it would be fun to see your full inventory with explanations.

I'm sorry. There is a never-ending balancing act between longtime readers and newer ones, and I tend to defer to longtime readers because the last thing you want in this business is to be boring and repetitive.

But here are some nicknames of notes:

• Grandpa Sleepy Tea: Mike DeWine. He looks like a grandpa who should be peddling sleepy tea elixirs in the 19th century. But it’s also tongue-in-cheek because he’s as ruthless a political operator as we have in Ohio.

• Tim McVeigh Junior: Speaker Matt Huffman. In my opinion, Huffman is a domestic terrorist who has never provided a solid alibi for his whereabouts on April 19th, 1995.

• Third Place Frank: Secretary of State Frank LaRose. Christened after LaRose finished third in his own precinct during the 2024 Republican Senate primary, a race in which he also finished a distant third place overall.

• Dusty Dave Yost: Attorney General Dave Yost. He looks dusty—like he’s spent the last 20 years wandering around a desert.

• Mayor Suburbs: Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther. He sends his daughter to private elementary school despite living blocks from one of the best public elementary schools in the city. He loves playing golf and taking free international junkets than anything relating to being mayor. He is a suburbanite at heart, right down to refusing to take public transportation because anyone who makes under $40,000 a year scares him.

• Mayor Résumé: Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb. An empty suit of a mayor who is not nearly as impressive as his résumé would have the average person believe.

• The Notorious Conman: Gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. The man was in cahoots with Martin Shrekli and got rich by pump-and-dumping Alzheimer’s patients.

• Boss Baby: Vice President J.D. Vance. He looks like an adult baby who demands to be treated like a boss despite routinely shitting his pants in public.

• President Business Deals: President Donald Trump. This is one of those names that needs no explanation.

Feel free to sound off in the comments if I forgot any nicknames.

The Statehouse gremlins publicly will line up behind him if he wins, but you have to imagine Huffman and pals are terrified of the idea of Governor Vivek, right?

I wouldn’t say they’re “terrified” since they control the purse strings. “Dread” would be a better word because they know that behind the scenes, Ramaswamy is a charlatan who knows nothing about our state government.

The singular upshot of Ramaswamy becoming governor would be that Huffman would have to deal with that fraud throughout the rest of his Speakership.

According to multiple sources, Ramaswamy met with legislative Republican leaders in recent weeks. He wasn’t even aware that the State Legislature had term limits and could not independently identify Speaker Matt Huffman.

Huffman privately loathes Trump because he doesn’t tolerate bullshit artists. And at the moment, there’s no bigger one in Ohio politics than Ramaswamy. I want to think the friction might be enough to make Huffman quit like a dog, but that’s probably wishful thinking on my part.

Hey, any thoughts on moving away from Substack since it’s a Nazi platform?

Get serious. I’m still on Twitter, tweeting like it’s 2015, and that’s after its owner threw a literal Nazi salute after a Trump rally a couple of weeks back.

All tech platforms have a “Nazi problem,” which is why I’ll see these Big Tech gremlins in Hell. But until then, I have a business to run, and I’m not yet rich enough to distribute my newsletter through an army of couriers like The New York Times.

So, Intel. Were we bamboozled or swindled on that whole farce, and is there any situation where that actually comes to fruition at the level we were promised?

Bamboozled. Scammed. Fleeced. Hustled.

These are just some of the words that come to my mind when I think of the Intel plant, which will never come close to the soaring heights we were promised.

The best case scenario is that Intel spins that off to a smaller firm to finish the project in a much smaller capacity. But given that the CHIPS Act appears to be on life support, I’m skeptical we even get that far.

It should be a lesson in how these things are covered when they’re announced. Just because politicians and business leaders pimp a bunch of pie-in-the-sky numbers doesn’t mean the press has to regurgitate them.

How'd they find Luigi Mangione? It doesn’t add up.

My conspiracy theory is they used some sort of government dragnet of cameras inside private businesses to pop him at that McDonald’s, and they don’t want to publicize the tool for obvious reasons.

The trial will be fascinating.

I feel like I hear mostly about statewide politics, and maybe sometimes about local stuff in Columbus and Cleveland. What about Cincinnati? What's going on there? Why do they eat chocolate meat sauce on spaghetti? WTF are the Charterites?

It’s a good question! I’m more connected to Cleveland than Cincinnati, but this is a pro-Skyline Chili publication, as I was converted by an acolyte almost 10 years ago.

As for the Charterites, it’s a term that I am hearing for the first time. The Wikipedia page makes for an interesting read! We could use something like that in Columbus.

I’d love anyone in Cincinnati to pitch me on a freelance article or series. Anonymity can be granted to the right person. It’s a city I respect but don’t know much about other than it’s fabulously corrupt, like Cleveland (and, to a lesser extent, Columbus).

Do you think Tressel stands a chance against Trump’s endorsement of Ramaswamy?