Troops Don't Want to Work Today Either
Lordstown man contemplates future under capitalism, Ohio tries different approach from just throwing addicts in jail, and more.
Four to five tornados touched down in the Miami Valley last night and devastated Dayton and Celina:

















Just absolutely awful, and I feel bad because all I can offer from my couch is “thoughts and prayers” usually reserved for victims of mass shootings.
VOTING FOR OBAMA AND TRUMP WEREN’T ENOUGH FOR THE MAHONING VALLEY

I worked at Whirlpool, the largest dryer manufacturing plant in North America, for exactly one summer after damn near failing out of the University of Montana after my freshman year.
It didn’t take me long to learn how many people had toiled at the ‘Pool since graduating high school 15, 25, 30, 40 years ago.
Even back in 2006, I wondered what might fall upon the City of Kings if Whirpool idled the plant and the operation to more exploitable labor pools and higher profit margins. Suddenly thousands of Marionaires would be out of a job and their only skill would be building dryers for Whirlpool.
Marion has warded off those evil spirits, but it’s still a specter that haunts Ohio as Lordstown recently found out with the idling of the GM Chevy Cruze plant.
From Sabrina Tavernese of nytimes.com:
LORDSTOWN, Ohio — In the weeks since he lost his job at the car plant, Rick Marsh has blasted Pink Floyd while cleaning the house. He has watched the cat watching the birds. He has smoked cigarettes out the sliding glass door. He has watched Motor Trend, a TV network about cars. He bought a grill and built a swing set.
He has done everything he could to avoid thinking about the fact that, after 25 years at the General Motors plant in Lordstown, he was losing the only real job he ever had.
…
The path to the White House next year runs through places like Lordstown, and Mr. Marsh and many of his neighbors, far from knowing how they will vote, say the G.M. plant shutdown has only left them more at sea politically. They tried voting for Barack Obama, then Mr. Trump. Now they don’t know where to turn.
…
“People are going to get hungry, and when I mean hungry, I don’t mean just for food,” he said. “I think, once you get pushed to a point that you have nothing left,” he said, and paused. “Without the ability to feed my family and pay for my children and feed my children, what am I as a man?”
Bad time to be a moderate in American politics. But this is why I’m dreading the Democrats nominating Joe Biden. He’s going to try pitching unity tripe and nibble around the edges and President Deals is going to grind him to dust like he did Hillary Clinton.
We need the strongest possible contrast, despite the Booming Stock Market, this system isn’t producing results for a majority of Americans. And fascism has usually trampled over well-meaning moderates.
PRO-LIFE STATE LINGERING IN SEXUAL DARK AGES

The Columbus Dispatch recently dropped a devastating report on how Dr. Richard Strauss molested Ohio State student-athletes for over 20 years.
It’s one of those stories that make me reflect on the inherent evil in man more than my morning glance into the mirror.
Ohio’s draconian laws played a role in allowing the problem to fester. For a state that cares deeply about a cluster of cells in woman’s units, it turns out we have lost focus on actual human beings.
From Danae King of dispatch.com:
When it comes to making it easier for victims of sexual abuse and rape to report crimes and seek justice, Ohio’s laws are some of the worst in the nation, legal scholars and other victim advocates say.
“Right now, Ohio is in the dark ages for child sex-abuse victims. There really is no state that’s worse,” said Marci Hamilton, founder and CEO of CHILD USA, a Philadelphia-based think tank that tracks statute of limitations reform in each state.
Several laws in Ohio combine to create a “literal system of deterrence for victims that favors the child predator and institutes that cover up for them,” Hamilton said.
Hopefully the Lesgilature follows Mike DeWine, who has expressed a desire to correct the barbarism in our sexual crime reporting laws.
SOMEONE REALIZED THERE MAY BE ANOTHER WAY THAN THROWING DRUG ADDICTS IN PRISON

Bill Clinton, Joe Biden, and other Democrats in the early 1990s loved to brag about loving cops and putting people in prison for crimes of desperation. It was a way to signal to old-school racist voters that they weren’t that kind of Democrat.
States followed the federal lead in toughening drug sentencing laws. Now, with an opioid epidemic that refuses to go away — A 40-year-old Colerain Township man pled guilty last week after his one-year-old daughter ingested fentanyl and died — we’re running out of room and money to imprison drug addicts.
Better late than never, it’s led to Ohio examining new ways of treating addiction within the criminal justice system.
From All Things Considered of npr.org:
Ohio has one of the largest female prison populations in the country. There are about nine times more women behind bars in the state today as there were just a few decades ago. And experts agree addiction has been fueling this rapid growth.
…
Monghan is serving a seven-year sentence for robbery at the Ohio Reformatory for Women. She lives inside the Tapestry Treatment Community. It's the only addiction recovery unit for incarcerated women in the state. It uses a tiered approach and group therapy to help women identify the root causes that lead to addiction. For Monghan, that was being molested and pressured into an abortion at a young age.
MONGHAN: It's been a really huge eye-opener for me. A lot of things that I've been through in my life that I try to shut out and I didn't even think affected me, I'm starting to realize that it really did.
Ohio: One of the largest female prison populations in the country! Don’t understand how that one got left out of the last tourism video.
But Americans, by and large, are bad at processing trauma. We put it into a lockbox and block the memory from our mind. Don’t ask me how I know this, but it’s true.
Anyway, this is another example of the need to get behind Senate Bill 3, a criminal justice reform bill that everyone from Columbus City Attorney Zach Klein to Senate hobgoblin Larry Obholf supports.
OHIOANS GATHER TO REMEMBER KOREAN WAR VET
They call the Korean War the Forgotten War for a reason, but Ohio gave one last salute to Army veteran Hezeklah Perkins on Saturday.
From America’s state news network, Fox:

I’ve seen these stories before, and I my poster’s brain can’t help but wonder if no family associated with him for a reason. What if these guys are standing around saluting the biggest scumbag in the world? Hey, I never knew him. I’m just asking questi—[my agent, who is also my cat, tells me I need to move to the next section].
MURDER SHE WROTE AT MUIRFIELD
Shoutout to the drunk Muirfield Village dad who took a break from preparing his seasoning-less Memorial Day cookout to do la epic prank.
From 10tv.com:
The prank was first discovered overnight by a Dublin police officer who noticed the bubbles floating across the roadway near Glick Road and Muirfield Drive.
Authorities are working to determine how something like this happened. City of Dublin workers told 10TV that at this point they will not add chemicals to force the bubbles to break apart, but instead allow them to go away naturally.
Investigators are not sure who is responsible for this prank at this time.
Would love to have seen the Golf is Serious Business people in $800 polo shirts at Muirfield apoplectic at the scene of the crime.

THOSE WMDs. In addiction’s wake, HIV now appearing in Appalachia… Need land for parks and housing? There are plenty of useless golf courses to repurpose… She thought she married a rich Chinese farmer (she hadn’t)… “Wow, what is that?” Air Force pilots report unexplained flying objects… Despite what Dementia has stolen from the creator of Deadwood, the disease has given his work new urgency.