Welcome to the final countdown
Abortion rights, neo-Nazis, and drag races—oh my!
The Religious Right, up until the repeal of Roe vs. Wade, had lost every cultural battle of my lifetime, and I am 36 years old.
However, now that the dog has finally caught the car it’d been chasing for 40 years, Americans are starting to realize the horrors of allowing your health policy to be dictated by fundamentalist Christians.
Last week, I covered one specific horror story from Ohio—a 10-year-old rape victim forced to travel to Indiana to obtain medical care.
Michael Gonidakis, Ohio Right to Life’s president and a lobbyist for the Petland puppy mills, responded that in his society, that 10-year-old would have her rapist’s baby because she’d have “access to great healthcare,” whatever the hell that means.
But give Donald Trump this much; he knew that the abortion issue would be a loss for the Republican Party when Roe was overturned. It’s a shame he had to become president for me to realize he was the funniest man alive, but he’s always maintained animal cunning, and it’s no more evident than on this issue.
South Carolina and Nebraska—two states never accused of going woke—failed to pass anti-abortion legislation. The one in Nebraska was a “Heartbeat Bill,” which is the law that could go into effect in Ohio at any moment if a judge’s injunction against it goes away.
In Ohio, the Republicans of the Holy Roller persuasion are attempting to circumvent Ohio citizens voting to enshrine abortion rights into our Constitution. They have concocted a scheme that revolves around “protecting Ohio’s Consitution from powerful out-of-state interests.”
Unsurprisingly, their funding is coming from an oligarch who lives in Illinois.
From Karen Kasler of satenews.org on the PAC behind the push:
And most of the funding for the PAC is from a billionaire Republican megadonor from Illinois.
Republicans have said they want to keep out of state special interests out of Ohio’s constitution. But more than $1 million for these ads has come from Illinois billionaire Richard Uihlein, who runs a prominent office supply and packing supplies company.
[…]
Uihlein, whose great-grandfather was a founder of the Schlitz brewing company, runs the private packing and office supplies company Uline. He and his wife have given more than $120 million in recent years to pro-Trump candidates and conservative causes.
It’s cool that the Supreme Court, which has three members directly connected to blatant corruption, ruled that money is free speech, so now we’re subjected to the whims of a packaging conglomerate that lives in Illinois.
Thankfully, there is at least a deadline to the insanity: May 10th, according to Secretary of State Frank LaRose, who supports the push for the August Special Election and recently promised “consequences” for House Republicans that don’t.
Speaker Jason Stephens (R-Kitts Hill) said he’ll vote for the measure if he brings it to the floor. Well, he has two more Wednesdays to do that. But in the meantime, there are five Republicans who have yet to bend their knee to the Ohio Right to Life brigade, according to reporting from Jeremy Pelzer of cleveland.com:
Jay Edwards (Nelsonville)
Brett Hillyer (Urichsville)
Gayle Manning (North Ridgeville)
Scott Oelslager (North Canton)
Tom Patton (Strongsville)
The Rooster salutes these Republicans for opposing the measure, whatever their reasons.
But make no mistake; Speaker Stephens is in quite a predicament. If he votes for the August Special Election, he can kiss Democratic support goodbye in future Speaker’s elections.
But, if he doesn’t play ball, he will draw the ire of one of the most powerful Republican lobbyists in the state. And State Senate President Matt Huffman (R-Lima), a domestic terrorist, will no doubt play hardball with any of Stephens’ pet projects in the upcoming budget negotiations between the two chambers.
But I spoke with Michael Gonidakis, the Ohio Right to Life President, outside House Taco on Friday. He claimed not to know what Speaker Stephens would do, but he also mentioned that he hadn’t spoken to Stephens in over a month.
That’s quite the cold shoulder, which makes me feel like if Stephens were going to fold on the matter, he would have already done so. But that last part is just speculation.
It’s 2023, and wannabe Nazis are assembling in public
I had a beautiful 40-mile bike ride planned with my even more beautiful girlfriend this weekend.
While pedaling to meet her, she texted me: “Change of plans. Nazis are at Landgrant.”
And yes, there were indeed literal Neo Nazis from the “Blood Tribe” gang assembled on the public sidewalk outside Landgrant’s Drag Queen Brunch. They yelled slogans like “Pedophiles get the rope” and “Sieg Heil” mere 24 hours before the 78th anniversary of Hitler blowing his brains out as Allied troops advanced on his bunker.
They were led by Christopher “the Hammer” Pohlhaus, a former US Marine who wore lift shoes and was coked out of his mind.
These losers protested a drag show in a public park in Wadsworth, Ohio, back in March, and they were pretty effective in ruining the event in the rural, conservative town.
Well, they had a much harder go in Columbus. Though the Columbus police didn’t hit them with pepper spray and wooden bullets as they did George Floyd protestors in the summer of 2020, Landgrant Brewing simply turned the music up and kept the party going while attendees held blankets to block the view of the genocidal maniacs hurling death threats and racial slurs from the sidewalk.
Thankfully, yelling at the top of your lungs while wearing long sleeves and ski masks on a warm spring day is physically exhausting. And it’s not like these schlubs were in peak physical condition to begin with.
They lasted about 30-45 minutes before marching back to their UHaul and fleeing on Route 315 North. The cops witnessed the entire gang load into the back of the UHaul, which is illegal, but they never pulled them over and arrested them.
A curious choice, which, again, is a kindness that would not have been extended to racial justice protesters. It makes you think, for sure. But, of course, Mayor Suburbs thanked the cops first in his response to fascists openly congregating in our city.
It’s the cars and guns, stupid!
Columbus decided decades ago to design its entire city around the personal automobile. Our current city leadership doesn’t have the political courage to do anything about it, though they will swear that they care about fantastical ideas like “climate change” and “mass transit.”
The Ohio State is largely a subsidiary of gun manufacturers and Ohio Gun Owners, a group of well-adjusted men who fantasize about fucking their guns. As such, our state is flooded with assault rifles and unregistered handguns.
We got a good example of Columbus’ combined car and gun problem on Saturday night in the sleepy suburb—you’re damn right, I said suburb—of Clintonville.
From nbc4i.com:
According to a release from the Columbus Division of Police, officers were sent to the 4100 block of Indianola Avenue in Clintonville at 11 p.m. on reports that approximately 100 cars were street racing.
Furthermore, police say that several people spectating the racing were in the middle of Indianola Avenue. Some of those spectators were reportedly stopping vehicles and vandalizing them. When police arrived, they got out to try to settle down the spectators before several gunshots were fired.
Some of these shots were fired towards the officers before the street racers and spectators fled the scene. No one was struck by any gunfire and police did not specify if the officers returned fire.
Who knows if the cops got shot at, but they certainly felt like they did. My friend who lives in Clintonville compared it to a five-star pursuit on Grand Theft Auto, which is only possible in real life when you shoot at police officers.
My friend speculated at least 200 cops responded to the scene, which is somewhat hilarious considering that they couldn’t arrest one of the 100 cars in attendance.
But it shows you the dangers of designing your streets like drag strips. Drivers will inherently treat them as such, and there’s nothing cops can do about it—even when they catch them in the act.
Our Democratic city leaders won’t do anything about the roads. Our Republican state leaders only care as much as they can use it to paint urban areas as crime-ridden hellholes while ignoring that their gun-fucking laws have flooded our streets with unaccountable murder machines.
Here’s Ohio Republican Chairman Alex Triantafilou responding to a tweet from FOP Lodge #9 Vice President Brian Steele:
Worth noting that the last notable Republican candidate for city council, Kiernan Cartharn, who was the only candidate endorsed by FOP Lodge #9 when he ran in 2017, received a minimum four-year sentence last Monday for breaking into a woman’s home and raping her.
Sure, our Democratic city council doesn’t have all the answers. But guys like Triantafilou have none of them.
THOSE WMDs. On the frontier of new “gold rush,” mining for treasured EV minerals yields misery… 25 weird Ohio roadside attractions to visit… Homeless in the city he was once a mayor… Cities reviving downtown by converting offices to housing… The “based” Congressman representing Detroit in his own way.