Ohio or China, what's the difference
Your friendly neighborhood newsletter
I’ve been working for the past few weeks on a longform investigative style piece on an official enemy of the Belldumber (no not Niraj), but progress is slow so here’s some news to make your week even worse.
Stand up to anti-Conservative Bullying
Is a subtitle that I couldn't care less about, because it doesn’t exist. Every time a liberal college professor bullies a strong Conservative college student with their facts and non-trash worldview Republicans in this country tremor in fewer.
The Republican brain trust has a brilliant fix to this with a new initiative that many of you will get to see in person soon. That’s right, pack your bags because the Trump campaign is going on a Le Tour de Hate of Ohio college campuses.
The last thing already overworked and stressed college kids need is more lunatics on their campuses but that is exactly what they’re going to get. Step aside oval-preacher, we can’t hear you.
The hate train is rolling through 5 Ohio colleges as part of a RNC national college kickoff.
There’s some excellent details in this like this delightful bit about what you can get for showing up.
Along with instructions on voter registration and contact, Merritt said there will be a “swag component” – free merchandise like T-shirts and koozies for students to hand out to their peers – along with a competitive format based on who can make the most voter contacts and log the most volunteer hours for the campaign.
If the Republicans really think they can win votes on college campuses in Ohio by giving out MAGA koozies I have some really bad news for them. It turns out that according to my unscientific research well-educated college kids are not likely to have their votes swayed by shitty made-in-china swag.
If giving out swag actually worked I would’ve joined like 40 Christian groups on campus in my time in college, they always had by far the best junk.
I hope the self-titled Make Campus Great Again campaign once again gets them laughed out of my former states prestigious learning institutions. I also hope that maybe some good can come out of this.
Turning out dumbass college kids to vote, and vote blue, is surprisingly important. This should kick the DNC in to high gear to get onto campuses early and ramp up everything in preparation for a long 2020.
Someone way smarter than me has good data files on OSU voter turnout which last I checked in 2016 was something like 70%, and given the amount of students and the partisan makeup let’s kick that up higher.
Let’s go to Court
My legal experience has vastly increased recently after I called the cops last night on some drunk-as-hell white dude trying to fight multiple Uber drivers outside my apartment. I now consider myself an expert on the legal system, and my B+ in American Constitutional Law in college further proves it.
All that goes to say listen up I know what I’m talking about.
We really should impeach Brett Kavanaugh, he has no right to sit on the nation’s highest court. For that matter neither does Neil Gorsuch, but let’s focus on Kav for a second.
It turns out, to nobody’s surprise, that the sham-investigation that Mitch McConnell approved and set the rules for was indeed a sham. It’s almost like McConnell knew exactly what he was doing and the investigation was a show used to allow senators like Susan Collins to use a half-hearted excuse before their confirmation votes.
There’s now once again more credible evidence that Kavanaugh is a sack-of-shit serial sexual abuser and never should have been allowed to step foot on the court.
Clearly he (and uh others who happen to be in the executive branch) need to be impeached. Similar to the executive branch Congress can impeach supreme court justices in basically the same manner. The House approves charges by a simple majority than the Senate must convict with a 2/3rd’s majority.
That’s the kicker, it could turn out that Brett Kavanaugh was the Zodiac-killer and Mitch McConnell and his Senate goons would refuse to hold an impeachment hearing. Same as the president. No matter what Republicans do the impossible hurdle of a 2/3rds majority in an already unrepresentative senate is impossible to overcome.
The only answer left to me is court-packing or permanently changing how the court operates. When you have 2/9 (really 3/9 when we include also terrible Clarence Thomas) illegitimate justices that have lifetime appointments you have to do something.
Court packing isn't that difficult, Congress can decide how many justices sit on the court through legislation. Going back to the days in early-America where a rotating-cast of federal appellate judges decided on cases is a start, but expanding the court to 15 with 5 democrats, 5 republicans, and 5 picked by the 10 (a proposal supported by Beto and Buttigeig) is clearly the best option here.
It isn’t going to happen, but it’s one of the only ways to fix the national embarrassment the Kavanaugh confirmation was, and before that the stunt that led to Merrick Garland not even receiving a hearing.
As radical as it sounds, maybe it’s the first step of actually taking back our democracy.
I also want to see every Democrat running for president call for the impeachment of Kavanaugh, as Castro, O’Rourke, Harris, and Warren have now done (as of Belldumber press time). It needs to happen.
Debate Me
For the first-time this year I didn’t actually watch a debate. I was returning from a work trip in Canada (where I spent an amazing 4-days under an actual government) and ran into a travel mess in Chicago.
Long-story short I have almost nothing to say about the debate because all the content I consumed about it came from Twitter.com, where I’m convinced everyone is a bot. I don't need to take up space here saying Joe Biden is old because he mentioned a record player, if you needed that to tell you he’s old you I can’t help you.
At this point it feels like just a waiting game to get some folks to drop out and the dominos to finally start falling. Primary season can’t come soon enough, and I regret to inform you all that I did indeed sign up for Andrew Yang’s free-money scheme.
If I win, all my $1,000 a month will be given to loyal Belldumber readers, unless I want some to go on vacation or something. Also, I really don’t like Andrew Yang and the sooner we can get him off the stage, regardless of whether UBI is a good idea, the better. Just another businessman running a grift, it’s clear as day.
China
The aftermath of the HB-6 mess that I covered extensively in here keeps getting weirder and weirder. A group of actually decent citizens launched a petition campaign to reverse the fee that will go straight to a profitable energy company.
The rich energy people, concerned that Ohioans might see through their con, have started a campaign to stop the petition. This is being done with the brilliant use of fear-mongering that strikes deep at everyone’s worst nightmare, China.
I don’t really know what to say about this. It’s so clearly false that I don’t have a response, these people are willing to do literally anything to steal your money.
Their similarly fake TV ad campaign is an ad buy of over a million dollars to tell people that saving money=China=bad, which is some big brain stuff.
Please if you see the petition against HB-6 sign it, and make sure you have everything in your signature correct because invalidating petitions signatures is fairly easy and has cost many a political campaign.
Also definitely don’t report a petition circulator to these whack jobs, which leads to them doing great things like smashing a circulators phone and being arrested for assault.
First Energy, Householder, DeWine and everyone involved in the HB-6 scheme is corrupt beyond belief and they just don’t care.
It makes me sick that they actually got away with all of this, this petition getting on the ballot is pretty much the only thing we can do to stop it.
Support Me Cowards
I can’t conceivably charge for this newsletter since I get busy at work and write way too sporadically. I’d love to write more but I travel for work most weeks and sleeping in my hotel bed is much easier than being mad online.
The good news is there’s an easy way to thank me for not clogging your inboxes, buying your official Belldumber t-shirt. Now this is absolutely a waste of money and I recommend purchasing only if you are comfortable with wasting $20 of your hard-earned money.
Click the above button, titled, “Waste your money here,” to view my wares that you can waste your money on.
Official Belldumber super-fan Tyler Jawns has already made the plunge and looks simply superb in his merch. You can be like Tyler and impress all your friends who will now know you really hate Niraj Antani (Niraj merch sold separately).
I also recently purchased the domain www.belldumber.com, so now you can have your friends type in a few less letters to get here.
No trivia talk today (rough outing in Columbus last week) so just a few words here wishing you a good week. Keep paying attention.