Oklahoma Politicians Make National News for Reasons You Would Have Guessed
Oklahoma is a state that people tend not to talk about. Whether it’s because passing through that state on the way to somewhere else sucks or because Oklahoma City stole the Seattle Supersonics — or some combination of both — is up for the reader to decide. Nevertheless, the Sooner State appears to have some sort of well-oiled PR machine which dictates Oklahoman politicians can only make the news for being jackwagons. Take U.S. Rep. Jim Bridenstine, for instance. The congressman last week took to his blog to condemn pesky Obama’s “aggressive attempts to fundamentally transform America” (i.e. his directive about gender identity and school bathrooms) and encouraged Congress to go so far as to use the “power of the purse to combat this executive overreach.” While no one really knows what Bridenstine means by this, other Oklahoma lawmakers recently used their resources to pass a law that makes performing an abortion a felony, which is similarly non-impactful. While Oklahoma waits for the Supreme Court to strike down the abortion law, the rest of the state is following Bridenstine’s lead, hoping to use their purses to create a historical village where animatronic pioneer guides quote the state’s current politicians, somehow coming across as slightly lesser turds than the humans.
US Armed Forces Make More Progress on Not Being Scared of LGBTQ People
After much heel-dragging by the haters, the Senate last week finally confirmed Eric Fanning as a secretary of the U.S. Army. Fanning now has a place in history as the first openly gay leader of a branch of the American military. While it’s fun, easy and necessary to be cynical about most things, this turn of events does signify real progress — it’s only been five years since the Obama administration overturned the anti-gay “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Sen. John McCain (who knows a thing or two about military service and what it takes to succeed in that field) deserves some credit for intervening and basically shaming senators who opposed Fanning’s confirmation into cutting the shit. After just a week on the job, Fanning outlined areas where America’s armed forces could improve, pointing out that consistent budgetary wrangling is a distraction that wears on the troops and their families. The secretary stopped short of blaming the dipshits in Congress directly.
Ohio Continues to Wish There Was Some Sort of Way to Figure Out How to Legalize Weed
There are a lot of things people just don’t have answers for. Why can’t there be world peace? Why can’t we get rid of cancer and all the other diseases that take people’s loved ones from them? It could be said that, overall, humans are pretty stupid. More convincing evidence of this can be found here in Ohio, as our legislative bodies sit on their hands while voters entertain deeply flawed concepts to legalize marijuana that contain statutes that don’t make a lot of sense. The Enquirer chimed in this week with an editorial on the matter that sounds like it was titled by someone who had to pay by the word at an old-timey telegraph machine: “Get medical pot bill right.” The state House passed a bill that will offer legal medicinal marijuana to some folks by 2018, so The Enquirer’s advice that the Senate should help make the legislation better is pretty critical (because the state Senate sometimes fucks up new laws just for fun?). Meanwhile, people who are not politicians and have no say in the way the laws that govern them work wonder why everyone is pretending as if legalizing weed is some cutting-edge immunotherapy theory that needs to be developed and tested when, in reality, we could just do exactly what Colorado did and let the green wave of money from weed taxes roll over the entire state from edge to edge.
End-Times Weather Fluctuations Provide Opportunity for Coworkers to Make Small Talk
Someday soon your tongue will be on fire and there won’t be clean water to drink and everyone will be tribally combative because the world got too hot and society broke down. All because of hairspray, SUVs and other stuff humans enjoy. In fact, this April just went down as the hottest one on record, and, more troublingly, it was the seventh month in a row that broke global temperature records. Pop star/rapper Nelly cautioned America during the 2000s about the threats of climate change with a song called “Hot in Herre,” but nobody listened to him or the scientists saying the same thing. In a longer (and equally depressing) statistical view, April broke its temperature record by the largest margin ever recorded. While denying the obvious and scientifically measured changes taking place on our home planet seems fairly ridiculous, discussing this dire situation with certain types of people at the water cooler has been even more difficult lately because it’s been really chilly in the mornings here in Cincinnati.
Ohio Police Appear Not to Get Why People Want Them to Wear Body Cams
Body cams are pretty much coming to every American police department near you, but that doesn’t mean the Fraternal Order of Police can’t come up with ways to make them not work the way they’re supposed to. The Ohio FOP last week requested that officers have access to body cam videos before writing a report, which would be funny if the union weren’t serious. State Rep. Alicia Reece refused to compromise, however, and once the technology is in place the public will be able to watch the video to confirm a police report rather than the other way around, which is what created the need for body cams in the first place.
CONTACT ISAAC THORN: letters@citybeat.com
This article appears in May 25 – Jun 1, 2016.
