Good for Sherrod, and good for the FOP for remembering who supported them when they were under attack by former Fox News personality John Kasich:
The Ohio Fraternal Order of Police today endorsed Democratic incumbent Sherrod Brown for re-election to the United States senate.
“Senator Brown was one of our strongest allies in the fight against SB5, Issue 2,” said FOP president Jay McDonald, referring to the collective bargaining law that was repealed by voters last November thanks in part to heavy opposition to it from organized labor, including Ohio’s first responders.
Brown “is also one of the strongest supporters of law enforcement issues in the United States Senate and our members of the FOP in Ohio are proud to stand with Senator Brown for his re-election,” McDonald said.
Brown is the first Democrat to be endorsed for the senate by the FOP since Howard Metzenbaum in 1988.
Our paralegal is married to a police officer. Her husband kept a Bush-Cheney sticker on his bumper until it weathered off BUT he was locally active in the fight to repeal SB5. It was the first time we’ve been on the same side of a political issue. I haven’t asked him if he’s “switched sides” and I won’t, but maybe he’s reconsidering which Party actually supports decent wages for middle class people, now that Republicans went after his ability to remain in the middle class.
Now, I know all police officers in Ohio won’t become liberal Democrats, or even vote for Sherrod Brown because Brown got the union endorsement, let alone taking that giant leap and voting for Obama at the top of the ticket but if we can get them to break the GOP voting habit we can peel off a few permanently.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Mitt Romney’s position on collective bargaining. He took one position when he was standing in Ohio and then took a completely different position when he was standing in Virginia (but only after Rick Perry yelled at him) so I’ll let you figure this mess out:
Remember when former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney went to a call center of conservative faithful in Ohio, as volunteers were dialing on behalf of the efforts to save SB 5, the state’s new union-busting bill? And then when asked by reporters, said he wasn’t going to take a position on the issue?
Well, that was yesterday.
Today it appears Romney does have a position: he supports Gov. John Kasich’s efforts to curtail public employee unions in the name of tightening Ohio’s budget. Romney said as much at an event in Virginia, as reported by NBC’s Mark Murray and the Washington Post’s Rachel Weiner.
The Romney campaign confirmed the account, and sent along the video which you can watch below. When a reporter asked about Romney’s response to Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s attacks on him over his non-support of SB 5, he went straight for it.
“Oh, I’m sorry if I created any confusion in that regard, I fully support Gov. Kasich’s—I think it’s called Question 2 in Ohio,” Romney said. “But what I was referring to was I know there were other ballot questions there in Ohio and I wasn’t taking a position on those. One of them for instance, relates to healthcare and mandates, I’ve said that that should be up to individual states. I, of course, took my state in one direction. They may want to go in a different direction. I don’t want to tell them what I think they ought to do in that regard, that’s up to them. So, it was with regards to that issue that I didn’t want to make a commitment. And I didn’t even know what their Question 1 is, if there is a Question 1. I don’t know what that one is.
“But with regards to Question 2, which is the collective bargaining question, I am 110% behind Governor Kasich and in support of that question,” he said.
Mitt Romney also supports a national right to work (for less) law, so Romney opposes private sector unions too. Although… I don’t know which state he was standing in when he said that, so we may need verification on whether that is still his position. Maybe we should just ask Rick Perry what Mitt Romney thinks.
BGinCHI
I have a serious man-crush on Sherrod Brown.
That dude is what other Dems should aspire to be.
AA+ Bonds
The Ultimate Fox News Story
Maude
We are seeing things change. It’s slow but sure.
Romney is helping people see what the rich are really about. Good for brown.
Villago Delenda Est
Kay, this is heartening. A great many people are finally figuring out what has been going on for the last 30 years, and they are pissed.
AA+ Bonds
Cacti
@AA+ Bonds:
Do they realize that sentence #2 wholly negates sentence #1?
General Stuck
EEouch!! that’s gotta smart to the wingers in Ohio.
Other than that. Mitt Romney supports Mitt Romney first and foremost, and all the Fox News bullshit will not be able to hide that fact for very long, when voters start paying attention to the coming election. I think most people underestimate the just how out of the ordinary this man is, with regard to his penchant to patronize a particular audience he is addressing, that is highly beyond the worst of presidential candidates in the past. People will take a degree of duplicity in politicians, but not with every breath they take.
Villago Delenda Est
@AA+ Bonds:
So, did these people raise the lemons themselves? Did they hand make the cups the lemonade is served in?
Did they personally fabricate out of raw materials their lemonade stand?
AA+ Bonds
unemployed
unemployed as fuck
Villago Delenda Est
@Cacti:
No. They do not.
They are that fucking stupid.
AA+ Bonds
I love the “small business owner” in America, who is invariably some mustached rapist selling pills full of gelatin to cure Communism out of the glove compartment of a Dart
A lumpenprole
jwb
@Cacti: Not to mention the roads and bridges that were used to get said lemons and sugar to the place where lemonade could be made.
Baud
@AA+ Bonds:
FTFY
Cacti
@Villago Delenda Est:
And they grew their own sugar cane, which they harvested, refined and granulated themselves, and mixed it with water from a spring in their own backyard.
gelfling545
@AA+ Bonds: Pretty ambitious kids to pave a road in front of their house & so forth to give them a spot to sell their lemonade. I am also assuming that they grew and harvested the lemons & sugar cane so that they weren’t transported over any gov’t funded roads and that they have a non-municipal water source.
Alison
OT but on the Sherrod Brown topic, a funny from his wife:
https://www.facebook.com/schultz.connie/posts/10151087177020272
I LOL’d.
Violet
And who made the cups into which they put the lemonade to sell them? Did the throw them on their own pottery wheel and bake them in their own kiln? After digging the clay from their own yard, of course.
jwb
@Alison: That’s wicked funny.
Maude
@Villago Delenda Est:
The deserter said that for eight years he was awesome and powerful. Thought you’d like that.
Southern Beale
Aliright, reposting from downstairs … some conservative bloggers don’t know who Sherrod Brown’s wife is. Hilarious.
realbtl
There is a proportion of the population that thinks that things like roads, bridges, local and national parks etc just magically appeared. Now if that damned infrastructure fairly would just get its ass back here and fix them and make more I wouldn’t have to pay ANY taxes.
Kay
@Alison:
The last Sherrod event I went to, Angela Zimmann was there. She’s running for Congress. She is apparently enough of a threat to have merited a “tracker” from her opponent’s campaign. He is supposed to follow her and take something out of context and feed it to the soul-dead media personalities at Fox News, I suppose, who will then parrot it.
Except he was sort of lazy. He got a brat and a water and sat at a picnic table, glum and silent. Angela was flitting around all over the place, probably saying al sorts of things he could take out of context, but really, he just wasn’t much of a worker.
PurpleGirl
@AA+ Bonds: I’m assuming that the drink stand is on or close to a sidewalk. Who made the sidewalk? Who maintains the street it is on?
rikyrah
good for Senator Brown. they should wake up and see who is really on their side.
Jay in Oregon
@Cacti:
So these young entrepreneurs took Mitt Romney’s advice on how to succeed on your own, I see.
I wonder what kind of interest rate their parents gave them?
the Conster
There are no roads that people drive on to the lemonade stand? The parents and kids went out and dug the road and paved it all by themselves? Wow. That’s some solid wingnut thinking right there.
Valdivia
@Alison:
I love her description of that kiss. :) Thank you too funny.
gbear
Edit: Comment deleted. I should have looked at all of Kays links before I posted.
Maude
Wonder if John has storms down his way. It’s 85 here and awful We’re supposed to get storms tomorrow afternoon.
lacp
So their parents are going to take over their business with a leveraged buy-out, run up $150M debt, then outsource to China and tell the kids to fuck off? Cool!
burnspbesq
@Jay in Oregon:
Hope Mom and Dad bought a credit default swap; the little fuckers are planning to hide all the cash offshore and then file Chapter 7.
Jay in Oregon
@gbear:
So Kasich apparently passed an emergency vehicle without yielding—he claims he didn’t even see the vehicle, which isn’t a great defense either—the cop tickets him, and the cop is an idiot?
Here’s a thought, Governor Kasich; maybe you didn’t see the emergency vehicle because you’re a self-absorbed asshole. I’m sure like most Republicans you think you are above the laws the “little people” have to obey, and you’re butthurt because the cop didn’t recognize your specialness.
Jay in Oregon
@burnspbesq:
Was it a straight-up loan, or did their parents take an equity position?
tam
OT: But Dan Rather just called George Will “one of the most intelligent of commentators” on Rachel Maddow’s show and she somehow managed not to burst out in laughter.
Kay
@gbear:
You can post that link continually as far as I’m concerned. Kasich had a fender bender during his official duties recently and the cop who responded was the one he called an “idiot”.
The funniest part of that whole “idiot” thing was the stop was filmed. The cop was completely professional and polite. I have no idea why Kasich thought he was an “idiot”.
gbear
Do you suppose that Kasich calling a cop ‘an idiot’ while being filmed in a room full of people had anything to do with the endorsement?
gbear
@Kay: Wow, I’m just one step behind on everything today. I just posted the clip again.
PurpleGirl
@Maude: I’m concerned about two days of storms — I’m set to see my dentist tomorrow and an oral surgeon on Thursday and I can’t change the appointments. My luck that it works out that way this week.
Alison
@tam: LOL that jumped out at me too. As I tweeted, that’s a pretty serious dig at the intelligence of basically all other commentators ever.
Linnaeus
Sherrod Brown is great. I remember when Paul Hackett was supposed to be the great Democratic hope to beat Mike DeWine and the doubts that a lot of Very Serious People had when Brown was the party’s nominee instead. But he proved them wrong, thank goodness.
gbear
@PurpleGirl: You’re probably OK. The reports about lightning hitting fresh fillings are greatly exaggerated.
Valdivia
Also–wonderful for Senator Brown, one of the best guys we have.
burnspbesq
@Jay in Oregon:
Don’t know. The kids didn’t file an 8-K. Apparently they think it’s not material.
muddy
@burnspbesq: It’s okay, they can do it retroactively, can’t they?
Mnemosyne
@PurpleGirl:
Ah, it must be that kind of week. It turns out that I have an abcess forming under one of my crowns, so I have to get a root canal next Tuesday. I have freaky S-shaped roots, so I have to drive 20 miles to see an endodontist since my dentist doesn’t have the right microscope to follow the roots all the way down.
(To be fair, there is an endodontist closer to me, but the one 20 miles away is the guy who did my other two root canals, so I feel like I can trust him.)
burnspbesq
@muddy:
Or they can let it ride, and if the SEC investigates, they can enter into a consent decree in which they agree to never again do that nasty thing that they don’t admit doing.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
Isn’t this cool? It’s right of a piece with the police chiefs assn of a county that might have the same name as a former chief justice and current senate candidate who responded to the news that Fix News Personality King John might come to the area with “well, then let’s be sure to get as big a concentration of idiots in one place as we can.” And folks in OH know just how odd it is that people in that county, especially LEOs would speak in a disparaging manner about an R. I’m kind of excited by this turn of events.
muddy
@burnspbesq: I wish I had enough money to get special treatment. Once the IRS wouldn’t give me my refund for 5 months because when I filled out the form I put my name and social first and my then husband’s name second. I was the one filling the form and the only one with income, but noooo. They finally coughed it up a week before they would have to pay interest.
WaterGirl
@AA+ Bonds: Hey, my first car was a dodge dart. I loved that car!
PurpleGirl
@Mnemosyne: Years ago I had something like that happen. Good luck.
Mnemosyne
@PurpleGirl:
This will be my third (or fourth?) root canal with this endodontist, so I’m not too worried. My experience last time was that he is VERY generous with the novocaine, so I didn’t feel a thing during the actual procedure. It hurt for a couple of days afterwards, but the actual drilling etc. didn’t hurt a bit.
Of course, for a few hours I looked like I’d been very poorly Botoxed because I was numb from my chin all the way up to my eyebrows, but I didn’t care.
muddy
@WaterGirl: Me too! ’75 Dodge Dart, metallic gold. It would stall every time you turned right, and you’d have to open up and mess with the carburator. Lots of trip planning so as not to turn right. or to turn right onto a less travelled street at least. Still, I loved it.
And my Oat Willie’s bumpersticker. “Onward through the fog”, I met people all over the country due to that sticker.
WaterGirl
@muddy:
I had forgotten all about that. Good times!
Mine didn’t do it when I turned right – that’s pretty funny – but I did have to futz with the carburetor. I think I kept some tool in the car so I could kind of hold it open while I started the car.
I was SO SAD when that car died. On the highway 50 miles from my parent’s house. I got the Dodge Dart Swinger after that, but it wasn’t nearly as awesome as my original dodge dart. Good for jokes, though… I can remember when the mechanic told me I needed a new diaphragm for my “swinger”.
I have loved 3 cars in my lifetime: my dodge dart, my sporty black subaru that saved my life in the accident with the semi, and my current vehicle, a honda CRV. Sorry for going on and on about it all, just hearing “dodge dart” and then being reminded of the carburetor must have triggered something. I am feeling all choked up about my old dodge dart and all the memories of being a young pup.
FlipYrWhig
Can I just say, with this stupid meme about building a business on your own… BY DEFINITION, that’s not possible. Without at least one customer, a business ain’t no business. Even irrespective of the government presence in the foreground and background of all of modern American life, which was the actual point Obama and before him E. Warren were making, it’s just an asinine, fantastical piece of idiocy.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@AA+ Bonds: You shouldn’t foret selling “colloidal silver” thru ads on shortwave radio.
dww44
@tam: Plus, not for the first time on TRMS, he goes to great lengths to point out how vulnerable Pres Obama is in his reelection campaign. “No better than 50-50” says Rather, by way of providing another rationale for why Romney should release his tax returns. Can the pundit class not see what a horrible candidate Romney is? Lord only knows, but that episode with Bush and his military service not only destroyed Rather’s career, it seems to have turned him into a mushy centrist. But then, maybe I’m a wild-eyed liberal optimist and he’s got a better feel for November’s outcome.
shortstop
@AA+ Bonds: Pipe down. I’ve run a consistently successful–during many years extremely profitable–small business for 12 years. And I vote Democratic. Every time, because I suffer no illusions about how I’ve “done it alone” without benefiting from others’ work. Also too, I have no mustache, but I’m considering springing for a leg wax more often, because shaving is monotonous.
shortstop
@dww44: I think he thinks that kind of remark establishes his nonpartisan cred, rather than making us think he’s way past due for retirement.
shortstop
Is it wrong to hope the public health department cites those little girls?
scav
Largest component of Lemonade is water. Didn’t exactly drawl out of the ground on it’s lonesome until managed to dig the well along with the lemon and sugar-cane crowing (no subsidies there, I would assume!), paving the streets, constructing the cups, etc. Did they barter with their customers so that no federally tainted tender touched their virgin hands?
shortstop
@scav: Fairly certain they’re using powdered mix from a can. It just sounds right.
scav
@shortstop: Unpossible if they wish to be 100% pure and unsullied by all help and all taint of govt, and I wouldn’t want to think poorly of the fair-haired wide-eyed little political props. Then again, perhaps to be truly free of govt involvement and regulations they used shredded lemon scented hand-towels to make their magic brew, so there’s your powder and I concede your point. Should work this up into a rhyme: This is the Lemonade that Galt Made.
Villago Delenda Est
@Kay:
The officer in question should have saluted Kasich, and then shot the other driver for daring to touch Kasich’s vehicle.
grandpa john
@dww44: So even retired reporters still got to have a” horse race” huh.
Every time I read some shit like this, I go over to RCP and look at their EV map which hasn’t change much in several months, and it certainly doesn’t resemble a “horse race”
grandpa john
@shortstop: Likely, hell finding lemonade made with real lemons now a days is like a gourmet treat