Bemusement

 Friend of mine, his wife has a Costco membership, and sometimes, I benefit from this, as she over-purchases and I get stuff -- sometimes in bulk, donated to the food pantry, other times, personally.  This past week I was given a 5-lb bag of spinach (I ate about 2/3 before it was starting to go, and off to the compost with the rest) and some organic peanut butter.  Spinach was fine, the other... ugh.  Oily and then bland, and didn't look/taste like any PB I ever hate (my friend was less charitable).  Give me processed foods any time...

Last night, of course, I did not blog; between TV night (Dr. Pimple Popper), catching up on a stored episode of J!, and finishing up part one of one my other projects...well, it was late and I was/am a sleepy boy.  Alas.  Today was quite the day; very busy, lots of meetings, new projects, company upheavals, and, to top it off, a barrage of (minor) food pantry and SVDP stuff.  I went "out" for lunch to Bakery 57 (a large coffee and a muffin was in order) and they rearranged their store, which was... equally unsettling, and as a change-resistant (to put it mildly) Republican, it was almost too much.

Ohio's new $100 million LGBTQ+ hub aims to create a community destination. Some are asking, ‘But at what cost?’ – The Buckeye Flame
This story amused the hell out of me (For the record, one of my former coworkers writes for them, he flagged it on linkedin, and as I smelled a trainwreck...).  One, of course, because everyone does love a trainwreck, and two... this story involves Armond Budish's son, and I could not tell if he was grossly incompetent or grievously corrupt.  Like father, like son, and, of course, as they are Hope and Changers, they are probably (and unsurprisingly) both.  To use my favorite phrase, if only we had a Republican state and legislator to crack down on this.  Hell, Armond Budish just got hired by CSU, and... well, given his record with the county, if any GOPer (say, Matt Dolan) with brains or political ambitions should be pointing out that if CSU has the money to afford this grifter, they don't need it from the state, and maybe we should do something Republican, like buzz-sawing their budget.

But then I got to thinking.  As we all know, our fine GOP apparatus is trying to pass a constitutional amendment to make it more difficult to amend the state constitution, in large part to preserve the abortion ban, and, well, just because.  I get this -- as an, not-Joe-Biden Catholic -- and I think that is a good idea, but playing loose and fast with the amendment process is... slimy, and this comes from a state with the Householder payola scandal not exactly buried in distant memory.  Let's face it; the GOP is basically saying we need to protect the state from the voters, and... well, if I am not exactly convinced by this, I can imagine what a more fair and balanced voter might do to it.

But... one way to actually present this idea would be to highlight the above story, right?  Here, you have a project in the bluest county in Ohio (benefitting, in theory, the LGBTers who are not part of our electoral coalition), driven by the son of the semi-disgraced county executive...and all it is doing is wasting money and screwing over the very people it was supposed to help?  The headlines literally write themselves, and the GOPers in charge should be highlighting this as to why we need this "reform;" namely, that the voters in places in Cuyahoga County are too stupid and corrupt to NOT get fleeced at any opportunity, and considering that these are the people who are voting on stuff... we need to protect you -- and your wallets -- from them.  

Now, I am not saying it is a winning argument, or even a good one, but 1) it's better than the truth and 2) one of the more useful things in politics (mastered by Donald Trump, of all people) is to attack people with the very same arguments they use against you.  Reminding everyone that the Democrats in Cuyahoga County are the ones against electoral "reform" because it will allow them to perpetrate scams like this might just convince people to swallow the pill and vote for the thing.  It should certainly be done as part of good political practice, but if there one thing a lifetime of Republicanism has taught me, it is that Republicans in Ohio (and elsewhere) seldom engage in good political practice.