Welp, here’s another story that is headed straight for the ever-growing Stoner Hall of Fame.

According to a story from the Seattle Times published yesterday (via The Youngstown Vindicator), last Friday a 22-year-old Ohio man called 911 because he had apparently gotten “too high” smoking marijuana. I don’t think any amount of police training could have prepared the cops for what they found upon arriving at the abode of the stoner in question.

According to a report filed by the Austintown Township police, the man was found in a fetal position on his floor, with an assortment standard stoner junk food like Doritos, Goldfish crackers and Chips Ahoy cookies scattered around him. He also complained that he “couldn’t feel his hands.” Which is sad because it sounds like he was really hungry. Johnny Law found his stash, but have yet to charge him with a crime. Although they did take away his car keys. Now how is he going to get to 7-11 the next time he gets the munchies? Poor guy.

I’ve often said that the most dangerous thing a stoner has ever done is eat too much junk food such as polishing off an entire box of Cap’n Crunch (with Crunch Berries of course) in one sitting. But the image of this guy (which is captured pretty accurately in the photo above I think) really takes the cake. I don’t know about you, but I’d do just about anything to see the “crime scene” photos from this caper.

Oh, Ohio dude, NEVER CHANGE!

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
94-year-old woman arrested for trying to smuggle weed
Dickhead cop asks ‘Why is it everybody who plays Frisbee golf smokes weed?’

 
Oh, Northeast Ohio, I love you. Akron police are seeking a man now dubbed, probably by some rubbish local news program, the “Bowel Movement Bandit,” suspected of having shat on as many as nineteen cars parked in residential driveways. But police have an excellent lead—the gentleman caller has been clearly photographed red-assed in the act of Cleveland-steamering an innocent sedan:

Officers are searching for someone they said has defecated on 19 parked cars in driveways.

The bowel movement bandit strikes between 5:30 and 6:30 a.m. On Wednesday morning, a resident caught the suspect on film.

I have nothing to add except that it sure would be wonderful if his name turned out to be “Browning.”
 

 
Via NewsNet 5

 
“Four dead in O-HI-O. Four dead in O-HI-O.”

Companies love to stir up a lil’ controversy. If you’re old enough, you’ll recall Calvin Klein’s “heroin chic” campaign as well as another late 90s campaign that was widely decried as “porn.” Well it’s one thing to flirt with such imagery, it’s quite another to jump off into the deep end into something so stupid that it turns people off to your brand, like Urban Outfitters has with their totally obnoxious “Vintage Kent State Sweatshirt”:

Kareb Farkas writes at The Cleveland Plain Dealer:

Urban Outfitters is facing a public backlash after offering for sale a “Vintage Kent State Sweatshirt” with red blotches that could be interpreted as blood stains.

Twitter lit up as people blasted the company for its insensitivity for selling an item citing a university nationally known as the site of the May 4, 1970 deaths of four students by the Ohio National Guard during Vietnam War protests.

“We take great offense to a company using our pain for their publicity and profit” the university said in a statement Monday. “This item is beyond poor taste and trivializes a loss of life that still hurts the Kent State community today.”

The tragedy at Kent State was a national disgrace, inspiring Crosby Stills Nash and Young’s “Ohio” as well as DEVO, whose Jerry Casale was an actual witness to the event. Casale told the Vermont Review in 2010:

Vermont Review: Going back to your early days. You were present at the Kent State shootings in 1970. How did that day affect you?

Jerry Casale: Whatever I would say would probably not at all touch upon the significance or gravity of the situation at this point of time—it would probably sound trite or glib. All I can tell you is that it completely and utterly changed my life. I was a white hippie boy and then I saw exit wounds from M1 rifles out of the backs of two people I knew. Two of the four people who were killed, Jeffrey Miller and Allison Krause, were my friends. We were all running our asses off from these motherfuckers. It was total, utter bullshit. Live ammunition and gasmasks - none of us knew, none of us could have imagined… They shot into a crowd that was running away from them! I stopped being a hippie and I started to develop the idea of devolution. I got real, real pissed off.

VR: Does Neil young’s “Ohio” strike close to your heart?

JC: Of course. It was strange that the first person that we met, as Devo emerged, was Neil Young. He asked us to be in his movie, The Human Highway. It was so strange - San Francisco in 1977. Talk about life being karmic, small and cyclical - it’s absolutely true. In fact I just got a call from a person organizing a 30th Anniversary commemoration. Noam Chomsky will be there and I may go talk there if I can get away. I still remember it so crystal clear, like a dream you will never forget . . . or a nightmare. I still remember every moment. It kind of went in slow motion like a car accident.

VR: You said that the Kent State shooting sort of served as a catalyst for your theory of Devolution, which spawned Devo—

JC: Absolutely. Until then I was a hippie. I thought that the world is essentially good. If people were evil, there was justice… and that the law mattered. All of those silly naïve things. I saw the depths of the horrors and lies and the evil. The paper that evening, the Akron Beacon Journal, said that students were running around armed and that officers had been hurt. So deputy sheriffs went out and deputized citizens. They drove around with shotguns and there was martial law for ten days. 7 PM curfew. It was open season on the students. We lived in fear. Helicopters surrounding the city with hourly rotating runs out to the West Side and back downtown. All first amendment rights are suspended at the instant the governor gives the order. All of the class-action suits by the parents of the slain students were all dismissed out of court, because once the governor announced martial law, they had no right to assemble.

And now it’s an ironic tee-shirt for dipshit hipsters! Urban Outfitter’s “Helter Skelter” fashion line inspired by the Manson Family murders are on hold for now, apparently. They may want to rethink those “beheaded journalist” and “Jerry Sandusky Telethon” tees, too.
 

 
via Daily Kos

 
Proving once again how the Lord works in… um…. very mysterious ways, an Ohio man named Jim Lawry thinks he sees the face of Jesus in some… bird shit.

After visiting a McDonald’s drive-thru window in the town of Brooklyn, Ohio, Lawry noticed that a bird had crapped on his car windshield and that the mess resembled Jesus Christ. According to Lawry, the holy apparition, when seen from the outside of the car, looks like “regular bird poop.”

“A bird pooped on my car windshield and when I got inside the view was like Jesus looking down on Me,” he wrote on YouTube. “I had family + friends get in my car and they too were a bit amazed. Wanted to share this with you.”

Lawry videotaped the bird shit on his windshield and posted it to YouTube today, but then quickly removed it. I wonder why?

Previously on Dangerous Minds:

King of Plop: Michael Jackson seen in car windshield bird poop

 
Who’s the better guitarist: Slash or Eddie Van Halen?

A couple was arrested after their argument over who was the greatest guitarist of all time became so heated that Motel 6 staff was forced to call the Brook Park police.

The boyfriend was screaming on behalf of Slash, lead guitarist for Guns and Roses. The girlfriend was jumping for Eddie Van Halen, namesake of ’80s rockers Van Halen.

When police arrived, they calmed down and agreed to be quiet. However, their names were run through a database that revealed they had outstanding warrants in other cities. Both were arrested.

Predictably, the commenters can’t agree on who is the greatest guitarist of all time, either.

Via Cleveland.com

True the Vote‘s Catherine Engelbrecht actually sees herself as a defender of democracy!

The Tea party-affiliated group True the Vote has been barred from monitoring polling places in Franklin County, the second largest county in Ohio — which includes the state capital, Columbus—after allegedly submitting fraudulent forms.

True the Vote claims that its campaign is non-partisan, yet its website touts “vote fraud is nearly an exclusive crime of the left” and claims that the left—I think they mean Democrats here—wants “to be able to steal elections at will.”

But forging signatures on official forms? Can’t you see they had to bend the rules to save democracy from… people like themselves???

It doesn’t get any more ridiculous than these assholes! I don’t know what the hell these dipshit doodlebugs think they’re up to and I don’t think they do either.  That’s why they’re Tea baggers, I suppose. If their IQs were any higher this sort of lowbrow activity would have no appeal…

Via Raw Story:

“The Franklin County Board of Elections did not allow Election Day polling location observer appointments filed by the True the Vote group,” board spokesman Ben Pisctelli told The Columbus Dispatch in a statement. “The appointments were not properly filed and our voting location managers were instructed not to honor any appointment on behalf of the True the Vote group.”

Plunderbund reported that True the Vote had likely falsified or forged election observer forms submitted to the Franklin County Board of Elections. Board member Zachary Manifold told Plunderbund he was “amazed that a group that goes to such extreme lengths to claim voting fraud in Ohio would knowingly forge or misuse signatures to try to gain access to Franklin County polling locations.”

You’d think!

True the Vote President Catherine Engelbrecht denied the allegations, insisting that no one trained by True the Vote had done anything illegal or unethical. Engelbrecht said the incident was the Ohio Democratic Party’s “final, desperate attempt to deny citizens their right to observe elections” and vowed to take legal action.

Isn’t that what any completely insane, reality-denying  person would say when confronted with the fact that members of her organization had been caught red-handed forging signatures on official government papers? Committing felonies!

I think it is.

The group had hoped to place poll watchers in predominately African American areas. True the Vote had asked to send poll watchers to 28 precincts in Franklin County — which includes the capital, Columbus. African Americans comprise more than half the population in 20 of the 28 targeted precincts, though they make up only about 12 percent of the state’s total population.

Left-leaning groups have accused True the Vote of seeking to intimidate Democratic voters.

I wonder why that would be? These True the Vote-types seem like such honest, patriotic Americans!

If you can’t trust people who wrap themselves up in the American flag, who can ya trust?
 

After seeing over two million voters deliver a whopping 61% to 39% rejection of his party’s strong-arm tactics to strip collective bargaining rights from public employees, Ohio Republican Governor John Kasich did one of those “open mouth and remove all doubt” things they tell fools not to do:

At a news conference Tuesday night, Mr. Kasich congratulated the winners and said he would assess the situation before proposing any new legislation. “It’s time to pause,” he said. “The people have spoken clearly.”

When asked about the people’s message, Mr. Kasich said, “They might have said it was too much too soon.”

“They might have said”? Might? Might nothing asshole, it was a 61% to 39% vote! Even reliably Republican counties voted against harming their friends and neighbors. No one except stupid people in the state ever believed GOP union-busting had anything to do with creating jobs. And to demonize teachers, fire fighters and police officers as lazy, coddled bums? I mean the whole thing was just so… predictable.

“Too much, too soon”? Jon Stewart, here comes an easy work day, courtesy of one of the most tone-deaf politicians in America.. More people turned up to vote against SB-5 than voted for Kasish himself in the last election, even. This man is a fucking plank.

Attention Republicans! Let me spell it out for you:

The American people are starting to wise up in an unprecedented manner to the bleak future our corporate overlords and their craven vassals like Kasish have planned for us. And so the Reichwing is starting to get a better sense of how deep the backlash is. This is why the GOP is stepping up their efforts to discourage voter registration among younger, older and poorer voters who tend to vote for Democrats. If you can’t beat ‘em… uh… try to change the rules mid-game, I suppose?

There’s a big problem in their math, though, and it’s a fatal error indeed: There are more of us than there are of them…

99 to one? I’ll take those odds!

As I am fond of reminding myself, demographics are a bitch for the Republican party... Even with the 1%‘s special interest money behind them, they’re still gonna lose and keeping losing until they’re just a minority party of cranky racist stingy “olds.” That’s pretty much what they are now, but when the Baby Boomers start dying off en masse (and it won’t be long before that happens) the Republican Party is toast.

Think of Republicans as newspaper subscribers. That’s how I think of them. Comforting thought isn’t it?

Meanwhile over in Wisconsin, Scott Walker must be absolutely pissing himself as he contemplates how brief his tenure in the governor’s office will have been and what his next career move will be since elected politics will probably not be much of an option for him moving forward…

The Walker recall efforts in WI got a big shot in the arm from labor’s HUGE win in Ohio. If you’d like to contribute to boot that Koch whore from office, you can donate at ActBlue.
 

 
The day after the first leg of the Wisconsin recall elections, I thought the number of “We won!” emails coming from the various lefty and labor organizations I support seemed a little odd. Did we win? It sure didn’t look that way to me. If “we” would have won, the tallies would have been different, right?

Maybe they were half right. Wisconsin Democrats did, after all, oust two Republican senators in two of the very, very few successful recall races ever held in American history. Pity the other two races didn’t fall their way, but it’s certain that what happened in Wisconsin awakened an awful lot of people to what was going on in their state, the role of the Koch brothers in rightwing AstroTurf politics there and just how aggressive and vicious the GOP can get when they are in the majority in a legislative body.

The Republican majority now hinges on one vote in Wisconsin. Personally, I’d rate the glass more than half-full considering the power math of less than a year ago. There is little doubt that Democrats will retake the legislature next year.

The collective bargaining rights issue highlighted by the recall election in Wisconsin, as I’ve maintained here, has never been merely a statewide matter. It’s a national issue of great importance to the future of this country’s middle-class families. Wisconsin was the flash point. The first battle in a longer war.

When I stopped and thought about it, I realized what HAD been gained in Wisconsin and this is now coming much better into focus as Ohio Governor John Kasich and the Republican party seek to back-walk the deeply unpopular anti-labor bill SB 5—it’s not a law yet despite the GOP’s best efforts—and are asking Ohio Democrats and labor unions to withdraw a November referendum on it. The public opinion is decidedly against the Republicans and polling just a little over two months from the November 8 vote shows an overwhelming 54% to 36% gulf in favor of rejecting the bill.

With this much Republican blood in the water, why would Ohio Democrats be stupid enough to withdraw the referendum? AS IF the Republicans would ever pay them the same courtesy! It’s hilarious to watch Kasich say this shit! So craven! So… Republican.

So ridiculous!

I love watching a Republican grovel, don’t you?

Kasich and the Ohio Republicans have been knee-capped and they damn well know it. Working families across Ohio owe Wisconsin progressives their gratitude. We all do.

Good people of Wisconsin: You lit what might be a long fuse, as Rachel Maddow eloquently pointed out on her show last night:
 

 
The view on the ground in Wisconsin and Ohio from New Left Media. If Gov. Kasich doesn’t back down, he’s going to get “Walkered” too. Could two prominent Republicans be THAT stupid? Hopefully not, but I wouldn’t put anything past these guys. Even money says Kasich looks at the mess he knows is brewing on his doorstep and backs down. Crank-call victim Walker, however, just isn’t that smart, has shitty political instincts and he’s already dug himself in way too deep. Walker’s misguided “My-way-or-the-highway” approach was never going to work in a union state like Wisconsin. The man’s a buffoon, a Republican buffoon (Walker has the most idiotically Republican-looking face I think I have ever seen).

Look for Walker to push his anti-labor legislation through in the coming days with some parliamentary chicanery and then for all hell to break loose around him. Walker might not even make it all the way to the recall process, in my estimation, he might have to resign long before it can legally take place. He’s not going to be able to delude himself that he’s “Reagan Jr”. anymore when he gets forced out of office…

Over the last two weeks, tens of thousands of workers and their supporters have flooded the Wisconsin and Ohio state capitols, pushing back on their newly-elected Republican Governors’ attempts to revoke collective bargaining rights for public workers.

Other than the flashes of anger Ohio crowds showed when they were curiously shut out of their statehouse, the protests have been entirely peaceful, even jovial, with the Wisconsin capitol having an atmosphere similar to a pep rally.

WI Gov. Scott Walker and OH Gov. John Kasich have claimed budget crisis as the impetus for their efforts, but their accounting is spurious, and unions have already agreed to reductions in pay and benefits. Wisconsin public workers have yielded to all of Walker’s fiscal requests, making Gov. Walker’s insistence that he must cut collective bargaining rights to cut the deficit even more dubious.

Many of those we interviewed, including union leaders, did not believe that the revocation of their rights was necessary to balance budgets, but was rather part of a coordinated effort to dismantle unions and reduce their large financial and organizational contributions to progressive politics.

As Governors Walker and Kasich hold staunch, refusing even to negotiate, the protests in Wisconsin and Ohio continue, joined by thousands of others from states across the nation.

This NEW LEFT MEDIA film was produced and edited by Chase Whiteside (interviews) and Erick Stoll (camera). Additional camera by Matt Wisniewski.

These guys are fantastic. I really admire Chase Whiteside, he’s an outstanding young man. Please help New Left Media spread clip this around, won’t you?
 

 
Via Joe.My.God (and his title, too)

 
Today’s resurgence in black rock and Afro-punk has been accompanied by a boosted interest in obscure post-Hendrix black rock from the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, as shown by the rediscovery of Detroit bands like Death and Black Merda.

Elsewhere in the heartland, Cleveland’s late-‘60s soul and R&B scene (a role-call of which can be found in this bio for the Imperial Wonders) also boasted a clutch of guitar-centered rock bands, including the excellently named Purple Image. Rising from the 105th St. & Superior area (which took a big hit during the unrest resulting from the 1968 Granville Shootout), PI traded on a thumping, harder-than-Parliament psychedelic sound fortified by powerful group vocals and the two-guitar attack of Ken Roberts and Frank Smith. Unfortunately Purple Image’s excellent self-titled 1970 debut would be their one and only, becoming a rare black-rock nugget before it was re-released by the UK’s Radioactive label in 2007.

It would take another Midwestern black rocker to pick up the

but that’s another story…
 

 
Get: Purple Image - Purple Image [CD]

The state of Ohio is all bothered over a new billboard which shows a breast-milk smeared bab-ay, urging passing motorists to breastfeed, presumably after they’re out of the car. It bothers me, too, but that’s just the atrocious design. The billboard kind of looks like a PSA against undead zombie babies addicted to breastmilk instead of brains. And goddamn, but that baby looks like he’s about to start wiggling his eyebrows suggestively up and down like Groucho freaking Marx. Haunting.

You can always count on the topic of breastfeeding to spark thoughtful and measured debate—or else hysterical attacks and counterattacks. The latest skirmish in the breastfeeding vs. bottle feeding war is being fought in Ohio, where billboards like the one shown here, from the state health department, have been spotted around Cleveland and Toledo and probably elsewhere. Sure, there’s the implication that formula doesn’t satisfy—but the bigger issue here seems to be just what the heck is up with that baby? One local tells Toledo’s Fox affiliate: “When I first saw it, I thought, you know, I agree with breast milk, it’s fine, but then I saw it with the milk around its mouth and I thought that was so unappealing. The baby’s cute, but I did not like the milk coming out of his mouth.” Cleveland Scene readers are more straightforward. Says one: “The little fella looks SATISFIED AS HELL—like a tit vampire with all the drool and boob milk dripping off his chin.” The Ad Council’s breastfeeding campaign seems boring by comparison. Via @rickuldricks.

(AdFreak: Ohio not drooling over breast-milk billboard)