Meatball Ron, Cooked

 

Ron DeSantis dropped out of the 2024 GOP Best of the Worst contest with a fake Winston Churchill quote and endorsed Donald Trump roughly a week after saying:

“You can be the most worthless Republican in America,” DeSantis said on Sunday ahead of the Iowa caucuses. “But if you kiss the ring, he’ll say you’re wonderful.”

And things had been going so well since...I don't think they ever were. 

DeSantis was, for some people the Great Not-Trump Hope, and I have no real idea why; sure, he's younger and supposedly sharper, but he ran for governor of Florida specifically as a Trump sycophant, and it's kind of hard to make that kind of volte face politically. He was never a happy warrior--I chose the above gif to demonstrate a man who smiles like someone was jabbing his voodoo doll in the mouth. He came off like a robot with someone still learning how to operate the switches at the control. He hated the press and so did his campaign, and fuck it, that's just stupid.

And while DeSantis is a big deal in Florida because he's got a rubber stamp legislature enabling him (to do so much culture war shit, all leading him up to fucking off the campaign trail right before New Hampshire), he really looks small when you pull in. And I'm not just talking about the high-heel boots and pudding fingers, the weird darting tongue thing he does when he's stressed out like some wary lizard, or the way he stands like he just washed his arms and can't do a thing with them. 

For a while there, he was flying high, but all good things must come to an end--and even really ugly misbegotten things like the DeSantis campaign. 

So, Iowa Picked the Rapist with 91 Felony counts?

 

I don't especially enjoy the primary season because the idea of caucuses themselves are dense and dumb to me--what the whole fuck is going on with those? People are dropping votes randomly into paper bags and empty popcorn buckets. Who knows who is showing up? (I see no ID's in the deep freeze, they don't need these when the voters are all Y.T.'s.) 

And then there's Iowa itself--an entire state that feels like a FOX news set-up in a rural PA diner no more than ten miles from the nearest militia training site. What gets me is the state gets these political creatures camping out among them, speechifying at them, trying to shake hands with them for at least six months out of the year, and when the inevitable man/woman-in the street interviews take place, they just say the most normie, uninformed things. Like, one guy was hung up on where Vivek Ramaswamy was from because of 9/11. There were no Hindu people with Indian ancestry having anything to do with that. And if he was concerned, how about looking up anything at all ever? Candidates do townhalls, have debates, have featured articles in newspapers and magazines and there's FUCKING WIKIPEDIA and some dolt allowed to vote doesn't know where this man's people are from. OR who did 9/11. 

One young lady said she was just thinking about Jesus and how he died for our sins, and wasn't that why Trump was going through all these trials? No, damn it, I want to yell--you weren't thinking that; Trump and every asshole warming up the crowds for him told you that and it somehow drilled its way into the thing you pick out sandwich fixin's with. Being in trouble for defaming one of his rape/assault/harassment victims has NOTHING to do with you. He stole government docs belonging to the US Gov't which is basically all of us, and that is a crime against you. The insurrection was a crime against our government. Also against you. 

How in the hell did about half the caucus goers decide the guy who has been determined to be a rapist and a fraud, is twice-impeached, and had a whole bathroom's worth of White House docs, PLUS, horked out of his Florida home is still somehow fit to be president?

Snuffing Liberty's Lamp on the Borders

 

Trump praises an anti-immigrant military-style operation from the 1950s called “Operation Wetback” as he calls for rounding up Latinos in mass detention camps pic.twitter.com/9FYrI9zYQz

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) January 14, 2024

Detention camps. Build the wall. Iron Dome.  Trump is full of unnecessary antihumanitarian gimmicks. I think I know pretty well what he thinks he means by detention camps--something akin to what his good buddy Sheriff Arpaio had. How in the fuck, into the 21st century, was this shit something we as a modern nation allowed? 

 They love the hate and the othering. Calling other people names is a good substitute, they reckon, for figuring out the real cause of inequality. The grotesque ease with which untermenchen always figure out how to keep punching down while never challenging the ubermen. 

You know who also loves this stuff--Chip Roy of Texas. He applauded and supports Ron DeSantis because he shipped people from Venezuela who got to Texas all the way to Martha's Vinyard, because that is proof of something, and I want to say it is xenophobia and also proof that liberal cities are better at figuring out how to care for people than bigots in MAGAland ever could. 

Which brings us to the tragedy at Eagle Pass, the woman and two children who died as Texas officials prevented federal officials from doing anything about them. This was according to design. This is what Governor Abbott expends his efforts with, instead of making life better for Texans.  Like fixing the energy grid and shoring up protections for Texas residents in shit weather. Like accepting money to feed hungry kids. 

Now, Greg Abbott is going to tell us that woman and those two children were already dead in the water. 

Sure, that's how he wants it. From the moment they left home and threw themselves at the demented Jigsaw trap this psychopath put between them and a life that was still grueling, but had to be better than whatever they left if you understand what they had to overcome to get so far in the first damn place. Of course, they were. By design.

The Freedom to do What, Nikki Haley?

 

Asked what caused the Civil War, Nikki Haley refuses to mention slavery: “What do you want me to say about slavery? Next question.” pic.twitter.com/cEMW3Cn9ku

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) December 28, 2023

It shouldn't have been considered a trick question, but we know that for Nikki Haley, it kind of is. Here's the exchange:

Q: What was the cause of the United States Civil War?

 Haley: Well, don’t come with an easy question or anything. I mean, I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was going to run. The freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do. What do you think the cause of the Civil War was? 

Q: I’m not running for president. I wanted to hear you view on the cause of the Civil War. 

Haley: I mean, I think it always comes down to the role of government. We need to have capitalism, we need to have economic freedom, we need to make sure that we do all things so that individuals have the liberties, so that they can have freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to do or be anything they want to be without government getting in the way. 

Q: Thank you. In the year 2023, it's astonishing to me that you'd answer that question without mentioning the word “slavery.”

 Haley: What do you want me to say about slavery?

Q: You've answered my question. Thank you.

 Haley: Next question.

The freedom to do what? The articles of secession of South Carolina and all the other Confederate states make it clear--to hold other people in slavery, which is not freedom for the people held in slavery. The proponents of slavery certainly considered it an issue of economic interest, to their mind perhaps, "economic freedom". But enslaved individuals certainly had no right to "be anything they want to be."

Casey DeSantis is Just Helping Her Man

 

We’ve built a nationwide coalition of moms who are mobilized to help elect @RonDeSantis: Mamas for DeSantis.

While voting in the Iowa caucus is limited to registered voters in Iowa, there is a way for others to participate. I’m calling on mamas and grandmamas from all over the… pic.twitter.com/vlVLIHiiUF

— Casey DeSantis (@CaseyDeSantis) December 8, 2023

Wait. Is that...is she calling for...I mean?  Is she saying the mamas and grandmamas should RIG the Iowa caucus? Because I think we know who would be very STRONGLY concerned if there was RIGGING and would have to LOOK INTO THAT very STRONGLY! 

 Casey DeSantis has not been swanning around dressed like a Disney princess in capes and opera gloves in godforsaken Florida to not be First Lady of the US, m'kay? She knows that despite the high-flying nature of her husband's campaign (donor flights, migrant flights, evacuee flights...), he needs help., with this 2024 thing. Sometimes he even seems a little desperate. And that when she steps in. 

This seems a little desperate, too. 

Nothing New Under the Florida Sun

 

Ryan Christopher Palmeter, the white gunman who shot and killed three Black people at a Dollar General store in Jacksonville, Florida was a 21-year-old who bought his guns legally and had no criminal history, local law enforcement said https://t.co/iXp0cIgwMo

— Reuters (@Reuters) August 28, 2023

The oft-repeated social media line is that Ron Desantis is coming back to Florida to address a tragedy that he doesn't want students to learn about the origins of in class. It's true, though. The slaying of 3 Dollar General patrons due to a racially-motivated murder spree, happened near to the anniversary of a race riot where white people went crazy in response to a lunch counter civil rights protest.* Like the Parkland shooter of Marjorie Stoneman Douglas HS, this young man painted swastikas on his rifle. It was meant to send a domestic terrorist message. 

DeSantis: Never Back...Up?

 

Desantis’s bus is stuck like a beached whale in NH.

Symbolic of his whole campaign. pic.twitter.com/cUKi7oUDVD

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) August 20, 2023

All I know is this week, Ron DeSantis made a comment that Trump voters were "listless vessels."

As would have been predicted by anyone who saw how they responded to "deplorable", the MAGA response was basically, "Oh, we got a list buddy, and you are on it, now."  But otherwise, Ron DeSantis is enjoying himself very much. A Happy Warrior, even. Take a look at his face whenever you get the chance.

The Weak Dictator DeSantis

 

I keep thinking I want to write something about Desantis (because he is uniquely awful as a 2024 GOP candidate and as a governor) but it just always feels like there is more Trump news. It's hard for even a dedicated, intentional troll to maintain headlines of any kind when your primary opponent is a) a former president and b) keeps getting indicted and stuff. So, in the midst of avoiding writing yet another damn TrumpWorld post, I thought I'd just catch up with Ron. 

Trump likes to tout that he's rising in the 2024 polls, but it's more the case that DeSantis, his nearest competitor, has fallen and possibly can't get up. The Florida governor's campaign "reset" just saw his campaign manager replaced with his state COS. He fired about a third of his campaign staff, but some campaign aides got jobs working for his state office.  

Some of his aides must have really shown quite the work ethic. His campaign does feel like it's chock-full of hustlers. 

Makes You Wonder (UPDATED)

 

Although the video with the above fascist symbolism with Ron DeSantis superimposed was posted by, and then deleted by, a fan account, the troubling specter of That Gay Ad having been produced by a staffer with DeSantis' campaign does make me wonder. 

See, we've seen this before. Fascist imagery just showing up at random starts to show a pattern that doesn't really feel all that random at all, but more like a test-balloon. The atmosphere in Florida is a bit cozy for the Nazi-lovers, and the GOP in Florida seems kind of okay with their existence (and assistance). 

It's how I feel about the history curriculum in Florida whitewashing slavery. If it can be called ignorance, it's ignorance of a very deliberate kind (a kind Ron DeSantis himself is very much in step with.) Radicalization is a choice. (I don't even know where to begin with the idea of the Chiclet-heads of Prager U having anything to do with school curriculums.)

It's not just DeSantis, it's the party. It's just not usually as ham-fisted as the above, and of course, it was posted by a fan. (My gut says "Plausible deniability" after the Pride month ad.)  But whatever it is DeSantis seems to be doing, it looks like telegraphing to the white supremacists and Christian nationalists to get onboard with him. And that test-balloons like these are flying is a four-alarm fire.

UPDATE: And it was apparently right to wonder- the person (now fired) who made the video was...an aide with the campaign.

UPDATE: This piece by Tim Miller describes just who this Nate Hochman is--a Generation Z edge-lord who considered Nick Fuentes "based" and was going to be putting the words literally in DeSantis' very large (I think his jaw unhinges like a boa constrictor!) mouth.  But here's the part that sort of reveals what the game is:

He went on to discuss the merits and demerits of one of America’s most vile humans, saying the fact that he has said “super edgy things means that there’s a pretty strong ceiling to what you can actually accomplish in politics.”

“Edgy” is definitely one way to describe Holocaust denial!

When the Dispatch asked him about his Fuentes remarks, Hochman acknowledged that he said some “really stupid things, which I don’t actually believe”—but did not apologize.

"Edgy" is like "ironic" or "just kidding" or "sorry, not sorry". Walk-backs and obfuscation are tactics.  In the meanwhile, while we're just shitposting on the good old socials and all, just making our memes, some of the message gets through, and some more people are just a little radicalized. It's incremental and excremental. 

It's why I'm not putting all my hope on the youth--some of them are already on a pretty shitty path and after all, there were Boomers who were radical liberals and "didn't trust anyone over thirty" and my generation X had its share of folks who were about to "sell out" and some but not all millennials count as "woke". Grown people are supposed to demonstrate leadership and set examples. Just like we've got a lot of Gen Z young folks who are fed up with the system that put them through shooter drills and told them to expect less bodily autonomy than previous generations, we've also got some racist incels who legit think Elliot Rogers had a point. And that current is what deeply concerns me, because the pose of irony and the dismissal of actual empathy as "virtue-signaling" and "shitlibs" and being "snowflakes" is all a way of keeping the baby Nazis from wandering off and trying to be human.

But to bring it back to Meatball Ron--back when he was a teacher, in addition to getting history wrong, he was fraternizing with the kids and trying to be cool.  That's him also in this campaign--extremely online and led by callow youth instead of being capable of "leadership" until forced to fire an alt-right dickhead in the midst of also firing 1/3 of his campaign staff. (Which is still not leadership.)

What I'm saying is--I really don't wonder. The GOP invited the alt-right in and that's what they are going to be. 

Don't Know Much About History

 

WATCH >> Ron DeSantis defends new curriculum that will teach children how slaves *benefited* from slavery.

"They're probably going to show some of the folks that eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith into, into doing things later in life." pic.twitter.com/Ls1wyk3tr4

— Ammar Moussa (@ammarmufasa) July 22, 2023

They parlayed: only AFTER SLAVERY ENDED WHICH WAS NOT A GUARANTEE! Generations of unpaid skilled workers labored under the yoke of slavery incapable of seeking other opportunities because they were not treated as people, but property, with little post-slavery option outside of running for it and possible death or recapture. In the meanwhile, they were denied literacy, they were in a segregated church, they had their families sold away from them, they were heritable to other members of their owners' families.  (No, stop everything and read about slave law.)

And they could be abused to within an inch of their lives or past it including sexual abuse. They were used in medical experiments. They were believed to be less capable of pain, a belief that persists in medical practice sometimes even today. They made a straight face in front of white people to preserve their dignity before God and others. 

DeSantis' Campaign is Not Queer Friendly (UPDATED)

 

To wrap up “Pride Month,” let’s hear from the politician who did more than any other Republican to celebrate it…

pic.twitter.com/FT7LdW4vls

— DeSantis War Room 🐊 (@DeSantisWarRoom) June 30, 2023

They are trying to tell the heteros something, but I feel like the message is for queers everywhere--Ron is not our friend. His ad plays club music and he wants to project so much butchness, but his actual history in Florida is killing our stories by not letting queer people be out loud, and he wants to eliminate trans people everywhere. Imagine just being the kind of douchebag who wants to determine that people who go to the potty whenever one is in public is an occasion to have everybody play pin the gender on the donkey? 

Pete Buttigeig is the exact respondent this bullshit requires: he points out that De Santis is running some people down, but who is he ever uplifting? Who does he want to serve? Who does DeSantis think he is doing all this for? It is obviously for very few people. Or wait:

No one but Desantis. And I don't even think Trump wants to compete with DeSantis in this homophobia. Because Desantis seems to want to be eliminationist, but pretend someone will still vote for him. For non-eliminationist reasons. Like what he's done for Florida, like their insurance and disaster protection and how they are still at or near the bottom for student performance or...

Where the MAGA Buses Run

 

It looks like Trump wants a MAGA crowd to greet him on Tuesday, and FWIW, I recommend exactly zero counter-protestors show up, because if Trump, Inc. puts out a "Y'all Come!" it isn't for you babies, except as a trap.  Let MAGA folks, Proud Boys, Patriot Front, people who just like dressing up in an American flag, getting on busses, and yellllllliiiing, go do their thing. And let the Florida National Guard handle things if they get out of pocket in some major violent way or whatever. Because no self-respecting governor would let people go wild in his own state, not white supremacists and extreme right-wing militia folks and whatnot. 

Truly, it would be a real leadership crisis for whatever was running the state this trial is being held in!

Luckily...

OMG.  I mean. Wow.

No. Obviously, Ron DeSantis is an intelligent man and will skillfully sort out how to not have MAGAs run riot in his state in a way that doesn't alienate the MAGAs and makes the rest of the country think he knows what end is up. He has a high EQ like that, doesn't he? 

Hmm?

Sorry, I was disassociating. No really. No reason to think this will be a January 6th style shitshow. Except that many of those people are still out here.  And never got the message that Trump lost fair and square, isn't a good politician at all, and probably is guilty of all kinds of crimes. 

What was the phrase? "Will be wild"?  That ethos is coming to Florida.

Trump's main primary opponent better hope not, and also, too....

(I gave my last sympathies at the office.) 

Bragging on Themselves

 

In NC tonight, Ron Desantis pledges to rename Ft. Liberty back to Ft. Bragg in honor of the incompetent, failed, fired Confederate General who rose up to help lead an insurrection and civil war against the United States. pic.twitter.com/62bVF0TZ8b

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) June 9, 2023

So, I really had to ask myself, "What in the world does the governor of the Free State of Florida have against the name 'Liberty'?" Because the name went from Ft. Bragg, named after a General whose one notable win was against this nation in a conflict best described as treason in defense of slavery, to "Liberty", a cause I think we all should admire.

Ron DeSantis doesn't hate liberty, does he?

(Well, he's questionable on the First Amendment and it just goes to show, you can lead a person to law school, but you can't make them think the law's a good idea. I mean, he tries. And he tries.)

Maybe he does have a problem with liberty, for some people. It really does feel like a certain kind of signifying for a Florida Governor to back naming a US military base for a Confederate general. The base itself, of course, stays the same, and only the name changes--so why does he care?

It's grievance. Pretending something is lost because it's been re-named is as silly as claiming one's nose has literally been got or that one's face has gone away in a game of Peek-a-Boo.  Trump did the same kind of grievance and still does. If we change anything, we won't even have a country. 

Mike Pence is doing it, too.  It feels like they are trying to support the Confederate cause of states defying federal law, or even seceding, a very strange position for presidential candidates to take. And I could be wrong--they might just be catering to the assumed historical imaginations of Confederate flag-carrying racist whites. For some reason. And it doesn't even really feel like a thing that should be an actual issue--it's a wedge issue.  It's actually kind of a push-poll-like wedge issue, where they are trying to capture and create that audience at the same time.

I don't know why they think they are going to be better at doing this than Trump ever was. He's the Mozart of Malice, the Beethoven of bigotry. And he's liable to actually start a second Civil War--and those posers just wish. 

Climbing One Hill After Another

 

A Florida School Has Banned the Poem Read at Biden’s Inauguration

Amanda Gorman’s The Hill We Climb is restricted after just one parent complained about it.https://t.co/AMLRSaUSOA #BannedBooks #IStandWithTheBanned

— PEN America (@PENamerica) May 23, 2023

There is some back and forth over what we count as a "ban" for purposes of conversation--so let's go with "restriction". One parent complained about this poem. One confused parent, who thought it was written by Oprah Winfrey (which right there is a bit of a red flag--no?) And so it was decided on the basis of one opinion that maybe the younger ones would be "confused" or "indoctrinated" by a poem that was read at a presidential inauguration for all the world to hear. 

So, let's talk about the parent--who apologized for promoting the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", a notorious anti-Semitic hoax that still has a lot of play among a certain set of conspiracy theorists. She admits she's not much of a reader. One could argue what sort of thinker she is. But the point is--she's one person.

And she has the ability as a parent to restrict her own's kids' reading. I can wonder about what sort of strange, unwell bonsai her kids' curiosity might be pruned to as a result. But my own parents pulled messy romance novels and Mad Magazine out of my sweaty little hands as a kid--it was their right. At issue is whether a very few, and possibly very cranky few at that, should have veto power over all the kids' reading. 

After all, just eleven people filed most book bans across the country. Maybe these people need new hobbies, because that sounds like an industry, if not its own agenda.

I can't say age restriction is wholesale bad--I definitely question things of a sexually explicit nature being in the hands of kids and think maturity restrictions do make sense, in context. But, for example, nudity was used as a reason for banning the graphic novel "Maus" in a context that had no sexual conten. And I can see where there are challenges to LGBT+ content on the basis of "sexual references" where nothing is explicit. (I want to put out there that not all "coming of age" novels are for the people who are coming of age themselves, but for people who have also been through it.)  But also, just because something is contentious doesn't mean it's wrong, as in the case of, I dunno, the grand sweep of American history.

Those decision aren't one hill to climb--but one after another. And shouldn't be lightly decided just because school officials can't be bothered to fend off random cranks.

The Jebbening! of Ron DeSantis

 

pic.twitter.com/H7G6q4TtKq

— Secular Talk🎙 (@KyleKulinski) May 25, 2023

You know, I love the sunny optimism of people who want to push the theory that Ron DeSantis will most surely fail because he's a weird fucking glitchy AI trained on Orwell as a handbook and White Christian supremacy as a goal who sort of can't stand like a man who has always had arms and regularly unhinges his mouth when he laughs like he's about to devour a sacrificial goat. I mean, sure, all that is really off-putting, but if one has the backing of enough big money donors and is somehow the largest tool in the shed after the other big tool gets majorly law-hammered (because the conviction of Trump for anything at all and legal removal from the primary pool springs eternal in the minds of those who have engaged in the contest--although they would never, never say something so obvious aloud) who you gonna settle with? 

DeSantis is Not Sanitary

 

Ron DeSantis wiped his snot on a man in Iowa pic.twitter.com/1sme5S2c23

— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) May 19, 2023

Look, if you can get beyond "pudding fingers"--great and good on ya.  But if you can't draw the line at snot fingers, I don't know where to go with you. Because stunad just wiped his nose on his hands and his hands on a wheelchair. 

Now, that isn't the worst about DeSantis you'll see recently.  There's the utter torture his anti-abortion bullshit is putting pregnant families through. The Washington Post has a story about a lovely family that had to watch their little baby die because they could not mercifully end that pregnancy before their child was born to suffer a horrible death, and you will never, never, never convince me this is pro-life. 

There will be other stories just like this. This asshole's politics is about people suffering for his culture war bona fides. I don't know what he or his conjoined twin wife Casey believes as a Catholic or a Republican, but I know he doesn't give a shit about whether other people suffer for his ambition. They are against public schools, because wow--why sanctify education, right?  If critical thinking makes you less conservative, more liberal, more inclined to dissent--and wow! Does this prickly pants hate dissent! 

(But while he absolutely hates protests outside of homes of officials, he really likes depositing immigrants outside of where liberal officials might be.) 

Suffice it to say--his hands aren't clean.

What Rough Beast Slouches Towards Iowa?

 

The whackadoodles of Mike Flynn's travelling psyops parade decamped at the Doral where they were welcomed among the other bedbugs. It's an explicitly Christian Nationalist gimmick, and many Christians do not enjoy the political posturing. While Trump was not there in actuality, he was there in the form of his idiot son Eric and probably Lara Trump--they have been tight with this weird community of anti-vaxxers and convoy-promoters and school board and hospital protesters. And when his Iowa rally was called supposedly due to the weather, The Former Guy called in to let convicted and pardoned felon, the man who was collecting bucks from Russia and Turkey, Mike Flynn, know that he was definitely welcome in a second Trump Administration.  As he's been saying. 

Of course, one should be aware by now that Flynn is, to put it delicately, batshit. Someone who wants to overthrow the government, celebrates chaos, and thinks there's vaccines in the salad dressing isn't normal.  But this is Mr. 5th Generation Warfare, the guy who is telling his followers to look out because the internet is being used to tell people weird shit in order to manipulate them. Which is fun stuff from the guy whose son spread Pizzagate memes in 2016 and himself talked about Agenda 21, which is actually dead stupid. 

The coterie of kooks include Julie Green, who I almost feel sad for, because she is on a level of toxic dumb shit that is hard to divorce from thinking--is she okay? Why do people let her just be delusional like this? Is there money in it? 

(I mean like, fortunetellers do get paid sometimes, it's a reliable bunco. But when someone is so repeatedly wrong, shouldn't they they get moved to the next town by ripped-off and unhappy customers? Unless they have found the marksiest of the marks. And that is the Trump mishpocha. They want to believe.) 

Ron DeSantis Just Dropped Some New Racism

 

This signifying white supremacist just came out in favor of choking out homeless people of color by smearing progressive DAs as being controlled by a (((globalist))))? This is deeply racist. Manslaughter is not what a Good Samaritan does. https://t.co/QaJUiBXChO

— Vixen Strangely (@VixenStrangely) May 13, 2023

In 2018, Ron DeSantis' gubernatorial opponent made the most succinct summation of what DeSantis was about: The racists believe he's a racist.  The racists had every reason to believe DeSantis was a fellow traveler. We know pretty well from what Tommy Tuberville thinks about MAGA and white supremacy what the score is with MAGA Republicans. If you want to score MAGA points, you have to signify white supremacy.

You have to deny the Ocoee Massacre and the Rosewood Massacre (they aren't even teaching positive Black history there, as far as I hear it.) You have to direct a policy of downplaying white complicity in a systematic degradation of people of color. You have to pretend this is because it's mean to depict white people as racist--and then, be this guy. The guy who can't say "Boo" when racists broadcast anti-Semitism all over his state. And then celebrate a guy who choked a homeless man to death for being publicly upset about an actually very upsetting reality: Hunger and thirst and no place to lay his head where the law would not call him a vagrant and penalize him for the sin of being an unhomed person.

 

Ron DeSantis is Not Your Challenger

 

This is a man about to get reamed by the House of Mouse. and their case is pretty good because the petty Napoleon who started the fight between the tourist main event in his state basically telegraphed why Disney was being singled out.  He is unannounced as a challenger for the 2024 GOP nomination--I think not. Nothing that is happening right now says that Ron DeSantis is in contention. Oh he can run. He just isn't going to be really in contention.

He is on a book tour while Ft Lauderdale has been under water. He's cruising around various countries getting a first class experience of VIP -dom while his state is being left behind--underinsured and overcharged. He's this guy:

Prepared to do anything but actually run for the office he probably very much wants.  Because he's a prickly pudding fingers and is not actually a great governor.

I think he's bad for Florida, but if Florida thinks he's okay by them, I am still not seeing it for the rest of us. 

UPDATE: I was supposed to get to this last night, but his surgeon general apparently personally committed a fraud regarding COVID-19 findings.  This matters, because Ron DeSantis picked this guy specifically because he wanted to be a culture warrior about masks and vaccines and when you do that, you have to accept shoddy science. This fraud is a Qanon guy  and DeSantis knew that was what he was going for. 

UPDATE: 

Aw shit. The above hat is real swag existing in the world and since DeSantis is as-yet unannounced, this better not be connected to him, because Disney is already fixing to sue his ass and they are really, really protective of their intellectual property. They will build an animatronic display of "Bitch you tried it" over the sandy wasteland Ron disappears into. 

UPDATE: In Jersusalem, Ron DeSantis takes credit for Trump's moving the embassy there and is typically GOP-style wrong about the JCPOA because he's a) a Republican and b) doesn't know shit about foreign policy. He expects no blowback from either thing. Also his voice goes waaaay up when asked about GITMO so that's obviously a great experience for him. 

Ron DeSantis had a complete meltdown when asked about a former Guantanamo detainee who said DeSantis observed his torture. Ron DeSantis for too long has been the boy in the bubble. Shielded from constituents and press in safe spaces within Florida. pic.twitter.com/BZLagMS0r6

— Thomas Kennedy (@tomaskenn) April 27, 2023

He isn't ready and he isn't gonna get ready.  And unlike Haley or whoever else, Trump is fixing to run as Florida Man, so DeSantis is disqualified from running as VP. Also too, this man will not be more viable in 2028, either. Sorry to this man. But not really. 

Twenty Years Ago, the US Invaded Iraq

 

Saddam Hussein was no hero and his statue rightfully was toppled ending an anti-democratic regime so many years ago, but the invasion 20 years ago was a war of choice and the US often blows off our dumbest choices, refusing to understand the how and why of our clearest fuckups. But our basis for war then was thin.  The US made choices during that war that impacted the country very negatively, and the US failed to understand why or how until it was too late. The cost was high. 

To me, the worst thing about it was the war of choice also lead to horrible choices at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere--the dehumanization of populations, the broken faith that we were supposed to be the good guys. That even now, we have a potential US Presidential candidate who sanctioned rectal feedings at Gitmo should appall us. He rose up in the GOP bestride a very horrific steed--the willingness to not just follow a multitude to do evil, but to lead a pack. Iraq was a proving ground of what was the worst in us. Our attempts to manage the government of Iraq by crisis, to use their tragedy to make bank should be taught in every classroom. It won't be, but it should.