Who Are You Going to Listen To?

 

Several hours before this tweet, North Carolina was declared a federal major disaster, which means @FEMA will rush federal aid to 25+ affected counties and reimburse local governments + nonprofits for restoring facilities and infrastructure.

👉🏻 https://t.co/NkRaj6EJ73 https://t.co/JLeTgiYzyq

— Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) September 29, 2024

Well, uh, let's hear it for a fact-check from Frank Luntz, because open-faced lying to struggling people is, my God, why do we have to explain this?  Completely wrong and unnecessarily divisive and totally unhelpful. 

And also, what Trump is stunting about right now. He did a little photo-op in Valdosta and lied behind a tiny brick wall someone had to stop everything and make for His Nibs. And he had an emotional support evangelical by his side to sanctify his lying. Who prayed for HIM and his election because of course. 

People have died. Some of the survivors have lost everything they had. They have family photo albums and keepsake Bibles and all kinds of records of their life they can't get back. They are going to be homeless for a while. And Trump shows up in his MAGA hat like this was a campaign event. Costing local security. Taking away resources from search and rescue or whatever else for his hot minute criticizing the Biden Administration for--what they already are doing. 

What they ARE ALREADY DOING. 

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. 

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.

Intimidation is the Point

 

It's a beautiful thing, seeing Trump use a crime underboss with blood on his hands as his character witness calling for "strength and honesty in our New York courts." It really takes you back. Once upon a time in America, the specter of the NY mob and the menace of the Five Families might have fucked with a prosecutor or a judge. Maybe after Rudolph Giuliani and Gravano's own turn, this isn't as certain as it used to be. 

Am I being tongue in cheek? I recall when Trump was proud of a mob celeb at one of his South Florida businesses not so long ago. He's not shy about his associations with this kind of people--he has relied on it as a business fact. He was denied a casino license in Australia because of this business fact. 

Now, I don't pretend I've researched a lot into what degree Trump, the builder, had to ingratiate himself with the mafia consortium who owned everything to do with concrete back in the day, when he was supposedly changing the NYC skyline (I only expect those contractors, for sure, were the ones who got paid), but I do understand what he's doing here:

He's just letting people know he's got friends in all kinds of places. Loyal ones. Maybe dangerous ones.

Texas Placing Bets on Whether a Woman Will Die

 

The Texas Supreme Court put a lower court's decision on hold regarding whether Karen Cox could receive what might be a life-saving abortion of an almost-certainly doomed fetus, following on AG Ken Paxton's claim that any doctor or hospital that performed that procedure would be prosecuted. This woman is the stake in a fucking card game. It seems to me that the elected zealots involved, like Justice John Devine:

John Devine, an anti-abortion activist and self-styled “Ten Commandments Judge,” will become one of Texas’s nine Supreme Court justices early next year, as the Democrats are not fielding a candidate for the seat in the November election.

....

Devine has long been a staunch anti-abortion activist. At a June rally in Fort Worth, Devine told the crowd he had been arrested 37 times while protesting abortion clinics in the 1980s, Smith reported. Though, in a more recent interview, “he said he had been arrested during peaceful protests several times in the 1980s but did not remember how many,” Smith reported. Despite this history of activism, Devine insisted he “is still able to interpret the law impartially.”

In 2008, Devine and his wife, Nubia, showed everyone just how committed they were to the pro-life position when her seventh pregnancy endangered her life and that of the baby. The Texas Observer‘s Emily DePrang wrote about a video his campaign put out called “Elizabeth’s story.”

Like that bet. 

So-called pro-life people love to say that a woman's life isn't really jeopardized by a pregnancy. They love to act like they did something special by allowing a fetus to be born if it survives even briefly. And they will claim victory of anything short of this young mother of two just dying right now. Trisomy-18 isn't always fatal: kids with Edwards syndrome can live--see former Senator Rick Santorum's youngest child, Bella, for a story of a child with a way better than expected outcome. But keep in mind this is a former senator with a shit-ton more access to the best care for his kid, and whose wife did not have Cox's unique set of pregnancy complications.

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. 

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. 

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.) 

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.

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.

It Comes Down to Hurting Women

 

A Florida woman, unable to get an abortion in her state, carried to term a baby who had no kidneys. Her son died in her arms shortly after he was born, just as her doctors had predicted he would. https://t.co/f9kwtQ4dBH

— CNN (@CNN) May 3, 2023

The so-called "pro-life" movement isn't that at all. There was no good reason for her to carry this doomed child to this outcome--only a stubborn idea that being born is better than not, even when biology stubbornly also insists, sometimes--no. 

If we look at the snitching-based law in Texas that allows anyone to sue a person who obtains an abortion or aids and abets it--here's where we end up. The worst human ever gets to use this law to further abuse someone who certainly does not owe him offspring. The reality of what anti-abortion legislation is for becomes obvious. 

It's about control. It's about telling someone who is female-bodied they have no rights the state needs to respect. Women are shuttled from pillar to post as lawyers argue whether they are close enough to death to be given reproductive care. The law that says they can seek care to save their lives is disregarded for the sake of the anti-abortionists' imaginary fetal friends. 

We have states where women are told to wait even in a parking lot until they are close to death before they can seek care. 

The reality of their situation needs such careful documentation. Like once again, in Florida, where a rape victim needs a paper trail to prove her situation. Consider a minor child, a victim of incest. How easy is it for that person to document what happened to them? A person economically dependent on their rapist (a situation a groomer/abuser certainly tries to create). A person stalked, threatened with further violence based on their actions? 

There are people who can't easily demonstrate they are raped or even physically imperiled by their pregnancy until their situation is literally them--at death's door. And this is not where someone should be compelled by law to be for their care.  No one should be so compelled to save their own life, or negotiate the euthanasia of their own child, by way of a protracted argument in a biologically time-limited situation. We need to give this space to them. It should not be a debate.

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. 

A View of DeSantistan

 

“Leave our country go back to Israel”
“Heil hitler” “sir do you think you should be put in an oven”

These “GDL” nazi animals have been terrorizing & targeting Jews & Jewish communities with impunity

Police are refrained from doing anything. This needs to be stopped pic.twitter.com/WGJrt9GZjE

— Baruch Sandhaus (@BaruchSandhaus) February 22, 2023

While I could talk about how Trump threw hats at the good folks of East Palestine and offered them his brand-name bottled water, I am more interested in what is happening in the state where his chief rival is governor--his "home" state of Florida (since New York's fine but it ain't home no more). More than a year ago, I noted that Florida Nazis were a very bad sign. I think something is very rotten in Florida.  I understand this guy--I do. 

He looks like a little pouty potato, but he's always thinking about how to destroy the history he learned so that no one is ever troubled by it again. He's a clever spud who wrote his own book trying to ignore race and its impact on our history, He would rather no one was ever confronted by bad thoughts. So he's removing the libraries and the people who want to remember what libraries used to be. 

The (Book) Free State of Florida

 

There's something rotten in the state of Florida, and DeSantis is all over it--his state has purged books, of all things, from school libraries. Because you never know what might be lurking in books. Ideas. Hope. Emotions. Freedom of thought. Freedom of speech. Non-conformity. There might be something there to challenge the youthful mind to do something more than hear and obey. And in DeSantis' Free State of Florida, that just isn't something he wants to see. 

Yeah, I'm here to tear up his stupid circumlocution called the "Free State of Florida". When you introduce a kind of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" for teachers and students and whoever else is connected to schools, how dare you call whatever the fuck you are doing "freedom"? When you start a war against "woke" (anti-racism and anti-homophobia/transphobia, anti-systemic oppression of minority rights, apparently)--what is freedom to you?

Is it just another word for nothing left to lose? 

I don't mind calling a person who muses about how to make the death penalty easier to apply a whole ass fascist. He throws his little shit about making pedophilia subject to the death penalty in there to libel opponents of his bullshit as being pro-pedo instead of anti-death penalty. But I see him. And I don't have a hard time believing the stories that his time in the service attached to Guantanamo and adjacent to the SEALS in Fallujah were about finding legal loopholes to circumventing human rights. (You can do your own research, because I don't know whether what I see is true or not, I only know what I find DeSantis capable of. And I would bet it's a lot) 

TWGB: Look Who's Coming to the Doral

 

Stories about the Trump organization being fined $1.6 million for 17 felonies (overhead! practically a turnpike toll!) or Trump and his lawyers being sanctioned nearly a million dollars for a frivolous LOLsuit against Hillary Clinton and a whole cast of characters based on Trump's long-established grievances (as if the body of his one-time Twitter feed had coalesced itself into a legal document) are heart-warming, sure, but they leave me cold. 

It only follows, as the night the day, that some degree of fucking around will get some finding out on the morrow. Do I find Trump's balance of FA to FO satisfactory?

I do not. He still gets around and has got some coming around.

This is why I am watching his re-election campaign such as it is find its footing with interest, because as he typed out on Truth Social, he has something wild planned at the Doral. Funny evocative world--wild. I remember when things were wild at the Willard and proceeded to get wilder at the Capitol. Surely, there's nothing intentional there?

But look who is coming to Doral! It's former General and Trump NSA Michael Flynn and the ReAwaken America circus!  It's a person some consider to be a traitor who has gathered election-deniers, Christian Nationalists, Qanon, and the Apocalyptic viewpoint of a showdown between good and evil, happening right here in the good old US of A. 

DeSantis and the Debts

 

In Pennsylvania, where Dr. Oz and Doug Mastriano are contending for US Senate and the governorship, respectively, former president Donald Trump has a nickname for a certain governor of his party up for election in Trump's own current state of residence: he calls him "Ron DeSanctimonious." And why not? Trump is spoiling to run for president in 2024 himself and wants to kneecap other contenders who have forgotten who he is. 

Now, the reason why Trump wants to run for president in 2024 might understandably be construed to be in part his belief that being a political contender will wash away some of his legal woes.  We've known that for more than a minute. He doesn't need to run to prove himself--he has been in the White House. Even if he lost. And was impeached twice....What he does need is to manufacture the kind of pre-emptive immunity he once had when he was in office.

But what he doesn't want is some upstart who came to office on his presumed coattails (today, what should have been an unraveled bolero, if the media and Democratic messaging could get on the same page about his fall from grace) to supplant him. 

And Ron Desantis, who toadied with croaking and sticky-tongued fidelity to win in Florida, has decided to trip the light Olympic and set his cap among the stars, declaring that he's God's gift to politics. 

I love you, Ron.

On behalf of millions of people, never stop fighting for freedom. pic.twitter.com/5wcopo041U

— Casey DeSantis (@CaseyDeSantis) November 4, 2022

(Casey DeSantis--brainwashed tradwife or religiously-literate brains behind the rattan throne? Also too, don't care.) 

On the nth day, the creator endowed me with an amazing gag-reflex, but I sputtered a little over this one. Sure, it's serving "God created a farmer" energy and also, those various t-shirts from the kind of twee probably mostly foreign labels that appeal to millennial wine moms who decorate their houses with wooden signs with inspirational calligraphy and are advertised on Facebook. 

As far as Trump can see--DeSantis owes him. All the young Republicans do. Which leads me to once again ask--What is the play? Because you can't suck up to Trump if you want to topple him. And you need to finish him to get over him, and no Republican seems to have the taste for it. 

Does DeSanctimonious have the stones? He's ambitious, wants to be liked, and loves to retcon history. He's already earned dictator cred. He's earned the support of bigots and punched down at LGBT people every chance he can get and smeared their allies as "groomers".  He's thumbed his nose at science and history alike. (He's done a lot to reinforce my personal prejudice that the Ivies socially promote unfit conservative students because they would rather not deal with the stink they would raise if flunked for just poor all-around scholarship.)

I think DeSantis might not have the stones. I know Trump thinks he doesn't. But I'd like DeSantis to try it because I am not too sophisticated to watch a little bloodsport. 

The Supersessionists' Answer to Anti-Semitism

 

Doug Mastriano asked by an Israeli reporter (@nathanguttman of @kann_news) to respond to antisemitic attack on Josh Shapiro and association with Gab.

His wife Rebbie steps in and says: “I'm gonna say we probably love Israel more than a lot of Jews do.” #PAGov pic.twitter.com/Pczpz2IYgJ

— Jacob Kornbluh (@jacobkornbluh) October 30, 2022

When asked about the anti-Semitic attack on Josh Shapiro (who Mastriano has derided as being a "secular Jew" which is just not even his place to say anything about) and his association with Andrew Torba who is rabidly anti-Semitic, Rebbie Mastriano steps in to offer the worst of philosemitic bullshit: she and her husband love Israel so much--even more than the "fake Jews" do. I mean, no other country has Megiddo in it, she did not add. Which is mentioned in the Book of Joshua which she and her spouse are ridiculously influenced by--which is just a crazy-ass pile of smiting of heathens by people backed by God, which is totally their thing. 

But in their world, people who don't back them are the real heathens, whoever they are. So. Are they reeeaaaalllly anti-Semites? Or just all-purpose haters? Um. Why do I fucking care? These chucklefucks believe dangerous nonsense that has no place in any government whatsoever. But yes, if Jewish people are among the many people they think are part of a "problem" then yes. I would call it that.

So, the thing she said? Totally the kind of rambling we've been hearing from Trump, lately. But also a troubling aspect of the rise in people talking about Christian Nationalism. She loves Jewish people--mostly elsewhere. 

And when we see signs like this in Florida:

Anti-Semitic banners were hung over an overpass on I-10 in Jacksonville, Florida on Friday. Mayor @lennycurry and Governor @RonDeSantisFL have not yet condemned the actions of Nazis in Duval County. There are an estimated 14,000 Jews in the city.

Photo: @MelissainJax pic.twitter.com/lPlYICJT1w

— Travis Akers (@travisakers) October 29, 2022

The way they were hung just recently in LA, are we holding our breath to see how Ron DeSantis, who Doug Mastriano wants to emulate, he says, responds? When an area arena scoreboard sign is hacked with anti-Jewish messages as well? 

You cannot expect any people who have become friendly with hate to protect anyone; you cannot expect them to recognize people who they have already demonstrated they will exclude. And if seeing is believing, then what I am seeing tells me we are seeing a party taking a very dark turn. 

Ron DeSantis Lets You Know Who To Thank

 

He is wearing a campaign shirt while handing out food donated by a charity. This is a pretty clear violation of campaign finance laws and of IRS laws regarding the charity. https://t.co/OgWHe7oiMw

— Juan-Carlos Planas (@jcp717) October 2, 2022

Ron DeSantis doesn't do things by accident, even when it looks like he's vamping. Of course, he would show up and make it look like he's there as a proactive Governor who cares about his people. Also he lets you know--it's him. Alright? He will feed you and get you some kind of Federal aid because that's on him. But wait. President Biden already approved aid to Florida.

Actually, Congress approved aid without Florida Republicans.  Like, no Florida Republicans approved aid going to their own state, about to be totally ripped up by a massive storm system. 

I like to think I am not stupid, and have for more than a minute understood that Republicans delight in showing that they do the culture war stuff over actually ever doing good government because culture war stuff is easy and government is hard. FL. Gov Ron DeSantis did culture war stuff over migrants to the US and spent a little bit or so of taxpayer money to demonstrate his signifying about migrants because it was obvious as a story for his people to understand.

Knowing when to evacuate vulnerable people is hard.  It involves understanding the problems the people involved will experience trying to turn their emergency planning around on a dime when their every dime needs to be accounted for. You err on the side of caution when there are people who only ever live by hearing an alarm. 

I guess I'm saying DeSantis will take credit for things not being worse, just like he did with COVID, where he did all he could to make things not look worse, even if they were pretty bad.  The media need to guard themselves against accepting his pro-himself puffery. 

Martha's Vineyard and the Migrants

 

So, I think that the DeSantis stunt of hijacking undocumented people from Texas (who had not ever stepped a foot in Florida) and were mostly Venezuelan (escaping a left-wing government nightmare that would be familiar in treachery to Cuban immigrants) was obviously signaling about his national ambitions, not the current gubernatorial battle; his ass thinks he has that sewed up.  I want to concentrate on how what he did here, spending some ridiculous sum to transport asylum seekers processed by DHS to try and own libs, was dumb as hell. (Is it human trafficking--or kidnapping? It totally feels like a violation of human rights.)

I have been saying DeSantis is covering up his clusterfuckery with culture war signifying, and this is just another example of that. Does someone need to spend taxpayer money for 50 people that never set a step in Florida to actually get decent treatment in a receptive and empathetic community of people who are welcoming and actually happy to help people in trouble--in a whole other state? 

You know, a lot of liberals are going to focus on the cruelty. That these people were misled to get them onto the transport with promises of jobs and they weren't even fed or told where they were going to go. I don't think that matters to DeSantis fans. They love the cruelty part of it. They get off on it. These thimble dicks think that owning libs is exactly what went down and...

That isn't what happened. 

Migrants and local high school AP Spanish students, who have been dismissed from school to help interpret, play a ball game in the Parish House parking lot to pass the time. pic.twitter.com/KsyRKsoslv

— Brooke Kushwaha (@BrookeKushwaha) September 15, 2022

What really happened was a whole community chipped in.  This could have been Ron DeSantis, but he doesn't have that grace. This could have been Greg Abbott too, who did the same stunt times two in DC. What if just treating immigrants and asylum-seekers like human beings was such an accessible idea that governors in an election year never had to signify about treating them like pawns and not even people, and just--fucking showed basic human decency? What if decency was always an option, and we recognized that choosing whatever this is--is not ok? 

Ron DeSantis: The Chicken and the Egg

 

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis thought his new task force had found 20 people who voted illegally in 2020.

Now we're learning the rest of the story: Florida officials apparently told these people they could vote. - @MaddowBlog https://t.co/0uapuxrfoR

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) August 31, 2022

I've long been of the opinion that the authoritarian in part craves total control because they aren't really good at keeping things in line. The trains aren't really being kept on time, but you can wail the hell out of people who claim otherwise and it's about as good. When I see, say, Gov. Abbott send immigrants in busses off to NY or post TX National Guard at the border, it's obviously for show, but there's an underlying administrative failure there:

Is this the best use of his state's resources to deal with an issue, or is it just an ostentatious abuse of power to bolster his own public image, at the public's expense?  Is the show to hide the incompetence, or is the incompetence the point that establishes the need for the show?

The same thing goes for DeSantis--if his own state's officials created the mess where former felons believed it was fully correct to register and vote, was it incompetence that he's now capitalizing on, or was it entrapment? Did he help create the situation he's now punishing them for because his government is inept or is he a devious monster? 

As with any "state of mind arguments" (like the ever popular "ignorant or lying" question regarding politicians' pronouncement) I would say it's terrible either way. But if DeSantis did set up people just to create a voter fraud narrative, that is heinous. And if he continues to prosecute people for an administrative cock-up of his own officials--ditto.

He's a little would-be tyrant and not as "normal" a politician as his supporters want us to believe.