The Crimes of the DeSantis Power Circle, Symbolic of Statewide Republican Corruption

If you want to know how corrupt Republicans are, not only look to their crimes but also look to how they cover up said crimes when they're in control of the investigation. Right here in Florida is a perfect example as a grand jury probe dug into political fundraising misdeeds by those in power (via Jim Vertuno with AP News, linked through PBS Newshour):

A Florida grand jury found that Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis' administration "misappropriated" $10 million in taxpayer money it diverted to a charity connected to his wife, but it declined to file criminal charges due to a lack of evidence indicating who specifically was responsible.

DeSantis on Thursday did not dispute the legitimacy of the secret grand jury report obtained and published online by CBS News Miami, but he insisted no laws were broken and said whoever leaked the sealed documents would face "consequences."

What consequences? The report already indicated nobody in a position to do anything about this is pressing criminal charges!

The Leon County grand jury completed its report in January on investigations into Hope Florida, the charity started in 2021 by Florida first lady Casey DeSantis. Despite the lack of charges, the report ignited a new round of criticism aimed at DeSantis and other top state Republicans over the charity receiving $10 million from a state Medicaid settlement intended to help poor children get health insurance.

Basically, DeSantis' own wife stole from sick kids. SHE STOLE. FROM SICK KIDS. The sociopathy is bottomless with these crooks.

Also note, the grand jury completed their work in January but it's only NOW - after the August primaries were voted on - that the report leaked.

The Hope Florida charity is supposed to help financially struggling families connect with churches and aid groups to help keep them off publicly-financed assistance programs. The $10 million was instead moved to political action committees that used the money to oppose a 2024 statewide ballot measure that would have legalized marijuana for adults in the state...

The grand jury said no one would take responsibility for sending the money to the charity or had any memory of who did.

"We recognize that this would be an impediment to criminal prosecution," the report noted. "While we can't prove who is responsible, we can plainly see that taxpayer money was misused for political purposes and we would like to see changes made to prevent this from happening again."

The grand jury report concluded that James Uthmeier, who was DeSantis' chief of staff at the time, "was in a position of authority over those involved in settling," and that his Keep Florida Clean PAC was the prime recipient of the $10 million. The grand jury said then-state Attorney General Ashley Moody's office knew of the plans to divert the money. She was later appointed by DeSantis to the U.S. Senate...

Take note of all the players involved in both the crime and the cover-up, how they're all interconnected and relying on each other to stay in political power. Uthmeier and Moody both owe DeSantis their offices, and they have personal incentives to make sure they're never held accountable for any role they had in this.

The articles covering this story don't delve too much into how a grand jury investigation into this even started back in October 2025. That it was a fellow state Republican in the state House questioning the fundraising diversions seems a bit surprising unless you recognize it as an intraparty power play: Back then, Casey DeSantis was campaigning to run for governor to follow in her husband's footsteps, a blatant act of nepotism that arguably angered other Republicans ambitious for that office. The polls favored her well into February 2026, but the grand jury created enough scandal to keep her from running.

When she didn't show up on the ballot, you'll notice the other state-level Republicans didn't care to hold anybody accountable for it, even though clearly crimes took place. Their inaction reeks just as much as the DeSantis' power grabs and theft.

And this is what you get when one party runs everything at the state level for 28-plus years. The Republicans - driven more and more by their wingnut extremists - have been in control of Florida since 1998, packing the state courts with conservative judges happy to bend the laws to their favor, shredding every voter-backed referendums that supported funding schools and keeping ecosystems safe, denying local communities any sovereignty, and mocking any accountability to the voters who keep putting the same crooks back into office.

All I want - all I've been praying for the last two decades - is for my fellow Floridians to wake up to the reality that the state-level Republicans - as much as the national party - are a bunch of honest-to-God crooks. The Republican Party from trump on down to DeSantis and to every state legislator and county official are part of an ongoing criminal conspiracy to take taxpayer money for their own pockets and make most of us - even their own voters - suffer to their cruelty.

Please. I am begging every Florida voter. You want an end to criminal corruption in politics? You're going to have to recognize it's all coming from the Republicans in charge at Tallahassee, and you are going to have to vote every goddamn Republican crook out of office. Please.

The Gerrymander Wars Escalate

Any regular follower here knows I am not a fan of the gerrymander.

I've railed about it often: how it distorts true representation, suppresses voter interest and turnout, and drives the major political parties to pander more to the monied powers than to genuinely represent their districts and states.

For some time there in the late 2010s, I had some hope that legal fighting over the gerrymandering efforts by Republicans in key battleground states like Florida would end the issue: That the skewing of representation and denial of voters rights would irk even conservative-leaning courts to level the electoral field and letting sanity prevail.

Alas, the Roberts Court in 2019 nuked those hopes from orbit. All I had left were my observations that even by 2022 the GOP efforts to rig the congressional elections in their favor had turned farcical and clinging to a diminishing returns cliff - all those distorted districts and they still only have a 4-5 seat lead in the House - of their own making.

With the 2026 midterms looming - and with growing evidence that the slim Republican holdings in both the US House and Senate are slipping away - you can taste the desperation of the Far Right to impose their minority rule with escalating efforts across GOP-controlled states to skew their gerrymandered districts even more. Especially as trump himself - openly noting that losing Congress this 2026 would end his reign of madness and sadism - has been running around since 2025 - when his polling numbers slipped as ICE thuggery and tariffs increased - demanding states like Texas and Indiana redraw their districts to keep Democrats from gaining control of a divided House.

The big difference this election cycle - and a big reason why the Republicans are panicking in public - is that the Democratic Party finally decided to take the gloves off and do their own extreme gerrymandering to counter the decades of GOP mapmaking that drove us to this cliff.

I've noted before that yes, Democrats were guilty of gerrymandering in states their legislatures controlled, especially in Maryland, Illinois, and California. It's just that the Dems never pulled it to the extremes the way Republicans did in Texas, Ohio, and Florida. 

Until now: California passed a voter referendum in 2025 allowing them - the most populous state - to skew their congressional districts to where Republicans may not have any seats left; and Virginia passed a voter referendum this month allowing them to redraw districts to where mathematically speaking the Democrats can win the US House by 1-2 seats.

The Virginia results are under legal scrutiny at the moment, so it may not be settled for this midterms. In the meantime, the GOP panic that they could lose the House - and lose it for a long time, because they don't have as many nationwide voters as they'd like to keep skewing the results - has resulted in map madness in the large-population states they still control.

Florida, for example, called an emergency legislative session: Not about data centers, or AI, or education needs, or funding for the upcoming hurricane season; but about redrawing a map they already skewed 20-to-8 in their favor back in 2022. It's bad enough that they're planning to divide the Tampa metro - as huge a Democratic Party stronghold in the state you can find - so that none of the seats representing that metro will favor Dems: A clear partisan attempt to negate the rights and powers of a large number of American citizens.

The funny thing about all this? All of these Republican efforts to gerrymander themselves into permanent victory could actually help them lose it all (via David A. Graham at The Atlantic):

But partisan gerrymandering does have one ultimate weakness—a foe that doesn’t always win, but whose victories are especially satisfying. That foe is gerrymandering itself. If you have never heard of a dummymander, this is probably a good time to learn the word. Dummymander is the term that the political scientists Bernard Grofman and Thomas L. Brunell coined for what happens when a gerrymander backfires, hurting the party that it was designed to help. Dummymanders are nothing new, but the bunch of new districts drawn in recent months mean that they could play an important role in the outcome of the midterms...

Now the action is mostly reaching its end as the deadline for finalizing 2026 maps nears, although some questions remain. (Among them: Will the Supreme Court issue a ruling weakening the Voting Rights Act in time for Republicans to draw new maps for this cycle? (editor's note: goddamn this foreshadowing...) The consensus among election analysts is that the redistricting will end up giving Republicans only three or four new seats, if any. But Democratic prowess in recent special elections raises the possibility that rather than a cold-blooded political hit, the GOP’s efforts could end up as a Pyrrhic victory.

In late January, a Democrat won a Texas state Senate seat in Tarrant County—in a district that Trump won by 17 points in 2024. Most House districts won’t see a shift that big, but victories like these have raised the possibility of Democrats catching enough of a blue wave that maps drawn to help Republicans might actually hurt them. The math is simple: In order to draw more districts favoring Republicans, GOP legislators had to spread their own voters a little thinner. But if they spread them too thin and Democrats have a good year, Republican candidates will become vulnerable.

One thing that keeps getting overlooked in these gerrymander wars is the role no-party-affiliate (NPA) or independent voters play in how districts get won. When they're drawing these maps, the Republicans (and Democrats) look at how much they can spread out their registered voters they expect to show up, and then pray that the third-party indy voters either side with them or fail to show... which is a huge gamble to take if you're trump's party when polling shows a lot of independent voters are pissed at trump right now. You can survive independent voter outrage if your district is +5 or +8 in favor of your party, but you can't if you've got the percentages at +1 or +2.

Many of Grofman and Brunell’s examples of dummymanders come from late in the 20th century, when Democrats still held lots of southern seats because of historic party support, but were on the verge of losing them to Republicans. For example, they write that the map Georgia Democrats drew after the 1990 census looks more like a Republican gerrymander than one drawn to help Democrats, which the authors blame on “the belief that it is good to be as thin as possible as long as you still remain breathing.” Entering the 1992 election, Georgia had nine Democratic House members. Three won, but three lost, and three more retired.

In the wake of those 1990 redistricting, the Republicans rose on the demographic - and racist - shifts from social conservative Democrats fleeing a party more inclined to defend civil (Black) rights. Those shifts were accelerated in the 2000s by the War on Terror of 9/11 and the growing evangelical Christianist voting base, which led to the Tea Party/anti-Obama fervor that drives the modern Republican base to this day.

Thing is, that partisan shift is pretty much played out. For all the ongoing outrage and demonizing the Far Right produces and consumes within their own circles, they can't increase their voting base any further. At best, they can bamboozle or enrage certain voting blocs - Latino men for example in 2024 - to side with them for one or two election cycles before their hypocritical true selves emerge and drive those blocs off.

This is one of the reasons the Republicans are not only struggling to gerrymander every state they can to favor themselves, they're also desperate to take away voting rights from everyone - Blacks, women, college-age, LGBTQA+ - they don't want voting. The conservative mindset on full display that only THEIR side should have power and rights, and everyone else needs to sit there in our cages being grateful for the crumbs thrown our way.

I'm terrified of the damage these gerrymanders are going to inflict: the lack of honest representation that will ignore the needs of our communities just as we need help from government the most.

The only true way in my opinion to end these gerrymander wars is for the rest of us - all of us - to show the fuck up at the polling stations during the midterms and vote the Republicans - the ones most responsible for propping up that child-raping, grifting, sadistic trump - out of office. As much as the Democrats are playing these mapmaking games, they're not the ones responsible for this monstrous tyrannical regime arresting families, crashing economies, and bombing schools.

We are long past due holding the Far Right accountable for all the sins they've inflicted on the rest of us. To hell with their games: VOTE THE REPUBLICANS OUT.

Then we'll see an end to these fucking partisan maps.

The Fall of Florida's Higher Education Under Far Right Republicans

As part of Ron DeSantis' ambitious agenda - for his insane presidential hopes - in 2023 to "fight Wokeness" in Florida's educational system, we witnessed the Sunshine State's schools fall under the merciless attentions of Far Right wingnuts eager to purge "diversity" and any genuine standards at every level. As I wrote back in February 2023:

 Not only are the classrooms at our public schools been emptied of every book so that DeSantis' foot soldier censors can refuse whichever titles they fear, but DeSantis is happily plugging in conservative political hacks into leadership roles at every major state university...

This is essentially a hostile takeover, not just by DeSantis but also by Far Right Republicans obsessed with dismantling higher educational systems they fear are too liberal...

DeSantis is essentially saying that things like civil rights and Title IX protections won't be upheld at state universities. Segregation and racial discrimination, sexual harassment, hostile workplaces, hostile classrooms... all of this will become the norm in DeSantis' Florida.

This is all echoed in DeSantis' efforts to shut down ANY discussion of "Critical Race Theory" essentially meaning our state cannot teach one iota of Florida's history regarding racism, slavery, Jim Crow, Civil Rights marches, all because Republicans are terrified that White People's Feelings (tm) will be hurt if we teach the facts that Yes Goddammit racism happened and keeps happening. He's just making sure that college students will be kept ignorant as much as our K-12 students.

(Christopher) Rufo is, by the by, a wingnut conservative hack actively campaigning to shut down public education of any kind in an obsessive desire to privatize something for greed and racism. DeSantis, desperate to win over 2024 Republican primary voters, is giving Rufo the opportunity to wreak havoc on Florida's educational system...

So it's been two years since then, with DeSantis' presidential hopes all dashed while Florida's educational standards sank into the swamps. In the meanwhile, we had situations like political hack Ben Sasse - Far Right Republican dragged in from another state - causing massive administrative and financial damage to the flagship University of Florida. We keep witnessing Republican leadership at the state level fail our kids and families when it comes to high school success and getting prepared for colleges. The state's budget for education across the board is disappearing, forcing more cuts that shouldn't be happening.

And DeSantis' takeover of New College? How is that turning out? Let Nate Weisberg's report at Washington Monthly educate us:

As Chris Mullin wrote recently in the Washington Monthly, DeSantis exploited Florida’s unusually centralized system of higher-education governance to insert political control directly into the classroom—stacking boards, replacing presidents, and rewriting curricula. His boldest gamble has been a complete takeover and ideological makeover of ​​New College of Florida, a small public liberal-arts college on Sarasota Bay known for its experimental pedagogy and progressive-left campus culture. Charging poor performance and ideological bias, DeSantis announced plans in early 2023 to transform the school into a “Hillsdale of the South”—a reference to the small, selective, conservative-leaning Michigan college that eschews government funds and focuses on teaching the classics. The governor appointed six new conservative trustees to New College, including activist Christopher Rufo, ​who then ​fired its President, Patricia Okker, and replaced her with former Florida House Speaker Richard Corcoran ​at more than double Okker’s salary​. Within months, the new board abolished the gender​ studies program, dismissed faculty and administrators, created athletic teams, and secured tens of millions in state funding.

Two years later, the picture looks grim. New College’s four-year graduation rate has plummeted from 58.3 to 47.4 percent. The school’s U.S. News & World Report college ranking has fallen by nearly 60 spots, from 76th among national liberal-arts colleges in 2022 to 135th this year. Faculty and staff have fled, and students have followed them out the door. “It’s kind of like a Ponzi scheme,” one professor told Inside Higher Ed. “Students keep leaving, so they have to recruit bigger and bigger cohorts.” Spending​ at the college​, meanwhile, has exploded. ​In Tallahassee, there is now open talk of either privatizing New College or shutting it down completely. 

DeSantis’s justification for the takeover was that New College was an educational disaster—a failed experiment in left-wing academic culture. Though the school ​had its problems (it struggled​​, for instance,​​ to reach its enrollment goals, as do many small, less-selective colleges around the country) and ​was indeed ​​left leaning, it was far from a disaster. In fact, by most objective measures, it was a model of what a small public liberal-arts institution could achieve. As Aalia Thomas reported in the Washington Monthly in 2023, New College consistently ranked near the top of the magazine’s l​ist of l​iberal​ ​arts ​colleges ​​for upward mobility, research, and service. ​​Its graduates earned PhDs at rates higher than many of the nation’s most prestigious private liberal arts colleges. Its curriculum mixed ​​postcolonial theory with Aristotle and Voltaire. The college charged about $7,000 a year for low-to-medium-income students—a bargain compared to most similar liberal arts colleges. It enrolled a high share of Pell​ ​​Grant recipients and produced civically engaged graduates—​​92.6 percent of its students were registered to vote in 2020. Far from failing, New College embodied many of the qualities conservatives say they prize in public higher education: affordability, rigor, civic virtue, and upward mobility. 

​​The governor’s appointees arrived convinced they were rescuing a failing school. ​​They replaced New College’s narrative-evaluation system with traditional grades. They bragged about making the college more “selective” (instead, the percentage of new students with a 4.0 or above high school grade point average decreased from 55.1 percent in 2022 to 42.1 percent in 2024)​.​ They recruited athletes and ​​self-described “normal” students to reshape the culture, ​​many of whom quickly transferred out. ​The campus began to change in telling ways: the reopened campus café, operated by a vendor tied to Corcoran, now serves coffee in cups printed with Bible verses, and the college has commissioned a statue of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk to stand on campus in honor of “free speech​.​​​” ​All this change has been financed by ​​an ​​eye-watering ​​boost​​ in ​​spending​​. The college’s budget has grown from​​ ​$53,232,164​​​​ ​​​​the year before the overhaul ​​​​to​​​​ ​​​​$93,043,119​​​​ ​​​​today​​​​—a​​​​ 75 percent​​​​ increase​​​​.​​​​ ​

​​​​​​​​Even DeSantis allies are turning on the project. “There can be no question anymore about what the numbers really are,” said Eric Silagy, a​​ DeSantis-appointed​​ member of the state Board of Governors. Nathan Allen, ​​who served as ​​​​vice president of strategy​​ for New College ​​during the conservative takeover but has since resigned​​, ​suggested where the blame for those numbers should be placed​: “​​New College is not a House or Senate project … It’s a Ron DeSantis project.”​​ ​​​Corcoran himself has said, ​​if New College doesn’t produce something different, “then we should be closed down.”

That Corcoran - a political hack hire who didn't deserve the job in the first place - is looking for the exit is a telling sign of how screwed up New College under Rufo and the other wingnuts turned out. And as much as this is all on DeSantis - pushing a political agenda on our state's schools - all of the state-level Republicans who backed DeSantis' efforts on this need to answer for their own corruption and incompetence here.

Look at the waste in dollars at New College: almost doubling the spending with reduced results, arguably funneling that money into wingnut ideas that aren't working out, if not funneling that money into their own pockets. Remember what happened at UF under Sasse: He hired in 'consultants' and lackeys at double if not triple the pay for no-show jobs and no-show results. It was... it is a huge grift for these greedheads.

For the Republicans, this was never about improving the educational standards of Florida. This was about viewing public education as a cash cow, a means of filling their own pockets with state money while the system breaks down. It was about playing into the hypocrisy of accusing our schools and colleges of being 'broken' and 'corrupt', while being the ones in charge breaking it all and using their own corrupt urges to make it worse.

We've had almost 30 years of constant Republican (mis)rule in the state of Florida, a straight line of crooked behavior by our elected officials and their shady business allies. Why the hell should they be allowed to retain any office after these decades of deceit and destruction?

State of Plague

Just when you think things can't get any dumber in the Sunshine State, the crazed Republican leadership that's been pretty much in charge since 1999 prove they can dumb down even further.

The GOP Morans are playing to their conspiracy-driven anti-vax MAGA base by deciding to end vaccine mandates for public schools (via Greg Allen at NPR): 

Florida's governor said he'll be asking the state Legislature to repeal a statute that requires children to receive vaccines for polio, diphtheria, measles and mumps before entering school. If it passes, Florida will be the first in the nation to eliminate all vaccine mandates for children and adults.

Other vaccines, including those for chickenpox, hepatitis B and strep infections, are mandated by the state health department, as opposed to Florida's Legislature. The state's Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo said his department will soon issue rules repealing those requirements too.

"People have a right to make their own decisions," said Ladapo, who joined Gov. Ron DeSantis for the announcement on Wednesday. "If you don't want to put whatever vaccines in your body, God bless you. And I hope you make an informed decision. And that's how it should be."

These are, by the by, the same assholes whose anti-abortion stance is to take away all health care choices by women period, so where the "make their own decisions" defense then you bastards.

Public health and child health professionals condemned the move. Dr. Aileen Marty, an infectious disease expert at Florida International University, said, "This will cause havoc."

"It will cause problems for funding free vaccines for the impoverished and issues with vaccines to the rest of us due to insurance-related issues," Marty said. "It is clearly against empirical evidence of what is safest for individual children."

It's more than just the children at risk. It will be the teachers, the parents, the communities at large. Schools can be super-spreaders, which we saw happen during the beginnings of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

And here's the thing: COVID is not over. It's still out there, and not just in Florida.

And it's not just COVID, or "regular" influenza.

We're seeing the re-emergence of measles as an infectious threat after decades of thinking our nation had finally seen an end to it. But after all those decades of our medical and scientific leaders successfully promoting and encouraging vaccinations to reduce the risks, we're now in an age when medical frauds are in charge of our nation's health care and are actively shutting down every agency and means to combat infectious diseases.

It is factual to declare that Robert Kennedy Jr., that sonofabitch, is on the side of the viruses making us sick or dead.

And Florida's elected leaders like DeSantis are happy to assist RFK Jr and the other anti-vax frauds to wage war on our children and families all because their anti-science ideology convinces them their ignorance is superior to decades if not centuries of proven medical practice.

Republicans would rather have thousands of Floridians die than admit their anti-vax stances was poor pandering to their conspiracy-driven MAGA base. We're all going to pay for inept, insane leadership by a party that won't lead towards honest-to-God better health and safety for our communities.

Fighting the Fear in Florida

It's hard to keep track of all the atrocities trump and his thugs are inflicting on the United States, but this one back in June really stood out as they were pulling this shit in my backyard: 

Pandering to the harsh anti-immigrant war on our American communities, Governor DeSantis and his cronies are fast-tracking a migrant detention center in South Florida (via Rachel Treisman at NPR):

Despite resistance, Florida officials are turning an airfield in the Everglades into a migrant detention center, which they've nicknamed "Alligator Alcatraz" due to its proximity to the apex predators.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier proposed the project last week, saying in a video posted to X that, in support of the Trump administration's crackdown on illegal immigration, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had asked state leaders to identify places for temporary detention facilities.

"I think this is the best one, as I call it: Alligator Alcatraz," Uthmeier said, referencing the infamous prison island in San Francisco Bay...

If anyone's paying attention to the overwhelmed ICE "detention facilities" right now, there are serious overcrowding, food availability, and wellness problems to where people are dying in custody. Even this horrific attempt to alleviate crowding at existing facilities won't stop this new prison - it's not a detention center, trust me - from being overcrowded itself. Stephen Miller wants his fucking quotas filled, and doesn't give a damn about treating his and ICE's victims with any basic decency or civil rights.

From what people can see happening at the airfield - there are already protestors gathering, bless them - it's looking like a bunch of portable classrooms getting converted into barracks, which I guarantee you will not be adequately air-conditioned. I doubt there will be any serviceable water or sewage considering that abandoned airfield would need months of dedicated construction efforts to make it genuinely livable.

This isn't going to be a safe or healthy place to get imprisoned...

And it turns out I - and the environmental and civil rights activists as well - was right about that hellhole being unsafe, unsound, and inhuman. Last week, federal judge Kathleen Williams gutted the anti-immigrant bastards for their sins (via AP News / NPR):

U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams' injunction formalized a temporary halt she had ordered two weeks ago as witnesses continued to testify in a multiday hearing to determine whether construction should end until the ultimate resolution of the case...

The judge said she expected the population of the facility to decline within 60 days through the transferring of the detainees to other facilities, and once that happened, fencing, lighting and generators should be removed. She wrote the state and federal defendants can't bring anyone other than those who are already being detained at the facility onto the property. The order does not prohibit modification or repairs to existing facilities, "which are solely for the purpose of increasing safety or mitigating environmental or other risks at the site.,"

The preliminary injunction includes "those who are in active concert or participation with" the state of Florida or federal defendants or their officers, agents, employees," the judge wrote in an 82-page order.

The judge said state officials never sufficiently explained why the facility needed to be in the middle of the Florida Everglades. "What is apparent, however, is that in their haste to construct the detention camp, the State did not consider alternative locations," Williams said...

DeSantis and Uthmeier never explained why they put the concentration camp there because they didn't want to repeat under oath their gleeful desire to "witness alligators eating any detainees trying to escape." Cruelty may play well on Fox Not-News but not in a courtroom.

While the legal ruling focuses mostly on the environmental impact of the camp, it helps stall the ongoing efforts by the Far Right under trump and Stephen Miller to incarcerate every dark-skinned person they can find in majority-Democratic cities/states. With any luck, it'll at least end that tasteless and profane merch industry that sprang up promoting "Alligator Alcatraz" like it was fcking Disney World.

If there's any good news right now, it's that ICE and the Florida AG aren't ignoring this court order: reports are that camp is emptying out and should be cleared in a few more days.

The bad news is: Where the hell are those poor detainees - most of them honest working people, family members, not at all the criminal rot the fearmongers insist upon - going? There is no way these haters are going to give up the targets of their fear/rage: ICE is most likely shipping these people to the other concentration camps they've been setting up in other Red states across the country. 

This is all going to turn into a sick and cruel game of "hot potato": moving immigrant prisoners from state to state dodging the lawsuits that will get filed in response to any legal abuses the Far Right leaders across those states will inflict on their victims.

If only we had a working Congress that would use its' constitutional powers to rein in a lawless, vulgar, monstrous president shitgibbon. 

Keep fighting. Keep protesting. Stop every concentration camp from getting built. Stop these hatemongers.

Fascism in Florida: Building the Horrors to Come

Update 7/3/25: Oooh, I am so sorry I missed getting mentioned on Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up today. I'm a bit distracted with taking care of an ill kitteh and a few other personal things, sorry. Thank you, Batocchio, for the share. To anybody still visiting, I promise to blog four times for the 4th of July (my Four For the Fourth thing) so I hope to see you tomorrow.

There are times I hate living in this godforsaken deep Republican hellhole that is Florida.

Pandering to the harsh anti-immigrant war on our American communities, Governor DeSantis and his cronies are fast-tracking a migrant detention center in South Florida (via Rachel Treisman at NPR):

Despite resistance, Florida officials are turning an airfield in the Everglades into a migrant detention center, which they've nicknamed "Alligator Alcatraz" due to its proximity to the apex predators.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier proposed the project last week, saying in a video posted to X that, in support of the Trump administration's crackdown on illegal immigration, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had asked state leaders to identify places for temporary detention facilities.

"I think this is the best one, as I call it: Alligator Alcatraz," Uthmeier said, referencing the infamous prison island in San Francisco Bay.

The goddamned trumpshirts can't give up their fantasies about Alcatraz, can they?

Uthmeier told the right-wing podcast The Benny Show on Monday that the federal government had approved his plan that morning, with the facility on track to open the first week of July. He said it would have 5,000 beds — half of its total capacity — by "early July."

"Alligator Alcatraz will expand facilities and bed space in just days, thanks to our partnership with Florida," the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) later wrote on X.

DeSantis is using emergency powers to take over the site, which is owned by Miami-Dade County.

But not everyone is on board.

Environmental organizations and immigration advocates have expressed concerns about multiple aspects of the project, from the potential consequences on the fragile Everglades ecosystem to the well-being of the people who will be detained there, especially in the hot summer months.

If anyone's paying attention to the overwhelmed ICE "detention facilities" right now, there are serious overcrowding, food availability, and wellness problems to where people are dying in custody. Even this horrific attempt to alleviate crowding at existing facilities won't stop this new prison - it's not a detention center, trust me - from being overcrowded itself. Stephen Miller wants his fucking quotas filled, and doesn't give a damn about treating his and ICE's victims with any basic decency or civil rights.

From what people can see happening at the airfield - there are already protestors gathering, bless them - it's looking like a bunch of portable classrooms getting converted into barracks, which I guarantee you will not be adequately air-conditioned. I doubt there will be any serviceable water or sewage considering that abandoned airfield would need months of dedicated construction efforts to make it genuinely livable.

This isn't going to be a safe or healthy place to get imprisoned.

And the majority of people getting sent to this forsaken swampy Alcatraz aren't going to be gangbangers, or criminals, or violent people. It's going to be nurses, mothers, veterans, families, honest-to-God citizens.

This isn't even really a prison: it's a goddamned concentration camp, and the first of many under trump.

This is ethnic cleansing, the likes of which we've seen in Nazi Germany, and the Balkans in the 1990s, and dozens of other places we used to pretend we'd never be like. Except that is for the history of us punishing Native Americans in the 19th Century and Japanese residents during the Second World War.

This is us at our worst, America. We need to fight back against what trump and Miller and their ICE thugs and their wingnut allies are doing to our communities and our neighbors. 

Addendum: JFC the Florida Republicans are selling t-shirts promoting this! This is akin to Nazis shilling merch promoting Dachau! Yes I went there, because these goddamn wingnuts are blatantly rounding people up just like 1930s Germany.

The cruelty is not only the point, the cruelty is not only policy, the cruelty is open vice signaling to their fellow haters. GODDAMN THEM.

When the War on Woke Destroys Libraries, It Destroys People Too

Just seeing this now on social media, and as a librarian I AM LIVID AS HELL (via Steven Walker with the Sarasota Herald-Tribune): 

Hundreds of New College of Florida library books, including many on LGBTQ+ topics and religious studies, are headed to a landfill.

A dumpster in the parking lot of Jane Bancroft Cook Library on the campus of New College overflowed with books and collections from the now-defunct Gender and Diversity Center on Tuesday afternoon. Video captured in the afternoon showed a vehicle driving away with the books before students were notified. In the past, students were given an opportunity to purchase books that were leaving the college's library collection.

Some discarded books included "Nine and Counting: The Women of the Senate", "The War of the Worlds" and "When I Knew" — which is a collection of stories from LGBTQ+ people recounting when they knew they were gay.

New College spokesperson Nathan March acknowledged the Herald-Tribune's request for comment but had not provided the college's response as of 2 p.m...

Fuck Governor DeSantis. Fuck Chris Rufo. Damn their anti-Woke, racist sexist asses.

This may not be literal book-burning but it's as damn close as the Far Right wingnuts will get.

I guarantee you there's no practical reason they're clearing these books. It's not for shelf space, or for updating to current understanding. These bastards are dumping these books out of spite, out of their sadistic need to make intellectuals and researchers and readers suffer. They intentionally purged a Gender and Diversity Center, for God's sake.

This isn't about faith either. These bastards are purging books about religions that only they disagree with, in violation of the First Amendment and the Constitutional right that no religious test should ever be applied to anything.

Any other rational actor at the academic level would have made good-faith efforts to see books that are weeded from a collection have a chance of going to another college that may need those titles for research purposes. Do you realize how many rare or hard-to-find titles survive at universities exactly because of their research value? If New College had a rare book that DeSantis and Rufo just tossed into the dumpster, they have knowingly denied current and future generations of researchers any opportunity to learn from that book.

SONS OF BITCHES.

For the LOVE OF FREEDOM, and AN HONEST GOD that does NOT ban thought or the SIMPLE RIGHT TO EXIST that every gay and lesbian and trans person has as human beings, and OUR SOULS. Florida, Please. Please please PLEASE STOP VOTING REPUBLICAN. Stop giving these haters and anti-intellectual dickweeds any power over all of us.

SAVE THE BOOKS. SAVE OURSELVES.

The Grift in Gainesville

Update: Many thanks again to Batocchio at Crooks & Liars for including this at Mike's Blog Round-Up! Please do your part to support Harris-Walz for the Presidential ticket this 2024, as well as voting out every goddamned Republican hack at the state level especially here in Florida. /rage

Someone pointed this article in the Independent Alligator to me this afternoon, and after reading the lede and the next three paragraphs as a U of Florida alum I am livid (via Garrett Shanley):

In his 17-month stint as UF president, Ben Sasse more than tripled his office’s spending, directing millions in university funds into secretive consulting contracts and high-paying positions for his GOP allies.

Sasse ballooned spending under the president’s office to $17.3 million in his first year in office — up from $5.6 million in former UF President Kent Fuchs’ last year, according to publicly available administrative budget data.

A majority of the spending surge was driven by lucrative contracts with big-name consulting firms and high-salaried, remote positions for Sasse’s former U.S. Senate staff and Republican officials.

Sasse’s consulting contracts have been kept largely under wraps, leaving the public in the dark about what the contracted firms did to earn their fees. The university also declined to clarify specific duties carried out by Sasse’s ex-Senate staff, several of whom were salaried as presidential advisers...

Graft. Grift. Corruption. Paying off cronies and buddies in every direction. There's no other way to describe this.

I wrote back in 2023 how Governor Ron DeSantis was sacrificing Florida's higher education system to pander to the MAGA voters:

It's been noted before that Florida's current Governor Ron "Pander Away" DeSantis is waging a war against "Wokeness," the current catch-all phrase by Far Right wingnuts describing anything that exposes our nation's history of racism, sexism, and bad behavior by conservative elites.

DeSantis has escalated his efforts across every level of education our state can offer. Not only are the classrooms at our public schools been emptied of every book so that DeSantis' foot soldier censors can refuse whichever titles they fear, but DeSantis is happily plugging in conservative political hacks into leadership roles at every major state university...

At the time, the big scandal revolved around DeSantis breaking the rules and hiring practices at New College, an experimental honors-level program that the Far Right anti-education forces wanted to convert into a Christianist Vo-Tech. But UF was getting the treatment as well:

If any of this feels the same as the situation leading to University of Florida - a flagship institution that had become one of the top universities in the nation - hiring an unqualified political hack like Ben Sasse earlier this school year, don't be shocked.

How was Sasse unqualified? Above all, he wasn't even from this state, carpetbagging his way here from Nebraska where he served as U.S. Senator. Where he did have qualifications, it was serving as president of a small college in that state that was facing financial shutdown. Sasse was able to bring in fundraising, and merging in students from a nearby college that did close in order to boost enrollment to a survivable level.

Thing was, University of Florida wasn't facing financial straits when DeSantis brought him on, only political targeting as a primary battleground over diversity hiring and enrollment that the Far Right Republicans like DeSantis wanted to stop. Sasse wasn't needed for any financial acumen: He was a party ally needed to push a political agenda.

And with that political agenda came a cash grab.

One of the things you'll notice about the modern Republican Party - at least from the 1990s, and arguably well back into the Nixon years - is how they view the public sector as a personal piggy bank to raid for their own pockets. Instead of managing revenues and spending for the public trust, the Republicans happily funnel taxpayer dollars to privatized businesses and contractors who happily overbill in order to get millions of money nobody keeps count of. Republicans in office will spend money on themselves and their vacation buddies without concern (or consequence).

Just look at the allegations leveled at Sasse: 

Amid protests over his conservative track record as a Nebraska Republican senator, Sasse promised during his ascension to the UF presidency in Fall 2022 that he would divorce himself from partisan politics under what he called a vow of “political celibacy.”

But the senator-turned-university president quietly broke that promise in his 17-month term at the university’s helm, hiring six ex-Senate staffers and two former Republican officials to high-paying, remote jobs at the university. 

Under Sasse’s administration, two of his former Senate staffers — Raymond Sass and James Wegmann — were among the highest-ranking and highest-paid officials at UF. Both worked remotely from the D.C. area, roughly 800 miles from UF’s main campus in Gainesville.

It's called "No-show jobs" and I doubt these guys even spent any actual minutes working for UF.

Sass, Sasse’s former Senate chief of staff, was UF’s vice president for innovation and partnerships — a position which didn’t exist under previous administrations. His starting salary at UF was $396,000, more than double the $181,677 he made on Capitol Hill. 

Wegmann, Sasse’s former Senate communications director, is UF’s vice president of communications, a position he works remotely from his $725,000 home in Washington, D.C.

They invented new jobs - arguably without any defined duties and responsibilities - just to fill them with cronies.

Sasse appointed his former Senate press secretary, Taylor Sliva, as UF’s Assistant Vice President of Presidential Communications and Public Affairs, a new position. Sliva’s $232,000 salary made him the second-highest-paid employee in UF’s Office of Strategic Communications and Marketing, trailing only Wegmann. 

The remaining three ex-Senate staffers — Raven Shirley, Kari Ridder and Kelicia Rice — served as presidential advisers to Sasse, though their specific duties remain unclear. Rice, Sasse’s Senate scheduler, is listed as a presidential adviser in UF’s salary directory but in practice remained as Sasse’s scheduler, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Sasse raised his former Senate staffs’ salaries at UF by an average of 44% compared to their Capitol Hill pay, contributing to a $4.3 million increase in presidential salary expenses over Fuchs’ last year in office.

Outside of his Senate staff, Sasse also tapped former Republican Tennessee Commissioner of Education Penny Schwinn as UF’s inaugural vice president of PK-12 and pre-bachelors programs. Schwinn, with a starting salary of $367,500, worked the newly-created position from her $1 million home in Nashville, Tennessee.

Additionally, Sasse hired Alice James Burns, former scheduler for Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC), as Director of Presidential Relations and Major Events. Burns, salaried at $205,000, also worked for UF outside of Florida.

Jesus. I doubt any of them ever set foot on campus except for the occasional photo op with Sasse and to pick up their paychecks (oh wait, they probably used direct deposit). How the hell could any of them claim to know what they were doing when they were NEVER there to do it?

In Sasse’s first full fiscal year at the university’s helm, travel expenses for the president’s office soared to $633,000 — over 20 times higher than Fuchs’ annual average of $28,000. Sasse spent more on travel in his 17 months at UF than Fuchs’ entire eight-year tenure.

Notice how Republicans love to claim they're the party of fiscal responsibility? How can they be, when they're more wasteful with money than drunken teenagers ahold of their parents' credit cards (Gods, this is a phrase I've been using since 2010). In all seriousness, Republicans are fiscally responsible only when it's their money: They will waste other's people's money to their hearts' content.

Remember how I said earlier Sasse had some experience running a college? Well, UF is a university: Vastly larger, more complex, and requiring more skill than Sasse apparently brought with him... because he hired in private consultants at expensive rates to walk him through it:

His track record in higher education administration was limited to his five-year presidency at Midland University, a small, private liberal arts college in Fremont, Nebraska. At UF, which enrolls over 60,000 students and pulls in an annual $1 billion in research grants, Sasse faced a steep learning curve.

He turned to consultants for help.

During his presidency, Sasse spent $7.2 million in university funds to consultants for advice on his strategic planning and to fill leadership gaps — over 40 times more than Fuchs’ total consulting expenses over his eight-year term.

Sasse paid nearly two-thirds of the $7.2 million to McKinsey & Company, where he once worked as an adviser on an hourly contract. The firm carries prestige as one of the “big three” management consulting giants, but is notoriously secretive about its dealings and shielded its work from public view using records laws protecting trade secrets.

A critical “scope of work” attachment, which would outline McKinsey's responsibilities to UF, was redacted from a copy of the contract obtained from a public records request. The redaction, permissible under state public records laws, makes it virtually impossible for the public to know what the firm did to earn its fees...

For all we know, those fees were for covering their tee times and martini luncheons at whatever golf courses they visited. It'd be nice to prove me wrong, McKinsey & Co.

Everything about this situation screams corruption, intentional wasteful spending of public dollars for private use and straight-up greed.

There is no way the crooks at the top of this chain - DeSantis and the state Republican leadership - will do anything to investigate these allegations (and will likely replace Sasse with one of their own corrupt colleagues).

Goddammit. Call in the feds. Get the Department of Education down here, get the Justice Department, bring the U.S. Marshals, whatever it takes. Find out how bad the rot is before it eats at everything else in the Sunshine State that hasn't been broken yet.

And for the love of GOD, Floridians: Vote these corrupt Republican SOBs out of office.

This Is What Censorship and Whitewashing Look Like

So this Sunday, Doonesbury ran a comic strip that directly attacked Ron DeSantis' attempt in Florida to whitewash American History: (edit, I had a bad link earlier. second edit: where are all the views coming from? please comment below...)

I can't show the whole strip (copyright), but you can click the link to see it. While Trudeau is usually good on research - when he states a fact in his strips, he can vouch for the sources - he does make a mistake claiming that I-95 is the best escape route to take. Christ, I-95 is a parking lot just like I-4! The teacher will never make it. Take the backroads like Highway 441!

All kidding aside, the story doesn't end with this strip angering up DeSantis or any "Lost Cause" wingnut. Because it angered up a major media conglomerate instead, as the Gannett newspaper chain decided not to run the strip as though they could hide it (via Keegan Kelly at Cracked.com):

This past Sunday, many readers whose regional newspapers are owned by the multi-billion dollar, conservative-leaning mass media holding company Gannett flipped to the funny pages to find that Doonesbury was conspicuously missing from its usual position in the printing. Former Iowa State Representative and president of the Veterans National Recovery Center Bob Krause noticed that absence and made sure to show Twitter what Gannett hid from them.

Gannett owns almost 400 newspapers in the United States, including the national publication USA Today and local papers in 44 states, among which is Krause's Iowa, where the Des Moines Register followed company protocol and cut out the above strip from circulation. Apparently, Gannett didn't want its readers knowing that seven of the states in the U.S. Confederacy explicitly cited the issue of slavery in their declarations of secession. Gannett also doesn't want comic strip fans learning about how almost 100,000 white southerners chose loyalty to their country over preserving slavery as they fought for the Union during the Civil War.

Many conservative-dominated states have passed legislation designed to prevent education about historical topics such as slavery and civil rights, but the state that Trudeau name-drops in Sunday's censored Doonesbury strip has drawn the most attention for how hilariously absurd its lengthy ban list stretches – a school district in Florida even made national headlines this past summer for banning an Arthur book from the school library...

I'd written before about how Doonesbury sits on the edge of controversy and how newspapers try to find a balance to ensure First Amendment rights aren't violated (often by putting the comic on the Op-Ed page). Here, the Gannett media corporation couldn't be bothered with that, and just straight up banned the Sunday comic. Gannett however forgot that Doonesbury is available through other sources - such as the GoComics archive - and that too many people would notice that void in the Sunday funnies.

What we're seeing here in real time is the Far Right Republican effort - led by DeSantis and a dozen-plus Republican governors - to whitewash American history to hide the "shame" of slavery, civil war, and racism from the schoolbooks in order to "protect the sensitivities of privileged Whites." They're getting help by these media empires - mostly owned by conservative rich folk, and owning most of our newspapers, radios, and local television stations - who want to pander to the wingnut Narrative of White Victimhood and the avoidance of literal centuries of racism and sexism that underlines our nation's history. (It ought to horrify everyone to realize how much control over our media that's held by so few corporations)

These history deniers, these panderers, these censors are incapable of even debating what it is they're trying to shove down the throats of our school-age children, and so they will resort to silence because they cannot convince. And this wasn't censored just in Florida: it reached as far as Iowa (a Union state) showing how far the company's - and the wingnut conservatives' - reach was on this.

All these wingnut deniers are doing is highlighting their own fear, their own ignorance, their own racism.

Shame on Gannett corporation for violating the First Amendment. Shame on DeSantis and every Florida Republican who cannot accept the racist history of our state and our nation. Shame on them for failing to recognize their sins and work to improve themselves by, you know, being less racist and less sexist.

I hope to God Trudeau sues Gannett on free speech rights. I hope to God the Republicans lose the next ten election cycles so their inept and racist legislation gets flushed out of our legal codes.

Stop voting Republican, Florida. Stop voting Republican, America. They don't want people to know the facts about our history, about our current economic and social inequalities, they don't want people to think period.

Update: I received a follow-up tweet from Ruben Bolling (aka Tom The Dancing Bug creator) on Bluesky - wait do we call them tweets there? - that he had done some digging into the matter, and had spoken to someone from Doonesbury's publisher that Gannett Media had "simply canceled" their subscription to the strip. Bolling considers it "not censorship, but a bad business decision."

I dunno. It depends a little bit on when the Gannett owners decided to drop Doonesbury. It just seems a little too coincidental that they drop the strip for ALL their papers - even in places where it's still popular - as this particular comic was getting prepped for print.

One of my core arguments remain: Florida Republicans are whitewashing our state's and nation's history, to the detriment of ALL our youth and adults who need the facts from the past to understand what needs repair in our society to improve our future. The corporate media is doing nothing to fight against that censorship, no matter how this looks.

The Disaster of DeSantis

I hadn't been paying too much attention to Ron DeSantis' presidential campaigns because quite honestly there wasn't much there to begin with.

I could have kept up with all the reporting about how mismanaged and unfocused his organization had been. I could have spent a lot of time focusing on DeSantis' many failures to even pretend to be a normal human being, given all the reports out there of how he can't even smile properly at rallies and debates.

I did spend time headdesking over how DeSantis - supposedly with this great Ivy League education going to Harvard and Yale - didn't have enough brain cells to spot the word FASCIST in a snowflake a stealth protestor gifted him at an early rally. How the hell did he even get out of Dunedin High with that lack of awareness?

What did matter about DeSantis' presidential ambitions was how he used his role as bully (not governor) to get the Florida Legislature to pass increasingly obscene legislation to ban abortion; attack trans and gay teens across the state; decry studies of racism and slavery as woke even trying to rewrite history to claim slavery had "benefits" (that was particularly offensive); and even go after corporations like Disney because they refused to roll over and play to his anti-gay agenda.

All so DeSantis could pander to the extremist Far Right voting base of the Republican Party and steal them away from donald trump.

Well, guess what Ron.

Those MAGA morons sold their souls to trump ages ago, and they ain't giving him up for some unhappy, wallowing mental midget trying to pretend he's a Machiavellian mastermind. Anybody thinking they were going to steal away trump's support have to be morons themselves. The best chance was to outlast the primaries, keep your name on the ballot at least, and pray to God trump ended up convicted in any of the criminal trials happening this year (or gets barred from the ballot for inciting insurrection under the 14th Amendment).

DeSantis spent apparently $130 million on his presidential bid, and all he got was a terrible second-place finish in a barely-attended Iowa caucus and every sign he was going to lose New Hampshire to Nikki Haley. (this begs the question for a campaign as mismanaged as this where the hell did that $130 million go?)

So of course DeSantis decided today to suspend the campaign and support the monstrous trump (via Jeongyoon Han at NPR):

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose hardline right-wing policies in his state garnered much public attention and made him an early favorite for the 2024 presidential race, suspended his bid for the Republican nomination on Sunday in a video posted on X, formerly known as Twitter. Gov. DeSantis also endorsed the former President Donald Trump, the frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination...

DeSantis' exit from the Republican presidential nomination field creates a path for former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley as the only conservative alternative to Trump's candidacy left in the race. Trump and Haley will square off in the New GOP Hampshire primary on Tuesday...

There have been real questions about DeSantis' campaign after his distant second-place finish in Iowa. He pledged to continue and focus on South Carolina, but his campaign and super PAC supporting him, which had spent tens of millions supporting him, has spent nothing on campaign ads since Iowa.

DeSantis' main campaign message was that he would be better at delivering the same kinds of policies that Trump would be in favor of, because he doesn't have the same baggage that Trump carries from his numerous indictments and federal charges. He vowed to rid the country of "wokeism," a term he often used to criticize liberal policies, win the presidency by a wide margin, and deliver on issues that Republicans care about — much like how he says he has in Florida...

It turned out attacking "Wokeism" didn't appeal in other states where racism is not as controversial a topic. It didn't help DeSantis that in half of his battles fighting "The Woke" he's lost - or is losing - in humiliating fashion. Getting outmaneuvered by Disney lawyers using British-era "Rules Against Perpetuities" to deny DeSantis' takeover of their Reedy Creek oversight board didn't look good either.

All DeSantis has really done for the state of Florida is mismanage it all - much like his national campaign - focusing on appearances instead of creating actual solutions. While DeSantis has been attacking gays and trans and women and Blacks, he's ignored the growing home insurance crisis. While DeSantis has been warring against Woke, he's been dismantling what had been a growing and successful public university system even turning the honors-level New College institution into a virtual paper mill.

If you think DeSantis' ending his failed presidential bid will make him let up on his arch-conservative governing, don't. He's still a petty little tyrant hoping to get his revenge on all the people who humiliated him on his climb to the top (and arguably thinking about running in 2028 if - Gods help us - trump fails to steal 2024).

All this disastrous campaign proved is that trump is an unstoppable juggernaut within the Republican Party. trump pretty much owns the GOP now. It's just a question of how many Republican voters who haven't bought into the MAGA madness are willing to turn away from that.

Just stop voting Republican, America. Doesn't matter if it's DeSantis or trump or Haley or any of the other would-be dictators waiting in the wings.

The Definition of Ignorance

What actually is a dictionary? If we go by primary entry at the Merriam-Webster Dictionary:

1 : a reference source in print or electronic form containing words usually alphabetically arranged along with information about their forms, pronunciations, functions, etymologies, meanings, and syntactic and idiomatic uses.

A dictionary is not a work of fiction. It is not a narrative of personal conflict or derring-do or happy endings.

A dictionary is not an opinion piece, it is not a partisan or biased source of information. A dictionary relies on fact, on word origin history, usage, and common meaning; displaying known varieties of interpretations and even recognizing slang usage when appropriate.

A dictionary is a language tool, which teaches and reminds users of that language - in our case, American English - what we mean when we say and write things to each other.

And now in the state of Florida - where Republicans led by goddamned Ron DeSantis are waging a War Against Woke - the English Dictionary is getting banned in school libraries because God forbid it teaches our kids what the meaning of words like "Woke" and "Racism" and "Sexism" really mean. Via Gloria Oladipo at the Guardian:

A Florida school district is facing a federal lawsuit after it decided to remove copies of dictionaries, encyclopedia and other books because the works included descriptions of “sexual conduct”.

The Escambia county school district, located in Pensacola, Florida, removed several dictionaries and encyclopedias from school libraries after school officials determined that the books violated Florida law HB 1069.

The law, signed by the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, last year, restricts access to materials containing “sexual conduct” in Florida classrooms.

During the district’s 2023 summer break, officials removed at least eight encyclopedias and five dictionaries...

Encyclopedias - like World Book and Britannica - are also basic research and reference tools that give summarized information about persons, places, and things. Publishers try to remove as much graphic information - and any kind of political or partisan point-of-view - from those works as possible, and STILL the goddamned GOP book banners went after them.

Alongside removing books like biographies of prominent African-Americans and women, these book-banners are taking away ANY kind of information our children need to learn things like actual language composition and literacy. These censors want to make every child - and soon, every adult - in Florida as book dumb and ignorant as possible.

Ignorant (adjective): 

1) a) : destitute of knowledge or education, an ignorant society

also : lacking knowledge or comprehension of the thing specified

parents ignorant of modern mathematics

b) : resulting from or showing lack of knowledge or intelligence

ignorant errors

2) : UNAWARE, UNINFORMED

The excuse by the book-banners is that they object to "questionable" words in the dictionaries and encyclopedias, as though learning the word "breast" or "penis" would turn eight-year-olds into sex perverts. But what they're really doing is taking away the sources that could teach those kids not only the using of those words but also their meaning, to where kids won't understand the concept of words like "slavery" or "feminism" and thus not consider them. To make our kids - our future adults - UNAWARE and UNINFORMED (and easier to lie to).

Along all the fiction books I read as a kid, when I was around 8 or so I also took the time to thumb through my mom's beat-up college dictionary to better understand the words I was coming across in the higher-level teen books I was getting into (the juvenile-level books kind of bored me at that age). This was when I came across words like "statutory" which described certain legal realities, because it used "statutory rape" as an example (and not in graphic detail). It clued me in to the meaning of the word "consent" and I grokked - yes, that IS now an accepted word, Mr. Heinlein - that certain behaviors were illegal (and morally wrong). THIS is how I learned words, I learned meaning, I learned period.

This is what George Orwell warned us about in 1984 - another banned work by the by - when he delved into how the Big Brother regime attacked language itself to control their nation. Concepts like Newspeak (invention of nonsensical words) to diminish the range of thought, along with Doublethink (self-deception by thinking and believing two contradictory ideas), all of which would lead to Crimethink (believing things heretical - "thoughtcrime" - to what Big Brother wants you to think).

This is DeSantis and his Florida Republican cronies going after ANY form of literary work that would dare give our children - ourselves - the ability to think, to comprehend, to express ourselves in ways HIS Big Brother regime doesn't want us to do.

DeSantis and the Far Right are terrified of those who don't think - and fear, and hate - the same way they think. So they're going out of their way to BAN such thought, to remove the tools we need to be our better selves and honest citizens of our state/nation/world. O'Brien would be proud.

There's only one word to describe DeSantis and his ilk:

Asshole (noun):

1) usually vulgar : ANUS

2) a) usually vulgar : a stupid, annoying, or detestable person

b) usually vulgar : the least attractive or desirable part or area —used in phrases like asshole of the world

We'll go with the number 2a) definition, please and thank you.

What If They Gave a GOP Primary Debate and Nobody Cared?

Update 1/15/24: Thanks again to Batocchio for including my blog in the Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up. If you can do me a favor, visit me here as I'm trying to narrow down blog articles to submit to the Annual Royal Palm Literary Awards for 2024, please let me know either in the comments or by dropping me a tweet (yes I know it's dying but I still check it for shits and giggles).

Just for the record, last night the Republicans hosted a presidential primary debate of all the possible candidates trying to usurp donald trump from the front-runner spot heading into 2024.

If it looked like an empty stage, that's because it kinda was.

With trump refusing to show up for these things - having already locked up the MAGA voting base and unwilling to get caught by moderators to explain his pending criminal trials - it's been a parade of second-and-third tier pretenders hoping to be the last one(s) standing if/when trump gets convicted and unable to run anymore or blocked from the ballots.

Or at least it was a parade. The standard attrition process of the primaries saw many of the wannabes who couldn't keep up their fundraising to pay off six-figure consultant fees falling to the wayside.

Remember all the clowns back in August 2023? The likes of Doug Burgum (who?) and Ada Hutchinson (why?) and Tim Scott (this one was actually a personal shock, I thought he had a sugar daddy keeping him afloat) and Mike Pence (ahahahahahahahaha) all trying to appeal to the trumpian base and failing.

The ones that had remained weren't exactly the charismatic types to keep the audiences entertained. Vivak Ramaswamy did his best to mimic trump's raging persona but as a pitiful tone-deaf elitist trying to insult everyone else he was too ridiculous to accept. Chris Christie at least had the bullying persona down to an art, but as his game plan was to attack trump as a danger to the party itself there was no way Christie was going to win over the base (what's heart-breaking is how his message didn't gave favor from whatever moderate anti-Trump voters remain in the GOP). It didn't help Christie's message that he himself surrendered to trump back in 2016 and was last seen staring at the cameras during his "endorsement" of a raving trump with an expression that screamed "my God, I sold my soul to the biggest moron in the nation."

Neither Ramaswamy nor Christie were on the stage, as both couldn't qualify for this round. As such, Christie announced just before this debate he was dropping out. In the process, Christie denounced the remaining survivors as incapable of stopping trump and basically left it all open for trump to win even without being present.

That left the challengers to Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis.

...

...

Yeah, the GOP's screwed. I didn't even have to watch that debate to know how quickly it devolved into direct insults and inability to focus on issues.

Having said that, it becomes interesting to see how the non-trump elements of the voting base come to terms with either backing a nightmarish homunculus like DeSantis who can't even fake basic human emotions or body language, or a pandering Lost Cause supporter like Haley who at least retains some semblance of functioning brain cells. The terrifying thing is that nobody really cares at this point.

But it is looking nobody will force a contentious Republican primary. The nature of the Winner-Take-All system that will accumulate delegates at a fast rate will likely honor trump as the winner before Super Tuesday even rolls up by early March. It then becomes a question if the Republican Convention has to scramble and find a replacement candidate should trump get barred from the ballot due to the 14th Amendment.

The insanity will just keep going through to November. Gods help us.

DeSantis Spite Making Florida Less Livable

It gets frustrating living in a hell hole where the political leadership WANTS to keep the state a hell hole out of partisan spite.

Evidence: The recent report out of the Tampa Bay Times about how the Florida Republicans rejected federal funding to fight automobile emissions and create cleaner air for the state residents (via Jack Prator and Max Chesnes).

Congress in 2021 provided $6.4 billion to states to curb tailpipe emissions and reduce the effects of climate change.

Florida was set to receive $320 million, the third most of any state.

The state Department of Transportation began drafting a plan to add trucker parking at rest stops, which staff said could fix the statewide shortage that kept drivers on the road longer, polluting more, as they searched for a place to stop.

The plan also suggested spending the money on things like electric buses and roundabouts, which reduce the amount of time idling cars sputter out climate-warming emissions at traffic lights.

But last month, the department secretary, Jared Perdue, sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Transportation declining participation in the federal program.

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK.

Perdue said in the letter that the program was an example of government overreach that was “the continued politicization of our roadways,” echoing statements made by Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has said that climate change is “politicization of the weather.”

To my knowledge, the federal funding didn't include any requirements for state Republican officials to make acts of public fealty to our Democratic overlords. The only ones making this a partisan politicized controversy are DeSantis and his GOP lackeys!

Florida now stands alone as the only state to say it would turn down the money, federal officials told the Tampa Bay Times. Any mention of the plan was wiped from the state’s website...

Even Texas, whose governor often tries to outshine DeSantis on conservative credentials, plans to take its share of $641 million, officials there told the Times...

Do you see that, DeSantis? Even your fellow Red State governors are taking the federal money, you know why? 'CAUSE IT'S MONEY YOU FOOL, ALREADY PAID FOR BY TAXPAYERS, AND THEY NEED IT TO BALANCE THEIR STATE BUDGETS!

The stupid, it's choking us...

This isn't happening in other GOP-controlled states because those states are not led by an overly ambitious trump-wannabe moron campaigning for the 2024 Presidential nomination. But this is all happening as DeSantis' own campaign is falling apart with more advisors fleeing a sinking ship of a shoddy effort (via Tom Boggioni at Raw Story):

Strategist Jeff Roe walked away on Saturday night, dealing yet another blow to the DeSantis campaign that has been plagued by firings and layoffs as the Florida governor's attempt to displace Donald Trump as the face of the Republican party went nowhere with conservative voters.

According to a report from Politico, the Washington Post report on backbiting and finger-pointing in the PAC led Roe to call it quits, issuing a statement on X, formerly known as Twitter, where he claimed that he, "cannot in good conscience stay affiliated with Never Back Down given the statements in the Washington Post today. They are not true and an unwanted distraction at a critical time for Governor DeSantis.”

The implication being that yeah it's probably even worse behind closed doors.

It's not helping DeSantis any better that the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) - a relatively toothless oversight committee - is filing an investigation over complaints that DeSantis is improperly coordinating with what are supposed to be independent PAC groups.

All this wasted effort, and yet DeSantis still has to preen and pose and pander to the Far Right - anti-government, anti-regulatory, anti-community - by pulling these self-spiting stunts denying much-needed funding for eco-friendly efforts that could well improve the quality of life for Florida residents.

This reminds me of the time Rick "Medicare Fraud" Scott as Florida Governor refused federal funding for high-speed rail between Tampa and Orlando - something that would have eased the insane traffic woes of I-4, and improved tourism between Disney World and the beaches - out of partisan anti-Obama spite - even as state Republicans were begging for the money going to their constituents - and then turning around like an idiot asking the feds if he could have the money instead for "more highways" (NO, the money was meant for rail you moron!)

The Republican leadership of Florida would rather let the environment turn toxic on their own voting residents than let the Democratic-controlled federal government send one penny for saving our health and livelihoods.

We are one Category 5 super-hurricane away from Mother Nature washing the Sunshine State into the Gulf of Mexico, but DeSantis and his wingnut handlers wouldn't give a rat's ass if that happened.

Gods help us.

The 2024 Republican Dash to Suck Up to MAGA Voters In Case trump Ends Up In Cell Block Six

There's a Republican presidential primary debate tonight and I don't wanna watch. NO, YOU CAN'T MAKE ME WATCH I DON'T WANNA. /pout 

I do, however, feel an obligation to rate and review the idiotic Republican pretenders to trump's dark throne that are placing themselves on the floor tonight for public humiliation. Only because I did this for the Democratic candidates back in 2019 who were running for 2020, and I ought to maintain a balance of sorts.

Much like I said back then, I am tired already of the constant horse-race mentality of mainstream media that has us overwhelmed with all this partisan posturing in public. We need laws in place to force the political parties - and the goddamned hacks who jump out two years early to start fundraising to fill their pockets with millions in campaign cash - to keep these election campaigns to the calendar year the election takes place (January 2nd, not a damn thing happens before then upon pain of permanent blockage from elected or nominated office). It's the only way to keep this goddamned pandering to a goddamned minimum.

Tonight's debate arguably isn't even going to have the biggest draw for the Far Right Republican voting base: trump decided to avoid attending, partly because he doesn't even need to show up to win (his polling lead is that huge) and partly because he's due in Fulton County Georgia tomorrow for his mug shot and arraignment on his FOURTH pending criminal indictments. This slogfest is going to be made up of the second-tier half-dead wannabes who think they have a shot at the nomination should trump actually be in a jail cell by the time the 2024 RNC Convention takes place. As Mark Leibovich at the Atlantic (paywalled) notes, this will be a tedious affair made up of 'listless vessels':

So why should the rest of us bother? Would anyone watch a Mike Tyson fight if Iron Mike wasn’t actually fighting? Or The Sopranos, if Tony skipped the show for a therapy session (with Tucker Carlson)?...

Tonight’s pageant of also-rans must go on too. The Republican National Committee has decreed this kickoff debate to be a landmark event, sanctifying August 23 as a key date in the 2024 cycle. (“Cycle” feels like an especially apt cliché here—events spinning hypnotically in circles.) Never mind that Trump upended the traditional presidential campaign cycle years ago, and that it is now dictated by whatever whim he decides to follow at a given moment. No matter how much thunder Trump steals from this proceeding—by skipping it, counterprogramming it with Tucker, and potentially following it up with a morning-after mug shot—everyone else is still required to treat this spectacle as some big and pivotal showdown.

As such, the media will swarm into town—because this is what we do and what we love (and because datelines impress). The host network, Fox News, will hype the clash—the “Melee in Milwaukee,” or some such. One-liners are being buffed, comebacks polished, and umbrage rehearsed. And no matter how effective certain gambits are deemed to be in practice, the absence of the GOP’s inescapable front-runner will only underscore how impotent the rest of the field has made themselves...

Even so, tonight’s contest will inevitably suffer from two basic structural flaws. The main point, theoretically, of a political debate is to try to persuade voters to support your campaign instead of the other candidates’. But that presupposes a constituency of voters who can be persuaded by hearing a set of facts, or are open to being educated. This, on the whole, is not the audience we have here. A large and determinative and still deeply committed portion of the GOP electorate—the MAGA sector—has been more or less a closed box for seven years now...

The other structural defect involves the likely self-neutering of tonight’s putative gladiators. Ideally, a debate features participants who actually want to win. That generally requires a willingness to attack their biggest adversary, whether he’s participating in the event or not, and especially when he holds a massive lead over them. Other than Kamikaze Christie, whom Republicans will almost certainly not nominate, most of the remaining “challengers” on the stage seem content to play for second place—running mate or 2028...

Seriously, none of these suckers will be trump's running mate: trump reportedly wants a woman Veep candidate to counter Kamala Harris, and most of these candidates already know working for trump will put them in the crosshairs with trump AND the MAGA base should they step out of line to protect their own asses like Pence did on January 6th. Haley, the only woman on-stage tonight, ought to be too smart to volunteer for that shit-job. I also doubt Pence will volunteer a second go-around as a whipping boy. Back to Leibovich:

Whether intentionally or not, DeSantis actually coined something memorable the other day when he chided Trump’s supporters for mindlessly following his every pronouncement—“listless vessels,” he called them. (He later said that he was referring to Trump’s endorsers in Congress, not voters.) This struck me as sneaky eloquence from DeSantis, or whoever wrote the line for him. But again, the phrase carried a strong whiff of projection as DeSantis prepared to lead the real parade of listless vessels to Milwaukee, content to bob along in the wake of the Titanic.

DeSantis has truly been a terrible campaigner, losing financial backers and stunning his few attendees with unsettling, almost-inhuman behavior at his rallies. He's performing much in the same way the flame-outs of 2016 performed, like Scott Walker and Jeb! Bush before him: Lacking any true charisma and unable to generate enthusiasm. The rest of the field has been equally unmemorable save for Christie - whose bullying always delights the punditry - and newbie businessman Vivek Ramaswamy - whose conspiracy-addled gaslighting has made him into this year's Mini-trump.

In the meantime, here's a scorecard of the likely Republican assholes candidates (the highest office currently known, and the state they represent) vying for their party base's vote when the state-by-state primaries do take place. Doing this in alphabetical order because HAHA trump you're in last.

Doug Burgum: Governor, North Dakota

Role as: The Guy Who Bribed Republican Voters Into Donating To His Campaign With Gift Cards So He Could Qualify For This Debate (no, seriously).

Funny thing is, Burgum has to call in sick with a "leg injury" during a basketball pick-up game (???) and may not attend his own political funeral, uh this debate. Otherwise, he'd have to spend most of the evening explaining where North Dakota even IS on the map. Update: Burgum decided to show up after all, so he's not THAT cowardly.

Burgum Can Win the Party Nomination If: trump is sitting in a jail cell convicted on any number of charges by June 2024 and the Party holds an emergency vote at the Convention.

Burgum Can Win It All If: The gift cards he promised to voters in the general election were all $5000.00 per person Actually, that would be illegal. And it's unlikely he'll ever get a general voting population defending the conservative agenda he's pushed at the state level and will threaten to inflict on America.

Chris Christie: Governor, New Jersey

Role as: The Guy Who Claims He Likes Bruce Springsteen (but doesn't seem to understand the lyrics railing against HIM and his fellow greed-heads).

Christie is the one most prepped and pumped for the debate stage if only because it gives him the chance to play out his role as Bully, one of the few things he does well. The last time he primaried in 2016, he was the one who nuked Marco Rubio from orbit and destroyed the Beltway Media's fair-haired alternative to trump. If the audience is tuning in tonight, it's to see how quickly Christie gives the likes of DeSantis an atomic wedgie. 

Christie Can Win the Party Nomination If: trump is sitting in a jail cell convicted on any number of charges by June 2024 and the Party holds an emergency vote at the Convention.

Christie Can Win It All If: He can successfully recall Bruce's lyrics to "The Ghost of Tom Joad" and tearfully recant his un-Boss-like ways. Otherwise, the general voting population is going to reject his bully tactics for the more congenial Biden.

Ron DeSantis: Governor, Florida

Role as: Anti-Woke Thin-Skinned Racist Sexist Disney Villain

DeSantis is the candidate who has done the most damage to his own state in pursuit of MAGA voter support, and the candidate who's done the least to actually get any MAGA voters to flip to him. His ROI is terrible. Any early lead he's had at the beginning of this horse race has dwindled to where a virtual noob like Ramaswamy is neck-and-neck. And Christie's going to be there to pounce and make DeSantis grind his teeth like never before.

DeSantis Can Win the Party Nomination If: trump is sitting in a jail cell convicted on any number of charges by June 2024 and the Party holds an emergency vote at the Convention.

DeSantis Can Win It All If: Gods help us if he does. DeSantis' behavior governing Florida - the mismanagement masquerading as leadership, the self-destructive micromanaging, the short-sighted mistakes - will all be transferred to the federal level where his governing style of harassing critics and destroying institutions to give his cronies power and leverage will be on a Jacksonian scale. While any of the Republican candidates will be ideological nightmares if they get into the White House, DeSantis is genuinely terrifying in that he will replicate trump's efforts to seize and maintain power no matter what, with a better idea of how to actually succeed at it.

Nikki Haley: Governor, South Carolina

Role as: The Pollyanna Trying to Campaign as Reagan But Messaging Like Ann Coulter

Haley is jumping into this campaign arguably to present a figure who is known for a certain level of competence and savvy, but she's still saddled with a GOP platform that will force her to support incompetence, fearmongering, and tax cut greed. She's also campaigning to a political party that still can't handle any woman in a legitimate leadership role, which is going to force her into some uncomfortable public stances if she can make it to the general election stage.

Haley Can Win the Party Nomination If: trump is sitting in a jail cell convicted on any number of charges by June 2024 and the Party holds an emergency vote at the Convention.

Haley Can Win It All If: She can truly motivate a dying, out-of-power moderate base that she could appeal to. Problem is, there are no true moderates left in the modern Republican Party, and she's not going to rally enough of them to a primary race that's been alienating them since 2008.

Ada Hutchinson: Governor, Arkansas

Role as: The Guy From Arkansas Who's Not as Creepy As Mike Huckabee

Hutchinson is someone who barely made the cut for tonight's debate, which tells you how low in the rankings he's already playing at. While he can appeal to those who like experience in their presidential candidates, Hutchinson doesn't have as great a national profile as the others and will suffer as a result. He's not going to offer anything any different from what Christie, DeSantis, Haley, Burgum, or Scott are going to offer.

Hutchinson Can Win the Party Nomination If: trump is sitting in a jail cell convicted on any number of charges by June 2024 and the Party holds an emergency vote at the Convention.

Hutchinson Can Win It All If: Somewhere between winning the GOP primary (or the emergency RNC vote) and the November general election he can somehow gaslight his way past the anti-abortion, racism, tax-cut deregulatory bullsh-t he's been selling as both governor and primary candidate.

Robert Kennedy Jr: Democratic Asshole, New York

Role as: Conspiracy-driven Anti-Vax Trojan Horse sent by Republicans to undermine Biden's incumbency run

I know Kennedy's running as a Democrat and he's not on tonight's debate list, but if you're getting most of your campaign funding from REPUBLICAN backers then goddamn you: You're running as a Republican. Go to hell, Junior.

Mike Pence: Vice President, Indiana

Role as: The Scapegoat who can't admit he got suckered and victimized by trump 

Pence is either genuinely clueless that most of the Republican voting base views him as a traitor for failing to cheat the Electoral count for trump back on January 6th, or he's running to validate his own self-worth convinced he's the true future of the Republican party once trump is behind bars. Either way, Pence has no true charisma that appeals at a national level: Another Scott Walker leading himself to primary humiliation.

Pence Can Win the Party Nomination If: trump is sitting in a jail cell convicted on any number of charges by June 2024 and the Party holds an emergency vote at the Convention. Seriously, if this emergency vote happens, Pence is one of the few party leaders with any backroom power to get the party to risk it all on him (if the leadership convince themselves the betrayed MAGA base will change their minds).

Pence Can Win It All If: This is one of the most unlikely things even if Pence navigates his way to the top of the GOP ticket. As mentioned before, Pence is a laughing stock to the voting public at large, and either has to carry the baggage of being associated with trump's ill-run presidency or coping with an angry MAGA voting base that will refuse to turn up next November.

Vivak Ramaswamy: Businessman, Ohio

Role as: The Next CEO Galtian Asshole Who Thinks He Can Run Government Like a Business

Ramaswamy is coming from a proud Republican tradition of at least one financial figure - Forbes, Cain, Foriana, in some respects Dubya and Mitt - jumping into the primary race thinking he's reinvented the wheel when it comes to governance. Instead, he's shilling the same deregulatory tax-cutting damage as before campaigning on a top-down Unitary Executive agenda to turn the White House into a dictatorship (gee, we've heard that before), while making a hard case of going "anti-woke" in ways that make DeSantis look like he's mumbling.  

Ramaswamy Can Win the Party Nomination If: trump is sitting in a jail cell convicted on any number of charges by June 2024 and the Party holds an emergency vote at the Convention. Or if he can sway the MAGA base with his 9/11 Truther, anti-abortion, racist, sexist, fearmongering messaging to back him before the party leaders can choose among their own.

Ramaswamy Can Win It All If: he can make voters look past the reality he's a first-generation son of immigrants bashing the very system of multicultural that allowed him to become a businessman and presidential candidate in the first place. The scary thing is that his rise in the polls this cycle mimics the similar rise that trump enjoyed in the 2016 primaries: Meaning if trump is truly eliminated from the ballot due to a slight case of JAIL, Vivak could replace him among MAGA voters willing to look past his ethnicity and embrace his conspiracy-driven gaslighting.

Tim Scott: Senator, South Carolina

Role as: The Anti-Obama Beard

Arguably one of the few candidates on the stage tonight who actually HAS a political career of some success (and none of the baggage that Christie has), Scott is most often the GOP figurehead that the racists in their ranks point to and say "Look, we vote for him, clearly we're not racist!" even though Scott parrots many of the same anti-affirmative action talking points and supports many of the same social conservative issues that most voting Blacks don't.

Scott Can Win the Party Nomination If: trump is sitting in a jail cell convicted on any number of charges by June 2024 and the Party holds an emergency vote at the Convention. If Pence doesn't appeal to the backroom party bosses looking to replace a convicted trump, Scott is the next most likely who will.

Scott Can Win It All If: Scott can actually appeal to general voters in spite of his conservative bona fides. In my humble but ill-informed opinion, he might actually be the one candidate who could give Biden some trouble in the general election on matters of race relations. Scott will have problems appealing to voters if abortion is the major topic, and he is going to get stuck defending a GOP platform that will be racist towards immigrants and sexist towards women.

Donald Trump: Indicted Loser of the Popular Vote (Twice), Ugh do I HAVE to List Him as Florida

Role as: The Eternal Shitgibbon. If you prefer, The Guy On Four (AND COUNTING) Criminal Trials Involving His Misconduct in Both Business And the Presidency

Trump Can Win the Party Nomination If: Gods help us, he's already polling in the lead, and there is still solid evidence that Republicans will vote for a convicted trump. However, if trump is sitting in a jail cell convicted on any number of charges by June 2024, the Party has every reason to hold an emergency vote to field a replacement choice.

Trump Can Win It All If: he cheats. Again. If he can get the Russians to meddle like he did in 2016, if he can get the FBI to spring another October Surprise like Comey did on Hillary weeks before the general election, if he can get Red state legislatures in states voting for Biden to nullify the Electoral count like he wanted to in 2020, if he can get a Republican-controlled branch of Congress to refuse a Biden Electoral win... Then it's chaos. And trump is ALL ABOUT THE GODDAMN CHAOS.

Among these choices, I dare not make a recommendation. My track record predicting these things have been horrendous: Backing Edwards in 2008 (before knowing his adultery), Backing Harris (and then Warren) over Biden in 2020), Thinking Romney had the nomination in 2008 (instead of McCain, whom I did favor but didn't think would win primaries), Thinking Walker had it sewn up in 2016 (he didn't even make it through the 2015 debates).

If I can say anything, it's that above all DO NOT VOTE trump. He's not worth it. He's going to get convicted one way or another and it will - fairly - drag the rest of the Republican ticket down with him. In general, I've been screaming to NOT VOTE REPUBLICAN at all for decades now, but you've seen how little influence I've had there (grrr).

In the meantime, don't watch any of the debates. They're boring and dull and the highlight reel on YouTube easier to digest. Gnight, krewe.

P.S. Cmon Tampa Bay Rays reclaim the AL East lead into the postseason!!!