Tag: Ron DeSantis

25AUG2023 – 2024 Primary Thoughts

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We’ll be bombarded for the next year and more with the 2024 election nonsense.  And the important political races will be things like primarying Mitt Romney out of his senate seat.  Maybe Mitch McConnell is coming up for a leadership vote too.  These are feel good events that we can all embrace and enjoy.

But I’ve come to the conclusion that short of a nuclear war, nothing will keep the Democrats from holding the White House for the foreseeable future.  And since if there is a war, I won’t be around anymore I’ve decided not to get too excited about all the hoopla.  So, the Republican presidential primary race isn’t particularly important with respect to how it plays out.  But does it serve any purpose?  Well, maybe.

A case can be made that it can provide information on the Uni-Party.  The talking points of the most obviously anointed of the candidates can tell us a lot about what the official party line of the Republican establishment is supposed to be.  You might further ask what use knowing that could be.  Well, the obvious answer is amusement.  It’s always fun to know just how stupid they think we are.  Come to think of it most people really are that stupid.  In fact, I was one of those stupid people just a decade or two ago.  I actually believed that George W Bush was a conservative and that he cared about the people on the Right.  What a dope I was.

But being mugged by Operation Iraqi Freedom opened my eyes thoroughly.  So, hearing Nikki Haley talk about how unlimited spending for Ukraine is the highest priority for the United States is hilarious.  Right now, the Ukrainians are being blown to bits in the minefields of Zaporizhzhia trying to approach the first of Russia’s three defensive lines.  Funneling more money and weapons to the Ukrainians will keep the meatgrinder going until the last Ukrainian has been fed in.  When that’s done the plan is the Poles and Balts are next.  When they’re used up it’s supposed to be our children that get fed in.  Something tells me that’s gonna land with a thud.  The Right is who usually fights these wars.  Well, we’ve been smartened up.  So now the millennials and zoomers on the Left are up to bat.  But they already spoke up back during the middle eastern campaigns, “No way bro, let someone else take care of that.  I’ve got pot to smoke and artisanal beer to brew.”  So yeah, Nikki Haley’s talking points tells you that the Uni-Party needs our kids to fight the Russians.

Aside from entertainment, the party line is valuable to know because it gives us a chance to see which of the candidates aren’t complete shills for the donor class.  For people like Haley, Hutchinson, Pence and Christie nothing needs to be proven.  Their tickets are stamped coming out of the gate.  What about this Ramaswamy guy?  Can we parse what he stands for or at least pretends to stand for?  And how about DeSantis?  Has he revealed his bottom line.  He’s already flip-flopped on Ukraine.  So, we know his donors must have given him an earful over his initial position that the war was a local affair and none of our business.  Is Ron a bought and paid for neocon?  Maybe.  That’s important information to ferret out.  After all he’s been about the best Republican governor in years.  How do these two things square?

I guess the other information that comes out of the primary will be where the pundits stand.  We’ve already seen that Fox News is now enemy territory.  Their mission is to support the establishment positions and candidates and attack Donald Trump whenever possible.  It’s been interesting to see how Tucker Carlson has become an outpost of right-wing realism in an ocean of left-wing propaganda.  Elon Musk has shown a willingness to allow free speech on his “X” platform.  That has been a veritable miracle.

And the last thing that will be interesting in the primary is what Donald Trump tells us about his plans.  He’s been kind of vague on what he plans to do either in the election or if he wins.  Of course, he’s the same old Trump and whenever he talks about his accomplishments there are no mistakes or defeats.  So, it’s an open question if he really has a plan to defang the Deep State.  It’s possible his plans have to remain unspoken to allow for the element of surprise.  But I would be less skeptical if he could share them with us.

But there it is.  We’re going to be marinated in this clap-trap for the next fourteen months and just to stay sane we’ll have to address it somewhat.  I’ll do my best not to take it too seriously.  But who knows, maybe something incredibly compelling will occur during this madness and I’ll be caught up in the excitement.  You never know.

Rufo in Florida Shuts Down Gender Studies Dept. in His College

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Say what you will about DeSantis as a candidate for president.  He’s getting people to fix things in Florida.  He’s hiring good people.  And they’re doing valuable work.

Purging public colleges of these leeches and psychopaths is one of the highest priorities.  These departments are the spawning grounds for people who destroy the minds of young people and suck the resources away from useful educational opportunities.  For every gender studies department closed down open up a welding class somewhere else.

Florida Law Has Illegal Aliens Leaving Florida

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New laws that Governor DeSantis has signed have begun to funnel illegal aliens out of Florida.  Focusing on things like the driver’s licenses that other states issue to illegal aliens, to the social services used at hospitals the bill seeks to identify illegal aliens and punish those who employ them and allow them to stay in the country illegally.

“It is part of a sweeping immigration bill signed by Republican Florida governor and presidential candidate Ron DeSantis back in May that is prompting many to leave the state.

The run-up to the new law has sparked protests by immigrant workers, from those in the tourism and hospitality industry, to those who work in agricultural fields.

“We are hearing people are starting to leave,” Yvette Cruz with the Farmworkers Association of Florida told CBS News of reports of migrant workers abandoning fields and construction projects. “We’re just gonna keep seeing that more as the law will take effect.”

The law also includes harsh penalties for those who try and hire or transport undocumented migrants, which critics say can include family members.

It also requires hospitals that receive Medicaid funds to ask for a patient’s immigration status.

DeSantis claims the legislation is needed due to what he considers the Biden’s administration’s failure to secure the border.

“At the end of the day, you wouldn’t have the illegal immigration problem if you didn’t have a lot of people who were facilitating this in our country,” DeSantis recently said during a campaign rally.”

Good work Florida, good work DeSantis.

NORMAL

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Glenn Youngkin, Ron DeSantis, Disney, Bud Light, Target, Heckler & Koch.  What do these names have in common?  They all relate to Americans getting fed up with radical culture war outrages and pushing back against them.

Republican Glenn Youngkin was elected governor of a blue state (Virginia) because the public schools were indoctrinating the kids with anti-white racism and forgetting to teach them the three R’s.

Ron DeSantis was re-elected in a landslide because he stood up against teachers teaching deviant sex to kids in the second grade.  And he stood up to Disney, one of the largest employers in the state of Florida, when they called him out on the school issue.  And that made him more popular still.

Bud Light stepped on their own … foot when they let a feminist marketing director “partner” the brand with a male TikTok influencer who puts on woman face and pretends he’s the reincarnation of Audrey Hepburn.  Then a video was found of that same marketing director denigrating the “frat-boy” image of Bud Light and saying that the demographic they formerly sold beer to was shrinking and they needed to go after the more progressive younger crowd that was represented by the TikTok influencer in drag.  Of course, she forgot to check if any of these new customers drink beer.  When word got back to her actual customers of her disdain for them, they stopped buying her beer, in droves.  Now sales are down over thirty percent and still falling.  Bud Light is now called Trans Beer and the company can’t give it away, literally.  They’ve tried to sell it with a 100% rebate coupon.  At some point they may have to just pull the product and try to rebrand with some other name.  But the damage now appears permanent because they refused to apologize to their customers.

Target was celebrating their annual “Pride” month with a display at the front of the store that included clothing for children including tuck-friendly bathing suits.  When this was highlighted by several right-wing media outlets a huge hostile reaction started from Target customers in several states.  Target claimed that their employees were frightened by the anger in these areas and the company moved the displays to the back of the stores and scaled it back in these areas of the country.  And the stock price of Target took a nosedive.  It went from about $160 a share to about $130 which is close to a twenty percent loss in equity.  Target claims that they will not change their stance on LGBTQ sponsorship.  It should be interesting to see how things progress over the summer.

And finally, we come to Heckler & Koch.  This German gun manufacturer also had a feminist marketing executive who decided to respond to some of the company’s on-line patrons when they called the Bud Light marketing manager “woke.”  She told them they were stupid and explained that sexist ads like the bikini babes in beer and gun advertisements was “trash marketing” and only dinosaurs liked that kind of stuff.  And she went on and on trading barbs with her company’s customer base about identity politics of various sorts.  Well, that didn’t go over well with the customers.  They threatened to boycott Heckler & Koch.  After a short pause a post from the company appeared saying “Policies were ignored.  Changes have been made.  Heckler & Koch does not engage in identity politics.”  Shortly after this a new marketing manager started posting and he very humorously disowned the remarks of his predecessor.  Problem solved.

It appears to me that there is a very large audience of Americans who are fed up with the woke agenda and will reward politicians who will fight it and punish corporations that mock them and side with their enemies.  What is needed is an organizing force to channel this anger and use it to accomplish some goals.  What we need is the opposite of GLAAD.  We need an organization that advocates for normalcy.  Its acronym should be something like NORMAL or NORML or STRAIT or something like that.  Their job should be to give a report card on corporations that reflects the degree to which they align with the values of normal people.  And they can report these findings back to the members in the general public and make recommendations for actions like boycotts or protests or letters to government to protest the actions of the worst offenders.  And alternatively, they can recommend that the membership patronize and support the companies that are most sympathetic to the community.  And likewise, NORMAL, or whatever it’s called can give scores to elected officials and candidates with respect to how they protect the interests of their constituents.

It’s easy to see how such an organization would be useful and what it could achieve.  The real question is why doesn’t it already exist.  Now all I have to do is figure out words to fit the acronym.  National Organization Representing Moral American …  Dammit, what begins with L?

As the Nose on Your Face

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Look at all the attention that the Bud Light and Target boycotts have gotten.  Even in blue states the uproar has hit a nerve with many people, especially parents of small children.  Look at the popularity of Matt Walsh’s movie “What Is a Woman?”  We seem to have finally reached a breaking point to what people will ignore.  Even the most lethargic or bovine parents have been triggered.  They can see that terrible things are being done to children and they’re afraid for their own children.  They’re looking for someone to fix this.

The transgender madness and more generally all of the grooming that is being done to kids in the public schools is the weapon of opportunity that any half-intelligent candidate running for president in 2024 should embrace whole-heartedly.  And obviously it is the one that gives Ron DeSantis his biggest advantage.  He has gone the farthest in words and actions to attack this visible target.

His work with the Florida legislature to outlaw grooming children in the lower grades and his attacks on Disney reinforce this reputation for defending parents’ rights against the LGBTQ coalition and their goal to indoctrinate small children into sexual deviance and confusion.  And if any issue has the potential to overcome the voter fraud machine that the Democrats have built it would be parental fear for their children’s welfare at the hands of the public schools.  Glenn Youngkin showed this in Virginia, a state that had long ago gone from purple to blue.  The fear that parents felt over the indoctrination of their kids by radical teachers overcame their social programming to vote Democrat.

Could such a thing happen on a national level.  I think it’s possible.  But it would have to be rolled out with a powerful message that transgender indoctrination was a nefarious and potentially fatal poison that threatened children.  And even though DeSantis and Youngkin are the ones that would primarily benefit from this strategy all of the Republicans could potentially get on board such a campaign.  In fact, any of them that stands against this strategy will be flattened in the wake of it.  Even Trump would be in trouble if he ignores the strength of its appeal.

But are any of them smart enough to grab onto this third rail and ride the lightning to the White House.  Well, Trump is obviously savvy enough but he also realizes that the issue favors his most dangerous rival, Ron DeSantis.  In fact, Trump’s come out against labelling things as woke.  He claims the expression is overused.  And it may be.  But in the case of transgender grooming, it doesn’t matter what you call it, but trying to ignore it is not a good play.

And as much as I want Trump to be the protest candidate in the phony elections we now have, I can see how DeSantis is the real strong horse if he has the brains and guts to play the transgender card for all its worth.  Impassioned rallies where he brings de-transitioned victims of the transgender medical industry out to speak and make their case against the insanity of transitioning children would be an enormously powerful platform.  Imagine that idiot Biden trying to defend all his rainbow nonsense in the face of something like that.

Well, for what it’s worth that’s my thought.  What actually happens is anybody’s guess.

DeSantis Keeps Getting Better

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Boy, I wish I lived in Florida.

I’m Not from Missouri But, My New Motto is “Show Me”

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I get e-mails, letters and postcards asking for donations, memberships and other forms of support.  Some of these are from annoying corporations like AARP and various energy companies that claim they can make my life better by offering me fabulous benefits and savings.  And I can’t blame these people for sending this crap to me.  Caveat emptor and all that.  Consumers in this country just ignore all that jazz.  Honestly, I need an industrial grade shredder for all this stuff.

But then there are the political candidates from all over the country who are running for office or already are in office but want me to help them “make a difference.”  Well, they’re barking up the wrong tree.  Appeals to my desire for change are too late.  They all had their chance.  They’ve had decades to fix these things.  For fifty years I’ve watched them struggle and stumble and been treated as a punching bag by the Left.  Well, that’s enough.  If they’re too stupid or too lazy to beat out the bad guys then they don’t deserve any money or help from me.

So now the currency of the hour is success.  Results; checks in the win column; scalps on the wall.  That’s the coin of the realm.  So, Ron DeSantis is a winner.  Donald Trump is a winner.  The Supreme Court is a winner.  Tucker Carlson is a winner.  Elon Musk is a winner, sort of.  Each of them has done something that pushed back against the Left and produced results.  Measurable, identifiable and applaudable results.

And you know who else has a win?  All those beer drinkers who are boycotting Anheuser Busch.  That’s a win.  Donald Trump Jr. saying don’t boycott Anheuser Busch because they’re our friends?  Well, that’s a losing message.  Sure maybe it’s too late to change the Left’s control over corporate America.  But it certainly can’t hurt to punish the most egregious traitors.  It’s like primarying Liz Cheney.  It’s just a gesture but it’s a very satisfying gesture and it feels good to hit back at these people.  Make them pay for humiliating us and profiting from their betrayal of us at every single turn.

Results, results, results.  If you want our money, if you want our support, if you want our trust, show us results.  Accomplish something!

And they’ve got the easiest victory laid out in front of them.  Trans-gendering children is an abomination that is just crying out for politicians to get out in front of the movement to ban it.  DeSantis to his credit is already doing something about it.  The schools that groom kids into believing in these things are the obvious targets to attack.  And the pharmaceutical companies and the medical centers that enable these procedures and the AMA that certifies these things safe and effective all should be attacked and punished legally for the harm they are doing.

But until something is actually done it’s just a wasted opportunity.  It proves that no one out there really wants to do anything to help us.  They just want our money because they say they will make something happen if we send it.

Well, no.  Show me that you can do more than parrot some words.  Show me that you’re smart and brave.  Show me the win!  Until then, save the postage.  I’m not buying it.

Maybe the First Stirrings of a Red State Council?

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Just the first little inkling of what a real red state cooperation could look like.  Coordinating efforts to resist and fight back against the Leftist agenda, both in government and elsewhere.  It’s a start anyway.

 

Witness to a Friendly Quarrel

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Back on Monday the 27th of February I found a link in my mailbox to Curtis Yarvin’s substack, the Gray Mirror, with his latest post.  It was a critique of Ron DeSantis’s efforts to replace the woke management of a small state college in Florida (called prosaically, New College of Florida) by replacing the board of trustees with conservatives.  DeSantis put Chris Rufo and some other conservatives on the board and told them to excise the cancer of wokeism.

Yarvin tells a parable about how a drunken man chops down the mighty oak that shades the town square in some mythical Lithuanian town and the townspeople decide to replant the rootless trunk.  But the wise man goes and scoops up acorns and plants them around the fallen tree’s stump.

Further on Yarvin explains that DeSantis and Rufo trying to reform Florida colleges is the town trying to replant a dead tree in the ground.

“The fallacy of replanting the tree is to believe that the past is something we can just have back. It isn’t. We can be inspired by the past. We can want a beautiful oak tree in our town square. But we live in the present and we have no oak tree, just raw lumber. We can build the future under the inspiration of the past—but it is not the past. And we have to be patient enough to wait for it, or we are just losers. Press F to pay regrets.”

But the wise man (according to Yarvin) is anyone who tries to build a new culture from the ground up by supporting coffeehouse artists in New York City that somehow aren’t woke.

“Do you want to win? Or do you want to wring your hands? Where did wokeness start? Among the cool kids. In the Village arts scene. To hear the story the world will be telling itself in 50 years, always listen to New York now. The future always starts at the center and at the top.”

So that’s one side.  Today I read a rebuttal by Rufo.  He calls Yarvin’s take “right-wing doomerism.”

“Yavin’s basic theme is that the progressive-managerial state, or Cathedral, is so powerful, that any action to challenge it will end up reinforcing its power. This is right-wing doomerism—if the beast is all-powerful, better to adopt the position of a prey animal and do nothing.

But I’m more optimistic than this. The takeover of New College has already changed the dynamics in higher education. We have a strong new president who has a mandate to change the administrative and academic trajectory of the institution. You’ll see changes in the next 120 days.

…

I believe in an uncompromising new conservatism that attempts to restore the authority of the people over their government—and lay waste to woke institutional capture. The Republic is not yet dead. We have a duty to do whatever we can to save it.

I’m ready to fight—and win.”

Okay, so there is definitely a lot of rah-rah stuff here.  Rufo is cheerleading the efforts his people are making in Florida and anticipating victories and gains that won’t happen for years, or maybe decades.

But, so what?  The progressives worked at this poison for over a hundred years.  They worked away diligently and steadily.  And the results have been astonishing.  Horrifying, yes, but astonishing.  So why should we expect that our results won’t be slow and incremental.  As TomD said back a week ago or so in a comment “One step at a time is how we collectively got here and hopefully how we will get out.”

Sure, in my more pessimistic moments I fear that Yarvin is right.  The Elites control everything and they have all the money.  We can’t possibly win.  But then I think, “Then what have we got to lose by trying to win?”  So, I’ll take Rufo’s side in this cordial quarrel.

He’s making his play.  Let him finish it before we start declaring him the loser.  I hear DeSantis plans to roll out the same idea at other Florida state colleges.  They’re talking about eliminating things like gender studies and DEI and even affirmative action.  For all I know DeSantis is the next Pericles and Florida is the Athens of the new world.  It’s certainly no stranger than the original Athens having happened.

How in the world do you get the Plato, Aristotle and Thucydides from a bunch of bronze age barbarians like the Dorians toppling Aegean civilization and celebrating it in epic poetry?  Truly, the Afghanis aren’t that far removed in culture and lifestyle from the 9th century Dorian invaders.  Predicting the Parthenon from them seems a bloody miracle.

Maybe we’ll get a miracle too.  Our enemies aren’t geniuses they’re just better organized and better funded.  There is such a thing as luck.  And luck rewards persistence and intelligence.  It’s like the old saying, “God helps those who help themselves.”  If you’re just willing to lay down and die then you’ve already decided your fate.  Luck isn’t going to pull you off the ground, put your sword back in your hand and strike down your enemy.  You’ve got to try.  So, let’s give DeSantis and Rufo the benefit of the doubt and all the help we can think of.  Let’s cheer them on and provide all the rah-rah we can muster.

If DeSantis can turn around the Florida state colleges it’ll make guys like Abbott in Texas envious and might start a movement to clean up all the Red-State state-colleges.  And after that maybe it’ll spread to the grammar and high schools.  See what I mean?  Rah-rah is easy.  And it’s cheap.  What’s a few electrons rattling around in my computer?

Anyway, I’ll bet on DeSantis and Rufo in this quarrel.  Right wing doomerism just isn’t my cup of tea.