Florida Follies, Blob Save Us!

(Oh dear god, don't let that happen.)

Dear you,

Cognitive dissonance continues in the Sunshine State.  We have survived several weeks of spring breakers with more coming, and they are all (Miami Beach chaos aside) so very happy!  Why not?  Up here in the Panhandle the weather is lovely, breezy and not too hot.  We don't have news stands featuring publications with high-anxiety producing headlines.  The free weeklies you might see only aim to convert (church ads) and tempt you to drop a few dollars (family friendly restaurants happy to seat your party of fifty). Florida doesn't want you to worry your little head about a thing!

I don't get it. Why aren't intelligent tourists boycotting this state? Things aren't as heavenly as they seem despite the big sell:

Visit Florida!  Where the governor responds to being called sanctimonious by Trump saying he doesn't even know what that word means.  Yes, he said that.  The governor currently eviscerating education doesn't know basic vocabulary.

Visit Florida!  Where the "Don't Say Gay" mandate is being expanded to include ALL public school grades. Yes, your seventeen year old will have no "schooling" about Oscar Wilde, Walt Whitman, Storme DeLarverie, Harvey Milk, Alan Turing, Freddie Mercury, King David, Alexander the Great, Sappho of Lesbos, Michelangelo, etc. etc. etc.  Well, at least they will know something about RuPaul if they stream TV.

Visit Florida! Where a bunch of wrinkly old white dudes and servile old white chicks are pushing a law that guarantees there will be no discussion of a female's menstrual cycle until the 6th grade.

Visit Florida! Where open carry is coming soon!  Wear your weapon in public!  Take it to Dirty Dick's bar and grille and watch the possibly liberal waitstaff squirm.  It's fun to abuse 2nd Amendment rights and you can do that here!  (Unless, of course, you are Black, Latino, LGBTQ, Native American, or a female with a brain.) 

Now, I might be wrong here.  Perhaps the majority of these breakers breaking don't agree with our "rulers".  They probably just want to be warm and away from wherever they come from.  I hope that is the case.  But they need to keep in mind that Mother Nature herself is resisting fascist Florida, using any means possible to punish our expanding stupidity. From the insider.com website:

"A giant blob of seaweed called sargassum is on its way to the coast of Florida.  Pollution and warming temperatures are causing the algae to grow more quickly.  It can be seem from space and weighs about 13 million tons."

My favorite reaction to that news can be found in our satirical treasure, The Onion. On that site, the fictional average guy, Frank Galonski, Systems Analyst, opines “DeSantis will just make a big show of putting it on a bus to Washington.”   He probably will.

Visit Florida!  Where in-your-face evidence of our disregard for planet Earth is about to wreck your break!

Welcome to paradise, darling.  More than "woke" is about to die here.

Joyce 

Dystopia.

Dear you,

Tennessee governor, Bill Lee, signed a bill into law that essentially bans public drag performances. Who voted for this man?  Who votes for someone who wants to criminalize people doing their thing? It just keeps getting sicker in Republican-land. Last year, in currentaffairs.org, Nathan J. Robinson warned us. He reported on the Texas Republican platform, his subtitle: "We need to understand the very, very dark forces that we are up against".

Dark indeed.  Their assaults on individual rights (and actual individuals) is matched by their assaults on democratic governance as a whole.  We are seeing it now, the calls to eliminate essential oversight bodies like the EPA or FDA.  Yes, Robinson warned us, referring to the Texas platform as their intended national model.  He wrote: "The Texas GOP also wants to repeal: all estate taxes, all business franchise taxes, the federal income tax, and all property taxes. The answer to the question of “But if you eliminate all the taxes, how will you fund government services?” is, of course, that there will be no government services. The platform calls outright for eliminating most of the federal government. The EPA’s power has already been gutted by the right-wing Supreme Court, but the plan is to abolish it altogether. And that’s just the start. 

In a section entitled Unelected Bureaucrats, the agenda proposes eliminating altogether: 

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS)

The Department of Energy

The Department of Education

The Department of Housing and Urban Development

The Department of Commerce

The Department of Health and Human Services

The Department of Labor

The Department of the Interior

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA)

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF)

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC)

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)

The Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA)

Holy fuck.  Imagine this week's bank failure (Silicon Valley Bank) without the FDIC protecting at least some of the deposit money.  Been brave enough to fly recently?  Imagine how fun that is going to be without a TSA.  Work through that list and consider the dystopian possibilities.

As for lesser impactful politics/voting, zoom in to my condo zone. The board and management are freaking out over a lack of votes (quorum) about an assessment. Many (like me) didn't vote because the whole deal is totally shady. The assessment estimate?  Inflated and vague. The intended "projects" focus on tree and shrub killing. Other idiotic priorities include spiffing up the corn hole area and the poolside public bathrooms. Those of us who abstained are receiving calls and emails yelling at us for "not caring".  This reminds me of an old South Park episode. Stan refused to vote for the school mascot because the choices were either a douche or a turd.  He was exiled and berated by Puff Daddy who said he must vote or die.  I don't recall if Stan caved and voted.  But I am not going to cave.  A "yes" supports destruction and tackiness and a "no" would suggest I don't want other sensible things on the list paid for (like new pool fencing to replace the rotten wood ones we have now).  I won't vote and I certainly won't die.  In the end, in this silly circumstance, no real harm will be done one way or another (except for the death of beautiful green things).  Wish I could say the same for our current national dilemma where it appears too many voters are choosing something very, very dark.

Who are these people?  What motivates their allegiances and alliances?  Vote or die becomes they vote and we die.

This is going to be one hell of a fight.  Embrace the light!

Love,

Joyce

Criminal blogging.

Dear you,

Oh, if only I did not have to comment on #DeathSantis, governor supreme, ever again.  But it is state legislative session time in Tally and Ron's goon squad of GOP code creators are on fire!  Setting liberty on fire.  See The National Review's (a traditionally conservative platform) Charles C. W. Cooke:  "An idiot in the Florida state legislature has introduced a bill that would require the registration of bloggers who are critical of the state’s government."

The idiot's name is State Senator Jason Brodeur.  His handiwork is S.B. 1316 and it requires any blogger who writes about the Gov. (and gets paid for their work) to "register" with the state ethics commission or some other Big Brotherly body.  I am happy to say I AM NOT PAID TO SPEAK MY MIND HERE IN THIS BLOG-SPACE.  And, dear senator, my mind-speaking today is simply this:  leave professional journalists the hell alone.  You come for them, you come for all of us.  And yes, you are an idiot because you are going to be ripped by the left, the right, and the center. Foxnews.com quoted Sarah Rumpf, contributing editor of Mediate, who shared a picture of the U.S. Constitution and declared:  "Here's my documentation needed to write about DeSantis, Moody, Bordeur, or any elected official. I'm not filing any 'registration' or reporting my salary to Tallahassee. Go step on all the Legos with this unconstitutional nonsense."

Go step on all the Legos, a child and idiot-friendly version of "go fuck yourself"!  You are fabulous, Ms. Rumpf.

That's all I got today . . . 

Please pray, fight, speak (choose your verb, any verb) for Florida. It is going down here and it could happen to you.

Love, Joyce