So what’s new in DuhSantistan?

A valid reason to be angry at and regulate disney. Their predatory business practices against consumers. We have been victims of this policy.

What is not a valid reason to hate Disney is because you want to punish opposition the state's official policy of cruelty to gay Floridians because so many members of your base are uncomfortable with their own impulses.

 

Manny Diaz is a hack. DeSantis put him in that role because he's a craven crony and will do whatever Ron tells him.

 

And here comes the 6-week abortion ban:
‘We will sign:’ Florida Gov. DeSantis champions potential 6-week abortion bill

I knew he'd do this as soon as he won reelection.

 

Interesting. Thought he was trying to stay clear of the issue but the Noem attacks must have caused him to reconsider

 

I don't think so. He's trying to have it both ways, winking support for an abortion ban to people like @tilly, but not actually pushing too hard for it. It won't happen any time soon.

 

DeSantis’s proposed State budget provides for a sales tax exemption on gas stoves. Meanwhile, I own a condo on which I have $100,000 of property insurance. My premium just went up
from $1,100 to $3,200.

 

He’s an unmitigated disaster and the fact that so many in Florida love the guy is flat out frightening. He’s quickly ruining our state in every aspect and the fact that his voters can’t see that he’s screwing them is sad. Keep this man the hell away from the White House, he’s already done enough damage to one state, god forbid he gets his hands on the other 49.

 

Florida’s bills will come due, and Ron will have moved on

 

So now Dear Leader is against capitalism?

 

And free speech.

 

Good for Pritzker.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...is-ap-black-studies-j-b-pritzker-culture-war/

This comes after Pritzker told the College Board that Illinois might not use its new AP course in African American studies if it is modified to “appease extremists” and “fit Florida’s racist and homophobic laws.”

 

The proverbial picture being worth a thousand words these cartoons say it all about DeSantis and his obsession with whitewashing Black history.

 

Just another day, just another photo op for some culture stuff. Nothing new here.

 

From his press conference trying to take credit for what democrats accomplished:

 

Shocker, the people most motivated to ban books from schools are elderly bigots:
https://www.salon.com/2023/02/03/ca...eer-army-to-snatch-books-from-students-hands/
The Manatee Patriots' website has pages dedicated to stirring up outrage over what they deem "filth" students are reading. And digging through the social media presence of the "woke-busting" Patriots only piles on the worry that these are people who are so censorious that the Little Golden Book about "The Poky Little Puppy" would offend them. (Surely, a book about a dog who digs under fences to access the neighbor's property is a covert Marxist!) A Patriots leader who advertised the "Vetting Inappropriate Books Workshop," for instance, also posts conspiracy theories accusing Bill Gates of driving up egg prices so he can force "artificial" eggs on Americans.

Despite the tendency of Republicans to invoke elementary school kids when talking about the need for book banning, the classrooms being targeted are in high schools and middle schools. Books flagged for banning include The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang, and Monday's Not Coming by Tiffany Jackson. Digging into the complaints, it becomes clear that, despite lots of hysteria about "depictions of sexual activity" in books meant for nearly adult readers, the real objections are centered around the acknowledgment that racism is real or that LGBTQ people exist. Unsurprisingly, few, if any, of the targeted authors are white men. The books that offend the "woke busters" are mostly written by women of color.

Despite claiming to speak for "parents," it wasn't at all clear that the Manatee Patriots have many members with kids in school, and photos of their events suggest most of them have long aged out of the range where that's even remotely likely. The likelier explanation for what's going on here is that the "woke busters" are angry old white people who are taking out their resentments about social change on school-aged kids who are an easy target because they have very little social power and can't vote yet. Why should the Manatee Patriots care if their "activism" deprives kids of the basic educational resources they need to grow into healthy, productive adults? All that authoritarians care about is power and using that power to punish anyone who reminds them that they are a bunch of bigots.

Unfortunately, Republican leaders in Florida have decided it's quite profitable to cater to a bunch of anti-reading fanatics who cannot stand the idea that kids and grandkids grow up to have minds of their own. On Thursday, Sen. Marco Rubio posted a screed attempting to recast book banning as "freedom," arguing that the real freedom is in being "protected" from "woke ideology." The GOP's message is clear: If you can't read the book you want, don't worry about it. There is no greater freedom than the freedom from having to think for yourself.

 

"More things found in the Library," their site breathlessly reads. The offensive materials they flagged? Michelle Obama's memoir and a history of Barack Obama's presidency.

Book burners.

 

What a clown show.
Legislature considers allowing Florida to transport migrants from anywhere in the U.S.

 

The problem is these folks have unlimited time on their hands too! They essentially have no lives, or rather they view this nonsense as their life’s mission.

 

I’m a teacher in Florida. Here’s what the book bans look like in my classroom
Many schools, including my own, do not have a full time media specialist. Due to budget cuts, we have a media specialist every other week. That means we have one person to vet thousands of books in our school alone, before we can have them in our classrooms. In addition to the mountain of work now laid in her lap, she hasn’t even been given a system to vet the books with. Currently, it is a subjective process of a single person reviewing each book with a 12-point questionnaire. One of my issues is that what one person finds offensive, another may find silly. For example, the book ‘No, David’ by David Shannon. On one page an illustration of David running pantless down the street is shown. One media specialist may find this humorous, as it was intended, while another may label it as pornographic. The lack of directives and specificities makes me fear for the future of school-based libraries.

In an attempt to shield their teachers from disciplinary actions, my district issued a directive to make all classroom libraries and media center books unavailable to students until further directed. We have been told that this is a temporary move as the district works toward compliance with this law, but with only one person to vet thousands of books, it doesn’t feel very temporary.

I work in a low socio-economic neighborhood and most of my students do not have access to books at home. Last year, with the help of my family, friends, and community, I was able to start running a Little Free Library out of my classroom. When my students finished group and had free reading time they were welcome to choose a book from my library to take home. They could keep it, share it, or bring it back and trade it out. They loved it. Word got around and students from outside my groups started asking to come and get books and I welcomed them.
***
I explained to them that there was a new rule and until we had someone look at all of our books we had to put them away. Shoulders slumped, faces looked confused and sad, and one of my most voracious readers, who typically gets 3-4 books per week from me, started to cry. My only offer of comfort was to explain to them the access they have to books at the public library both in person and online.
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That should be the new DeSantis and Florida GOP motto: We make third graders cry. This might be the most emphatic point in the entire article: "I’m furious that there has been talk of putting guns in teachers’ hands, but I’m not trusted enough to put a book in a child’s hand."

 

Another funny shot at our state from The Onion: