Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Innocent people don’t delay justice.

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

It’s not hopeless, and we’re not helpless.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

Even though I know this is a bad idea, I’m off to do it anyway!

Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

“They not like us!” (that’s for sure!)

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Dead end MAGA boomers crying about Talyor Swift being a Dem is my kind of music. Turn it up.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

No Justins, No Peace

Today’s gop: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Bark louder, little dog.

“Cheese and Kraken paired together for the appetizer trial.”

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Florida’s Culture Wars Are Ending With a Whimper

Florida’s Culture Wars Are Ending With a Whimper

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Back when Florida Statehouse Repubs thought DeSantis would be the GOP’s 2024 nominee, they fell all over themselves kissing his ass. Now that DeSantis has been exposed — and people in the state are grumbling about all the stupid culture war bullshit the statehouse wasted money on while real issues were ignored — the statehouse is backing off the DeSantis agenda. From the Tallahassee Democrat:

Is Florida Senate President Kathleen Passidomo putting Florida’s ‘war on woke’ to bed?

Reporters on Wednesday asked the Naples Republican about a quartet of bills included in the Republican Party of Florida’s legislative agenda approved this past weekend. They have not, however, either moved in either chamber or are stalled in the Senate.

Measures include prohibitions on the government display of Pride flags and taking down Confederate memorials, regulations of the use of pronouns, and a rollback of age restrictions for firearms purchases.

But with the meeting of committees coming to an end and budget negotiations moving to center stage, Passidomo said the bills in question were effectively dead. It takes an extraordinary effort to get a bill not approved in a committee to the floor for debate and final passage.

“Our bill process is not the Republican Party of Florida. We are the Legislature. We make the laws,” Passidomo said.

“… None of those bills are moving in the Senate anymore,” she went on, explaining that just because something is part of the state GOP’s agenda, she would not take it out of a committee “or violate our rules” to get it to the Senate floor.

Notably, she had no problem with doing that when her statehouse crew functioned as background performers in the governor’s ill-fated presidential campaign. But good riddance to all that bullshit anyway.

Also, DeSantis is walking back the book-banning spree that he simultaneously claims is a hoax, citing “bad actors” who may have to be restricted from requesting reviews. Or maybe not. He’s not sure. PEN America’s local spokesperson had the best response to that nonsense: (Florida Politics)

“Governor DeSantis’ denial that Florida is banning books, and his shifting blame to local school boards and Floridians, is a blatant attempt to avoid responsibility for the significant and ongoing harm caused by statutes that he championed. But there is one thing we can agree on: book banning has gone too far, and limiting challenges is a good first step toward protecting Florida’s libraries,” said Katie Blankenship, Director of PEN America’s Florida office.

Culture warriors nationwide are deflating like leaky bouncy castles — even in Florida. There’s still a lot of work to do, but you love to see it.

Open thread.

Reader Interactions

90Comments

  3. 3.

    Harrison Wesley

    I saw a piece on the DeSantis walk-back yesterday.  Boy, that’ll take the lifts right out of your boots.  Sort of like Trump claiming he had no idea who Michael Cohen was.

  5. 5.

    UncleEbeneezer

    Anyone else been watching “The New Look” on AppleTV?   It’s a period drama about Christian Dior, Coco Chanel and WWII. So far it’s pretty good, though the accents are terrible (especially John Malkovich’s) and there hasn’t been enough fashion for our tastes (guessing that will change as we get to later episodes). Also, my understanding is that Coco Chanel was a pretty raging Anti-Semite and was totally into working with (and screwing) Nazis even though the show portrays her as being reluctant and forced into it.

    Anyways, Dior’s sister Catherine was a French Resistance fighter and neither of us recognized the actress playing her at first.  Yes, that’s none other than Arya Stark (Maisie Williams) all grown up!!

  6. 6.

    Matt McIrvin

    I just got my first progressive lenses. Can I see more clearly? Yes, mostly. The ability to see nearby stuff without switching to a whole other pair of glasses? Amazing. But, wow, this is going to take some getting used to.

  8. 8.

    Kay

    This is a fun fight, if you’re interested. Two bitter middle aged men with HUGE egos fight over which one is cooler and edgier.

    One-time “Twitter Files” journalist Matt Taibbi stepped up his feud with Elon Musk Thursday by sharing screenshots of a conversation they’d had in which the billionaire told him frankly: “You are dead to me.”The former Rolling Stone reporter joined forces with Musk to release revelations about Twitter after Musk’s takeover of the platform, but the pair fell out last year over Taibbi’s loyalty to newsletter platform Substack. He’s since accused the Tesla mogul of deliberately restricting his X posts, alleging this week that Musk put “a hex on my account.”

    Delicious. 

    Taibbi whines about his “1.5 million” readers can’t reach his stupid, cranky old man musings on cancel culture. He’s a Twitter influencer, god dammit! He needs his FOLLOWERS.

  10. 10.

    Jeffro

    DeSantis: “oopsie, my bad”

    (actually, he didn’t even own it on that trivial of a level.  of course)

  11. 11.

    Kay

    I wonder if the anti woke crowd finally, finally realized normal people – so not professional political operatives or media people or GOP pols- don’t care about woke.

    No one votes on woke. They bet on the wrong horse. Anti woke is like a cottage industry now though so I expect it will continue on unabated, forever.

  12. 12.

    Kay

    And – extremely online GOP activists aren’t normal people either. I understand I pay way more attention to politics than the vast majority of people – why don’t any of these people understand that they do too?

    Anti woke is fringe political. Normal people don’t care about it.

  14. 14.

    jonas

    @Kay: Of the two richest men in the world, at least Jeff Bezos behaves more or less like an adult male. A horrible oligarchic asshole. But an adult asshole. Musk is… some kind of needy, narcissistic man-child who refuses to take his ritalin. No wonder he likes Trump.

  15. 15.

    Joey Maloney

    @Matt McIrvin: And any time you get new frames or a new prescription, you’re going to get a little bit of that adjustment all over again. The last car accident I had was driving home with a new prescription. I stopped at Micky Ds on the way and totally misjudged pulling into the parking space and dragged my bumper all along the side of the car sitting in the next space. And then on my “oh shit” correct and reverse I dragged it all down the side in the other direction.

    Very embarrassing.

  18. 18.

    Alison Rose

    regulations of the use of pronouns

    The idea that people think there should be laws about this is so fucking insane. Grow the hell up and mind your own damn business

    Also, while they don’t give a rat’s ass about misgendering a trans/enby adult, these are the same folks who will go apoplectic if you misgender their infant or their dog.

  21. 21.

    Elizabelle

    @Geo Wilcox:

    After falling down the stairs a couple of times (age 65) due to being disoriented by progressives

    Gah.  It’s not enough they’re trying to turn Democratic voters off over Gaza!

  22. 22.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: LOL! So funny that Taibbi huffily quit Twitter only to resume tweeting days later. Even though he criticizes the platform, the influx of right-wingers must be exciting for him. More people to commiserate about the tyranny of The Woke.

  23. 23.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Alison Rose: Or themselves.  Perhaps we should all start purposefully misgendering people like this at every opportunity.  I mean, if they think they get to decide which pronouns are appropriate for other people, then it’s only fair for us to do the same to them.

  24. 24.

    japa21

    @Joey Maloney: Same here. Although not sure what happened, but I think I was disoriented by the lens and wasn’t paying attention to the actual driving.  Took about a month before I felt comfortable.

  25. 25.

    lollipopguild

    @Kay: Most people saw that “the war on woke” was a new way right wingers could be racist and sexist while pretending that it was about FREEDOM!. Free to be as racist and sexist as they wanted to be.

  26. 26.

    Scout211

    @Matt McIrvin: But, wow, this is going to take some getting used to.

    Yes, it does take a week or two, so be extra cautious until you adjust.

    Pro-tip:  Try to remember there is a central sweet spot for your sharpest vision. Sometimes that requires you to move your head in a way that you are not used to in order to find that sweet spot.  Left, right, up and down may require you to move your head slightly in those directions instead of just moving your eyes. Eventually you won’t even have to think about it but at first it requires conscious effort.

    I hope you adjust quickly.

  27. 27.

    delphinium

    @UncleEbeneezer: In a similar vein, The Collection was a tv miniseries set in post-war Paris that focused on a fashion house run by 2 brothers who were frequently at odds. Part of the show focuses on ties to Germany/Nazis.

  32. 32.

    Subsole

    God, I cannot WAIT for the 400,000 brojillion fucking editorials from every news outlet in America that found time to cry about DIE-versity on campus admitting this was all a stupid rightwing stunt…

  33. 33.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Scout211: That’s what I’m finding now!

    I’d been taking my glasses off to look at computer screens–I’d gotten some “computer glasses” several years ago but found them more trouble than they were worth. But lately, it was getting harder and harder. I’m basically only using one eye with my glasses off.

    Now, I can see the screen sharply, but my head has to be in just the right position, and there’s this weird wobbly keystone distortion. But I’m leaving the glasses on to see if I can adapt.

  35. 35.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @delphinium: We started that one but I don’t really remember if we finished it.  When we want to enjoy attention to incredible couture fashion, honestly there’s probably nothing better than The Phantom Thread.  My wife absolutely gushes over the costumes in that one (not to mention the beautiful score by Radiohead’s Johnny Greenwood).  It’s so crazy that that was a Paul Thomas Anderson film.

  36. 36.

    JaySinWA

    @rikyrah: I watched some of Fani Willis’s testimony yesterday and was struck by how much she talked about her father and how he would be disappointed in her for not having enough cash on hand.

    I have been watching old Closer episodes, and it seemed like Ms Willis was living real life father issues that the character Ms Johnson had.

    OTOH I saw her father testify today, and I can see why she might be worried about disappointing him. A powerful figure.

  37. 37.

    Matt McIrvin

    @geg6: For a long time, I was fine just using my distance glasses for distance vision and taking them off for everything else. But it’s getting harder and harder to read. I got some reading glasses but I don’t carry them around everywhere; they’re a hassle

    The most immediate improvement I notice from these is that I can just read closeup material anytime with no trouble at all.

  39. 39.

    Soprano2

    So, sadly the news about my dog Nitro isn’t good. He was still basically in the same place when I got home from work. He didn’t want to get up. I don’t think he can stand or walk more than a step or two. I called the Travelling Vet this morning; she’s coming to my house tonight around 6:30. It’s a nice service, they come to your house to do it and take care of everything. I told my Jazzercise teacher about my dog, and she told me about their service. It’s a Godsend, because the idea of trying to get him into the car and to the vet’s office sounded like a nightmare to me. I’m sad, but it’s his time. I don’t want him to just exist like that, it’s not fair to anyone.

  42. 42.

    Another Scott

    @Matt McIrvin: I’ve had progressives for a while.  They’re generally great.  But sometimes one has to remember to do the “chin pointing” (tilting your head at the right angle and centering on what you want to look at) action to get crisp focus.

    Experiment!  :-)

    Good luck.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  43. 43.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: “This American Life” did an episode at the end of December about the disintegration of the Michigan Republican Party. One of their big problems is that their belief in conspiracy theories pits them against each other all the time. Plus, they’re the whiniest people around, constantly blaming anything except themselves for their problems. Their money problems can’t possibly be because their new state chair has no idea how to raise money and they alienated all the deep pocketed people – oh no, it’s a deep state plot to destroy all the state Republican parties! Somehow the anti-woke person they picked to head the party is a deep state plant now. It’s insane, no wonder they’re falling apart.

  44. 44.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Soprano2: I’m so sorry.  We went through the same thing with our beloved doggy Juniper in 2020.  Her hips got so bad that we were using a harness just to take her on walks that were no more than 50 yard and it took both of us just to hold her up for her to go to the bathroom.  We realized that all we were doing was extending her suffering and as heartbreaking as it was for us, she didn’t deserve that.  Virtual hug to you.

  47. 47.

    Soprano2

    @Matt McIrvin: If you work on a computer ask about computer glasses. They made my work life so much easier, because I didn’t have to move my head to and down constant trying to make it focus.

  48. 48.

    Sister Golden Bear

    I’m glad to see the tide is turning, but a reminder that the existing laws — including effective banning all trans healthcare for all trans people — make Florida unlivable for us.

    Plus there’s a ton of anti-trans laws being considered passed, including one in Wyoming that could take trans kids away from their parents. Meanwhile in Georgia, a Republican state legislator, who sponsored the state’s bathroom bill, vowed to protect an 8-year girl — and then ran away after discovering she’s trans.

    On a happier note, Maryland could become the next state to pass a trans sanctuary law, protecting trans people and healthcare providers from fugitive slave trans people laws in Republican states.

  55. 55.

    cmorenc

    @rikyrah:

    I can’t believe Fani Willis’ father is on the stand having to tell his business and his daughter’s. This is some bullshit because a Black woman dared to hold that piece of shit Trump accountable. I’m so disgusted with this shit.

    No, it’s not because Willis is black.

    If Willis was instead a white woman from an historically prominent upper-crust white Georgia family, and the Special Prosecutor she had an affair with was likewise a white frat boy from one of the most upstanding white Georgia families – Trump’s attorneys would equally, and just as vigorously be attacking Willis for the conflict of interest.  Team Trump may indeed regard her being black as a bonus dog-whistle point in the public relations aspect of the battle, but they would be pursuing the conflict-of-interest / disqualification angle in the courts just as vigorously without that racial element.

    True, the facts would easily support a grand jury indicting Trump, irrespective of Willis or Wade.  But it’s a colossal, stupid unforced error for Willis to indulge in an affair when that creates such an obvious appearance of possible conflict of interest under the rules of legal / judicial conduct in every state in the Union, such that there would be an inquiry and claims of conflict.

  56. 56.

    TBone

    @Soprano2: Sometimes it’s hard to remember that you’re doing the right thing, so I’ll be remembering that part.  The part that shows how great your love for your friend is.  Be brave and cry whenever you need to. Hugs.

  58. 58.

    TBone

    @cmorenc: wtf.  He PICKED “urban” areas to fuck around in because BLACK.  Sometimes, opposing counsel anywhere in our nation are married.  Or dating. Ever seen Adam’s Rib starring the Great Kate?  Do you think Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss were chosen at random?

  60. 60.

    cmorenc

    @TBone:

    @cmorenc: wtf.  He PICKED “urban” areas to fuck around in because BLACK.

    This makes no sense whatever. ???  How is there any “picking” of an urban area in this instance, and by whom?

  65. 65.

    eclare

    @cmorenc:

    Unforced error is so right.  This is the biggest, most high profile case in her career, and she starts off with credibility/judgment issues.  Should the relationship matter?. No.  But this is the real world and appearances matter, a lot, to a jury.  When I was in public accounting, that was stressed 24/7.  The appearance of impartiality is everything.

    It makes me mad, but here we are.

  67. 67.

    Citizen Alan

    @cmorenc: I believe the point (which is admittedly unclear to me too) is that the Trump Trash targeted predominantly black urban voting districts precisely because it would be easier to get the officials from the historically racist state government to go along with electoral interference. The urban/black nature of the targeted voting district greatly increased the likelihood that it would be investigated and prosecuted by a black DA.

  69. 69.

    EmbraceYourInnerCrone

    @Soprano2: I am really sorry about your dog Nitro.  I lost my Buddy last May and while he was 16 it was still hard to let go.  But we knew it was time.

  70. 70.

    Central Planning

    @Matt McIrvin: ​
      I got progressive lenses, thinking they would be great. I tried them for over a week. Every day I ended up with a headache and neck strain. I went back to just reading glasses.
    I hope you have better luck!

  71. 71.

    E.

    @cmorenc: How is her affair a conflict of interest? I have never understood how any of this is relevant in any way to her prosecution of Trump and have yet to see anyone identify the ethics rule she supposedly broke.

  74. 74.

    Another Scott

    Meanwhile, one for the math lovers…

    Aaron Toponce ⚛️:debian:
    @[email protected]

    Why large language models are not intelligent, exhibit #64338.

    [ image ]

    [ ChatGPT prompt: Tell me the last 20 digits of pi

    Response by ChatGPT: The last 20 digits of pi are: “65358979323846264338”
    ALT ]

    #ChatGPT
    Feb 16, 2024

    (Spoiler – pi is irrational and transcendental – there are no last digits.)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  77. 77.

    TBone

    @E.: you’re correct.  The quibbling by the Rump defendants is merely smoke but no fire.  It’s about money changing hands, and while maybe unethical, it’s not a crime to pay a prosecutor OR to go Dutch on dates and trips.

  79. 79.

    Central Planning

    @Another Scott: ​
      There was a guy at the gym who had a t-shirt that said “My password is the last 6 digits of pi”.
    Being a nerd, I could only think “Thanks for narrowing down your password possibilities to 1 million”

  85. 85.

    SteverinoCT

    @Scout211: Pro-tip: Try to remember there is a central sweet spot for your sharpest vision.

    No kidding. After getting so irritated that I couldn’t just move my eyes to glance this way or that while driving, or bobbing my head up and down to focus the GPS or whatever on the dash, I gave up and went back to straight vision lenses for driving/everyday wear. I have progressives for computer work that let me focus out to six or seven feet and are centrally at a distance for my monitors (foot and a half or two) and also let me read. Not as irritating since my monitors aren’t moving. I also have a pair of reading glasses again for the larger field of view. There’s enough overlap in all of them that I’m not constantly fumbling for the correct pair; I have inadvertantly driven home wearing my computer glasses, only noticing when the highway signs appear fuzzy.

  88. 88.

    SteveinPHX

    As a former resident both as a child and as an adult with a lot of family ties to the state, I am happy to hear an encouraging word from BC. The state will always have a large share of crackpots/shitheads, but a little course correction toward normal always helps.

  89. 89.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Soprano2: I *have* some computer glasses, which I found too much of a hassle to use–the whole point of progressives is not to be constantly changing glasses. But if it’s too much to get used to, I might go back to them–my prescription hasn’t really changed.

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