Ron DeSantis will announce his presidential bid this week in the most appropriate venue possible, i.e., in a discussion with Elon Musk on Twitter Spaces. Their “discussion” will be MC’d by another fat-cat right-wing tech douche, according to NBC News:
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will announce he is running for president during a discussion with Twitter CEO Elon Musk, three sources familiar with the plans told NBC News.
Musk and DeSantis will host an event on Twitter Spaces, the site’s platform for audio chats, on Wednesday at 6 p.m. ET. It will be moderated by David Sacks, a tech entrepreneur who is a Musk confidant and DeSantis supporter.
That same evening, the campaign will release a launch video, and DeSantis will begin visiting several early states after Memorial Day.
A confab of grievance-driven, personality-free, snippy, entitled, anti-woke whiners is the perfect DeFascist campaign launch vehicle. (Especially if it subsequently crashes and burns like Musk vehicles tend to do.) DeSantis almost never gets out of the right-wing media bubble, and if this reporting is true, he won’t for the campaign launch either.
Will DeSantis unhinge his jaw, bare his tonsils at the camera and make a strangled hengh-hengh sound to simulate human mirth? Probably. I won’t be watching. I’m so sick of that fucker already — rooting for Trump to figuratively rip off DeSantis’s head and shit down his windpipe.
Open thread.
H/T: Valued commenter Alison Rose.
Urza
As if sane people didn’t already have enough reasons to hate Twitter and the viper that took over.
Alison Rose
Wow. Musk, DeSantis, and Sacks, all together. My vagina just made the Windows95 shutdown sound.
Manyakitty
@Alison Rose: and you win the thread.
Betsy
So do I have this right? A supporter of both these fat-ears is going to be the “moderator” of a mutual admiration and shoot-off-at-the mouth session?
In other words, a total safe space for two entitled, untested, fail-to-the-top grit-less white men who think alike?
No wonder this country is in trouble.
But fine. People who have real ability and can meet actual challenges, like Stacey Abrams, will save “us”.
Mike in NC
What dream job(s) would Leon Skum ask for in a DeFascist Administration? Head of NASA? Secretary of the Treasury? The list is endless but it would focus on making peoples’ lives worse.
Anoniminous
Smart move. The national Infotainment Mediums will give DeSantis tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars of free publicity taking about his “boldness” & “modern media savvy” & all that other shit they like to trot out.
Baud
Audio means people can’t see his creepy smile. Smart.
Fiona
Musk is so goddamn stupid. Does he not realize half the lunatics he’s trying to cozy up to are Trump stans?
Betty Cracker
@Manyakitty: Yep. Kind of unfair for that to happen just two comments in!
@Betsy: I’m almost tempted to watch because how can it not be disastrous? Musk and DeSantis both think they’re funny and charismatic when they’re SO not. Sacks and DeSantis both have droning, adenoidal voices.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: Oh, is Twitter Spaces audio only? Yeah, that’s probably smart, but he still has a horrible voice.
TriassicSands
Quick, Alison, hit Ctrl-Alt-DeSantis to avoid the Red Screen of Death.
Steeplejack
Did DeSantis ever get his lemming-herd legislature to pass the “You don’t have to resign as governor if you run for president” bill? Last I heard, it had not been finalized.
My dream scenario is that it gets challenged and overturned in court, and then he really does have to resign as governor because he’s already running for president. Not gonna happen, but it’s a nice fantasy.
Alison Rose
@TriassicSands: Will that make him disappear into the Bermuda Triangle? I’m already so sick of his stupid face and voice and now they’re gonna be even more prevalent.
Manyakitty
@Alison Rose: I wonder if the media is getting over him and moving on to Tim Scott as the new hotness. They are desperate to be ‘not racist.’
BR
That they are doing it audio only is telling because it would be very awkward on video.
bbleh
From what I can see, DeSantis is beginning to twist slowly, slowly in the wind.
Orange Man and the Seven (or how ever many there are now) Dwarves. And by all accounts, he’s increasingly unpopular with an increasing majority, and he’s a substantial drag on down-ticket races. What an absolute sh!tshow of a party ..
@Manyakitty: I would say yes to the first, but as to the second, he’s just Flavor Of The Week. What’s going to be interesting is whether the money and the media attention settle on another anti-Trump or they just keep running in circles like a dog chasing its tail.
different-church-lady
DeSantis is a fascist. Full stop. The media is not going to say it, so it’s going to be up to us to make sure everyone knows it.
eclare
@BR:
Wait, what? Audio only? Wow.
So is Pudding Boy just totally grifting with no intention of doing anything?
Manyakitty
@BR: yeah, but I’d like to see desantis unhinge his jaw and accidentally slurp up Elmo while he was trying to do a laugh.
Jeffro
@Alison Rose: After reading those three names, I was about to say “oh for just one well-placed grenade”…
@Manyakitty: …but then yeah, she did win it (Win95 it?)
LOL
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
I thought this was audio, but not sure.
Alison Rose
@Manyakitty: Yeah, and to help the GOP prop up their “we’re totally not a racist party, look here is a Black person” thing. At least Tim Scott doesn’t repulse me like TFG and DeSadpants do.
oldgold
With Musk getting more involved in our politics, my intense dislike of Citizens United v. FEC grows.
I think it may have made its way into the Mount Rushmore of bad Supreme Court Decisions.
Other candidates:
Dredd Scott v. Sanford
Plessy v. Ferguson;
Bush v. Gore;
District of Columbia v. Heller;
Dobbs v. Jackson; and,
Marbury v. Madison.
OzarkHillbilly
Huh. I feel almost exactly the same, Betty. Just not the “figuratively” part.
Ruckus
@Manyakitty:
I second that. Or whatever number we are up to now.
Quinerly
@Alison Rose:
💜
Manyakitty
@Alison Rose: I don’t know what to think about him. He’s so deep in denial he might as well be Cleopatra.
Alison Rose
@Manyakitty: LOLOLOL
MazeDancer
Tiny D so hoping he’ll seem warm and charming next to Elmo.
Someone on Twitter rightly pointed out this is going to not work well for launch day fundraising.
At least, Elmo can report the crowd size as whatever Ron desires.
Ruckus
@Fiona:
If muskey didn’t have so much money he’d be the guy in HS that no one talks to. Even decades after HS, he’d be that same guy that no one talks to. Because no one would give not even one shit about him. But I still like that twitter sold their site to him for twice what they were asking because he was stupid enough to offer it.
Ruckus
@TriassicSands:
OK, I’m actually laughing out loud.
different-church-lady
@OzarkHillbilly: Trump’s aim isn’t nearly that good.
TriassicSands
Fear not, we’ll all get to enjoy the wonderful variety of neo-fascists the GOP will have on display — Nikki Haley, Tim Scott (representing, a bit ironically, the CSA and where the Civil War started), Asa Hutchinson (representing polite, soft-spoken fascist cruelty), Chris Sununu (should he enter — representing the wolf in sheep’s clothing), Donald Trump (representing the world’s foremost authority on absolutely everything, aka infinite expertise) and Ron DeSantis (representing just how stupid voters can be).
And there will probably be more — 2016 showed is that vanity candidacies are all the rage.
Ken
It’s all so clear now. The tech-savvy have been pondering how it is that Twitter hasn’t fallen over, given the cuts in personnel and infrastructure that Musk has made.
Clearly Murphy, the trickster god of technology, has been holding it together all this time, just so that it can collapse spectacularly during this announcement. Murphy probably owed a favor to Cucumbria, the goddess of karmic retribution.
bbleh
@eclare: So is Pudding Boy just totally grifting with no intention of doing anything?
SOP for most of the Republican Party, especially at the national level, so probably, yeah.
Ruckus
@different-church-lady:
Maybe so but he is so full of shit that it really won’t matter if his aim is bad…
bbleh
@Ruckus: ok we need to stop talking about this now because I’m out of brain-bleach.
Matt McIrvin
@Ken: I’ve always been reminded of Adam Smith’s saying that “there is a great deal of ruin in a nation”–there is a lot of ruin in a social network; many of the users will hang on because of network effect, they’ll excuse a lot of glitchy or obnoxious behavior, and the infrastructure that supported them in the first place had to be less fragile than you might think, probably needs a whole lot of breakage before it actually falls over.
OzarkHillbilly
@bbleh: Aaaahh… Success!
Roger Moore
@oldgold:
Louchner v New York
Buck v Bell
Korematsu v United States
Scout211
Front page headline on HuffPost right now:
PARTNERS IN SLIME: DESANTIS TO LAUNCH WITH ELON MUSK ASSIST!
Seems about right. Plus, the front page photos of both of them are kind of awful.
Ha ha ha ha !!
Matt McIrvin
(In some technical sense, LiveJournal and MySpace are still operating. I even have a theoretically active LiveJournal account though I haven’t posted to it in ages.)
feebog
Let’s summarize. The front runner has recently been found liable for sexual abuse, is under cirminal indictment and is almost certain to be indicted for other crimes in the next few months. The Nazi Robot is a distant second and will formally throw his rubber boots into the ring tonight on a platform owned by the only guy in the country with less charisma than the robot. The field is rounded out by a couple former governors from failed southern states, a black Senator who couldn’t find more than a couple black people to attend his announcement yesterday and a tech guy who has already pissed off all the young voters in the country. We are going to need a bigger clown car.
TriassicSands
I guess this is a sign of just how bad things have gotten — Betty Cracker rooting for Donald Trump.
My take, unburdened by having to endure DeSantis as my governor (which, I understand, can really intensify your feelings), is somewhat different. I would prefer, in an act that even Cirque de Soleil performers would be hard-pressed to pull off (no pun intended), would be for Trump and DeSantis to simultaneously rip each other’s heads off and shit down each other’s windpipes all at the Superbowl as the main halftime entertainment. I might even tune in for that spectacle.
Cameron
@BR: Ah, yes, the old actor’s bit about a “face built for radio.”
Trivia Man
@Steeplejack: I also want to know if he has signed it! I spent some time yesterday digging and couldn’t find a single story that says YAY!! HE IS FREE TO DO BOTH THINGS AT ONCE!!
if he signed it, he’s not very proud of it.
Betty Cracker
@Manyakitty: I was reading something about Scott’s announcement yesterday, and the Oracle billionaire and Musk gushed over Scott, making me wonder if the latter was going back on his earlier declaration that he supports DeFascist.
But probably it was a feint to inoculate himself against charges of racism arising from all his racist tweets, amplification of white supremacist accounts and support for a governor who is canceling black scholarship, diversity initiatives, etc.
Manyakitty
@Betty Cracker: everything about this screams TOKEN.
Hilbertsubspace
Elom Mush to help with DeSantis’ presidential bid launch. But, who gets to press the button to blow up the presidential bid when it starts to tumble out of control? I think I speak for everyone here when I say, “Pick me!”
gvg
What is so exasperating about these mini fascists is how small and petty they are.They have no clue about so many things. It was a revelation to me when some commenter pointed out that they really did hate/love Disney and want to take it back to when it reflected their idea of wholesome values…….but the thing they don’t get is that modern Disney reflects the current audiences ideas about ….wholesome values, such as be nice to everyone. Nice people have gay friends and black friends. Nice parents like it that kids have diverse friends and never say anything about it except supportive things. Bullying is looked down on. Also doing well in school is almost always viewed as a good thing. Etc. and so on.
The old old Disney pretended like these things did not exist.
Now they do, but the mouse crew keeps singing just like before. That might be the worst part(to the bigots). Although I don’t really get them at all.
Gin & Tonic
I’m surprised Sacks can detach his lips from Putin’s balls for long enough to do this.
Cameron
@Manyakitty: BETTER TOKEN THAN ‘WOKEN’!!!!
FelonyGovt
Not that he seems to care, but Elongated Muskrat seems to be digging himself under further and further with the liberals and progressives he would need to retain to keep Twitter operational going forward.
gvg
@Ken: No, it would be better if it collapsed when Trump made some big announcement.
Maybe accepting the nomination from prison
Scout211
@Trivia Man:
bbleh
@Cameron: [Republican staffer pauses and thinks “could that maybe work…?”]
Ruckus
@feebog:
The point of a clown car is how many clowns can you stick in it. As clown cars go this one is not close to full.
Unfortunately.
Jay
@FelonyGovt:
Twitter has hostages, Tesla doesn’t unless you are in an accident.
Kristine
@Alison Rose: If there were a Betty Cracker Award for Best Turn of Phrase…
Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)
@Ruckus: We’ve all heard, “If you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?” The reverse, I think, is “If he’s so rich, why is Elon so goddamned stupid?” My hope is “A fool and his money are soon parted” works. It’s just taking longer when so much money is involved.
Tony Jay
@TriassicSands:
Considering the probable line-up for the MAGOP Primaries, I say we go straight to a Hancock conclusion.
“If you don’t give this fascism up quietly, I swear to Christ, your head is going up Puddin’Boots’ ass, his head is going up your black ass, and you drew the short stick, Orange Boy, cause your head is going up my ass!”
And in one swell foop, Will Smith is box-office again.
Manyakitty
@Cameron: trademark that and sell it to him.
Ladyraxterinok
@Roger Moore:
Statements found googling Buck v Bell ,say sterilization (involuntary?) is still legal in federal law?
Did I understand this correctly? And is this true?
Ruckus
@FelonyGovt:
You misunderstand muskrat. He doesn’t care. Not one iota about anyone but muskrat. The world revolves around the billion dollar pole he has stuck up his butt so he doesn’t care if you like him or not. He’s the richest man, and you aren’t. OK none of us are but his concept of humanity is: More money is grand, most money is grandest, suck it everyone else, elon is the best because he has the most.”
different-church-lady
@Ruckus: He’s good with anything that happens, as long as he gets to make the troll face.
Matt McIrvin
@gvg: Right. They specifically pick on Disney to a degree they won’t with most media outlets because Disney always had the reputation of being the safest choice for wholesome family entertainment, and at one time, that meant catering to a basically conservative white Christian middle-class nuclear-family perspective (though Disney unlike some of its competitors always seemed to avoid overt religiosity, which I think is interesting).
Disney has always wanted to find the great cultural consensus and play to it. So if they shift, that implies that the great square cultural consensus has shifted and it’s a huge threat.
Sans Simian
I can hardly believe I used to worry about DeSantis being the more, umm, palatable fascist. What a maroon.
OverTwistWillie
Casey’s gonna dump him after he terms out. She wants the celebrity, and his utility is below the Jay Cutler line as a reality TV punchline.
Jinchi
@Ruckus:
He does though. It seems like being the richest man in the world would give you self confidence, but this is a guy who frets over the thought of being canceled, and spent $40 billion to make sure his tweets were main lined into everyone elses feed.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: They can just hear his whiny, arrogant voice.
Baud
@different-church-lady:
And 💩
zhena gogolia
@OzarkHillbilly: lol
PST
Josh Marshall weighed in today, in part by quoting a cynical old Washington hand who’s been covering the meatball:
Marshall ends by calling DeSantis “a one-man Rosenkranz and Guildenstern, a mix of malevolence and comedy destined for a bad (political) end.”
bjacques
@Jinchi: i.e. Stupid Palmer Eldritch. With the original you at least got all the Can-D you could want (or afford) and communion with Perky Pat.
ArchTeryx
@Matt McIrvin: Lj has been a Russian front for over a decade.
Ruckus
@Boris Rasputin (the evil twin):
There is only one problem with this. OK only one obvious problem.
He has money. A lot of money. A lot of a lot of money. No one else wanted to pay the 22 billion asking price for twitter and he paid twice that, so the concept that he’s stupid is well proven. And there is another saying that applies. “Money can buy a lot of stuff, it can buy an education, it can’t buy you the intelligence to use it.” Remember that his family got him a lot of money diamond mining in South Africa, in a very racist time in a very racist area. And all that money didn’t, because it can’t, buy him actual intelligence. He’s like all the rest of us, we are born with a capability to learn, some a lot more capacity and some a lot less. All the education in the world won’t change that capacity. It will give some a better chance to make the most of what they’ve got, it will give some the chance to do good with that and it will give some the chance to do crapola. You might be able to see where I am going with this…..
eldorado
won’t stop this blog from constantly promotiing elon and his site though
Betty Cracker
@Gin & Tonic: Uncanny how the shittiest people in America just so happen to be Putin cock-holsters. Uncanny, I tell you!
Uncle Cosmo
@Scout211: I’m betting that, just like earlier this month, any launch involving Sunk Mole will blow large chunks of concrete many meters away before it gets off the ground. If it gets off the ground…
Betty Cracker
@eldorado: Yep, Musk boosters 24/7/365 right here — the adulation simply never ends.
Hoodie
@PST: This morning the Obama Bros were discussing in-the-wild DeSantis sightings at events in Iowa. The guy is truly socially handicapped, lacks basic retail politics skills. Richard Nixon had more personality. Added to that, Nixon was smart, or at least, cunning. DeSantis appears to be a moron, pure Dunning-Kruger type idiocy, i.e., he’s so dumb he thinks he’s smart. This Twitter rollout is truly dumb, he’s just serving as a prop for Musk and god knows what Musk might say in this event.
Omnes Omnibus
@eldorado: Yes, this is a terrible and immoral blog.
Kyle Rayner
@Hoodie: Would actually be pretty hilarious if they both stumbled over each other’s clown feet with the things they say that day. Here’s hoping for a circus like no other before it, defying all imagination.
Matt McIrvin
@ArchTeryx: That’s why I stopped posting to LiveJournal (moved my old blog to Dreamwidth, which is a fork of the code–I still post there on occasion). For a while before it went under Russian ownership, it was subject to constant Russian DDoS attacks to shut down dissidents who posted there.
Roger Moore
@gvg:
I think the key is that they genuinely believe their values are still popular. After all, everyone they interact with on the daily supports them. So when Disney is pushing these other values that differ from theirs, they see it as an attack. Disney is pushing those values because they want to steer everyone onto the wrong path. It couldn’t possibly be because most people support the values Disney is representing and the company is just trying to please their audience.
I suspect, though I’m not 100% sure, that this ties back to their views on evil. When Disney is pushing values that disagree with theirs, it isn’t just a disagreement over values. It’s a sign that Satan is active in the world and is trying to steer people into sin. Fighting against Disney values isn’t just a matter of who will control the country; they’re fighting to protect people’s immortal souls.
Jay
@Ruckus:
emeralds, not diamonds.
And Spaceface has picked a fight with Bellingcat.
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus:
Wouldn’t be any fun if it wasn’t…..
Roger Moore
@Ruckus:
If you believe that, you’ll need to get in touch with my friend the Nigerian prince. Musk absolutely cares about what people think about him. That’s why he spends so much time posting on Twitter and got upset when President Biden’s tweets were getting more views. He is as narcissistic as Trump.
Geminid
@feebog: This Republican primary field is starting to look like a clown car- towing a flaming dumpster down a long hill without brakes.
RandomMonster
Literally would be fine, too.
hells littlest angel
Any truth to the rumor that catturd2 is leaving Florida in order to be eligible to run for vice president?
Ruckus
@Jay:
Emeralds, diamonds, doesn’t really make much difference, as he didn’t actually earn any of it, by doing anything other than being born. He started life with far more than many/most and supposedly has a rather high IQ. I wonder if he bought that also….
Brachiator
I won’t be watching, either. I don’t care about any Trump vs DeSantis battle, even though I know the press is looking forward to this.
I will be interested to see how the electorate responds to both of these clowns.
Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)
@Ruckus: Quite right. We’ve all seen people like De Fascist who’ve had enormously expensive educations wasted on them. Musk is no different.
I’m still rooting for him to lose more tons of money.
Ruckus
@Geminid:
Starting? STARTING?
Surely you jest….
Alison Rose
@Kristine: ~curtsy~ :)
Kay
Oh, good. Will be a chance for Musk and his minions to ask the governor about Florida’s state supression of speech.
Ha ha. Just kidding. They never actually cared about speech.
Kyle Rayner
@Matt McIrvin: Was weird to see Dreamwidth get mentioned out in the wild right up until I remembered I only found BJ because someone linked to it from DW.
Alison Rose
@eldorado: You’re right, Elon would be a barista and Twitter wouldn’t exist if only Anne Laurie et al stopped putting tweets in their almost-top-10,000-blog posts. Thank God you and your self-righteousness showed up to save the day!!!!!!!
eversor
@gvg:
The right, particularly the Christian sector of it, is utterly convinced that media and corporations shape the culture. Hence their determination to seize the media and then use it to correct the culture to their whims. Hence all the National Conservatism demands to install Christians into media, government, and educational positions.
What they cannot grasp is that there has been no woke march through the institutions. Art, music, TV, movies, simply reflect what the currently culture actually is. They don’t shape things, they simply mirror it. Disney isn’t woke. It’s products simply ape what the current young parents and children actually are. Disney is who we are. That’s why Disney is loved. It’s why it’s always been and always will be loved.
The reason they cannot grasp this is the moment they admit this is the rock bottom of it. It’s not shadowy elites and a liberal conspiracy that did it. It’s that the younger generations just dislike Christianity, conservatism, traditional values, libertarianism, capitalism, guns, and on and on. And not only are those things going away to varying degrees, all the social and religious items are going down in history as abjectly bad things that were supported by bad people.
Their freakout of DEI is a great example of it. It must be corporate indoctrination. It’s not. It’s in most places so people have a neutral space to learn how to navigate issues with other people which takes the stress out of “what do I do, will I offend someone or cause a scene” where nobody gets in trouble for lobbing the wrong words. Nobody outside of social conservatives gives a flying fuck about it. You don’t have to go. But it’s useful and they have free catered food so people do go and it’s a social lunch and people like it. Just as nobody gives a flying fucking about pride. Sure rainbow logos on linkedin but nobody cares. There is a pride parade but it’s now widely mocked as a corporate sponsored idiot fest that happens to have good music and street food… like every other stupid holiday. It’s lost all meaning, like Christmas! Nobody is going to fly into a fit if you “misgender” them, it’s just awkward for all involved.
We are currently in AAPI month which like other things is “pandering to minorities” that the right hates. They catch is that normal people don’t care. It doesn’t change how you do your job. It’s a chance for people to wear native dress and bring in home cooked meals for their coworkers, aka team building. It harms nobody. In fact, most people like the home cooked meals and think the clothes are pretty cool and you get to learn about that person from accounting or IT and their family that you never would have before.
The right simply cannot mentally handle that all this stuff exists because it reflects the current culture as it is. The majority of people enjoy it and embrace it, or if not just consider it so normal and begnin they can’t get what all the fuss is about. And it’s that “I don’t get what the fuss is all about” that terrifies the fuck out of conservatives. Because once you have a bunch of straight white guys rushing down to the AAPI celebration to sample different foods who don’t think this is anything but routine or watching Disney movies where the woman/girl is the protagonist and not a plot device and don’t realize this was once an exception to the rule and not absolutely normal conservatives have lost.
Jay
@Ruckus:
apparently his IQ is on a monthly lease,……..
Kay
Jay
@Kay:
uber elite Four Seasons Landscaping in Arcadia,……
different-church-lady
@Alison Rose: People just do not understand what addiction is.
japa21
@eversor:
I expected another of your super heated anti-Christian rants. Surprisingly, it wasn’t. It actually showed a degree of nuance, recognizing that some “Christians” act a certain way which is detrimental to society. That would indicate an awareness on your part that there are Christians who believe and act in a way that is a positive for society.
And other aspects of your comment were spot on. Companies don’t tend to lead the way, instead reacting to what they see happening in society around them. I do think that the artistic community, including movies had more of a tendency to be in the lead.
different-church-lady
@hells littlest angel:
The Catturd2 is a lie.
jnfr
They deserve each other. Easy enough to avoid.
japa21
@Kay:
Damn, I thought he would rent a ball room at M-A-L for the after party.
different-church-lady
@Omnes Omnibus:
And on top of that we keep using Twitter.
zhena gogolia
Cauvin’s on the case.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNsaJcxIOLQ
leeleeFL
@Alison Rose: Omg! Thanks for that! I lLOLd
Geminid
@Kay: It is a weird way to launch a campaign. I have a strong stomach, but I don’t think I could listen to those three guys for very long.
But I am interested in what they say about the war in Ukraine. Sacks seems to fancy himself an expert, and he’s very much a defeatist and an appeaser.
different-church-lady
@PST:
But on the plus-side, he’s a fascist.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
I believe that there is a difference between someone like elon wanting to be liked and you or I wanting to be liked. elon, SFB, death santa wants humanity to like them. They don’t give a rats ass if you or I as individuals like them. Because they at least have some level of understanding that they will never be individually likable.
Someone like Joe Biden or Barack Obama, they want humanity to like them but they also want to be liked as an individual. They may understand that not all individuals will like them, but they are still going to try to be and will be liked by many individuals even if you never met them. The 3 I mentioned know that if you or I met them the likelihood that one or both of us will like them is rather small. As in unmeasurable. And all 3 of them may actually care, but not anywhere near enough to change so that the possibility even exists or to even care enough to understand it’s on them, not you or me.
As I’ve stated here before, I worked in professional sports. And like the rest of the world I’ve found that a lot of people, towards or at the top of their endeavors more obviously fall into the elon/SFB/deathsanta area than normal humans do in this area. They want more to be adored than liked. Normal humans want to be liked. Abnormal humans don’t and like many at the top seem to work at being not liked.
different-church-lady
@Ruckus: He doesn’t want to be liked in a normal sense. He wants to be given attention. It’s what trolls do.
Biden and Obama want to be decent people who help others. If they’re liked for that, then it’s a bonus.
Jager
@different-church-lady:
Doesn’t make any difference when it’s loose and wet
horatius
Lone Skum all over Rhonda Sandtits. The world’s least watchable porno.
different-church-lady
@Jager:
Look, if what you’re all saying is that some of it is bound to get down DeSantis’ open neck, then fine, but that’s just supporting my main point.
Uncle Cosmo
@Cameron: “And a voice built for mime” – don’t forget that!
ColoradoGuy
T**** is a cult leader, and DeSantis wants to be. Big big difference there. The actual cult leader will stare him down like the cold-blooded monster he is.
Also, T**** radiates menace. He’s the Darth Vader of American politics, and his cult followers love that. The menace is real enough: 400,000 dead Americans on the day he left office is no small accomplishment.
lollipopguild
@Matt McIrvin: In the 50’s and 60’s Disney was an american company, over the decades since then they have become a company that has fans and customers all over the world. I took my family to WDW in Florida back in 2002 and on Main street most people were speaking French, German, and Arabic.
Brachiator
@Ruckus:
Does it really matter that Musk did not earn some of his wealth? That’s just a biographical detail.
Some people have noted that Trump could just have invested his inheritance and still been wealthy.
Musk has had some success and is royally screwing Twitter, but he has still built his wealth and is worth about $184 billion.
I don’t know if he has a high IQ or whether that even matters, but he has demonstrated some talent, offset by massive cluelessness.
Hr has probably done more harm than good, but is he really representative of the Tech Gilded Age?
Ruckus
@Jay:
And I see that payments must often be late…..
Ruckus
@different-church-lady:
I always over write. You simplified.
Thanks!
M31
I hope they really get into it and start laughing at each others’ jokes — not sure which one is going to get the racist/cringe/loser stank prize.
50 quatloos that they joke about Elmo being ‘African American’ har har har
Ruckus
@different-church-lady:
The only part I don’t get about shitting down his neck is that there is likely to be absolutely no room in there for more shit, he’s full up.
To the tippy top of his shitty head down the the soles of his shitty feet.
geg6
@Kay:
See, this is a conundrum. I despise Cheetolini with every fiber of my being, but I can’t help but admire his ability to hit a fellow GOPer piece of garbage exactly where it hurts most. I don’t like that feeling.
different-church-lady
@Ruckus: Good distillates require good ingredients.
Cameron
@different-church-lady: Who is Catturd1?
different-church-lady
You are Catturd 6.
eversor
@ColoradoGuy:
I can’t see Trump or DeSantis radiating “menace” as they both come off as people who’d lose a street fight. It’s like Hawley talking about manliness while obviously being the guy you could slug in the face at a bar and not only would he not fight back nor would his friends.
All of these fuckers are wimps and cowards. Who’s only solution to things would be “I’ll call my dad”.
M31
@different-church-lady: haahahahha brilliant
not watching that show though
“The Losener”
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
All of this is true and is my point.
I’m one of the people that has stated here that if SFB had invested the $400 mil he’s be worth what he claimed he was, ($16 billion) rather than less than 1/4 of that because he’s a failure at, well, everything.
elon is a hell of a lot smarter than SFB but that’s like saying that dried shit smells better than fresh. It’s what and how one deals with their lives that count, not the size of their bank account. And SFB stole a lot of the $400 million he started with from family members after their father died. He’s such a great human being – oh wait all signs point towards NFW.
There are people who inherited money who aren’t assholes and there are people that live on the street that are good humans. And people like elon, or worse, like SFB, who didn’t/doesn’t deserve anything and they get admiration for things that they didn’t do or didn’t deserve. Humanity truly can be that harsh mistress that so many write about.
geg6
@Brachiator:
OMG, he’s the poster boy! And it does matter whether he inherited his wealth or not (he did, meaning he started life halfway between third and home). It’s that he and his cronies and admirers equate his wealth with his abilities. When you start out life unimaginably wealthy, it’s nigh impossible not to make money or get early opportunities in new and innovative things that no one else gets. He’s not brilliant or all that talented, but too many people think he is because of his wealth and privilege. As for Cheetolini, he would be unimaginably wealthier than he may or may not be today if he has just sat on all that cash daddy left him. He has blown through ridiculous amounts of inherited wealth, which is how he ended up in serial bankruptcies and in hock to Russians. Neither of these men are very smart. I’ll give Trump credit for being sly and understanding showmanship and exactly what his people want. Musk is just a rich asshole who got lucky in having first or best shot at investing in some cutting edge tech that other, much smarter people invented. They are both stupid, horrible people and I have no respect or time for anyone who think differently of them.
geg6
@eversor:
Can’t disagree with any of that!
Roger Moore
@different-church-lady:
I am not a Catturd. I’m a free man!
Trivia Man
@Scout211: I found that bill tracker yesterday, looks like it’s OFFICIALLY on his desk today, finally.
Bet: he’s going to sign it with a flourish as he announces
cain
@Hoodie: I’m hoping that they start a fight with each other and then Elon de-platforms DeSantis. That would be mind blowing!
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Roger Moore: six of one, half a dozen of another.
Manyakitty
@eversor: 😆😆😆😂🤣 spot on
MomSense
Fuck DeSantis.
different-church-lady
@Roger Moore: [Maniacal, over-acted laughter]
karen marie
I would pay money to see that not figuratively.
feebog
@Ruckus:
But Trump was the first one in and takes up a lot of room. If Chris Christy announces the car may not even move.
Brachiator
@Ruckus:
I don’t know what Elon Musk deserves. This seems like a pointless game. That some people admire Musk is not my problem. I hate what he is doing to Twitter, but he bought it and can wreck it if he wants that.
Trump is a different matter. He has committed crimes. He is a danger to the country and to humanity, especially if enough voters are foolish enough to elect him president again.
The Thin Black Duke
@Brachiator: Musk is a buffoon, but he destroyed a platform that provided a voice to marginalized communities, so that makes him dangerous. Musk is a suicide bomber in clown shoes.
Ruckus
@MomSense:
Fuck DeSantis
Deserves repeating.
Also EWWWW.
Ruckus
@feebog:
The car may not even move?
How terrible would that be if they couldn’t get the electioneering out of first gear?
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
The Thin Black Duke @146 said it better than I would.
And do not get me wrong, I will dance a jig the moment I hear that SFB is in cuffs and will likely die in custody. IOW if he gets 8-10 yrs.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
Also.
Yes elon bought twitter and it’s his. But. And while this may not be a reasonable or legal but, twitter is an open source website. I don’t know how many humans read it but I know that it can be seen in many parts of the world and it is a fair number that do participate so if someone is asking just me, I’d say legally sure, he over paid for it, it’s his, he can do what he wants. But in this modern world it fills a place that really not much else does. Anything he does effects a lot of people. And yes they can leave and leave him holding a pretty empty $44 billion bag. I know others who would spend time on there, including me. But now I might check it out 15-20 minutes a week. And that’s a lot less than I did. And some weeks I don’t give it more than 5 minutes. Now I’m just one person but what if even 25% of the normal suspects did this? How about 50%? He will likely change a lot of the communications of a lot of the world, and likely already has. So, will the world be better or worse? Or no change at all
Also, I wasn’t saying elon deserves anything. He paid for a private site. Hell he over paid for it. Hell that’s likely more than he deserves, but it’s his own fault. I’m a wordy bastard and sometimes what I think I said doesn’t strike people the way I meant it.
Matt McIrvin
@lollipopguild: Walt Disney World specifically is the resort they position as an international destination more than a regional attraction, which makes the idea of Florida as a dangerous, benighted no-go zone damaging to them. And despite what many people have been suggesting lately, they can’t just pull up stakes and move to Georgia or somewhere else. The scale of that operation is vast and probably couldn’t be replicated from scratch today–Universal is trying its best and their investment is huge, but they’re also building on the work they’ve already done in Orlando.
Disney has something like 20-30 hotels alone just on property, depending on how you count them. Four giant theme parks, two water parks, a huge retail/restaurant area separate from the parks, multiple sports and recreation areas, a transit system on the level of a major municipal one. That’s all sunk cost.
Paul in KY
@Baud: If I was advising them, I would counsel ‘audio only. For the love of God, no video!!!’
Paul in KY
@Ruckus: It can’t buy you love….but it can damn sure rent it!
Paul in KY
@Betty Cracker: Boy oh boy do you adulate….
Paul in KY
@Hoodie: It is pretty telling when Dick Nixon is the sociable party dude compared to him.