Ron de santis

October is upon us, which means it’s horror movie season. And a new release promises ‘a dark dystopian story’ that depicts ‘terrifyingly evil’ behavior. But Cockburn raised an eyebrow at the trailer for Florever Purge, which contains very little to fear and a lot to love. Among the supposedly blood-curdling lines uttered by the movie’s main villain: ‘We trust people to make their own decisions’ and ‘We’re not going to be bludgeoning people with restrictions, mandates, lockdowns or any of that stuff.’ Cockburn is no horror connoisseur, but ‘I’m going to leave you alone’ doesn’t give him goosebumps. For most of the trailer, Cockburn found himself not hiding behind his sofa, but nodding his head in agreement.

The smart money says that Donald Trump will not run in 2024. The smarter money says that he might, but that he shouldn’t because he’s too old and too divisive. I have no accounts at either of those depositories, so am not going to participate in that panel discussion. Instead, I propose to make a few obvious points. If they’re obvious, why make them? Because the obvious is not always so obvious. René Descartes is widely detested by all the clever people, for whom ‘Cartesian’ is term of snobbish contempt. I think Descartes was a great genius but one who was wrong about a couple of important things. No, I do not mean what he says about ‘extended substance’, the ‘Cogito’ or any of his other epistemological and metaphysical flights.

Almost no topic shows our media's complete disconnect from reality than the national coverage of governors over the past year with regard to the COVID-19 pandemic. While flooding their viewers with stories of coronavirus failures about Ron #DeathSantis in Florida and Kristi Noem in South Dakota and Greg Abbott in Texas, the press consistently praised the work of Andrew Cuomo of New York and Gavin Newsom in California. The reality on the ground could not be more different. The two most prominent faces of the Democratic response to COVID (with Gretchen Whitmer being the third) have found themselves humiliated and disgraced. Both may end up out of power thanks to their personal and professional behavior of the past year.

When Donald Trump descended on a golden escalator from the heights of Trump Tower in June 2015 to announce his run for president, the press, political pundits, the consultant class and pretty much everyone else viewed it as a high-profile publicity stunt. It was a means for Trump to do what he does best: draw attention to himself. The consensus was that he’d make a splash before fading, making way for Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio. Despite losing reelection and likely taking down the Senate GOP with him, Trump still remains very popular in the Republican party — particularly among a small but hardcore percentage of the base that chooses presidential nominees during the primary season.

Isn’t it odd how progressives constantly emit platitudes like words matter, yet can never resist a chance to indulge in hyperbole of the highest order? On Friday’s Real Time with Bill Maher, former navy officer and current MSNBC crank Malcolm Nance made the absurd claim that 40,000 people stormed the Capitol on January 6. Though conservative pundit Ben Shapiro aggressively rebutted this falsehood, Nance did not back down. So what if he was lying? Insisting that ‘40,000 people’ entered the Capitol sounds a lot more dramatic — or melodramatic — than ‘1,000 people’ and it helps bolster Nance’s asinine storyline. The late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (a Democrat) used to say, ‘You’re entitled to your own opinions, but not to your own facts.

Florida governor Ron DeSantis is carrying an enormous burden, whether he knows it or not. As of right now, he is single-handedly carrying the GOP and its still somewhat loyal Trump base on his back and away from Donald Trump in four years. There is a buzz around DeSantis and a possible 2024 presidential run that hasn’t been seen or felt since perhaps Chris Christie circa 2010. Everyone saw how that worked out. DeSantis would find himself in a precarious position by crossing Trump, who as of now seems to be refusing to retire quietly and settle into a role as the GOP kingmaker. The king wants his crown back.

The summertime auguries bode badly for former president Donald Trump, who has made a business of harmlessly splashing his feet in the Rubicon. He has reportedly made up his mind about running for president again in 2024 but won't say whether he'll cross the river yet — so you'll just have to keep giving him your money to find out. Naturally, people are growing bored and frustrated with the spectacle. QAnon supporters are probably Trump's most fervent followers, and they received his recent rally in Wellington, Ohio, with a sigh of ennui. Apart from the standard artillery blasting traitorous RINOs, Trump railed against the rising tide of crime and ridiculed 'woke' generals. But the diehards snored.

Nothing could be more predictable than media coverage of the catastrophic building collapse in Surfside, Florida. Cable news will feature it because the story is both shocking and eye-catching. Their obvious problem is that the cable channels have hours of air-time to fill and precious little real information, beyond dreadful pictures and interviews with bereaved friends and family and others who escaped the tragedy. To save hours of watching this low-information disaster footage, the best thing is to read the story on your favorite website and watch very little TV. That is true of every breaking-news news story where real information is scarce at first.

The term ‘Florida man’ usually comes loaded with negative connotations, but not if you’re talking about Ron DeSantis. The first-term Republican governor’s approval ratings have reached 64 percent; a recent poll had him at 55 percent, still high for an unabashed conservative in a swing state. Enterprising apparel companies are already selling ‘DeSantis 2024’ gear — and a Trafalgar poll of likely contenders (excluding Trump) shows DeSantis leading the pack with 35 percent support among Republican voters. The Florida governor also bested Trump in a straw poll conducted during June's Western Conservative Summit in Denver. DeSantis’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic has earned him adoration from the right.

Oh joy! A fake scientist under indictment for hacking wants to oust alleged snow-sniffer and congressman Matt Gaetz, who is under investigation for soliciting sex from an underage girl. Could matters get any more Florida than this? In an Instagram post worthy of any up-and-coming representative, Rebekah Jones declared her intention to challenge Gaetz for Florida's first congressional district. 'I had hoped that someone in the Republican party would step up and primary him, and I've yet to see that happen,' Jones, who is a resident of Maryland, said in her Instagram post. 'And so, if it takes me going home to Florida to run against Matt Gaetz, then I will do it. If it means getting one child sex trafficker out of office, you're damn right I'll do it.

Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed two more pieces of major legislation on Monday, this time targeting Chinese Communist party influence in the United States. HB 1523 criminalizes 'trafficking in trade secrets', while HB 7017 aims to prevent foreign influence in America's higher education system. The latter implements strict vetting of foreign researchers to avoid espionage and requires state agencies to disclose certain donations from 'countries of concern', which consist of China, Cuba, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Syria, and Venezuela. 'There is no single entity that exercises a more pervasive, nefarious influence across a wide range of American industries and institutions than the Communist party of China,' DeSantis said during a signing event in Miami, Florida.

Miami  Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed legislation on Monday to penalize Big Tech for de-platforming private citizens and political candidates. The bill, which was passed last month by the Florida legislature, would allow Floridians who are banned from platforms to sue for damages and imposes hefty fines — up to $250,000 each day — on tech companies that boot political candidates. DeSantis signed the bill during an event at Florida International University that featured remarks from local citizens, political activists and elected officials, most of whom were of Latin American descent. Cubans and Venezuelans warned that Big Tech's crackdown on free speech was reminiscent of their home countries' slide into socialism and thanked DeSantis for pushing back on online censorship.

For all that has gone wrong in America in the last year, the main thing that has gone right is our system of 50 independent states has endured and prospered. The COVID-19 pandemic was a challenge to our federalist system. The impulse in March 2020 was to have all states respond in the same way to the virus. Of course, in a country with large cities and small cities, sprawling suburbs, small towns, extremely rural areas and everything in between, that made little sense. We quickly corrected it and governors took control of COVID-19 policies for their states. The results of that have been astonishing. States that had tight lockdowns, such as New York, New Jersey and Michigan, did not see better outcomes than states which loosened their lockdowns early on.

Donald Trump is not retiring. He’s not disappearing to live the range life and he has no intentions of remaining quiet over the coming months and years. Acknowledging his loss somewhat for the first time from the CPAC stage this weekend was simply a way of paving a golden road heading into 2022 and 2024. Trump still believes he’s the future of the Republican party, even as a one-term defeated president pushing 75 years old. He clearly still has enthusiasm of the CPAC crowd — but straw polls and speeches will not be the deciding factor for Trump in 2024 so much as the success of candidates he backs heading into 2022 in GOP primaries, designed to upset incumbents Trump considers unfavorable.

Donald Trump was over an hour late for his first speech since leaving the White House at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Florida. The former president finally emerged at 4:47 p.m., kissing the American flag as the PA system blasted Lee Greenwood’s ‘God Bless the USA’. He waited, applauding the crowd for the duration of the song before beginning his prepared remarks at 4:50 p.m. ‘Hello CPAC — do you miss me yet?’ he asked the crowd. Trump quickly laid to rest some of the stories that have swirled since his departure from office. ’We’re not starting new parties,’ Trump said. ‘We have the Republican party…that was fake news.’ He then launched into the issue everyone expected him to tackle: immigration.

Andrew Cuomo is having the time of his life. His approval ratings are through the roof and he’s being talked about as a replacement for Joe Biden should Joe wander off somewhere without his Visiting Angel, never to be found again. Hipster merchandise featuring his face is exploding on Etsy and he’s getting a nightly hour with his own brother on CNN to chat about oh, this and that, and whatever is happening in his day at the given moment. It’s quite the arrangement!