Stop the Idiocracy: Disney

Showing posts with label Disney. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 26, 2023

Disney sues Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis over his petty ‘targeted campaign of government retaliation’ waged against the company

John Raoux/AP

Either we believe individuals and corporations should be protected from punishment for their opinions and beliefs, or we do not. DeSantis clearly does not, and is making himself a national laughingstock as he continues to issue baseless threats against his state’s biggest employer and tourist draw. {AP 4/26}

Tuesday, April 18, 2023

DeSantis and Florida Republicans taking their petty hissy-fit against Disney to another level, threaten to move to strip the company of its land

Octavio Jones/Orlando Sentinel

The Governor suggests replacing it with a new state prison. {Miami Herald 4/17}

Friday, April 22, 2022

Trump using his lackeys to jockey for 2024 positioning, while the House Minority Leader is caught on tape saying that he would ask Trump to resign and that Trump acknowledged ‘some responsibility’ for January 6

Evan Vucci/AP/Shutterstock

NEW YORK TIMES - McCarthy said Trump acknowledged ‘some responsibility’ for Jan. 6: New audio captures what Representative Kevin McCarthy said to Republicans shortly after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol

I do not believe for a second that Trump, even privately, has ever taken responsibility for his obvious, central role in inciting these yahoos to sedition. Kevin McCarthy was likely speaking out of his ass on these tapes, making up a story on the fly that he figured would placate nervous Republicans in the immediate wake of the Capitol Hill riot. God help us if this inept, two-faced slimebag becomes Speaker of the House. McCarthy, in the heat of the moment, may or may not have asked Trump to resign, but there was little point to that as only days remained in Trump’s term. Since then, however, Kevin McCarthy and the majority of House GOP have done nothing but obstruct any efforts to hold Trump and his various cronies and sycophants accountable, while the party becomes more overtly Fascist in their policy and rhetoric. Excerpt -

Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, told G.O.P. lawmakers in the days after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol that former President Donald J. Trump acknowledged that he bore “some responsibility” for what happened that day, new audio revealed.
The audio obtained by The New York Times that emerged on Friday is part of a series of new revelations about Republican leaders’ private condemnations of Mr. Trump in the days after his supporters stormed the Capitol as part of an effort to stop the certification of electoral votes for Joseph R. Biden Jr.
“Let me be very clear to all of you, and I have been very clear to the president: he bears responsibilities for his words and actions,” Mr. McCarthy said on the call, which took place on Jan. 11. “No if, ands or buts.”
“I asked him personally today, does he hold responsibility for what happened?” Mr. McCarthy said. “Does he feel bad about what happened? He told me he does have some responsibility for what happened and he’d need to acknowledge that.”
Mr. McCarthy’s assertion is at odds with the former president’s refusal, then and now, to accept responsibility for the deadly attack. It illustrates the vast gulf between the private, derisive tone Republican leaders use about the former president and their public flattery of the de facto leader of their party.
Mr. Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mr. McCarthy was asked in a news conference earlier this year about the call with House Republicans after the attack. He sidestepped the question: “I’m not sure what call you’re talking about.”
The New York Times on Thursday reported that Mr. McCarthy told Republicans he planned to urge Mr. Trump to resign. The reporting is based on the upcoming book “This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden and the Battle for America’s Future.”
Mr. McCarthy disputed that reporting, but in an audio clip obtained by The Times of a different phone call with Republican lawmakers, Mr. McCarthy said he would tell Mr. Trump of the impeachment resolution: “I think this will pass, and it would be my recommendation you should resign.” (Read more)

Jason Kempin/Getty Images

Jenna Ellis speaks out against DeSantis’ war on Mickey Mouse, offers to defend Disney in court - When even a shameless grifter, and certified cultist thinks you’ve gone too far and there is no benefit to be had, that says something. Likely, it says she is a Trump loyalist, and perhaps Trump is realizing this culture war nonsense may ultimately backfire badly on the GOP. More to the point, he is seeking to neuter any internal opposition prior to 2024, and DeSantis has been making a lot of noise of late. These Republicans are going so far off the deep end that Trump may appear as a relatively reasonable alternative to those on the fence in two years. Which may be how he is going to position himself between now and then, seeing as this is not a sane society and he is not going to prison as he would be if this were a sane place. (Newsweek 4/22)

Wednesday, April 20, 2022

Reviewing Jonathan Haidt’s vitally important article, ‘Why the past ten years of American life have been uniquely stupid.’ And speaking of ‘stupid,’ Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis crosses another line of decency in the GOP moral crusade against Mickey Mouse

Jonathan Haidt - Why the past ten years of American life have been uniquely stupid (The Atlantic 4/11)

Pixabay

A long article that is worth the time and effort. Ideological conformity on the left and right is stupefying our institutions and overall society, while the voices of reason in the middle have been almost completely drowned out. Americans of all stripes better start arresting their totalitarian impulses, because we’re already far too down that rabbit hole. And when one is in a hole, the logical thing to do is to stop digging. Logic, however, doesn’t play much of a role in #Murica, and we may very well be f**ked. America’s collective stupidity is a matter of life and death. Everything from national security, to education, to health care, to infrastructure, and so forth is now in severe peril. And we are collapsing fast, as Jonathan Haidt makes clear in this excellent piece. A couple of excerpts -

The story of Babel is the best metaphor I have found for what happened to America in the 2010s, and for the fractured country we now inhabit. Something went terribly wrong, very suddenly. We are disoriented, unable to speak the same language or recognize the same truth. We are cut off from one another and from the past.
It’s been clear for quite a while now that red America and blue America are becoming like two different countries claiming the same territory, with two different versions of the Constitution, economics, and American history. But Babel is not a story about tribalism; it’s a story about the fragmentation of everything. It’s about the shattering of all that had seemed solid, the scattering of people who had been a community. It’s a metaphor for what is happening not only between red and blue, but within the left and within the right, as well as within universities, companies, professional associations, museums, and even families.
Babel is a metaphor for what some forms of social media have done to nearly all of the groups and institutions most important to the country’s future—and to us as a people. How did this happen? And what does it portend for American life?
***
American politics is getting ever more ridiculous and dysfunctional not because Americans are getting less intelligent. The problem is structural. Thanks to enhanced-virality social media, dissent is punished within many of our institutions, which means that bad ideas get elevated into official policy.
***
WE CAN NEVER return to the way things were in the pre-digital age. The norms, institutions, and forms of political participation that developed during the long era of mass communication are not going to work well now that technology has made everything so much faster and more multidirectional, and when bypassing professional gatekeepers is so easy. And yet American democracy is now operating outside the bounds of sustainability. If we do not make major changes soon, then our institutions, our political system, and our society may collapse during the next major war, pandemic, financial meltdown, or constitutional crisis. (Read more)

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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis pushes to strip Disney World of autonomy over its 27,000 acres - Exactly the actions of a textbook Fascist. DeSantis is out of control. Why are the GOP falling on their swords over this nonsense, anyway? The ‘don’t say gay’ bill is reasonable enough in of itself, as little kids do not need to be learning about sexual matters. What is not reasonable is the vitriol its proponents have displayed toward anybody - even one of their state’s biggest employers - who may have concerns. I’ve noticed a massive uptick in anti-gay rhetoric of late from the nationalist populists, and that is not accidental. If I were a gay man, or a lesbian, or otherwise on the LGBTQ spectrum, I’d be thinking about arming myself. Anybody opposed to these a**holes should be considering gun ownership. #JustSaying. (AP 4/19)