Ron DeSantis has written a book! Let's see what's in it:
DeSantis, who this week begins a media tour to promote his new book “The Courage to Be Free,” launched a “Prescribe Freedom” campaign in January that proposes permanently limiting Covid-19 vaccination and mask requirements and giving cover to physicians whose medical views depart from scientific consensus. He also plans to set up a panel to review recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and called for a grand jury to “investigate crimes and wrongdoing committed against Floridians” related to the Covid vaccine.
DeSantis’ attention to the issue is having real-world impact — and not just in Florida. GOP lawmakers across the country, in some cases emboldened by DeSantis’ ramped-up rhetoric, have introduced hundreds of bills this year under the medical freedom banner, including proposals to put lawmakers in charge of immunization requirements, ban the government from creating non-school-based vaccine mandates and allow citizens to challenge public health disaster declarations.
DeSantis's efforts to out-Trump Trump are so plainly performative that it's hard to believe anyone takes them seriously. But they do.
Oh yeah, what a principled guy. Advocating for medical freedom. Except not when the medical treatment might help a trans kid. Then we have to stop these deviants whatever the cost!
Of course, none of this "freedumb" stuff applies to women.
Colbert was hilarious last night on the title of the DeSantis book which he described (I'm working from memory here), as "so ersatz political that I've already forgotten it". He then spun out a series of possible alternative names, ending, as I recall, with "The Tree That I Saw". Highly recommend searching it out on Youtube.
Thanks for that. I laughed out loud. Needed that today.
My pleasure... "The Bravery To Be Flag". I'm dying...
I'm increasingly convinced that Rich DeNixon is not a national threat. I feel bad for innocent Floridians, but, eh, it is their state to fix, not mine.
I think the difference is media. Nixon could hide his fangs long enough to get through a televised speech. Today, media is a lot more unrelenting, and makes obvious what an insecure, petty asshole Ronnie is. I don't think that will play outside of the 27% dead-ender club.
If this type of politician had been around in the early 1950's, metal brace manufacturers of today could have bought and sold paupers like Musk.
His real complaint?
Meatballs do not look good with masks on. Too much like the Beagle Boys..
Harvard, Yale and the JAG Corps could take the boy out of Florida, but they couldn't take the mafia out of the boy.
It's interesting to note the ways in which DeSantis is trying to out Trump Trump.
It's tough to be that much of an obvious asshole and still win votes. I can't stand to see or hear Trump but I know he holds a certain weird bad boy charm for many of his followers . DeSantis, otoh, has zero charisma, a whiny flat-toned voice and no discernible sense of humor. You would think he would want to stake out the smart asshole vote instead of the dumb asshole vote where I don't think he can beat Trump. OTOH, to borrow an expression (for Gingrich?) he is the stupid person's idea of a smart person.
Additionally, he doesn't have a built in fan base built off a TV personality. Unsurprisingly, that was a default perception of him by many low info votes and they pulled the lever. Similar to everyone wanting the Terminator to be Governor of California. Voters love celebrities.
DeSantis has none of that.
But was DeSantis does have is a well honed ability to insert himself into the channeled rage and hatred of all things liberal that a not insignificant portion of the country has on an IV drip via Fox News.
" .... permanently limiting Covid-19 vaccination and mask requirements ...."
If Trump's attempt to appoint Jeff Clark attorney general was a virtual murder-suicide pact, DeSantis's proposal is a literal one.
Floridians don’t need no protection at all. Look, it’s unfortunate but really… I don’t give a shit. If Florida manly men want to play Russian roulette with their AR-15 they should be free to do so. In fact, I want to encourage this behavior.
I have no plans to visit and will refuse if my employer decides to arrange a business reason for me to do so. Thanks for playing.
Unfortunately, what happens in Florida does not always stay in Florida.
What happens in Russia or china doesn’t stay there either. I’ll keep my distance from all of them.
These anti-vaxxers are trying their best to give small pox, diphtheria, tetanus, and polio a helping hand in resurging across the Florida and the US. Lets see if we can also bring back the fun we had with whooping cough, rubella, and the measles
What a bunch of fucking morons.
Montana's got dumb bills too. The dumbest is a bill to keep people who've had ANY mRNA based vaccines (there will be a bunch of them coming) from donating organs or blood. Brilliant!
The craziest thing about this is that given the population makeup of Florida, it should be the one State more willing to err on the side of caution when it comes to COVID safety measures.
This is like someone living between a fireworks factory and a fuel depot pushing for the elimination of all fire code regulations, and all work safety regulations.
Ban masks, or ban mask requirements? I have no fondness for DeSantis. I have less for the Telephone Game
The bill is plain stupid. Should a new pandemic strike and the evidence is overwhelming that masks are effective in preventing infection - or should some clever company invent a new mask which unarguably prevents the spread of COVID - it will be illegal in Florida to implement obviously desirable public health measures.
It doesn't matter. He, much like Marjorie Taylor Green, has figured out the new attention economy game and he just has to keep spewing an ever increasing amount of wackitude to keep his name in the news and the campaign donations rolling in.
The book is just a retirement investment in case he loses. Gotta shear the sheep while you're hot. The players may change, but the Republican scam machine doesn't.
This is GREAT! The US seriously needs to prune its population because we have the second largest Carbon footprint per capita and are thirteen times the size of Australia, the record holder.
Focusing the reaping on the dumber parts of the field will mean that the remaining wheat will be smarter.
He's not asking for banning MASKS, he's asking for ending mask MANDATES.
As far as I can tell DeSantis is a buffoon not much different from Trump, but anyone engaged in such a malicious misrepresentation of his points is no different from him.
There is a broader point here that the medical community has done an outrageous job of using the government to enforce "scientific" claims that have been known to be BS for years, most obviously in the field of nutrition. This sort of end-game is the inevitable result of constant overreach. We're all better off if medicine is forced into a position of having to say, a lot more often, and a lot more honestly, "I don't know. Do what seems best to you and use common sense".
(This is not a claim about much of infectious disease or physiology. It is a claim about much of nutrition, epidemiology [especially as applied to toxicology], and mental health.)
Cool story bro.