[Updated] Monday's Monumental Absurdities: DeSantis and Musk Are Winning the Culture War
[Updated] Monday's Monumental Absurdities: DeSantis and Musk Are Winning the Culture War
Hey, look at who the two most popular national party leaders in America are today:
That’s right: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and President Donald J. Trump. DeSantis is the only person on that list whose favorable/unfavorable is not under water, and Trump is the only other who is not at least double digits on the wrong side of the equation.
How popular is Ron DeSantis with Floridians in the midst of his fighting his war on the child groomers at Disney? He’s this popular:
He’s 21 points up on Charlie Crist and 23 points ahead of Nikki Fried. This legitimate, non-partisan poll from the University of North Florida comes just days after Florida Dems had released the results of a fake poll they commissioned which claimed to show Crist leading DeSantis by 13 points.
Yeah, no.
Not that Republicans in DC are capable of learning, but what DeSantis is showing them is how to fight the Democrats on every front of the culture war they have been waging against our country for half a century now, and win. In addition to the bill dissolving Disney’s self-governing district in Central Florida, DeSantis on Friday signed bills banning the teaching of critical race theory or any of its myriad forms of stealth curriculum, a bill that will allow Floridians to sue social media companies on grounds of censorship, and a bill implementing an aggressive congressional district map that will create 3 new GOP-dominated districts in the state.
That is what we call a good day in the culture wars, and it’s illustrative of why DeSantis is one of the most popular GOP governors in America, and why he continues to steadily gain ground on Trump in horserace polls about the GOP’s 2024 presidential nomination.
Speaking of the bill to rescind Disney’s self-governance in the state, the worst take of the week on it came from a guy who used to possess a high degree of insight and common sense, Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams:
Literally nothing in that bill diminishes Disney’s first amendment rights in any way, shape or form. Like any other giant, China-pandering corporation, Disney is free to say whatever it wishes to say and engage in politics however its groomer-management team sees fit.
But when a corporation engages in politics, it makes itself a potential political target. That can be a perilous place for any corporation to be, as countless others have found out over this country’s history.
Disney chose to discard the public trust it had earned over the decades as a wholesome creator of child-friendly entertainment and take sides with the country’s child groomers. You don’t get to do that free of charge. You don’t get to do that and then point fingers at the politicians who decide your company is undeserving of special privileges like not having to pay property taxes that everyone else must play.
When management at a corporation decides to intervene in a state’s political discourse, they’d better have their big boy pants on when they do it. Disney found this out the hard way, thanks to Ron DeSantis.
Speaking of corporations, LieAwatha thinks we have too many of them that remain profitable. No, really, she said that:
This nutjob apparently thinks corporations are charitable organizations. Or, being an outright communist, she more likely thinks they should exist only to funnel money into a central government so it can be wasted by people just like her.
Holy crap.
Meanwhile, pressure continues to mount on the rent-seeking wind industry over its killing of millions of birds every year:
Here is an excerpt from that story:
Of California’s 23 vulnerable bird species studied (barn owls, golden eagles, road runners, yellow-billed cuckoos…), scientists have found 11 are now experiencing at least a 20% decline in their population growth rates because wind turbines and solar panels are killing them and/or destroying their limited-range habitat.
California’s mild-winter Mediterranean climate is home to some of Earth’s rarest bird ecosystems.
But California is also where some of the most ardent supporters of “green” energy policies reside.
Disproportionately due to California’s activist-level insistence on converting their energy infrastructure from fossil-fuel-based to renewables-based, the US as a whole has facilitated a 300% to 9,400% increase in wind and solar energy generation, respectively, from 2009 to 2019. Nation-wide, the solar power industry alone is poised to detonate from a 0.4 GW energy capacity in 2009 to 75 GW by 2025.
Too few proponents of explosive wind and solar energy expansion are focused on the effect this unprecedented change has had on local ecosystems – especially vulnerable wildlife populations.
To have a “population-level effect” on a vulnerable bird species, the authors of a new study have clarified that fatalities generated by wind and solar energy in California must induce a “greater than or equal to 20% decline in the population growth rates” for the 23 prioritized bird species they analyzed.
[End]
Don’t get overly-excited about this, though, since Democrats dominate California and Washington, DC for now, and Democrats only care about ‘science’ when said ‘science’ supports their political goals. This bit of real science certainly doesn’t. So, it will be ignored by both the state and federal governments, at least for now.
Finally, Elon Musk’s inevitable takeover of Twitter advanced again on Sunday:
Here’s an excerpt from that story:
Twitter Inc. TWTR 3.93% is in discussions to sell itself to Elon Musk and could finalize a deal as soon as this week, people familiar with the matter said, a dramatic turn of events just 10 days after the billionaire unveiled his $43 billion bid for the social-media company.
The two sides met Sunday to discuss Mr. Musk’s proposal and were making progress, though still had issues to hash out, the people said. There is no guarantee they will reach a deal.
Twitter had been expected to rebuff the offer, which Mr. Musk made April 14 without saying how he would pay for it, and put in place a so-called poison pill to block him from increasing his stake. But after the Tesla Inc. TSLA -0.37% chief disclosed that he has $46.5 billion in financing and the stock market swooned, Twitter changed its posture and opened the door to negotiations, The Wall Street Journal reported earlier Sunday.
Mr. Musk has said from the beginning that his $54.20-a-share offer is his “best and final,” and he reiterated to Twitter Chairman Bret Taylor again in recent days that he won’t budge on price, some of the people said. The conversations between the two sides were expected to focus on issues including what Mr. Musk would pay should an agreed deal fall apart before being consummated.
Twitter is slated to report first-quarter earnings Thursday and had been expected to weigh in on the bid then, if not sooner.
The potential turnabout on Twitter’s part comes after Mr. Musk met privately Friday with several shareholders of the company to extol the virtues of his proposal while repeating that the board has a “yes-or-no” decision to make, according to people familiar with the matter. He also pledged to solve the free-speech issues he sees as plaguing the platform and the country more broadly, whether his bid succeeds or not, they said.
[End]
Musk will own Twitter eventually. The only real question at hand is how much he will have to pay to get there. It could be a done deal by the end of this week, in fact.
UPDATE: And just like that, 15 minutes after I posted this, Bloomberg reports that Musk and Twitter could announce a deal today:
Glorious.
That is all.