'Floridians Demand to Know Where Disney Is Going so They Can Come With'
'FLORIDA (The Borowitz Report)—Shortly after the corporate giant cancelled plans for a new campus in Lake Nona, Florida, residents of the state demanded to know where Disney was going so that they could come with.'
'Across the state, Floridians indicated a desperate de…
'Floridians Demand to Know Where Disney Is Going so They Can Come With'
'FLORIDA (The Borowitz Report)—Shortly after the corporate giant cancelled plans for a new campus in Lake Nona, Florida, residents of the state demanded to know where Disney was going so that they could come with.'
'Across the state, Floridians indicated a desperate desire to join Disney in its departure, suggesting that an unprecedented exodus may soon be under way.'
“When I think of Florida, I think of gun violence, draconian abortion laws, and book banning,” Carol Foyler, who lives in Boca Raton, said. “When I think of Disney, I think of teacups, princesses, and singing animals. I want to be where Disney is.”
“I’ve lived in Florida all my life and never considered leaving before,” Harland Dorrinson, a resident of Fort Lauderdale, said. “But, wherever Disney goes, Ron DeSantis won’t be there, and that’s good enough for me.”
'Tracy Klugian, who resides in Tampa, expressed a sentiment echoed by millions of others in the state. “I’d rather live in Disney without Florida than in Florida without Disney,” she said.' (Satire, NewYorker)
Sadly Mother Nature is humbling us as Florida becomes less inhabitable. It’s a clear warning when insurance companies withdraw and Floridians find out the real costs of living on the environmental edge. NOAA meet Noah.
But the water in the Gulf is something like 94 degrees. The reefs are dying. The barrier islands will soon disappear. But, the problem is that transgendered kids are playing sports.
Exactly; the House and Desatan among others focus on nonsense while the planet 🌎 dies. I will not be sorry to leave the living behind soon enough as seems likely because I have no family to worry about except my three senior fur babies. The only reason I go on through hellish days confounded by conflicting news, nuke saber rattling, and intense anxiety about what I will see when I open my eyes one more time. But I do cry for the fate of so many who have never seen lives without threat, fear, insecurity, hunger. Earth cannot support 8 billion people now or ever especially when all they seem to get accomplished is conflict.
Before the "Powell Memo", among other turns of events, there was a fairly salient public conversation about overpopulation that kind of slipped away. I think that increasing plutocratic control of media had a lot to do with that. Some months ago my local newspaper rand a front page story (not the banner headline but still) about predictions that proved to be false, and one of them was world overpopulation. Yet to me a lot of our current global problems seem, at the very least, greatly exacerbated by exact that in early stages, climate change among them.
We certainly have it within our power to significantly reduce our footprint; though we can't eliminate it. Nature deals with major imbalances of population to resources with periodic population crashes, no longer unthinkable as global rather than localized for Homo sapiens. If we are indeed "wise" as our "sapiens" moniker suggests, we will be looking harder at responsible family planning and the larger picture of the common good.
My youngest daughter is so flamboyant that she's been told (in a complimentary way) that she is like a cartoon character come to life. If she was born with XY chromosomes, she would totally be a drag queen!! She's practically one now! :D
Frankly, I don't see the difference between my cartoon-character offspring reading to young kids at the library and a drag queen doing it. In a kids' eyes, either one seems like an other-worldly fairy princess, so what the heck??? *smh*
Sarasota, like Orlando, used to be a liberal stronghold. Now DeSantis is putting a stranglehold on higher education in those cities. Heaven forbid students should be taught to think for themselves!
The whole planet really; we take a lot for granted. But nature really gets flamboyant in the tropics and semi-topics. I have wondered about the evolution of our potentially intense appreciation for beauty, which is very much a thing. I have wondered if beauty really is just "in the eye of the beholder", but I think "Yes" and "no". There was a show on PBS years ago that seemed to try to reduce our capacity for perceiving beauty to be rooted in sexuality, but I think that is, while important, a special case. I think that Keats got closer with "beauty is truth". To me it has something to do with unifying simplicity, same-yet-different variation (think Bach or Mozart) and inherent integrity; the grace of a tiger, or a consummate dancer, or an ocean wave.
This is not just for jollies. Mathematicians and physicists speak of "beauty" in identifying powerful insights. By the same capacities by which we perceive beauty, we recognize fruitful paths in an overwhelming universe. We resonate with what's true, even in a fantasy.
Well said, JL, I find so many disparate things “beautiful”—often it’s form (eg; fractals) or color….or or or….to me there is also an element of wonder or amazement or discovery. How looking at a bug under a microscope and it looks alien….ugly and beautiful a the same time. Our evolved brains/bodies (it’s really all one piece IMHO) are remarkable. I do wonder what/how our fellow species comprehend the world….they might see a beauty far beyond what we can comprehend! So many questions!
Yes the whole planet... Beauty is a feeling that comes from reactions to the world around you in a particular way. I think feeling love, being open and positive, embracing is part of it. It's very personal and maybe too of the moment. Those who cannot see beauty, or feel it, especially the beauty of nature, I imagine to be in a bad place psychically. I agree it's about individual capacity. Because objectively speaking the physical world has endless beauty. I was remembering our many trips to Florida years ago and how we sunk into the beauty of the coastal landscape, the keys, the wildlife, the morning sun, the the sea breezes, the evening shower. DeSantis and the Florida Republicans poison this paradise for many of us.
Republicans sell entitlement, and deliver to the wealthy and connected. They throw bones (mostly of contention) to the serfs. Four plus decades of "Reaganomics", and who has what to show for it? Who has gained? Who has seen their security and quality of life under threat? Who is denied human rights? What the payoff and for who? Woke? You snooze (too long), you lose.
Have you seen this? A new effort, quite detailed (there is a link to the entire publication from this site)…to take back the WH, oh, “and our country” & government, and this, apparently is the game plan. I find their premise mostly ludicrous (was willing to have an open mind, but what I read was pretty weird to me), but seems they are really vested in this view/perception. https://www.heritage.org/conservatism/commentary/project-2025
Slow and sometimes catastrophically. We memorialize some mass deaths; COVID -19, not so much, even though well more than a million died fighting a heartless, predatory invader. Commonly disaster gets nearly everyone on the same page, but not that one. There were heroes to be sure, but also villains, and the latter still remain unaccountable. There is something of a firestorm of red lights blinking on the dashboard right now, and one-up-obsessed Republicans keep upping their puerile power games as if nothing else mattered; and indeed they seem to think nothing does. They will suffer too, but we with better things to do must step lively, to not go down on their ship of fools.
Sadly, Human Nature is bumbling us in California as the state becomes less inhabitable. It is a clear warning when taxpaying residents leave the state and drive up the cost of living in places like Florida where they bring their corrupted politics to do the same to Florida.
Corrupting the politics into a liberal mess. Florida is no more or less generally corrupt than many other states like New Jersey and New York... where most of the Florida residents derive from.
I would take Rick Scott over hypocrite idiot thief Senators from CA any day.
I love Andy Borowitz, and this doesn’t need to be labeled satire. If not for my only child and only grandchild I’d flee Florida in a heartbeat, likely to Maine. Most recent example, the new history standards approved by the Florida Board of Education:
The new standards require instruction for middle school students to include ‘how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit,’ a document listing the standards and posted in the Florida Department of Education website said.
“When high school students learn about events such as the 1920 Ocoee massacre, the new rules require that instruction include ‘acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans.’ The massacre is considered the deadliest Election Day violence in US history and, according to several histories of the incident, it started when Moses Norman, a prominent Black landowner in the Ocoee, Florida, community, attempted to cast his ballot and was turned away by White poll workers.”
Suzanne, I just can’t wrap my head around how folks can actually buy into this—what is their logic…oh, wait…. Reading this I had the horrid thought that they would similarly try to say that those in Nazi concentration camps should be grateful for the free room & board they got. Despicable!
I think you’re probably right on that. After being a Republican my entire life, I became a Democrat the day dt was confirmed as the GOP nominee. My only child, age 42, whom I love like my life, recently argued with me about the great replacement, that white men like himself are being replaced in their own country. His father, my best beloved of 46 years, agrees with him. And yet his child’s mother is Vietnamese, and his friend group is beautifully multiracial. I wish I had asked him who he knew, personally, who had been replaced. I have my doubts he or his father know anyone. My heart breaks daily. But I can’t go back.
Thank you, esp. for sharing your heartbreak, but also for helping me with a response to that asks, "whom do you personally know who has been replaced?" Brilliant.
Sadly. A mass exodus would serve him well, I think. I'm not sure that a tourist boycott wouldn't be better, because of the revenue. After all, Florida doesn't have an income tax.
If Florida loses tourism as a primary income source, you can rest assured that DeSantis, et al, will quickly move for a state income tax to address the budget shortfalls. I wonder how many retirees are going to be as supportive of their wannabe dictator when they're having to fork over princely sums every year to keep him in monogrammed campaign shirts?
I went to Florida once to visit my cousin in Stuart. Once was enough. Many empty strip malls and a contrast between Jupiter Island and the many trailer parks. We had a nice visit, but I would never live there. I have one ex-student who lives near Sanibel Island who experienced the hurricane last year. I have a couple ex-classmates who are awful on the west side and frankly I don't care what happens to them. Now the sea level is rising and well, insurance. Then you add Stumpy Boots DeSatan and no sensible person should move there and get out if they can. Tourists should also stay away although there is the allure of Disney.
If DeDumbass doesn't stop harassing Disney, don't be surprised if they shut down and leave, which would be terrible for Florida because Disney generates billions in tourism revenue every year.
I lived in Florida as a child in the 1960s, and we moved back to NY just as Disney broke ground on Disney World. I remember the "old Florida" - a poor state with a lot of seedy tourist attractions (alligator farms, cheap motels, etc.), and our school lunch program relied on army surplus and what was actual garbage - rotten food, eggs half-developed into chicks, kids getting sick in the cafeteria. It was really cheap to live there back then, but the only people Florida attracted were retirees. Most of the people living on my street were old folks from out of state.
As a 22 yr .old, my husband and I lived there with one child in '62, had 2 more children. Lived in Cocoa. I remember my husband-at-the-time asking me if I wanted the paper, it was only 5 cents at the time. I remember that Orlando wanted a convention center more than you can imagine. I remember the day Walt Disney announced he was breaking ground for Disney. My ex worked at Cape Canaveral. It was a fascinating time, I thought. Not so in watching Blacks being hosed on television in a state just above us and the social workers being killed in Mississippi. Civil Rights happened for the Blacks who, before, had not been able to vote. Women were marching for our rights and Vietnam was going on along with sit-in and die-ins. It was a tumultuous time and opinions were flying .in every direction. Had a Floridian friend who told me his father had watched lynchings....both were in favor of it. Dr. Richardson is so right that history is a reminder that time marches on but history remains. Thank you, Dr. Richardson. For a girl from northern Maine, this was all sort of too much, except we lived in Queens, N,Y, where I saw the buses line up for the Freedom rides a few years, maybe on a year, earlier. Wow. Hadn't meant to write all of this.
Your words remind me of a Floridian writer, Carl Hiaasen, who (a former newspaper journalist) pens Florida-based humor filled mystery novels. They are fun to read & is clear he loves Florida, but very much dislikes much of what it has become politically and environmentally. I have not yet read his latest 2020 novel “Squeeze Me”.
Loved reading Hiaasen! I need to read him again. The Florida about which he wrote was full of corrupt people in business and politics who were always scheming to do terribly environmentally unsound things.
I grew up in the midwest in Indiana. Lots of people went there for part of the year even then. It was before Disney, so was as you have described. I have been wondering if Disney would move out. One of my ex-students has a daughter-in-law who is at Johns Hopkins in the Tampa area as it is a top tier pediatric hospital. When we were visiting my cousin, we went out to lunch at a place that might as well have been in Brooklyn. My cousin ended up in Florida because she worked for Grummund (sp?). This after many years living on Long Island.
I lived in St. Petersburg, in the suburb of Clearwater, near Pinellas Park. I loved it. There were only 5 or 6 kids living in the whole neighborhood, and we were all free range. It was the best place to grow up. Our neighborhood was quiet and we had several neighbors who were like grandparents to us. Too bad Florida isn't like that anymore.
A tourist boycott and a corporate one as well. There will never be an income tax in Florida. Here's hoping more and more entities refuse to come to Florida.
Yep, a tourist boycott would be better. Eventually the degrading climate, especially in Florida, will probably do the State in and it will be abandoned to the Anacondas and giant toads. Running for President is Ron’s and Uber-wife Casey’s strategy to get out.
Like the party in Orwell's anti-utopia, Republicans have been very systematically been intensely distorting our language since at least Ronald Reagan. There is a who lexicon of intentionally misapplied language that Republicans never miss an opportunity to popularize; "Supply Side Economics", Operation Iraqi Freedom" Citizens United, Defense of Marriage Act, Free market, Job-Killing, human-rights-free Enemy Combatant, equating AOC with Pol Pot, and warmed-over Romneycare with "Nazi Germany", not to mention words like "militia" (check the Constitution), patriot, "Freedom of Religion", and "Small Government, just off the top of my head. Modern Republicans are experts at defining things in misleading, often antonymical ways; and successful at installing it in public conversation so that even non-MAGAs commonly use the perverse nomenclature by default.
Of course, if the current hot temperatures continue unabated and the overall rises, those folks will not stay because Florida, like parts of Texas and Arizona will become uninhabitable.
I lived in Ft Lauderdale from the age of 9 until I left for college at 18. I knew in 1983 that I did not want to raise a family in Florida. Unfortunately now Texas is just as bad.
I understand from a relative that Tampa is relatively liberal/progressive FWIW.
But I do think people who are liberal minded, older and younger, will not choose to move to Florida, nor attend university there. It's not so easy to pick up and leave once you are planted, especially if you are old.
Florida is in for changes demographically and ecologically, and perhaps politically, faster than other states it seems to me. But the heat slows the brain and that is a factor too.
Well many cannot just pack up and leave..One has a house maybe which has to be sold, connections, doctors ( health care), attachments ( including family, kids in school with their attachments), a job..... it's hard. And if you are old it's formidable.
Yes. And what would happen if all those who could not take the political climate ( never mind the worsening weather come climate changes) just fled... if they could. That would leave Florida to the extremists and their minions. But I do think that people will want to spend their tourist dollars less there and perhaps college kids would not choose Florida. Florida's economy might suffer... especially if immigrants find Florida inhospitable.
I know that Andy Borowitz write satire but this sounds pretty good to me! I used to have to travel to Florida about once a month for work...just another benefit of being retired!
I am happy to be retired too and never have to travel to Texas again. Haven't been to Florida since a training class on taxes for expats in 1979. Never want to go to either state again.
'Floridians Demand to Know Where Disney Is Going so They Can Come With'
'FLORIDA (The Borowitz Report)—Shortly after the corporate giant cancelled plans for a new campus in Lake Nona, Florida, residents of the state demanded to know where Disney was going so that they could come with.'
'Across the state, Floridians indicated a desperate desire to join Disney in its departure, suggesting that an unprecedented exodus may soon be under way.'
“When I think of Florida, I think of gun violence, draconian abortion laws, and book banning,” Carol Foyler, who lives in Boca Raton, said. “When I think of Disney, I think of teacups, princesses, and singing animals. I want to be where Disney is.”
“I’ve lived in Florida all my life and never considered leaving before,” Harland Dorrinson, a resident of Fort Lauderdale, said. “But, wherever Disney goes, Ron DeSantis won’t be there, and that’s good enough for me.”
'Tracy Klugian, who resides in Tampa, expressed a sentiment echoed by millions of others in the state. “I’d rather live in Disney without Florida than in Florida without Disney,” she said.' (Satire, NewYorker)
Sadly Mother Nature is humbling us as Florida becomes less inhabitable. It’s a clear warning when insurance companies withdraw and Floridians find out the real costs of living on the environmental edge. NOAA meet Noah.
Truth. Sad truth. I live ten miles in from the Gulf, in Hernando County, and it may not be far enough to avoid a flood of Biblical proportions.
Love the Gulf side of Florida!
But the water in the Gulf is something like 94 degrees. The reefs are dying. The barrier islands will soon disappear. But, the problem is that transgendered kids are playing sports.
Exactly; the House and Desatan among others focus on nonsense while the planet 🌎 dies. I will not be sorry to leave the living behind soon enough as seems likely because I have no family to worry about except my three senior fur babies. The only reason I go on through hellish days confounded by conflicting news, nuke saber rattling, and intense anxiety about what I will see when I open my eyes one more time. But I do cry for the fate of so many who have never seen lives without threat, fear, insecurity, hunger. Earth cannot support 8 billion people now or ever especially when all they seem to get accomplished is conflict.
Before the "Powell Memo", among other turns of events, there was a fairly salient public conversation about overpopulation that kind of slipped away. I think that increasing plutocratic control of media had a lot to do with that. Some months ago my local newspaper rand a front page story (not the banner headline but still) about predictions that proved to be false, and one of them was world overpopulation. Yet to me a lot of our current global problems seem, at the very least, greatly exacerbated by exact that in early stages, climate change among them.
We certainly have it within our power to significantly reduce our footprint; though we can't eliminate it. Nature deals with major imbalances of population to resources with periodic population crashes, no longer unthinkable as global rather than localized for Homo sapiens. If we are indeed "wise" as our "sapiens" moniker suggests, we will be looking harder at responsible family planning and the larger picture of the common good.
And that drag queens are reading kids books at the library.
Seriously.
My youngest daughter is so flamboyant that she's been told (in a complimentary way) that she is like a cartoon character come to life. If she was born with XY chromosomes, she would totally be a drag queen!! She's practically one now! :D
Frankly, I don't see the difference between my cartoon-character offspring reading to young kids at the library and a drag queen doing it. In a kids' eyes, either one seems like an other-worldly fairy princess, so what the heck??? *smh*
Sarasota, like Orlando, used to be a liberal stronghold. Now DeSantis is putting a stranglehold on higher education in those cities. Heaven forbid students should be taught to think for themselves!
One of these right wing puritans condemned "Mrs. Doubtfire" recently as being a film that promotes drag and - get this - stalking.
Also RedTide and dead fish.
Lies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BH9YRpz757Y
Florida is, or was, ecologically gorgeous.
Was
Sad to hear that if true..
The whole planet really; we take a lot for granted. But nature really gets flamboyant in the tropics and semi-topics. I have wondered about the evolution of our potentially intense appreciation for beauty, which is very much a thing. I have wondered if beauty really is just "in the eye of the beholder", but I think "Yes" and "no". There was a show on PBS years ago that seemed to try to reduce our capacity for perceiving beauty to be rooted in sexuality, but I think that is, while important, a special case. I think that Keats got closer with "beauty is truth". To me it has something to do with unifying simplicity, same-yet-different variation (think Bach or Mozart) and inherent integrity; the grace of a tiger, or a consummate dancer, or an ocean wave.
This is not just for jollies. Mathematicians and physicists speak of "beauty" in identifying powerful insights. By the same capacities by which we perceive beauty, we recognize fruitful paths in an overwhelming universe. We resonate with what's true, even in a fantasy.
Well said, JL, I find so many disparate things “beautiful”—often it’s form (eg; fractals) or color….or or or….to me there is also an element of wonder or amazement or discovery. How looking at a bug under a microscope and it looks alien….ugly and beautiful a the same time. Our evolved brains/bodies (it’s really all one piece IMHO) are remarkable. I do wonder what/how our fellow species comprehend the world….they might see a beauty far beyond what we can comprehend! So many questions!
Yes the whole planet... Beauty is a feeling that comes from reactions to the world around you in a particular way. I think feeling love, being open and positive, embracing is part of it. It's very personal and maybe too of the moment. Those who cannot see beauty, or feel it, especially the beauty of nature, I imagine to be in a bad place psychically. I agree it's about individual capacity. Because objectively speaking the physical world has endless beauty. I was remembering our many trips to Florida years ago and how we sunk into the beauty of the coastal landscape, the keys, the wildlife, the morning sun, the the sea breezes, the evening shower. DeSantis and the Florida Republicans poison this paradise for many of us.
I don't know that it's all that sad, there are some Floridians who could use a little humbling, starting with the Governor and both Senators.
! AMEN !! ,Dave !
Republicans sell entitlement, and deliver to the wealthy and connected. They throw bones (mostly of contention) to the serfs. Four plus decades of "Reaganomics", and who has what to show for it? Who has gained? Who has seen their security and quality of life under threat? Who is denied human rights? What the payoff and for who? Woke? You snooze (too long), you lose.
Have you seen this? A new effort, quite detailed (there is a link to the entire publication from this site)…to take back the WH, oh, “and our country” & government, and this, apparently is the game plan. I find their premise mostly ludicrous (was willing to have an open mind, but what I read was pretty weird to me), but seems they are really vested in this view/perception. https://www.heritage.org/conservatism/commentary/project-2025
True. But as the saying goes “The mills of God grind exceeding slow...” Will Florida survive until that humbling happens?
Slow and sometimes catastrophically. We memorialize some mass deaths; COVID -19, not so much, even though well more than a million died fighting a heartless, predatory invader. Commonly disaster gets nearly everyone on the same page, but not that one. There were heroes to be sure, but also villains, and the latter still remain unaccountable. There is something of a firestorm of red lights blinking on the dashboard right now, and one-up-obsessed Republicans keep upping their puerile power games as if nothing else mattered; and indeed they seem to think nothing does. They will suffer too, but we with better things to do must step lively, to not go down on their ship of fools.
Sadly, Human Nature is bumbling us in California as the state becomes less inhabitable. It is a clear warning when taxpaying residents leave the state and drive up the cost of living in places like Florida where they bring their corrupted politics to do the same to Florida.
You think OUTSIDERS are making Florida corrupt?
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
You all never seemed to have a problem with Rick Scott and he was a known thief when he ran for office.
Corrupting the politics into a liberal mess. Florida is no more or less generally corrupt than many other states like New Jersey and New York... where most of the Florida residents derive from.
I would take Rick Scott over hypocrite idiot thief Senators from CA any day.
Of course, you would.
Which is why the phrase "Florida Man" came into existence.
Care to link to any corruption from the California senators?
It should be on the scale of this:
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2014/mar/03/florida-democratic-party/rick-scott-rick-scott-oversaw-largest-medicare-fra/
https://www.newsweek.com/rick-scotts-connection-massive-medicare-fraud-scandal-resurfaces-1780279
$1.7 BILLION in fines.
Florida - where they don't want ex felons to vote but they happily elect them to the Senate.
Florida - where they don't want ex felons to vote but they happily elect them to the Senate.
In a nutshell.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-03-28-mn-43046-story.html
COME ON ! That is GREAT !! Seth !
Meant to say “less habitable” pangs of conscience about my grammatical error :)
I love Andy Borowitz, and this doesn’t need to be labeled satire. If not for my only child and only grandchild I’d flee Florida in a heartbeat, likely to Maine. Most recent example, the new history standards approved by the Florida Board of Education:
The new standards require instruction for middle school students to include ‘how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit,’ a document listing the standards and posted in the Florida Department of Education website said.
“When high school students learn about events such as the 1920 Ocoee massacre, the new rules require that instruction include ‘acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans.’ The massacre is considered the deadliest Election Day violence in US history and, according to several histories of the incident, it started when Moses Norman, a prominent Black landowner in the Ocoee, Florida, community, attempted to cast his ballot and was turned away by White poll workers.”
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/20/us/florida-black-history-education-standards-reaj/index.html
Concerning the new standards: The Lost Cause Movement is alive and well in America today.
Which is the point
Suzanne, I just can’t wrap my head around how folks can actually buy into this—what is their logic…oh, wait…. Reading this I had the horrid thought that they would similarly try to say that those in Nazi concentration camps should be grateful for the free room & board they got. Despicable!
I think you’re probably right on that. After being a Republican my entire life, I became a Democrat the day dt was confirmed as the GOP nominee. My only child, age 42, whom I love like my life, recently argued with me about the great replacement, that white men like himself are being replaced in their own country. His father, my best beloved of 46 years, agrees with him. And yet his child’s mother is Vietnamese, and his friend group is beautifully multiracial. I wish I had asked him who he knew, personally, who had been replaced. I have my doubts he or his father know anyone. My heart breaks daily. But I can’t go back.
Thank you, esp. for sharing your heartbreak, but also for helping me with a response to that asks, "whom do you personally know who has been replaced?" Brilliant.
Sigh.
But that’s what DeSantis wants. He wants you to leave. He’s an authoritarian. He does not care about you.
Sadly. A mass exodus would serve him well, I think. I'm not sure that a tourist boycott wouldn't be better, because of the revenue. After all, Florida doesn't have an income tax.
If Florida loses tourism as a primary income source, you can rest assured that DeSantis, et al, will quickly move for a state income tax to address the budget shortfalls. I wonder how many retirees are going to be as supportive of their wannabe dictator when they're having to fork over princely sums every year to keep him in monogrammed campaign shirts?
I think he would just move he and his family. Which is what I thought you were going to say.
I went to Florida once to visit my cousin in Stuart. Once was enough. Many empty strip malls and a contrast between Jupiter Island and the many trailer parks. We had a nice visit, but I would never live there. I have one ex-student who lives near Sanibel Island who experienced the hurricane last year. I have a couple ex-classmates who are awful on the west side and frankly I don't care what happens to them. Now the sea level is rising and well, insurance. Then you add Stumpy Boots DeSatan and no sensible person should move there and get out if they can. Tourists should also stay away although there is the allure of Disney.
If DeDumbass doesn't stop harassing Disney, don't be surprised if they shut down and leave, which would be terrible for Florida because Disney generates billions in tourism revenue every year.
I lived in Florida as a child in the 1960s, and we moved back to NY just as Disney broke ground on Disney World. I remember the "old Florida" - a poor state with a lot of seedy tourist attractions (alligator farms, cheap motels, etc.), and our school lunch program relied on army surplus and what was actual garbage - rotten food, eggs half-developed into chicks, kids getting sick in the cafeteria. It was really cheap to live there back then, but the only people Florida attracted were retirees. Most of the people living on my street were old folks from out of state.
As a 22 yr .old, my husband and I lived there with one child in '62, had 2 more children. Lived in Cocoa. I remember my husband-at-the-time asking me if I wanted the paper, it was only 5 cents at the time. I remember that Orlando wanted a convention center more than you can imagine. I remember the day Walt Disney announced he was breaking ground for Disney. My ex worked at Cape Canaveral. It was a fascinating time, I thought. Not so in watching Blacks being hosed on television in a state just above us and the social workers being killed in Mississippi. Civil Rights happened for the Blacks who, before, had not been able to vote. Women were marching for our rights and Vietnam was going on along with sit-in and die-ins. It was a tumultuous time and opinions were flying .in every direction. Had a Floridian friend who told me his father had watched lynchings....both were in favor of it. Dr. Richardson is so right that history is a reminder that time marches on but history remains. Thank you, Dr. Richardson. For a girl from northern Maine, this was all sort of too much, except we lived in Queens, N,Y, where I saw the buses line up for the Freedom rides a few years, maybe on a year, earlier. Wow. Hadn't meant to write all of this.
Your words remind me of a Floridian writer, Carl Hiaasen, who (a former newspaper journalist) pens Florida-based humor filled mystery novels. They are fun to read & is clear he loves Florida, but very much dislikes much of what it has become politically and environmentally. I have not yet read his latest 2020 novel “Squeeze Me”.
Loved reading Hiaasen! I need to read him again. The Florida about which he wrote was full of corrupt people in business and politics who were always scheming to do terribly environmentally unsound things.
I grew up in the midwest in Indiana. Lots of people went there for part of the year even then. It was before Disney, so was as you have described. I have been wondering if Disney would move out. One of my ex-students has a daughter-in-law who is at Johns Hopkins in the Tampa area as it is a top tier pediatric hospital. When we were visiting my cousin, we went out to lunch at a place that might as well have been in Brooklyn. My cousin ended up in Florida because she worked for Grummund (sp?). This after many years living on Long Island.
I lived in St. Petersburg, in the suburb of Clearwater, near Pinellas Park. I loved it. There were only 5 or 6 kids living in the whole neighborhood, and we were all free range. It was the best place to grow up. Our neighborhood was quiet and we had several neighbors who were like grandparents to us. Too bad Florida isn't like that anymore.
A tourist boycott and a corporate one as well. There will never be an income tax in Florida. Here's hoping more and more entities refuse to come to Florida.
Yep, a tourist boycott would be better. Eventually the degrading climate, especially in Florida, will probably do the State in and it will be abandoned to the Anacondas and giant toads. Running for President is Ron’s and Uber-wife Casey’s strategy to get out.
It is easier to govern with an iron fist if your opposition relocates...
You bet
Sadly, this might also be looked on as a self-cleansing of Democratic party voters. Here's a business world article on Florida's population growth, not a word on politics. https://www.southwestjournal.com/florida-why-more-americans-are-choosing-to-move-south/#:~:text=A%20significant%20increase%20in%20migration,not%20simply%20there%20for%20relaxation.
DemocratIC party voters.
It’s just awful how Trump has changed our language.
Yup, I hear non-MAGAs repeat that one.
Like the party in Orwell's anti-utopia, Republicans have been very systematically been intensely distorting our language since at least Ronald Reagan. There is a who lexicon of intentionally misapplied language that Republicans never miss an opportunity to popularize; "Supply Side Economics", Operation Iraqi Freedom" Citizens United, Defense of Marriage Act, Free market, Job-Killing, human-rights-free Enemy Combatant, equating AOC with Pol Pot, and warmed-over Romneycare with "Nazi Germany", not to mention words like "militia" (check the Constitution), patriot, "Freedom of Religion", and "Small Government, just off the top of my head. Modern Republicans are experts at defining things in misleading, often antonymical ways; and successful at installing it in public conversation so that even non-MAGAs commonly use the perverse nomenclature by default.
Sorry abt that. Will fix
Thank you!
It wasn't Trump. It comes from racist Republicans back in the 1950s, I think.
That is very easy to believe. Let me add that disrespecting and even dehumanizing one’s adversaries comes as second nature to “these people.”
That is the intention of “strongmen/authoritarians: to chill or get rid of dissenting voices.
Pretty much, it's also a reflection of intensity of their convictions and denigration of their opponents. "existential" in other words, "them or us"
In service of absolute power. Lacking real world support, big lies require maintenance by wishful thinking and oppression.
Of course, if the current hot temperatures continue unabated and the overall rises, those folks will not stay because Florida, like parts of Texas and Arizona will become uninhabitable.
Andy nails it every time.
Borowitz tells the truth with humor, a certain cynicism.
Fern, this should have had a 'spew alert'! I almost blew coffee all over my screen! Thanks for starting my day of with a bang!
Happy to oblige, Sandra; it matters 100% to front Andy.
Let's all go where Disney goes!The lawlessness of red states is making it increasingly hard to live there with the cruelty and despair.
The cruelty is the point. Heartbreaking here every day.
Trump (among others) never seems more pleased with himself as when he is breaking rules and getting away with it.
" EXODUS" To WHEREVER
O ur TRUE LORD/GOD ! is Present !JESUS, said " LOVE! Your NEIGHBOR ! Just as YOU ! LOVE YOURSELF ! BLESSINGS !
Or we could just impeach DeSantis and rename the state Flori-Disney!
Or Disorida
or DeS-orida
I lived in Ft Lauderdale from the age of 9 until I left for college at 18. I knew in 1983 that I did not want to raise a family in Florida. Unfortunately now Texas is just as bad.
Borowitz.....
I understand from a relative that Tampa is relatively liberal/progressive FWIW.
But I do think people who are liberal minded, older and younger, will not choose to move to Florida, nor attend university there. It's not so easy to pick up and leave once you are planted, especially if you are old.
Florida is in for changes demographically and ecologically, and perhaps politically, faster than other states it seems to me. But the heat slows the brain and that is a factor too.
Not that hard. We packed up and left.
Well many cannot just pack up and leave..One has a house maybe which has to be sold, connections, doctors ( health care), attachments ( including family, kids in school with their attachments), a job..... it's hard. And if you are old it's formidable.
You mean it was not that hard for you.
We have our house, the kids have their homes, their ex's live here, the grandkids are going to college here. We can't just leave.
Yes. And what would happen if all those who could not take the political climate ( never mind the worsening weather come climate changes) just fled... if they could. That would leave Florida to the extremists and their minions. But I do think that people will want to spend their tourist dollars less there and perhaps college kids would not choose Florida. Florida's economy might suffer... especially if immigrants find Florida inhospitable.
"GOP" fever-dreams seem the big risk factor there.
I know that Andy Borowitz write satire but this sounds pretty good to me! I used to have to travel to Florida about once a month for work...just another benefit of being retired!
I am happy to be retired too and never have to travel to Texas again. Haven't been to Florida since a training class on taxes for expats in 1979. Never want to go to either state again.
Love these citizen responses... they offer hope that FLA hasn't yet become a dead zone! Got its Mojo workin'!
; D
Satire? No matter. DeSantis is beyond belief
Ah, but not beyond Andy's satires!