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Florida has attracted nationwide controversy as new censorship measures put in place by Gov. Ron DeSantis have driven some schools to empty their bookshelves to keep up with a wave of right-wing activists demanding the review of any books mentioning racial or sexual orientation issues.
In fact, things have gotten so extreme that one school was even forced to pull a documentary about civil rights icon Ruby Bridges.
But things could just be getting started. As Greg Sargent noted in The Washington Post on Wednesday, a new bill advancing in the legislature with DeSantis' support could formally require schools to ban any book, pending review, if even a single parent complains about it.
"The provision is buried in a bill that’s already received attention for another reason: It would expand the state’s 'don’t say gay' law prohibiting classroom discussion of sex and gender up to high school — well beyond the initial goal of limiting discussion only through third grade," wrote Sargent. "That’s bad, but the book-banning provision, which has attracted far less attention, makes it worse. That part of the bill mandates that instructional material facing objection in public schools through 12th grade for depicting 'sexual' or 'pornographic' conduct be 'unavailable to students until the objection is resolved.'"
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"This means books and other materials would be removed before something akin to due process occurs," wrote Sargent. Furthermore, "such objections could be lodged not just by a parent, but any resident in the county, meaning anyone could get a book removed more easily than before."
Furthermore, Sargent noted, the bill is written so broadly that virtually anything can be challenged as "pornographic." For instance, "Take the case of “The Bluest Eye,” a novel by Toni Morrison. In at least one Florida county — Pinellas — parental objections have already resulted in the book being banned from schools because it features a rape scene, even though students protested that it was important to their education." And the challenges take months to resolve, leaving books banned in the meantime and creating an environment in which teachers are afraid to introduce any controversial subject.
DeSantis, facing growing protest and negative press attention as he prepares to launch a 2024 presidential bid, has shot back, calling it a "hoax" that Florida schools are seeing a wave of book bans — even though it is very much not a hoax.
Ultimately, it could become a serious liability for him, wrote Sargent.
"DeSantis probably calculates that this would serve his short-term political interests. Headlines about banned books — and liberal outrage in response — will bolster him among GOP primary voters," wrote Sargent. "But those elites are also backing DeSantis because he supposedly can win back suburban voters alienated by Trump. And national stories about the latest book-banning frenzy would probably undermine that suburban appeal ... it’s likely he will have to answer for the whims of these petty functionaries when their efforts run off the rails."
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Elon Musk's 'blundering stupidity' is 'flushing Twitter down the sink': major tech news site
March 29, 2023
A commentary published on top tech news website TechCrunch takes Twitter CEO Elon Musk to task for doing seemingly everything in his power to make the social networking site worse.
The piece's author, Natasha Lomas, marvels at the way that Musk has made Twitter less user-friendly while at the same time implementing changes that are sure to drive away more users, such as taking away verified accounts from people unless they pay him a monthly $8 fee.
"It almost doesn’t matter if this is deliberate sabotage by Musk or the blundering stupidity of a clueless idiot," she writes. "The upshot is the same: Twitter is dying."
Lomas predicts that charging users monthly fees for verified accounts will be Musk's "next -- perhaps final -- stage of destruction" of the company he bought last year for more than $40 billion.
READ MORE: Trump busted for telling a 'story that cannot possibly be true' by CNN fact checker
"Genuine users are rightly outraged at the idea of being blackmailed into paying Musk to prove who they are," she charges. "These people — the signal amid the Twitter noise — are, after all, a core component of the value of the network. So of course they shouldn’t (and won’t) pay — and so their visibility on Twitter will decay. Which, in turn, will trigger more damage — as any remaining users wanting to find quality information will find it increasingly hard to come by… It’s death by irrelevance."
The bottom line, Lomas says, is that Musk is "flushing Twitter down the sink."
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Panelists on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" were alarmed by Donald Trump's open embrace of Jan. 6 rioters during a campaign rally in Texas on the 30th anniversary of the Branch Davidian siege in Waco.
Political analyst John Heilemann said he spoke to a pastor at the event who believed the deadly FBI siege was a false flag operation to distract from a combination child sex trafficking-cocaine distribution ring operated by Bill Clinton, Jeb Bush, Barack Obama and Hunter Biden, who would have been 23 years old, and host Joe Scarborough marveled at the lurid conspiracy theory.
"The irony of somebody sitting on the site of the Waco compound where David Koresh molested little girls is pretty remarkable," Scarborough said, "12-year-old girls and set fire to the place, and there's satellite photos that show it, but so much of the insanity, the QAnon insanity, and the Republican insanity we see from the most extreme parts of the party, it all started at Waco, and for the irony of QAnoners elevating David Koresh, a guy who sexually molested and raped young girls, to their hero?"
Scarborough recalled the Oklahoma City bombing by right-wing extremist Timothy McVeigh on the two-year anniversary of the fiery end to the Waco siege, when he was serving his first term in Congress, and he remembered calling CNN to correct their reporting that it had been carried out by an Islamic terrorist.
FROM EARLIER: Morning Joe profanely condemns Trump's open celebration of Jan. 6 'rioters and convicts'
"I called them up, [saying,] 'This isn't an Islamic plot, I've got wackos running around my district that talk about Waco every day like it was the battle of Lexington,'" Scarborough said. "It all started there."
Heilemann pointed out that McVeigh had been present outside the Waco standoff, where he handed out anti-government and pro-gun literature, and he later told investigators he had bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building was in retaliation to that government action and 1992 siege in Ruby Ridge, Idaho.
"The Trump thing was dark and ominous, not just to going to Waco, but to go in a period that's considered the anniversary of the whole 51 days [of the siege]," Heilemann said. "That's why people were wigged out about Trump going there, and that war, for a lot of people, is still going on."
Scarborough said the former president plainly showed he was on the side of his supporters who had been criminally charged in the violent attempt to overthrow the government.
"The twisted thing, it ends with the convict choir, elevating other people who actually tried to overthrow the United States government, tried to overflow an election," Scarborough said. "You can draw a straight line from there to here."
Watch the video below or at this link.
03 29 2023 07 32 27 youtu.be
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