Texas And Florida Are The Fastest Growing States

 From Axios.com.

Florida Right-Wingers Now Want To Censor Shakespeare!

The idiocy of right-wingers never seems to have a limit. Now a Florida school board wants to censor Shakespeare. Drew Lichtenberg (lecturer at Yale University and dramaturg at the Shakespeare Theater Company in Washington, D.C.) responds to this stupidity in The New York Times:

It seemed, for a moment, that Shakespeare was being canceled. Last week, school district officials in Hillsborough County, Fla., said that they were preparing high school lessons for the new academic year with some of William Shakespeare’s works taught only with excerpts, partly in keeping with Gov. Ron DeSantis’s legislation about what students can or can’t be exposed to.

I’m here to say: Good. Cancel Shakespeare. It’s about time.

Anyone who spends a lot of time reading Shakespeare (or working on his plays, as I have for most of my professional career) understands that he couldn’t have been less interested in puritanical notions of respectability. Given how he’s become an exalted landmark on the high road of culture, it’s easy to forget that there’s always been a secret smugglers’ path to a more salacious and subversive Shakespeare, one well known and beloved by artists and theater people. The Bard has long been a patron saint to rebel poets and social outcasts, queer nonconformists and punk provocateurs.

Yes, Shakespeare is ribald, salacious, even shocking. But to understand his genius — and his indelible legacy on literature — students need to be exposed to the whole of his work, even, perhaps especially, the naughty bits.

The closing lines of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 20, addressed to the poem’s male subject, are among the dirtiest — and hottest — of the 16th century. “But since she pricked thee out for women’s pleasure, / Mine be thy love and thy love’s use their treasure.” A favorite trick of Shakespeare’s was to play with word order, especially when he wanted to disclose something too daring to be said in a more straightforward way, such as the love that dared not speak its name. The untangled meaning here: Your love ultimately belongs to me, sir, even if women (sometimes) enjoy your prick. Or, from the neck up you are as beautiful as a woman, and from the waist down you are all man.

Sex is one thing. The plays are also astoundingly gory. The bloody climax of “King Lear” so horrified the playwright Nahum Tate that he felt compelled to rewrite its ending. Tate’s sanitized version of “King Lear,” premiering in 1681, held the stage until 1838. In the 18th century, Voltaire called “Hamlet” the apparent product of a “drunken savage” who wrote without “the slightest spark of good taste”— which didn’t stop Voltaire, who also recognized Shakespeare’s “genius,” from openly borrowing from the Bard for one of his own plays.

In 1872 in “The Birth of Tragedy,” Friedrich Nietzsche praised this savagery. To him, Shakespeare contained the ne plus ultra of grisly truths. Hamlet, he wrote, “sees everywhere only the horror or absurdity of existence.” Nietzsche being Nietzsche, he considered this a good thing. Art, wrote Nietzsche, transforms “these nauseous thoughts about the horror or absurdity of existence into notions with which one can live.”

In light of Nietzsche’s counterintuitive epiphany, the notion of Shakespeare-the-hipster caught fire. Hamlet, uniquely among male roles in the classical canon, became an aspirational part for female theatrical stars looking to prove their bona fides and upend gender preconceptions: Sarah Bernhardt most famously, but also the great Danish actor Asta Nielsen. Shakespeare’s sonnets were a source of succor to decadent aesthetes such as Oscar Wilde, just as they had been to Charles Baudelaire. The writings and teachings of queer poets such as W.H. Auden and Allen Ginsberg suggests they saw themselves in Shakespeare’s works, as did anti-racist writers from James Baldwin to Lorraine Hansberry and Ann Petry.

Where the avant-garde led, pop culture followed. Shakespeare’s plays have always lent themselves to all manner of interpretations and they found new life in the postwar era, with landmark works like Basil Dearden’s “All Night Long,” a neo-noir film from 1962, which set “Othello” in a British jazz soiree. Franco Zeffirelli’s “Romeo and Juliet” in 1968 plugged into a different cultural zeitgeist, capturing onscreen the summer of love, while Roman Polanski’s film version of “Macbeth” in 1971 feels like an encomium for the dying utopian dreams of the ’60s.

In the transgressive ’90s, Shakespeare was everywhere: taboo, art house, alternative and cool. Gus Van Sant’s “My Own Private Idaho” reimagined Prince Hal and Hotspur as gay grunge gods and Baz Luhrmann’s “Romeo + Juliet” featured Leonardo DiCaprio at the peak of his androgyne allure. Even “Shakespeare in Love,” a relatively middlebrow Oscar winner, presented a vision of the brooding, bearded, sexy Shakespeare, as embodied by Joseph Fiennes.

In many other cultures, the bawdy lowbrow and the poetic highbrow are often personified by separate champions: In France, it’s Rabelais and Racine; in Spain, Cervantes and Calderón. In English literature Shakespeare has always combined both brows into something rich, special and strange. In “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” one of Shakespeare’s most magical and sensual plays, Bottom — a man with the head of a donkey — spends the night in bed next to the fairy queen. He wakes up having had something close to a religious experience. Every play in the canon features something similarly subversive and transcendent — and all of them are essential.

One can no more take out the dirty parts of Shakespeare than one can take out the poetry. It’s all intertwined, so that Shakespeare seems almost purposefully designed to confound those who want to segregate the smutty from the sublime. His work is proof that profundity can live next to, and even be found in, the pornographic, the viscerally violent and the existentially horrifying. So if you’re looking for sex, gore and the unspeakable absurdity of existence in Shakespeare, you will definitely find it. That’s the genius of Shakespeare. And it’s precisely what makes his work worth studying. 

The New Florida Republican Dictionary (A Satire)

More great satire from Alexandra Petri (pictured) in The Washington Post:

Well, it’s a week with a Thursday in it, and Florida is, once again, revising its educational standards in alarming ways. Not content with removing books from shelves, or demanding that the College Board water down its AP African American studies curriculum, the state’s newest history standards include lessons suggesting that enslaved people “developed skills” for “personal benefit.” This trend appears likely to continue. What follows is a preview of the latest edition of the dictionary to be approved in Florida.

Aah: (exclamation) Normal thing to say when you enter the water at the beach, which is over 100 degrees.

Abolitionists: (noun) Some people in the 19th century who were inexplicably upset about a wonderful free surprise job training program. Today they want to end prisons for equally unclear reasons.

Abortion: (noun) Something that male state legislators (the foremost experts on this subject) believe no one ever wants under any circumstances, probably; decision that people beg the state to make for them and about which doctors beg for as little involvement as possible.

American history: (noun) A branch of learning that concerns a ceaseless parade of triumphs and contains nothing to feel bad about.

Barbie: (noun) Feminist demon enemy of the state.

Biden, Joe: (figure) Illegitimate president.

Black history: (entry not found)

Blacksmith: (noun) A great job and one that enslaved people might have had. Example sentence from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R): “They’re probably going to show that some of the folks that eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith into doing things later in life.”

Book ban: (noun) Effective way of making sure people never have certain sorts of ideas.

Censorship: (noun) When other people get mad about something you’ve said. Not to be confused with when you remove books from libraries or the state tells colleges what can and can’t be said in classrooms (both fine).

Child: (noun) Useful laborer with tiny hands; alternatively, someone whose reading cannot be censored enough.

Christian nationalism: (noun) Certainly constitutional; probably what the Founding Fathers would have preferred!

Classified: (adjective) The government’s way of saying a paper is especially interesting and you ought to have it in your house.

Climate change: (noun) Conspiracy by scientists to change all the thermometers, fill the air with smoke and then blame us.

Cocaine: (noun) A substance discovered in the White House; the only fit subject for news cycles.

Constitution: (noun) A document that can be interpreted only by Trump-appointed and/or Federalist Society judges. If the Constitution appears to prohibit something that you want to do, take the judge on a boat and try again.

Coral: (noun) Superfluous refuge for fish, others who have failed to adapt to life on land.

DeSantis, Ron: (figure) Governor who represents the ideal human being. Pronunciation varies.

Disney: (noun) A corporation, but not the good kind.

DOJ: (noun) Schrodinger’s legal entity that is both good and evil simultaneously, used for investigating legitimate country-shaking crimes (Hunter Biden possessing a firearm) and conducting illegal raids (Donald Trump kindly opening his home to some classified documents).

Election: (noun) Binding if Republicans win; otherwise, needs help from election officials who will figure out where the fraud was that prevented the election from reflecting the will of the people (that Republicans win).

Elector: (noun) Someone Mike Pence should or should not have accepted, depending.

Emancipation Proclamation: (noun) Classic example of government overreach.

Firearm: (noun) Wonderful, beautiful object that every person ought to have six of, except Hunter Biden.

Florida: God’s paradise on Earth; sometimes Ohio; see “The Courage to Be Free”! All parts of the country at once. Real estate here will only get more valuable.

FOX: News.

Free speech: (noun) When you shut up and I talk.

Gun violence: (noun) Simple, unalterable fact of life, like death but unlike taxes.

Immigration: (noun) When someone leaves their country of origin to seek a better life elsewhere; huge insult to the receiving country, to be prevented at all costs.

Independence Day: See Jan. 6.

Jan. 6: (noun) A day when some beautiful, beloved people took a nice, uneventful tour of the U.S. Capitol.

King Jr., Martin Luther: (figure) A man who, as far as we can discern, uttered only one famous quotation ever and it was about how actually anytime you tried to suggest that people were being treated differently based on skin color you were the real racist. Sample sentence: “Dr. King would be enraged at the existence of Black History Month.”

Liberty: (noun) My freedom to choose what you can read (see Moms for Liberty).

Moms for Liberty: (noun) Censors, but the good kind.

Nature: (noun) Something it is okay to boil, probably. Like soup.

Orca: (noun) Enemy of the state, vessels.

Orwellian: (adjective) When people are mad about a book written by Josh Hawley or another Republican, not when people try to erase slavery from history.

Pregnant (adjective): The state of being a vessel containing a Future Citizen; do not say “pregnant person”; no one who is a real person can get pregnant.

Queer: (entry not found)

Refugee: (noun) Someone who should have stayed put and waited for help to come.

Slavery: (noun) We didn’t invent it, or it wasn’t that bad, or it was a free job training program.

Supreme Court: (noun) Wonderful group of mostly men without whom no journey by private plane or yacht is complete.

Trans: (entry not found)

United States: (noun) Perfect place, no notes.

Unfree: (adjective) The best way for thought and people to be.

"An Obscene Revision Of Black History"

Eugene Robinson, in The Washington Post, comments on Florida's new racist school board decision. Here is part of what he wrote:

Florida’s decision to teach in schools that slavery in this country was of “personal benefit” to some enslaved people is obscene revisionism. It is like teaching that though Abraham Lincoln might have been assassinated, at least the performance at Ford’s Theatre that night was first-rate.

For those who doubt this obscenity is actually in the curriculum, look no further than Page 6 of Florida’s 2023 academic standards for teaching social studies: “Instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”

It was Gov. Ron DeSantis, running for the GOP presidential nomination as an “anti-wokeness” Savonarola, who inspired this latest effort to both-sides slavery. (Months ago, the state rejected an Advanced Placement course on African American studies, saying it “significantly lacks educational value.”) On Friday, DeSantis blamed the state Department of Education — “I wasn’t involved,” he claimed — but also defended the abomination: “They’re probably going to show that some of the folks that eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith into doing things later in life.”. . .

I have looked through the new Florida curriculum to see whether that sentence about “personal benefit” might be a singular aberration, and it is not. Yes, the standards do require that students be taught about the horrors of slavery. But they also leave some very wrong impressions.

The curriculum mandates that teachers “examine the various duties and trades performed by slaves (e.g., agricultural work, painting, carpentry, tailoring, domestic service, blacksmithing, transportation).” That suggests a smorgasbord of career options, but in fact the vast majority of enslaved African Americans were forced to do backbreaking work as field hands. Very small numbers were employed otherwise.

Florida wants students to study “how trading in slaves developed in African lands (e.g., Benin, Dahomey)” and “the practice of the Barbary Pirates in kidnapping Europeans and selling them into slavery in Muslim countries.” In other words, I guess, “Black people started it” and “White people were slaves, too.” Students are also to be taught that the first Africans brought to Jamestown in 1619 were technically indentured servants. Show me the indenture documents.

The problem with all of this is that it seeks to contextualize American slavery as something other than what it was: a unique historical crime, perpetuated over 2½ centuries. Slavery was practiced here on an industrial scale, based on race and the belief in white supremacy, with not just individuals but also their descendants consigned to lifelong servitude.

The Florida curriculum does a similar trick in interpreting the Jim Crow period. It calls for studying “acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans” — blaming both sides — but then mentions the “1906 Atlanta Race Riot, 1919 Washington, D.C. Race Riot, 1920 Ocoee Massacre, 1921 Tulsa Massacre and the 1923 Rosewood Massacre.” All of those atrocities, and many more, were White riots against innocent Black victims.

What happened happened. We will not move forward until we truthfully acknowledge where we’ve been.

DeSantis Gets Low Support On COVID-19 In Florida

 

The charts above reflect the results of a new Quinnipiac University Poll -- done between August 17th and 21st of a statewide sample of 997 Florida adults, with a 3.1 point margin of error.

It seems the Florida adults aren't buying the garbage that Gov. DeSantis is selling!

COVID Hospitalizations For Children Is At A Record Level

While ignoring the COVID pandemic, Donald Trump told Americans that young people, especially children, didn't get the disease. That was a lie, but it seems to be a lie that is still being put forward by right-wing Republican politicians.

As school is starting across the country, many schools want to mandate that their students (and teachers) wear a mask. That is a reasonable action. Consider the chart above. It shows that not only can children get sick with COVID, but many require hospitalization -- and those child hospitalizations have reached a record level nationwide.

But in spite of the virus raging across the country, many red-state governors are banning mask requirements in schools (or anywhere else). This is especially true of Gov. Abbott in Texas and Gov. DeSatis in Florida. Both have issued edicts that say schools cannot have a mask mandate.

They did this in spite of the fact that their own states are experiencing record child hospitalizations due to the Coronavirus (especially the Delta variant). They do this to please their extremist base. Evidently, playing politics is more important to them that saving the lives of children in their states.

CNN Poll - Biden Leading In Arizona, Florida, & Michigan

The charts above reflect the results of the new CNN / SSRS Poll -- done between July 18th and 24th of 873 registered voters in Arizona, with a 3.8 point margin of error.

The charts above reflect the results of the new CNN / SSRS Poll -- done between July 18th and 24th of 880 registered voters in Florida, with a 3.8 point margin of error.

The charts above reflect the results of the new CNN / SSRS Poll -- done between July 18th and 24th of 927 registered voters in Michigan, with a 3.8 point margin of error.

Governors Suffering Because They Took Trump's Advice

The chart above shows the results of a SurveyMonkey Poll. They questioned 16,832 adults in Arizona (moe 3.5 points), 44,440 adults in Florida (moe 2.5 points), 12,883 adults in Georgia (moe 4 points), and 49,377 adults in Texas (moe 2.5 points) between May 11th and July 19th.

The charts shows the Republican governors in all four states have suffered by following Trump's advice to reopen their economies before the Coronavirus was controlled. All of the governors now show a disapproval much higher than approval over their handling of the virus -- by 26 points in Arizona, 18 points in Florida, 11 points in Georgia, and 11 points in Texas.

New Polls Show Biden Leading By 13 In Florida & 1 In Texas

The chart above reflects the results of the new Quinnipiac University Poll -- done between July 16th and 20th of 924 registered voters in Florida, with a 3.2 point margin of error.

The chart above reflects the results of the new Quinnipiac University Poll -- done between July 16th and 20th of 880 registered voters in Texas, with a 3.3 point margin of error.

In a normal year, Florida would be a battleground state leaning Republican, and Texas would be a sure win for the Republicans. But these polls (and other recent polls) show that is not true this year.

Florida looks like it is a good bet to go Democratic this year. Currently, Biden has a 13 point lead over Trump (51% Biden to 38% Trump). And Texas has become the battleground state. Currently, Biden has a 1 point lead (Biden 45% to Trump 44%). That is well within the margin of error, and means Texas could go either way in this election.

Fox Poll Shows Trouble For Trump In Four Red States

This Fox News Poll was done between June 20th and 23rd of 1,010 Florida voters, with a 3 point margin of error.

This Fox New Poll was done between June 20th and 23rd of 1,013 Georgia voters, with a 3 point margin of error.

This Fox News Poll was done between June 20th and 23rd of 1,012 North Carolina voters, with a 3 point margin of error.

This Fox News Poll was done between June 20th and 23rd of 1,001 Texas voters, with a 3 point margin of error.

Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Texas are all red states. Trump carried them all in 2016, and should easily carry them again in 2020. But that is not the case. The Fox News polls show him trailing Biden by 9 points in Florida, and by 1 or 2 points in the other three states (which is within the margin of error -- so he is virtually tied in those three).

This shows Trump is in deep electoral trouble.

New Poll Shows Trump Losing Ground In Battleground States

These charts are from the New York Times / Siena College Poll -- done between June 8th and 18th of 3,870 registered voters in Battleground States (Pennsylvania, Michigan, Florida, Arizona, Wisconsin, North Carolina). The poll's margin of error for all the states is 1.8 points -- and for each state is between 4.1 and 4.6 points.

Trump won all six of these states in 2016, and that allowed him to squeak out an Electoral College win. But it is distinctly possible that he could lose all of them this year. He's looking more and more like a one term president.

New Iowa, Florida, & Michigan Polls Have Trump In Trouble

This chart reflects the results of the Des Moines Register / Mediacom Iowa Poll -- done between June 7th and 10th of 674 likely Iowa voters, with a 3.8 point margin of error.

This chart reflects the results of the American Greatness / TIPP Battleground Poll -- done between June 9th and 11th of 910 registered voters in Florida.

This chart reflects the results of the Detroit Free Press / EPIC-MRA Poll -- done between May 31st and June 4th of 600 likely Michigan voters, with a 4 point margin of error.

This chart reflects the results of the American Greatness / TIPP Battleground Poll -- done between June 9th and 12th of 907 registered Michigan voters.

If these polls are correct, then Trump is sinking fast. He's in a dead heat with Biden in Iowa -- a state he won by 9 points in 2016. He is 10 points behind Biden in Florida. And two polls in Michigan show him 16 points and 13 points behind Biden.

Biden Leads Trump In Florida, Arizona, And Virginia

The chart reflects the results of the Florida Atlantic University Poll -- done between May 8th and 12th of a sample of 928 Florida voters, with a 3.1 point margin of error.

This chart reflects the results of the Arizona Public Opinion Pulse Poll -- done between May 9th and 11th of a sample of 600 Arizona voters, with a 4 point margin of error.

This chart reflects the results of the Roanoke College Poll -- done between May 3rd and 16th of a sample of 563 Virginia voters, with a 4.1 point margin of error.

Many expect Virginia to go blue in November, but Florida and Arizona are battleground states that Trump cannot afford to lose.

Joe Biden Wins Big In Florida, Illinois, And Arizona

Ohio didn't vote yesterday. It's governor refused to abide by a court decision and used the excuse of the election being a public health hazard. He cancelled the election, saying it would be held later (possibly in June).

But the other states voted -- Florida, Illinois, and Arizona. And Joe Biden scored huge victories in all three states. He won Florida by about 39 points, Illinois by about 23 points, and Arizona by about 12 points.

That gave him most of the available delegates in those states, and he increased his delegate lead from about 150 to nearly 300.

It looks like Joe Biden is going to be our nominee. But I still don't think Bernie Sanders should be pressured to quit. Let him make that decision in his own time, and don't give his supporters the idea they were not allowed to have their say.

New Democratic Polls For Texas, Florida, And Georgia

The chart above reflects the results of the University of Texas / Texas Tribune Poll -- done between January 31st and February 9th of 575 likely Democratic primary voters, with a 4.09 point margin of error.

Texas will vote on March 3rd.

The chart above reflects the results of the St. Pete Poll -- done on February 12th and 13th of 3,047 likely Democratic primary voters in Florida, with a 1.8 point margin of error.

Florida will vote on March 17th.

The chart above reflects the results of the Channel 2 / Landmark Communications Poll -- released on February 13th of 500 likely Democratic primary voters in Georgia, with a 4.4 point margin of error.

Georgia will vote on March 24th.