Ron's Gone Wrong, Con't

Hurricane Ian is shaping up to be the most deadly Florida storm in nearly 90 years, because people in the path didn't evacuate in time, and the reason people didn't evacuate at ground zero, resort-laden Lee County, was because GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis didn't compel mandatory evacuation until more than 24 hours after the rest of the region had been told to clear out.

As stories of death emerged from the destruction in southwest Florida, President Biden, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and local authorities have clashed over Ian’s casualty toll. Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno told “Good Morning America” that deaths could range into the hundreds. Biden warned that Ian could be the “deadliest hurricane in Florida’s history.” The governor has downplayed deaths in daily briefings, saying the tropical cyclone’s numbers will not come near the 1928 hurricane that killed a record 2,500.

Yet Ian already is shaping up to be the deadliest storm to pound Florida since 1935. State authorities have documented 72 deaths thus far — slightly under Hurricane Irma’s toll in 2017, according to the National Hurricane Center. County sheriffs have reported dozens more, pushing the total to at least 103. That makes Ian more fatal than Hurricane Andrew in 1992.

Ian’s storm surge has claimed the most lives, according to the Florida Medical Examiners Commission, which is tallying direct and indirect deaths. Slightly more than half of Ian’s victims drowned, the latest data shows, underscoring what experts call a frequently overlooked reality: Water usually kills more people than wind.

Storm surge as high as 18 feet blasted through homes, trapping some people inside while sweeping others into brownish rivers. One woman was found tangled below her house in wires. Many of those who drowned were elderly.

“I don’t want to scare people, but they need to understand: The leading cause of death is going to be drowning,” said W. Craig Fugate, former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Florida Division of Emergency Management. “Storm surge doesn’t sound inherently deadly unless you understand it.

One week after landfall, rescue teams continue to wade through wrecked communities — often with only a vague idea of who might be buried in the rubble. Lee County Manager Roger Desjarlais admitted at a news conference Monday that officials do not know how many people they are searching for. First responders are relying on cadaver dogs.

“We don’t have anything,” Virginia Task Force 2 leader Brian Sullivan said Tuesday as his team scoured Red Coconut RV Park in Fort Myers Beach, the storm’s ground zero. “The sheriff’s office was trying to work to compile a missing persons list. We haven’t received any information regarding that area.”

Counting the dead is an imprecise science — there is no certain tally from Hurricane Katrina, for instance — and throughout the years, officials have debated what qualifies as a storm death. Hurricane Maria’s toll was initially in the dozens, with officials including only drownings and blunt force trauma. But an analysis of excess deaths later pushed the total into the thousands. Many elderly people died in Puerto Rico as the island’s blackout continued for months and medical care was hard to reach.

DeSantis at first indicated that indirect deaths might not be counted.

“For example, in Charlotte County, they recorded a suicide during the storm,” he said the day after the storm. “They also had somebody pass away from a heart attack because you don’t have access to emergency services.”

But the agency tasked with cataloguing the deaths, the Florida Medical Examiners Commission, adheres to a broader definition.

“We include motor vehicle accidents if someone is trying to evacuate and they hydroplane,” spokeswoman Gretl Plessinger said. “If someone had a heart attack when medical services were down. … If there was any suspicion it was related to a hurricane, that’s a storm death.”

 

There's a very good chance that the storm's death toll could be two or three times what it is now, a toll in the hundreds, plural, not just hundred, singular. But all Ron DeSantis cares about is how this makes him look bad. 

It makes him look bad because he failed Florida completely.

This should be the end of his political career, and Florida should be getting Charlie Crist as governor next month.

That's up to you, Florida.

Vote like your state depends on it.

 

The Big Lie, Con't

The vast majority of Republicans running in 2022 incorrectly believe that the 2020 election was fraudulent, and the vast majority of those Republicans will easily win safe red state seats in November and will work to enact actual election fraud in 2024 and beyond.

 

A majority of Republican nominees on the ballot this November for the House, Senate and key statewide offices — 299 in all — have denied or questioned the outcome of the last presidential election, according to a Washington Post analysis.

Candidates who have challenged or refused to accept Joe Biden’s victory are running in every region of the country and in nearly every state. Republican voters in four states nominated election deniers in all federal and statewide races The Post examined.

Although some are running in heavily Democratic areas and are expected to lose, most of the election deniers nominated are likely to win: Of the nearly 300 on the ballot, 174 are running for safely Republican seats. Another 51 will appear on the ballot in tightly contested races.

The implications will be lasting: If Republicans take control of the House, as many political forecasters predict, election deniers would hold enormous sway over the choice of the nation’s next speaker, who in turn could preside over the House in a future contested presidential election. The winners of all the races examined by The Post — those for governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, attorney general, Senate and House — will hold some measure of power overseeing American elections

Many of these candidates echo the false claims of former president Donald Trump — claims that have been thoroughly investigated and dismissed by myriad officials and courts. Experts said the insistence on such claims, despite the lack of evidence, reflects a willingness among election-denying candidates to undermine democratic institutions when it benefits their side.

The Post’s count — assembled from public statements, social media posts, and actions taken by the candidates to deny the legitimacy of the last presidential vote — shows how the movement arising from Trump’s thwarted plot to overturn the 2020 election is, in many respects, even stronger two years later. Far from repudiating candidates who embrace Trump’s false fraud claims, GOP primary voters have empowered them.

 

Republicans are tired of elections. They want power, they want it now, and they will destroy whatever is in their way so that they can get it. Their candidates want it, their elected want it, and they want it.

 

Democrats need to figure this out.

 

There are no good Republicans.

 

There are no good people who remain in support of Republicans. Not a one.

 

Vote, or soon, you'll never have to.