In Case You Missed it (v110)

There was a lot of focus on Florida in the blog, with Hurricane Ian, and three elected Florida Men who have been in the news recently. Here's your recap of last week's posts, in case you missed anything.

Your Sunday School lesson recapped multiple interviews with Florida Man Sen. Rick Scott. Here's a snippet from his stop in the Meet the Press remote classroom, where he was asked 

if "things like mobile manufactured housing should even be legal" in Florida anymore. In part, he said they have to look at building codes after every event, to make sure it doesn't happen again. 

At the same time, you know people that they want to live in Florida. They want to live in the Sunshine State. And, you know, the more expensive housing you have, it makes it difficult for people to live there. So, I guess it's a balance.

They also talked about insurance, and things they can to do encourage insurance companies to stay in the state.  

And on getting federal money for his state, something he and Rubio have requested, What's-his-name suggested there may be some in Congress who "don't want to support" the request, given DeSantis voted against Hurricane Sandy aid because it wasn't paid for by cuts somewhere else. Grab a fork and some croutons.

Scott's pretty good at spinning up a word salad (and he's not the only one, as you 'll see a bit later.) His meandering answer to Karl's question, and recaps from his other interviews, are in the post. 

For your Extra Credit, I recapped an interviews with FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell, and with another Florida Man, Sen. Marco Rubio. Speaking with Jon Karl in the This Week remote classroom, he talked about the damage caused by Hurricane Ian.

...So, this is a character-altering event. It will change the character and the nature of these communities. They’ll be rebuilt, but you can’t rebuild something that is slice of old Florida and bring it back. 

They also discussed disaster aid, and Rubio's votes to deny aid after Superstorm Sandy devastated New York, New Jersey, and other northeast states. 

And when Karl asked if he'd take the same stand on aid for Florida if Congress did their thing and added a bunch of unrelated stuff, Rubio said "it won't come to that," because he and Rick Scott won't ask for anything unrelated.

I mean, why would somebody add something from another state that’s not impacted by the storm? So, it shouldn’t come to that and I’m not -- you know, it shouldn’t come to that pork in the road because it’s unnecessary thing. It's our request. 

You can read my reaction to that in the post; let me know yours.

The third Florida Man, Gov. Ron DeSantis, was in my head when I was Wondering on Wednesday. I wasn't wondering about those white boots he wore; well, actually I was wondering about them, but not in the post. 

First and foremost, I'm wondering what the heck is wrong with the national media - not the crazies, the regular old media - who can't seem to stop asking each other if they notice how amazing it is that the president, a Democrat, is collaborating with the Republican governor of a storm-ravaged state, and how amazing it is that's happening, this close to the midterms and all the rest. 

I'm not kidding - it was a topic on NPR, and on ABC and CBS and NBC and probably all the other networks I didn't check in on. I'm wondering exactly what they were expecting to happen; was Gov. DeSantis going to swallow his pride and refuse to ask for help for residents of his state? Where was he going to get help, from Martha's Vineyard or something? 

It took me a bit, but I realized why it was such a big deal for the media; check out the post and see if you agree with me.

On Thursday, I circled back in a Sidebar to Sen. Scott's interview with Margaret Brennan in the Face the Nation remote classroom. She asked him to respond to nasty comments made by former president Donald Trump. Scott didn't really address Trump's comments; instead,

I'd also say that what Vice President Harris said yesterday that, or the day before yesterday that, you know if you, if you have a different skin color, you're going to get relief.   

Brennan pointed out that Harris didn't say what Scott said she did; he argued with her on that. I promised I'd get to the bottom of it, if i could figure out what was going on.

In the post, I relayed the full question Harris was asked by Priyanka Chopra Jonas, which was really about climate change, not about Hurricane Ian, although it did touch on the storm.

I know this will sound silly, but in the interest of clarity, I included the Veep's 750-ish word answer. As I said, Scott's not the only salad spinner in DC.  It's easy to see why folks on the right went off the rails on this: they wanted to go off the rails. 

I closed the post with some frustration, which I'm sure some of you will share.

And speaking of frustration, there was more of that in last week's TGIF, in a 'bad week' entry about how the agency fails to identify fake charities. I mean, they really fail to identify them; one man got approval for 76 charities if you can imagine that.

All of this was made possible by stripping down processes a few years ago, at a time of budget and staffing cuts. Which makes all the political handwringing about the Biden administration's funding additional IRS staff to backfill vacancies, provide customer service to taxpayers, and yes, to do the vetting that would prevent this kind of things all the more absurd. 

There you go - all caught up on last week's posts. I'm taking some time off, so there won't be much new content for you this week. 

See you when I get back.