Month: October 2024

Dim DeSantis Says Dumb Things

Buck Banks

Craig Pittman: “I think you should be more honest about what that would mean for people, taxing them to smithereens, stopping oil and gas, making people pay dramatically more for energy. We would collapse as a country, so this whole idea of climate ideology driving policy, it just factually can’t work.”

— When a reporter asked him about the role climate change played in making Helene and Milton into monster hurricanes, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis first attacked the reporter for daring to ask such a thing. Then he claimed, erroneously, that trying to combat climate change would ruin our economy.

Elon Musk: A Misinformation Machine on Steroids (and/or Ketamine)

Buck Banks

450 posts, 679 million views

PolitiFact analyzed more than 450 posts Musk made on X, the social media platform he owns, from Sept. 30 to Oct. 14. These included reposts, quote replies and some standard replies to other X users. Musk — who was born in South Africa in 1971 and became a U.S. citizen in 2002 — continued his long-standing election year pattern of sharing falsehoods about immigrants and the immigration process, including baselessly claiming that immigrants have or will vote in U.S. elections. Musk has more than 202 million X followers who regularly view and interact with his posts. The misinformation-containing posts we analyzed over these two weeks received nearly 679 million views, more than 5.3 million likes and over 1.6 million reposts.

An Audit of Georgia Voter Rolls Found Just 20 Noncitizens Registered to Vote

Buck Banks

20 in 8.2 million

“An audit uncovered 20 noncitizens out of 8.2 million registered voters in Georgia, according to findings announced by Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Wednesday,” the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports. “Nine of those 20 noncitizens cast ballots years ago, before ID verification checks were in place, while the other 11 were registered but never actually voted, the audit showed. Election officials canceled their voter registrations and reported them to law enforcement agencies.”

13 Dead from ‘Flesh-Eating’ Bacteria in Florida

Buck Banks

74

Thirteen people have died so far this year of a “flesh-eating” bacteria after Florida was slammed by back-to-back hurricanes, which pushed floodwaters onto land, public health department data showed Tuesday, according to the Temple Terrace Patch. The health Department said 74 cases of the disease have been reported in Florida since hurricanes Helene and Milton.