Why Florida is an awsome place to live

[ed]

I understand that this may come across as a benefit to some <cough Abdul cough> to the rest of us it is a warning.

Do not bottom skim in the lake!!!

[DJ]

Skinny dipping definitely not recommended.

[ed]

The tone is best described as "come hither"

[ed]

OK I get it. ed is having one of those interludes. Best to wait a while before dealing with him.

A less generous person might refer to it as a psychotic break.

[robinson]

It’s hanging on to nipple hair

[Witness]

https://tuckbot.tv/#/watch/j27r5f

Edit: added the YT vid, if you want to see the whole dubious event in full.

[Rob Lister]

And they keep following!?

[Pyrrho]

[robinson]

That really is awesome

[Pyrrho]

And they keep following!?

Yeah uh...and shooting while letting the truck steer itself...okay...but the other driver did have a gun aimed at him so...

[Witness]

Florida deputy performs exorcism on child, instructs another to shoot anyone who enters demon-filled home

Christopher Dougherty was fired from the Orange County Sheriff’s Office and arrested on child abuse charges

A now-former sheriff’s deputy in Florida was arrested Sunday after allegedly performing an exorcism on a child, and telling another there were demons in his home and to shoot anyone who entered.

Christopher Dougherty, 37, was arrested on child abuse allegations the same day he was fired from the Orange County Sheriff’s Office on an unrelated matter, according to the agency. He had worked with the sheriff’s office since 2006.

Deputies responded Thursday to a 911 call about a residential alarm and determined there was evidence of child abuse at the apartment occupied by Dougherty.

A girl, wearing body armor and a Kevlar helmet, was lying on the ground in a shooting position with a rifle. A boy was armed with a Taser, and Dougherty was in possession of a handgun, the Orlando Sentinel reported, citing the arrest affidavit.

The children told investigators Dougherty performed an exorcism on the boy before telling the girl that there were demons in the home and directing her to shoot anyone who entered.

Dougherty was detained and taken to a hospital where he was held under the Baker Act, a Florida law enabling those determined likely to inflict harm to themselves or others to receive emergency mental health services, the Orange County Sheriff's Office told Fox News. He was arrested Sunday after his release.

Dougherty was also terminated from the Orange County Sheriff’s Office Sunday for “an unsatisfactory performance finding in a separate matter,” the agency said, without providing details.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/florida-ex-d ... nge-county

[Witness]

Hey ed! How are your crawdads doing? No sightings? Thought so…

That's because you got the wrong beasties.

****** drumroll ******

Escaped cloned female mutant crayfish take over Belgian cemetery

Escaped self-cloning mutant crayfish created in experimental breeding programmes have invaded a Belgian cemetery.

Hundreds of the duplicating crustaceans, which can dig down to up to a metre and are always female, pose a deadly threat to local biodiversity after colonising a historic Antwerp graveyard.

"It's impossible to round up all of them. It's like trying to empty the ocean with a thimble," said Kevin Scheers, of the Flemish Institute for Nature and Woodland Research.

Marbled crayfish, which travel across land and water at night and eat whatever they can, do not occur in nature and are banned by the European Union.

Instead, the freshwater beasts, which are about 10cm big and voracious, are thought to have been bred by unscrupulous German pet traders in the 1990s.

They are similar to the slough crayfish found in Florida but are parthenogenetic, which means they reproduce with themselves and all their children are genetically identical females.

The mutation, which occurred about 25 years ago, means populations can spring up rapidly from just a single Procambarus virginalis.

In 2018, scientists established the global marbled crayfish population was descended from a single female and didn't need males to reproduce.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/escape ... OELOTHGPA/

Now that's a title!

And "they reproduce with themselves", stupid journalists.

[Witness]

↑ Still obsessed with that Zinnia, I see.

---

Florida judge resigns from vote-counting board after donations to Trump campaign uncovered

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A Florida judge has resigned from Duval County’s vote-counting board after findings that he donated repeatedly to President Trump’s re-election campaign and other Republican efforts were uncovered.

Duval County senior Judge Brent Shore, whose home displayed several signs supporting Trump, had served as chairman of the canvassing board because of his role as a county judge.

Yet Florida judicial rules bar judges from political donations of any kind.

And canvassing board rules bar members from "displaying a candidate's campaign signs."

Senior county Judge Brent Shore, who has refused to change rules barring the public from photographing or videotaping vote-counting meetings, first donated $20 in 2016 to Donald Trump’s initial campaign for president. He has donated 11 more times since then to Trump for a total of $170, as well as donating $178 in the last two years to the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/poli ... 068234002/

That's really peanuts – is their pay that lousy?

[Witness]

[ed]

Disney is in orlando

[Witness]

Disney is in orlando

So it's cultural, right?

[robinson]

Disney is in orlando

Nope. It is not.

[robinson]

Part of it is Orange county, and part is in Osceola county, but none of it is in Orlando

[ed]

"Education" and "culture" and "economic anything" are words that one does not associate with us.

[Witness]

[ed]

Gators, you left out Gators on your graph Witness

[robinson2]

And fire ants

[robinson]

Murder hornets

[Witness]

Gators, you left out Gators on your graph Witness

Gators, puny gators give you anxiety?!? I'm very disappointed!

---

Sorry if this has already been posted somewhere:

Florida's DeSantis moves to allow citizens to shoot looters, rioters targeting businesses

Critics argue the law would allow for armed citizens to become vigilantes

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has drafted “anti-mob” legislation that would expand the state’s Stand Your Ground law – a move that some worry would allow armed citizens to shoot and potentially kill anyone they suspect of looting.

DeSantis’ newest legislation comes in response to months of protesting that frequently lead to rioting this summer in Florida and across the U.S., following the death of George Floyd, a black man who died after a white Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.

The legislation is an attempt to prevent “violent and disorderly assemblies” by permitting violence against anyone involved in the “interruption or impairment” of a business, reportedly described in the draft as being a burglary within 500 feet of “violent or disorderly assembly,” according to reporting by the Miami Herald Tuesday.

“It allows for vigilantes to justify their actions,” a former Miami-Dade County prosecutor, Denise Georges, who has worked with Stand Your Ground cases told the Miami publication. “It also allows for death to be the punishment for a property crime — and that is cruel and unusual punishment. We cannot live in a lawless society where taking a life is done so casually and recklessly.”

The draft legislation also includes measures that would make protesting which disrupts the public by blocking traffic, a third degree felony. The law would also reportedly grant immunity to drivers who unintentionally kill or injure protesters who were blocking traffic.

Additionally the law would allow the state to withhold funds from local governments that cut police budgets.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/florid ... businesses

[Bruce]

You see this here badge on muh chest? Makes me a bonafide deputy of Florida. What's that? You can't see it? How's about you bring yourself a bit closer. Right on that red X. You'll see it from there.

[Witness]

↑ Come on, Bruce, snowshoes? Can't be Florida.

[robinson]

The man in that picture is almost exactly what I look like

[robinson]

But no tats

[ed]

↑ Come on, Bruce, snowshoes? Can't be Florida.

We use them for traversing the mud flats.

[ed]

Before we knocked off all the Seminoles

Oh... this was taken in Myakka State Park a couple of miles from me

123831261_4263959230309121_8719710047215882086_o.jpg

[Witness]

mud flats

How do you distinguish them from the rest of the country?

[ed]

Depth, primarily. Depth and concentration of poisonous reptiles.

[Witness]

1920.

[ed]

1920.

Belle Glade (and the surrounding area) is sometimes referred to as "Muck City" due to the large quantity of muck, in which sugarcane grows, found in the area

[ed]

nutty, unhinged, and dangerous.

NUD

Our birthright

[robinson]

"Last week DeSantis decided to cap off a triumphant year by drafting a bill that would allow armed Floridians to blow the living crap out of rioters and looters."

What's really bizarro world is the places that make it illegal to defend yourself

[Witness]

How Janis Joplin was arrested in Tampa 50 years ago

Police let Joplin finish her set at Curtis Hixon Hall before arresting the singer in her dressing room.

Details: https://www.tampabay.com/news/tampa/201 ... years-ago/

[ed]

We have a statue of Janis here in Sarasota.

WWII-sailor-kiss-famous-photograph-statue-Sarasota.jpg

Thats her on the right

[Witness]

Reality is more funny:

2009: Aluminum copy to Sarasota temporarily amid controversy

Interest in a revisit to Sarasota in 2009 was cultivated by a director of a bay-front biannual show and an aluminum copy was placed at the bay-front, again temporarily. An "88-year-old donor, who served in the U.S. Navy during World War II" offered to pay half a million dollars for it against an initial asking price of $680,000.[10]

While some members of the community supported the statue, others felt the statue was not good enough to be displayed on the bay front. The chairwoman of the public art committee at the time said that "it doesn't even qualify as kitsch...It is like a giant cartoon image drafted by a computer emulating a famous photograph. It's not the creation of an artist. It's an artist copying a famous image."[10] The statue was immediately controversial, with some people calling for its removal[11] for various reasons, including the fact that it may constitute copyright infringement,[12] as well as concern about its content representing a sexual assault.

Joel May, a Sarasota architect and a member of the city's public art committee, raised an issue of possible copyright infringement, because of the similarity of the sculpture to V–J day in Times Square, published in Life in 1945 and still protected by copyright. Johnson asserted that he was aware of this issue, and had used another photograph of the kissing couple taken by Victor Jorgensen, which is in the public domain.[13] The attorney for the municipal government said that the attorneys for Johnson and the donor had fulfilled the requirements set by the city commission, making way for exhibition of the statue for at least ten years.[14]

An automobile crash occurred on April 26, 2012,[15] during which the Sarasota copy of the statue was struck by a vehicle and was damaged. The impact knocked an approximately 3-foot-wide hole in the sailor's foot and added hairline cracks to its frame. This led to the statue being taken down by the city,[16] which laid the statue onto its side, close to the site, while insurance companies negotiated over liability and repair issues. The minimum distance for a road hazard established by the state of Florida is fourteen feet, but the location barely met that standard because it was erected near one of the busiest and most complex intersections in the city.[citation needed] The statue attracted visitors who gathered around the base and often backed up to the curb to take photographs. No one was present when the automobile jumped the curb and careened into the statue.

Debate about returning the statue to that location ensued, with an editorial calling for moving the statue to a safer location, as had been advocated by critics before the statue was placed for the controversial ten-year display.[17] The statue was re-erected near the Sarasota shoreline in December 2012.[18] Similar controversy was occurring in California. In March 2012, the San Diego Unified Port District voted to purchase a permanent bronze replacement for the loaner. This controversial move resulted in the resignation of three board members.[9][19] Despite the controversy, construction of the new weather-resistant bronze statue proceeded,[20][21] in part due to a fundraising campaign by the Midway Museum that raised US$1 million.[22]

Controversy leads to tagging as sexual assault

Unconditional Surrender has been a topic of controversy many times, both pro and con, but in 2019,[23] after the man thought to be the subject of the original photograph, V-J Day in Times Square died and media coverage that followed made it better known that the woman thought to be the other subject was not known to the sailor depicted and had related that it was not consensual, controversy over the statue gained new momentum with more accusations that it depicts a sexual assault. The day after his death,[24] the statue in Sarasota was vandalised with #MeToo graffiti.[25] A tweet from the police department stated late one evening that they had dispatched officers to the statue in response to a report that "Unconditional Surrender" had been vandalized. When officers arrived, they saw the large words, "#MeToo", painted in red on the left leg of the woman. The police noted later that they were uncertain of the time of the tagging because no surveillance cameras captured the activity and there were no reports of witnesses.[26]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconditi ... sculpture)

[Witness]

After hurricane Andrew: