Florida Follies: Huge Confederate Flag and Shot 68 Times

Nothing to do with a black man getting nominated for President of the United States. just honoring Jefferson Davis' birthday.

Huge Confederate flag is raised early along I-75 and I-4
By Jan Wesner and Andrew Meacham, Times Staff Writers
In print: Wednesday, June 4, 2008

TAMPA — Men [missing teeth and of limited mental capacity] driving pickups honked and flashed a thumbs-up sign. One yelled "Hell, yeah!" Another pumped his fist [the 1 not holding the beer] in the air.

Others, though, weren't nearly as pleased at the sight of a Confederate flag the size of a semitrailer truck flying Tuesday high above the junction of Interstates 75 and I4.

"It's huge and it's obnoxious," said Curtis Stokes, president of the Hillsborough County branch of the NAACP.

Organizers building a Civil War monument at the site said last week they hoped to fly the Confederate flag sometime next year. But they raised it shortly after sunrise Tuesday to mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Jefferson Davis, the only president of the Confederate States of America...

"I love it. It's gorgeous," said Tanya Heard [whose white ancestors used to own black people], 27, who lives nearby and pulled over to look up at the flag, along U.S. 92 in the Eureka Springs neighborhood just west of I-75.

The flag, which cost $800, was lowered at sundown and organizers said it won't go up again until the site is officially dedicated...[yesirree Bob, just a damn coincidence]...

Tampa resident Marion Lambert [an ignorant redneck cracker bitch], a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, paid $7,000 for the 0.19-acre site in January 2004. In February 2005, Lambert met with six planners from Hillsborough's Planning and Growth Management Department, who advised him how to prepare an application for a variance to build a monument.

In April 2005, county records show, a land use hearing officer approved Lambert's request for a lighted park with monuments and a flagpole "to commemorate American [and lynching. Jim Crow and segregation] veterans."

But no one in county government asked Lambert which veterans he planned to honor, or how...

While the flag's outline was visible from more than a mile away at some points, it was the view from the southbound lanes of I-75 that took drivers' breath away.

It was suddenly, jarringly there as drivers rounded a bend in the road and crested the I-4 overpass, and just as they came upon the exit sign that says "Martin Luther King Blvd. 1 mile." The flag made [Florida a national laughingstock] this week on CNN and Fox News...

[In an unrelated except in a desecration of what little passes for justice these days]

LAKELAND, Fla. -- The Department of Justice says SWAT team officers didn't use excessive force when they shot the suspected killer of a sheriff's deputy 68 times during a manhunt near Lakeland in 2006.

[68 freakin' times! How dead can you make someone? No trial for this dreadlocked (pic on newscast) cop killing nigra. Why he even shot the police dog! He's lucky we didn't shoot him 168 times.]

Angilo Freeland was the man believed to have fatally shot a Polk County deputy and his police dog. Nine officers fired on the 27-year-old after finding him hiding in the woods the next morning. They say a sudden movement by the suspect caused them to fire.

The Justice Department sent a letter to Sheriff Grady Judd this week saying an investigation had concluded that Freeland's civil rights had not been violated.

Don Brown, president of the local NAACP chapter, says he still believes the number of shots fired at Freeland was excessive. He called it "profoundly disturbing."