Florida, where we love the criminally insane, especially when they build firing ranges in their front yard

Oh Florida, where we can't wait to pave over paradise and the right for every idiot to own a shooting iron Trumps every other right like not getting killed by psychopaths using their Second Amendment rights.

So this absolutely batshit crazy gun nut--Joseph "Compensating for Small Cock" Carannate--after hammering a couple of bottles of cheap booze thought it a fine idea to build small gun target backed up by sand in his front yard, next to houses where other children play.

Obviously, the right of neighboring kids to live pales next to the right of an asshole to avoid driving drunk to a local firing range and instead just to bust off caps on his own property.

So, the ass wipe neighbor built the target to the most exacting standards by getting a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon By God Beer and get some gap toothed Confederate flag flying friends to help him slap it up.  That way he could just step outside and blast off a few rounds, practicing for fighting off the Islamic fascist hordes 'cause real Americans don't take no shit from no hordes.

Also, who wants the hassle of driving to a gun range?  With a home range you can just roll out of bed bleary eyed, pop a beer, and walk outside, and blast away.  And Florida law, handcrafted by the National Rifle Association, makes it all legal.

Yay, smell the gunpowder and freedom!

Beause you know, what could possibly go wrong?

http://freakoutnation.com/2015/02/neighbors-upset-about-florida-gun-nuts-front-yard-shooting-range/

Don't Move to Florida

Sure come to visit and spend your hard earned ducats, euros, and dollars to keep our low wage service economy going, but please don't plan on coming to live.

We will soon run out of water; ever' damn body has a gun and can't wait to stand their ground, and we have crooks aglore, some seemingly too stupid to even breathe.

Things get weird in a hurry down here.

It would help to be crazy to live here, but you gotta embrace the strange: such as the cutest convict or actual flesh eating zombies, and sinkholes swallowing our penninsula.

Rule # 1, cardio.

"Sinkholes illustrate an interesting point: In some cases, what we call natural disasters actually aren't. Florida's sinkhole problem is partially due to a shrinking water table, caused by millions of thirsty citizens. To its credit, the state is looking for alternatives for potable water, and is actually a global leader in desalination. But desalination remains an extremely expensive, energy-inefficient process of turning saltwater into consumable water."  emphasis added

http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/floridas-sinkhole-problem-is-one-part-of-americas-looming-water-woes

Poor but Not Poor Enough: Life among the working poor in FL

[BY CARLA K. JOHNSON AND KELLI KENNEDY
ASSOCIATED PRESS

MIAMI -- Sandra Pico is poor, but not poor enough.

She makes about $15,000 a year, supporting her daughter and unemployed husband. She thought she'd be able to get health insurance after the Supreme Court upheld President Barack Obama's health care law.

Then she heard that her own governor won't agree to the federal plan to extend Medicaid coverage to people like her in two years. So she expects to remain uninsured, struggling to pay for her blood pressure medicine.

"You fall through the cracks and there's nothing you can do about it," said the 52-year-old home health aide. "It makes me feel like garbage, like the American dream, my dream in my homeland is not being accomplished."

Many working parents like Pico are below the federal poverty line but don't qualify for Medicaid, a decades-old state-federal insurance program. That's especially true in states where conservative governors say they'll reject the Medicaid expansion under Obama's health law.

In South Carolina, a yearly income of $16,900 is too much for Medicaid for a family of three. In Florida, $11,000 a year is too much. In Mississippi, $8,200 a year is too much. In Louisiana and Texas, earning more than just $5,000 a year makes you ineligible for Medicaid.

Governors in those five states have said they'll reject the Medicaid expansion underpinning Obama's health law after the Supreme Court's decision gave states that option. They favor small government and say they can't afford the added cost to their states even if it's delayed by several years. Some states estimate the expansion could ultimately cost them a billion dollars a year or more.

Many of the people affected by the decision are working parents who are poor - but not poor enough - to qualify for Medicaid.]
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/08/14/2951034/anti-medicaid-states-earning-11000.html#storylink=misearch

FL: Better Robbbed Over Phone Than By Gunpoint

[The revelation that more than 10,000 convicted criminals have been welcomed with open arms into Florida's mortgage industry is shocking, even in light of the state's sleazy, anything-goes history.

At first blush, things look bad for the Office of Financial Regulation and its commissioner, Don Saxon, whose long nap was harshly interrupted by last week's headlines.

And although it's tempting to view this story as just another embarrassing validation of Florida's reputation as the most crooked and most screwed-up place in America, there might be an upside to the scandal...

But let's look at it another way -- not as horrendous bureaucratic incompetence, but rather as a daring, innovative way of diverting and retraining Florida's inexhaustible supply of felons...

Isn't it better to be robbed over the phone than at gunpoint?]
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/columnists/carl-hiaasen/story/618353.html

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."