Category — Florida

United For Care is a Florida group lobbying for medical marijuana in Florida. They have had no luck with the Florida legislature, so they have turned to the petition process to get it on the ballot.

Having declined to bring it up in the legislature, the Legivermins [the larval stage of Congresscritter] are attacking the petition’s purpose and intent. According to UFC, House Speaker Will Weatherford said the amendment would put “marijuana shops on every corner”.

I guess no one has told him that that is the current system of distribution the illegal product. Medical marijuana requires a doctor’s prescription, not just a note from the US Treasury.

Actually medical marijuana would create a lot of jobs in Florida, because the Feds prohibit it moving across state lines. The marijuana would have to be grown, processed, and dispensed within the state, with cheap foreign imports totally illegal. Medical marijuana has to be of a known and consistent potency, like any other drug, so this is not something for a couple of ‘Dead heads to try in a hidden patch of a state or national forest. I can imagine that it will initially be a green house operation for both control and security.

The state controls will probably be similar to those for distilleries with everyone involved having to submit to background checks to keep out the criminal element.

Just legalizing marijuana would be a better move, as you could tax the hell out of it, significantly reduce the load on courts and prisons, and hurt the drug cartels – what’s not to like?

CBS reports that in the center of the Florida Peninsula:

Polk County sheriff’s deputies arrested Pastor Terry Jones, 61, and his associate pastor, Marvin Sapp Jr., 44, each on a felony charge of unlawful conveyance of fuel as they travelled in a pickup truck towing a large barbecue-style grill filled with Qurans soaked in kerosene. Jones had said he was heading to a nearby park to burn 2,998 Qurans — one for every victim of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Sheriff’s officials said that Jones was also charged with unlawful open-carry of a firearm, a misdemeanor, and that Sapp faces a charge of having no valid registration for the trailer.

This clown received his notoriety for staged burnings of Qurans at his double-wide ‘cathedral’ up in Gainesville, Florida. Apparently the locals felt that his activities were affecting UF Gators football, so he has left and is now in Central Florida on the I-4 Corridor.

When I look at those charges I know that he gave a traffic cop a hard time. Polk County hasn’t voted for a Democrat for President since LBJ, so it isn’t some ‘liberal conspiracy’, it is a PO’ed police officer. Flammable liquids, as most people do not know are required to be carried in a Department of Transportation approved container when being transported on a highway. A barbecue grill does not qualify. A charge like that requires research, so the officer was not happy with Brother Jones. The other charges were thrown in just to up the bond required.

I assume that the trailer and contents were seized as evidence, that would be the procedure for a felony arrest.

So Pam Bondi ran for Florida Attorney General based on being tough on criminals. One of her signature issues was to reduce the time from being convicted of a crime and given the death sentence and having that sentence carried out. She was going to eliminate all of the ‘unnecessary delays’ caused by defendants getting stays of execution.

Floridians now know that she has added a new justification for a stay of execution: to accommodate her reelection fundraiser.

A man convicted of multiple murders and rapes was give a three-week stay because the execution date would interfere with Ms Bondi’s reelection launch. This is her idea of doing her job.

I was sure we were going to make it, but although we had sprinkles, drizzle, and brief shower today, we missed quadrupling our average rainfall for the month of July, coming up with only 23 inches.

The local produce is terrible. The tomatoes have fungus, the watermelons are tasteless [more water than melon], lots of things were just washed out.

The local seafood is affected by the over-abundance of fresh water pouring in from the flooded rivers and streams, as well as the runoff from the roads.

About the only things that are thriving are mosquitoes.

So I was going to complain yesterday about having received a foot of rain this month, but other things intruded. So now I’m going to complain about having had a foot and a half of rain this month, when we used to average 6 inches of rain for all of July, usually because a tropical storm came through.

We got 5½ of those inches tonight between 6:15 and 7:15PM from a line of thunderstorms that passed through. There might have been thunder, but I didn’t hear any over the sound of all the water hitting the roof.

Tomorrow I hope it clears long enough for me to get a picture of the lichen growing on my mailbox. It is the same lichen you normally see on live oaks, but there it is on a white metal mailbox, nominally out in direct sunlight.

We have to do something to slow down climate change.

Note: Frog with ‘umbrella’ stolen from Naked Capitalism.

US 98, the main East-West route along the beaches in the Panhandle is closed at Panama City until some time tomorrow because a QF-4 drone crashed on take-off from Tyndall AFB this morning. The road goes through Tyndall.

The QF-4 is a conversion of the F-4 Phantom, and is used as a target for weapons systems. As a safety measure the aircraft has a detonation charge that can be remotely activated if the ground loses control. They don’t know if that charge went off when the aircraft crashed, so they are closing the road to prevent any risk.

They had to use the charge to destroy another QF-4 last week over the Gulf, because it decided to wander off course.

US-98 over here goes through Hurlburt Field and an Eglin AFB facility on the local barrier island.

1. Stand Your Ground played no part in the trial of George Zimmerman, it was the excuse used by the local prosecutor for not filing charges when the crime occurred. Zimmerman’s attorneys used the standard Self-Defense provisions of the law.

2. The Prosecution filed the wrong charge against Zimmerman, even though they lacked the evidence to prove it. This is the second time recently that prosecutors in Florida have gone to trial with unprovable charges and lost the case because they couldn’t prove it beyond reasonable doubt. They are getting as bad as the Los Angeles district attorneys.

3. Zimmerman could have and should have been charged with Manslaughter. Manslaughter was included in jury instructions, but the prosecutors didn’t explain to the jury how the facts in the case corresponded to the elements of the law.

4. The Judge is restricted to explaining the law, she could not tell the jury how that law applied to the current case, as the judge must remain impartial.

Manslaughter would have been a short, straight-forward trial. Trayvon Martin was dead, and George Zimmerman killed him. That was never the question, that was a fact. The prosecutors should have used that great legal fiction, “the reasonable man”, to show that Zimmerman caused the death of Martin by failing to act “reasonably”. There were several points on the night of the incident when, if Zimmerman had done the “reasonable” thing, there would have been no confrontation with Martin and no death.

The prosecutors had a case they could have proven with the evidence they had, most of it supplied by Zimmerman, but they decided to go for the ‘big win’ because CNN was going to cover it. This was never about the death of Trayvon Martin, this was about the political aspirations of the prosecutors. Justice was not served.

I see all of these people making disparaging remarks about the intelligence of the people in Florida and the state legislature over the 2013 changes that were made by House Bill 155 to § 849.16 [PDF link], for Chapter 849 (Gambling) of Title XLVI (Crimes) of the Florida statutes.

First off, this wasn’t a mistake, the changes accomplish exactly what they wanted to accomplish, and that includes seizing your computer or smartphone if you use them for ‘gambling’ as defined by the state of Florida. They are addressing what they perceive to be a serious loophole in the previous version of the law that came to light when the Feds raided several ‘Internet cafes’ in Florida as part of an interstate gambling investigation. That investigation led to the resignation of the state’s Lieutenant Governor, as she had worked as a public relations spokesperson for one of the groups involved in the Federal sweep.

There are plenty of legal ways to gamble in the state of Florida, and each of those ways has an industry lobbyist in Tallahassee to prevent any intrusions on their ‘turf’.

You should understand that the people who brought the lawsuit about these changes are part of the same group that created the problem – owners of ‘internet cafes’.

Update: I saw an example of one of the so-called problems with the law was someone using a smartphone to read a code for a manufacturer’s contest. That isn’t ‘gambling’ under Florida law, as explained in § 849.094 (Game promotion in connection with sale of consumer products or services.), so it isn’t applicable. As I seem to remember that this claim was made by the attorney for the plaintiff, maybe he should read the entire law – just a suggestion.

Note on the PDF file: The relevant changes are on the bottom of page 4 and top of page 5. The strike-throughs indicate text deleted from the previous law, and underlining indicate text that was inserted.

The National Weather Service in Mobile has issued a

* Flood Warning for Okaloosa County in northwest Florida until 1100 PM CDT Friday…

* High surf advisory now in effect until 7 PM CDT Saturday…

* High rip current risk now in effect through Saturday evening…

* Flash Flood Watch now in effect through Sunday morning…

* A strong thunderstorm will affect southern Okaloosa County in
northwest Florida through 115 PM CDT…

Update: There was a tornado East of me that came from that thunderstorm. It is still raining, but not as hard.

For those with an interest: gopherwood was probably cedar and a cubit is about 18 inches [elbow to the tip of your middle finger (hur,hur,hur…)].

The mushrooms have gotten moldy, and the mold has mildew on it. This has been going on for a week to the ‘delight’ of the local tourist industry.

It stopped raining long enough for the local fireworks display which took place inside the low lying clouds. They would save a lot of money if they just used a bank of subwoofers and a few lasers and projectors.

Needless to say it has been a while since I have seen any cats, inside or out.

In order to generate “local excitement” [sell stuff] the chamber of commerce is once again annoying people with the Billy Bowlegs Festival. This year the unavoidable part runs from Thursday, May 30^th and finishes up on Saturday. The really obnoxious parade on Thursday screws up traffic and sends a lot of noisy people through my neighborhood.

Almost at bad as the parade traffic jam are the Friday fireworks. I know a lot of people enjoy fireworks, but they probably have not seen what loud noises and flashes of light can do to people and aircraft – I am definitely not a fan.

With luck it will rain the rest of the week… 😈

That is one of a group of North American B-25 Mitchell bombers that took to local skies in celebration of the 71^st and final reunion of the Doolittle Raiders, the group and mission depicted in the movie, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo.

The Doolittle Raid was really a psychological warfare operation as it wasn’t able to actually damage much of Japan’s military effort, but it gave a boost to American morale, and pinned down a segment of the Japanese military to defend the home islands against further raids.

The Raid was originally scheduled for April 19^th, 1942, the anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, but at to be advanced because the aircraft carrier Hornet that was carrying the aircraft was spotted by a Japanese submarine.

The Reunion was held locally because the training for the Raid took place on Eglin Air Force Base. This is the last year because the few survivors are currently in their 90s.

A few years ago I wrote about a local whacko, who has turned his property on a major commercial street into an anti-Obama billboard [topped by the obligatory battle flag of the Army of Tennessee.]

Today I went by the main Post Office and on the right-of-way in front of it is some whacko with a collection of anti-Obama signs. If someone doesn’t stay with the signs, they will be gathered up and discarded, so he’s sitting out on the side of the road under a beach umbrella to show how much he hates the ‘Muslim Socialist’ who was just reelected President of the United States, including by the electorate of Florida.

No indication as to what the basis of impeaching Obama would be, but then, there doesn’t really have to be.

I am forced into agreeing with the editorial staff of my Local Puppy Trainer in their article: A new push for Gulf drilling. They actually looked at the facts of drilling in the Gulf, and the claims of the proponents to come to the conclusion that this is a really bad idea.

They are libertarians and normally overly pro-business, but they have been through some bad times: the bankruptcy of the syndicate that owned them and the Deepwater Horizon disaster. They were personally looking at the possibility of long-term unemployment if the paper failed.

They did what they were supposed do according to orthodox libertarian doctrine and it failed them miserably. They were in much better financial shape before being bought by the syndicate located in Orange County, California, which followed the standard model of putting profitable companies into debt to buy even more companies.

When you are dependent on advertizing and something like the BP oil spill brings economic activity to a halt just as you were starting to recover from the effects of the global financial meltdown, you really don’t want to hear drilling proponents talking about how ‘safe and worry-free’ drilling in the Gulf of Mexico really is.

The surprising thing for me is that they actually fact-checked the claims about the effects of increased domestic oil production and told people flat out that it has no effect on the cost of gasoline. We have had increased production for several years now, and the price of a gallon of gas it staying just below $4/gallon. The extra oil is being exported, not used in the US. Oil from the Alaskan North Slope has all been exported to Asia, not available for use in the US.

Drilling benefits oil companies, not the US, and certainly not Okaloosa County, Florida.

This week was the start of the Spring Break season on the Gulf Coast, when local tourist businesses start making some money, and local hiring edges up in the service industry.

Needless to say, what no one needed was a crane being pushed on a barge to slam into the bridge to the barrier island.

The water main to the island was busted, and there will have to be a complete inspection to see if the bridge can be repaired, or needs to be replaced, which would be a severe economic loss to the area. The bridge was constructed as two parallel structures, and only one was hit, but it was already over-capacity for a four-lane bridge, so limiting it to two lanes will be a traffic nightmare.

The island can be accessed via a second bridge at its eastern end, but almost all of the houses, hotels, and condos are built near the damaged bridge. Water taxis are going to be needed, and we don’t have any.

The crew of the ship pushing the barges is going to be having an uncomfortable discussion with the Coast Guard as to why the boom of the crane wasn’t lowered for transport.