Meet Doug Hughes, Great American Hero. (Oh wait, you already have.) Mr. Doug is a dedicated public servant and self-proclaimed Showman Patriot, a 61-year-old mailman from Ruskin, Florida (no, we have no idea where that is), who decided to combat the scourge of excess campaign money (which is definitely A Thing That Deserves To Be Combatted) by hopping in his gyrocopter (A Thing That Also Apparently Exists) and flying to the nation’s Capitol. Hughes wanted to drop off a letter to each of the 535 members of Congress telling them they could just go fuck the fuck off if they didn’t want to combat corruption, just like Thomas Jefferson would ... even though he was going through restricted Washington DC airspace:
After 2½ years of planning, Hughes came hovering low over the buildings of northeast D.C. about 1:20 p.m., like a distant bird. He rounded the Washington Monument a few minutes later, flew straight up the expanse of the National Mall and brought his small craft down right in front of the Capitol, where he was quickly surrounded by police and surrendered without incident.The flight stunned police, Secret Service and witnesses. Authorities briefly shut down the Capitol as a security measure. The incident brought out dozens of reporters and cameras from national media outlets — exactly what Hughes had hoped for. Hughes, who sees himself as a sort of showman patriot, a mix of Paul Revere and P.T. Barnum, wanted to do something so big and brazen that it would hijack the news cycle and turn America's attention toward his pet issue: campaign finance reform.
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Were it up to South Carolina’s confirmed-bachelor senator, Lindsey Graham, Hughes would have been blasted from the sky, because terrorism. Graham explained to radio wingnut Hugh Hewitt that, because "our nation is under siege," they should have just shot him down! Under siege from mailmen in gyrocopters? Yes, Senator Graham, we so do want you to be in charge of the Pentagon under President Ted Cruz, we are very much looking forward to that.
As it turns out, Hughes was not coy about his intentions. Last year, he contacted the Tampa Bay Times to tell them exactly what he was going to do, and also told the newspaper that he had told the Secret Service dudes who showed up at his house (twice) after SOMEONE went and tattled on him:
The first visit, Hughes told the Times, came one night last spring at about 1 a.m. The agent was accompanied by a Hillsborough County sheriff's deputy. In a statement issued to media outlets Wednesday, the Secret Service said it interviewed Hughes on Oct. 5, 2013, and that a "complete and thorough investigation was conducted." [...]Someone inside his circle of secrecy had reported him, telling the Secret Service that Hughes was talking about committing a daring act of civil disobedience that also happened to be a federal crime.
Anyway, this, the fact that Hughes had alerted the media well beforehand, and that the Times only deigned to give authorities a half-hour’s notice once he was in the air, caused a fair amount of very earnest handwringing, given that the Times is owned by The Poynter Institute, which exists ONLY to wring its hands about the Future of Journalism.
The Washington Post was ON IT:
If a reporter and his newspaper know in advance — months in advance, as it turns out — that a man intended to undertake a stunt that could sow panic in the nation’s capital, are they obligated to alert law enforcement authorities? And should they be faulted for not doing so until the last minute?
Yes, say all the Very Serious Journalist Ethics People the Post contacted. To which the Times replied that "the rationale for the article's timing on Hughes's mission was simple: 'If he chickens out, we don't have a story.'"
Florida logic is the BEST logic.
Flakka Makes Us Hump a Tree, Like We Don’t Do That Anyway
We’ve told you before about Flakka, the new drug-type-thing that is, according to the po-po, sweeping our otherwise beautiful state and leading to all sorts of weird and strange behaviors that are completely abnormal here the rest of the time.
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Well, here is its latest victim/perp: Kenneth Crowder, who is 41 and needs a goddamn haircut, hippie, was all doped up on the stuff when he
was spotted by witnesses running naked through a Melbourne neighborhood, yelling that he was a god before committing a sexual act on a tree.
He then attacked the cops who came out to arrest him, as you do:
A Melbourne police officer went to the area and confronted Crowder, who was wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt, officials said.Crowder walked toward the officer in an aggressive manner and identified himself as God, according to police.
The officer used a Taser on Crowder, but he pulled the probes out of his body and continued to fight, police said. Crowder was shocked a second time, but he again pulled out the probes and went at the officer with clenched fists, according to police.
The officer punched Crowder in the face and a scrum ensued, with Crowder saying that he was Thor and trying to stab the officer with the officer's badge, police said.
No, dude, if you were Thor you’d have that hammer thing and be trying to space-bone Natalie Portman, not humping a tree and trying to stab a cop with a badge in Florida. Pull it together.
Speaking of Deities
The city of Jacksonville, which is basically South Georgia, a land of rednecks that gave us Rick Scott as governor twice (thanks guys), has this prime piece of riverfront real estate, which, though just a smidge environmentally contaminated, is poised to become the centerpiece of Jacksonville’s efforts to try to make SOMEONE care about its downtown, which no one really cares about. Why? Because Jacksonville is a soulless hellspawn of white flight and suburban sprawl. Anyway. Rant over. Where were we? Oh, right, so the city is trying to entice developers to do their thing, and the leading candidate is Jacksonville Jaguars owner (and the mayor’s sugar daddy) Shad Khan, who, in fairness, has a totally boss mustache, see:
But he is not the only candidate. A late entrant is a company called In Him LLC, based in a Jacksonville trailer park (OF COURSE) and run by a guy named Stephen Grenda, who has an absolutely serious, divinely inspired plan:
“We’re in the last days. The sun’s been blotted out. God wants to make a final stand,” Grenda said.Grenda said that God has chosen him to develop the shipyards and wants to build a replica of Noah’s Ark.
That’s not all, though! Grenda goes on to say, "yeah, there's also going to be a healing temple there, and there's going to be nurses, close to two nurses ... [And a] volleyball court. I love volleyball."
CLOSE TO TWO nurses AND volleyball? Sign. Us. Up!
He’s not quite sure how he’s going to pay for all this, but that’s OK, because the Lord will provide. And maybe he’ll set up a GoFundMe account, which seems to be all the rage.
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Squirrel!
Here’s a very Florida headline: Florida Man Warned About Stalking Nuisance Squirrels, Police Say:
Melbourne police warned a resident not to stalk or hunt nuisance squirrels after he killed at least one of the scurrying creatures before taking a request to eliminate another from a neighbor.Police received calls about 10 a.m. Sunday concerning a man with a BB gun walking in the area of St. Marks Avenue, just south of Parkway Drive. The man told police he believed the squirrels were a growing nuisance in the area, officers said.
The cops say this sort of call is unusual, but the cops have been known to lie.
Squirrelly Motherfucker!
Sith Lord Rick Scott stuck his bald, oblong-shaped head out long enough to embarrass himself again this week, because it is a week. This time, your favorite Florida governor who is not Jeb Bush was going to stick it to Obamacare, by suing Obama for not giving him the money for the Obamacare that he refuses to implement because tyranny:
“It is appalling that President (Barack) Obama would cut off federal health care dollars to Florida in an effort to force our state further into Obamacare,” Scott said in a statement. […]The agency targeted by the lawsuit — the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS — is still deciding whether to renew a $2.2 billion program called the Low Income Pool that helps Florida hospitals treat low-income patients. And if no LIP dollars are awarded, Florida could be looking at a $1.3 billion budget gap.
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And if there’s a $1.3 billion budget gap, that would mean No Tax Cuts. Sadface. Of course, this wouldn’t be a problem if Rick Scott would just TAKE THE FUCKING MONEY AND EXTEND MEDICAID TO THE POORS, like he is supposed to. But he will not, because Freedom, etc. Also, Rick Scott is an asshole. See, there’s even a bumper sticker:
And In Other Dickbag Florida Governor News
Jeb!™, the “smart” Bush, got gabby with the good Christianists at Focus on the Family, who took a break from telling The Gays that they are going to roast in hell forever because God is Love, to discuss one of the very finest moments of his governorship. As we Wonksplained:
Jeb actually bragged about his meddling from the governor’s mansion in the case of Terri Schiavo, the poor Florida woman who fell into a vegetative state after collapsing from unexplained reasons in 1990. Thirteen years later, after watching her languish in hospice in a state of living death for over a decade, her husband and legal guardian, Michael, decided to remove her feeding tube, allowing her the dignity of peacefully dying over the indignity of “living” for another 40 years as basically just a bunch of involuntary nervous system functions being turned occasionally to avoid bed sores.
You’ll recall that Jeb, who is positioning himself as the Sensible, Not Crazy Republican, had the legislature pass a very special law giving him the authority to overrule a family’s medical decisions and reinsert a feeding tube into a woman IN A VEGETATIVE STATE, because something something sanctity of life.
Oh, and here was another highlight:
Jeb was so certain that meddling from the highest levels of government into a private family matter was a political winner, he even got his brother, then “the president,” to fly home from a vacation to sign legislation permitting Terri’s parents to reinsert her feeding tube as she was already being allowed to peacefully die.
Eventually the courts told the Brothers Bush where to fuck right off, and Terri Schiavo was allowed to slip peacefully into that good night, which of course desanctified all life everywhere but gave Jeb!™ a chance to remind Christianists about that one time he was a good Catholic Christian warrior.
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And then there’s Marco “Polo” Rubio, Jeb!™’s understudy, who announced this week that he wants to be president, too! Rubio, a vacuous cipher who came into the Senate riding that Tea Party wave in all its glory, is not about to cede the Jesus to his old mentor:
As detailed in a report for Truth Wins Out by researcher Bruce Wilson, Rubio has been, in an act of meta-pandering, pretty much every kind of Christian there is. Follow this bouncing Jesus ball if you can: Rubio was baptized Catholic, cheated on the Catholics with the Mormons as a kid, but turned back three years later. Then he cheated on the Pope again sometime just before 9/11, for four years, with an insanely conservative Baptist church, but then he went back to Catholicism. But he never stopped two-timing the Virgin Mary with the Baptists. Make sense? Not really!
Oh, and that not-Catholic church he goes to on Saturday nights is full-on, Ted Cruz’s Daddy-style crazypants.
So we see that Rubio is in an open relationship with the Lord. He’s married to Catholic Jesus, from whom he gets his legislative inspiration, but he gets Saturday nights with the hot, demon-wrasslin’, gay-bashin’ young earth creationist Jesus, at the Christ Fellowship in Miami, to which he has reportedly given over $50,000 over the years.
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That’s all for this week, Florida. Keep wrestlin’ those demons.
