Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

If you can’t control your emotions, someone else will.

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

the 10% who apparently lack object permanence

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

American history and black history cannot be separated.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

“Perhaps I should have considered other options.” (head-desk)

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Petty moves from a petty man.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

Trump should be leading, not lying.

“I was told there would be no fact checking.”

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

You are here: Home / Economics / Grifters Gonna Grift / Late Night Open Thread: Ah, Florida

Late Night Open Thread: Ah, Florida

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Yes, I am trespassing on Betty’s turf, because who could resist? Reports NYMag:

And here we thought hate-mongering Florida pastor Terry Jones had gotten Koran-burning out of his system when he finally set one alight in 2011, leading to major unrest in Afghanistan, where protesters stormed the United Nations compound and killed people. Hardly. On Wednesday, Sheriff’s deputies in Mulberry, Florida, pulled over a truck Jones was riding in, which was towing a smoker grill stuffed with 2,998 copies of the Muslim holy book. The books, which Jones and an associate pastor at his church had planned to burn in a park north of Mulberry to mark the anniversary of 9/11, had been doused in kerosene. The sheriff’s deputies arrested him on “felony charges of unlawful conveyance of fuel and open display of a firearm,” the Tampa Tribune reports…

Reader Interactions

77Comments

  5. 5.

    Chris

    Bracing myself for Glenn Reynolds’ inevitable post about the arrest by literally brown-shirted fascists with Obama instigating it all behind the scenes.

  9. 9.

    jl

    The mess didn’t catch fire by itself before they arrested him. Truly, The LORD looks after Pastor Terry Jones (including him getting is ass arrested).,

  10. 10.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @kc:

    They’re used to smoke hogs. The pastor probably thought that would be a nice touch.

    Is he that bright? Or did he just grab the thing behind his house?

    ETA: About a way to be insulting? He probably did it intentionally.

  11. 11.

    Tommy

    I am confused. Who are these folks?

    Small not so liberal town. We voted 67% for McCain. I live in southern Illinois.

    The folks from Westboro Baptist Church came here a few years ago for a funeral and hundreds of folks showed up with poster boards to block them off from the funeral. Conservatives, liberals, you name it. They didn’t last a few minutes.

  16. 16.

    Percysowner

    @kc:

    They’re used to smoke hogs.

    And Turkey Legs. I love smoked Turkey Legs. I do think he grabbed the first thing he saw where he could start and shut the lid to prevent people from putting their hands over the fire to stop him from burning Korans. I guess he learned from his mistakes. Fortunately he just goes and makes more mistakes.

  20. 20.

    Tommy

    @Amir Khalid: Sad, but of course it is. A few years ago the local newspaper in my area, a Knight Ridder pub, had to shut down comments for a year cause folks were mad that a local AD at a highschool, beloved by many (myself included) used a public school for his wake.

    I live in a small town, it was the only place where 1,000 plus people could pay respect.

    Things went to hell in the comments. I can be a total dick, I mean over-the-top dick, but if I spent a week or so I could not have been as mean as what happened in those comments.

  21. 21.

    Chris

    @Tommy:

    Feh. The WBC is one of the few groups so right wing that it’s equally hated on both sides of the aisle. Our side, because they’re homophobic fuckwads. The other side, because their homophobia goes so far that they consider the U.S. military tainted by association and troll their funerals. If they stopped doing it to the military and just stuck to trolling the funerals of clear-cut liberals, no one on the right would give a shit.

  22. 22.

    kc

    The sumbitch didn’t have lights hooked up on the trailer. I hate getting behind some asshole towing a trailer with no lights, especially when it’s filled with kerosene-soaked books.

  23. 23.

    burnspbesq

    The interesting story in non-US sports involves a guy I’d never heard of until today, Wladimir Balentien. He’s from Curacao, he had a very forgettable three years in major league baseball, and last night he tied Sadaharu Oh’s Japanese single-season home run record of 55, with 21 games to go.

    Twice before, a Westerner has tied Oh’s record, only to see pitchers stop giving them any opportunities to break it. It’ll be interesting to see if there’s been enough progress in race/ethnic relations so that they will pitch to Balentien.

    Wanna see 55 home runs in less than three minutes?

    http://www.sbnation.com/mlb/2013/9/12/4722524/55-wladimir-balentien-home-run-record-japan

    44 and 54 are completely ridiculous.

  29. 29.

    Suffern ACE

    Why would you douse them in kerosene before you got to the park? Isn’t that kind of tempting fate that a stray cigarette wouldn’t start them burning early?

  35. 35.

    mdblanche

    Between Chunky Bobo’s new colleague Vladimir Putin becoming a media darling to left, right, and center, the want-witted pyromaniacs in Congress glancing at the world economy with that glint in their eyes, an asparagus-brained delegation of said want-wits visiting Egypt to swap conspiracy theories with the locals, and literal pyromania like this, it seems like lately the crazy has been ratcheting up to levels that risk causing damage on a global scale.

  41. 41.

    Tommy

    @lamh36: I thought the exact same. I could pull those off if I had to. But I wouldn’t.

    Look I am not a prude. In another world …….

    But my gosh I could not imagine my little girl wearing cloths like that. 18 or so, do as you want. Under that not so much.

    I recall wanting to get my ear pierced in like 1984 as a dude. I didn’t like it at the time, but my dad said to me:

    Sure do it, then sleep in the driveway until the hole closes.

    He wasn’t joking …..

  43. 43.

    handy

    @Amir Khalid:

    About par for the course, actually. Which, to extend the analogy a bit further, would place the Yahoo news comments section right about Bethpage Black.

  45. 45.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @lamh36:

    Although I suspect she’ll just stop wearing short shorts where dad or mom can see her…

    It is my view that you can’t stop kids from doing things. If it is silly clothes, piercings, or haircuts, let them. Look back through your pics. Anything you regret? But wasn’t it cool then? Then again, I am an uncle not a parent.

  47. 47.

    Punchy

    @Redshirt: And therein lies the scheme to make millions. Set up a Koran store a block away from Pastor Terrys Hate Festy. Advertise you can sell them in bulk quantities. Also sell gasoline and C4. Watch the ducats roll in.

  50. 50.

    TriassicSands

    I’m an atheist, so religious people of every stripe seem just a little silly to me. I understand why people would want to have an all-powerful, caring God, I just can’t figure out why anyone would think one actually exists. (This doesn’t mean I can’t or don’t respect people who have religious faith.)

    On the other hand, just believing in God isn’t necessarily bad and people have done lots of good things in the name of their own religions. I’d like to think they could have done those same things even if they acknowledged we live in a godless (and Godless) universe. But people who feel the need to burn another religion’s holy book(s) seem to me to be fundamentally lacking in confidence in the rightness of their own beliefs. Worse still, the notion that it is one’s religious duty to harm or even kill people who are “unbelievers” — sure they believe, but not the right things — is something only some of the absolute worst human beings imaginable.could accept. It’s depressing to think how many people alive today qualify for that description.

  51. 51.

    Suffern ACE

    @Omnes Omnibus: I’m spiking mine with peanut dust, shrimp tails and gluten. I’m tired of these food allergy folks! Tired I say. Remember when you used to fly an they’d hand you a free bag of scallops?

  52. 52.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @TriassicSands:

    Worse still, the notion that it is one’s religious duty to harm or even kill people who are “unbelievers” — sure they believe, but not the right things — is something only some of the absolute worst human beings imaginable.could accept.

    That’s really the problem, isn’t it? Unless it is a fight over fundamental survival – I get this piece of meat and live or you get it and I die – there shouldn’t be fights like this over belief. But some people figure they are necessary.

  54. 54.

    Ahh says fywp

    Jones is a pathological narcissist who enjoys the control he has over his pathetic, deluded followers.

    Charged with a felony? About damn time.. I hope he gets a couple of months behind bars. Nasty pieces of work like him don’t do well when they are victim rather than victimizer.

    Sad thing he still has a few friends in the Christian community despite being a serial hipster con who was kicked out of Germany for stealing from his church, sued in Florida for theft of wages (plaintiff lost, bc Florida… he wwas telling truth but the conduct wasn’t illegal), and run out of Gainesville when the county caught on to his tax evasion racket (student journalists at UF caught him).

    But no true Christian, etc.

  55. 55.

    cckids

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    It is my view that you can’t stop kids from doing things. If it is silly clothes, piercings, or haircuts, let them. Look back through your pics. Anything you regret? But wasn’t it cool then? Then again, I am an uncle not a parent.

    My dad always had a rule (for the 7 of us kids), that our hair, clothes, etc. were up to us as long as it wasn’t: 1) permanent, 2) obscene, or 3) illegal.

    It worked for us; I adopted it for my kids. It saves lots of fighting about all this temporary crap. None of us ever thought up an item that realistically fit #3, which is just as well.

  56. 56.

    RobertDSC-Power Mac G5 Dual

    Grotesquely off topic and if you aren’t a Mac person, just skip on by. Thank you. :)

    A few weeks back, I mentioned my Mac G4 tinkering and someone chimed in with the news that they owned several Mac G4 Cubes. I can’t remember who it was who said that, but if anyone remembers who it was, I would appreciate it if they could answer one question:

    If you have a set of functional speakers, would you be willing to sell them to me?

    I’ve had so much trouble in trying to get the Pro Speakers to work under 10.4.11 in a consistent manner. The latest problem is that the Mac will turn on, start up, play the startup chime, then won’t load the login screen. On a lark, I tried using a duplicate copy of 10.5.8 on this Mac and the machine boots up and loads the login screen. I log in and the Mac takes a minute to figure out that the Pro Speakers are there and are functional. After dismissing a dialog box saying that the software can’t recognize what’s in the port, the Speakers work just fine.

    I don’t want to use Leopard with this Mac but that’s the only way I get the Pro Speakers to work. 10.4.11 won’t work and I’m tired of messing with it. A Griffin iFire is too expensive and after some Google digging, I found the Cube Speakers. They have a USB input that fits in the ADC-version Cinema Displays I use for my Macs. If anyone has these speakers and they work, I’m interested in buying them.

  57. 57.

    ? Martin

    @RobertDSC-Power Mac G5 Dual:

    If you have a set of functional speakers, would you be willing to sell them to me?

    That was me. How fortuitous I came back to this thread.

    Let me check and see if we still have a set. I think they’re all gone though. Kids used them on their systems and the exposed diaphrams got broken on at least a few of them. I’ll have my son go through the collection tomorrow after work. But if we have any, they’re yours.

  58. 58.

    Central Planning

    If he’s going to smoke 3000 Qu’rans, I want in on the grift. I want to print 3000 Qu’ran-looking books and sell them to this guy.

    The text won’t actually be from the holy book, but perhaps Arabic repeating “Terry Jones is a dick.” I’m sure he doesn’t read Arabic.

    What could go wrong?

  59. 59.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Chris:

    Feh. The WBC is one of the few groups so right wing that it’s equally hated on both sides of the aisle.

    WBC is purely a scam to generate lawsuites. Basically they get in people’s faces, insult them until they lash out then sue them.

  60. 60.

    gnomedad

    I’m happy this guy was stopped because it probably saved some lives, but it’s disturbing free speech-wise. I’m hoping the ACLU unsuccessfully defends him.

    Returning to snark mode, Obama wants to take away your Korans! Or barbecues! Or something.

  61. 61.

    burnspbesq

    @gnomedad:

    I’m hoping the ACLU unsuccessfully defends him.

    As an ACLU member, I hope they’ve got other priorities.

    I also think that the charges that he’s facing don’t provide any room for a First Amendment defense. The law about conveyance of fuel has a legitimate, safety-related rationale, and it certainly looks like a “neutral law of general applicability,” to use the magic mumbo-jumbo from the Supreme Court’s opinion in Employment Division v. Smith.

  62. 62.

    Randy P

    @gnomedad: He wasn’t doing any free-speechifyin’ while driving. Which makes me wonder what he was doing that raised enough suspicion for a cop to pull him over. Sure the smoker full of Molotov cocktails (in effect) was a safety hazard. But that wouldn’t have been obvious. Why was he stopped in the first place?

  63. 63.

    gnomedad

    @burnspbesq:
    @Randy P:
    True enough; it’s like this guy wanted to be stopped, which seems a little convenient. Then again, this is Florida we’re talking about, so presumably he wasn’t busted just for being a crazy winger.

  69. 69.

    KrisWV

    @Omnes Omnibus: You young whippersnappers! In the late 70’s everyone male and female under 25 wore shorts like that all summer long. When you cut off your jeans, the cut line was no lower than the bottom of the pocket. Also, old basketball uniforms were that short.

    Now get off my lawn.

  70. 70.

    PaulW

    @Central Planning:

    If he’s going to smoke 3000 Qu’rans, I want in on the grift. I want to print 3000 Qu’ran-looking books and sell them to this guy.

    The text won’t actually be from the holy book, but perhaps Arabic repeating “Terry Jones is a dick.” I’m sure he doesn’t read Arabic.

    What could go wrong?

    Maybe a few copies getting accidentally shipped off to Pakistan? You’ll have Muslims reading “Terry Jones is a Dick” in their holiest of works.

    (pause)

    Actually that might work. Go for it.

  72. 72.

    gbear

    @Botsplainer:

    It’s almost as if God is telling them to do things in the most incompetent way possible. Pulling an unregistered trailer with no lights and not chained to the vehicle; refusing to apply for a permit for a rally in a county park because they figured they’s be turned down anyway; these guys just screw up the details that anybody else would find a no-brainer. Then they blame everyone else when they get called on it.

    Is this the guy who was going to burn a Koran but some dude yanked it out of his hand and ran away with it while he was waving it around?

  76. 76.

    The Other Chuck

    Guy probably funded a mosque’s community operations for a few months after buying all those Korans. Way to go Terry, and w’asalaam alaikum to you too :)

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