I found this on Pat Burns’s blog today. The original source seems to be Comedy.com back in February.

Okeechobee Veterinary Hospital staff holding snake (Tampa Bay Online)

Dallas Examiner:

Since July 17, authorities in Florida have allowed reptile hunters with special permits to capture and euthanize pythons that are thriving in the Everglades and other parts of the state, living off native species and harming the fragile ecosystem.

The largest python (a Burmese Python (Python molurus bivittatus – DZ) so far was captured on Thursday. It was a 207-pound (94.09 k.) male that measured more than 17-feet (5.18 m.) long and 26 inches (66 cm.) in diameter; however, it was not captured by one of the permitted hunters. Instead, it was shot on the 20-acre (8.09 h.) compound of the Okeechobee Veterinary Hospital by one of the vets who was alerted to its presence by his nephew. It is illegal to shoot pythons in Florida wildlife management areas or federal lands, but the snakes can be legally shot on private property.

The now-deceased snake is believed to be one of more than 100,000 pythons living in the Florida wilds. The snakes are often abandoned by disgruntled pet owners when they become too large to handle and too expensive to feed. They can reproduce rapidly with female pythons laying up to 80 eggs at a time, and they have no natural predators in Florida.

Hat tip to PBurns via Karen L. Myers.

Treasure Coast Palm photos

Vero Beach 32963:

In what a top Florida anthropologist is calling “the oldest, most spectacular and rare work of art in the Americas,” an amateur Vero Beach fossil hunter has found an ancient bone etched with a clear image of a walking mammoth or mastodon.

According to leading experts from the University of Florida, the remarkable find demonstrates with new and startling certainty that humans coexisted with prehistoric animals more than 12,000 years ago in this fossil- rich region of the state.

No similar carved figure has ever been authenticated in the United States, or anywhere in this hemisphere.

The brown, mineral-hardened bone bearing the unique carving is a foot-long fragment from a larger bone that belonged to an extinct “mammoth, mastodon or ground sloth” according to Dr. Richard C. Hulbert, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Florida Museum of Natural History museum. These animals have been extinct in Florida for at least 10,000 years.

Etched into the bone by a highly sharpened stone tool or the tooth of the animal is the clear image of a walking adult mammoth or mastodon. Extensive tests over the past two months have shown that the image was created when the bone was fresh, presumably right after the animal it belonged to was killed or died.

Other accounts:

Sun Sentinel

TC Palm

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Hat tip to Karen L. Myers

Photo and video described as having been shot at Key West at Sunset, New Year’s Eve, December 31, 2008. It certainly looks like a missile. via Coast to Coast.

No official comments or MSM reports so far.

7:09 video

Do-gooders Jimmy Carter and Habitat for Humanity some years ago built Fairway Oaks in Jacksonville, Florida, a classic liberal charity project delivering housing to the undeserving poor.

And what did the poor do with their housing? They certainly didn’t maintain it. Obviously, they rode it hard, and put it away wet. And now, 8 years later, they expect Jimmy to come back and fix it all up for them again. Besides, nobody told them them the place had been built atop some former dumps. Call Erin Brokovitch! Those poor people are feeling a trifle queer, breaking out with mysterious skin rashes, you know the drill, and they need to sue. After all, Jimmy Carter has got that presidential pension. There are deep pockets there.

Michelle Malkin is experiencing a bit of Schadenfreude this morning.

He merely needs a thorough scrubbing

TCPalm:

It looks like a rare albino alligator.

In early December, residents of Vista Plantation began seeing an unusually large white-colored alligator in the community’s lakes west of the Indian River Mall, said subdivision manager Charles Smith.

“It was pure white,” he said.

The 300-pound, 10-foot-long adult alligator is seen resting on the shores of one of the man-made retention lakes along the golf course fairways winding through the subdivision’s condominiums. That lake is north of State Road 60 and west of 66th Avenue.

But when park officials called in a wildlife official to verify the alligator is albino, they learned the coloring is instead a coating of white minerals from untreated water pouring out of an artesian well emptying into the lake.

Bruce Dangerfield, Vero Beach Police animal control officer, humorously offered to pull the animal out to prove his point.

“I offered to catch it and use a scrub brush,” Dangerfield said to prove it, to which subdivision officials declined.

Yet, the alligator could continue to get fresh coats of white minerals as long as it stays around the artesian well. The coating is on the animal’s thick skin and isn’t a threat to its health, officials said.

Wilson Bradshaw, President of Florida Gulf Coast University, evidently did not like being the subject of nationwide negative news coverage, so he is explaining, that though the problem is that we misunderstood his noble purposes, he feels obliged to bow to our confusion and reverse his decision.

My Fox Tampa Bay

FGCU’s president reversed his decision to ban Christmas decorations.

In an e-mail message sent to the campus Wednesday, university president Wilson Bradshaw, Ph.D. acknowledged the “overwhelming negative response” to his original letter banning all holiday and seasonal decorations from the school’s common areas, citing “legal limitations.”

“It is now clear to me that we have erred in our attempt to find a balance between how best to observe the season in ways that honor all traditions – while also allowing employees to express their individual beliefs during the upcoming holiday season,” Dr. Bradshaw wrote. “As stated in my earlier message, there was no attempt to suppress expression of the holiday spirit. However, the message was received differently, and for this, I am sorry.”

Original story

Demonstrating once again the American propensity to entrust the education of the young to society’s biggest fools, the eminent Wilson G. Bradshaw, president of Florida Gulf Coast University, struck a blow recently for “diversity” by issuing a proclamation banning public acknowledgment of Christmas.

Fort Myers News-Press:

Christmas is just 30 days away, but Santa Claus won’t be stopping by Florida Gulf Coast University this holiday.

He’s not allowed on campus.

FGCU administration has banned all holiday decorations from common spaces on campus and canceled a popular greeting card design contest, which is being replaced by an ugly sweater competition. In Griffin Hall, the university’s giving tree for needy preschoolers has been transformed into a “giving garden.”

The moves boil down to political correctness.

“Public institutions, including FGCU, often struggle with how best to observe the season in ways that honor and respect all traditions,” President Wilson Bradshaw wrote in a memo to faculty and staff Thursday. “This is a challenging issue each year at FGCU, and 2008 is no exception. While it may appear at times that a vocal majority of opinion is the only view that is held, this is not always the case.”

The ineffable Wilson G. Bradshaw’s Holiday proclamation. .pdf

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UPDATE

11/27: Policy reversed.

When you or I get angry at one of our local politicians, we post an angry letter to the local newspaper. In Deltona, Florida, unhappy constituents (clearly originally hailing from more tropical climes) leave a Voodoo doll and candle by the offending politicians mailbox. Uh oh!

News-Journal

City Commissioner Zenaida Denizac’s happy day after a church picnic this past weekend was briefly ruined by the discovery of a voodoo doll on her lawn.

The doll was stuck with many pins and included a photo of the commissioner’s face pinned on the doll’s head. The doll, inside a black plastic tray, was found by Denizac’s husband next to a periwinkle plant near the base of her mailbox Saturday afternoon.

Jose Denizac said he saw the package when he left at 4 a.m. to fish but thought it was trash. When he returned at 5 p.m. he saw the object while parking his boat and checked it out.

“As soon as I saw the doll and the pins and the candle, I knew what the intention was,” Jose Denizac said. “It is envy. My wife has always been a leader who does not hide anything and speaks with frankness.”

Sheriff’s deputies are investigating the unusual incident, although they do not believe it is a direct threat to the elected official, said spokesman Brandon Haught.

Miami Local10.com provides an inadvertently hilarious example of liberal media self-parody, gravely quoting with dead seriousness the relatives of the criminals who got shot by one of the victims of a hold-up, who, though 71-years-old, happened to be a retired Marine with a concealed-carry gun permit.

The family of one of the men who was shot by a retired United States Marine while they attempted to rob a Subway sandwich shop said the customer shouldn’t have pulled the trigger.

According to Plantation police, two armed men barged into the Subway at 1949 Pine Island Road shortly after 11 p.m. Wednesday, demanding money from the employee behind the counter. When they tried to force John Lovell into the bathroom, he pulled out a gun and shot both men, police said.

Donicio Arrindell, 22, was shot in the head and later died at the hospital. Fredrick Gadson, 21, was shot in the chest and ran from the Subway, but police found him in hiding in some bushes on the property of a nearby BankAtlantic.

Lovell, 71, was the lone customer at the time. Police said he had a concealed weapons permit.

Gadson’s grandparents told Local 10 on Thursday that Lovell was wrong for pulling the trigger.

“He should not have taken the law in his hands,” said Rosa Jones, Gadson’s grandmother.

Her husband, Ivory Jones, also condemned the media for its portrayal of Lovell’s actions.

“I don’t condone what they did, (but) I definitely don’t condone the news people making him out to seem like they’re making a hero out of this man because he shot somebody down,” he said.

Politico describes democrat party efforts at negotiating a compromise between the Clinton and the Obama camps on the issue of the seating of delegations from Michigan and Florida.

Those people who believe all problems have solutions may be unfamiliar with the inner workings of the Democratic Party.

On Saturday, the party’s Rules and Bylaws Committee will try to solve a big problem, in order to avoid a huge problem in order to prevent a train wreck.

The big problem is what to do about Michigan and Florida, two states stripped last year of their delegates to the Democratic National Convention because both broke party rules and moved their primaries up too early in the election year.

The rules committee will try to work out a compromise Saturday to try to seat those states in some form or fashion. It will be difficult, and the 30 members of the committee, who come from all over the nation, have been warned to keep their hotel rooms Saturday night, because the meeting may go into Sunday.

The huge problem is what happens if one side or another does not like the rules committee’s compromise. In that case, the controversy would go to the 186-member Credentials Committee, which will convene in July or August.

And if that happens, the party will be presented with a possible train wreck: Whatever the Credentials Committee decides will have to be voted on by the Convention in late August as its first order of business. And this could create what the media might love but the party dreads: a floor fight in Denver.

Read the whole thing.

This is probably the battle which will decide the nomination. Whoever controls the credentials committee will have the key to securing the nomination.

Hillary is refusing to lie down, and has –as was predicted– finally played the Florida and Michigan card. After all, as we remember from 2000, counting every vote is vitally important to democrats.

Hoist by their own petard, the democrat party left is responding this morning in characteristic fashion to Hillary’s efforts to thwart their desires… by having a cow.

Andrew Sullivan does a particularly nice job of frothing.

The Clintons know no respect for rules or propriety or restraint in the pursuit of power. But Clinton’s latest speech in Florida should cause even veteran Clinton-hating jaws to drop some more….

How do you respond to a sociopath like this? She agreed that Michigan and Florida should be punished for moving up their primaries. Obama took his name off the ballot in deference to their agreement and the rules of the party. That he should now be punished for playing by the rules and she should be rewarded for skirting them is unconscionable.

I think she has now made it very important that Obama not ask her to be the veep. The way she is losing is so ugly, so feckless, so riddled with narcissism and pathology that this kind of person should never be a heartbeat away from the presidency.

Hillary is sitting pretty, armed with the argument possessing the greatest emotive force, and as ABC NEWS reports, she is not afraid to use it.

Sen. Hillary Clinton continued to push her popular vote argument. As an example, Clinton mentioned what happened in the elections in Zimbabwe to illustrate what can happen when the popular vote is not observed.

Speaking in Sunrise, Fla., Clinton said: “You heard Diana talk about coming from a country where votes don’t count. People go through the motions of an election only to have it discarded and disregarded. We’re seeing that right now in Zimbabwe — tragically an election was held, the president lost, they refused to abide by the will of the people. So we can never take for granted our precious right to vote.”

Clinton gave an abreviated version of her earlier speech, but made her argument for the popular vote to be the most important factor in this election again.

“Many of us believe that the candidate who got fewer votes was inaugurated president (in 2000),” Clinton said. “And we know that of all states, this state should have extra attention to make sure your votes are counted.”

How dare she! bleats Newsweek’s Jonathan Chait:

Hillary Clinton’s rhetoric today about counting the results in Florida and Michigan is simply incredible. Her speech compares discounting the Florida and Michigan primaries to vote suppression and slavery. …

They supported this “disenfranchisement.” Here’s a New York Times story from last fall, headlined, “Clinton, Obama and Edwards Join Pledge to Avoid Defiant States.”

Moreover, it’s obviously true that Obama not campaigning, organizing, or advertizing in those states hurt him, and helped the more familiar candidate in Clinton. She decided to campaign to change the rules only after it became her interest to do so.

This gambit by Clinton is simply an attempt to steal the nomination. It’s obviously not going to work, because Democratic superdelegates don’t want to commit suicide. But this episode is very revealing about Clinton’s character. I try not to make moralistic characterological judgments about politicians, because all politicians compromise their ideals in the pursuit of power. There are no angels in this business. Clinton’s gambit, however, truly is breathtaking.

If she’s consciously lying, it’s a shockingly cynical move. I don’t think she’s lying. I think she’s so convinced of her own morality and historical importance that she can whip herself into a moralistic fervor to support nearly any position that might benefit her, however crass and sleazy. It’s not just that she’s convinced herself it’s okay to try to steal the nomination, she has also appropriated the most sacred legacies of liberalism for her effort to do so. She is proving herself temperamentally unfit for the presidency.

It’s a pretty darn depressing election, what with no actual Republican running. At least we are getting some entertainment out of it, as the Clintons and their party’s leftwing base do the Vote Count two-step, hopping back and forth on “counting every vote” depending on exactly who is benefiting.

The nutroots left is adding another variation to its performance: the Clinton two-step. What fun it is to see the MoveOn.Org crowd which so passionately defended the Clintons through scandal after scandal, and then through Monica-gate and Impeachment, suddenly awake and discover the Clinton’s dark side.

We may have tragedy in November, but we’ve got comedy today.