Broward Palm Beach News Blog

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CNN's loss is probably NOT Florida's gain.

​This week Lou Dobbs, the last of the original CNN anchors, announced he was leaving the station and ending his show on that network to "go beyond the role here at CNN" and "engage in constructive problem solving."

While this could mean many things, the smart money says his "constructive problem solving" means playing some golf outside of his West Palm Beach home (which we're sure was built solely by legal residents of this country, and is situated on a golf course we're also sure was built by only White mid-western farm boys) and waiting around for a time slot on Fox News.

I called the phone number listed for his WPB house to ask Lou about his plans for the new time off, but there was no answer--he must be out eating at restaurants who employ only legal residents or shopping for clothes made only by American hands from fabrics made of materials procured by non-immigrant field workers. So we decided to put together a little list of five things Lou will do while in the Sunshine State.

Besen: NARTH "Peddles shame and profits from pain"

​WTF is it with the Marriott anyway? First the Delray Beach Marriott throws open its doors to CAIR and Geert Wilders, now West Palm's Marriott will offer a cozy welcome for this year's national NARTH conference. The National Association of Research and Therapy for Homosexuality, in case you're new to this, is a pseudo-scientific association dedicated to the proposition that gays can be cured with a little "reparative therapy." Or, actually, probably quite a lot of reparative therapy, and it don't come cheap.

Flickr user: SEIU International

Guess who's not coming to dinner.

​Dennis Kucinich, the Ohio congressman known for his love of television cameras and his quixotic presidential bids, will no longer be the keynote speaker at this Saturday's Palm Beach County Democratic Party dinner. He canceled the gig last week after several local Dems lambasted his voting record on Israel.

As state Rep. Kevin Rader, D-Delray Beach, told the Palm Beach Post: "There's probably a dozen members of Congress who consistently, always vote against Israel. Consistently. And Dennis Kucinich is one of them."

Whether such criticism is warranted depends on one's political slant. "He's a national figure who's very popular," says Mark Siegel, Palm Beach County Democratic party chairman. "Plus, he's a charming guy and an excellent speaker."

But there are plenty of reasons why Palm Beachers should be glad they were spared a Kucinich speech.

This week's New Times feature details my foray into the world of scambaiting -- the practice of turning the tables on email scammers by playing along as a gullible victim -- with advice from a worldwide scambaiting site called 419Eater whose main administrator lives in Broward County.

In Nigeria, the people who run 419 scams -- those pesky, fraudulent emails that fill up your spam folder promising payouts of millions of dollars -- call themselves "Yahoo-yahoo Boys," after their favorite email service. It's been estimated that 250,000 internet scammers operate in Lagos alone, and the promise of easy money from gullible Europeans has created an industry centered around internet cafes, where teen-aged boys and girls congregate to send out mass emails. Or, as pictured in the video after the jump, they just work from home (discussed in this excellent article).

Above, African hip-hop artist Olu Maintain celebrates the Moet and Hennessey that goes along with being a Yahoo Boy. And after the jump, another much more explicit new song by Prince Hollywood -- not in English, but you  get the drift. Those are definitely "Benjamins" they're throwing around.

Don and Derek: Two racially appropriate names for baby.

​If you were a jew-hating, black-bashing, out-and-proud white supremicist, what would you name the little bun you had baking in your oven?

We've been poking around on the web forums of our own homegrown hate group, Stormfront, lately. In part because theThe Palm Beach County Environmental Coalition has claimed

Maxwell: The crusade temporarily suspended

​The Lake Worth elections slated for November 3rd just get weirder by the minute. As if the flap about Mayoral candidate Rene Varela's role in the sales of wild dolphins to a marine park in Dubai weren't scandal enough, now the Palm Beach County Environmental Coalition is claiming that one of the candidates running for City Commission may have ties to West Palm white supremicist group Stormfront.

Maxwell is one of the leading rabble rousers on illegal immigration: He sees the issue as a major problem facing Lake Worth. He's joined by a vocal coterie of local frothers including blogger Lynn Anderson. Until recently, Maxwell broadcast a radio program devoted to the subject, "Connecting the Dots on Illegal Immigration," which ran Thursdays at 8 pm on WBZT 1230 Clear Channel.

I wonder if Big Brother winner and Delray Beach resident Adam Jasinski was dipping into his stash of pills prior to the interview above, 'cause he sure does look slightly skeeted to me. Oh, and Mr. Jasinski, you really aren't "smarter than you look" -- hence the $1 million in drug charges you now face.

In Florida, you gotta pay to play

​With Broward politicians and contractors in hot water over bribery allegations today, it's not surprising that Governor Crist has called for a statewide corruption Grand Jury. According to the Sun-Sentinel:

Citing an apparent "culture of corruption" taking root in South Florida, Gov. Charlie Crist on Wednesday called for a statewide grand jury to take a sweeping look at honesty-in-government in Florida. The panel will have the authority to indict public officials and make recommendations for changes in state law, the governor said. "Today we take a stand to root out public corruption," Crist said, adding his action sprang from "an unsettling string of crime, unconscionable violations of the public trust by public officials, predominantly in South Florida."

The culture of corruption is nothing new. This week's New Times feature story details what happened when one West Palm Beach nonprofit developer was solicited for campaign contributions to grease the wheels for planned affordable housing project. The end result? A grand jury convened in 2006 on the question of whether West Palm Beach was a "pay to play" city. Snippets from the Grand Jury report after the jump.

Flckr user: pedrosimoes7

Keep your lasers out of my eyes!

​More than 20 times in the past year, pranksters have shone a green laser beam into the cockpits of planes landing at Palm Beach International Airport, attempting to blind the pilots.

No planes have crashed, but at least one pilot was injured, according to the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office.

That should be enough to discourage more Star Wars games, no?

Photo courtesy of Boca Raton Resort

Nice place to meet a lobbyist, no?

​Georgia Sen. Saxby Chambliss has a small problem with political scandal. Four years ago he was scolded for missing an intelligence briefing on the Iraq war to golf with Tiger Woods. Then last fall he released an unfortunate campaign commercial in which he appeared to be groping the chest of his young granddaughter.

Now, he's been caught spending gobs of Republican campaign fund money on golf outings -- including nearly $35,000 at  Boca Raton Resort and $6,000 at The Breakers in Palm Beach between 2007 and 2008.

Flickr: Brittanny Pockets

He's just so smug...

​I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell arrives in Boca Raton this weekend, the site of the original inspiration of the book that became the movie. What are the critics saying about the magnum opus of Tucker Max, our local frat boy made good?

Let's start with our own Village Voice Media critic, Vadim Rizov who calls the film, "visually incompetent to a painful extreme and almost never funny, but, worst of all, it doesn't have the courage of Max's unadulterated convictions."

The Hollywood Reporter raves that Beer in Hell, "achieves a certain cinematic distinction by outdoing 'Dumb and Dumber' in sheer grossness and detail with its depiction of the unfortunate effects of explosive diarrhea."

Impressive. More glowing reviews after the jump.

Foley: My perversion is cooler than your perversion

​Foxy Newsweek blogette Holly Bailey over at The Gaggle wonders if yesterday's skunks are smelling a lot like today's roses: It appears that politicians who have been tarred, feathered, and run out of town on a rail (or even better, bundled off to prison) are soon enough able to step into shiny new careers as political hacks/consultants/ talking heads or, better yet, elected officeholders! Witness the fetes and extravaganzas thrown in honor of recently sprung Jim Traficant, or the sight of Tom Delay swanning around on Dancing with the Stars, or Eliot Spitzer peddling his economic bon pensees on Slate and CNBC.

That's the trailer for I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, the movie for audiences who thought The Hangover was too subtle. It's based on the best-selling book of the same name by Tucker Max. The film, which is limited release this weekend, is sure to linger for an uncomfortably long time in Boca Raton, where Max had his notorious fling with the former Miss Vermont, Katy Johnson. Boca's where Max landed after he was fired at a law office and gave up his ambition of being a lawyer.

In a May speech at Ohio State's graduation ceremony, Max told about how in Boca he went to Plan B.

Since I had trained my whole life for either law or business, if I can't do law, I'll just do business, right? My dad owns a successful restaurant company in South Florida, and I had a great idea for how to expand the concept and take it national, so let's do that.

At first, the challenge of the business and the thrill of something new invigorated me. My dad has a great restaurant concept and we had a fantastic plan to expand it, but there was so much wrong with the way it was run, I had all kinds of problems to solve first.

Jazzy, ain't it? That little ditty is by Lloyd Marcus, whose musical genius works like a dog whistle on the Tea Party crowd. Marcus will be joined by Joe the Plumber (no, that wasn't a campaign-season nightmare -- he really exists!) at Revolution/America's Backyard in Fort Lauderdale on October 3. Your hosts? The Tea Party of South Florida, if you haven't already guessed.

Flickr: naked sculptor

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After a nude, 91-year-old Lake Worth man stopped a thief Saturday morning, he was cheered. Maybe it wasn't the ticker tape parade Robert E. Thompson recalls from when he returned from World War II, but his deed was celebrated in all the Florida papers, and the tale even reached New York.

But for the nude and elderly, fame is a fickle food. On Sunday, in Fort Worth, Texas -- near that state's own Lake Worth, as it happens -- a 71-year-old man ventured into his backyard with one gardening tool too many. That article in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram was snatched up by the Dallas media, and now Robert Dean knows the dark side of society's attitude toward naked old people:

"Nothing but a weed whacker and a smile," cracked the headline in the city's NBC affiliate. On the Dallas Morning News' Crimeblog, commenters had a field day with the report: "Too much garden hose?" asked one. Dean has nearly eclipsed Thompson's fame -- Fox affiliates in Boston and Washington, D.C., picked up the story. (Note: Lest we add insult to injury, the photograph above is not of Dean.)

JREF

​Tickets for self-proclaimed "spiritual teacher and psychic" Sylvia Browne's first two appearances at the Seminole Casino Coconut Creek later this month sold out so fast that the casino booked Browne for a third evening of...of...whatever it is Sylvia Browne does. She says it's reading people's minds and talking to the dead. Skeptics, like The Amazing Randi, call Browne's act "flim-flam."

Tickets for the final night, September 29, are on sale for $30, which is a deal considering a 30-minute phone sessions with Browne go for more than $700.

The trio of dates are part of what Browne calls her "farewell tour." Randi, who heads the Fort Lauderdale-based James Randi Educational Foundation, says Browne's act hasn't gotten any better since they appeared together on Bill Bixby's television special in 1989. "And this farewell tour has been going on since 2002," Randi says. "Apparently she likes to linger on the doorstep when she says goodbye."

He says he's not surprised that Browne would come to South Florida, where there are plenty of skeptics -- but also plenty of commercial, self-proclaimed psychics. "She's a real money maker," he says.

Randi has, on several occasions, offered Browne the chance to prove her paranormal powers and collect his million dollars. She accepted the challenge in 2001, on the Larry King show, but never followed through.

Other skeptics have followed Browne's antics for years, chronicling her at StopSylvia.com.

For the cover story I wrote about James Randi last month, I tried to contact Sylvia Browne via email (no reply), phone (a member of her staff said she would consider the interview, but said she normally gets a fee for such things, then never returned the call), and silent psychic signals sent from my brain (all day, every day, for weeks). She didn't respond.

After the jump, video of some of Sylvia Browne's most audacious psychic predictions (and the results).

Pasquale, the scary, scary "robber"

​Nobody's missed the news about the 91-year-old man in Lake Worth, Robert Thompson, who jumped out of bed naked and held an "intruder" at gunpoint until the cops arrived, right? But what's missing from the Fox, Associated Press, and Sun-Sentinel reports is one crucial piece of information: In Lake Worth, property intrusions by drunken migrants are one of the perks of living in this wicked little town. And take it from a Lake Worthian, you don't need a Rottweiler, a gun, or your exposed junk to scare the bejesus out of some totally soused Guatemalan who has no idea where the fuck he is or how he came to be inside your fence (or on your porch, in your driveway, or passed out on your living-room sofa, for that matter.)

Let's skip the hoopla about what an American Hero this old fart was for a minute. (The geezer ended up shooting himself in the leg, for chrissake.) I'm a Lake Worth homeowner myself, and in the ten years I've lived on B Street, I've had the pleasure of many encounters with drunks on my property. For instance:

*The time two thoroughly pissed men pulled up on my swale, clambered out of their van, made their way into my backyard, and peed against my fine old Mahogany tree.

*The time I found a guy sleeping off a bender, curled up on one of the chairs on my patio, with two of my best beach towels used as blankets.

*The time I found one of my neighbors sprawled beside my hedge, looking like he was dying (he wasn't; just too many cans of Coors).

*The time a female friend of mine woke up to find a dude, about four feet tall and completely blotto, standing in her bedroom doorway (she tackled him, he fell down, as drunks are wont to do; nobody got shot).

In the first case, I marched out, armed only with a martini, and chased the guys out of my yard. The second two cases required a call to 911. But in no wise was I in need of a loaded gun, and I didn't have to flash the family jewels at anybody either.

"I would have shot him if he kept coming," Thompson was quoted as saying. "You've got to protect yourself."  Wow. I feel so reassured that my palsied Lake Worth neighbors are waving their .38s around in the dark.  I guess I can sleep easy. 

Hasner: That corpse ain't dead yet.

​Oh good Christ. Now Delray Beach Republican House Rep. Adam Hasner is crowing about a Florida investigation of ACORN, as if that organization weren't already a corpse riddled with right-wing arrows. Hasner appears to be terrified that the dead will rise and, once risen, perhaps even stalk around collecting fake voter registration signatures.

Can we cut through the bloviating for just a second here? ACORN turned over those 888 faked voter registrations itself. Those registrations were pieces of paper that never went live. Paul Newman and Mickey Mouse were never officially registered in Florida. And no one bearing the voter cards of Paul Newman or Mickey Mouse ever went to the polls. Much less ever voted for B. Hussein O'Bama.

Not only did the so-called ACORN voter fraud go nowhere but the perps are now being arrested in Florida and will no doubt be prosecuted. Does this really require a House investigation? At -- excuse me -- real taxpayer expense?

Hasner should be reminded that intrepid videographer Hannah Giles actually visited ACORN offices in Miami with her prostitute schtick -- and got nuthin: ACORN employees in Miami advised her to go to a battered women's shelter.

Clearly, ACORN's management of its employees is pathetic: There's video footage to prove it. But ACORN doesn't receive any funding from the State of Florida. It does receive federal funding, for programs to eradicate lead paint from older housing and to provide foreclosure advice, among many other programs. But leave it to Hasner to jump on whatever creaky, three-wheeled bandwagon* might be passing close enough so he can bum a ride all the way to the next elections.

*Other vehicles Hasner has hopped on lately include a joyride on the Geert Wilders hate-train. 

Domino theory: $$ attracts $$.

​If the recent ACORN video stings hadn't convinced you that the right wing is a whole bunch savvier and sneakier than the left, then a comparison of the net worth of our Florida House reps ought to definitively settle the contest. Florida Trend's look at our politicians' net worth, published this month, found that the ten richest Florida House reps are all Republicans.

Baxter Troutman of Winter Haven leads the list -- the orange-grove magnate has managed to amass a cool $40,849,990 million. A distant second is Carl Domino of Jupiter, with a mere $23,719,585 million.

Hudson, in the hole.

​In contrast, look at poor Democratic whip Franklin Sands, D-Westin. Sands' net worth, thanks to some brilliant investments with Bernie Madoff that robbed him of $3 million, took a very democratic 80 percent nosedive last year.

Still, some Juicers might feel a little bit smug knowing that Pembroke Pines Republican Matt Hudson* is sunk deep into the red: Hudson is a cool $84,000 in the hole. Even if your net worth amounts to the $15  you've got in your pocket, you can count yourself ahead of the good rep.

*Hudson recently took health-care town hall questions via Twitter. He may be broke, but he's no Luddite.

​I can admit it: I really don't know that much about training circus elephants. And I dare say most Juice readers don't either. But there is still something unsettling about seeing videos in which these magnificent beasts are slapped with sticks, shocked with prods, and left with deep gashes from training hooks.

This weekend, at the Hollywood Beach Latin Festival, the Animal Rights Foundation of Florida -- a local PETA-like group -- will canvass the crowd, circulating petitions asking the Broward County School District to stop supporting circuses that have performing elephants.

The district's "educational field trips only" policy ensures that students won't go in mass -- during the school day. But like most schools in the country, Broward hands out free and discounted tickets to students.

"That's how these circuses keep their shows on the road," explains ARFF's project coordinator, Amanda Burk. "They wouldn't exist if they didn't get schoolkids to go. Even take-home tickets send the wrong message to families that it's acceptable to abuse animals for entertainment."

Earlier this year, Ringling Bros. was forced to defend its training techniques in a California courtroom. According to the animal rights group, at least 25 Ringling Bros. elephants have died since 1992, including four baby elephants.

The turd doesn't fall far from the dog

​Stories in the New York Post and today's Palm Beach Post confirm that the tan, leggy hooker in the ACORN hoax videos is in fact an FIU student. Hannah Giles, one of two college kids who traveled around the country on a $1,300 budget shooting videos of ACORN workers making asses of themselves, is also the daughter of self-promoting hoohaa and Aventura pastor Doug Giles of Clash Church and Clash Radio. One of the senior Giles' many motivational tomes, The Bulldog Attitude, is sold on Amazon.com. Writes one reviewer of Pastor Giles' self-help advice: "The bulldog attitude translates into an intolerant attitude towards everyone else who isn't on the same page."

Shall we speculate here about how much of this message the younger Giles may have absorbed from her daddy? The too-hip-for-thou Clash Church appears to have been founded by a pubescent marketing firm hopped up on Coca-Cola and thrash metal: "An energetic church that meets you right where you are" goes the tag line. Daddy Giles appears in sunglasses and open-necked shirt against a background of garage band, mouthing inanities about the devil in a voice evidently modeled on The Big Bopper. Everything -- from Daddy Doug's three-minute video chants to any of his many self-published books -- is for sale in the online church store.

Looks like Hannah G is a chip off the old mutt.

​Oh Woe is ACORN. The U.S. Senate has just voted today, 83-7, to cut housing funds to an organization which has long been the darling of the far Left -- and which is now so utterly disgraced it has nowhere to go but down. The vote would make ACORN ineligible for Housing and Urban Development funds, effectively squeezing the lifeblood out of a group dedicated to finding affordable housing for urban, working class stiffs..

ACORN had almost weathered the voter registration fraud scandal from last year's presidential election. Last week prosecutors in Florida issued warrants against 11 part-time workers hired to register voters in Homestead, arresting at least six on tips from ACORN itself. The workers had forged 888 registrations using fake names and addresses.

But ACORN was dealt a death blow not by voter fraud but by a sting operation mounted by two twentysomething journalists James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles, [EDITED: Giles is a 20-year-old FIU student whose father is a pastor in Aventura. See this story] In the video below, O'Keefe and Giles pretend to be a prostitute and her john running a housefull of illegal underage hookers. ACORN workers advise them how to hide their money (bury it in a backyard tin) and how to make up a creative name for their business. Naturally, Fort Lauderdale's wacko conspiracy theorists are all over the story.

The ACORN workers in the video are depicted are dumb as a box of rocks -- you almost have to feel sorry for them. ACORN has fired the workers, but now the organization is pushing for the state of Maryland to charge O'Keefe and Giles with a felony for filming the workers without their knowledge.

Left wing bloggers may bellyache about how O'Keefe ought to be targeting rich right-wing organizations for these stings instead of an underfunded groups with untrained workers, but the fact is, ACORN clearly doesn't have its shit together. Both the voter registration scandal and the Baltimore and DC video stings are the result of piss-poor management. These ACORN workers are so clueless the blame game ought to go right to the top. 

Judge for yourself.

 

The rock python's scary-sexy maw.

​Amnesty Day is coming up on October 3, but that's amnesty for you, not for our scaly friends. Owners of exotic reptiles may turn in their anacondas at Gatorland in Orlando, no questions asked. It's time for Spot the reticulated python to find a new home, if he survives the three-hour drive in a sweltering car. Rocky the African rock python receives permanent sanctuary -- and not in your neighbor's garden. 

Those rock pythons are becoming an issue, by the way. The Christian Science Monitor reports that scientists are now concerned that the highly aggressive rock will breed with our kinder, gentler Burmese in the Everglades, producing offspring of real star quality -- the kind of man-eaters only a B-movie director could love.

In response to the new threat, officials are encouraging us to hunt down six reptile species: rock, Burmese, reticulated, and scrub pythons; the green anaconda; and monitor lizards. They've still issued no instructions on how to best dispose of your frozen iguanas.

And in other news: Our state bird prepares for a tough campaign to retain his nest.

Flickr: iruleitstrue

Dolph Diggler, the pride of Hollywood, ashamed of Lakewood

​You know how you make your porn name by using your childhood pet's name and the name of the street where you grew up? Apparently, the formula for professional wrestlers is:

(First name of favorite action movie actor) + (last name of favorite movie character)

And that's how Dolph Diggler became the alter ego of Nick Nemeth, a leading contender for the WWE Intercontinental title belt, who bills himself as a native of Hollywood, even though he's actually from Lakewood, just west of Cleveland.

Why? Having lived in both cities, I think Lakewood -- with its hard-working, hard-drinking culture -- makes a much better backdrop for forging a brute.

But then that's not Diggler's rep. He's more of a pretty boy. And frankly, I can more easily picture his highlighted hair at the Seminole Hard Rock than at McCarthy's Ale House on Detroit Ave in Lakewood.

Here's video of the final two minutes of Diggler's match against Slam Master J from last night's airing of WWE Superstars. After the jump, awkward video of Diggler and his soulmate, Diva Maria.

Foley: His mind is a terrible thing to waste

​I don't know about you, but if I were planning to produce a radio talk show with a disgraced former Republican congressman whose pedophilic Instant Messages to a 16-year-old page had made headline news a mere three years ago, I don't think I'd call my new radio program "Inside the Mind of Mark Foley."

Because that's a mind inside of which nobody much cares to linger.

In fact, we remember too well exactly what's inside Foley's mind. It's a rare combination of inane pederasty and typos, a melange of  dim whack-off jokes and adolescent sniggering. Cast your memory back, for instance, to this IM -- a document that still makes the skin crawl, as fresh as the day it was first pecked out on Foley's sticky keyboard:

Maf54 (7:46:33 PM): did any girl give you a haand job this weekend
Xxxxxxxxx (7:46:38 PM): lol no
Xxxxxxxxx (7:46:40 PM): im single right now
Xxxxxxxxx (7:46:57 PM): my last gf and i broke up a few weeks agi
Maf54 (7:47:11 PM): are you
Maf54 (7:47:11 PM): good so your getting horny
Xxxxxxxxx (7:47:29 PM): lol...a bit
Maf54 (7:48:00 PM): did you spank it this weekend yourself
Xxxxxxxxx (7:48:04 PM): no
Xxxxxxxxx (7:48:16 PM): been too tired and too busy
Maf54 (7:48:33 PM): wow...
Maf54 (7:48:34 PM): i am never to busy haha
Xxxxxxxxx (7:48:51 PM): haha
Maf54 (7:50:02 PM): or tired..helps me sleep

The show, which threatens to premiere on WSVU 960 AM (out of North Palm Beach)  on September 22 at 6 p.m., purports to offer an insider's view into Washington, D.C., politics and "the inner workings of how policy is made." 

If you can't pick up the station, you can stream it at seaviewam960.com. 960 is an "Adult Standards music station catering to an older audience that is concerned with the current healthcare issue." Stress on the adults and on the older audience here. You'll witness the inner writhings of Foley's mind between sets of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Barry Manilow, and Barbra Streisand.

I suppose that because this creep shows no signs of quietly slinking away, we at least have the assurance that he's finally communicating with his appropriate age group. Be sure to dial in with your health-care questions: Mark, I'm having trouble sleeping. What do you suggest?

Flickr: ask curly

In 2007 Philippoussis was still a tall, rich, handsome athlete. These days he figures two-outta-four ain't bad.

​Maybe that wasn't the housing bubble that burst in South Florida. The real supernova may have been Mark Philippoussis, the tennis star whose South Florida debauchery was an economic engine that finally ground to a halt in 2005, when he sold his Delray Beach mansion. The big Aussie who displayed a voracious appetite for fast women and faster cars has since relocated to South Australia. "Down Under" would be an apt description for his financial condition.

Australia's Sunday Herald Sun is reporting that Philippoussis (known as "The Scud" by his fans) still owes the IRS about $500,000 for tax debts on his slew of South Florida homes. He's square on the Delray Beach pad, which he sold for $3.3 million. But the debt comes from among the four other homes he kept in the state -- one of which was in Miami Beach.

Of course, when we last checked in with Philippoussis, he was a reality TV star with a much more enviable dilemma: whether to claim the heart of a conventionally hot 20-something kitten or to try taming a bona fide cougar. Age of Love was the name of that pop culture catastrophe. Scud walked into the sunset with this hottie but according to his Wikipedia page was most recently dating this one. It remains to be seen whether he'll prove as beguiling to women with his most recent pick-up line, "You have beautiful eyes -- can I borrow a half-million dollars?"

Only one person had a sign

​Yesterday's Health Care Forum at the Palm Beach County Government Center, sponsored by the Republican Party of Palm Beach County, was a fairly subdued affair. A total of two protesters turned up outside the center in support of Progressive Democrats of America: They held a banner favoring a single-payer system. It was nothing like the three-ring circus that had erupted outside the recent forum in Delray Beach. No high school marching band, for instance. Which only goes to show that right-wing radicals really know how to throw a hell of a party.

Inside, things were pretty sedate too. A lot of people were dressed in navy or steel gray, in handsome suits with handsomely coifed silver locks, holding expensive-looking briefcases or efficient clipboards. Mark Foley was there, dapper and grinning. So were former County Commissioner Addie Green and Town of Palm Beach Councilman Bill Diamond (Diamond called for the town to secede from Palm Beach County not long ago) and County Commissioner Priscilla Taylor.

Only one person carried a sign. The most interesting T-shirt in the crowd was worn by Jupiter resident and Navy veteran Stan Bloom, which read Tyranny Response Team in bold letters. Bloom, who had a long gray ponytail, said the tyranny referred to the "Obama Tzars."

By the time the meeting began at 1 p.m., there were still a few empty seats in the house. On the dais to discuss HR 3200 were congressional candidates Edward Lynch and Col. Allen West, Democratic Congressman Alcee Hastings, and surprise dark horse Dr. Ben Graber, a Democratic former Broward County mayor and State House rep who's also a Coral Springs obstetrician. Wild and crazy Sid Dinerstein moderated. Somebody recited a weird blessing that started out sounding like the Lord's Prayer and then went AWOL (imploring God to spread his loving arms around us, etc -- maybe it was supposed to be nondenominational, I dunno), and then the games began. Hit the jump for our favorite sound bites.

Flickr: oddball7

​The editorial sections of major Florida newspapers are furious about Crist's pick of George LeMieux for U.S. Senate. But in their rage -- or maybe it's modesty -- they forgot to mention how complicit their papers are in LeMieux's selection.

After all, Crist's office was playing by the book, releasing LeMieux's name as a contender for the appointment two weeks ago. As we noted then, it was very obviously a trial balloon. Crist's people waited for the sounds of harrumphing editorial boards and, hearing none, they let word leak that LeMieux was a "leading contender" for the job. Still from the opinion page came the sound of a collective shrug.

So who can blame Crist and LeMieux for feeling blindsided by the nasty editorials that came this weekend? Further, why didn't we naive Floridians enjoy the wisdom of these editorial writers in advance of Crist's making his choice?

The St. Petersburg Times, it seems, was holding back on this sentiment, which it finally expressed yesterday:

An appointee with congressional experience would have hit the ground running. But now Florida's junior senator is a Washington neophyte who will be a caretaker -- and Crist proxy -- in the midst of debate over health care, climate change and a rising federal deficit.

Now you tell us?

Summer's a great time to revisit the classics!

​Here we are in the dog days of August, an excellent time to do a little summer re-reading.  On the Juice's beachside reading list is the Grand Jury Report released in 2007 on the "Pay to Play" scandal in West Palm Beach. A Grand Jury was convened three years ago, due to pressure from local neighborhood activists and nonprofit organizations, to look into the question of how campaign contributions were affecting development contracts in West Palm Beach, and also into the blue ribbon "ethics comission" established by Mayor Lois Frankel. The report was published in two parts, because both the mayor and House Rep. Mary Brandenburg fought to have one section redacted (Section B); that section was publicly released a year later. Here follow 7 good reasons to revisit this old news:

1. Because Mayor Lois Frankel is seeking to undo the charter that would limit her to two terms, and perhaps run for a third term as Mayor (the Grand Jury's final conclusion: "Under the strong mayor format of government, there are virtually no checks and balances to the mayor's power. There is no independent recourse to address grievances under this form of government.")

Take a look at that video, evangelicals and anti-Muslim crusaders. Are you really, really sure you want to risk your credibility on the Fathima Rifqa Bary case? Y'all remember how the Terri Schiavo thing backfired, right? Actually, this one is the media mutation of the Schiavo story and Elian Gonzalez -- a Florida-based custody battle with a religious catalyst. Yikes.

Anyway, Christians: Are you all positive you want to stand squarely behind a guy like Blake Lorenz, the pastor of a church called Global Revolution? And lest that name be too cryptic, here's how Lorenz described the stakes in the St. Pete Times:

"These are the last days, these are the end times, and this conflict between Islam and Christianity is going to grow greater. This conflict between good and evil is going to grow greater."

OK, pastor, I give up. Which side is good?