Florida Woman Scalds Rick Scott In Starbucks, With Words

Here's this week's excellent Speaking Truth To Bat Boy viral video, recorded by lucky bystander Stephen Bender and posted to the YouTubes . It features a Starbucks customer ( later identified as Cara Jennings, "a former Lake Worth city commissioner and liberal activist") giving Florida governor Rick Scott a Venti serving of outrage over his terrible, terrible healthcare policies. On seeing Scott in the home of blackened bad coffee, Jennings yells, 

You cut Medicaid, so I couldn’t get Obamacare. You’re an asshole. You don’t care about working people! […]

You should be ashamed to show your face around here. You strip women of access to public health care. Shame on you, Rick Scott! We depend on those services. Rich people like you don’t know what to do! When poor people like us need health services, you cut them. Shame on you, Rick Scott! You’re an embarrassment to our state.

At one point, Snyder spokeswoman Jeri Bustamante approaches Jennings, attempting to engage her, perhaps by explaining how healthcare is actually bad for people, but Jennings dismisses her: "I'm not talking to you." We were actually relieved to learn the woman was part of Scott's entourage; the first time we saw the video we thought Jennings was going off on a hapless Starbucks drone.

Scott reverts to talking points, blurting simply "A million jobs, a million jobs." That didn't fly with Jennings either:

Jennings: “A million jobs? Great. Who here has a great job?”

Scott: “You should.”

Jennings: “Or is looking forward to finishing school, you really think they have a job lined up? You stripped women of access to public health care. Shame on you, Rick Scott. We depend on those services.”

Scott: “Maybe you should try to tell the truth.”

Yes, that's the governor of Florida insisting that someone yelling at him at a coffee shop not misrepresent his sterling record. A week after Scott signed a law restricting women from getting routine health services at Planned Parenthood. Frankly, Jennings had him dead to rights, and if she'd gotten the chance, she could have pointed out Florida's refusal to expand Medicaid under Obamacare has actually killed people. Still, hey, a million jobs.

By Wednesday, however, Scott had a reply, of sorts, to that mean lady who threw incivility at him in the Starbucks. In a speech in Boca Raton, Scott said that it only makes sense for Florida to not expand Medicaid, because while the Federal government will pay for almost all of the expansion, the states must kick in a tiny percentage, and that's just not fair:  

I've said all along that if the federal government wants to have its program, they should fund their program," Scott said Wednesday. "But don't come to the state of Florida and ask us to tax our taxpayers for a federal program. I don't believe in that. I don't go to the federal government and say 'fund my program.'"

But Scott has also doubled down against Jennings, saying she wasn't willing to have a conversation.

"I didn't see the video, but I was there," he said. "She was not somebody you could talk to."

Not content with insisting that letting tens of thousands of people go without healthcare is a good thing, Scott's lackeys also dug up some horrible dirt on Jennings in a 2010 Palm Beach Post profile of the woman. Political consultant Melissa Sellers shared the awful truth about the unhinged lady in the coffee shop: Not only is she a "self-proclaimed anarchist," Sellers said, but Jennings "also refused to pledge allegiance to the flag. It’s a free country, but its not at all surprising that an anarchist prefers shouting over conversation."

So there! Never mind that what she said is true, she doesn't salute the flag, so the hell with her. She should feel lucky that nobody's lynched her yet, frankly.

Update: Yes, last paragraph should have saidJenningsdidn't salute the flag, not "Sanders." Caught and fixed it in an earlier draft, and then WordPress apparently ate the correction. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

[ Towleroad / Tampa Bay Times / WaPo / Tampa Bay Times ]