Good Morning Florida Keys

School Days, Key West

The ongoing saga in our school system brings Nepotism up in today’s Key West Citizen. Apparently it’s pretty strong in our school system. There seem to be arguments pro and con. I suppose what we are all struggling to come to grips with now is a pretty strong con.

My father’s company had a strong policy against husbands and wives working for the company. The one exception went back for decades and probably was inherited when my father’s father and his brother-in-law purchased the company from its founders just after World War II. That husband and wife were allowed to remain in the company. I was hired, even though it was my father’s company. We had one pair of brothers working there, out of the Birmingham operation, but I was the only person in management who had a relative in the company, and every penny I spent on marketing and advertising was strictly monitored after first being approved by higher management. Golden Flake had a very, very tight internal accounting and record keeping department. So tight, that when the company comptroller decided he wanted to marry his secretary, she quit working for the company.

Another somber issue raised in today’s Citizen piece is State Attorney Dennis Ward’s doubt that School Superintendent Randy Acevedo was completely unaware of what his wife Monique was doing. I also find it hard to believe Randy was totally in the dark. But perhaps he was. Even so, given what he now has seen brought forward, perhaps the most damning and glaring being identical amounts spent for school functions and his campaign to be reelected last year, I can’t help but wonder what he now is thinking? How does he convince himself that he can do his job impartially? How can he deal with the School Board, who are charged with the public trust of getting to the bottom of this? How can he face students and staff, and expect them to look up to him, believe he’s looking out for their best interests? Randy’s problem is not with the School Board, it’s with his wife and, I imagine, with himself. Does he really expect anyone, except perhaps the people to whom he’s closest, to believe he is blameless in this truly terrible situation? Does he really believe he can do his job effectively while all of this is nipping at his and  Monique’s heels, legs, hindquarters and above, which might end up in convictions and 30 year prison sentences? Take a paid leave of absence,  Randy. Put your attention, time and energy into your family.

Let me change the facts a bit. What if, instead of  working for our school system, Monique had worked for Key West developer Ed Swift? What if instead of being charged with embezzling, misappropriating, stealing $180,000, more or less, from the school system, Monique was charged with doing that to Ed Swift’s company. Would the community be in an uproar over that? Would the public feel it had been betrayed? Would the State Attorney see that case in the same light as the case we now are reading about ongoing in the Citizen? It’s one thing to rip off a private company. It’s quite another to rip off a school system. The fiduciary responsibility to the students and staff and the citizenry putting up taxpayer dollars, their own money, is far higher for school officials, than it is for private citizens working for private companies. The maximum legal penalties for ripping off a company or a school might be the same, but the severity of the sentence on conviction is influenced by the damage suffered by society. Ripping off Ed Swift is serious, but ripping off a school system is more than serious; it is grave, and it needs to be dealt with accordingly, if that is what really happened.

Sloan Bashinsky, citizen

I ran into an old codger named Michelangelo out at Higgs Beach yesterday. It’s hard not to run into him out there, or over at Indigenous Park, when he’s in Key West. He heads north some summers, where it’s cooler. Like a lot of cohorts, he lives in his vehicle when he’s in Key West. No, he’s not homeless. No, he’s not a bum. Close to 90, he put in his work time, now he’s retired. Not caring to live in a retirement home and able to get around on his own, he lives this way.
 
Michelangelo is beloved by a number of people who know him down here, including me. When I offered him a “Sloan for mayor” campaign T-shirt, he said he didn’t need one because I wasn’t running for mayor. After persuading him that I am indeed running for mayor, he said it won’t work because I’m too honest, and for me to forget about it. I said I just might quote him. Before I left, I was guessing what size he wore. Looked like a medium to me, but he talked me up to extra-large. Maybe he plans to put on 75 pounds.
 
A California friend once wrote a “To whomever It May Concern Letter of Introduction” for me. As part of the introduction, he spoke of my habit of speaking the truth no matter what, often to my own ultimate detriment. He said he felt I am constitutionally incapable of not speaking the truth. My wife at the time said much the same in her own her own “Letter of Introduction.” I should have known that pretty soon I would be put to say some things to them that did not make their day. Prelude to them and me getting a divorce, it would turn out.
 
Back then, the idea of my getting involved in politics, particularly running for an elected office, had never occurred to me. I hated politics, didn’t trust politicians or elected officials. Not much has changed, even though I now are one: a politician. Well, if the only criteria for being a politician is running for elected office, then that’s what I am. But then, I never heard of a politician going about running for office the way I’m doing it, except maybe Key West’s beloved Capt. Tony Tarracino, whom I never had the good fortune to personally know, although I did have the good fortune to watch his interview by Cricket Desmarais a couple of years ago, which is set out verbatim in that year’s issue of SECRET OF SALT: An Indigenous Journal.
 
I have heard told, and he didn’t deny it during Cricket’s interview, that Tony cussed more, screwed more women, had more illigitimate children, drank more whiskey, smoked more cigarettes and who knows what else than maybe any man in history. And, after running a few times, he got himself elected Mayor of Key West and served one term, during and after which tourism increased noticeably, it’s said, because Tony got the TODAY Show to come down here and hang out with him for a while. If Tony was a politician, then I’m a mermaid. Nor am I a politician. How much you willing to bet that Tony would vote against one nude beach and topless beaches everywhere else in Key West, and the continued criminalization of marijuana usage, if he wuz our mayor today?
 
Here’s something I received yesterday by email from one of Michelangelo’s good buddies, who hangs out in Key West except for the hottest months. Another beach bum, who thought, I suspect, I might get his drift, since I’m promoting the city offering homeless people jobs as litter cops.
 
 
I recently asked my friends’ little girl what she wanted to be when she grows up. She said she wanted to be President some day. Both of her parents, liberal Democrats, were standing there, so I asked her, “If you were President what would be the first thing you would do”?
 
She replied, ‘I’d give food and houses to all the homeless people.’
 
Her parents beamed.
 
‘Wow…what a worthy goal.’ I told her, ‘But you don’t have to wait until you’re President to do that. You can come over to my house and mow the lawn, pull weeds, and sweep my yard, and I’ll pay you $50.  Then I’ll take you over to the grocery store where the homeless guy hangs out, and you can give him the $50 to use toward food and a new house.
 
She thought that over for a few seconds, then she looked me straight in the eye and asked, ‘ Why doesn’t the homeless guy come over and do the work, and you can just pay him the $50? ‘
 
I said,  ‘Isn’t it more practical for me to hire 10 illegals, than to hire a homeless unemployed American.  Welcome to the Republican Party.’
 
Her parents still aren’t speaking to me.
 
 
Sloan for mayor, political advertisement, yeah right, approved and paid for by moi, all except the photo, which you can blame on Sandy Downs, if it came through. I’m wondering if maybe Sandy was sweet on Capt. Tony . . . I got no doubt that he would have been sweet on her, if he had ever met her . . .
  

In italics, responses to yesterday’s Stop Litter, Key West post. My comments in standard type.
 
 
Good stuff.

 

Hi Sloan

Now it makes sense.

Now you have explained the psychology behind it as far as the tourists concerned.  

I guess, feeling free being in KW, means to many people being able to trash the place is part of it.

Thank for explaining it from all angles.

You know all the cogs in the wheels in city government.

This great idea is your baby.

The one to make it happen will be you.

Thank for explaining it from all angles.

Its a win win.

Willi

Sloan, Just one little observation. In Kiev, Ukraine, when the commies were in power, there were not that many cars and nobody gave any thought to putting in parking meters. Since independence they don’t have the money to install them so they have human parking meters who each patrol a block and collect the parking fee from each car. There are also little old ladies with brooms out of the Wizard of Oz cleaning the streets.The worse thing about littering cigarette butts in Key West is that our storm sewers drain right into the ocean and those things kill fish and wildlife.

Eurpoeans, western and eastern, in my experience tend to have a much different outlook than Americans. I understand the same thing about the toxicity if cigarette butts on the ocean, marine life. Cigarettes ain’t too friendly to human beings either, and it amazes me that kids today are taking up the habit, given all that’s known about cigarette smoking.

Cig companies deny it, but they market to children. Remember “Joe Camel”? The face was actually a penis and balls but it took the adults a long time to “get it.” They all grow up way too fast these days.
 

Sloan, Here’s something off the top of my head…will enforcement of a new law backfire on the city? On weekends the trash receptacles on Duval Street fill up fast. They could fill up FASTER if everyone used them. To keep them empty, more labor will be needed. That translates into more trash removal expenses especially if overtime is required. Hope the fines offset any increase in labor costs. Jim

Well, they could set out more trash receptacles. Yes, they could pick up twice or even three times a day on Duval Street, where the main problem is. Certainly, it won’t cause a problem for cigarette smokers to use trash recptacles. No point in claiming to be going green, if we don’t enforce the litter laws.

Don’t retreat from your pirate-costumed homeless litter police proposal.  Your “Stop Litter” blog posting can be adapted to a letter to the Ed., responding to today’s Editorial…. [I shortened the post to just under 500 words and submitted it to the Citizen.]

This is a great platform issue, right up there with nude beaches.  It addresses several needs simultaneously:   Cleans up our streets, in an uniquely KW-colorful and non-draconian way, while providing  homeless citizens  an opportunity for gainful employment that contributes significantly to our community.

Aaargh!!

Sloan for mayor, political advertisement provided by mateys on their doubloons, published on mine . . . Arrrrrrrr!!!

The Editorial in this morning’s Key West Citizen cries out for enforcement of Key West’s litter laws. Cries out.

$250 is the fine for littering, the Editorial says.

One cigarette butt, one plastic cup, one paper plate, one napkin. $250.

The base for overtime fines on our parking meters is $25, someone in Sippin’ Internet Cafe just told me, who has gotten and paid same.

The other day, I saw a tourist (looked like a tourist) in front of a store on Duval Street finish smoking his cigarette. Standing beside a black, metal trash receptacle, he flipped the butt into the street. I see this all the time, and not just tourists. I see store employees do it, I see locals do it. It seems to be the national pastime on Duval Street: flipping cigarette butts.

Vying for second place is tossing plastic cups (empty open containers) from local bars and pubs, and pizza parlor paper plates.

Every morning walking to Sippin’ to post that day’s missive, I pass by the pizza and sandwich shop next to Pegasus Hotel’s entrance. The sidewalk is littered with paper plates that were dropped on the ground instead of in the nearby trash receptacle.

If I go to Sippin’ early enough, I see the city’s street cleaning crews out there, blowing massive amounts of debris off the sidewalks and sweeping and collecting that and even more debris off Duval Street.

Way I figure, thousands of litter tickets could be given on any one day on Duval Street. Say 5,000 tickets, which probably is a low ball number. Let’s see, 5,000 x $250 is, hmmm, $1,150,000. For just one day. Wow. No more budget shortfall. We don’t even need parking meters maybe any more.

Well, dream on. We don’t have enough police officers in the entire city to patrol Duval Street and ticket every litterbug. And, we don’t want to upset our tourists and have them go home with a bad taste in their mouth, do we. And, we don’t want, if we are government officials, to get all those angry phone calls, emails and letters from constituents who got $250 litter tickets they want us to call someone to make it go away, do we.

No, we want the police to crack down on bicyclists running red lights and stop signs, don’t we.

When I ran for mayor in 2007, I suggested that we offer our homeless people jobs as litter cops, to give them paying work, or at least those who wanted paying work. Dress them up sort of like pirates and have them walk around Duval, Whitehead, Simonton and their crossing streets waving swords and pistols (plastic version) at litterbugs and uttering pirate threats. Then, if a litterbug doesn’t pick it back up, the litterbug gets a $250 ticket.

I thought this would be good for the greening of Key West, and good publicity that might cause people from elsewhere to come here just to see if it really was happening. I was interviewed by a nationally-syndicated radio station based in New York City about it. And by several other radio stations, including one in Alaska. They all thought it was a terrific idea, but the Key West officials didn’t seem to think so, because my posts, which they received, were met by deafening silence.

Now I’m not stuck on just offering litter cop jobs to homeless people. But I think that would be a good place to start.

Sloan for mayor, political advertisement approved and paid for by moi

So, I received requests to keep emailing out my daily posts, instead just posting them to the Today’s Cock-a-doodle-doo page of goodmorningkeywest.com. I also learned some people, I remember when I was one three years ago, do not know how to get to a website or open a file page in the menu. And I learned some people do not have computers and/or internet connection, and were keeping up with my emails through their cell phones. So, I will continue to email posts. People who don’t care to receive can mark them as junk mail, and that should block future emailings from me.
 
Unless your name is Robert Cintron. Poor Robert, no matter how hard he tried to block my emails, they kept getting through. If I had been Robert, I might have wondered if maybe something wanted Sloan’s emails to get through to me, but I never got the sense that Robert wondered that. So I deleted his name from my email contacts list, to ensure he didn’t receive any more emails from me.
 
Robert is one of three prominent local people, the other two are Key West Citizen Editor Tom Tuell and Monroe County Mayor George Neugent, who say my good amiga Sandy Downs is crazy and a liar, and nothing she says can be trusted. Sandy, who on her own keeps coming up with what strike me as hilarious ads for my campaign, which she runs on her dime in Key West the Newspaper. Sandy, who ran for sheriff last year, and made a lot of people, including Robert Cintron, Tom Tuell and George Nugent, really unhappy.
 
I campaigned hard for Sandy, and devoted at my expense a lot of space to her campaign on goodmorningfloridakeys.com. Although I often posted stuff she had written or told me, she had no say-so in what went up. Looks to me that what she’s doing now is pretty much what I did for her campaign last year, on her dime, all by her lonesome.
 
I have found myself lately saying to a few people, and to the powers that be, that maybe Sandy didn’t get elected because too many people were afraid they, or their relatives and friends, would end up in the pokey.
 
Probably the first new pokey resident would have been outgoing sheriff Rick Roth, for using taxpayer money to lie to the public in newspaper and radio ads. The lie was that the Trauma Star rescue helicopter would not cost Keys residents (taxpayers) any money to use.
 
I also have found myself lately telling Sandy that she’s our sheriff anyway, working behind the scenes. If you knew what I know, you might agree.
 
Moving vertically, just as I was about to post this today, a woman in Sippin’ Internet Cafe struck up a conversation with me after hearing I am running for mayor. She said she had decided during the week before the election in her small upstatee New York town (Cassadaga) to run for mayor as a write-in candidate and won something like 120-50. What could I do, but give her and her boyfriend Sloan for mayor campaign T-shirts.
 
Moving laterally, this morning’s Key West Citizen Editorial is a kudo for the sinking of the Vandenberg today, which I always opposed. Not because I didn’t think it would generate revenue for Key West especially, which I expect it to do. But because I didn’t buy into the argument that an artificial reef will take pressure off our natural reef. It really bugged me to hear that argument, when nobody was saying that what is mainly killing our reef is water pollution, mostly sewerage, about which there is still much to do if we are going to stop killing the reef.
 
Next today is my “‘chance” meeting at Sippin’ yesterday with “Solar Richard,” who came there looking for Sloan, after hearing from me from three different people, who told him Sloan is the environmental candidate.
 
Although he was scattered in his speaking and hig-strung, I came away wondering if he might be another Nikola Telsa? Nikola Tesla – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 
 
Solar Richard has installed a hydrogen-powered system in a sunshine yellow Avalete Corvette, the only one built for hydrogen power. He sells solar powered (photovoltaic) energy generated at his home back to to energy company where he lives in Tacoma, Washington. He designed solar powered lighting for a big bridge in Tacoma. He is headed next week to Amsterdam, fee and expenses paid, to speak to an international energy conference.
 
He said he knows how to use solar power to convert sea water into drinking water.
 
He said he knows how to use solar power to treat sewerage.
 
He said we can build a solar collector farm in shallow water, about 1/3 square miles in size, more or less, we roughly calculated, that will supply into the present energy grid work/infrastructure all of the power Key West city needs during sunlight hours. Free day time power, thanks to Sol. Night energy would have to be provided the regular way.
 
He said he has state-of-the-art solar collectors, which he can get manufactured in three different plants. He said these solar collectors track the sun and are sealed marine quality; rising sea water, say a Wilma-like tidal surge, will not damage them. They are easily replaced when they wear out.
 
He said federal stimulus money will pay for all of this up front, if the State of Florida will apply for it. He is going to see Governor Crist, if he can get an appointment. 
 
When I said there are lots of green-living enthusiasts down here, who want Key West to become a model greening city, he said what better way to do it than to become solar-energy seld-sufficient?
 
I called City Hall and learned there is a special City Commission meeting tonight. By copy of this post, I’m asking the commissioners and mayor to give Solar Richard 3 minutes at the end.
 
I will be there to object to Parrot Key’s request to become another transient rental unit condominium project, another one of which we need like we need a dead natural reef. 
 
Sloan for mayor, political advertisement, approved and paid for by moi

Solar Richard Profiled in NYT (27. October 2007, 12:43 by Erik) ~ Here comes the sun …

The New York Times calls Richard Thompson, AKA Solar Richard, a “certified character,” in their profile of the Tacoma man published today.
 
It’s a nice article about Solar Richard, and we appreciate the linking of green power with Tacoma. Particular positive attention is focused on the effort to light the new Narrows Bridge with solar power:
 

At Mr. Thompson’s urging, the new mile-long Tacoma Narrows Bridge is on its way to being lighted with solar power, a project toward which the state has contributed $1.5 million. And if all goes as planned, there will be electricity left over to feed back into the city’s power supply.
 

Kudos to our own Solar Richard for helping keep Tacoma on the map.

Opening my email account just now, I found this reply to yesterday’s Memorial Day, Key West post. When I went to the web link, I found the poem, which seems somewhat in keeping with what was rummaging through the back roads of the memories of the recesses of my mind earlier this morning, as I wrote my contribution to today’s post.  

Dear Sloan,
I really enjoy your page.
I have included a link to it in my new blog
(also to the sister page, but it seems that one is just a backup)
http://theindianbanana.blogspot.com
cheers
Juani
 
Love is
irresistible
exciting and forbidden
 
I am sorry
a butterfly doesn’t need always to flee
but she doesn’t know
 
Love is spontaneous
and stupid
doesn’t think
 
forget me love
sorry I wasted your time
forgive me
 
foolish old man
dreaming impossible dreams …

 
 
Last night at Sippin’ Internet Café, some of the usual suspects showed up to chew the fat. One arrived in a Sloan for mayor campaign T-shirt she had redesigned to resemble something like Jane might show up in to get Tarzan’s attention. At my urging, she said she would get a photo taken and send it to me, and as soon as I get it I’ll share it with you.
 
She says she reads this blog daily, and she keeps telling me I’m a troublemaker. I keep telling her I know that, have been a troublemaker all my life. I told her my mother often used to say about me, “Only a mother could love it!” It. I was an it. No wonder I turned out like I did. Maybe her just as often saying, “With legs like that, you should have been a girl!” also had something to do with how I turned out. It’s always good to blame someone else for how I turned out, but I doubt that dog hunts too good.
 
The truth is, I was born a trouble maker. It’s in my genes, I told Jane last night, after demonstrating several different ways just how big a trouble maker I am, all the while perhaps not all too secretly wondering how I was going to figure out how to get her out of that designer T-shirt, which didn’t leave all that much to the imagination. I told her maybe I would write about it, the T-shirt, and maybe women would hire her to make their own Sloan for mayor T-shirts into something someone like me would just naturally want to snatch right off of them. Just naturally.
 
Now I realize this isn’t exactly something a person running for elected office is supposed to put into words on a public blog, or even into words anyone might even hear. Candidates for office don’t do stupid stuff like that. Candidates for office tell people what they hope they want to hear, the old smozzle job. A close relative of the check’s in the mail and I promise I won’t come in your mouth jobs.
 
Now why would I promise something like that, when I just might do it, if someone keeps on doing something?
 
My God, when I gave a campaign T-shirt last night to a woman in a local pub, she immediately started licking the crotch of the lying son-of-a-bitch claiming to be me on the front of the T-shirt. Then she came out from behind the bar and started licking my T-shirt in the same place, as I hollered, “Lower, lower!” Probably a good thing she didn’t go lower, I didn’t have my digitalis handy.
 
Yeah, yeah, you don’t need to say it. This is gross. It’s repulsive. What can I say? I’ve been a monk since early January 2005. I’m going crazy. I wake up in the wee hours, or at dawn, rarin’ to go, and all I can do is keep rarin’. Well, at least I know I’m not catching any bad disease. Nor could I give one away, unless you consider what I told the damsel in the Jane version of my campaign T-shirt last night, which I think maybe some of the other usual suspects also might have heard. Like, I sometimes tell people I’m a virus, and if they get too close to me they might catch it.
 
It is what has a hold of me and doesn’t seem to care much about anything I want, but has its own mind made up about where it’s taking me and what it’s going to do to me along the way. It gave me a harem in my dreams, but I tell you truly, dying and going to heaven and getting a harem just doesn’t get me over wishing I was dying and going to heaven — thank you, Jesus! — before I die and go to heaven in the way Christians and Moslems talk about it.
 
If this post makes you restless, I maybe should say I’m sorry, but I’m not going to do that, because I’m not sorry. What I’m sorry about right now is being a monk. Well, there are a few other things I’m sorry about, but that’s not what I went to bed last night with the itch to write about today, which was still itching when I woke up before dawn.
 
Speaking of which, it now is dawn and why it is, I can’t say, but I have yet to hear a Key West wild rooster greet the day.
 
Cock-a-doodle-doo, Jane, and how do you do!

Sloan for mayor, political advertisement, yeah right, and the horse I rode in on, approved and paid for by moi

 
P.S. Would you believe? Right after I finished writing this cock-and-bull, a wild rooster started greeting the day in the parking lot of City Hall. Yeah, maybe you would believe it. Maybe you would.

The other day, State Attorney Dennis Ward loaned me his copy of the Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, by Vincent Bugliosi, which I began reading last night, the day before Memorial Day, when America commemorates its war dead.
 
Also yesterday I received an email containing photos of the New York City Memorial Day air show over the city and the Statue of Liberty, to which I replied: “Impressive. When I was a boy, I would have loved to see something like this. Would have brought my plastic model airplanes to life, for a while.  Older, more jaundiced, it brings up for me mixed feelings, thanks to Vietnam, Iran Contra, Iraq, Afghanistan.” 
 
To which the sender replied: ”I hear you Sloan.  But its about the beauty of NYC which is my home and the boys in uniform who serve which you have to separate from the politics. Have a good weekend.”
 
I was sick as dog yesterday, preparing unawares, I suppose, to write write this post today.
 
Two things jumped out at me as I read the first 56 pages of Bugliosi’s courageous book. Courageous, because he was not afraid to tell it like he saw it, and be branded a traitor.
 
The first thing that jumped out was his unearthing of the charges against Saddam Hussein brought by his own country against him, charges on which he was ultimately convicted and executed. What he was charged with was finding and putting to trial over one hundred Iraqis who had plotted to assassinate him. After being convicted in an Iraqi court, they were sentenced to die and were executed. That was the only crime he was charged with doing. He was not charged with mass murder of the Kurds or his own people. He was charged with doing what any American president and American law enforcement and courts would have done, if an assassination attempt on the president had been unearthed and thwarted and the conspirators caught. Begliosi says in his book that what Saddam Hussein seemed most interested in leading up to the American invasion was completing his fourth novel, about political intrigue and treason in that region.
 
The second thing that jumped out at me in the first 56 pages was that President George W. Bush apparently never suffered mental, emotional or spiritual agony over the deaths and wounding and emotional trauma suffered by American troops in Iraq, and by their families and friends. To the contrary, Bugliosi convincingly proves just the opposite with quotes out of Bush’s own mouth, that he and his wife were wife having a ball, the time of their lives throughout his presidency.

Bugliosi’s kindest view in the first 56 pages of George W. Bush and his Vietnam draft-dodger crew is they perhaps hoped to use Iraq to establish a model democracy for the Middle East, which would be contagious and take over the region. While making making a pretty good argument that this may have been their goal, Bugliosi points out that it’s not America’s business to invade countries that are not threatening America, to force them to have a democracy form of government.

The rest of what I’ve read so far in Bugliosi’s book is mostly rehash of what I’ve read or seen on TV before. Yet somehow, I suspect as I read further, I will have some more things jump out at me that I have not seen before. Like Bugliosi, I seem not to have filters that enable me not to see what is staring me right in the face, even if I don’t want it staring me right in the face.

Bugliosi is not exactly a lightweight. The brief author bio at the end of the book says he started his legal career in the Los Angeles, California District Attorney’s office, where he prosecuted and won 105 out of 106 felony jury trials, including 21 murder convictions without a single loss. The most noteworthy was the Charles Manson murder trial, about which Bugliosi wrote Helter Skelter, the biggest selling true crime book in publishing history. The legal and literary credits only start there, in the author bio. For more information, go to www.prosecutionofbush.com.
 
I have long felt Bush was guilty of treason and the murder and maiming of thousands of American troops, and many more thousands of Iraqis. As facts proved, there were no weapons of mass destruction, there was no imminent treat Iraq posed toward America.

911 was clearly bait, a trap set by Osama bin Laden. When Bush and his Vietnam draft-dodger cronies cooked the books good enough to persuade Congress to go to war against Hussein, they gave Osama precisely what he wanted: a Middle Eastern nation in which to fight America on Islamic ground, in a rugged desert clime, using weapons (suicide bombers) against which the mightiest military force in modern history had no defense. Thus did George W. Bush and his cronies give aid and lend comfort to the enemy (Osama bin Laden).
 
Today is Memorial Day, when Americans commemorate our war dead. Let us do it with our eyes wide open. Let us do it knowing not one American soldier’s death or wounding in Iraq was in service to or to defend America. It was, as Bugilosi says in his book, in service to and to defend the personal agendas of George W. Bush and his cronies.
 
Sloan Bashinsky, American citizen

From Jim Hendrick, aka CZAR, me thinks protesting yesterday’s Female Ways, Key West post.
 
The person who originated this e-mail obviously knows nothing of KW politics!
 
PLEASE! ….NO MORE POLITICAL or Religious E-MAILS!
 
We need to get back to what e-mail was really designed for…
 
Can’t say I know what email was really designed for and can’t say I know anyone who knows, although maybe someone I know does.
 
The other day I sent a short email to a large email list originated by someone else, which looked to me to include a number of members of the Higgs Beach Committee. I wrote to them about by talk yesterday with Fran Gonzon, who runs the concession at Higgs Beach. Beach towels, umbrellas, kayaks, etc. I asked him what percentage of his beach customers did he reckon were European and what percentage American? A best estimate. He said on regular days, when there isn’t a special event at the beach, close to 80 percent of this customers are European.
 
This reply came back to the entire email list:
 
What % of Europeans live around Higgs Beach? Perhaps the Neighborhood should have the FINAL say.
 
When I shared the above with a local businessman, he said it sounded to him like the neighborhood protester didn’t spend much time at Higgs Beach. He went further, saying of an earlier email I had published from the neighborhood showing maybe a dozen signatories, that one of them is in a wheelchair and he doubts ever gets out to Higgs Beach. He and I both wondered how often any of the people who signed that email get to Higgs Beach in a year’s time? And we wondered what caused them to think Higgs is a neighborhood beach to begin with? It’s owned by the County, open to everyone. And, as I already wrote, based on my experiences out there, locals who use it come from all over the city. My businessman friend said the only neighborhood beach in Key West is tiny Simonton Beach. When I raised an eyelid, he said it’s the homeless people’s neighborhood beach.
 
The point of my providing the large email list with what Fran had told me about his European/American ratio was to show that Europeans are indeed important to the Key West economy, they use that beach, at least, and we probably ought to factor that into our thinking on how we go about marketing and advertising Key West.
 
When I shared Fran’s report with several Key West men last Friday, one of them said he had worked in a big Key West hotel for a number of years, and had really been against cruise ships and their passengers. Had been. Then he decided to start doing his own investigation, and for two years he asked new registrants at his hotel what caused them to come to Key West? For two years he recorded their responses. 45 percent of them had first come to Key West on a cruise ship, and had wanted to come back and stay longer. He said this now is common knowledge in the lodging industry down here, and the Tourist Development Counsel also knows about it. But I wonder if many Key West people know it, because the griping about cruise ships and their passengers is an ongoing complaint I hear in Key West.
 
In closing today, I again attempt to include Sandy Down’s latest mischief, which I’ve heard didn’t make it through when I posted it a few days ago. If it doesn’t come through this time, at least I tried. You also can see it on page 25 of this week’s Key West the Newspaper (kwtn.com), in black and white. I suppose some will say I should show in my campaign finance reports Sandy’s artwork as a campaign contribution, but what value would I put on it? She did it herself and important people around here — Tom Tuell, Editor Key West Citizen, Robert Cintron, local prominent attorney, George Neugent, Mayor of Monroe County, for examples — say she’s crazy and a liar, and nothing she says can be trusted.
 
Meanwhile, see you at the beach, where we might conduct a couple of baptisms and hang a few politicians and pubic, er, public officials while we’re sunning our buns.
 
Sloan for mayor, political advertisement, approved and paid for by Sloan Bashinsky, except for Sandy’s part, which she did all by her lonesome without any input from me.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 24th, 2009 at 9:49

An email exchange with Rev. Joe McMurray, regarding yesterday’s Business As Ususal, Key West post:
 
Good Morning, Sloan,

Though I agree with some of your comments this morning, I take exception to others. Let me explain.

I think it was a mistake to print Gina’s comments to your list. Yes, we are all adults and can choose what we want to do. It is a free country, after all. But too many of us are unwilling or unable to act like adults, instead defaulting to the “how does this impact me-me-me” mechanism, which you also mention. You’ve given those people another option today which flies in the face of what we’re trying to accomplish here — no harm and safety for all. How many more people will now drive by the various “sites” today and potentially risk the safety of the students and citizens of Key West? Though Gina’s response is a non-violent one, it encourages people to go to the site. I think that was an error on your part.

Your t-shirt idea, which someone else raised at the Community Meeting about “creating your own” is a harmless one. Though it is not “doing nothing” it is innocuous enough — a silent protest that there are people present on our island who want to spew evil and hope that it spreads. Fair enough.

But I take issue with your presumption that “doing nothing” is, in fact, doing nothing. It is not “doing nothing” but it is a choice not to engage. Just because there is a potential conflict anywhere in the world doesn’t mean that “not reacting” is tantamount to “doing nothing.” I think it takes a great deal of courage to try to ignore Phelps today. It takes a lot of stamina to know that there are epithets against you and those you love being released in the air space of Key West, and be willing to just let it be for the greater good. It takes fortitude to take a peaceful stance and not fuel the flames of danger. And it takes a helluva lot of unselfishness to put your own personal feelings aside for the good of the community.

Regarding the interview yesterday, again I take issue. Phelps did not win the argument by using scripture — Ezra gave some solid quotations himself that Phelps merely tried to sidestep. Perhaps it was the radio you were listening on, but my radio did not portray it the same way. And bravo to Ezra for not allowing Phelps to use the airwaves to spew hate speech. Sure, everyone has a right to say what they want, but you don’t have to give them a megaphone (or a couple-thousand people audience, either). Phelps sounded pathetic, resorting to one isolated scripture (which he has mistranslated, by the way) — the same one the religious right always uses to further their case for bigotry, while ignoring the hundreds of thousands of other words of accountability to which they fall short. And this, mind you, only impacts those who subscribe to the words of the Bible — many do not — also their choice.

Anyway, those are my thoughts this morning. Who knows? They could change by the afternoon, though I doubt they will.

Thanks, Sloan.

Best,
JoeRev. Dr. Joe McMurray, Pastor
Metropolitan Community Church Key West
Key West’s Home for Liberating Spirituality
The Home Where You’ve Always Been Welcome
E-Mail: jmcmurray@MCCKeyWest.com
Address: 1215 Petronia St., Key West, FL 33040
Office: 305-294-8912 Fax: 305-294-6198
Cell: 305-395-0358
Web: www.MCCKeyWest.com
 
 
Hi, Joe.

Doing nothing, is what I heard loud and clear at the meeting in your church, and what the city and school officials also later recommended. So that’s why I used doing nothing in yesterday‘s post. But yes, doing nothing is doing something, and often is much harder than doing something.

I heard, perhaps it wasn’t factual, that US 1 Radio’s management wanted to give Phelps air time, and Bill Becker didn’t want to do the interview, so it was assigned to Ezra. The result was not doing nothing. The result was disaster, because it gave Phelps just what he wanted: a large audience, some or a lot of whom, like him, believe the Bible is the literal word of God, and that everything he said on the air was the God’s truth.

Moreover, they heard Ezra say before the interview began that the station had decided it should give both sides air time. The station knew going in what to expect from Phelps. When he delivered it, Ezra didn’t like it and tried to bend Phelps to his will. When Phelps didn’t bend, Ezra terminated the interview. The listeners in Phelps camp saw this as cheating, dirty. It endeared Phelps to them even more.

It was dreams that had me put up yesterday’s post. In my dreams tonight (it’s now 5 a.m.), I was told to write about the female today. I begin that task by saying what US 1 did, what Ezra did, was devoid of the female. It was all male. Likewise, what Gina sent out in an email blast to a lot of people — I did not post the attachments, which were much more aggressive than the text of the email — also was devoid of the female. It was pure male.You are a minister, therefore I will take this out of the realm of psychology and put it in the realm of spirit. What US Radio and Ezra and Gina did lacked the Holy Spirit. The Dove. The very thing Jesus told his disciples they would not be forgiven for blaspheming. Blaspheming him could be forgiven, he told them, but not the Holy Spirit.

Phelps lacks the Holy Spirit. During the interview he kept repeating, like an automaton, the same Old Testament passage condemning homosexuality. He also bent Jesus’ sayings in the Gospels to suit his agenda. He is like Saul of Tarsus before God grabbed and changed him into Paul. Phelps doesn’t see it that way, though. He sees it like Saul, who believed it was his God-duty to hunt down and haul as many Christians as he could find before Roman tribunals, where they would be given a chance to renounce Jesus, and if they did not, be put to death.

The Holy Spirit made several suggestions about how to receive Phelps in Key West. For adults, stay away from him, and wear One Human Family T-shirts. For the high school, close the high school. But if the school remained open, encourage students to wear One Human Family T-shirts. The school nixed both options. The only person I saw in a One Human Family T-shirt yesterday was me. If I were to say I was left feeling Key West is committed to One Human Family, I’d be fibbing.

Back to the US 1 Radio interview. In the spirit, it was the equivalent of 911. Phelps got the result Osama bin Laden got, and Key West and the Keys will be a long time getting over it. Or may never get over it. Although I don’t expect many to believe that, I know a few people in the area who understand how it works in spirit, even though they might use different words to explain it, if they wrote instead of me.

Tom Oosterhoudt, who is gay and used to be very aggressive about gay rights, wrote an editorial in Conch Color begging Key West to do nothing. As did Key West Citizen make the same recommendation in an Editorial. As did our Police Chief, who is gay. As did our city officials. But our #1 radio station just couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do nothing. What kind of role model did that set for Keys children? Their community leaders tell them to lay low, but US 1 Radio does the exact opposite and then doesn’t even send in the first team.Sloan

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I was one of many recipients of this email blast yesterday about Fred Phelps visit to Key West today:
 
Gina Maseratti here!  Well, you all know that hate Monger Fred Phelps is in town to spread his viciousness around town.  Well, drive by the triangle at the entrance to Key West around 4-5 PM today.  Gina will be spreading love and kindness to all.  Join in as she sings “2-3-4 what did you come here for?”

Attaching script for my video, “Impossible Mission” and lyrics for the song.

Drive by and honk for diversity.  If you can’t come, sing the lyrics at home and hug someone!

Gina Maseratti
D.R.A.G. Party (Drastic Reform f American Government)
President 2012????????

My sentiments follow:

The City and its Police Chief Donnie Lee, who is gay, have urged locals and visitors not to engage or respond to Fred Phelps in any way. As have Rev. Joe McMurray of Key West, also gay, and many government and school officials begged for no response. The local Jewish synagogue voted to close today, and not have any members there when Phelps and his entourage show up to demonstrate there.
  
However, I do not agree we should do nothing. I believe we all should wear One Human Family T-shirts today, while going about our business as usual. Easy enough to make: just take out an old T-shirt and a magic marker and write One Human Family on it. Maybe do some creative art work to go with it. Any response beyond that might be more about our own personal agendas, than about Fred Phelps.
 
At the suggestion of a friend, I listened to yesterday’s US 1 Radio’s ”Morning Magazine” interview of Phelps by a fellow named Ezra. When Ezra started quoting the Bible, Phelps had him for a snack. When Phelps declined to quit calling gay people fags, the flustered Ezra terminated the interview.

The irony was, Ezra had carried on for a few minutes before the interview, defending US 1 Radio’s decision to interview Phelps. Ezra said, as a radio station, they had a duty to report the news, air both sides. And then he denied Phelps’ constitutional right to call gays fags.  What US 1 was thinking, giving Phelps air time, and then sending in a rookie instead of seasoned journalist Bill Becker?
 
I learned from the interview that Phelps is really skilled at turning around what you say and using it against you. It would not surprise me if he won a few, maybe even a lot of converts to his cause during his interview by Ezra.
 
When Joe McMurray later came on the air with Ezra, he reiterated that many people had begged against giving Phelps any attention, including air time on US 1 Radio. You simply cannot debate Phelps on his turf and come out on top. He thrives on it. If we drive by and honk where he’s demonstrating, he will think the honking is for him.
 
If I interviewed Phelps, I’d probably start saying, for his information, that many people down here think he is a closet gay and that’s why he carries on the way he does about fags. I would say no more, other than to keep coming back to that, if he wanted to keep talking.
 
But I’m not going to interview Phelps. I made up a One Human Family T-shirt this morning and am wearing it and will go about business as usual today. I hope you do that, too. Here’s another reason to do it this way.
 
From Alabama, I saw our own drastic Governor George Wallace run for President. If he had not been shot, he would have wrecked American politics. Fred Phelps will do that, if he runs for President in 2012. Let’s not encourage him. Join me and my friends at the nude beach today instead. 
 
Sloan for mayor, political advertisement paid for and approved (all except Sandy Downs’ latest mishief) by Sloan Bashinsky