Category: October

(Ed: I’m sorry, but the shortened links no longer work and only the Home and Contact Us links work in the Navigation Bar at the top. Thank you all for letting me know about this problem, but moving ten years of stuff to entirely new format and location is quite a challenge. Thanks for sticking with us. It should take about a week for us to get it all right. I didn’t want to completely shut down the Coconut Telegraph so for now it’s just email and the Coconut Telegraph working correctly.)

[Winn Dixie Rocked] I was in Winn Dixie Sunday eve and someone turned up the volume on Hips Don’t Lie on the in-store music system and looking down the aisles you could see people wiggling and tapping their feet. It was pretty cool. I’ve never seen people get down in a market before. You have to admit, that is a great song. Shakira – Hips Don’t Lie – Wyclef Jean  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUT5rEU6pqM 

I was watching the Keys cooking show, Cooking in the Keys. The cook was getting ready to grill asparagus outside. He had more than he needed. Instead of saving the extra, or throwing them in the garbage, he chucked a whole handful into the canal, making a stupid comment about feeding the fishies. How ignorant.

[Crooks] If Druckemiller’s son knowingly sold the stolen equipment, does that not make those who bought the equipment in possession of stolen property? Would that not make Roman Gastesi, his kids and his county cohorts complicit in the fact they too were found to be in possession of stolen property?

[Son of iGate] The son of a former Monroe County IT director was arrested Saturday after admitting to police that he broke into two relatives’ homes and stole about $13,500 worth of jewelry, according to arrest affidavits. Brandon Druckemiller is accused of breaking into two homes, both on Tuesday, taking several gold chains, bracelets and rings and pawning some of it before relatives called police.

(Ed: New Coconut Telegraph format: If you click the browser refresh button you get a new banner every time.)

Feds to review health of Yellowtail population. http://www.keysnet.com/2012/10/06/482635/feds-to-review-health-of-yellowtail.html

Observe Breast Cancer Awareness Month by getting checked. http://www.keysnet.com/2012/10/04/482598/observe-breast-cancer-awareness.html

A feeling of fear and awe came over me as I entered my favorite watering hole at MM 20 when I saw the owner and a young man with a thick roll of blueprints leaving the bar. Gad, can it be that another world famous or infamous swigging center will go the way of the one at MM 17? Years of holy consumption and re-contouring the tops of the barstools has to mean something to these newbees, wouldn’t you think? Can we, the paying pubic, sue?

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How about making a mini-casino out of the new failed Dunkin’ Doughnuts in Marathon?

The county is scheduled to start testing new urinal spatter shields in the men’s restrooms in most county buildings. The new type shields are said to reduce the frequency of cleaning by reducing spatter and thereby reducing the amount of man hours needed for restroom cleaning. The photo in the shield’s center is said to further reduce spatter by giving men something to aim at. They seem to be especially popular with employees at the correction facility. Any cost savings in this economy is a plus for the taxpayers.

Amendment holds pain and promise. Proposed property tax breaks good for some, but potentially costly for others. http://keysnews.com/node/42692

5 in race for 3 Marathon City Council seats. http://www.keysnet.com/2012/10/06/482638/five-in-race-for-three-city-council.html

In 1945, President Harry Truman announced that the United States would share its knowledge of the atomic bomb exclusively with Britain and Canada.

[Son of iGate] The arrest of Druckemiller’s kid for stealing from relatives proves the gene pool in Monroe County is so shallow that mosquitoes can’t breed in it. Parents who do dope, raise kids who do dope.  Parents that steal raise kids who will steal.  It’s called setting an example.

It is our constitutional right to bare arms to protect our home and family. I really do not care if your arms are bare, or have shirt sleeves covering them.

Happy Columbus Day! RethinkingColumbus: towards a true people’s history. http://bit.ly/R0RQEl

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[“Exaggerated media exposure on these beautiful and fun loving dogs“] Just the opposite is true. 75-80% off all human deaths and mauling are done by pit/rot breeds. And it is not because the are fun-loving. They have been breed to kill and they do because they have the jaws to do it. Chihuahuas don’t. It seems that many people self-identify with this underdog. The poor creature is misunderstood, and only if people would give them a chance everything would be ok.

The problem with this is these people are jeopardizing are lives and health while they go down this path of illogic. Have you ever met a mauling victim? Horrific.

Pete the Pup in Buster Brown. The first Pete was poisoned by an unknown assailant. His last film was A Tough Winter. One of his offspring carried on beginning with the next film, Pups Is Pups. Currently lives in Dog Heaven.

Petey Little Rascals. That circle often migrates between the right and left eye from film to film. This was obviously a dog with a lot of tricks! However, if the truth be known, there were other Petey’s that were used as stand-ins for some stunts and other duties, like close-ups.

[Son of iGate] Druckemiller’s son admits to stealing from 2 relatives. http://keysnews.com/node/42767

Foreclosure website launched www.KeysIslandProperties.com

City to push for infrastructure tax extension. http://www.keysnet.com/2012/10/06/482633/city-to-push-for-infrastructure.html

[Patrol Care Use] It has now been proven for at least the second time, that we have been told, crime is not eliminated by having patrol cars in the neighborhood. As a matter of fact the Sheriff’s cars were broken into to get guns that should have not been there. At any given time more than half the Monroe County Sheriff vehicles are actually outside of Monroe County so that they could be driven to the officer’s home. Why not eliminate the situation where these employees feel these vehicles are their own personal vehicles to use as they please, and go back to a car pool, where the cars are only used when actually on the job. This could be a good beginning at saving hundreds of thousands of dollars.

[“Amendment 8 Hell No” …your summary, someone who knows English punctuation ay least. I spent 5 min. trying to figure out what you were saying and still don’t know.]

Deer Poster – I DID NOT WRITE THAT SUMMARY. THAT SUMMARY CAME FROM THE FL ELECTIONS DEPT EXPLANATIONS OF THE AMENDMENTS.. And what’s behind your writing such a nasty personal attack post? Methinks possibly you’re pro amend 8, or a tea party’er, or a pro-religion fanatic bible thumper who thinks public money should be given to “churches”.

If you really spent 5 minutes trying to “figure out” and still couldn’t, maybe you should go to the FL Elections website and review all the amendments.

(Deer Ed, sorry for shouting. That poster was offensive and got me pissed.)

Reposting the Summary – just so everybody can read it again for themselves. Summary – Proposing an amendment to the State Constitution providing that no individual or entity may be denied, on the basis of religious identity or belief, governmental benefits, funding or other support, except as required by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, and deleting the prohibition against using revenues from the public treasury directly or indirectly in aid of any church, sect, or religious denomination or in aid of any sectarian institution.

Apple’s new iPhone is popular – with crooks. This headline says it all, especially here in the Keys. http://bit.ly/R8ZWHO

[Yugo Shaves] Amazing to me that Chan 7’s 10 p.m. newscasters don’t spend the time to learn how to pronounce peoples’ names properly. Two of them just called Hugo Chaves Yoogo Shavez. I don’t even speak Spanish, am not on TV, & even I know better.

[3 Tricks] I have no idea how this guy does these tricks, but they are pretty amazing — and entertaining. Watch the whole thing as there are three tricks. 3 Tricks

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[Vote No] League of Women Voters advice for voters on amendments: http://www.thefloridavoter.org/resources/issues/2012-constitutional-amendments

[New Email “Contact Us] Wow! Can you read me now? You never cease to amaze me with your technical expertise. I have felt so shunned every since I couldn’t get to you in the usual way. Now, can we keep this our secret and keep all the crazies out?

Law Enforcement Organizations need to work together. http://forums.leoaffairs.com/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=90121#p582917

[An Eulogy To A Dog] George Graham Vest, a lawyer fromSedalia,Missouriwho later became a U.S. Senator, gave this eulogy in response to a lawsuit on behalf of “Old Drum”, a foxhound who was viciously killed by a human neighbor. His owner brought suit for damages. When Mr. Vest concluded the case with this speech below, the courtroom was filled with tears. Old Drum’s master won this law suit. http://www.milwinkennel.com/poems/FaithfulFriend.htm

I love this site.

[Privatized Space Program] SpaceX Launches to the International Space Station. Space Launch Complex 40 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida is illuminated by a Falcon 9 rocket as it lifts off at 8:35 p.m. EDT carrying a Dragon capsule to orbit. Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, built both the rocket and capsule for NASA’s first Commercial Resupply Services, or CRS-1, mission to the International Space Station.

SpaceX CRS-1 is an important step toward making America’s microgravity research program self-sufficient by providing a way to deliver and return significant amounts of cargo, including science experiments, to and from the orbiting laboratory. NASA has contracted for 12 commercial resupply flights from SpaceX and eight from the Orbital Sciences Corp.

Pretenders in Paradiseis looking for entrants. Zombie Nation Vacation theme. Let your inner ghoul out. http://www.keysnet.com/2012/10/05/482615/pretenders-in-paradise-looking.html

Political advertisement paid for and approved by Rick Ramsay Republican for Sheriff

[“Is there somewhere to find information on all the choices to vote and what all the amendments are”] The CT has been full of websites doing just that. Where you been? Go read some past CTs if you can get the links to work. 

Cops need to be well equipped. All cops should have immediate access to their weapons which are tools of their trade. The crutch of the story is that the same cops should act like responsible adults and secure said weapons in the responsible manner of rules that are installed by their employer, bottom line! There’s to much pass the buck, Chuck anymore.

An independent voter’s quest to make sense of the 12 constitutional amendments.
Amendment 3
So there’s a limitation on the total amount of tax money that the State can take from us ? Who knew? And they want to change the way that they figure it ? That’s the amendment. It says here that the amount of tax depends on the total income of Florida residents now, but they want to change it to depend on the inflation rate and the number of people in the state. Just thinking about how this changes things gives me a headache. Keep reading and it may make sense.
It says that any extra money collected will go to education. That sounds like what we used to call a ” deal sweetener”, but keep reading. It says that if the schools don’t need extra money, we get it back. Schools don’t need money !? Is someone using drugs ?
Read the whole thing again and read what the League of Women Voters says. OK I did that and still don’t get it. Well, you know what they say a when you’re not sure if food has gone bad,
” When in doubt, throw it out “. Amen to that. Another NO.

Can we still send posts by traditional email, or do we have to use the “Contact Us” link? (Ed: Yes you can still email to the same address as always: island@bigpinekey.com, but please remember to add Coconut Telegraph or some form of that to the subject line because we now have a much stronger spam filter in place.)

CARACAS, Venezuela — President Hugo Chavez scored a comfortable election victory that could extend his rule to 20 years and vowed to deepen his self-styled socialist revolution after a bitterly fought race against a youthful rival who has galvanized Venezuela’s opposition. Tens of thousands of ecstatic supporters thronged the streets around the presidential palace in downtown Caracas, pumping fists in the air and shouting Chavez’s name after the former soldier beat opposition candidate Henrique Capriles by more than 9 percentage points. However, Chavez only got 135,000 more votes this time around than he did six years ago, while the opposition boosted its tally by 1.85 million. 

The “real” unemployment rate couldn’t possibly be 7.8% because the world is only 6,000 years old. Just ask any Republican.

[Chair Talk] A poster on here after telling us all he was going to sneak up behind a robber and beat his arse unless he found him in his house then he was going to shoot and kill him. He then stated the law would be on his side. Right after he said that he said that the law protects the robbers more then law abiding citizens. Didn’t he just say it was legal to shoot and kill a person when they are breaking in your house? How does the crook have better rights? He’s dead and you’re not in any trouble. Seems the crook loses to me.

As it turns out Clint Eastwood’s chair did talk back. http://www.youtube.com/embed/eAXNnCPkpNc?feature=player_detailpage

If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years you’d have a shortage of sand.  ~Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize winning economist

My take on Obama’s pathetic record in office http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDPadcNq2ks&feature=player_embedded

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This is from the O’Rilly-Stewart debate. You can tell people who watch fox news. They believe all of the garbage they are being fed. And honestly. Someone should stand up and tell the truth

A smaller Government, less taxing & a balanced budget & State Sovereignty. http://bit.ly/wwLXIJ

Romney’s numbers don’t add up, but, hey, that’s probably just liberal media bias.

Government must not be run like a business because it isn’t. In business profit comes first. In government people come first. Please help save America from more Republican leadership.

Chavez got reelected because he shares Venezuela’s oil revenue with his people. He cares about them.

 From the Right

Well, by golly, the September jobs report came out Friday and it is being hailed as absolutely marvelous news for Team Obama. After all, they sure need to have their moral boosted after the debate. I understand that Mr. Obama spent a few hours atWalterReidHospitalso that Romney’s boot could be removed from his (ahem) butt.

If the unemployment rate had really dropped below 8% it could be construed as an indicator that the Obama policy is effective. Some folks might even claim that all is well and that we should stay the course and give O another 4. I apologize in advance, that what follows is stuffed with statistics, but it’s important. If anyone is really going understand the folly of the latest BOLS report you must check out the stats. The source of all of the stats is Team Obama’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Here’s here’s what Team Obama’s latest BOLS report claims. The single number that is getting all of the attention is the new unemployment rate that BOLS claims. In September BOLS claims that it was 7.8%. That is being heralded as stupefyingly super califragilistic expealidocious good news for Obama. But, just for fun, let’s look just a tad deeper.

First of all, if it’s even accurate, and it’s probably not, that’s a reduction of only three tenths of one percent. Wow! Even if its accurate, it only takes us back to just before Obama was inaugurated. Certainly you will remember that O assured us that our unemployment rate would by now be about 5%. He also assured us that if it wasn’t: “this will probably be a one term affair”. It isn’t, and it will be.

Let’s dig deeper. Team O’s BOLS report claims two totally different numbers for exactly the same metric. The narrative of the BOLS report states that in September there were a total of 114K new jobs created. But, and it’s a huge butt, if you look further in the report you learn that they also claim that there were 873K more Americans with jobs in September than in August. Need I say that makes absolutely no sense?

One possible “explanation” is that the 114K number was taken by a survey of actual employers. It’s called the “establishment” survey. Most economists trust this number. It is the golden rule. The second number, 873K jobs allegedly created was taken by survey of “households”. Economists when their feeling kind and generous, call that “households” number “volatile”, but usually they just call it bogus.

Now Team Obama is trying to claim that we added 873K new jobs in September. We didn’t. No way! Team O’s BOLS report tell us that we actually added only @114K new jobs. We know that it so because the BOLS report tells us so in the reports narrative. Even that sounds pretty good until we look a little deeper. First, in order to just keep pace with population growth we must add about 200K new jobs every month. Second, if we keep adding jobs at the rate we’re now adding jobs; it will take until 2025 to get us back to where we were when Obama took office. Third. Hopefully you will remember that it was only a few months ago that Obama was whining that federal employees were “hurting”, because so many of them had been laid off.

Please check out the BOLS report. If you will, you’d find that Team Obama began adding a long ton of federal jobs three months ago. Just since July Team Obama has hired 73K new employees. In September alone they hired at least 10K.

You probably will be surprised to know that the current federal employee unemployment rate is 4.3%. But, non federal unemployment rate is at least 7.8% and probably higher. It’s obvious that Obama began pumping up federal hiring’s as the election grew closer in order to pad the books. It worked.

It is virtually certain that the actual number of people with jobs in September was actually 142,215,000. That number is the BOLS report of the number of people holding jobs in August added to the number of jobs reportedly added in the BOLS establishment report for September (142,101,000 + 114,000 = 142,215,000).

That’s a very, very, important equation because elsewhere in its report BOLS is now claiming that there were about 873K more Americans with jobs in September than August. They now claim that there are 142,974,000 Americans with jobs. Deer Friends, it just ain’t so. It’s bunk! Worse, it’s highly likely that the “household” survey numbers were cooked.

It’s important to understand that if Obama had not hired 73K brand new federal employees in just the last 3 months, the would have been no change in the total number of Americans with jobs in September. Please remember that we lost jobs in July, and August (314K). It’s probable that had Obama not hired the 73K brand new federal employees, our unemployment rate would be a lot higher.

Let’s compare where we are today with where we were when the Dems took control of Congress and our purse strings on January 1, 2007. Today there are about 2 million fewer Americans with jobs than there were on 1/1/07. Don’t believe me, look it up. Today, there are about 11,377,000 more Americans who have quit even looking for work since 1/1/07. (today 88,710,000/ 1/01/07 77,333,000). Please think about that: Today, nearly 4 years into the Obama administration, there are nearly 90 million Americans who have given up trying to make a living.

Many, if not most, of those folks now rely on a beneficent government to feed them, house them, amuse them, clothe them, provide them with transportation, provide them with communication, provide them with health care, chill them in the summer and heat them in the winter. We, through our government and our tax dollars, even nurture and succor them. It’s hard to believe that there are some folks who actually believe keeping persons on welfare makes more economic sense than having them work. Just yesterday a CT poster made that claim. Oh well.

Obama and the Democrats have gutted our work force. They have buried our middle class.They gave reviving our economy their very best shot, they tried, and they just didn’t deliver. It’s time for us to shed the 6 years of Democrat control.

Part 2) Well, we’re back on the rock. It feels good. The trip back from Connecticut was “exciting”. We had left a request for a wake up call at 3:30 AM so that we could take it easy finishing the packing and make our way to the airport for a 6:00 AM flight. No call came: I woke up at 4:55 AM. We barely made it. The TSA screeners actually were first rate; they were quick, courteous, and efficient.

We had a grand experience even though the weather was far from being perfect. By way of full disclosure, our Deer Ed published some pretty pics of fall colors in the mountains, but this olde didn’t take them all. Much of our sojourn was under grey skies and rain, not so good for photos.

Part 3) Yesterday’s item from a self-proclaimed vigilante makes for amusing reading. But, it doesn’t make much sense. If the poster was telling the truth, he might think his “deeds” as being very macho. But, Deer Friends, he committed enough felonies to put him and his friends away for life. Life in prison is not a lot of fun. On the other hand, I’ve known many, many, inmates who are serving life sentences. They made great informants because they’re always anxious to earn brownie points. One of them told me that prison wasn’t unbearable. He said that the food wasn’t too bad, the clothing was comfortable, the medical care was OK, he said he had lots of friends, and he said that there was plenty of sex. He said it was just shaped “different”.