[Bugs] When you have bugs its a sign of balance within your land. When you have bugs in your house — clean it! The use of pesticides, herbicides and fungicides are killing our reef because that’s their intended purpose. Pesticides kill creatures, fish and the like. Herbicides used for weeds kill plant life in the ocean, fungicides kill the good algaes and anything else in the water that resembles plantlife. We live in a porous land (the Florida Keys) and when it rains here all these toxins are quick to enter the waters surrounding our world. There are alternatives to weed killers , 1 gallon of vinegar kills weeds, boric acid kills roaches and ants. 

[Marathon Journal] Marathon City Hall dust up at last City Council over city hall construction plans. Mr. Keynoter, remember the times that I said the position of chairman wasn’t ceremonial? Here is an example. The discussion was why the project was moving ahead faster than the plans warranted. So much so that the construction plans were not the final documents that you need to build a city hall. I think something like blueprints are in order. When a motion to further investigate the plans, Mayor Cinque adjourned the meeting. No one challenged the decision of the chair. If someone had challenged the decision of the chair, a vote would be taken.

How’s it feel coming to the end of the third term?: He supports term limits, fresh faces, history, and pay attention to city governance. Mike has 3 years on the Planning Commission with a year as chairman. That was 2004 through 2997. He was elected for city council. His service the next 6 years has shaped this young city’s history. You add this all up, and you get almost 10 years of public service.

Any thoughts on Bruce Schmitt’s open letter to Marathon on the Keynoter?: This is the controversy attached to the Overseas Hotel and Bar/Liquor Store. The city maintains that the zoning doesn’t allow for the use requested. The city is wrong. Unfortunately, court was involved where the city loses the case. Mike looks back on the hullabaloo and opined that good people tried their best at resolution.

Are you going to run again after a year off?: Cinque said not now. He plans on vacation. His horses are successful in races. The most recent race his horse finished 3rd. I imagine there are a whole host of things he will get to. City Council members work hard. It is not just attending council meetings. It is the time in research. More importantly is the involvement with Marathon residents.

What’s best for Marathon?: He answered that nice hotels coming online every week it seems. More transient beds are heating up the local economy. Transient units are like vacation rentals, hotel stays, and resorts. Restaurants to a lesser degree are coming online feeding those coming down to Marathon. Mike talked about residents getting paid well enough to help the local economy.

Any last thoughts? He talked about the honor he felt in his ten years of public service. I hope that he gives a “farewell address” to his fellow councilmembers, staff, and residents. He did a good job, although we had disagreements. This job is hard to not run into some kind of dust up. Mayor Mike Cinque handled himself with dignity and honor. 

[Friday the 13th] Would you board flight 666 to HEL on Friday the 13th? For superstitious travelers, that might be tempting fate. But Finnair passengers on AY666 to Helsinki–which has the 3 letter designation HEL–don’t seem too bothered. Friday’s flight was almost full.

[“Kill bugs around house”] I spread bug killer granules two feet wide around the perimeter of my house. It helps a little. I have ant and roach traps throughout the interior. I think they work the best. We seldom see a bug inside any more.

[Lionfish Venom] If I spear and kill a lionfish and then leave his body in the water, do the spines keep on killing? Also, if I spear and kill a lionfish and cut off his spines with scissors, in the water, do they keep on killing? This is the type of information divers need to know.  I have never read about it.

[The Never Ending Microsoft Update]  I thought it was just me. My computer already drives me crazy on a daily basis because it’s running on Vista. My first clusterf**k on this most recent issue was that my system was getting hung up. Operating for about a minute after a reboot then just seizing and freezing. I noticed the update icon and that’s where the second half of this wasted day began.

I downloaded the first batch of updates and presto, the computer was operating fine again. Then I just kept getting the prompt to update over and over again.  And like the idiot I am I just kept doing it even though I knew it was the same batch of updates. I was ready to call in The Geek Squad, but I shut the whole thing down, went out and had fun the old-fashioned way — interacting with real people and places. Best decision I ever made. When I came back and rebooted it was all over, like a bad dream. At the moment, my computer is running slicker than owl snot for the first time in years. I think most of our problems in life go away whether we do anything about them or not. 

[Orchid Society] Please join us for our final home visit of the season on Sunday, Sept. 22 from 11 am to 2pm. It will be hosted by Marianne Bertoni, 14 Sapphire Drive, Big Coppitt Key, approx. mm10. Coming from Key West on US 1, Sapphire Drive is on your left, immediately before the big Southern Furniture store. If you are coming from up the Keys it’s on your right, just after the store. Bernard Lavaud of B&G Orchids will be there with some plants to sell.

As you probably know, Jay Phal had to cancel the visit to his home in August because of the death of his father-in-law in Colombia. While he was there he and his sons were able to view some of the local orchids. He put together a .pdf of his photos, so in addition to the Newsletter (Menu >Ongoing Events) we are attaching it for you. colombia inmybackyard

[Superstitious] If you drop a knife on the floor, a man will come to visit.
If a spoon, a woman will come.
If a fork, it will be neither man nor woman.

Wanted, small accordion in working order. I played many years ago and would like to try again. Thanks. Classified Ads > Wanted

[“Bugs –What can I spray under my house that repels all bugs and other nasties? Can something be sprayed over the entire property to keep insects out”] Link 

My phone and internet service is Verizon, and it also sucks. Constant static, slow internet service. When will FIOS (fiber optic) come to the sticks of Big Pine?

[“Use Cash”] In a perfect world cash would be better, but those of us who spend a lot of money don’t want to carry around big rolls. Credit cards don’t cost you a dime if you pay the balance off every month. ATMs are great when traveling or needing money late at night to buy drugs or a girl. 

[“Use Cash”] Federal consumer ‘protection’ bureau to monitor 80% of all credit card transactions. Just dump the plastic and go cash like the good old days down here.

[Free App] Metal Detector for iPhones. Link

I’ve heard another complaint about Commissioner Nugent ignoring the complaints and minor problems of taxpayers. It seems he only responds to business’s concerns. I think his time in office has reached its expiration date.  ~diddo43@hotmail.com

Amanda Johnson. See more of her work at Island Arts Co-Op.

“Living on an Island” boat tour of house for sale on Cedar Drive. I hope to meet YOU in the Keys real soon! 
Sincerely, Nira

It’s not that I’m old, your music really does suck. And pull up your pants!

Motorcycle for sale.  2012 Ice Bear Ninja Trike, 150cc, looks and runs great, great gas mileage, lots of extras and upgrades. Asking $2750.00 OBO. Classified Ads > Auto, etc.

[The Name Game] For the past 20 years, Janice “Lokelani” Keihanaikukauakahihuliheekahaunaele has had to carry two IDs–a state ID card and a driver’s license. Her Hawaii driver’s license dropped one letter in her last name and didn’t even include her first or middle names. In the past, the governor’s office made a special adjustment to accommodate her full name on her state ID, but when that expired in May, her new state ID came back incomplete, just like her driver’s license.

Keihanaikukauakahihuliheekahaunaele has been told by the county to shorten or change her name, to which she responded, “How disrespectful of the Hawaiian people!”

Keihanaikukauakahihuliheekahaunaele was married to a Hawaiian man who is now deceased, and the name is not only how she honors his memory, but also his heritage.

The Neil Young concert video was nice. His live albums, well at least “Time Fades Away,1973” have been of some question as to being “Live” in my book.  

Neil pulled up in back of Studio Instrument Rentals, in 1973, where I was shooting hoops and killing time. He got out of his huge, bronze-colored Mercedes and asked for directions. He was escorted up through the alley to the studio that had been prepped for recording. Wally Heider had his mobile recording studio vehicle parked on the boulevard and ready to go. Recording took place for a few days. Straight from the sound board to Wally’s studio. It is quite possible the applause was dubbed, should this, in fact, be that same album.

[Use Cash] I haven’t used an ATM in 5 years. Want to safeguard your money–keep it in your pocket! Afraid of getting robbed? The banks rob someone every time their card is used, either the merchant, the consumer or both. With all the talk about spying and aggregation of data why people keep using ATM, debit and credit is beyond me. We live in the Keys for crying out loud. Walk into the bank, say hi to a neighbor, cash a check and get a pile of dead presidents to spend around town using cash.

1) You save merchants money, the convenience fee
2) You move through the line faster and cash never gives an error code on a screen
3) Cash is not traceable and that in itself is a blessing. Every transaction you use any plastic for is documented and added to your ever growing government file

If you master living within your means and paying cash, you’ll be richer than you ever thought possible.

[Sewers] Installing grinder pumps anywhere in the Keys is extremely short-sighted for an area prone to flooding and lengthy power outages. I have to really question the motivation of our politicians for ignoring these facts. Without electricity the pumps won’t work and sewerage will flow into our homes. Who’s steering this ship?

[Bugs] I tried organic insecticide and was dissatisfied. It remained sticky on my plants and I could see a sheen on the leaves and it gunked up my sprayer and I had to use paint thinner (non-organic) to clean it. Plus it stank.

I’ll have you know, I’ve been sober for over 200 days. Not like, in a row or anything, just in general.

An interactive chart of biblical contradictions. The whole site is seriously an incredible resource. Go there and just play around with it. Then show your fundamentalist religious friends and watch them squirm. There’s just no plausible way anyone can take the Bible literally after spending time on this site unless they’re closing their eyes, sticking their fingers in their ears, and refusing to think about any of the errors in their worldview. Link

[Scam of the Day] You have won lump sum on the Coca-Cola email award. Contact for claims ukcocacola7809@x.com.sb. (Note: click that link and you or your computer die.)

When Miley Cyrus is naked and licks a hammer its art and music, but when I do it, I’m “wasted” and have to leave Home Depot!

[Sewers] Dear Governor and other State and County Officials: For over eight months a group of residents in the Florida Keys, now named the “Sir Isaac Newton Coalition” (SINC) have been battling the Florida Keys Aqueduct Authority (FKAA) regarding their intention to use a large number of grinder pumps as part of our waste treatment collection system instead of the gravity system initially proposed.  What at first appeared to be some confusion on FKAA’s part as to the makeup of some subdivisions has turned into a legal mess with apparent violations of state DEP rules and other statutes.  After numerous meetings with the FKAA and mixed support from our own County Commission, we have had to take legal action that includes initiating litigation relative to the $90 million dollar bond Monroe County is seeking through the Bond Validation hearing earlier this week.  We now find it necessary to seek an injunction on some construction because the FKAA has expedited the construction schedule by four months in the disputed areas, despite contractual constraints, in an attempt to complete the work before the Judge rules in our case.   In parallel, we are working with the State Attorney regarding FKAA violations of the Public Records act and will be filing details on concerns we have regarding procurement practices.

The gravity system we are seeking was promised a year ago in the State DEP required public hearings and all properly performed economic analysis shows it to have lifecycle savings that are significant.  The problem is two-fold.  The FKAA refuses to redesign the system and uses fabricated analysis to support their position.  Meanwhile the County is divided as to whether to fix the currently identified issues, which would cost less than $2 million, or fix all areas that were mis-designed for a cost of up to $10 million.  We have met with the Clerk of the Court, Amy Heavilin, who has statutory audit responsibility for this project and she is prepared to move forward with audits and engineering analysis.  Unfortunately, without an injunction, FKAA will have made our arguments moot.

FKAA is an unresponsive organization.  Their appointed Board of Director will not even accept our requests to meet and have not responded to any of our concerns.  I am sure all of you know that the citizens of Monroe County voted by a wide margin to change the FKAA BOD to an elected one.  This mess is an example of why this is necessary.

[Epic Privacy Browser] Won’t stop the NSA of course, but will for trackers, search engines saving your searches, cookies, web bugs and God knows what else. It loads pages a heck of a lot faster as a result. Even has a built in proxy toggle switch for hiding one’s general location discoverable by their IP address. So evil websites can’t track you down for watching the nudies on line.

This is all possible using Firefox + NoScript, TrackMeNot, Ghostery, Ad Block Plus and FoxProxy add-ons also if you need Firefox’s more extensive browser customization and add-ons. But the joy here with Epic it’s all built in by default and updated to keep protecting your privacy online from those evil marketing types who want to profile your personality for targeting purposes.
You can’t hide from the NSA, but at least you can exclude everyone else. Link

[Moderate Muslims] Defacing our currency is something “moderate” muslims might do.  Just because they may not be setting off bombs, do you think they are not helping to bring Islam into America? The Koran demands it of them.

After dinner at a restaurant, a woman in Monte Vista, Colorado, pulled out this dollar bill from her purse, and placed it on the table as part of a tip.  Underneath the words “In God We Trust”, someone had stamped the bill in red ink — NO GOD BUT ALLAH.

We asked her where she had gotten the dollar bill. She said it was part of her change in Alamosa, Colorado.  We took a picture of it.  These are starting to show up all around our country!

There’s more to CCleaner than clicking a single button. This popular application for wiping temporary files and clearing private data hides a variety of features, from fine-grained options for tweaking the cleaning process to full drive-wiping tools. Link

This Old Seven Mile Bridge repair extravaganza makes you wonder what kind of grip the Pigeon Key people have on the County Government.  Is there some kind of fear factor involved?

If you live close to latitude 40° north, Saturn stands straight over Venus on Monday evening.

What happened to that Boston bomber kid?

[“Look what we made”] It’s upside down! Who made that peace sign, Hipsters?

[Bugs] Ortho 32 oz. Ready-to-Use Bug B Gon Max Lawn and Garden Insect Killer is what I use in my yard. I had a bad problem with german cockroaches and it wiped them out. Just hook it to your hose and spray.

[Captain Doom and Gloom]  Crying kids on planes spawn child-free zones, flight nannies. No freaking chickens either! Link

[Diplomacy] What if Russia got to be more exceptional than us?  Could we handle it?

[Unions & Corporations] ] You may be right that some unions are now coming out against Obamacare but you are not 100% correct in your statement when you talk about “Health insurance provided by the Union”. In the vast majority of cases where a union member is covered by health care it is the employer that pays for and has control over the health care coverage as a result of a negotiated Labor contract and it is not the union providing the coverage directly. So now do you see that it is Corporations that are opting to throw what they have been responsible for all along to the federal govt? This is what’s known as “Corporate Welfare” Oh, and since “Corporations are people” and their sucking at the public trough, maybe we should drug test them.

[Syria] It seems Republicans don’t like the peaceful solution Russia has come up with.

New military badge for Syrian operation.

[Drones Strikes Work] Yemen’s al-Qaeda branch has confirmed that a U.S. strike killed one of its leaders at the end of last month. It was said in a statement posted on a militant website Saturday that Qaid al-Dahab was killed by a “perfidious American air raid” in the el-Manaseh region of Bayda province, along with one other person. Yemeni officials reported his death last month, saying the strike was likely by a U.S. drone. They said two were killed with al-Dahab. Al-Dahab was believed to be al-Qaida’s leader in the southern province of Bayda, one of its former strongholds. The statement praised him for having waged “jihad” for years, saying he had lost a hand in a previous battle.

The United States conducts regular drone strikes in Yemen but rarely confirms individual attacks.

I still don’t get what Russia, the US,  and Fox News have to do with Syria?

سما المصري تفشخ اوباما وتسبه بالاب والام

Egyptians against Obama. Music Video

[Syria] The only way Putin would have won any kind of battle would have been if Syria didn’t have to declare their weapons and would have been allowed to keep and use them.

The fact that Syria isn’t keeping them has to be held accountable for them and is allowing them to be destroyed is a huge fact that cant be denied. I don’t care how tough the right thinks Putin this is a huge defeat for him. To the poster asking if we are to believe that Putin who was in the KGB was beaten by a community organizer the only things I can think of is ask John Mccain an American war hero who it was that defeated him in the election. As for Putins toughness I say drop him off in the middle of Chicagos largest ghetto without a map and see if he can tough guy himself out of there. Yep, the community organizer has proven he doesn’t sweat the rights new beloved tough guy Putin. Now about those human shields the Conservatives want to send to Syria. Good luck with that.

The plot thickens. Already we are seeing the effects of Putin’s Mideast power coup. We’ve just learned that it is likely that Russia will be the recipient of Syria’s chem warfare assets. The problem is that there is virtually no way to make sure that Assad will give up his entire inventory, nor is there any way that the world can trust Putin to destroy the weapons. Remember Saddam? We have just learned that it is likely that final UN agreement on the issue will hinge on the US agreeing to abandon its threat of a military strike on Syria if Assad does not comply. Then it is also likely that the agreement will be conditioned on a complete cessation of the US’s supplying weapons to the rebels. Needless to say the rebels are dead set against the proposal because it virtually guarantees the Assad will triumph. Assad wins, and Putin wins thanks to Mr. Obama’s complete foreign policy ineptitude.  

Even worse, Putin is showing himself to now be the real power player in the mid east.

If you doubt that, please consider that Putin will soon be traveling to Tehran, Iran, to work out a strategy for the Iran’s fundamentalist Islamic regime’s nuclear program. Iran has just announced that it preparing to start up yet another reactor. Put simply, Putin has now cast himself as the protector of Iran as well as Syria.

Putin, seen by Iran’s clerical establishment as a strong opponent to America and the West — especially after his successful political play on averting a U.S. missile strike on Syria — was approached by Iran to protect the Islamic regime in the face of continued pressure by the West over its illicit nuclear program.

All of this is terribly dangerous to Israel and the few mid east nations who are still allies of the USA.

Part 2) The labor unions gleefully spent over $400 million of their members money in support of Obama.  They believed Obama and they believed Pelosi when she said “we’ll have to pass the law to understand what it means.”  Well, we know what it means. The unions now too know what it means, and it infuriates them.

Union leadership had a nasty surprise when they learned that Obamacare would seriously hurt their memberships by cutting hours and increasing premiums. One leader has even said that it will cause the end of the 40 hour work week, the back bone of our economy For a time they were content with temporary exemptions that they had received from Obama, but now all of that is changed. Their surprise morphed into anger when they learned that Congress has exempted itself from Obamacare. Congressional leaders stated that the increased cost of Obamacare would force their staffs to find new jobs.

Now union leaders are screaming that Obamacare is “killing” them. They are arm twisting the Prez to get special subsidies.

A White House official said the Treasury Department has determined that the healthcare plans used by many union members — known as multi-employer or Taft-Hartley plans — cannot be made eligible for subsidies that are intended to help uninsured people afford coverage. Even given that, with Obama’s usual disdain for the law, Team Obama issued the following statement: ““The administration will work with multi-employer plans and other non-profit plans and encourage them to offer coverage through the Marketplace, on an equal footing, to create new, high-quality, affordable options for all Americans,” Geeesh!

CLIMATE CHANGE

Buying “a pig in a poke” refers to buying an unseen piglet in a sack. The piglet was actually a cat, so when you opened the sack after purchase “the cat was out of the bag.”

Governments bought the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) ‘pig’ ‘that human CO2 was causing global warming wrapped in the ‘poke’ of their Reports. IPCC assured buyers it was a pig with 90+ percent certainty

They fooled governments and media four times now they offer a new poke in Assessment Report 5 (AR5), but with 95 percent certainty it’s a pig. This is despite the fact that the cat is already out of the bag. Their predictions have failed. For 17 years global temperatures have declined while CO2 levels continue to increase. Arctic summer ice, supposedly all gone by 2013 has recovered by 60 percent in one year. Severe weather has not increased. Damage done by policies already implemented, such as green jobs and alternate energies, is already evident. Newspaper coverage declined dramatically as people sense problems even if they don’t understand. Decline followed the peak created by Gore’s false fantasy An Inconvenient Truth.