(Saturday, June 22, 2013. The Coconut Telegraph is not published on Saturdays)

Summer first full day is here!

It’s summertime summertime sum sum summertime.

[Land Giveaway on Lower Matacumbe] Did I read this article right? Did the city really give the right away 8,000 sq ft or so to homeowners who own waterfront property in Lower Matacombe, saying they would protect the “earth” while they applied for a building permit on a three bedroom house. Didn’t they just close the access road in Key Largo because this is where drunk and loud boaters were disturbing homeowners? Who in the building department let this slip by? Can every person who lives on an access road get free property? Call me crazy, but I smell a rat. How much is that property worth now? Private road on water with no access to boats and cars 1 million – 7 million? Does the E.P.A know about this or maybe the F.B.I? Who controls maritime law? Let’s see if this is even legal.

[Wetstock 9] For the record, I am not the presenter, promoter, or have anything to do with the business end of Wetstock. However I will be there with great talented musicians and fifteen hundred of my closest friends!

~Your Friend Flip Flop Bob

P.S. I just heard The Phoenix Band is “on board” and will be doing an encore appearance this year at Wetstock 9.

[Sewers] County shoots down independent review. No to study on $150 million sewers, but approves high maintenance costs. Link

[Sewer Added-on Costs] If you need something to anger you over the sewer system, try this: Even though the work is mandated, you still have to get permits for the work.

$75 to the county to inspect the pvc pipe connection from your house to the pipe in front of it.

$90 to the health department for a permit to disable and fill your existing system.

And if you are to have a grinder pump, $150 to inspect the connection from your house to the pump (that’s just one wire from your main panel to a box near the pump).

The sharks are circling folks.

We’ll be friends until we’re old and senile, then we’ll be new friends.

[Carpet Cleaner] I have an R/V at Bahia Honda and I am in need of a carpet clean because my dog peed on the carpet. I check on the Business Directory listings and was not able to find someone local to hire or if there are any places (Winn Dixie) that rent the machine.  Any suggestions would be helpful.

[Rowell’s Marina] Someone thinks a private developer will buy the property, develope it to a park, pay taxes on it, and let all the county citizens use it for free?

Semicolons replace commas in a list whose items themselves contain commas. For example: Liz tried several things to treat her allergies: taking over-the-counter medications such as Chlor Trimeton, Zyrtec, and Claritin; alternating those drugs; wearing mosquito netting over her head; and, finally, swearing never to go outside in the spring.

Use a semicolon—not a comma—to separate independent clauses that don’t have coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or). For example: Yes, I see the mess you’ve made; you’ll be cleaning it up tomorrow.

[Sewers] I believe it is time that I join the conversation. I have noticed an increasing number of unhappy neighbors.

I am quite happy to have been south of the Seven Mile Bridge since 1990. While I am not excited about our new sewer, I encourage all to price a replacement “engineered” septic system. It is easily $20,000 to $25,000. I will gladly pay $310 per year rather than $25,000 all at once. I have a new personal goal to be here in 2033 to make my final payment!

Why are IRS agents now training with AR-15’s? Special agents at the IRS accidentally shot their firearms 11 times between 2009 and 2011, and at least three of the cases “may have resulted in property damage or personal injury.”

Agents actually fired their guns accidently more often than they intentionally fired them in the field, according to an audit by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. The report also found that the agency, which is now training with AR-15s, does not always provide remedial training to agents who fired their weapons due to “negligence.” Link

We all think we’re pretty smart until we try to turn on someone else’s shower.

[Sewers] Second $20 million sewer assessment is imminent. Good luck keeping up with the poo-poo expenses. Link

In a recent survey, 89% of Key West residents believe global warming is affected by human activities. 96% also supported the City’s decision to reduce its total community greenhouse gas emissions by 15% by 2015. The next step is action – by our government, our businesses and our residents. Preserving Island Life is about the little things we can do to increase our community sustainability and resilience. At this link you will find 12 themes that we will follow over each 12 month calendar year. And it all starts with a pledge to make a difference. Will you join us? Link

[Pigeon Key] I could not agree with the reader regarding us wasting tax dollars on a bridge to a privately owned island.  There are way too many other projects that we all could benefit from, instead of the not-for-profit group at Pigeon Key.

[Semi;Colon]  I was having some gastric distress, so I went to my doctor.  After numerous tests, it was decided that my colon had some issues. The suspect section was surgically removed, and now I have a semi-colon.

[Climate Change] The glaciers disappeared in Central Park too!

Muslim moving day. 

[Save the Reef] I’ve been worried about the reefs since I was a kid. I grew up diving South Florida from West Palm to the Dry Tortugas. The reefs are a far cry from the colorful living colonies of coral they once were.

The east coast cities killed the near shore reef with sewage being dumped from pipes just offshore (Hollywood Beach Bandshell and Key West). They hid the tourist poop and dredged the beaches to put more sand on them to hold all the fat northern tourists that continually come to Florida. The Keys are nothing like they were 50, 40, 30, 20 or even 10 years ago! Looe Key is a mere representation of what it once was.

The reefs problem is tourists. No agency, no organization, no government entity is going to save their slide — it is Allah’s will.

I care about the reefs, but after having worked the dive industry as a SCUBA Instructor, boat captain, dive master and mate, I’ve seen enough of these “we wanna drink, dive, and do what we wannas without being policed” to know that diving is the excuse for getting shit faced on someone’s charter boat.

Nope, not me. My law is the law on my boat and drinkers and diving are not a good mix.

[More bar wisdom] Some people call it beer, I call it dinner.

[Big Pine Swimming Hole] Someone wrote that they like it like it is. What’s that? a locked gate? a no trespassing sign?

[Sewers] Why do you assume that the people at the sewer meeting were right about the grinder pumps and the FKAA was wrong? For God’s sake ,the people who were there came because a neighbor who runs an energy consulting company wrote a report and convinced them to try to convince the County Commission to hire an independent company to study the issue. Which company do you think that was supposed to be? How can that not smell wrong to you?

[Semicolon] Mark Twain wrote a snarky comment on the semi colon and how it should never be used, but I can’t find it.

Fanci Seafood will be closed on Sundays until August. Everyone have a great summer!

[“Abortion: no longer than 6 weeks gestation for abortion unless it is a medical reason”] How about you keeping your thoughts out of my wife’s vagina? Mind your own business!

In 1989, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that burning the American flag was a form of political protest protected by the First Amendment.

[Conspiracyman] Does anyone else out there watch that weekly program on Sunday night, on channel 39 (WFSL), Unsealed Alien Files at 10:00 p.m., and soon after, Unsealed Conspiracy Files at 10:30 p.m.? It’s a really good program, disclosing some pretty radical stuff. I’m really surprised they haven’t taken it off the air yet. I have it set to record on my DVR just in case!

[Peaceful Buddhists Fight Back] “The world has grown accustomed to a gentle image of Buddhism defined by the self-effacing words of the Dalai Lama; the global popularity of Buddhist-inspired meditation and postcard-perfect scenes from Southeast Asia and beyond of crimson-robed, barefoot monks receiving alms from villagers at dawn. But over the past year, images of rampaging Burmese Buddhists carrying swords and the vituperative sermons of monks like Ashin Wirathu have underlined the rise of angry Buddhists in Myanmar — and revealed a darker side of the country’s greater freedoms after decades of military rule. Buddhist lynch mobs have killed more than 200 Muslims and forced more than 150,000 people, mostly Muslims, from their homes.

“You can be full of kindness and love, but you cannot sleep next to a mad dog,” Ashin Wirathu said, referring to Muslims. “If we are weak,” he said, “our land will become Muslim.” Link

Mercury is fading and dropping day by day. Use binoculars in bright twilight.

The next meeting of our computer club is coming up this Saturday, June 22, 10 am at the senior center. Bulletin Board

[Climate Change]  Was anyone on earth when, 10,000 years ago, we were covered with glaciers one mile thick? At that time the Pacific west coast extended out 35 miles from where it is now in some places. It appears that climate changes no matter what living organisms do here.

[Obama Vacation] How come the Right has such a selective memory? Why can’t they remember that G. W. bush took more vacations than any president in history. His vacations were also at a time when he started two wars that were spending us into recession.

Right leaning political family posts pictures on Facebook of fourteen year old granddaughter killing baby seal pups with high powered rifle. Left wing media response and celebrity outrage exposes double standard and rank hypocrisy. Link

Fox News qualifies as a “fifth column” in our midst.

[Obama Vacation] So we are to believe that when Bush took an entire 5 month vacation  at his ranch while our country was at war and that doesn’t send a message  but Obama meets with world leaders and hes not working? Yep, well….O.K.

Bush was losing jobs by the millions but still was on vacation more then any President in history. I guess a person wouldn’t want to be in the White House much when you destroy a countrys economy. Wise move.

FROM THE RIGHT

Deer Friends, in Europe the bloom has fled from the Obama rose. A few days ago he presented what was billed as being an important message. He delivered a speech that was panned as being disjointed and dispirited.  Certainly you will remember that candidate Obama drew a crowd of 200,000 at his speech at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. He was able to only draw about 4500 persons this time at the same venue. It sure looks like Europe is mirroring the USA. Obama’s poll numbers are plummeting.   Rasmussen has now joined other polling firms and is reporting that Obama’s approval has plummeted to 45%. Perhaps even worse for Democrats and Obama is the news that only 29% feel that America is going in the right direction. It looks like the anti war liberals are getting disenchanted with Obama.  They are realizing that many more Americans have been killed under Obama in Afghanistan than were killed during the Bush admin. The anti war liberals now recognize that Obama actually tripled the number of troops in Afghanistan. What about Gitmo? It’s no surprise that the Tea Party rally in D.C. the other day drew a crowd  that dwarfed the Obama speech crowd in Berlin.

Part 2) What follows is an opinion piece written by Logan Beirne. It’s worth a read.

“Our founding fathers faced men like Edward Snowden. They sentenced them to death. After we won the Revolutionary War, many people continued to break the law, claiming they were merely perpetuating American ideals. Our first president and commander-in-chief, George Washington, condemned them.In exposing the FSA’s surveillance program, Snowden claims to be a good American doing his part to expose government intrusion. Our Founders likely would have prosecuted Edward Snowden to the fullest extent of the law.The fact is that he intentionally broke U.S. law by leaking classified information and knowingly harmed our national security. For doing so, our Founders likely would have prosecuted him to the fullest extent of the law.While they had encouraged defiance against the British government during the war, after they won, they had little tolerance for disobedience against the new republic. This was because it was just to rebel against laws imposed without adequate representation, but once the American people gained representation, they were required to follow their own laws. For example, when Daniel Shays and other farmers rose up against their unjust treatment at the hands of the Massachusetts legislature, they were crushed. Despite Shays’ men’s honorable intentions and revolutionary rallying cry, “True Liberty and Justice may require resistance to law,” Washington had little sympathy.“What gracious God, is man! that there should be such inconsistency and perfidiousness in his conduct?” he lamented, “It is but the other day, that we were shedding our blood to obtain the Constitutions under which we now live; Constitutions of our own choice and making; and now we are unsheathing the sword to overturn them.”Following this rationale, Washington would vigorously pursue Snowden for breaking his nation’s laws and jeopardizing its national security.

Snowden had the option to contact his elected representatives in Congress, reach out to the courts, or pursue a variety of lawful channels.He had the ability to protest what may very well be a deeply troubling program, without breaking the law and revealing sensitive information to our enemies. Instead of acting as a true patriot, Snowden leaked intelligence to a British newspaper and fled to China.This is not to say the Founders would necessarily approve of the NSA programs, however. They would likely applaud efforts to keep a close watch on foreign nationals using all tools at our disposal; at the same time, they would take issue with the fact that untold thousands – or even millions — of innocent American citizens are swept into the dragnet as well.We fought a revolution to escape government intrusion. While we will surely learn more details about the NSA methods over the coming weeks, initial evidence of the programs’ indiscriminate techniques coupled with inadequate oversight, paints a picture analogous to the hated “writs of assistance” that led to the Revolutionary War.

America’s fierce aversion to these general warrants was a galvanizing force behind the creation of our constitutional republic.The king had authorized agents to conduct wide ranging searches of anyone, anywhere, anytime. If the agent was looking for weapons, for example, he could scour a town, searching every innocent man, woman, and child and their homes without any need to identify particular people for which he had legitimate reason to suspect.Without court oversight or probable cause, these writs left it to the officials’ discretion, thereby placing “the liberty of every man in the hands of every petty officer.”As Revolutionary commander-in-chief, George Washington was not shy about collecting intelligence, explaining that “It is by comparing a variety of information, we are frequently enabled to investigate facts, which were so intricate or hidden, that no single clue could have led to the knowledge of them.”He ferociously hunted America’s enemies, using varied and ingenious methods to do so.Analogously to the NSA programs, the Founders even intercepted the mail of Americans loyal to the crown. However, they were wary of abuses and sought to ensure transparent democratic oversight over the process rather than secretive national government agencies.We should likewise be wary of creeping government intrusion and strive to ensure proper oversight.

While we may decide as a nation that the current NSA activities are far less intrusive than the general searches of yesteryear, these programs are worth our scrutiny due to the new precedents they set. Times and technology will continue to change, but our values should not. We might look to Washington and our founding fathers for guidance on how to respond to security challenges while remaining faithful to our nation’s core constitutional principles.