[Shipwreck Settlement] The Freedom, a 141-foot Christensen megayacht, that ran aground in the Dry Tortugas in 2010 has agreed to pay the government  $200,000 in a settlement.  The owner is Alabama resident Joel Anderson who agreed to pay the government the money in order to forgo another costly trial.

In 2011 the courts ruled that Halmos allegedly concealed information, misrepresented himself as a lawyer  and committed other fraudulent acts against insurance  companies, according to the  ruling. For those reasons, the insurance companies don’t owe Peter Halmos any more money to repair the vessel. This is about civil rights and insurance companies who try to stonewall you,” Halmos said.

On Oct. 24, 2005, Wilma battered and pushed the Legacy for more than a mile, tossing it like a beach ball in the Northwest Channel  before it came to rest on the muddy edge of Great White Heron National Wildlife Refuge. ~ condensed from Adam Linhardt of the Citizen staff

The Titanic sank today in the North Atlantic after hitting an iceberg April 15, 1912 in order to avoid paying taxes.

When I saw Citizens’ new prices, I passed wind and got a wind and flood policy.

[New Road Projects to Start] In Key Largo, between mile markers 99.6 and 106.3, one  of two lanes in each direction might be closed between 9  a.m. and 4 p.m. Mondays through Fridays and 8 p.m. to 6  a.m. Sunday evenings through early Friday mornings. The  project is expected to take nine months. Also, between mile marker 59.9 and 68.25, an eightmonth-long project is to begin, resulting in possible lane  closures between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m., Sunday evenings  through early Friday mornings.

These pictures of my girls was taken Sunday at a flower show in San Diego.

In 1959, Fidel Castro, the new Cuban  leader, arrived in Washington, D.C., for an 11-day  tour of the United States. isn’t this when he said he wasn’t going to be a communist?

Kudos to NOAA for getting the dive balls on the Adolphus Busch wreck replaced so quickly. Don’t know why they went missing – planned maintenance? Broken off? Just glad to have them back in place.

Gas was down to $3.63 at the Shell in Marathon on Saturday. Wholesale gas is down to $2.80 from a high of $3.15 a while back. Breathe easy, at least it is going in the right direction for a change. It is less than $3.00 in South Carolina. Much less tax up there. Wow! 

During these past two weeks during Deer Ed’s BrainEnemaCation, my wife and I visited our vacant lot on Big Pine Key. When last there in the fall, we set a pile of stones on each corner of the lot with a reflector, and put a marker on the street front of the lot to help make it easier for contractors, etc. to identify the correct lot. I made it as a gift for my wife as well, sort of as a mark of hope of someday getting a house up. It was a sand dollar stepping stone painted pearl white, with a few large sand dollars next to it (see photo).

So on our recent visit, the marker is was gone. The street front stone markers kicked over. The reflectors were tossed 6+ feet away. My wife was bummed as was I.

Rowdy kids or rude jerks – who knows? Anyway, if you received the marker as a gift, let Deer Ed know and he can contact me. Otherwise, if you did this yourself, get a life and refrain from private property trespass and destruction. Really, can’t you think of something productive to do? 

[Recycle] During the 10 months of  last year for which the village has records, Islamorada’s  waste hauler took nearly a  fifth of the recyclables it collected to the South Miami Dade landfill rather than to a  recycle center. Advanced Disposal transported 104.5 tons, or nearly 210,000 pounds, of non-vegatative recyclables to the landfill.

[“a pack of wild cats”]  There is no such thing.  It’s called a pride. 

[“Animal factory or torture”] My wife saw this and said she would never eat fresh meat again, only the packaged stuff from the markets.

Sen. Marco Rubio says entertainers Beyonce and Jay-Z missed a chance while in Cuba to see firsthand the effects of political oppression. The  Republican  lawmaker from Florida calls their recent trip “hypocritical” and he takes issue with the U.S. government’s  approval of the visit as a cultural mission. Beyonce and Jay-Z marked their wedding anniversary in Havana last week. U.S. citizens aren’t allowed to travel to Cuba for mere  tourism, though they can obtain licenses for academic, religious, journalistic or cultural exchange trips. These  people-to-people licenses were reinstated under the Obama administration. Rubio, a Cuban-American, says such trips provide money to the Castro government to oppress the Cuban people.

Rubio appeared on 3 major networks and discussed the trip during interviews Sunday on  CNN’s “State of the Union,”  ABC’s “This Week” and NBC’s  “Meet the Press.”

If you quit looking for a job dont blame the President you really didnt want a job. Why does the right feel its the Presidents fault you dont have the qualifications to be employed? Its getting old listening to the right blame our president for lazy asses that dont want to work or get the qualifications needed to be employed.The right enables the lazy more then they realize. Dont have a job? Blame Obama its al his fault. Pure pacyderm poop.

The company I work for has hired 3 more employees in the last month and is looking for more. Hey, can we thank the President for giving those 3 employees jobs? No,  that that would be as stupid as blaming him because you didnt get an education or a job skill.

The Rights in full desperation and it shows on here daily.

North Korean destroyer crossing the Deleware.

Our Republican Senators in Washington must have a very short work day.  They come into their offices in the morning, pick up the list of the latest Obama proposals to help the Country,  drop them in the waste basket (without reading), and go home

Things that happened while Ed enjoyed his vacation that FTR will never share (to be continued). Georgia GOP Chairwoman Sue Everhart warned that “straight people might enter into fraudulent gay marriages to obtain benefits.” Couldn’t a straight do the same thing?

Nancy Pelosi is a petty, self-absorbed hypocrite, a thumb sucker and a nit-wit. Nancy Pelosi is also a serial liar, a cheat, and a thief. I must say, Nancy Pelosi is the worst example of a Catholic I have ever personally witnessed. She married for money and is using her wealth to lie to the American people. She also has a reputation for shirking her Representative obligations both In Washington and in California. The woman is simply not to be trusted.

FROM THE RIGHT

The battle of the guns goes on and on.  Many who are supporters of the Second Amendment are deeply concerned that the big push to broaden the existing background checks will lead to a national firearms registry. A registry that will record who has firearms, the number they own, and the type of gun.  Those who favor expansion of background checks tell us that that concern is without merit. They say that could never happen.

The folks who favor enhanced background checks are flat wrong.  The federal government wants that information.  We know that to a certainty because we learned last week that a federal investigator demanded and received a list of all the holders of concealed weapon permits in Missouri. Missouri Governor Jay Nixon (Dem) defended the release of the data.  Nonetheless it is obvious that the sharing of an entire data basecrosses the line between law enforcement activity to profiling through intelligence gathering. In short, the feds demanded and got a list of gun owners in Missouri

The feds claimed that they wanted the data base so that they could identify CCW permit holders who might have claimed Social Security benefits for mental illness.  That argument is specious because the feds are now required to do a background investigation for all new gun purchases from a dealer. If the feds were truly setting out to enhance background checks, they could simply check the SS data base during the course of that “investigation.”  But they don’t.

The push for enhanced background checking is a sham, a smoke screen.  The current check is nothing more than a check for arrests and criminal history of the applicant. The check relies on the answers the applicant supplies. It usually takes only a few minutes on the telephone.

Joltin Joe Biden apparently was not given the talking points from Obama when Biden recently told the NRA: “…… regarding the lack of prosecutions on lying on Form 4473s, we simply don’t have the time or manpower to prosecute everybody who lies on a form, that checks a wrong box, that answers a question inaccurately.”

Since the early ’90s, when many states relaxed their weapon laws, violent crime has dropped 70 percent. Despite the rampages on campuses and military bases, as well as the hail of gang bullets in Chicago that has killed over 200 so far this year, the national murder rate is at a 47-year-low. Link 

The evidence is clear that Team Obama is using this dust  up as smokescreen, they seem to know that background checks for firearms will have no statistical impact on firearm crimes. We know that because Attorney General Holder’s gun application prosecutions in 2011 were down 35 percent from the Bush administrations peak in 2004. That’s from Justice Department data. Justice has also reported that since the Brady law took effect there have been 6,037,394 applications/background checks. But, and it’s a huge butt, in the end, a microscopic 62 cases were referred for prosecution, but most were declined by prosecutors or dismissed by the court. Out of the original 73,000 denials, there emerged just 13 guilty pleas. The stats are unclear, but it appears there were no convictions at trial. And remember that the number of deaths by gun has been constantly declining. Link

We know that changing the criteria for gun ownership is a fool’s errand because the FBI has reported a steady and marked decrease in homicides wherein a firearm was used. The number of homicides by gun has decreased by about 15% between 2007 and 2011.

Then we must remember that the only way to be assured that a gun owner is free from mental illness, it would be necessary for that gun owner to be examined and tested  by a mental health expert, at least annually.

Even the Huffington Post has weighed in on the issue, in a December ’12 issue their headline states: “Gun Control Laws Fail To Keep Mentally Ill Away From Guns.”

Obama’s exploitation of the Newtown victims families is crass, and disgusting.

Part 2) In their never ending obsession with social engineering, the Obama administration is engaged in a broad push to make more home loans available to people with weak credit.  What could possibly go wrong with that? Duh!.  Apparently Team Obama has no memory of the fact that it was precisely that policy that plunged us into recession. You really should read: Link