Welcome to Town Now F*ck Off!

$34 Tab Brings Beating At Key West Waffle House

Patrons Beat A Customer Who Stepped Into A Fight Over The Tab

It’s one thing to be upset about the food or service at a restaurant, but in Key West two customers turned their anger into a fistfight, berating a cashier, beating a woman who came to her aid, over a $34 breakfast tab.

Police in Key West say the women became upset when they were handed the tab at the 24-hour eatery on Roosevelt Avenue, and told the cashier they wouldn’t pay. When a bystander tried to speak up for the cashier, police say the two women attacked the helpful customer, pummeling her with their fists.

Witnesses told police the women ran off, stiffing the cashier for the tab. Police are looking for the pair, who Waffle House workers told police are often seen in the restaurant.

There was no word over what made the diners so upset that they were willing to beat someone up over their bill.

Rossi in the Sunshine, alone.

Mark Rossi is I think, still a bit of a noob when it comes to being a politician in Key West. I am still A little surprised to find he got caught out in this particular no no. The County State Attorneys has charged him with violating the Sunshine Law by allegedly talking on the phone with the mayor. A year or so ago.

I can't help wondering, how the hell do they either find out about something that took 5 minutes, months ago, or worse take said amount of months to bring charges. Who bloody cares anyway? Rossi has not learned some of the most important lessons in Keys politics. Keep mouth firmly shut. Raise hand to vote. Put hand in pocket quickly with cash...nevermind.

The conversation was either about the Mayor wanting to buy a T shirt from In & Out Burger in Las Vegas. (???) or Top Secret Key West budget proposals. Quite the discrepancy. Personally I am going with the In&Out Burger theory.

So the situation so far. Rossi charged, McPherson NOT charged, both going to be wearing even more hideous shirts than available on Duval. Stay tuned.

Cay Clubs Falling Apart.. hehe

From The Keynoter

A televised fishing-tournament series now owned by Keys developer Cay Clubs Resort and Marinas canceled plans for this week's scheduled competition in the Turks and Caicos.

“They kind of dropped a bombshell on us,” said Islamorada offshore captain Paul Ross, part of Team Galanti, last year's series champion.

Known as the BXRL, the league was founded by Norm Isaacs, a noted captain and fishing-show host.

Cay Clubs acquired the BXRL last year and announced plans to increase the total purse to $2 million in 2007.

Cay Clubs formed in 2004. In the Keys, it quickly acquired 14 hotels and marinas in roughly two years, with more than 2,800 units and 900 boat slips. Along with other properties, it's listed $108 million worth of real estate holdings in federal regulatory filings.

But the company also owed $87 million as of Dec. 31, and is scheduled to make $74 million in principal payments this year alone.

Two weeks ago, some 80 employees were suddenly laid off. And last week, more were let go as the company started merging some charterboat operations to save money.

OK I am not really laughing, more like the mad scientist guffaw. Cay Clubs cannot even come up with a paltry $2m for their new toy, er.. fishing contest? It is by no means a done deal yet, as the tournament is still proceeding, but I predict Cay Clubs in receivership within 6 months. Sell you shares now kiddies!

Truman Waterfront/Wisteria Island Combo

I have a suggestion to throw into the pool and it would fix two problems in one fail swoop. The Truman Waterfront is being fought over by just about every relevant and not so relevant group in town. Everything from a outdoor swimming pool, to a ferry station to an assisted living facility. At the same time, various concerned parties are fighting about how to carve up Christmas Tree Island. Ocean Properties who own next door fugly development, Sunset Key, want to turn it into another, well Sunset key. The city could care less they just want to squeeze as much tax revenue out of it as possible, and they don't much care how it is done.

Well, as a person who is dead against a bunch of old people being 'assisted' on one of the few open spaces left in town, NOT owned by some greedy pig, the Truman navy property, I highly recommend building the old folks home on Christmas Tree. Lets face it, they ain't going to want to go anywhere anyway. The tax breaks, both state and federal, will fatten up city pocke.. erm coffers and the people will be left with their bit of paradise unspoilt by the smell of lavender and pee.

Yes it may sound a tad shallow and possibly even a little cold hearted, I make no apologies for it. The land was donated by the Navy to the City of Key West. That means all of us, not just a small collection of special interest groups. I want to be able to ride my bike down there like I used to be able to, have a glass of wine at a reasonable price, watching the sunset, or just layout and relax without being bombarded by tour train/trolley amplified guides blathering on, or be constantly spied on by federal rent a cops.

Hahah yeah I know never happen, but I can dream.

The Race to be City Manager

I admit I have not paid much attention to this particular political race, because they are all as bad each other I thought.

Aha, I was wrong. Some are worse. Much worse.

Take a loot at this blog from Deerfield Beach circa 2004. Fascinating.

Larry Deetjen

This is his Topix Profile.. please note under favorite things "Developing Beachfront Property".

Why Bush Hasn’t Been Impeached

Congress, The Media and Most of The American People Have Yet To Turn Decisively Against Bush because To Do So Would Be To Turn Against Some Part of Themselves.

By Gary Kamiya

05/22/07 "Salon" --- - The Bush presidency is a lot of things. It’s a secretive cabal, a cavalcade of incompetence, a blood-stained Church Militant, a bad rerun of “The Godfather” in which scary men in suits pay ominous visits to hospital rooms. But seen from the point of view of the American people, what it increasingly resembles is a bad marriage. America finds itself married to a guy who has turned out to be a complete dud. Divorce — which in our nonparliamentary system means impeachment — is the logical solution. But even though Bush cheated on us, lied, besmirched our family’s name and spent all our money, we the people, not to mention our elected representatives and the media, seem content to stick it out to the bitter end.

There is a strange disconnect in the way Americans think about George W. Bush. He is extraordinarily unpopular. His approval ratings, which have been abysmal for about 18 months, have now sunk to their lowest ever, making him the most unpopular president in a generation. His 28 percent approval rating in a May 5 Newsweek poll ties that of Jimmy Carter in 1979 after the failed Iran rescue mission. Bush’s unpopularity has emboldened congressional Democrats, who now have no qualms about attacking him directly and flatly asserting that his Iraq war is lost.

Some of them have also been willing to invoke the I-word — joining a large number of Americans. Several polls taken in the last two years have shown that large numbers of Americans support impeachment. An Angus Reid poll taken in May 2007 found that a remarkable 39 percent of Americans favored the impeachment of Bush and Cheney. An earlier poll, framed in a more hypothetical way, found that 50 percent of Americans supported impeaching Bush if he lied about the war — which most of that 50 percent presumably now believe he did. Vermont has gone on record in calling for his impeachment, and a number of cities, including Detroit and San Francisco, have passed impeachment resolutions. Reps. John Murtha and John Conyers and a few other politicians have floated the idea. And there is a significant grassroots movement to impeach Bush, spearheaded by organizations like After Downing Street. Even some Republicans, outraged by Bush’s failure to uphold right-wing positions (his immigration policy, in particular), have begun muttering about impeachment.

Bush’s unpopularity is mostly a result of Iraq, which most Americans now believe was a colossal mistake and a war we cannot win. But his problems go far beyond Iraq. His administration has been dogged by one massive scandal after the other, from the Katrina debacle, to Bush’s approval of illegal wiretapping and torture, to his unparalleled use of “signing statements” to disobey laws he disagrees with, to the outrageous Gonzales and U.S. attorneys affair.

In response to these outrages, a growing literature of pro-impeachment books, from “The Case for Impeachment” by Dave Lindorff and Barbara Olshansky to “U.S. v. Bush” by Elizabeth Holtzman to “The Impeachment of George W. Bush” by Elizabeth de la Vega, argue not only that Bush’s misdeeds are clearly impeachable, but also that a failure to impeach a rogue president bent on amassing unprecedented power will threaten our most cherished traditions. As Lindorff and Olshansky conclude, “If we fail to stand up for the Constitution now, it may be only a piece of paper by the end of President Bush’s second term. Then it will be time to be afraid.”

Yet the public’s dislike of Bush has not translated into any real move to get rid of him. The impeach-Bush movement has not really taken off yet, and barring some unforeseen dramatic development, it seems unlikely that it will. Even if there were a mass popular movement to impeach Bush, it’s far from clear that Congress, which alone has the power to initiate impeachment proceedings, would do anything. The Democratic congressional majority has been at best lukewarm to the idea. In any case, their constituents have not demanded it forcefully or in such numbers that politicians feel they must respond. Democrats, and for that matter Americans of all political persuasions, seem content to watch Bush slowly bleed to death.

Why? Why was Clinton, who was never as unpopular as Bush, impeached for lying about sex, while Bush faces no sanction for the far more serious offense of lying about war?

The main reason is obvious: The Democrats think it’s bad politics. Bush is dying politically and taking the GOP down with him, and impeachment is risky. It could, so the cautious Beltway wisdom has it, provoke a backlash, especially while the war is still going on. Why should the Democrats gamble on hitting the political jackpot when they’re likely to walk away from the table big winners anyway?

These realpolitik considerations might be sufficient by themselves to prevent Congress from impeaching Bush. Impeachment is a strange phenomenon — a murky combination of the legal, the political and the emotional. The Constitution offers no explicit guidance on what constitutes an impeachable offense, stating only that a president can be impeached and, if convicted, removed from office for treason, bribery “or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” As a result, politicians contemplating impeachment take their cues from a number of disparate factors — not just a president’s misdeeds, but a cost-benefit analysis. And Congress tends to follow the cost-benefit analysis. If you’re going to kill the king, you have to make sure you succeed — and there’s just enough doubt in Democrats’ minds to keep their swords sheathed.

But there’s a deeper reason why the popular impeachment movement has never taken off — and it has to do not with Bush but with the American people. Bush’s warmongering spoke to something deep in our national psyche. The emotional force behind America’s support for the Iraq war, the molten core of an angry, resentful patriotism, is still too hot for Congress, the media and even many Americans who oppose the war, to confront directly. It’s a national myth. It’s John Wayne. To impeach Bush would force us to directly confront our national core of violent self-righteousness — come to terms with it, understand it and reject it. And we’re not ready to do that.

The truth is that Bush’s high crimes and misdemeanors, far from being too small, are too great. What has saved Bush is the fact that his lies were, literally, a matter of life and death. They were about war. And they were sanctified by 9/11. Bush tapped into a deep American strain of fearful, reflexive bellicosity, which Congress and the media went along with for a long time and which has remained largely unexamined to this day. Congress, the media and most of the American people have yet to turn decisively against Bush because to do so would be to turn against some part of themselves. This doesn’t mean we support Bush, simply that at some dim, half-conscious level we’re too confused — not least by our own complicity — to work up the cold, final anger we’d need to go through impeachment. We haven’t done the necessary work to separate ourselves from our abusive spouse. We need therapy — not to save this disastrous marriage, but to end it.

At first glance it seems odd that Bush’s fraudulent case for war has saved him. War is the most serious action a nation can undertake, and lying to Congress and the American people about the need for war is arguably the most serious offense a public official can commit, short of treason. But the unique gravity of war surrounds it with a kind of patriotic force field. There is an ancient human deference to The Strong Man Who Will Defend Us, an atavistic surrender to authority that goes back through Milosevic, to Henry V, to Beowulf and the ring givers, and ultimately to Cro-Magnon tribesmen huddled around the campfire at the feet of the biggest, strongest warrior. Even when it is unequivocally shown that a leader lied about war, as is the case with Bush, he or she is still protected by this aura. Going to war is the best thing a rogue president can do. It’s like taking refuge in a church: No one can come and get you there. There’s a reason Bush kept repeating, “I’m a war president. I’m a war president.” It worked, literally, like a charm.

And many of the American people shared Bush’s views. A large percentage of the American people, and their elected representatives, accepted Bush’s unlimited authority to do whatever he wanted in the name of “national security.” And they reaffirmed this acceptance when, long after his fraudulent case for war had been exposed as such, they reelected him. Lindorff and Olshansky quote former Republican Sen. Lowell Weicker, who justifies his opposition to impeachment by saying, “Bush obviously lied to the country and the Congress about the war, but we have a system of elections in this country. Everyone knew about the lying before the 2004 elections, and they didn’t do anything about it … Bush got elected. The horse is out of the barn now.”

To be sure, the war card works better under some circumstances than others. It is arguable that if there had been no 9/11, Bush’s fraudulent case for war really would have resulted in his impeachment — though this is far from certain. But 9/11 did happen, and as a result, large numbers of Americans did not just give Bush carte blanche but actively wanted him to attack someone. They were driven not by policy concerns but by primordial retribution, reflexive and self-righteous rage. And it wasn’t just the masses who were calling for the United States to reach out and smash someone. Pundits like Henry Kissinger and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman also called for America to attack the Arab world. Kissinger, according to Bob Woodward’s “State of Denial,” said that “we need to humiliate them”; Friedman said we needed to “go right into the heart of the Arab world and smash something.” As Friedman’s statement indicates, who we smashed was basically unimportant. Friedman and Kissinger argued that attacking the Arab would serve as a deterrent, but that was a detail. For many Americans, who Bush attacked or the reasons he gave, didn’t matter — what mattered was that we were fighting back.

To this day, the primitive feeling that in response to 9/11 we had to hit hard at “the enemy,” whoever that might be, is a sacred cow. America’s deference to the shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later approach is profound: It’s the gut belief that still drives Bush supporters and leads them to regard war critics as contemptible appeasers. This is why Bush endlessly repeats his mantra “We’re staying on the attack.”

The unpleasant truth is that Bush did what a lot of Americans wanted him to. And when it became clear after the fact that Bush had lied about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, it made no sense for those Americans to turn on him. Truth was never their major concern anyway — revenge was. And if we took revenge on the wrong person, well, better a misplaced revenge than none at all.

For those who did not completely succumb to the desire for primitive vengeance but were convinced by Bush’s fraudulent arguments about the threat posed by Saddam, the situation is more ambiguous. Now that his arguments have been exposed and the war has become a disaster, they feel let down, even betrayed — but not enough to motivate them to call for Bush’s impeachment. This is because they cannot exorcise the still-mainstream view that Bush’s lies were justifiable and even noble, Straussian untruths told in support of what Bush believed to be a good cause. According to this line of thinking, since Bush and his neocon brain trust really believed that Saddam Hussein was a dangerous tyrant, the lies they told in whipping up support for war were, while reprehensible, somewhat forgivable.

In Elizabeth de la Vega’s book on impeachment, framed as a fictitious indictment of Bush for conspiring to defraud the United States, she argues that from a legal standpoint it doesn’t matter that Bush may have believed his lies were in the service of a higher good — he’s still guilty of fraud. In a brilliant stroke, de la Vega compares the Bush administration’s lies to those told by Enron executives — who were, of course, rightfully convicted.

The problem is that the American people are not judging Bush by the standards of law. The Bush years have further weakened America’s once-proud status as a nation of laws, not of men. The law, for Bush, is like language for Humpty Dumpty: it means just what he chooses it to mean, neither more nor less. This attitude has become disturbingly widespread — which may explain why Bush’s illegal wiretapping, his approval of torture, and his administration’s partisan purge of U.S. district attorneys have not resulted in wider outrage.

This society-wide diminution of respect for law has helped Bush immeasurably. It is not just the law that America has turned away from, but what the law stands for — accountability, memory, history and logic itself. That anonymous senior Bush advisor who spoke with surreal condescension of “the reality-based community” may have summed up our cultural moment more acutely than anyone else in years. A society without memory, driven by ephemeral emotions, which demands no consistency from its leaders but only gusty patriotism, is a society that is not about to engage in the painful self-examination that impeachment would mean.

A corollary to the decline of logic is our acceptance of the universality of spin. It no longer seems odd to us that a president should lie to get what he wants. In this regard, Bush, the most sanctimonious of presidents, must be seen as having degraded traditional American values more than the most relativist, Nietzsche-spouting postmodernist.

All of these factors — the sacrosanct status of war, the public’s complicity in an irrational demonstration of raw power, the loss of respect for law, logic and memory, the bland acceptance of spin and lies, the public unconcern about the fraudulence of Bush’s actions — have created a situation in which it is widely accepted that Bush’s lies about Iraq were not impeachable or even that scandalous, but merely a matter of policy. Just as conservatives lamely charged that the Scooter Libby case represented the “criminalization of politics,” so the conventional wisdom holds that distorting evidence to justify a war may be slightly reprehensible, but is not worth making much of a fuss about, and is certainly not impeachable.

The establishment media, which has tended to treat impeachment talk as if it were the unseemly rantings of half-crazed hordes, has clearly bought this paradigm. In this view, those who want to impeach Bush, or who are simply vehemently critical of him, are partisan extremists outside the mainstream of American discourse. This decorous approach has begun to weaken. A recent U.S. News and World Report cover read, “Bush’s last stand: He’s plagued by a hostile Congress, sinking polls, and an unending war. Is he resolute or delusional?” When centrist newsweeklies begin using words drawn from psychiatric manuals, it may be time for Karl Rove to get worried. But it takes time to turn the Titanic. The years of deference to the War Leader cannot be overcome that quickly.

For all these reasons, impeachment, however justified or salutary it would be — and I believe it would be both justified and salutary — remains a long shot. Bush will probably escape the fate of Andrew Johnson and the disgrace of Richard Nixon. But he’s not home free yet. The culture of spin is also the culture of spectacle, and a sudden, theatrical event — a lurid accusation made by a former official, a colorful revelation of a very specific and memorable Bush lie — could start the scandal machine going full speed. Even the war card cannot be played indefinitely. If Bush were to withdraw the troops from Iraq, and the full dimensions of America’s defeat were to become apparent, all of his war-president potency would backfire and he would be in much greater danger of being impeached. Congress and the media both gain courage as the polls sink, and if Bush’s numbers continue to hit historic lows, they will turn on him with increasing savagery. If everything happens just so, the downfall of the House of Bush could be shocking in its swiftness.

© 2007 Salon.com

Monday Morning

Coastie skipper arrested after Key West bar brawl

The commanding officer of a Boston-based Coast Guard cutter was arrested and charged with assault Tuesday following a scuffle during a port call in Key West, Fla.

Cmdr. Michael Sabellico, 42, of Scituate, Mass., the skipper of the 270-foot medium endurance cutter Escanaba, was arrested May 15 by Key West police around 1:15 a.m. The Coast Guard has temporarily reassigned him, officials said.

According to the police report, Sabellico and several crew members were drinking at establishments along the island’s famed Duval Street when they argued with a bartender at an Irish pub.

Sabellico and the crew members allegedly were loitering in an alley when the bartender at Irish Kevin’s asked them to leave. They left as requested, but according to the report, Sabellico returned and scuffled with the man. He then left the scene. Sabellico was apprehended later and charged with simple assault.

The Coast Guard is conducting an administrative investigation into the incident. According to Atlantic Area spokesman Lt. Rob Wyman, Sabellico has been reassigned temporarily to the Coast Guard’s 1st District but he remains the Escanba’s commander.

Cmdr. Chris Austin, currently the commanding officer of the Portsmouth, Va.-based Coast Guard cutter Northland, has assumed temporary command of the Escanaba while the ship returns to its home port.

Way ta go, pick a fight in an Irish pub. Look at this guy, would you be a scared?


The Deli, not good enough for the developers clients...

Another landmark restaurant is set to close in downtown Key West. The Deli, on the corner of Truman and Simonton has been there since the early 50's. Owner, Bob Bernreuter, seems to blame it on the lack of business over the last few years. Seems all the multi million dollar condo owners could care less about a lovely little historic eaterie, and failed to spend any of the cash we are constantly told they bring in, at the Diner. I am so sorry to see it go.


The Truman Waterfront

I have to say I am very concerned about the direction this last little bit of public land is headed towards. Hundreds of parking spaces, thousands of sq feet of retail (read tourist traps crap) shops and a ball park for children. Huh?

I really am starting to understand why Key West is the planning train wreck that it is, if this is the kind of things they do with our free spaces. The city also somehow wants to squeeze in an old folks home. Then theres Ed 'Swifty' Swift who thinks we need a ferry terminal there, (I guess the enormous Ferry Terminal across the harbor is not good enough), to take us all to and from Cuba.

For crying out loud! How surreal is this going to become. I will be watching this one closely.

Very cool, but I would have nightmares for weeks after perpetrating this much abuse..

You know, as a believer in Karma I can't help thinking that those bugs are going to be up for some serious payback.

And Finally, The President won't fire him but you can!

Reefer Madness!!

In Michigan, a cop eats the brownies he spiked with pinched weed. Gets mega paranoid, blames his wife.. oh the lulzzzzz

Enjoy the Remix

Closing Down and Re Emerging..

Ok, I had a thought to create a blog about Key West. Mainly because I was unhappy with the way the town is portrayed in most other media. The rosy tinted vision where we all live in hammocks and drink margaritas whilst listening to Jimmy Bucket.

But I have found it to be just too limiting. There are so many other things that I need to post, and frankly, I am bored with the way this blog is going.

I am not going to stop digging up and posting interesting tidbits on the Island. But I have to go where the news and interest takes me.

As far as I know, I have approximately 5 readers, (hello Mum), so I doubt it will make much difference. I look at the previous incarnation of this blog as the practice, hang tight for the real thing ;)

Kerensa

Cay Clubs

Cay Clubs are apparently hugely in debt, relatively speaking, due to massive acquisitions and not a hell of a lot of actual business. None of the properties they have acquired lately have any work of any note begun on them, nor any date set for work to start. They have also laid off almost 10% of their employees due to slow revenues.

Great this basically means that they own vast tracts of the Keys, no one else can touch them.. and they are in the hands of a wonky corporation, that is having major financial difficulties. History repeats and repeats. No doubt said properties will be left to rot, sustain natures fury and end up an eyesore for years. Or not.

In other news, Commissioner Mark Rossi is backing Last Stand among others in trying to save the Pine trees at Fort Zach. Personally, as someone who is there several times a week, I hate them, the needles get stuck in places I really would rather they wouldn't, and they shed so damn many. But I do definitely see the need for shade and the protection of the beach from erosion. What worries me is that the now world famous Corps of Engineers, you remember the ones who built those fabulous levies, are in charge of preserving the park and prevently any erosion. Ho hum.

Hendrick - slap on the Wrist etc etc,

Hendrick gets probation

Federal judge orders disgraced former county attorney to pay $50,000 fine

James Hendrick, the former Monroe County attorney convicted in February of obstructing justice and witness tampering in a wide-ranging, years-long Keys corruption case, was given five years probation and a $50,000 fine Friday in Miami federal court.

“An awful lot of people came forward on your behalf,” said U.S. District Judge Shelby Highsmith. A couple dozen filled the courtroom's pews: friends, business partners, Hendrick's wife and son. “Do not disappoint us.”

“I will not,” said Hendrick, who leaned over the bar to hug his wife. Her eyes brimmed and she whispered to him.

Hendrick, 59, was convicted in February of conspiracy, obstruction of justice and witness tampering involving a bribe paid to then-County Commissioner Jack London.

London had pleaded guilty to filing a false tax return for failing to report the $29,000 bribe and was facing three years in prison.

No charges in hotel death

Kohl closes probe into DoubleTree

Despite numerous blunders by DoubleTree Grand Key Resort staff that proved fatal for 26-year-old Thomas Lueders, Monroe County State Attorney Mark Kohl's office on Friday said the resort's actions cannot be considered criminal.

Lueders, of Washington, D.C., died from carbon monoxide fumes Dec. 27. His father, Richard, was in the same room, No. 416, but was hospitalized and fully recovered in a day, according to a report from the state Fire Marshal's Office.

The two were discovered by Grand Key General Manager Steve Robbins, who attempted cardiopulmonary resuscitation on Thomas Lueders. Robbins later resigned.

Lueders' death spawned multiple lawsuits from other Grand Key customers who stayed on the fourth floor, where the boiler room is located. That room was found to be the source of the carbon monoxide that seeped into Room 416 and killed Lueders while he was reading in bed.

The city pulled its certificate of occupancy and the 216-room resort was closed from Dec. 29 to March 1.

I know a couple of people who work at the Grand Key Hotel and the stories about this are scary. Apparently the 'smoke' alarms were going off for days before the main incidents and because no one could find any fire, they just reset them and ignored the noise. The problem is that some of these monitors were combination smoke/carbon monoxide monitors, but the staffing situation was so bad that no one knew. Alot of those in charge have been fired or re assigned, but a basic English speaking maintenance crew is obviously what is needed over there.


Spottswoods get the go-ahead

Massive project to redevelop to start in '08

After hearing vociferous public comment against it, the Key West City Commission on Tuesday passed a resolution to launch developer Spottswood Cos.' 20-acre redevelopment plan, called the Key West Hotel and Conference Center, at the so-called triangle where U.S. 1 intersects with Roosevelt Boulevard.

“I think we are going to have to get used to these changes,” Commissioner Bill Verge said.

The plan includes a 450-room hotel, 50 workforce-housing apartments, 33 time-share units, 21 residential condos, a 20,500-square-foot conference center, 21,000 square feet of retail space, and a 250-seat restaurant and bar at 3820 N. Roosevelt Boulevard.

Vociferous? VOCIFEROUS.. gee whiz wonder why? Although I am actually weighing this hideous monstrosity up with what the town is losing. A Comfort Inn, Quality Inn, Holiday Inn, Raddison Inn.. starting to see a creepy pattern here? Frankly losing those and a Waffle House just don't make me as uncomfortable as losing mom & pop B&B's downtown to massive over development. Yes I know, we are losing some of the cheap end hotel rooms and that is the one thing that is very very wrong with this deal. Those people are the ones who keep the economy going, not the rich bitches in their hermetically sealed, generic faux conch blockhouses.

So are the Spottswoods the children of Satan? Yes absolutely. I just don't care so much, what they do to an already ruined and depressing part of town. Its all over for us I know that, I just want to make sure that people know the names of those responsible.

Tampon and Other Oddities.

TAMPOA, the Truman Annexe owners group are re-filing their old dismissed lawsuit. Somehow I missed this one. The are actually claiming that they own Southard Street. Or at least a big chunk of it. They also insist that they be allowed to regulate traffic on the bit they own. I thought they already wer regulating and owning the bit of Southard that flows onto the navy base and then down to Fort Zach. Except of course that is federal land and I cannot see the Feds giving up their access road to a bunch of yahoo condo owners. We shall see what happens to possibly the most litigation happy group of people in town.

Parents of the Year/Month Award..

The parents of a 10-year-old boy were arrested Tuesday morning on charges of child neglect after they allegedly left their son alone in a guesthouse room in Key West for several hours and went out drinking, according to police.Officers were called to the 500 block of Rose Lane after Key West Police got a call from a boy who they said was crying. He told police that his parents, Clinton and Amy Morris, had left the room around 9 p.m. and said they would return in an hour. Police arrived at 1:30 a.m. to find the boy alone in the room.The boy said he called his mother's cell phone, but could not reach her and did not know his father's cell phone number. A police officer was able to get in contact with Clinton Morris and alerted him several times before he agreed to come back to the room, said police.When the parents arrived at the room, officers noted Clinton Morris, 37, smelled strongly of alcohol and had slurred speech.Amy Morris, 39, did not approach the hotel until officers ordered her to the room at which point police said she displayed slow movements and uneven balance, and then urinated on herself. Officers also tried to obtain Amy Morris' Social Security number, but police said she was too intoxicated to remember it.The couple is from Merrillville, Ind., and police said Clinton Morris is employed as a pipe fitter in Chicago.The Department of Children and Families took custody of the 10-year-old boy.

Fla. Legislature amends DUI law

Drunk drivers who leave the scene of an accident in which someone dies would have to go to prison for a minimum of two years under a bill passed today by the Senate and sent to Gov. Charlie Crist.

The measure is named for Adam Arnold, who was 16 when he was killed in 1996 as he was riding a mo-ped in Key West by a driver who was believed to be drunk.

The measure, sponsored by Sen. Victor Crist, R-Tampa, passed unanimously.

Keys Forum Bullcrap.

Are you kidding?If it wasn't for the vacationers you wouldn't have a middle class workforce in Key West.Who do you think they work for.The bars,hotels and attractions that the vacationers go for.Another genius that moved to a tourist spot and now wants the tourists to stop showing up.

A lot of people, myself included, moved here 16, 20 years ago, when it was most certainly NOT a major tourist spot. Also the kind of tourists that came back then truly respected the island and the locals. Now we have a bunch of yahoos with more money than sense who have caused multi million dollar rapist developers to destroy KW.

They have just announced we are losing another 500+ hotels rooms to $1.2m ++ condos. Rarely do any of the people who buy those condos use any of the facilities that employ the 'middle class workforce'. When they do bless us with their obnoxious presence, they don't tip worth a shit when they do emerge.

As for the 'attractions' they are all manufactured and owned by one man Ed Swift, and nobody here gives a shit if he lives or dies as he is one of the aforementioned rapists.

He is the McDonalds of attractions and working for him is just as demeaning.