Wednesday, June 30, 2010

People were deceived about senior center

Like many, I presume, I have been getting more and more caught up and ensnared in the World Cup web. While there are many interesting footnotes to the tournament, from vuvuzelas to miniskirt-wearing beer promotions, what has caught my attention most was the fact that North Korea actually paid Chinese actors to "perform" as their apparent cheering section. How is that for irony?

As I was pondering what this means, in light of a total denial of any culpability for the sinking of a South Korean Navy vessel by North Korea, a strange parallel came to mind.

Take yourself back to the heady days of the real estate bubble. Many of us are guilty of assuming that our property was worth more, because people getting paid to perform told us so.

I remember the impassioned pleas of people at City Commission meetings, almost crying out in favor of the proposed assisted living facility at the Truman Waterfront. Where will we go? What will we do? All the land in the Keys is being bought up by developers for exorbitant sums and we will be priced out of the Keys forever. I was, at the time, swayed by their passion, although I did not vote to approve the 99-year lease of priceless waterfront land, I felt for the people and their passion.

Now that the truth is beginning to unfold, I feel that the impassioned pleas were just an act. An act to sway the belief that such a land lease was in good faith, that we were doing the right thing. I feel that I have been deceived, and that the priceless land at the Truman Waterfront is now in the hands of developers, who might have paid actors to deceive us.

Matt Lynch

Key West

The oil spill is helping Obama destroy nation

I suspect the president's refusal to accept help from other nations in containing the oil spill in the Gulf is demonstrative of his battle plan to destroy America.

The damage to our economy by this oil leak is only beginning. Oil rig workers are laid off due to the moratorium on drilling. Coastal fisheries are going out of business. We can expect tourism to decline in the Panhandle.

If assessed with the theories of Cloward and Piven to destroy our nation through debt, and the president's promise to transform our nation, one may conclude the oil catastrophe was a boon to Obama's agenda. And he made the most of it through his inaction.

What most Americans are not aware of is how dire the Muslim threat to our nation is through their collusion with this "pragmatic" Marxist administration. Marxists and Muslims have long been natural allies in revolution.

To the Muslim, we infidels need not be converted, only submissive. I assert that the president's bow to the Saudi king was to illustrate the submission of our nation to the Islamists.

It would be a fine example of the nobility of the sovereign people of America to fund by our own selves all the common-sense plans presented to clean up this oil spill. Ironic that this may in fact be viewed by the administration and much of Congress as civil disobedience. So be it.

David Carter

Key West

We can't wipe clean thousands of roots

As I am perplexed and locked in a bovine gaze, I ask an itty-bitty question -- I am hoping one of you readers can shed some light on the following subject. I don't seem to be able to visualize an answer, as I scratch my woolly head. This: We keep hearing about beach cleanups and tar balls, if and when the oil cometh. Here in the Florida Keys, we have virtually no beaches except the few -- Bahia Honda, Long Key, Fort Zach, Anne's Beach, etc. But we do have an inordinate amount of mangrove shoreline.

Just exactly what is it we will be doing in this cleanup? Wiping mangrove roots by the millions with rags? Wiping the thousands of inaccessible miles of mangrove roots? Wiping, wiping, wiping -- catch my drift?

Now, I am no scientist. However, I do have a brain -- really, I think therefore I do. Every loop chart I have set gaze upon indicates that all loop currents, not just some, pass to and through the Florida Keys in eventuality. It is not a hit-or-miss game like a hurricane, so do any of you have a thought on my theory of wiping the roots?

I get the feeling we are screwed no matter which way the wind blows.

John Gerace

Big Pine Key