Key West mayor Craig “Chicken” Cates weenies, and other Aesop-ish hurricane tales from the best little whore house in the Florida Keys

Lady Kali grew tired of all of that thinking, thinking, thinking,

she stands on Lord Shiva’s chest after he lay down hoping to stop her rampage

So, next today is an epistle from St. Paul, of Homestead, Florida, where he moved a while back, because he no longer could afford to live in Key West:

I guess someone could still write in DON RICKLES.

(sob!) …. in November ….

… but …. He’d never know!

P.S.

http://www.npr.org/2014/11/12/363458858/florida-election-officials-arent-counting-write-in-votes

WOOPS!

A small omission.

AROUND THE NATION

Florida Election Officials Don’t Bother With Write-In Votes

November 12, 20146:56 AM ET

Heard on Morning Edition

The Tampa Tribune reports that state election officials increasingly are not bothering to tally write-in votes. It’s a tragedy for Mickey Mouse, who as a resident of Florida, was often named.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Good morning. I’m Steve Inskeep with another Florida voting scandal. Votes for Mickey Mouse no longer count. The Tampa Tribune reports state election officials increasingly are not bothering to count write-in votes. That’s a tragedy for Mickey Mouse who, as a resident of Florida, was often named. Chuck Norris also loses, along with none of the above. And it must be frustrating for our Miami correspondent Greg Allen. His vote will not count if he writes in Renee Montagne.

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

Curses.

INSKEEP: You’re listening to MORNING EDITION.

I replied:

And that vote would not be counted, unless Rickles had qualified as a write-in candidate.

As I explained in a couple of fairly recent posts, on the mayor part of the Key West ballot will be a bubble beside Craig Cates’ name, and people can vote for him by filling in that bubble, which is what the elections’ office computer scanner will pick up: the colored in bubble.

Also on the mayor part of the Key West ballot is a bubble for “write-in” and a blank space into which to write the candidate’s name. That bubble has to be filled in and the write-in candidate’s name, ahem, Sloan Bashinsky, written into the space. The election’s office computer scanner will pick up that bubble and shuffle that ballot into a different pile than all the other ballots, which will let the elections office know there is a write-in in vote on that ballot.

The elections office told me all votes for other races on that ballot will be counted, including the write-in vote for mayor. I also was told only votes for filed candidates, regular or write-in, will be counted.

If you watched the video of my skit and Todd German’s lead in to it, you heard him explain that, and that votes for not-filed candidates will not be counted.

Given how much attention this seems to be getting, how to do a write-in, and how little feedback I’m getting on what I said Hometown’s forum, what must be written in on the ballot I suppose is a heap more important that what I said?

Choking the Chicken

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByW25VYMZrbBUE5aUEdjcmpCY00/viewSt. Paul wrote:

“I suppose is a heap more important that what I said?”

Grrr…Don’t make me come Down there, Sloan!

I replied:

Sure I do, so you can vote for me, several times 🙂

Yesterday, one of our local luminaries suggested I buy yellow paint and a brush and paper and paint lots of yellow chickens and tack them onto poles in road right of ways all over Key West. I said, first, that’s seriously illegal, would get me in all sorts of criminal trouble with the election laws; second, one good rain and all those signs would melt.

The luminary was shocked that his suggestion was illegal - what about all the other candidates’ signs tacked up all over town? On private property, with the owner’s permission, I said. Permission I don’t have, I added.

But a great idea has come to me, I said. What I need is 100 of those yellow rubber chickens tacked up all over town in prominent places. I paid $10 for my yellow rubber chicken at the Halloween store in the Winn-Dixie shopping center. I can’t afford $1,000, for 100 yellow rubber chickens. But, dang, what if people who like that chicken and what it stands for, Craig “Chicken” Cates, just went and got themselves one, and tacked it up in their font yard, or on the front side of their apartment? Or hung it from their rear view mirror, or on their motor scooter or bicycle handle? Maybe that chicken’s mystique would spread kinda like the “Who is John Gault?” signs popping up everywhere in Ayn Rand’s ATLAS SHRUGGED? Turned out in that tale there really was a John Gault, Ayn’s version of her very own Jesus.

So since you are headed down here anyway, on your way stop off at your nearby Walmart and clean out their yellow rubber chicken coup.

I wrote to St. Paul this morning:

Perhaps something else fowl in the wind, beside a foul Category 4 hurricane named Matthew easing toward Jamaica.

Last night, I received a comment at the Sloan for Mayor Facebook page from someone living in Thailand, who said she is registered to vote in Key West, at Old City Hall. She said she had requested an absentee ballot and had been sent it electronically, with all sorts of instructions, rather complicated, about how to fill it out and return it to the Supervisor of Elections Office. She said the mayor’s race is not on the ballot she received from the Supervisor of Elections. She emailed me the ballot she had received, and the mayor’s race was not on it. I went to the Supervisor of Elections’ website and looked at the sample ballot. The mayor’s race is on it: Craig Cates, with a bubble beside his name, and below that, a bubble and a blank space for write-in candidate. Also on that sample ballot, just below the mayor’s race, is the District 3 Utility Board race, between Tim Root and Carol Shreck. However, that race also is not on the ballot the voter in Thailand sent to me last night. So she and I both are wondering if there is a ballot just for the city races, which she did not receive, perhaps because she only asked for a county ballot? If so, how many other absentee voters, she asked, might not have received the city ballot? Or, has some mistake been made and, I asked, the mayor’s race and the District 3 Utility Board race were left off the ballot? Won’t be able to answer any of those questions until Monday, when the Supervisor of Elections is next open.

Some of the Facebook chat with the voter in Thailand:

Christy Sweet Glad I decided to look at that video as I wanted info on the local and state races. So what’s the rubber chicken’s name?

Christy Sweet And thanks for opposing Cates, no incumbent deserves to go unchallenged.

Sloan for Mayor Christy Sweet Craig “Chicken” Cates, is the rubber chicken’s name

Christy Sweet Cates loses my vote for weenie’ism.

Craig Cates

Well, I know that got kinda long, St. Paul, but what the heck, here I was just trying to chill out yesterday, after a hard night and early morning’s work, and the heavens opened and dropped heaps more hard work on me, and a little bit of fun.

Being that you now live in Homestead, I’ll share something Kari told me this morning, as she fretted about being homeless and Category 4, or more, Hurricane Matthew down in the lower Caribbean and she has no place to take shelter if it gets near Key West. Hurricanes are horrible on homeless people down here, and on a lot of non-homeless people, too, unless churches or schools are opened and used as hurricane shelters.

Anyway, when Hurricane Andrew flattened Homestead, Kari’s husband, David Dangler, was new in the business of providing relief to disaster victims. They got a call from a woman in Homestead in need of a trailer in which to live, and all sorts of paper products, such as toilet paper and paper napkins, and diapers for a neighbor who had an infant. Kari went out shopping and got all of that and food and put it in the trailer, which they hauled down from Coca Beach, where they lived, to Homestead. National Guardsmen, armed to the teeth, were everywhere, providing law and order. That was before GPS. All the street signs were blown away. It took them a while to find where the lady was. She saw them coming down the street pulling that trailer and ran to greet them. Crying. So glad for the help. Kari cried on the telephone, telling me the story.

Last night, Kari called me to say she was only just charged by a woman who got out of her jeep, yelling obscenities at Kari: she was the whore who did this and that. She was going to cut Kari’s throat. Kari told the woman to back off, and something else, pure bluff, and the woman backed off.

A couple of weeks ago, Kari told me that a man had come at her in the dark, threatening her, talking loud and mean, and she had told him to back off, and something else, pure bluff, and he backed off.

What was she to do?

She was at her wits end last night, between police harassing her simply for being homeless, men hitting on her all the time, being threatened with physical harm and even death, and all this rain, and now a monster hurricane maybe bearing down on Key West? I suggested she go to the police and ask them? She said they would laugh at her. She might have been right.

Oh, did you see the article in today’s Key West Citizen about the Chief of the nursing home next to our hospital being “separated” from his job, but nobody is saying why? Well, just yesterday Kari told me why. The nice man was making sexual advances on his staff and patients, according to a friend of Kari’s, who used to work at the nursing home, who had told Kari what was going to come down there. I suppose it’s not politically correct to say the Chief was “separated” from his job because he was sexually harassing his staff and patients, or worse, but it is politically correct to say the hospital next door is engaged in monopolistic price fixing and price gouging and making local doctors sign loyalty oaths to the hospital, which violate the doctors’ Hippocratic Oath.

Kari told me something else about the now “separated” Chief of the nursing home. Kari was going there to see patients she knew. She stopped by to to speak with the Chief about her knowing how to write grants, she could help the nursing home get money. The Chief said they had written grants, a woman at the home office in Tampa had done it, but she had backed out because he, the Chief, had wanted to change what was in the grants and she didn’t want to be a part of it, and they had lost the grants. Kari told the Chief it depends on what is in the grant application, she knows how to do it so the grants will be approved. He declined. Shortly after, he banned Kari from the nursing home forever.

Kari said it reminded her of when she was banned from KOTS forever, after she reported Southern Homeless Assistance League’s executive director Randi Cohen Brown for ordering KOTS volunteer clients to open unclaimed homeless people’s mail and set aside any money and shred everything else, which Kari then saw volunteers doing: shredded were government checks, checks from friends and family, letters and cards from friends and family. So Kari reported that to the US Postmaster in Key West, who told her to report it to the US Postmaster in Washington, D.C., which she did.

That was before I even knew Kari Dangler existed. After I finally reported it at goodmorningkeywest.com, there came a touchy feel good article in the Key West Citizen about Randi Cohen Brown having achieved all she had set out to do at SHAL and she was moving on to exciting new horizons. Brown should have been prosecuted and put in prison, in my opinion. And Kari should have been given a substantial whistleblower’s reward. Instead, she was banned from KOTS for life, and with that bogus gun felony conviction, she is unable to get a decent job here, and not being able to sleep nights at KOTS, she lives and sleeps on the streets of Key West, which is a crime here, even though she is banned from KOTS and has no place else but outside to sleep here.

Just my stupid redneck mystic opinion: Kari has provided, and continues to provide, far more valuable services to Key West than Mayor “Chicken” Cates has provided, and ever has even even dreamed of providing, his hometown.

Meanwhile, I wrote to someone yesterday, who sent me an email banging me for what I wrote about homeless people in yesterday’s It’s no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society post at goodmorningkeywest.com:

The problem is, there are so few human beings who have healthy souls and spirits, that normal actually is a massive mutation from what should be normal. Thus the name of today’s post: “It’s no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”

It may be well that the homeless dunks and druggies you so despise are actually a hell of a lot more honest and well-adjusted than you are, than I am, than Donald Trump is. The drunks and druggies simply sized everything up and decided it wasn’t worth trying to fit themselves into what was terminally SNAFU/FUBAR.

Chow maim,

Sloan

P.S. In case you, or anyone, might be wondering about Hurricane Matthew from a metaphysical perspective:

Matthew 6 New International Version (NIV)

Giving to the Needy

6 “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.

² “So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. ³ But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, ⁴ so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

Prayer

⁵ “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. ⁶ But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. ⁷ And when you pray, do not keep on babblinglike pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. ⁸ Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

⁹ “This, then, is how you should pray:

“‘Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
¹⁰ your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
¹¹ Give us today our daily bread.
¹² And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
¹³ And lead us not into temptation,^[a]
but deliver us from the evil one.^[b]’

¹⁴ For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. ¹⁵ But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

Fasting

¹⁶ “When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. ¹⁷ But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, ¹⁸ so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

Treasures in Heaven

¹⁹ “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. ²⁰ But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. ²¹ For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

²² “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy,^[c] your whole body will be full of light. ²³ But if your eyes are unhealthy,^[d] your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

²⁴ “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.

Do Not Worry

²⁵ “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? ²⁶ Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? ²⁷ Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life^[e]?

²⁸ “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. ²⁹ Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. ³⁰ If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? ³¹ So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ ³² For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. ³³ But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. ³⁴ Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Choking the Chicken

sloanbashinsky@outlook.com