It is that time of year again!

The Conch Republic celebration.

Festivities ongoing all week long. From my perspective, the best part of the week is the Great Sea Battle between the Conch Republic and the forces of the United States. The event takes place saturday evening off Schooner Wharf, the Pier House, and Ocean Key.

Pirate ships manned by pirate men and ladies will battle hopefully a Coast Guard cutter. The Conch Republic’s World War I biplane will engage U.S. Navy jets.

Each water vessel will try to drown the other with hosed sea water. The pirate ships will also pummel the Coast Guard cutter with  rotten tomatoes, eggs and heads of lettuce. The biplane will fly low overhead and bomb the Coast Guard cutter with rolls of toilet paper.

You cannot appreciate the nature of the battle until you have seen the toilet paper bombs unfurling as they fall toward the cutter.

If you are in Key West saturday night, go! Do not miss what I consider a spectacular experience.

It never rained yesterday. A weather forecaster I am not. The clouds lifted and it was another great Key West day. I hung around the house all day working on this evenings blog talk radio show and otherwise writing.

I snuck out for lunch at Blossom’s. Dee called and said let’s have lunch. I  had a desire for a Cuban cheese toast tomato sandwich. So did she. That was my day. I stayed in last night to continue being nice to my back.

My blog talk radio show this evening at 9. www.blogtalkradio.com/key-west-lou.

I plan on talking a bit about the Boston bomber and the way the federal government has been handling his interrogation and arraignment, his right to remain silent and right to an attorney. I think the government has been playing with dynamite.

I am happy to discuss anything else you good people would enjoy chatting about.

The live Boston bomber is 19. Many media persons refer to him as a boy. He is a man. As much a man as our young persons who are 19 and do battle for the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Our 19 year old male soldiers are always referred to as men. Why not this bomber?

I am reading a book about Eisenhower. It is entitled Ike’s Bluff. Written by Evan Thomas.

I am old enough to remember the fear we had after World War II and into the Reagan administration regarding Russia. Russia was our enemy. War could occur at any time. A nuclear war. It was a deep rooted genuine fear.

Stalin was the big boss in Russia during a part of the time. A key person in his administration was Beria, the head of the Secret Police.

Russia did not have the atomic bomb till 1949. Russia exploded an atomic bomb in August of that year. The Russian scientists who worked on the bomb would have been killed or imprisoned if the test failed.

The Eisenhower book contains a quote from David Holloway’s book Stalin and the Bomb. The quote reflects the Russian mind clearly. “…Beria was said to have adopted a simple principle: those who were to be shot in case of failure would now become Heroes of Socialist Labor; those who would have received maximum prison terms were to be given the Order of Lenin, and so on down the list.”

That’s it for now! Please join me this evening at 9 for Tuesday Talk with Key West Lou.

Enjoy your day!