Friday, October 12, 2012

(The Coconut Telegraph is not posted on Saturdays (1-/13/12)

Thank God it’s Friday! Video



To the poster who thinks response time is only important when there are gangs around. If my ass needs help, response time is sure important to me. 

Fanci Seafood has a fresh plate of smoked fish in the case.

[“An independent voter’s quest to make sense of the 12 constitutional amendments —Amendment 7″] What the …? What happened to number 7? Google it to find out and then take the day off.

Geez, you just spent more time online with this one than any other, and you actually read Article 1, Section 28 of the Florida constitution. 
Go over it all to get it straight. Amendment 7 was the first try at what was Amendment 8. Last December, a judge threw it out because it said that it was ” consistent with the First Amendment of the US Constitution ” and that wasn’t true. He gave the Attorney General 10 days to change it.
Why the Attorney General ? Who knows ? You already spent way too much time on this one. 
Anyway, Amendment 7 is now Amendment 8. So why not deal with Amendment 8 later ? Because while trying to find out what happened to Amendment 7, you saw that almost a million dollars was spent fighting it. Fighting it ? You thought that the religious people would support it.
That’s right so I had to follow the money and found out that the money came from School boards and teacher’s associations. This means that it’s not really about religion at all, but about school vouchers. 
It works like this. If Billy is going into third grade he isn’t just assigned to a school. He gets a voucher for the average amount that it takes to educate a third grader for a year. Billy’s parents decide which school is best for Billy, send him to that school, and give the school the voucher. It’s just like giving the school money, except that it comes from the education portion of the property tax. That way, Billy goes to the school that his parents think is best for him, the good schools get the most money, and everybody wins, so the theory goes. What’s the problem ?
The problem for School boards and teacher’s unions is that under a voucher system, Billy’s parents can also send Billy to a private school, which the public school people don’t like. 

Where does religion fit in ? Remember when you Googled private schools ? You found out that there were two classes of private schools with almost no schools in between. The expensive private schools that charged as much as colleges , and the struggling schools where ordinary people paid some tuition and the kids sold magazines, candy, and had fund raisers to keep the schools going. How about that school in Connecticut that charged $41,000 a year for third grade and the kid didn’t even live at the school ? Anyway, most of these struggling schools are church related, mostly Catholic and Lutheran .
The Florida Constitution now makes it impossible to have a voucher system because, at the start anyway, the private schools are mostly religious and the constitution says that no state money can be given to an organization that is in any way associated with a religion. Amendment 8 changes that. 
So Amendment 8 doesn’t give money to religions. No. It makes it possible for the legislature to make laws that might transfer state money to organizations that are connected with a religion. 
But, like that CT poster said, they could give money to some wacko religious zealot ? They could, but you’ve got to give them credit for a little bit of common sense, and if they tried, the fight would be legendary.
So this is about school vouchers, and you can’t have school vouchers without changing what the Florida Constitution says about religion. But this only makes it possible for the legislature to discuss vouchers, because without it, it would be a waste of time because a voucher system has to start with schools that are tied to churches ? Why is the title of Amendment 8 ” religious freedom” ? Because someone thinks that their side will win if it’s called that. 
What are you going to do ? I ‘m a little afraid about changing the relationship between church and state in Florida, but I think that they might be on to something with that voucher system. After all, there are people willing to pay $41 ,000 to send their kids to third grade in a school that they choose rather than the one that the school board would choose for them. I’m going to vote for this because the schools need to be better and I think that vouchers could be the way to do it.
We should at least make it possible.
So you spent more time and wrote your longest post about an Amendment that’s not on the ballot. I hope you didn’t bore everybody . Look at it this way, you finally got a YES on Amendment 8

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Key Deer swimming

[Those in charge will never let the Sun shine for free] If only they would, that would solve all our energy problems, except at night or during cloudy days, but then we can do the NNK solution and install polluting generators at all of our homes to power our ACs, and other heavy usage appliances. Solar is not the base generation solution, no matter what the ‘greens’ say.

[Amendments] To the poster who wants lucidity from the independent voter. I ‘m trying, but these amendments are more baffling than I ever thought they would be when I started this review. Not only are they complicated, but their meaning is hidden to those of us who think about this only every two years.
I thought that the Frequently Asked Questions format would be best, but that didn’t work, so I decided that what I was thinking would be clearest if I put it as a conversation with my self.
My first two posts were set up that way, but Deer Ed’s software mashed it into big paragraphs so I decided that writing the conversation in paragraphs was better than having Deer Ed’s software do it. I’m not satisfied with the result, but I never intended to spend this much time on it, so I ‘m not going to change now. Why? Because I’m pissed off about the way these things are put in front of us. Many of them aren’t about what they say they’re about and are written by people who have their own agenda.

I don’t want to convince anybody of anything, but if I’m going to spend a lot of time researching these things, I want other people to know what I found out. The only reason why I’m telling you how I’m going to vote and why is because you don’t know who I am. 



Bench Bob

Its a shame that people talk bad about “the bum from CVS“. He does have a name! Take the time to talk to him. He is a very smart person, has niece history to talk, he also visits our Vineyard Church. You never know what life will turn to be, so be kind, friendly and take and give time for others. 

Dead Sperm Whale had 100 plastic bags in stomach. Link


Death of roach eating winner remains a mystery. Link

Damn!  I’m very disappointed.  I clicked on the link on CT to hear the debate between Jon Stuart and Bill O’Reilly and all I got was about 30 seconds of the debate with six minutes of comments about the debate from some twit.

Pakistani peace award girl shot by Taliban moved to Army HQ hospital. Link



As the County’s iGate unfolds it looks like the BOCC is going to need a bigger rug.

Druckemiller’s son resigns from Key West City job after 2 arrests. Link

People that run for office are not capable of holding a job.

[The USDA has actively killed at least 100 million animals in America] over the last four decades, putting this on the scale of an animal holocaust and a crime against nature.

The government’s Bye Bye Blackbird program  has poisoned tens of millions of birds over the last decade. The USDA even reports the number of birds it has poisoned to death in a PDF document posted on the government website.  Anticipating the USDA possibly removing that document from their website, you can view it at the following web address. Link

[Census 2000 Data] Top US Ancestries by country. Who’s in da ‘hood? Link





In 1960, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev interrupted a session of the U.N. General Assembly by banging his shoe on a table.

Florida Governor Rick Scott gave out a phone sex hotline number to Floridians seeking information on a deadly fungal meningitis outbreak. Scott was providing an update on the outbreak at a cabinet meeting on Tuesday when he announced what he said was the hotline’s toll-free phone line, but gave out the wrong number. The governor’s office was alerted by a public radio station in Tampa, WUSF, which was monitoring the cabinet meeting and posted the number on its website. The station said it was “quickly notified by a reader that the number instead connected to an adult telephone line.”

[More bar wisdom] Alcohol is never the answer. (Unless, of course, you ask me what I’m doing this weekend.)

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[Captain Doom and Gloom] Let’s see, the world is 7/8 covered with water. 1/8 is land where we live. The juntas bitch and moan about not having enough fresh wawa to go around.  The Arabs built several Desalination Plants that put out about 9 million gallons of pure fresh wawa per hour (or minute? they are huge) EACH.  They are building many more for their deserts. But, here in the lowly USA, we cannot get enough wawa. We cannot build such great wawa making machines. We cannot do anything without PAYING OUT OF OUR ASSES to OUR JUNTA, to turn a spigot for something akin to radiator drainage.  We have to, by law, spend mucho dinero for SPECIAL POTTIES that do not need lots of wawa to flush, but take gallons to clean by hand. Try and use a mechanism to make your own fresh wawa and they lock you up. Try using sea wawa to flush and they lock you up. Try doing it on your lawn for fertilizer, they lock you up. (How come there are no dogs in jail?) Try building a Rice Paddy like half the world has, they lock you up. Do not even think about your own garden, they lock you up. What is wrong with this picture is, the juntas have the power, the cops, the armies, and whatever THEY say is it, or they lock you up. Oh my Dog, I thought for a second I was in Russia!?!? Sorry!

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[Cloud] If you own Quest stock, you better trust it, because it is now the owner of Savvis, the grand papa of cloud services, and it will be the demise of this country. A large percentage of fortune 1000 companies are using the cloud, no matter what the service is called, it most probably is hosted at a Savvis location. Nothing more than thousands of square feet of real-estate filled with servers and redundant fiber interconnects that supposedly will always be there because of the amount of routes we have to get to the locations, and your data is mirrored in multiple locations. They just made it a little more complex for AL Qaeda to wipe us out financially, but none the less, a possibility. Do I trust it? There is nothing safer unless you keep it at home and send a copy to Alaska and have Palin hold on to it. Oh by the way, Savvis cost Centurylink billions, and Quest is now Centurylink.

[“Try to be lucid with your comments on proposed amendments on the ballot”] Is NO succinct enough for you? Works for me!



I am glad to know that Bobby Bench is alive, doing well, and irritating the BPK moaners. Bob is an Island Fixture and Institution. The Cat lady and Luther were also important figures in the heritage of Big Pine Key

[Fort Hood suspect’s beard raises bias questions] Really? Just shoot him in the head, wrap him in a bacon blanket and kick him out of a plane over the Middle East. Link

Ed, loving the new format.

[Son of iGate] Druckemiller son resigns city job after 2 arrests.



Bark Park Poster

Screenshot Captor is a free download that makes it easy to take the exact screenshots you want all in one program. You can capture the whole workspace, multiple monitors, active windows and more options using simple hotkeys. There are cool special effects like active window enhancement and watermarking or captioning. You can even capture scrolling windows using Screenshot Captor. Link  


Please watch this short film by Kid Rock & Sean Penn.”Americans”. It made me cry with pride to be an American. Well said and so timely. Link

For those of you that have questions as to what is going on inMonroeCounty, try to find your answers here. I dare you! Link

Political advertisement paid for and approved by Rick Ramsay Republican for Sheriff

I keep seeing comments about Deputies using their cars for personal business. With almost every phone capable of taking pictures or videos, if what they posted was true wouldn’t someone have posted a pic or video by now. Or is this another one of those urban legends?

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[Mosquito Control candidates] It’s all about the money. Link

Fight breaks out in lingerie football league game. Link

[“The bench bum has read more books then me”] Of course he has. I work all day while he reads fine books.

“Am i stalking him” No, it’s the opposite, I guess you were not alive when 50 or so people came on this forum to protect him when CVS took his bench away.  I am not stalking him, I just wonder why you support these creatures. I imagine you are like him with nothing to do. Oops, are you in the snowbird category?


[Prayer Request] No matter what your personal convictions about prayer, the USAprotects all of our rights to do so. I am honored to do this. 

[VP Debate] When it came to foreign policy it was like a man talking to a boy. Biden rules!

Does a country have the right to attack another sovereign nation that is developing a weapon that we already possess? According to the Arms Control Association,China,France,Russia, the United Kingdom,Israel,India, Pakistan and the United States all have an expanded nuclear arsenal.North Korea has enough refined plutonium for approximately 10 warheads and Syria’s nuclear position is unclear.   States that had nuclear weapons or nuclear weapons programs at one time are as follows:Belarus,Kazakhstan,Ukraine,South Africa,Iraq,Libya,Argentina,Brazil,South Korea and Taiwan.   By what authority does any nation possessing a nuclear weapon have the right to launch an attack upon another nation desiring to develop a similar armament?   There isn’t any logic nor justification supporting such an action.

The killing of innocent civilians living in the targeted country would constitute an act of murder.   Threatening political rhetoric and violent action has regularly been employed by many government leaders possessing sophisticated nuclear weaponry. Shall their nuclear capability be taken away from them because they sounded or acted unstable, illogical or irrational?   The response toIran’s pursuit of becoming a nuclear power is thoroughly insane. Killing its people because others do not want them to possess what they already have, is a war crime punishable by death. This projected genocide is being marketed and fueled by war profiteers. Politicos and pundits refuse to frame the recklessness of this proposed undertaking.  

The Persian people have a right to exist and live their lives in accordance to their beliefs and customs. Many heroic individuals are dying, as the Persian citizenry advances their government towards the goals and objectives that are compatible to them as a people.   The politicians who want to assault that nation with bombs, simply because the Iranians want the means to somewhat level the geo-political playing field, lack common sense and the situational perspective to lead.   World War III will eradicate the civilized world, as others will be drawn into it because of the oil, religious fanaticism, tribal hatred, scarce resources, alliances and nuclear warheads may make it our last.

Joe Biden, “Paul Ryan asked me for stimulus funds.” Link

[VP Debate] Joe tried his damndest to get Ryan to tell him what loopholes for the rich Romney would eliminate — to no avail. Romney wants us to buy a pig in a poke. The only details forthcoming are the cuts to the middle class. They’re mum on any supposed cuts to the rich



[Joe and Paul] Fax News had Carl Rove, Mike Hukabee, Sara Palin and other Obama haters on this morning. They all agree that Ryan did better than the VP. Someone even said Biden embarrasses Obama with his performance. They also didn’t like that Biden was laughing and implied that he was goofy. The wouldn’t admit that Biden was laughing because he was so incredulous over Ryan mis-information (to put it politely).

If someone tells you theres millions of people that cant find a job if they want too just hand them a large city newspaper.

Theres jobs out there. The mindset that the President is responsible for people not being able to find work is that of someone who has a political axe to grind.

They can dress it up and make it pretty but fact is theres always been lazy people out there. That mindset gives the lazy arse folks an excuse.

It actually makes them enablers.

Dont believe that. Go into Winn Dixie during a busy time and look at the first 100 people you see. I bet you can find 7 out of 100 that you know couldnt work because of their issues or folks that you know are just to damn lazy. Quit blaming the President for lazy arses. Enough excuse making for the lazy.

Do the math your next time in Winn Dixie. Start your count at the benches in front of the store. Chances are the same folks you see sitting around were sitting around since Bushs 8 years.

[“Mitts grandfather had 7 wives. And you say he’s not weird”] O’s grandpa was a communist.  And you say he’s not?  Works both ways.

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The election campaign of the 44th U.S.president is now calling another candidate for the American presidency a “liar.” This is a new low. It is amazing and depressing to hear this term being used as a formal strategy by people at the highest level of American politics. “Liar” is a potent and ugly word with a sleazy political pedigree. But “liar” is not being deployed only by party attack dogs or the Daily Kos comment queue. Mitt Romney is being called a “liar” by officials at the top of the Obama re-election campaign. Speaking the day after the debate in the press cabin of Air Force One, top Obama adviser David Plouffe said, “We thought it was important to let people know that someone who would lie to 50 million Americans, you should have some questions about whether that person should sit in the Oval Office.” The Democratic National Committee’s Brad Woodhouse said, “Plenty of people have pointed out what a liar Mitt Romney is.” Deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter says Republicans “think lying is a virtue.” Explicitly calling someone a “liar” is—or used to be—a serious and rare charge, in or out of politics. It’s a loaded word. It crosses a line. “Liar” suggests bad faith and conscious duplicity—a total, cynical falsity. Politics isn’t beanbag, but politicians past had all sorts of devices to say or suggest an opponent was playing fast and loose with the truth. This week’s Obama TV ad, “How Can We Trust Mitt Romney?” would have been perfectly legit absent the Plouffe “liar” prepping. Other than the fact that calling opponents liars is so natural to their politics, one wonders why the Obama people think this will have deep political resonance. The idea that they can make voters who live outside the political steam baths believe that a man running for the presidency would stand in front of 67 million people and literally “lie” about a proposal to change the federal tax code is ludicrous. Every other time he talks, Barack Obama says “millionaires” should pay more taxes, when all his proposed tax!
es clearly start at individual incomes of $200,000. That isn’t a “lie.” It’s a president taking three steps to make a layup. This tack won’t erode Mr. Romney’s new support and may do damage to the president’s candidacy. The polls aren’t jumping around because Mitt Romney is a bamboozler. They’re moving because the 2012 electorate is volatile. The first debate proved voters are looking for answers to their economic anxiety. The Obama campaign’s resurrection of “liar” as a political tool is odious because it has such a repellent pedigree. It dates to the sleazy world of fascist and totalitarian propaganda in the 1930s. It was part of the milieu of stooges, show trials and dupes. These were people willing to say anything to defeat their opposition. Denouncing people as liars was at the center of it. The idea was never to elevate political debate but to debauch it. The purpose of calling someone a liar then was not merely to refute their ideas or arguments. It was to nullify them, to eliminate them from participation in politics. That’s what is so unsettling about a David Axelrod or David Plouffe following accusations of dishonesty and lies with “whether that person should sit in the Oval Office.” And that is followed by President Obama himself feeding the new line in stump speeches without himself ever using the L-word. 

During the Vice Presidential Debate VP Joe Biden claims that the White House didn’t know they wanted more security at the embassy in Libya


Joe Biden to Eddie Munster in the debate last night, “I knew Jack Kevorkian and sir you are no jack Kevorkian.”

President Barack Obama is running roughshod over the Constitution, legal scholars say, by disregarding it, changing laws outside the legislative process, and extending federal power in unprecedented ways. The president has “profound disdain for the Constitution,” said David Rivkin, a lawyer at the Baker Hostetler law firm in Washington, DC. “Across a whole host of policy areas, President Obama and other high officials in his administration have pushed the envelope of anything attempted before,” said Ilya Shapiro, a constitutional expert at the Cato Institute. Under the president’s judicial philosophy, legislation ideally “streamlines government action” so it can “grow and experiment,” all while overcoming barriers like the checks and balances built into the Constitution, said Charles Kesler, a professor of government and constitutional scholar at Claremont McKenna College.
Everybody is talking about Obama is a Muslim. If Mitt’s grandpa could handle 7 women, and Mitt is half the man he was then i’ll bet Mitt can handle the government no problem
[Coal] You ought to see the thousands in West Virginia Obama has put out of work, and they have installed the scrubbers on the coal burning plants where you don’t see any pollution emitting from the stacks. Our electric bill has gone up 4 times this year. Our gas bill is up since he got sworn in and pretty soon all our tax money is going to go for more solar and wind factories so his cronies can bleed the money out and declare bankruptcy. This whole thing is a cruel joke and we cannot afford it.  VOTE FOR ROMNEY and let us have a better and environmentally friendly approach to power that does not bankrupt all of us in one year.
Before you are sure that Obama is not a Muslim, read this and consider. Link


[Debate] Biden couldn’t stop laughing at the lies Ryan believed.

[VP Debate] I was impressed at how informed Biden was. He kept interrupting Ryan’s fudging of the truth especially when Ryan criticized the stimulus bill, Biden said Ryan sent him 2 letters asking for some of that money!


[VP Debate] I remember someone submitting a blueprint to the US Patent Office requesting a patent for a spaceship, but the engine room was totally empty with a note saying “Engine Here”. When asked about it, the inventor said something like, Oh, someone will figure that out. That’s how Ryan sounded last night when Biden asked where he would make up the $20 billion he plans to cut in taxes. Ryan says that’s only the framework, they have to work out the details. 

Anyone can make up pie in the sky dreams


[VP Debate] When Joe Biden was educating Paul Ryan on foreign policy it made Ryan look younger than he is, especially with his little-boy haircut.

[VP Debate] I watched the spin doctors after the debate and most of the networks were fair and pointed out each candidate’s high points except FOX networks. One pundit complained Biden was to pushy and kept interrupting Ryan. That is the same network that were bragging about Romney being forceful and interrupting the President in last week’s debate. Yeah, fair and balanced, my arse.

 From the Right

The last week has seen the release of two reports that have given our Democrat friends much hope and solace. Perhaps even a tingle down their leg. Let’s take a peek behind the curtain of each of those reports. The first report was from Team Obama’s Bureau of Labor Statistics which reported that our unemployment rate had suddenly, mysteriously, unexpectedly dropped by three tenths of one percent to 7.8%.  It was a miracle. Many Dems hailed it as the Second Coming. The new number was pumped up by a claim that there had been a virtual explosion in reported new hires. The number was about 873K, that’s absolutely unprecedented. If true it’s the biggest jump in decades.  But is it true? Many think not. And there’s plenty of evidence that supports that belief. 

Just for now, let’s ignore that number. Instead let’s look at three other numbers in the report. The first one is the “Civilian Labor Force.” BOLS defines that category of Americans as those who are of employment age, who are not retired, and who are able to work. It means all able bodied eligible persons who are either employed or unemployed. That number, in September, was 155,063,000. The second number is the number of folks that are unemployed. That number in September was 12,088,000. The official BOLS  unemployment rate is calculated as a percentage by dividing the number of unemployed individuals by all individuals currently in the labor force (12,088,000 / 155,063,000 = at 7.8%.). But, is that really the best way to calculate our unemployment rate? Does that method tell us all we need to know about our employment situation?

Probably not. The third number also counts unemployed persons, but it counts only those people who could work, but just choose not to even try finding work. They are every much as unemployed as are the “Unemployed”.  The only difference is their state of mind. It makes perfect sense to combine those two numbers. By so doing we will learn just how good or how bad is our employment situation.

The “not in labor force” number for September was 88,710,000. To actually determine the real/total number of unemployed folks we must add the “unemployed” to the “not in labor force”: (12,088,000 + 88,710,000 = at 108,000,000).  That Deer Friends is  how many people in theUSAwho are unemployed. Think about it, 108,000,000 Americans who are able to  work are not working. Deer Friends that’s pretty damned scary. 

BOLS reports that there are 155,063,000 persons in our work force. Given that 108,000,000 persons are not working, means that more than two out of every three persons who are capable and eligible to be employed are not working. Put another way, our true unemployment rate is at 70%. How long can we endure that?

The second unemployment news that brought joy to our Democrat friends was that nationwide, new applications for unemployment compensation had plummeted. Deer Friends, if that were true it would be very good news for the Obama message. Is it true? Probably not! We’ve just learned that the most populated state in our union, the state with a truly rotten employment history, a state that is seeing mass flight of businesses away to more business friendly environments, somehow failed to submit their numbers.  Experts say that adding theCalnumbers of new applications will raise the actual total by about at 20K. That’s bad news for Team Obama. Did I mention the power of Democrat politicos inCalifornia?  The foregoing was written in the early afternoon. Now, in the evening we learn that BOLS has changed its mind; they now are claiming that all the states actually submitted their stats. Go figure.

Special note to those folks in the CT community who are trying to shift the blame for the massive failure of Obama’s foreign policy to Republican legislators: Thank you.  You folks are the gift that just keeps on giving.  You folks tried to convince us that the absence of security at the Bengasi Consulate murder site was the fault of Republicans. You tried to convince us that Republican legislators blocked funding. You tried to convince us that the Obama team had no ability to provide adequate security.  But, Deputy Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security, Charlene Lamb, testified under oath on Wednesday that the level of security at the Bengasi consulate was “adequate”.  Let me repeat that, the lady in charge of security for all of the American embassies, testified under oath that she was satisfied that their there was enough security. In fact, she had resolutely denied repeated requests to increase security. That same Team Obama operative had ordered the withdrawal of two teams of Marines from the facility. By the way, that the State Department had enough money to buy a fleet of Chevy Volts for the Paris Embassy as well as a $100K charging station for the Volts. Go figure.

Lamb is the lady who was on the phone with the Consulate through the entire attack. She is the lady who adamantly refused to admit that the attack was a terrorist attack. She reports directly to Mrs. Clinton. If Harry Truman was still President, he would say that “The Buck Stops Here”.  Obama says “There is no buck, but if there is a buck it is the Republican’s fault, and it is George Bush’s fault”.

By the way, AQI jihadism continues and flourishes: an employee of the American Embassy in Yemen was killed yesterday by masked gunmen. Yemini authorities are convinces that it was an act of terror aimed specifically by the US by AQI. Bin Laden is dead, but AQI and all of its offshoots are growing exponentially in the mid-east. Killing Bin Laden was like cutting one hair on a dog. The dog endures.

Part 2) Well gang the vaunted VP debate is history. On the one hand we saw a smiling, smug, grinning posturing olde fart of a pol. His dentures must have cost thousands. On the other hand we saw a relatively young man with an engaging grin and a goofy hair cut duke it out. Biden was animated, condescending, and smirking. It diminished him. Biden interrupted and postured and posed. It diminished him. Biden interrupted and spoke over Ryan. It diminished him.  Smirking, laughing, mugging, derisive sneering, and interrupting were the hallmarks of his entire performance.  Biden was contemptuous and dismissive. Biden was rude. His remarks were loose talk and bluster. Biden was smirking and mugging when Ryan was talking about Iran. Deer friends, there is nothing funny about Iran.   Biden was a performer at political theater; his offerings were not a substantive political statement. The 90 minutes were a cranky old man debating a courteous, respectful young man with a serious message that resonates.  Biden lost. Ryan won.