FISHERYNATION.COM

                Harvey Haddock cursed his father, why did he have to be a commercial fisherman? He could have been anything, a doctor, lawyer, porno star, anything but a damn commercial fisherman. He knew it was wrong to curse his father, but his rage needed an outlet and since his problems started with his career choice, his anger naturally returned to its birthplace. His father was a fisherman, and so was his grandfather, brother, and uncles, it seemed like everybody in his family at some time was a fisherman, probably going all the way back to Sweden where his ancestors had originated. The difference was that in other countries, and even in America until a few years ago, Commercial fisherman were respected as the hard working food providers that they were, but somehow something went wrong in America. A well-oiled propaganda machine financed by huge multinational corporations and foundations had decided to villainize America’s fishermen so that they could move in and industrialize the Gulf of Mexico  and the Atlantic ocean.

                 Suddenly fishermen were evil greedy environmental rapists out to catch the last fish in the ocean, much like our frontier pioneers had hunted the buffalo to the edge of extinction. Some powerful forces were at work here and Harvey and his fishermen brothers were helpless to fight it. His boat, the Dragonlady, no longer was a source of pride and income but an anchor around his neck dragging him under and drowning him in a financial sea of red ink. After 30 years of ownership the bank was foreclosing on the Dragonlady, he could no longer afford to upkeep his gear or maintain the vessel in fishing shape, this was the end of the line. He had lost everything he owned, everything he had busted his ass off for over 40 years of hard labor to earn, everything he loved, including his wife. He now knew how those poor homeless people he read about in the newspapers, and saw on TV felt. He was just an empty husk of the young idealistic man he had once been. Even his soul, the one thing he thought no one could take from him, had become so corrupted and became so bitter that the anger and hatred overflowed like maggots writhing in the busted belly of a rotten Bluefish.

                 This would be the Dragonlady’s last trip. Harvey Haddock had had enough. He was steaming up the Jersey coast from Point Pleasant, destination; Liberty Island. There, live on the internet, with the Statue of Liberty in the background, he was going to blow the Dragonlady to smithereens along with himself. In the fishhold he had rigged up a homemade weapon of mass destruction, 10 hundred pound bottles of propane, and 20 five gallon containers of gasoline. He had no idea what kind of explosion that would make, but was sure that Bank of America was not going to get anything more than a few pieces of scrap metal from the Dragonlady. The gasoline was there simply to burn up whatever didn’t blow up, and also to provide him with a flaming entrance to hell. He knew he was going there, might as well make it as spectacular as possible.

                All his life he tried to do good but somehow nothing ever worked out right, someone or something always threw a monkey wrench into the plan. He was a broken down failure, with a bad back, bad eyes, and ears, and now diabetes. After 40 years of kneeling on the deck of a fishing boat picking fish, he would kneel no more. On your feet or on your knees, Harvey would submit to no one. Especially that giant prick, Uncle Sam and his evil minions of unaccountable bureaucrats. It seemed to him that every level of government had become so corrupted by the money of special interest groups that America land of the free and home of the brave, had become land of the rich and home of the slaves. The American Sheeple were clueless, give em a six pack and a TV and they were happy. Of course welfare checks were nice, a whole segment of the population had grown up expecting to be taken care of without giving anything in return. They were owed it, and as long as the democrats kept them feed, they would vote to keep them in office. Conversely the multinational corporations that really ran the country somehow lied, bribed, and pulled the wool over enough people’s eyes that they gave the Republican party enough power to create a cynical balance between socialism and outright unbridled capitalism. Harvey still loved his Country, he just hated his government and what it had become because of the outright greed of some of the wealthy. He knew those bastards would be joining him in hell one day soon.

Harvey’s journey up the coast to the Statue of Liberty would be his statement on the true condition of America, Blow it up and start again. The Dragonlady was now passing Asbury Park, a city that still hadn’t recovered from the racial riots of the 60’s. Try as they would the city would sell development rights to some developer with grand plans to revitalize the oceanfront only to watch as they would invariably go bankrupt, yet refuse to give up the development rights leaving the city in limbo. It had come a long way from the early 90’s when it looked like downtown Beirut, but still redevelopment was slow in coming.  Even still, Harvey remembered as he looked through his binoculars at Convention Hall seeing the Blue Oyster Cult with a new band from Boston opening for them called Aerosmith. Or the Ramones fresh from cutting their first album playing a small club called Juilio’s South in 1976. His first date with his future wife Candy, was a Ramones concert at the Paramount theatre in 1980. Asbury was a dive, but it had a great music scene, some guy named Springsteen even played there a few times.

Off the starboard side of the boat, movement caught Harvey’s eye, a spout of water 15 feet high and the huge dark shape of a whale just breaking the surface, the small dorsal fin on its back identified it as a Fin whale. About 50 feet long they were a fairly common sight to Harvey as they migrated along the coast every summer. They could reach up to 80 feet long and are listed as endangered. “Oh look at that” says Harvey to himself as a smaller spout appears alongside the whale and a 15 foot calf breaks the surface. You guys better get out of here fast if you know what’s good for you thought Harvey, you’ll be in the New York shipping lanes soon. Seeing the whales swimming north with a nonchalant indifference to their natural majesty brought back the rage to Harvey. It reminded him of the utter hypocrisy of the National Marine Fishery Service [NMFS] and the enviro front groups that seemingly ran it.  This summer, Rutgers University teamed up with a few other research groups on an absolutely bogus study to track sea level rise off the Jersey coast. They used a large research vessel equipped with a seismic air gun array that is primarily used for oil exploration. For a month, every 6 to 10 seconds the air gun would go off as it was towed behind the vessel emitting an explosion up to 240 decibels loud. Within ten days of the start of the project 3 dead whales were reported. One 18 foot Minke whale washed up on the beach at Fire Island and was probably an accidental victim of a ship strike. But three days later a dead 40 foot long Fin whale was spotted and photographed by Denis Lovgren of the fishing vessel Kailey Ann on the southern edge of the Mud Hole, and two more boats from the Fishermans Dock Co-op also confirmed the sighting. The body’s location was 20 miles north of the blasting area and due to the southerly wind and currents in that area, exactly where a body would drift to.  Two days later a scallop boat from Barnegat Light, the Miss Manya, spotted a 70 foot floater about 30 miles east of the first carcass. The Miss Manya had a government observer on board and pictures were taken. This body was 25 miles to the north of the blasting area and also where a carcass would drift from the south. Two dead endangered whales, shortly after seismic testing starts and it’s not related? This infuriated Harvey. If a fisherman looked cross-eyed at a marine mammal NMFS would shut down their fishery, yet seismic testing, which any sane person would have to admit has to cause harm to any living animal in its operating vicinity was allowed to continue up and down the coast because it is the primary tool used to explore for oil reserves deep beneath the ocean floor. The government and the oil industry, claim that there is no proof that seismic testing causes any harm to marine life, and claims all the dead marine mammals and stranding’s are just a coincidence.
The oil companies and their government enablers fervently make sure that there is never any money to do any form of research into the effects of seismic testing on marine animals, because they know what they would find. Therefore if there’s no science to prove harm, then it must be okay. Clean Ocean Action, a Jersey based environmental coalition, rallied fishermen and residents to fight the testing and even convinced the N.J. State Department of Environmental Protection to file a lawsuit to stop it. The testing went on anyway. Two dead endangered Fin Whales and the worst Loligo Squid season for the local fishing fleet in memory. Nothing.  You couldn’t find a squid within 50 miles of New Jersey this summer. Coincidentally squid are one of the few species that there is documented evidence that they are harmed by Seismic testing. Research was done in Europe after giant squid washed up on the beaches of Spain during a time when seismic testing was occurring offshore, and their deaths were attributed to seismic testing damaging the soft tissue of their internal organs.  Yet NMFS ignores this, and their partners in crime the greenwashed groups Oceana and the Environmental Defense Frauds simply look the other way. They offered absolutely no help in this fight, just stood by the sideline. Can’t bite the hand that feeds you. Oceana was created  by the PEW Charitable Trusts in the late 1990’s to save the oceans.  But only from the effects of fishing. Oil drilling is fine, and hurts nothing. They push for huge marine protected areas up and down the coasts, where no one can fish and the environment can be saved from the bad fishermen, yet oil and gas drilling would still be allowed.  Has everybody already forgotten the Exxon Valdez, and BP Horizon spills?

Interestingly, Pew Charitable Trusts which is valued around 5 billion dollars, was created by the heirs of Joseph Pew, the founder of Sunoco Oil Company. It’s  board of directors are dominated by Pew family Members, and while the trust itself may not be heavily invested in the oil industry, that doesn’t mean that its  board members aren’t. And they are the ones who steer money into whatever endeavor they think they can profit from. Want to drill for oil on the US east coast? Create a phony overfishing crisis, buy some pseudo-science from the nearest advocacy science whore and campaign finance compromised politicians, and then use the Commerce department to do the rest of the dirty work. Replace anyone in NMFS, the regional fishery science centers, and the regional fishery councils, with willing flunky’s. There are always willing flunky’s. They don’t care how many people they hurt as long as they get paid. I’ll see them in hell thought Harvey. Its gonna be mighty crowded.

Harvey scanned the horizon around him, Gateway National Park on Sandy Hook was on his port side, while a number of large container ships were offshore of him, heading both into and out of the harbor. Directly in front of him a tug and barge was just exiting the Sandy Hook Channel and heading south. Harvey adjusted the auto pilot offshore to pass port to port. Soon he would be entering the Ambrose channel. Looming ever larger, and larger, the massive skyline of the New York Metropolitan area gleamed like the city of Oz in the classic movie. Harvey had timed this trip so that he could catch the incoming tide, and that tide had taken the Dragonlady and was sucking her into the giant mouth of the city. The Dragonlady’s  12/71 Detroit diesel engine was pushing her close to 10 knots, more than 2 knots more than normal, so Harvey backed off the throttle and slowed her down. He had something to do before he reached his destination. He pulled out his computer keyboard, he had managed to set up his boats Vessel Monitoring system to receive the internet and he now navigated his way to UTube. Drawing up his site he typed in this message;  Attention! Live Death at 4 PM EST today. Don’t miss it. Explosions, Fire, and one less mouth to feed. Pull up a seat and grab some popcorn and a beer. Sit back and revile in my misery as I blow myself to bits along with my boat. Contents of an adult nature so don’t let your kids watch.

Harvey smirked despite his despair and misery he still had a semblance of a sense of humor, twisted as it was. Keeping a sharp eye out Harvey looked around, he was putting along at 4 knots now and the south shore of Staten Island was to his left as a few miles ahead the massive structure of the Verrazano bridge grew closer. Coney Island was on his right with Brooklyn beyond.  Harvey never understood how David Cone got an island named after himself, sure he was a great pitcher for the Mets, maybe name a street, but a whole island? Could it be because he pitched for both the Yankees and the Mets? Why then wasn’t there a Dr. K land or Strawberry field island? How come the Bronx wasn’t named Babe Ruth Borough?  Come on Harvey, stay focused you’re drifting off, he thought. Leaving the wheelhouse Harvey went out onto the back deck, “gotta do this now while I have the chance”, he thought. Opening the aluminum hatch to the fish hold he climbed down the ladder. The hold was about 9 feet deep and could carry more than 50,000 pounds of fish, but because of stringent regulations Harvey hardly ever used it anymore. There sitting along the forward water tight bulkhead stood 10 one hundred pound tanks of propane chained together. Along the floor, inside the individual fish pens 20  five gallon gas tanks were scattered around, off to the port side a 12 volt battery was wired to create a spark when he released the button on his pressure release switch. He picked up the switch, attached was 50 feet of wire, plenty enough to allow him to wander around the back deck of the Dragonlady. He held down the button and forcefully taped it in the down position with contractor grade electrical tape. None of that Cheap Walmart crap, my life depends on this tape. Geez, I’m about to blow myself up and I’m thinking about the quality of electrical tape. Harvey approached the propane tanks, he opened the valve of one of them. Out hissed a whitish stream of gas smelling like sulfur and rotten eggs, Harvey turned and climbed the ladder back to the deck carefully holding the pressure switch while feeding out the wire. He laid it down on the deck and closed the hatch. The propane tank would empty and its contents would sink to the bottom of the bilge and collect along the fish hold floor. There it would be trapped by the water tight bulkheads and when Harvey released the button on the pressure switch, Kablooey, everything would blow.

Looking ahead he noticed the Dragonlady slightly heading toward Coney Island. He scrambled forward and changed course back to the deep of the channel, from here on he would have to keep a close watch at the wheel. I’ve never been up the Narrows on a boat before, he thought, been up the Kill Van Kull all the way to the Outerbridge crossing to haul at Garpo Marine, but the outerbridge is like a tinker toy compared to the Verrazano. Approaching the massive support pillars Harvey marveled at the sheer magnitude and engineering genius required to build such a structure. How can men build something so beautiful, yet be so ugly? Clearing the bridge the entrance to the Hudson River beckoned, the magnificent skyline of Manhattan came clearly into view with the new Freedom tower reaching seemingly into the clouds. Around it other massive buildings seemed like dwarfs. On the western shore the Jersey side had suddenly sprouted its own mini Manhattan as business’s crossed the Hudson to avoid the congestion and high New York taxes, while revitalizing Hoboken and Jersey City.

Harvey couldn’t help but remember the twin towers of the world trade center, those massive buildings that stood like a modern day pillars of Hercules welcoming visitors to America. On a clear day the reflection of the sun off their sides could be seen from his fishing grounds in the Mud Hole over 20 miles away. He remembered the smoldering cloud that hung over the city for weeks after 9/11. If I was President, people wouldn’t even remember 9/11 he thought, but they’d never forget 9/12 when I nuked every fucking military base and capitol in the middle east, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Those A-rabs would never fuck with us again.

There’s the Statue of Liberty, it seems small compared to the skyline, but as the Dragonlady drew within a half mile its size became evident. Harvey took the boat out of gear. He could see a small NY Harbor police patrol boat half mile north slowly patrolling. They’re gonna  want to see what I’m doing at some point , he thought. His mind started drifting again, looking at the statue of liberty and what it’s supposed to stand for , he pictured Lady Liberty in chains and shackles with neon billboards emblazoned along its base and crown advertising brand-name corporations and proclaiming; send me your poor uneducated masses, we need more slaves.

Maybe they should replace her if we can’t have freedom and liberty. They should build a 500 foot tall statue of a fireman and the next time someone blows up the city the statue can put out the fire with his giant hose using water from the Hudson River. Back to reality, the Dragonlady was drifting with the tide to the north, Gotta throw the bow anchor, he thought as he picked it up and heaved it over. The rope fed out quickly, 120 feet should be enough, he put a hitch in the cleat, and the boat started to swing around as the anchor caught the bottom. The bow now facing south.  Harvey went out to the back deck to check the viewpoint, he wanted the statue of liberty to be in the background of his video. He had prewired his camera to the computer before he left the dock, all that needed to be done was position the tripod so that it had the best view. Harvey moved the boat forward and then backed down trying to swing the boat out slightly east. Then he threw a second anchor off the stern and tied it off, taking the boat out of gear. The Dragonlady swung back slightly then held steady. Perfect. Repositioning the camera so the statue of liberty would be in the background, Harvey checked his watch. 3:55. Damn, I’m good. He turned on the camera, then went into the wheelhouse, checked the video monitor, on the screen was the North Jersey Skyline with the Statue of Liberty clearly visible. Perfect. He shut down the engine. He noted where he would have to stand, and walked out on the back deck. Turning on the microphone on the camera he picked the pressure release switch off the deck, and walked over to the starboard side and looked at the Statue of Liberty.

From the north the New York Harbor Patrol boat was a quarter mile away and closing in fast. He took out his pocket knife and carefully cut the tape away from the pressure release switch button while keeping the button depressed with his thumb. I’m live now. As he turned to face the camera he heard a beep from his cell phone. “Shit. Who’s that?”  He pulled out his cell and glanced at the screen.  God Damn Henry, I’m busy he thought as he reflexively answered the call.
*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *
Downstairs in his basement room Jimmy sat alone, staring at his computer screen drinking a beer, on the table next to him was a bag of popcorn.
“Is that?” he asks out loud. “Shit, that’s Uncle Harvey, he’s gonna blow himself up! Jimmy runs up the stairs yelling; “Mom, Dad, get down here fast, Uncle Harvey’s going to kill himself!

Cindy and Henry come running down the stairs.
“What are you talking about?” Asks Henry.
“Look that’s the Dragonlady, right?” On the computer screen is the picture of the rear deck of a fishing boat. “That’s the gallast and his doors, I’m sure of it”, states Jimmy.
Henry looks closely at the picture on the screen. “What the? Yea, that’s the Dragonlady, and that’s the statue of Liberty in the background, what’s going on? Is this live?”
“Yea”, says Jimmy, “A friend of mine texted me and told me to check this site out, some guys going to blow himself up at 4 o’clock, so I found it on UTube and made myself comfortable. It just went live”.
Henry looks around the room, “Where’s the phone?” he asks.  Jimmy retrieves it and hands it to him. On the computer screen Harvey has now appeared walking towards the starboard gunnel and staring at the statue of Liberty, he seems to be doing something with his hands, but they cannot see what it is. Henry franticly punches in Harvey’s cell phone number, and waits for the phone to ring. On screen Harvey turns to face the camera, then reaches in his pants pocket with his right hand, a faint voice is heard from the computer; “Shit, who’s that?” He looks at the phone, and answers it. “Henry, I don’t have time to talk right now, I’m in the middle of something really important. Love ya”.

“Harvey, I’m watching you on the computer. Don’t do what I think you’re planning on doing”. Harvey turns towards the Statue of Liberty, and sees the Harbor Patrol boat now only 50 feet away from him, he turns back to the camera and speaks.
“Hi, I’m Harvey Haddock and …” His  speech is interrupted by the sound of a loudspeaker from the patrol boat. “Dragonlady, this is a non-anchorage area. Immediately lift your anchors and vacate the area”.
“Shit” says Harvey to the camera, “Can’t a person blow himself up without constantly being bothered? Excuse me.” He turns back to the patrol boat and beckons them closer with his right hand, which is still holding his cell phone, realizing that Henry is still on the line, he speaks into it. “Henry, I’m sorry but it’s too late. I’ve been dead for years. I love you, and your family, you’ve been great to me, gotta go, the cops are here”. He drops the phone over the side.
“Stop! That’s close enough, I have a bomb.” He’s yells to the patrolman on the boat’s deck. The patrol boat is about 25 feet long with a small cabin that’s opened in the back, where a second patrolman is manning the controls.  Harvey holds up his left hand with the pressure control switch, both patrolmen draw their pistols, and Harvey raises his right hand up in the air.
“Don’t shoot or you’ll both die, and I don’t want to hurt anyone. I just want to blow up this boat so the bank can’t have it. I’m holding a pressure release switch which is rigged up to one thousand pounds of propane, and one hundred gallons of gas. When I release the button it all blows. If you shoot me, you will die, so I am asking that you back off at least two hundred yards. Tell the Coast Guard and the rest of your forces what I have here. All I want is fifteen minutes. Then you can clean up the mess. Nobody will get hurt. I’m just going to blow up the boat, don’t try to be a hero or your wives, if you have any, will be widows”.
The two patrolmen are talking to each other, still with their guns drawn, the Captain reaches for the radio microphone and talks into it. The other patrolman yells to Harvey; “Sir you don’t have to do this. It can’t be that bad. Nothing can be that bad”.

Harvey holds the switch higher. “Yes it can. Now son, please, you and your buddy back up, turn around and keep at least a two hundred yard security zone around the boat. I don’t know how big an explosion this will be but there’s sure to be some flying debris”. The patrolmen talk to each other, and the Captain puts the boat in gear and slowly backs up, and then turns around  heading east away from the boat. Harvey says out loud, “That’s right, back off”.
On the Dragonlady’s portside two Coast Guard vessels are closing in, about a quarter mile away they stop, then slowly, one turns north, while the other heads south. Back at Henry’s they have been watching the events unfold on the computer screen’
“Damn it. I gave Harvey two of those propane bottles. I thought he was scrapping them”, says Henry.
Cindy asks; “Do you think he’s going to do it?”

“Yea”, answers Henry. “He’s been so depressed since Candy died, there’s no talking him down. The foreclosure’s the last straw. He’s a dead man walking”.
Jimmy puts down the beer. He’s near tears.  “I can’t watch this. Poor Uncle Harvey. I can’t believe it’s him, and here I had a beer and popcorn to watch some poor smuck blow himself up”.
“Come on upstairs Jimmy. I don’t want to watch this either” says Cindy as she grabs his hand. “ Are you coming Harvey?”
“No, I’m staying here. If I can’t be with him physically, I’m going to be as close as I can. Maybe a miracle will happen”.

Harvey addresses the camera again; “Hi, I’m Harvey Haddock and in a few minutes I’m going to blow up my 75 foot fishing boat and myself with it. If you didn’t hear the conversation that I just had with the NYPD, I informed them that my boat the Dragonlady is rigged with one thousand pounds of propane and one hundred gallons of gasoline. I am holding a pressure release switch and it all blows when I take my finger off the button. I have asked for a minimum two hundred yard security zone around the boat, so that nobody gets hurt. I don’t want to hurt anybody”.

“I just want to make a point. I have been fishing since I was a teenager, forty years now, and it’s a damn hard job, both physically and mentally. At the end of everyday though, I knew that I had done an honest day’s work. I didn’t steal or take advantage of people with legal mumbo-jumbo to enrich myself. I produced food to feed people, and I created money by harvesting a renewable natural resource for the benefit of mankind, unlike the Wall Street crooks who play three card Monty with unsuspecting shareholders. I’ve owned the Dragonlady for 30 years now and thanks to the federal government’s intentional destruction of the small family fisherman, I am about to lose it to the bank, they have foreclosed my mortgage.  In a few minutes they can pick up the pieces. I’ve worked my ass off all my life, and a bunch of corporate crooks and government cronies, have taken everything I’ve owned, leaving me broke and destitute. I’ve lost my wife, my house, and now my boat. I’m too old to start over, and refuse to accept any handout from those crooks in Washington. Don’t get me wrong, I love my Country, I just hate my government and what it has become. So before I die, I want to poke a stick in the eye of those bastards one more time”.

“In the last twenty five years the National marine Fisheries Service has had an unwritten policy of destroying both commercial and recreational fishermen, simply because we are in the way. We are in the way of the big oil, gas and wind energy corporations that want to take over the ocean bottom where we have fished since before there was a U.S. of A.  NMFS was not originally created to destroy fisherman, they were supposed to protect and promote them. But because a few years after its creation they were placed under the control of the Commerce department, which is the biggest den of thieves in the country, NMFS policy changed from protect and promote, to destroy and remove, to make way for their oil company masters. This strategy did two things, it removed eyes from the water, and reduces liability when the inevitable oil spill occurs, causing massive environmental and economic damage”.

Harvey continues; “NMFS management policies have now bankrupted two thirds of the traditional New England groundfish fleet while leaving two thirds of their annual fishery allocations untouched due to onerous regulations. It’s not fish that are endangered, its fishermen. Environmental front groups have been created and funded by multinational corporations, and foundations, with the express intent of destroying the fishing industry with phony non peer reviewed advocacy science and by pressuring congress to change the very act that created NMFS. Their strategy has worked, and now just like the family farmer, fishermen are rapidly disappearing and being replaced by large corporate entities who control the fishery allocations.”

At his house Henry is in tears listening to his brother. “You tell them Harvey. Tell the fucking truth so everybody knows what’s happening, they won’t hear it in the Newspaper’s or TV”.
On the screen Harvey’s on a roll. “The America I grew up with no longer exists. It has been replaced, taken over completely by a bunch of greedy soulless conmen masquerading as C.E.O.’s and politicians. The U.S. government no longer works as intended with three distinct branches to provide checks and balances to protect the rights granted us by the original Constitution and Bill of Rights. Now thanks to uncontrolled corporate campaign contributions it works solely for the benefit of multinational corporate profits. Both political parties refuse to compromise on their opposing viewpoints and policies, leaving the country in a nonfunctioning stalemate. Illegal immigrates from overpopulated third world countries flood our borders and destroy our historical population demographics, ending up on the public dole, and bankrupting Social Security. Both parties claim to want to find solutions, but the republicans refuse to act, because their corporate masters want that cheap slave labor work force to keep the price of labor down. While the Democrats figure let’s let them all in and give them money, they’ll be sure to vote for us.  Clearly America is broken. I said it before, I love my Country. I just hate my government. And I have an idea about how to change it”.

“The Soviet Union collapsed by a peaceful people power revolution. We can do the same by a ballot box revolution. We can vote the whores out of office. But how?  The Democratic and Republican parties so monopolize the election process that third party candidates have no chance of winning any major office.  Also any new idea candidate is systematically and purposely destroyed by the corporate and government controlled news media that profits from the status quo. Now when you vote, you’re not voting for a candidate, but against someone you perceive as worse. There is a reason that None of the above is not on our ballots. It would win every election. But where can you find a candidate that would be beyond scandal, universally admired, and stands for everything good about America? How can you tell the present government they are no longer wanted? That you the American public want the USA to return to its true roots of Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of

Happiness for all, as our founding fathers so elegantly stated in our constitution”.  Harvey pauses and carefully switches the pressure release switch from his left to right hand. “My hands cramping, Oops almost blew myself up”, he says as he laughs nervously.

“The answer is simple, use the write in feature on the ballot and write in the name of the one person that every man, woman, and child in our country loves and respects, George Washington. The Father of our country. This would be a ballot box revolution that would cause a Constitutional crisis if he won the election. After all he’s been dead for over two hundred years, but it would send a message to Washington that we have had enough of the self-serving hypocritical whores who have been running our country. Write in George Washington for President, Senator, Congressman, and Governor, let’s see what happens then. Just remember, freedom doesn’t come easily, so be ready for a fight, these power hungry bastards will not let go easily. That’s all. Take my message to heart. Sorry if I bored you with my rant. You won’t be hearing from me anymore. Time to die”.

Harvey holds up his hand to the camera and removes his thumb from the button. He feels a vibration under his feet, suddenly the hatch to the fish hold rockets upwards, followed by a huge ball of flame. The deck rips open, tearing Harvey’s body to pieces and throwing flaming debris in every direction. What remains of the shattered hull sinks within a minute, leaving a large patch of flaming debris on the water’s surface as the only evidence a boat had once been there.