While millions of American families try to stretch three meals into five in the wealthiest nation on Earth, Key West’s ruling Conch Cabal — buoyed by a LYING city manager shambling around 1300 White Street like a bureaucratic revenant — has gifted the Southernmost City a holiday message so tone-deaf it could crack the bell at St. Mary’s:
A chocolate-covered insult.
A sugar-dipped sneer.
A confectionary proclamation from their imaginary palace balcony:
Let them eat $8 chocolate-covered strawberries.
Marie Antoinette would’ve applauded — right before her head dropped cleanly into a wicker basket outside Versailles.
And what triggered this moral collapse?
Not corruption (for once).
Not the Bubba Bozo Trio (for now.)
Not even the Walking Gerund’s latest psychedelic syntax slippage and word salad of buzz terms.
No — the spark that lit the fuse was Commissioner and Mayoral candidate Sam Kaufman, asking the city to provide $40,000 from the $75,000 originally earmarked to culturally uplift Key West through its UNESCO Creative City efforts — money the Conch Cabal gleefully choked to death — and instead use those funds to help feed Key West families during the holidays.
For the most vulnerable.
Not new money.
Not emergency funds.
Not a fiscal stretch.
Low-hanging fruit.
For the most vulnerable.
During the holidays.
Just culture funds repurposed for actual human beings, since the Cabal is allergic to culture anyway.
Only Commissioner Monica Haskell stood with Kaufman.
Let me just start by saying, commissioner Carey and Mayor Henriquez both supported a month for Christians.
Not Jews or Muslims.
No Pastafarians.
And I want to make this very, very, cristal clear: Christians.
Note that I did not stutter when writing or reading this.
That will become important at a later date.
But I digress.
It seemed — to any normally functioning empathetic human — like the perfect alignment with the tenets of Christianity:
Feed the hungry.
Care for the poor.
Love thy neighbor.
Whatsoever you do for the least of these.
But there was a problem:
None of the Christians were on board.
Not the professed ones.
Not the pious-by-branding ones.
Not the values-on-demand ones.
And certainly not the ones who stood at the dais asking Key West to designate an entire month for Christians.
Those very same commissioners — the ones who demanded civic recognition for their faith — turned around and voted against feeding hungry families during the holidays.
They didn’t just betray the community.
They betrayed the core tenets of the religion they claim to champion.
Shame.
Shame.
Shame.
Every one of you.
Instead, Kaufman and Haskell were crushed by a four-member thick-shelled, narrow, thin blue eyed firing squad that sounds like the cast list of a Key West fever dream:
— A former cop (who had some sense and tried to help.)
— A funeral director (who really needs to bring a couple of Snickers bars to meetings.)
— A clerk
— And a chocolatier
Not exactly the Apostles.
More like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse for those less fortunate.
Just the people who denied compassion like Peter at the fire pit.
Then came the haunting reminder from Key West’s former tax collector and Mayor — she who filed for bankruptcy while serving as tax collector — and now sits on the Florida League of Cities Policy Committee for Finance & Taxation.
Wreaking of fiscal accountability.
The great anti-hero, Tony Soprano, said it best.
“Remember when is the lowest form of conversation.”
But the Mayor, boy, she told the commission chamber what real need looks like.
Her staff used to make 250 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches every week for local kids.
Those kids would often ask for extra, or eat half and save the rest to bring home to their brothers, sisters, or parents.
And then she said the quiet part aloud:
“Living paycheck to paycheck is nothing new to families here.”
That line hung over the dais like smoke from a burning cathedral.
A loud juicy fart in church.
A lead Zeppelin.
And what did they try to do about it?
I can tell you precisely what they tried to do.
NOTHING.
That’s Key West reality — not the sugary delusion the Cabal consumes with their strawberries.
Eight dollars a piece.
Dessert instead of decency.
And pacing through it all — sweating, muttering, hallucinating through his own grammar — was:
City Manager Brian Barroso — The Walking Gerund.
At City Hall, “Going Barroso” is established vocabulary: a spontaneous collapse of coherence, truth, and syntax.
But on this morning?
He was raving like an acid-baked lunatic.
Sentences liquefied mid-air.
Logic slipped into a technicolor sinkhole.
Reality bent like warm taffy in the August sun.
And then he lied.
Right to every commissioner’s face.
He claimed that nobody reached out for help with food pantries.
Except…
They did.
In writing.
Directly to him.
And the Mayor.
On November 5.
As families were being gutted by the inept Orange blathering shitgibbon’s government shutdown.
Email from Leah Stockton, A.H. Monroe
Nov. 5, 2025 — 4:16 p.m.
40% new clients at FKOC in one week.
28 new families at SOS in three days.
During COVID, the City helped us feed the community.
We urgently need assistance again.
It takes a village.
How can the City help?
Sent to:
citymanager@cityofkeywest-fl.gov
mayor@cityofkeywest-fl.gov
And still Barroso said:
“Nobody reached out.”
A lie.
Not a mistake.
A lie.
Let me emphasize that again.
A lie.
I get my emails.
And I want to be very clear about that.
He tried to correct it. But at the end of the day, when the City Manager and the Mayor don’t get emails?
WTF?
I can assure you they get their marching orders.
But they are smart enough not to get them by text or email.
Perhaps on Signal.
It is almost as if the Choclatier was complicit.
She was copied on the plea for help.
And the Cabal rewarded the lie with dessert.
As all this unfolded — lies, strawberries, hypocrisy — a warning rose from history:
La Marseillaise — in English, for those who killed UNESCO on purpose:
Arise, children of the Fatherland,
The day of glory has arrived!
Against us, tyranny’s
Bloody banner is raised!
Do you hear, in the countryside,
The roar of those fierce soldiers?
They come into your very arms
To cut the throats of your sons, your wives!
To arms, citizens!
Form your battalions!
March, march!
Let impure blood
Water the fields of our nation!
Not a call to violence.
Certainly no January 6.
But a call to remember.
Because when rulers feast while the people starve…
When they betray the faith they preach…
When they lie directly into the microphone…
The people eventually stop trusting strawberries and start counting votes.
Versailles had guillotines.
Key West has elections.
And the $8 chocolate covered strawberries?
They won’t save them.
