Category — Florida

Obama doesn’t have to worry about sacrificing principles, he doesn’t have any. CNN reports Obama shifts on oil drilling?

ORLANDO, Florida (CNN) – Barack Obama said Friday that he would be willing to compromise on his position against offshore oil drilling if it were part of a more overarching strategy to lower energy costs.

“My interest is in making sure we’ve got the kind of comprehensive energy policy that can bring down gas prices,” Obama told The Palm Beach Post early into a two-day swing through Florida.

“If, in order to get that passed, we have to compromise in terms of a careful, well thought-out drilling strategy that was carefully circumscribed to avoid significant environmental damage – I don’t want to be so rigid that we can’t get something done,” Obama said.

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The Pensacola Beach Blogger has a story about the effect of the insurance companies refusing to issue property insurance policies in Florida. The state has cut a deal with Berkshire Hathaway [Warren Buffett’s company] to provide a $4 billion loan to the state at 6.5% in the event of a major hurricane. The deal will cost the state $224 million whether or not the loan is needed.

This would be totally unnecessary two years ago, but today, because of the mortgage meltdown, a loan of that size isn’t possible through the normal channels – the normal sources don’t have the money to lend.  Even successful businesses on solid footing can’t get the credit they need in the short term to operate.  Many of the people who will be going out of business in the near future simply can’t get the money they need to continue, as they borrow to restock their inventory.  If they can’t restock, they can’t stay in business.

So there’s really no need for “green” energy.

The Miami Herald reports that the Florida Public Service Commission isn’t buying: State shuts down FPL energy program

State regulators Tuesday terminated a Florida Power & Light voluntary green energy program because three-fourths of the money customers were donating went to marketing and administrative costs.

By a unanimous vote, the Public Service Commission ended FPL’s Sunshine Energy Program in which 39,000 customers have voluntarily added $9.75 to their monthly electric bill so that FPL could purchase renewable energy.

FPL in turn contracted with a Texas company, Green Mountain Energy, to carry out the program. PSC staff have been trying for months to find out where the money went, but all it could learn was that 24 percent was going to purchase renewable energy.

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We don’t shoot lawn mowers in Florida, that’s reserved for Louisiana governors and people from the upper Midwest.

However we do occasionally have to use firearms in our yards.

I have to say that anyone who lived in Levy County, Florida should know better than to go outside when a fox shows up during the middle of the day. I assume they felt that it couldn’t be a fox, because no fox in its right mind hangs around where there are people.

Fortunately when the fox attacked the woman, her husband had a .22 caliber rifle handy to put 6 rounds in the fox and kill it. Unfortunately, he fired 7 times, but a .22 is easy to dig out, and the pain from getting shot in the leg is nothing compared to the pain of the rabies shots, because foxes with rabies aren’t in their right minds, and will attack people.

The Washington Post reports on Moscow rumors: Russian Bombers Could Be Deployed to Cuba

MOSCOW, July 21 — Russian bombers capable of carrying nuclear weapons could be deployed to Cuba in response to U.S. plans to install a missile defense system in Eastern Europe, a Russian newspaper reported Monday, citing an unnamed senior Russian air force official.
…

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The suspense is over for absurdly-priced caffeine freaks: Starbucks names all 600 stores to be closed

… California will now lose 88 stores with two each in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and 10 in San Diego.

If you had lived in San Diego you would understand.

Actually they are closing half the stores in my county, and I don’t know why they didn’t close the other one. It’s only a block from a Whataburger, and there aren’t enough people in the county willing to spend an hour’s wages on a cup of coffee to justify it.  The old money drinks sweet tea and the working class goes to Tom Thumb.

CCN covers one of the minor “problems” with land transfers from military to civilian use: Live bombs haunt Orlando neighborhood. What a surprise, not all of the bombs dropped on a bombing range explode, and the military doesn’t go looking for the duds.

There is a section of the barrier island south of me that people keep agitating to have opened for exploitation. It isn’t going to happen because there is a whole lot of nastiness on that stretch of sand, some of it put there by my Dad in the 1950s when things didn’t operate as planned.

They don’t talk about it, but I’m sure that the first people to go onto that stretch of beach after hurricanes are explosive ordinance disposal guys to see what turned up. There are bombs and warheads going back to World War II hidden under the sugar white sand. The government can never clean up that land to the level that it would be safe to live on.

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So far there are going to be 9 Ballot Initiatives on the Florida general election ballot:

1. Wants to stop the government from preventing rich foreigners from buying up Florida.
2. Make Gays third class citizens [in a state in which a “boy and his goat” is still legal]. No indication as to how this is going to save marriage in a state with no-fault divorce that can be applied for over the ‘Net.
3. Actually a good idea, as it exempts improvements designed to increase resistance to hurricane damage, or the installation of green technology from an increase in assessed value.
4. Reduce property taxes for soil bank scam artists and others who are using conservation schemes to avoid taxes.
5. Another attempt to shift costs from property taxes to sales taxes, this time aimed at schools.
6. Not a bad idea, as it requires that assessment of waterfront property be based on current use, not on its value as a location for a 20-story tourist hotel. It might help a few marinas and boatyards stay in business.
7. Get rid of the ban to giving tax money to churches.
8. Shift Community College funding to a local sales tax increase.
9. Tells schools how to operate while providing a backdoor for vouchers by overriding a court decision.

I’ll give 3 and 6 an extra look, but the rest of this detritus should be put out to the road.  They keep trying to shift the cost of government onto the sales tax, usually implying that tourists will pay for the state.  Well sales tax revenue is way down, tourism is way down, and sales taxes fall mainly on the poor, while property taxes affect the well off.

Fallenmonk and Chris at Suburban Guerrilla are having a tizzy over Tbogg’s post on “Optical intercourse”, one of the many reasons for students being chastised at Pensacola Christian College.

The article is part of an exposé of some of the people hired by Monica Gooding and the Hedgemony’s Department of Justice.

While they shake their heads in wonder at what happens on the Florida Panhandle, they miss something – PCC’s influence isn’t limited to their campus and the graduates of the college. They have a very widespread network that is global.

In addition to the college, PCC owns: Pensacola Theological Seminary, Rejoice Music, Rejoice Radio, Rejoice TV, A Beka Academy, and A Beka Books. They have all evolved [they will hate that] from Pensacola Christian Academy. The Wikipedia entry notes: “The school was founded as Pensacola Christian School in 1954 by Arlin Horton (who later established Pensacola Christian College) and his wife Beka.”

One of PCA’s most well known alumni is Eric Hovind. Just drop by PZ Myer’s place, Pharyngula,  and search on that name and watch the server slow down.

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… and it doesn’t involve sex or goats.

According to that august national puppy trainer: Fla. congressman defends giving borrowed speech

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Republican congressman has apologized for posting a speech on his website without acknowledging that it was largely written by a fellow Republican from Georgia.

But Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., says he did nothing wrong in delivering the heavily borrowed address at a University of West Florida graduation in 2004.

While not lifted word for word, Miller’s address contains nearly identical passages and the same life lessons as a speech Sen. Johnny Isakson wrote for his son’s high school graduation in 1988 and has delivered more than 100 times since.

Miller says he credited Isakson when he delivered the speech, but that attribution was mistakenly left out of a written transcript that was posted on Miller’s website. After a columnist for The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle raised questions, Miller amended the site to show that the ideas came from Isakson.

I’m sure the graduates of the University of West Florida are thrilled to know they were listening to a 16-year-old high school graduation speech written by a Georgia Dad for his son, and read by their Congresscritter. That will make them feel better about their college loans.

Since he only “borrowed” it, I’m sure he will give it back. 😈

Read all about it: Florida to sign massive sugar, Everglades deal

WELLINGTON, Fla. – U.S. Sugar Corp., the nation’s largest producer of cane sugar, would go out of business in a $1.75 billion deal to sell its nearly 300 square miles of land to Florida for Everglades restoration, the company and the state’s governor said Tuesday.

Under the deal, announced at a news conference with Gov. Charlie Crist and company representatives, the state would buy U.S. Sugar’s holdings in the Everglades south of Lake Okeechobee, the virtual heart of the ecosystem.
…

Crist said the deal is “as monumental as the creation of our nation’s first national park, Yellowstone.”

“This represents, if we’re successful, and I believe we will be, the largest conservation purchase in the history of the state of Florida,” Crist said.

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As if the state didn’t have enough problems, CNN reports that Suspect tomatoes traced to Florida or Mexico

(CNN) — Investigators looking for the source of a salmonella outbreak linked to tomatoes will focus on farms in Mexico and Florida, federal health authorities said Friday.

Since April, more than 500 people have contracted the same strain of salmonella, linked to raw tomatoes.

The tracebacks “have taken us from point of consumption all the way back to certain farms in Mexico and Florida,” said Dr. David Acheson, associate commissioner for foods at the Food and Drug Administration.

The agency will send teams of investigators to farms in both locations this weekend as well as to the pathways from those farms in an attempt to determine where the contamination occurred, he said.

The tomatoes may not have been contaminated on a farm, he stressed; the contamination could have occurred in a packing shed, warehouse, supplier chain or distribution center.

This should pretty much wipe out the market for Florida vegetables.

From WKMG again, this time from their police beat: Palm Frond Used As Weapon In ‘Most Bizarre’ Central Fla. Store Robbery

Police said Gelando Olivieri attempted to rob the V&F Discount Beverage store in DeLand by threatening harm with a spiked Spanish bayonet, a palmetto-like plant with sharp points on its leaves.

“The man came in with the branch. I have never seen anything like this,” owner Goutam Sarkar told the DeLand-Deltona Beacon Thursday.

Surveillance video showed Olivieri wildly waving the palm frond in front of a worker’s face.

Investigators said Olivieri threatened to use the leaves to stab if he wasn’t given $50.

“(The plant) was sharp,” Sarkar said.

Before any money was exchanged, Oliveiri was chased out of the store by a man armed with a bar stool.

Oliveri was arrested a short time after the crime and charged with armed robbery.

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It isn’t a lake or a swamp this time, but Orlando’s WKMG reports on Florida’s latest brush fire:

“Officials said the wildfire is burning in a wetlands area of Clermont and no homes have been threatened.”

If they start drilling off the coast we might be able to watch the Gulf of Mexico burn.

Oh, contrary to the propaganda of drilling advocates, there were, indeed, oil spills from broken underwater pipelines after Katrina. The pumps were shut down and there are check valves on the pipes, but crude oil leaked out. There were also major leaks from damaged storage tanks on shore.