[“The only thing that ever stops a businessman from hiring is that not enough people are buying his stuff.”] You are obviously not a business owner.  Profit is the whole point of owning a business.  You can sell a million widgets, but if taxes (that includes Obamacare) sink your profit to nothing, your effort has done nothing but pay for the freeloaders the government gives entitlements to.  The business owner is left with bills and debt.

Our new leader of the Mosquito control decided to have meetings all day instead of using it for spraying mosquitoes. Now they are behind and all of us will have to suffer the consequences. If you want to play office do so without stopping what we are paying you to do. I am mad as hell. Our former leader would have used that perfect day for flying the choppers to our advantage.

[Follow the Money] U.S. study links pesticides to honey bee deaths, but EPA won’t call for ban. Link

Ukelele night at Coconuts is this Wednesday, May 8th starting at 7 PM. If you have ever wanted to play a string instrument try a ukulele. They are so easy & so much fun to play. The folks from Bone Island Band will have many to choose from. There will be several folks that can answer any questions and share info about the ukulele. You will be playing songs in a few minutes. Remember, nothing changes if nothing changes. Stop by the NUT. It’s a hoot.

[“Ponce de León”] The only fact that is true is he did not discover Florida, but he did name it.  Why would you take the time to make a post declaring most people are misinformed when you yourself are?  Here is Wikipedia’s explanation of his travels. Link

Leaders of a far-right Hungarian party accused Israelis of plotting to buy up the country as several hundred nationalists protested on Saturday on the eve of a meeting of the World Jewish Congress in Budapest.

I could not help but wonder is our dear ex-patrioted Hungarian Piner a member or did he start the movement? Link

Individual images taken of Venus in one year to create a full curve. The summer solstice being at the top, winter solstice at the bottom, and equinox where the lines cross.

Do they hire lay people at houses of ill repute?

[Weed] I wish they would just make weed legal so all the smokers would shut up, sit at home and smoke until they die. 

Ponce de Leon did discover Florida and explored both coasts including the St Augustine area searching for the legendary fountain of youth. Just google his biography. The Indians attacked them and he was hit by an arrow causing his death in Havana. He was actually searching for Bimini.

A man, his bike, and his chick. It just doesn’t get any better than this. I’m pretty sure they’re heading to Wal-Mart.

[Developers] I think Congratulations are in order for the Blue Paper! You are the reason Balfour Beatty will at least have to own up and pay some property taxes and you did a great job of exposing both the lies and the hypocrisy of that private corporation and our elected officials. No other newspaper would touch the issue until you did the research and let us know what was really going on. Can we say Pulitzer? Maybe in the next legislative session we can ALL get a property tax exemption for those of us without lobbyists who rent to active duty folks.

I still think the court case will prove interesting and expect there will be further investigations as to how this deal was hidden from the public. Way to go!

Conscionable Surfing? It’s not just mindless entertainment? Wha?

Hi, I’m trying to find out what email address I would send a press release to for The Coconut Telegraph. If you could give me that information it would be greatly appreciated! Thank you.

I’m constantly amazed that only 26 letters in the English alphabet can produce so much bullshit.

Severe Weather Drought. Tornadoes drop to a new all time record low, major hurricane absence is setting a new record every day In a blow to those that want to link increased severe weather with global warming/climate change, a new record low has been set according to NOAA tornado data. At the same time, it has been 2750 days (7 years, 6 months, 11 days) since the last major Hurricane (Cat 3 or greater) hit the USA on October 24th 2005 when hurricane Wilma made landfall. Each new day is a new record in this major hurricane drought. Link

Boys and Girls Club’s One Particular Harbor Fundraiser. May 12th Margaritaviile Cafe 5 to 8 pm. Howard Livingston and The Mile Marker 24 Band. Tickets $40 each. Great food,drinks and a giant silent auction. Call 296-2258 for more information. Come out on Mother’s Day and help an organization that helps Mother’s everyday. Bulletin Board

If you are unhappy by the way the TSA handles airport security you only have to fill out the comment section and nothing more. Here is an opportunity to make a comment to the TSA and the many Congressmen that will be reading these comments. Go here

[“Lackanookie virus”] Yeah, well, welcome to the club. Lackanookie is caused by the lackofqualitywomen gene who suffer from lackoflife disease that is prevalent in the Keys. It’s caused by the alwayswantedtobeapartyqueen chromosome found in women in their late 40s and 50s who are usually the disassociated spouses of men suffering from wannalife.

Wannalife is usually diagnosed by a constant whine/ringing in the ears, blue balls, headaches and the desire to hold something that smells and feels feminine weighing under 300 lbs. Wannalife is cured by separating from lackoflife and moving on, which creates another disease in women called hatemylife.

Hatemylife manifests itself from lackoflife until the sick are seen clutching an alcohol filled vessel everyday which continues the destruction of the affected patient by interrupting cognitive thought.

Those with lackoflife and hatemylife try to self medicate with online shopping, conspicuous consumerism, alcohol, drugs or over eating, which results in the cattle call happy hours we suffering from lackanookie attend. Lackanookie is best cured by by importing qualityyounghotties from the mainland and paying them to leave until they are needed again.

I hope this helps 

Thank you CT. Friday’s banner rocked my boat!

[Don We Now Our Gay Apparel] Jason Collins was never a great basketball player. It’s pathetic — a literal joke — that must we look at basketball to find men to look up to. (they are tall.) But this week, we’re expected to admire this athlete we hadn’t heard of before not for any athletic achievement but for the miniature feat of revealing — after years and years of hiding — that he’s gay. Did he risk anything? His revelation comes at the end of his lackluster career, he’s receiving plaudits from everyone on up to Barack Obama, and since his college days, he’s had powerful political friends including Chelsea Clinton and (his erstwhile roommate) Joe Kennedy.

Giving up on living a lie is a good idea, but it’s not heroic. Maybe 30 years ago, it was heroic to be openly gay, but even back then, if you chose to keep your sexual orientation quiet, it was still wrong to delude another person to the extent that Collins apparently did. Collins graduated from Stanford in 2001, and it’s just ridiculous that someone who lived in that environment at that time — he roomed with Joe Kennedy and was friends with Chelsea Clinton — would be seriously burdened with backward ideas about sexual orientation. I’ll refrain from lambasting the man for his deceit and cowardice, but extolling him as a hero is absurd. Link

NASA captures Guatemala volcano erupting from space.

[Security] After checking your bank account, remember to log out, close the web browser, and throw your computer into the ocean. Link

Only the half-mad are wholly alive.

Cinco De Mayo recipes. Link

Festival heats up May music scene. Hit songwriters from a cross-section of the country will descend on the Keys for the Key Largo Original Music Fest May 16-19. Link

[Miss Lube Rack] Nancy D’Alesandro (Pelosi) – Miss Lube Rack 1955 And she is still giving the country a grease job!

Health benefits of castor oil. Link

Thieves targeting fishing gear Keyswide. Link

Healthy penis campaign. Start one in your town! Link 

[Captain Doom and Gloom] “Bomber Body Refused by Cemeteries” I read that cemeteries are refusing to accept the Boston Bomber’s body for burial.  I have a good idea, ship his ass to Al- Qaeda, Afghanistan, COD.  He’s their boy, they’ll give him proper Muslim burial, right?  Nah, you’re right, they don’t want him either.  Maybe best to just cremate him and flush him down a toilet to go into the sewer system with the rest of the crap.  Cheap and easy, and symbolically appropriate.  Dust to dust, crap to crap, etc.

Our government is too big, too much, too costly. It’s stealing our freedom a little each day and many of us are letting it happen. Be the change you want to see in the world, my friends. Why would anyone expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong? If you want total security go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking is freedom!

[Good News] 165,000 new jobs in April lowered the jobless rate to just 7.5%.

This brings up the subject of the anti american ‘patriots’ who will go out of their way researching obscure radical websites for anything that will make the country’s improved status look bad. The only numbers the radical right wing likes are those that show when America is failing. I just don’t get it. They say they love America, but cringe when it improves. It seems the only time they clam-up is when America attacks another country. Their silence is their approval.

The popular notion that Obama is the champion. Link

President Obama describes the incredible opportunities to create middle-class jobs in America by deepening our economic ties and expanding trade in Latin America and discusses recent Senate bill that takes commonsense steps to fix our broken immigration system. Video

[Good News] The DOW hit 15,000 Friday at about ten am for a bit. That’s the highest its been in all its history. Good thing Romney didn’t win the election or else the Right would be bragging instead of criticizing Obama for getting us out of this mess. Yeah, Obama! Rush Limbaugh must be rolling over in his grave (I wish). But these good numbers will be skewed to whatever political view the reader has. 

What FTR saw on told us on Friday when the jobs report came out = America is falling apart and our economy is getting worse.

Reality = Stocks climbed on Friday, with the S&P 500 and Dow industrials hitting intra day record highs after U.S. employment rose more-than-expected in April, easing concerns about weak economic growth.

The S&P 500 index broke above 1,600 and the Dow traded above 15,000 for the first time as stocks extended this year’s rally.

Non-farm payrolls rose 165,000 last month and the unemployment rate fell to 7.5 percent, a four-year low, from 7.6 percent.

The Dow Jones industrial average  rose 174.63 points or 1.18 percent, to 15,006.21, theS&P 500  gained 20.65 points or 1.29 percent, to 1,618.24 and the Nasdaq Composite  added 46.39 points or 1.39 percent, to 3,387.01.

Mining stocks were among top gainers, including Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc , up 3.4 percent at $31.36 after prices of copper posted the biggest daily gain in almost 1-1/2 years.

Wall Street was on track to end the week about 2 percent higher. On Thursday, Wall Street rallied after data showing U.S. weekly jobless claims dropped to a five-year low. How terrible.

Damn Obama. Its bad enough the company I work for is expanding so fast we are opening another branch and we are hiring more people for our home office and now this terrible economic news.

But hey we can always rehash Benghazi for a few more years.

Giving people government health insurance may not make them any healthier. One of the most important health insurance studies ever done shows surprisingly little effect. Bombshell news out of Oregon today: a large-scale randomized controlled trial (RCT) of what happens to people when they gain Medicaid eligibility shows no impact on objective measures of health.  Utilization went up, out-of-pocket expenditure went down. This is huge news if you care about health care policy–and given the huge national experiment we’re about to embark on, you’d better.

Also: “Study: Medicaid reduces financial hardship, doesn’t improve physical health” says the Washington Post. Link

FROM THE RIGHT

I hope that you took the time to examine the Bureau of Labor Statistics April unemployment report.  It actually had some marginally good news. We added about 165k jobs and unemployment actually slightly decreased. Having said all of that, the unemployment rate only declined by one tenth of one percent. To put that in some perspective, today, nearly 4/12 years after Obama took office  and after we have spent trillions on stimulus and bail outs of various mega companies and mega fat cats, our unemployment rate is nearly exactly what it was when Obama took office, 7.5%.%.  It is unchanged despite the fact that we have added nearly $7 trillion dollars to our national debt. Excusing their out of control spending as being “stimulus.”

It also worth noting that when the Democrats took control of Congress in 2007, unemployment was at 4.6%. If you think that job creation at the rate of 167k per month is great news, please consider that in order to return to the pre Democrat governance levels of employment, it will take us about 70 months at the current job creation rate. You can check it out for yourself at the Federal Reserve Bank calculator found at Link

Part 2) Obama’s bastard child, The Sequester, is hard upon us. You will remember the dire predictions from Team Obama that because of sequestration, the sky will fall, cows will tip over in the fields, and we will run out of beer.  Well Deer Friends, it just ain’t so! Obama did his level best to hurt all of us by threatening to veto any legislation that would have given federal administrators a measure of flexibility in sequestration cuts. I trust you will recall that the Republicans put forward two bills that would have given administrators some flexibility. I trust you will recall that both bills were killed by the Democrat Senate.

But here we are two months into sequestration, the stock market is at record highs, and we have had an O.K. month of job creation, cows are still standing in fields, and Coconuts has gallons of beer. Not even government employees have been hurt, in fact the unemployment rate for government employees decreased during April to a really low 3.3%. If we’re doing this well while the tiny sequestration cuts are in place, think of how well we could do if government ever really got serious about cutting spending.

Staff recommendations issued Thursday by the Florida Public Service Commission should leave commercial electricity proponents on No Name Key feeling optimistic about hooking up to the grid.

The recommendations were issued Thursday in advance of a scheduled May 14 hearing in Tallahassee to consider a March 2012 complaint filed by No Name residents Bob and Julianne Reynolds.

Filed against Lower Keys utility Keys Energy Services, the complaint argues that the PSC, not Monroe County, has jurisdiction over electrifying the island.

In addressing five separate issues, PSC staff clearly states the “commission should deny the county’s motion to dismiss the amended complaint” and that “the commission has jurisdiction to resolve the Reynolds’ complaint.”

The PSC staff says “Reynolds and No Name Key property owners are entitled to receive electric power from Keys Energy” under the terms of the commission’s “1991 territorial agreement between Keys Energy and the Florida Keys Electric Cooperative.”

PSC staff recommends “disposing” of the complaint by granting “ultimate relief the Reynolds have requested and order that the customers located on No Name Key in Keys Energy’s service territory are entitled to receive electric service.”

The 43 No Name homeowners, who now get electricity through solar and generators, have publicly battled over commercial electricity for decades, and until recently there were numerous legal hurdles blocking a resolution.

The Monroe County Commission appears ready to wash its hands of the issue, voting unanimously in February to drop a trespassing action against Keys Energy on aerial easements on No Name, as well as an appeal of a Circuit Court decision putting final say over electrification in the PSC’s hands.

The commission did vote to continue its involvement in the PSC case, but if staff recommendations are any indication, that could be a losing battle.

Monroe has blocked commercial electricity at every turn on No Name, arguing that its land-use plan, which prohibits utilities on No Name, takes precedence over the state. The county has also refused to issue building permits to connect to the poles.

No Name resident Alicia Putney has for years been the driving force against commercial electricity on the 1,000-acre island adjacent to Big Pine Key. A PSC decision to allow electricity would mean she could reverse that ruling only by appealing to the Florida Supreme Court.

PSC Prehearing Officer Eduardo Balbis on April 19 denied Putney the right to intervene in the Reynolds’ complaint. He said she would “suffer no actual injury” should homeowners be allowed to connect to the grid. Putney plans to appeal, but her attorney, Robert Hartsell, said he’s yet to decide whether to request a full commission review or directly appeal to either the Third District Court of Appeal or the Florida Supreme Court.

The PSC will decide only on jurisdiction May 14. If the board rules jurisdiction belongs with it, the commission would hold an evidentiary hearing where a final decision — which many expect to be in favor of electricity — would be made. ~rmccarthy@keynoter.com

PSC staff: Yes to No Name Key electricity. Link