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Weather: Mostly sunny. Highs in the lower 80s. Sunday Night: Partly cloudy with a 20 percent chance of showers. Lows in the upper 60s.
- Daily weather briefing from the National Weather Service in Jacksonville here.
- Drought conditions here. (What is the Keetch-Byram drought index?).
- Check today’s tides in Daytona Beach (a few minutes off from Flagler Beach) here.
- Tropical cyclone activity here, and even more details here.
Today at a Glance:
ESL Bible Studies for Intermediate and Advanced Students: 9:30 to 10:25 a.m. at Grace Presbyterian Church, 1225 Royal Palms Parkway, Palm Coast. Improve your English skills while studying the Bible. This study is geared toward intermediate and advanced level English Language Learners.
Palm Coast Farmers’ Market at European Village: The city’s only farmers’ market is open every Sunday from noon to 4 p.m. at European Village, 101 Palm Harbor Pkwy, Palm Coast. With fruit, veggies, other goodies and live music. For Vendor Information email [email protected]
Jake’s Women, By Neil Simon, at City Rep Theatre, 7:30 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, 3 p.m. on Sunday, at City Repertory Theatre, 160 Cypress Point Parkway (City Marketplace, Suite B207), Palm Coast. $25 for adults, $15 for students. Dive into the intricate world of Neil Simon’s Jake’s Women, where writer Jake’s troubled marriage to Maggie intertwines with his vivid conversations with his deceased wife Julie, his daughter Molly, his sister Karen, and his psychiatrist Edith. This captivating performance is packed with laughs and emotional depth.
Maze Days at Cowart Ranch, Fridays from 5 to 10 p.m., Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., Sundays from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., Cowart Ranch and Farms, 8185 West Highway 100, Bunnell. $15 per person, children 2 and under free. Get lost on a 5 acre walk through maze (approximately 30-60 minute adventure). Pick the perfect carver or edible pumpkin at our Pumpkin Patch with lots of sunflowers and of picture opportunities! Some pumpkins grown right here on the farm. Try to spot the cattle herd on the Tractor driven Hayrides (approximately 15 minutes). Get up close and friendly with farm animals. (Chickens, goats, calves, pigs and more!) Pony Rides! (Not included with entry- $8 or 2 for $15 & legal guardian must sign waiver). Challenge your friends and family at our hand pumped water driven Ducky Dash game. Roll and Race down our NEW Rat Race game that’s a Ratatoullie blast. And plenty more.
Grace Community Food Pantry, 245 Education Way, Bunnell, drive-thru open today from noon to 3 p.m. The food pantry is organized by Pastor Charles Silano and Grace Community Food Pantry, a Disaster Relief Agency in Flagler County. Feeding Northeast Florida helps local children and families, seniors and active and retired military members who struggle to put food on the table. Working with local grocery stores, manufacturers, and farms we rescue high-quality food that would normally be wasted and transform it into meals for those in need. The Flagler County School District provides space for much of the food pantry storage and operations. Call 386-586-2653 to help, volunteer or donate.
Al-Anon Family Groups: Help and hope for families and friends of alcoholics. Meetings are every Sunday at Silver Dollar II Club, Suite 707, 2729 E Moody Blvd., Bunnell, and on zoom. More local meetings available and online too. Call 904-315-0233 or see the list of Flagler, Volusia, Putnam and St. Johns County meetings here.
| In Coming Days: |
Notably: Naturally, this date recurring as a first Tuesday after the first Monday of November many times in the past, several American presidents were elected on a November 3: Taft the Rotund in 1908, FDR in 1936, LBJ in 1964. Maybe not as many as one would think. It was also on this day in 1986 that the obscure Lebanese magazine had its Watergate moment. The magazine was–is–called Al-Shiraa, which means “the sail.” It broke the story of Oliver North an the Reagan administration secretly selling weapons to Iran in exchange for the release of hostages held in Lebanon, what became known in the United States as the Iran-Contra affair and nearly sunk the Reagan administration in one of the major constitutional crises of the century. This being the United States, the felon Ollie North emerged as a hero–who continues to claim fans in our own backyard to this day–and Reagan was allowed to trod off into his sunset while the first George Bush, as implicated in the morass as many others, was elected to succeed him. And we wonder why Trump is about to be elected again. One certainty: in the four years ahead, assuming Trump’s arteries or Vance’s co-conspirators allow him to live that long, we will have scandals, constitutional and otherwise, that will make Iran-Contra look like a toddler-friendly exhibit at the Magic Kingdom of once-upon-a-time fairy dust.
—P.T.
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The Live Calendar is a compendium of local and regional political, civic and cultural events. You can input your own calendar events directly onto the site as you wish them to appear (pending approval of course). To include your event in the Live Calendar, please fill out this form.
Palm Coast Code Enforcement Board Meeting
Separation Chat: Open Discussion
Flagler Beach Library Book Club
The Circle of Light A Course in Miracles Study Group
Weekly Chess Club for Teens, Ages 9-18, at the Flagler County Public Library
Flagler County Republican Club Meeting
Flagler Beach Parks Ad Hoc Committee
Flagler County Drug Court Convenes
Story Time for Preschoolers at Flagler Beach Public Library
Model Yacht Club Races at the Pond in Palm Coast’s Town Center
‘No Sex Please, We’re British,’ at Daytona Playhouse
Free For All Fridays With Host David Ayres on WNZF
Flagler County Canvassing Board Meeting
Blue 24 Forum
The Doo Wop Project at Flagler Auditorium
For the full calendar, go here.
After a seven-year legal odyssey, the Iran-contra independent prosecutor published his final report today, finding no credible evidence that President Ronald Reagan had broken the law but concluding that Mr. Reagan had “knowingly participated or at least acquiesced” in covering up the scandal. The report represented the last official word on the $37.6 million investigation by the prosecutor, Lawrence E. Walsh, who seemed to be trying to shape history’s judgment on President Reagan’s actions and the role his senior aides had played in the tangled arms-for-hostages affair. Mr. Walsh said he found no evidence that George Bush had violated any criminal statute, though he complained that Mr. Bush had withheld evidence. The prosecutor said that contrary to Mr. Bush’s statements, “he was fully aware of the Iran arms sales.” Moreover, Mr. Walsh said, Mr. Bush failed to disclose private diary notes and refused to be interviewed as Mr. Walsh wrapped up the inquiry. In addition, the prosecutor said he had unearthed no indication that either Mr. Reagan or his Vice President and successor, Mr. Bush, knew of a central event in the affair, the diversion of money from the Iran arms sales to the Nicaraguan rebels. Mr. Reagan and Mr. Bush, who had a chance to review the report before it was published, both repeated today their consistent assertions that they had done nothing wrong.
—From “Walsh Criticizes Reagan and Bush Over Iran-Contra,” by David Johnston, The New York Times, January 19, 1994.
Ray W, says
The Washington Post published a story today about a new sodium-ion battery factory about to be built by Natron Energy in North Carolina that will manufacture enough battery capacity to store 24 gigawatts of electricity annually, or enough energy to power 24,000 EVs.
Here are some bullet points from the story:
– Even though sodium-ion battery production in the U.S. has been increasing in recent years, “sodium-ion batteries are still early in their development compared with lithium-ion, and they have yet to hit the market on a massive scale.
– Sodium-ion batteries use sodium, iron and manganese, which are “abundant elements, so they require less energy to extract and cost less” than do lithium-ion batteries that use rare and relatively expensive lithium, nickel and cobalt, said Natron Energy co-CEO Wendell Brooks. They last longer than lithium-ion batteries. They can have millions of charge-discharge cycles, as opposed to lithium-ion batteries that have a lifespan of “three to five thousand cycles,” said Brooks.
– In a sodium-ion battery, sodium ions carry electricity from the positive electrode to the iron and manganese negative electrode to discharge power. A reverse ion flow occurs during charging.
– “The biggest limitation of sodium-ion batteries is their weight. Sodium weighs nearly three times as much as lithium, and it cannot store the same amount of energy.” These limitations make sodium-ion batteries larger and heavier, which makes them more promising for stationary storage like home battery storage, or commercial-grade storage for large applications like story solar or wind power. They are less likely to be used in cell phones and personal transport vehicles. The article did not address whether sodium-ion batteries could be a cost-effective and maintenance-effective choice for the trucking or rail industries.
– A major advantage with sodium-ion batteries is that because they can last so long, they don’t need to be recycled as often, compared to lithium-ion batteries. And recycling salt, iron and manganese is far less destructive to the environment than is recycling lithium and cobalt.
Make of this what you will.
Me? No word in the story about whether Natron Energy is to receive funding from legislation signed into law by President Biden that is intended to bolster good paying manufacturing jobs in the United State. Even if the company doesn’t receive stimulus funding, good paying jobs are coming to North Carolina.
The batteries will use materials that are cheaper to extract and manufacture and are less pollutive during extraction and recycling when compared to lithium-ion batteries.
Millions of available charge cycles mean the batteries will likely outlast the lifespan of any vehicle, home, or industrial facility in which they are installed.
As I have repeatedly commented, we should have started down this path decades ago. Unfortunately, millions of the gullible among us bought into the political lie that developments in battery technology were unfeasible. Well, here we are.
We have long been a nation of technological marvels and possibilities, yet somehow, we were deceived into believing that we could not build a better battery. Why did this occur?
I argue that the professional lying class of our political leadership persuaded gullible Americans that the Solyndra solar panel plant failure meant than any investment in future solar projects would also fail. The same argument persuaded the gullible among us that batteries just wouldn’t work. I have repeatedly read comments by the politically gullible FlaglerLive commenters among us about how battery technology just can’t work.
Here we are. Twenty years behind the Chinese in solar and battery technology because we listened to the most defeatist politicians among us. Yes, we are catching up.
We are extracting more and more crude oil and natural gas than we should have to because too many of us listened to the lying professional class who did not have our best interests at heart.
Energy demand keeps rising, here and abroad, as it always has. More and more people all over the world want more and more energy.
Why shouldn’t a young well-educated Malaysian couple starting a family want a climate-controlled home and personal transport in their lives?
Roughly one billion people in the developed world enjoy the opportunity for personal transport and climate-controlled homes. Seven billion others desire the same.
Energy demand is not going to decline.
The issue is how are we going to transition away from carbon-based sources of energy?
I recently commented on a new Gulf of Mexico project that is drilling to a depth of 34,000 feet in order to access a pool of oil that will satisfy current worldwide consumption demand for 50 days. 34,000 feet! Another deepwater Gulf project is expected to find enough oil to last 100 days. The equipment used must be certified as able to withstand 20,000 pounds per square inch of water pressure. The idea that this is the answer to future ever increasing energy demands is ludicrous.
Looking for oil will only get more and more expensive, as we have already picked most of the low-hanging fruit. The technological breakthroughs that enabled the Shale Revolution took place 20 years ago. Maybe new ones are on the horizon, but no one is talking about them.
Yes, we used to have a limit of 15,000 pounds of water pressure per square inch when drilling for oil and gas and now we can drill at deeper depths, but that does not constitute an energy revolution.
Solar and wind are already cheaper producers of energy than is any form of carbon-based energy, and solar and wind power getting cheaper and cheaper as more and more technological breakthroughs occur. Sodium-ion batteries are but one of them. Graphene-aluminum-ion batteries are another and they off promise of lightweight and long-lasting personal transport batteries. This is the new energy revolution, and we have been ceding that revolution to other nations for decades due to political choices, not economic ones.
I will soon comment on a number of promising breakthroughs in wind energy.
Ray W, says
The Washington Post just ran a story about a young woman they had lauded in 2023 as a county principal of the year.
The young woman, a 2002 child immigrant from Colombia, had earned citizenship in 2012. She then voted in three presidential elections without issue.
Virginia law requires a name and address, plus a form of identification, such as a driver’s license, worker or school ID, utility bill or bank statement, before voting.
The educator went to an early voting polling site. A poll worker collected her name and address, and the educator chose to present her driver’s license. The poll worker asked what the “R” meant on the restrictions portion of her license; she had to wear glasses when driving at night. The poll worker then twice asked if she was a citizen. She answered affirmatively. The poll worker asked for proof of citizenship. She didn’t have it in her purse, but she was allowed to vote.
She then discussed this with her partner, a retired 30-year Air Force veteran. He persuaded her to file a complaint. The poll worker was removed from the site and the worker will no longer serve during the election.
A civil rights attorney told a Post reporter that “it is a violation of Virginia law for a poll worker ‘to require or even to ask a voter to provide anything more’ than a form of identification.”
The Fairfax County Office of Elections informed the Post reporter via statement that “[t]he worker ‘acted unliterally and in violation of check-in procedures by improperly questioning a voter’s citizenship.'”
Closer to home, in 2004, my elder daughter registered to vote in her first presidential election. When she appeared to vote, she signed in as instructed. The poll worker told her that her weeks-old signature didn’t match her current signature and sent her away. At the time, Florida law made it a misdemeanor for a poll worker to send a voter away without offering a “provisional ballot” to be filled out. The provisional ballot and the signatures were to be submitted to the county canvassing board for review of the ballot’s validity. Poll workers never had the power to unilaterally decide whether signatures matched. When told of the event that night, I apologized to my daughter for not teaching her about provisional ballots. I knew that people at polling stations had tried before to steal elections before by denying voters access to ballots. Why else would the legislature make it a crime for a poll worker to send a voter away without first offering the voter a provisional ballot?
On an even closer front, 15 days ago my wife called the Volusia elections office to request a vote-by-mail ballot. She provided the necessary information and was told it would arrive via mail in 5 to 7 days.
After a week, my wife called again because the ballot had not arrived. This time, a different worker said they are not supposed to give out a time frame because there were reports of problems with mail delivery.
Two days ago, my wife decided to go with me to vote; I had always intended to early vote in person.
I called the elections office before we left to see if my wife needed to cancel her vote-by-mail request to keep a clean record. The young woman told me it was okay to just present the proper ID and vote. I told her it had been 14 days since my wife had asked for her ballot. The young woman said the ballots had been going out.
I don’t know the truth of what is really behind the non-delivery of the ballot, but it has yet to arrive after 16 days.
I went online to see who holds the Postmaster position with the Postal Service. Mr. DeJoy is still serving as Postmaster. I recall the stories from 2020 just before that November election when he ordered the removal of high-speed mail sorting machines from post offices throughout the country that were still working properly. The tempest was that mail delivery times had slowed appreciably in the weeks prior to the 2020 election.
There are lots of ways to attempt to steal an election.
Several current GOP lawsuits in various states seek invalidation of any ballot that is received through the mail after next Tuesday, including potential invalidation of overseas ballots.
An attempt can occur one-on-one at a polling station when a voter is turned away in violation of law.
It can occur when a poll worker takes it upon himself or herself to required proof of citizenship when none is required.
It can occur if a postmaster orders removal of properly working machines, thereby slowing mail deliveries past the voting cutoff date.
It can happen when a mob storms a ballot counting room, as exemplified by the storming of a 2000 recount room in a South Florida county. I know a lawyer who told me he was standing outside the building with the mob, but he never admitted to entering the room.
It can occur when noncitizen voters illegally register and then vote. Georgia just completed an audit of all 8.2 million registered voters. 20 were found to be noncitizens. Nine had records of actually voting, with a few voting in more than one election.
Attempts to steal are not limited to any one party. In 2022, Florida referred for prosecution a number of convicted felons who had allegedly voted without authorization. Many had registered as democrats. Most of the charges were dropped, but some were prosecuted. As I recall, the Villages was home to four registered Republicans who admitted to voting twice in the 2020 presidential election.
An attempt to steal can occur when people storm a federal capital building.
Make of this what you will.
Me? To my knowledge, every state has a threshold for mandatory recount if requested. Florida’s threshold triggers when the vote margin is within one-half of one percent. If a candidate seeks recount in an instance of a margin greater than 0.5%, he or she has to pay for the recount. If closer, the citizens pay for the recount. This has been the law for a long time.
Historically, no recount of any significant vote size in any state or federal election has ever seen a revised recount approaching that half-percent threshold.
Instances of vote fraud have existed for a long time. No political party is immune from its members engaging in instances of voter fraud.
Anyone who claims that members of only one party are capable of attempting to steal an election is engaging in an act of disinformation.