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Weather: Showers possible in the evening, otherwise partly cloudy, hot and humid, a high of 93, low in the mid-70s.
- 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:
Primary Election Early Voting is available today in Bunnell, Palm Coast and Flagler Beach from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at five locations. Any registered and qualified voter who is eligible to vote in a county-wide election may vote in person at any of the early voting site, regardless of assigned precinct. According to Florida law, every voter must present a Florida driver’s license, a Florida identification card or another form of acceptable picture and signature identification in order to vote. If you do not present the required identification or if your eligibility cannot be determined, you will only be permitted to vote a provisional ballot. Don’t forget your ID. A couple of secure drop boxes that Ron DeSantis and the GOP legislature haven’t yet banned (also known as Secure Ballot Intake Stations) are available at the entrance of the Elections Office and at any early voting site during voting hours. The locations are as follows:
- Flagler County Elections Supervisor’s Office, Government Services Building, 1769 East Moody Boulevard, Bunnell.
- Flagler County Public Library, 2500 Palm Coast Pkwy NW, Palm Coast.
- Palm Coast Community Center, 305 Palm Coast Parkway NE.
- Palm Coast’s Southern Recreation Center, 1290 Belle Terre Parkway.
- Wickline Senior Center, 700 South Daytona Avenue, Flagler Beach.
See a sample ballot here. See the Live Interviews with all local candidates below.
Flagler County Commission Greg Feldman (Dis. 2, R) Theresa Pontieri (Dist. 2, R) Anna Jones (Dist. 4, R) Drew Moss (Dist. 4, R) Leann Pennington (Dist. 4, R) Flagler County School Board Cathy Moon (Dist. 1) Jill Woolbright (Dist. 1) Will Furry (Dist. 2) Rob Wood (Dist. 2) Christy Chong (Dist 4) Ron Long (Dist. 4) Trevor Tucker (Dist. 4) Palm Coast City Council Tony Amaral Jr. (Dist. 2) Jeani Duarte (Dist 2.) Jimmy Hengy (Dist. 2) Dylana Dee Galery (Dist. 4) John Kvederis (Dist. 4) Ramon Marrero (Dist. 4) Darlene Shelley (Dist. 4) The candidates' interviews will be live-linked the day their interview publishes. |
River to Sea Transportation Planning Organization (TPO) Bicycle/Pedestrian Advisory Committee meets at 9 a.m. at the Airline Room at the Daytona Beach International Airport. The TPO’s planning oversight includes all of Volusia County and Flagler County, with board representation those jurisdictions. The committee is responsible for reviewing plans, policies, and procedures and rank priority projects as they relate to bicycle and pedestrian issues within the TPO planning area. See the full agendas here. To join the meeting electronically, go here.
Conversations in Democracy: An open, freewheeling discussion on topics here in our community, around Florida and throughout the United States, noon to 1 p.m. at Pine Lakes Golf Club Clubhouse Pub & Grillroom (no purchase is necessary), 400 Pine Lakes Pkwy, Palm Coast (0.7 miles from Belle Terre Parkway). Call (386) 445-0852 for best directions. All are welcome! Everyone’s voice is important. For further information email atlanticcoastau@gmail.com or call Merrill at 804-914-4460.
The Circle of Light Course in Miracles study group meets at a private residence in Palm Coast every Wednesday at 1:20 PM. There is a $2 love donation that goes to the store for the use of their room. If you have your own book, please bring it. All students of the Course are welcome. There is also an introductory group at 1:00 PM. The group is facilitated by Aynne McAvoy, who can be reached at CAT9201@aol.com for location and information.
| The Latest Jail Bookings |
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| j-260821 |
| Source: Flagler County Sheriff's Office. Note: the Sheriff's Office redacts or censors the names of migrants arrested under authority of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. The federal agency requires the redactions, according to the Sheriff's Office. |
Notably: “… in this country that hatred is disfiguring.” It’s only a fragment of a phrase in a short essay by Camus from November 1938, less than a year from the beginning of World War II. But it might as well be the American motto these days. We have gone from e pluribus unum to ex multis odium.
https://youtu.be/Dz8fPDkgl2k?si=EY_vnjOO3dPI49V0
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.
[MEC id=”163848″]
For the full calendar, go here.
“Fear is therefore the pitfall of oppression, and it is panic that precipitates tyranny. The government bridles the author as a means of bridling his book. It responds to whim and succumbs to passion. It rules the people according to love and hate, rather than on the basis of truth and justice. I know of no persons more foolish, nor more ignorant, nor more stupid than those who rule by the dictates of fear and panic, of passion and whim, of love and hatred. For they entangle themselves in an endless array of absurdity. They think that everything is within their power although theirs is a limited human power with boundaries beyond which they cannot reach.”
–From Taha Hussein’s The Sufferers: Stories and Polemics (1955).
Laurel says
My opinion and my question. How does anyone justify this ignoramus? He most certainly did not get his job through merit, nor experience, nor any sort of knowledge.
This is our current administration.
Jim says
Well, I hope that the DoD is successful in getting our defense contractors to expedite deliveries of precision weaponry. That’s what I hope. In fact, almost my entire career was spent in that industry so I do know some things about procurement and deliveries. Today I saw a headline that the DoD has asked defense contractors what paperwork issues they can alleviate to help expedite delivery times. There is certainly opportunity there.
However, the real problems with expediting these deliveries is tied to the amount of equipment available, the number of trained personnel that can actually operate and build the weaponry and all of the issues of subcontractors needed to make this happen. I’ve been involved in expediting deliveries for the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force. I’ve never seen or heard of a single instance where this happened quickly. They can do things like increase the number of shifts in manufacturing. Typically, precision weapons are built on a 1-shfit/5-day operation. They can go to a 24-hour/7-day operation which will -theoretically- increase production four fold. However, it takes time to train those people. It takes time to train the people managing and monitoring the operations for quality and safety as well as productivity. It’s questionable whether the equipment will hold up to this level of use and stress. Quite often, when a production ramp up occurs, unless it’s done carefully it results in safety incidents. In operations such as this, the loss of personnel and equipment in an incident can set the program back huge chunks of time.
Trump says more defense plants are being built but no one seems to be able to verify that. Even if true, it takes a lot of time to build, acquire equipment, install, prove out (the military has a very detailed method of doing “First Article” approvals for new operations), and train personnel. This goes for the prime contractor and all of the sub-contractors. And “short-cutting” any of this for a “precision” weapon is guaranteed to result in a significant number of poor-performing or dud munitions. That’s something the Russians and North Koreans are known for since their production lines are hardly up to our standards.
So, in my opinion, the United States is now suffering the results of an incompetent president as well as an incompetent Secretary of Defense. Our current precision weapons inventory issues will not go away any time soon. We’re also putting our foreign policy and defense agreements at risk as well. Our current allies (I use that word carefully) can’t get weaponry and munitions they’ve ordered already because our DoD has diverted some of that to our own defense needs. What results from this is that those allies will procure alternative weaponry from other sources wherever that is available. They will not come back to us. This means that our own weaponry is going to cost even more going forward because there will be less quantities manufactured when we get through this current crisis.
Finally, I just wonder what China will do now. Almost all the so-called military experts believe China will move on Taiwan within 2 years. If that’s true, it doesn’t take a military genius to decide to move earlier while our inventories are low. We could still fight China but we’ll have to use more conventual weapons which put our military personnel at much higher risk. I just wonder how much stomach America has to see high casualties in such a conflict. So I also think the Trump administration will decide to not defend Taiwan and let China take it either by force or blockade.
So much for the American guarantees to come to an ally’s aid.
We’re definitely not “America First” as Trump likes to claim. We are closing in on being “America Alone”. I know Trumpers either don’t see that or think that’s just great. And we’ll all see the folly of this in the years to come.
Janet Sullivan says
You can have it Fast, Cheap, or Good. Pick two.
BillC says
Patriot PAC-3 MSE Interceptor: Building one takes roughly two years (24–36 months). This timeline is driven by a supply chain involving more than 400 companies and a 30-month lead time for the solid rocket motor curing process. The complicated supply chain of 400 companies could lead to erratic production delays.
A newly produced Patriot battery costs about $1.1 billion, a figure the Congressional Research Service breaks down as roughly $400 million for the hardware and about $690 million for a full load of missiles.
Tomahawk Cruise Missile: Production takes 18 to 24 months due to complex guidance systems and specialized components like solid rocket motors. The U.S. currently produces approximately 90 missiles per year.
Ray W. says
In 2023, Zach Dell co-founded the Austin-located Base Power; he is the CEO.
The business model is simple. Because Texas has a deregulated energy grid, wholesale electricity costs fluctuate throughout the day, with prices dropping whenever supply is high and demand is low. If someone could figure out a way to buy low and sell high, there would be money to be made.
As a foundation statement, due to Texas now being home to a large and growing supply of wholesale utility-scale solar power, excess supply hits the grid in the hours straddling noon, when people are working away from their homes and children are at school. Demand for electricity during these hours is comparatively low. However, demand for utility-scale power rises each evening when workers and children return home, just as solar power supply tapers down. Why not charge home batteries during the day when wholesale power is comparatively cheap to buy and then sell the stored power from the same batteries in the evening when wholesale power commands a higher price?
Base Power will install home batteries for a one-time fee ranging from $95 to $695, depending on the size of the battery or number of batteries and the location of the home. The homeowner pays a fixed rate of nine cents per kilowatt-hour for electricity consumed, not stored (FP&L charges roughly 15 cents per kilowatt-hour).
Here is the important part. Each home battery or set of home batteries comes with two-way inverter(s) that can both charge from the grid and discharge back into the grid, and Base Power has the software needed to control when the batteries are to charge or discharge the batteries and to monitor how much power is used to charge the batteries and how much power is discharged from the batteries, i.e., Base Power is creating a controllable linked-battery mini-grid. During a weather event or power outage, all of the batteries are quickly disconnected from the mini-grid in order to preserve stored electricity for homeowner use.
If Base Power can purchase wholesale electricity at a price less than nine cents per kilowatt-hour when supply is high and demand is low to power the participating homes, the company can make money. If it can sell the stored energy back into the grid at a higher price when supply is dropping and demand is rising, it also can make money.
According to a story by The Cool Down, more than 17,000 homeowners across Texas and the Chicago area have already signed up, meaning that Base Power has mini-grids in operation totaling more than 500 megawatts of decentralized battery storage capacity. This type of program works only in states that have deregulated their grids in a way that allows for wholesale price fluctuation depending on supply and demand.
Base Power just raised another $1 billion in investor funding; it is now valued at $13 billion.
According to a story published by The Austin American-Statesman, a city council-supervised community-owned non-profit electric utility company, Austin Energy, just signed a 10-year deal with Base Power for Base Power to provide to city residents 40 megawatts of power over the 10 year term at an overall cost of $40.8 million. Austin’s 2025 population was just over one million residents.
The reporter also wrote of Austin Energy’s brand new “Power Partner Battery” pilot program. Participating homeowners are paid $500 toward the purchase of home batteries that also have two-way inverters, just like Base Power’s model. The city utility will link the batteries into its own mini-grid, and provide the software to make the mini-grid work. The linked batteries will charge when wholesale prices are lower and discharge when wholesale prices are higher. Any profits gained by the program will be credited to the homeowners. Participants in the program are limited to 1,500 homeowners during the pilot period in order to analyze how it works. 150 homeowners have already signed up.
Finally, per the story, the Austin city council recently approved two 20-year deals that are to pay companies to build and manage Austin-based utility-scale BESS facilities. One deal pays a company $165 million over twenty years for a 100 megawatt complex. The other deal pays a different company $320 million over time for a 200 megawatt complex. Each of the two BESS complexes will charge batteries when wholesale prices are low and discharge them when wholesale prices are high. Any profits gained by the process are to go to reducing electricity rates in the city.
James says
Nothing like “draining a swamp” and replacing it with a den of vipers, eh?
Just my opinion.
Pogo says
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InyT9Gyoz_o&list=RDInyT9Gyoz_o&start_radio=1
Pogo says
Anyone not need to know this?
The sky is not shelter…
https://news.va.gov/148629/financial-pitfalls-veteran-homebuyers-should-avoid/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=teach+your+children+well&sei=keR8auC6KYqV5OMPkPvDqAc#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:7460b286,vid:dQOaUnSmJr8,st:0
Bob says
Well. He doesn’t Wear a dress nor wear high hills. Nor take leave a without informing the President. I believe there was one that said to the Chinese I have ur backs. As of now,however, recruitment is up. I’d like to know why he is an ignoramas.
Laurel says
Ooooh, not good. Says a lot.
The man is not qualified, and has fired generals much, much, much smarter, and far more experienced than Petey will ever be, in his dreams or otherwise.
This should be obvious.
James says
Perhaps because he’s not the worst, and unfortunately only the first.
Just say’n… that’s what happens when you leave the barn door open.