John Kerry

He’s back, in all of his tone-deaf glory.

Forget the fact that to first order, there are no solar-panel manufacturers here. Has anyone done an economic analysis of shifting from a high-density energy source to a low one? Kerry et al say that solar-panel production is the one in which jobs are growing fastest, but that’s meaningless outside the context of how many there are, or how low labor productivity they are in energy production, compared to gas and oil. It’s easy to grow something that is minuscule fast, but that doesn’t solve the problems of all the people Biden just threw out of work.

The Republican Party

has failed us.

Kristi Noem is the female Ronald Reagan, and she may be the second, if not the first woman president.

[Update a while later]

Yes, as pointed out in comments, the first elected woman president. And she may be the first, period, if Demented Joe manages to hang on for four years (or something happens to Harris before something happens to Joe).

Big Sur

Welp, the road was washed out again, this time at Rat Creek.

Trying to figure out how that happened. Presumably there was a culvert under the road to allow the water to pass through. Did it get clogged with debris? Fortunately, no one was hurt, but who knows how long Big Sur will be cut off from the south?

[Sunday-afternoon update]

Yup, as I suspected, the debris flow clogged the culvert.

As I note in comments, this was one of many washouts waiting to happen.

SN9

Bob Zimmerman has a post up about today’s planned flight.

If it happens, it will have happened on the 35th anniversary of the loss of Challenger, and on my birthday.

[Update a few minutes later]

Looks like winds are too high, so they’ll miss the anniversary.

[Afternoon update]

Well, it looks like they are going to try today. They’re loading propellant, but there seems to be an FAA issue.

[Friday-afternoon update]

Well, here‘s what we know so far.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!