With the coronavirus and its many knowns and unknowns, what may look like an overreaction today is the most effective form of prevention, and should not be given the chance to look like playing catch-up weeks from now.
Misplaced Inquisitions: Mayor Holland, Coastal Cloud and the Palm Coast Observer
Mayor Milissa Holland and Coastal Cloud Co-owner Tim Hale repeatedly–and unfairly–invoked Palm Coast Observer Editor Brian McMillan’s name in poor light during a 90-minute city council segment devoted entirely to refuting critical allegations about the city’s contract with the company.
The School Board’s Proposed Decorum Rules Are a Pretext to Silence Critical Information
The Flagler County School Board is considering speech restrictions at its meetings that include comment cards before a person can speak and prohibiting references to staff, students or anyone in the district.
Hack This: Palm Coast Is Onto Something With Tech Beach Competition
Palm Coast’s Tech Beach Hackathon last weekend points the way to a more useful form form of economic and innovative development, especially when contrasted with the enormous waste of dollars and resources over the past years at the county’s economic development department.
For Seven Days, Flagler Sees Florida’s Broken Death Penalty Machinery in Action
Though David Snelgrove was finally sentenced to life in prison rather than death this week, his trial shows how the 20-year ordeal in court could have been avoided with the same result two decades ago, had capital punishment not been on the table.
American Impotence: Trump’s Assassination of Suleimani Masks Broad Retreat
All is not well: Donald Trump’s assassination of Iran’s Suleimani masks how far American power has been forced into retreat across the Middle East, and will only accelerate strategic losses that endanger American lives and interests.
Flagler School Board Lets a Pastor Insult a Transgender Student at a Meeting, In His Presence
Rev. Charlene Cothran of Palm Coast called a transgender student “mentally ill” and his father “confused” and “intimidated” in both their presence during a Flagler County School Board meeting this week, with pushback only from Colleen Conklin.
Amicus Curiae: The 16-Year-Old FPC Girl Was Racist. She Was Stupid. She Was Not Criminal.
In the case of an FPC girl who wrote bigoted threats about her teacher last December, the prosecution is making outlandish claims that it was act of terrorism, stretching the meaning of a 2018 law passed after the Parkland massacre. The law does not apply, as even the prosecution acknowledged the case’s weaknesses.
Elizabeth Warren’s Medicare For All: Unfair and Irresponsible
Elizabeth Warren’s Medicare for all proposal is right in principle but is not realistic, fair or honest and it ensures that Warren’s candidacy will not succeed at a time when a door knob should have the capabilities of defeating Donald Trump.
Gender Traitors: Fired While Gay
The Supreme Court will decide three cases that ask a question you should be offended to hear still asked today: may an employer fire a worker for being gay? The answer in most states, including Florida, is yes.
Sheriff Mike Chitwood Smears Our Judges
Volusia Sheriff Mike Chitwood’s call on Chief Judge Zambrano to “overturn” another judge’s ruling on a convicted sex offender’s bond shows contempt for and misunderstanding of the very laws Chitwood was sworn to uphold. He sets a noxious tone.
Here’s What You Can Do With Yourself, Dorian
Hurricane Dorian’s fortunate shift away from the Florida peninsula must have at least something to do with the collective obscenities Floridians worn out from three years of hurricanes cussed its way, creating their own defiant weather system.
See Something, Say Something? 3 Flagler School Board Members Say Not If It’s Cancer.
Opposition to the Flagler Health Department’s proposal to offer the HPV vaccine in schools is driven by three board members echoing the rhetoric of vaccine denialism though various irrational pretexts.
Stop Criminalizing Children in the Name of School Security
The rash of zero-tolerance felony arrests of children that the Flagler school district experienced last year unjustly makes examples of adolescents in the name of a security establishment focusing on the wrong threats across the state.
Of Course Guns Have Nothing To Do With It
Mountains of evidence link America’s mass killings to the massive amount of guns in circulation, but let’s go ahead and pretend that guns have nothing to do with it, nor the absence of sensible gun control.
Go Back Where You Came From
No American can tell another to go back where he or she came from, at least not with a straight face: We’re all carpetbaggers in America going back to the original ones who crossed over the Bering Strait.
Bomb Iran? Pass.
Saudi Arabia is dragging the United States toward war with Iran against all American interests when the true threat to the Middle East continues to be Saudi Arabia–and American blindness to that alliance’s consequences.
Bunnell’s Mean Streak
The city that calls itself the crossroads of Flagler County is losing its bearings, its heart, and sometimes its mind–over the homeless, over panhandlers, over the sheriff’s office. It is becoming petty. It is becoming mean and resentful, and discriminatory.
Palm Coast’s Disappearing Canopy
Development in Palm Coast is back at a pace not seen since before the Great Recession. Lots are getting leveled, canopies lost. New homes are great., but must 11,000 square foot lots be entirely leveled to make room for 2,000 square foot homes? It’s not either or.
The Familiar Face of White Supremacy
The fad of not naming mass killers is deceptive and self-defeating, an act of cowardice that hides more than it wants to acknowledge. Brenton Tarrant, the killer of Christchurch, is an all–too familiar face.
Trump’s Fabulous Wall Fables
We’re in a post-factual presidency where alternative facts are the equivalent of papal bulls. It’s about belief, not reality. For the sake of appearances though, let’s argue the facts about the wall for a moment.
Let Craig Coffey Resign. With Severance.
Craig Coffey’s loss of credibility has been painful. It doesn’t need to be cruel. Rather than a public flogging on Jan. 14, he should be allowed to resign with a measure of dignity–and severance.
Democrats’ Arafat Complex
Early possibilities for the 2020 election–Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton–suggest Democrats aren’t learning lessons but clinging to habits of self-destruction.
Flagler’s Beach ‘Renourishment’ Is Exorbitant Futility
Whether it’s the Corps of Engineers’ plan for 2.6 miles of Flagler Beach sands or Flagler County’s ongoing dune-rebuilding over 12 miles, there’s no money to sustain either, yet officials are mortgaging the county’s future on a blank check.
Barbecuing Bing’s
With even Captain’s BBQ owners willing to get “back to the drawing board,” there’s plenty of room for Flagler government to fix what remains a dirty deal that hurts all sides.
Trump’s Responsibility
Trump can’t have it both ways. He can’t revel in his powers of denigration and incitement then take cover behind a bogus sense of outrage and his usual deflections when the incitement and denigration arm fuses and kill people.
Saint Kavanaugh
Whether Kavanaugh was confirmed or not is irrelevant: whoever’s next might be less personally sleazy, more temperamentally amoebic, but judicially? Same shill, different name.
Schools Are Safer Than Your Home
We’re making fortresses of the safest places in America, out of fear that one of those 120,000 schools might at some point be the target of a shooting.
America’s Pre-Existing Condition
Florida is among the states suing to end the requirement that people with pre-existing conditions be covered by insurers. It’s the latest cynical attempt to end Obamacare.
Truth Derangement Syndrome
Donald Trump once said he could shoot someone and not lose any votes. He’s right in the sense that he changed the rules of right and wrong, truth and lies, morality and immorality.
Thoughts and Prayers, As Pointless as Outrage
The ultimate, most pointless outrage is at lawmakers and gun freaks, one and the same, who stand in pools of blood as they tell us our gun epidemic has nothing to do with it.
Military Inferiority Complex:
Dear Leader Wants A Parade
The military doesn’t need parades. It needs to come home. Worshipping it in time of endlessly losing wars only locks and loads more cannon fodder.
Reporting on Public Figures’ Extra-Curricular Sex
Married or not, public figures’ affairs are nobody’s business as long as the acts are legal, consensual, off the clock and virally contained. But there are exceptions.
Four Funerals and a Wedding
In the past couple of weeks we’ve had four mass funerals and a wedding. Each tells a story about what we’ve become in a world turned on its head. Honorable is the least of it.
Whiplash
Donald Trump is rewriting the rules of politics, of time and of the English language, but the resulting explosions are as false a dawn as those of nuclear blasts.
I Am An Enemy Combatant
The media has been the enemy since the earliest days of the Republic. But to be an enemy in America is what all of us at one point or another have been or will be. It is an American responsibility. It’s proof of our beloved American citizenship.
Trump’s Middle Finger to Muslims, and Law
The executive order Trump signed on Friday does the opposite of what it aims for: it belittles American law, projects a nation in cowardly fear, alienates its own Muslim communities and endangers our security.
President Fake
We’ve been worried about fake news from all the wrong places. The most promiscuous peddler of fake news is the president himself, Donald J. Trump. That’s dangerous for media, for America and for democracy.
Israel’s Suicide Mission
Israel’s right-wing government never seriously considered the two-state solution, which it has now abandoned as it imposes a de-facto annexation of the Palestinian West Bank, enshrining apartheid.
Cops Aren’t Under Siege.
Civilians and Liberties Are.
It’s a widely accepted but dangerous myth: that cops are under siege, handcuffed by “new restrictions.” The reality is the opposite, with more unbridled and brutal policing than we care to admit.
It’ll Be Alt-Right
Donald Trump’s appointments and short-lists are pointing the way to an administration not much different than his campaign, suggesting there’s more wishful thinking than reality behind the hope that he’d surround himself with people saner than he is.
The Day After
Despite a liberal’s shellshock from a Trump presidency and the dreadful clarity of times ahead, this is no time to decamp or retreat–nor to deny in any way that he is our president.
Panic: On the Prospect of a Trump Presidency
“I spent the past year making fun of Trump and taking it for granted that Hillary Clinton would demolish him. I didn’t take into account her fabulous skills for self-destruction or the country’s ripeness for mass delusion.”
The National Anthem’s False Notes
Blasphemous as it seems, Colin Kaepernick’s freedom to sit out the Star Spangled Banner is written in the anthem’s very words, though his tormentors are more disturbed by his message, which they would rather not hear.
Ransom Rubbish
Oliver North would have you believe that the Obama Administration paid a $400 million ransom to Iran in exchange for three Americans. His history and compass are off. Here’s a little reminder.
In My Father’s Court: Baalbek
The Roman ruins at Baalbek in Lebanon were among my father’s favorite haunts. He was a professional photographer. Lebanon was his studio. We discovered the country, and ourselves, through his eyes.
As Exceptionally American As It Gets
Our mass shootings have developed their own set rituals and denials, none so lethal as the complicity with murder that blames the wrong targets while excusing guns.
Transgender Indecency
There were pragmatic ways to ensure access to bathrooms for transgender people until lawmakers hijacked the process with predatory bans that dehumanize people and make a mockery of decency.
The Republican Responsibility to Reject Trump
Derision, racism, default and brutality are strange ways to go about making America great again. Let’s hope for the GOP’s sake and everyone else’s that Republicans have the clarity not to fall for Trump’s latest reality show.
Palm Coast’s $9 Million Scam at Taxpayers’ Expense
Since 2008, Palm Coast government has wasted over $9 million in taxpayer money to subsidize its privately run, money-losing golf and tennis operations, which serve a small group of people. It’s been a colossal scam perpetrated on taxpayers.