Trump has survived by – consciously or not – following the example of another American president who created a political party in his own image and used it to rule almost unchecked: Andrew Jackson, whose portrait Trump hung in the Oval Office during his first term.
Florida & Beyond, and All Opinions
The Daily Cartoon and Live Briefing: Wednesday, November 6, 2024
The Flagler Beach Library Book Club meets, the Flagler County Republican Club holds its monthly meeting, Weekly Chess Club for Teens at the library, Jacques Brel’s bridge-jumpers.
The Deep Sea’s Potential Gold Mine, As Long As We Don’t Mine It
Deep-sea animals possess unique genes that allow them to live in an environment unlike anything else on Earth, with its intense cold, crushing pressure and total darkness. The essential role of deep-sea life in the functioning of Earth’s systems may be far greater than previously understood. Unfortunately, deep-sea ecosystems are under threat from seabed mining for minerals.
The Daily Cartoon and Live Briefing: Tuesday, November 5, 2024
Election Day, finally, endless Flagler County Canvassing Board meetings, thinking with George Orwell and Billy Currington (beer is good and people are crazy) and thinking of Iowa.
America’s Disappearing Dairy Farms
While the number of dairy farms has fallen, the average herd size – the number of cows per farm – has been rising. Today, more than 60% of all milk production occurs on farms with more than 2,500 cows. This massive consolidation in dairy farming has an impact on rural communities. It also makes it more difficult for consumers to know where their food comes from and how it’s produced.
The Daily Cartoon and Live Briefing: Monday, November 4, 2025
The Flagler County Commission meets, the Beverly Beach Town Commission meets, the sense of curfew before Election Day, an excerpt from Robert Graves’s Goodbye To All That.
Why Ancient Mesopotamians Would Have Used A Sheep’s Liver to Predict Donald Trump’s Election Odds
According to 4,000-year-old Babylonian instructions that have survived to this day, every crease on the liver has a meaning, and cuneiform tablets discovered in modern-day Iraq explain how to interpret them. Armed with this knowledge, it’s supposedly possible to calculate the answer to any question, so long as it is yes or no, by adding up the number of positive or negative signs and seeing which comes out on top.
Behind the Desperate Attempt to Defeat Abortion-Rights Amendment: GOP’s Contempt for Women’s Autonomy
DeSantis knows the majority of Floridians — like the majority of Americans — support a woman’s right to choose whether to have a baby, and he’s so scared Amendment 4 will pass he’s resorting to using every dirty trick in the patriarchal book to stop it. Like Donald Trump, he despises women, for whose right to determine what happens with their own bodies is nothing short of obsessive.
The Daily Cartoon and Live Briefing: Sunday, November 3, 2024
Jake’s Women, By Neil Simon, at City Rep Theatre, Maze Days at Cowart Ranch, Palm Coast Farmers’ Market at European Village, when an obscure Beirut paper broke the Iran-Contra affair.
Threatening ‘The Enemy Within’ with Force: The Danger to Americans
Former President Donald Trump has declared that there is “the outside enemy, and then we have the enemy from within, and the enemy from within, in my opinion, is more dangerous,” with past actions suggesting he would use the military to suppress opposition at home. For that reason, in a time of increasing political polarization, military educational institutions are focusing even more explicitly on the oath military members take to the Constitution, rather than to a person or an office.