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Weather: Mostly sunny. Highs in the upper 60s. North winds 5 to 10 mph with gusts up to 20 mph. Tonight: Partly cloudy. Lows in the mid 40s. Northeast winds around 5 mph in the evening, becoming light and variable.See the daily weather briefing from the National Weather Service in Jacksonville here.
Today at a Glance:
Presidential Primary Early Voting is available today from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at four locations. Any registered and qualified voter who is eligible to vote in a county-wide election may vote in person at the early voting site. 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.
- Flagler Beach United Methodist Church, 1520 South Daytona Avenue, Flagler Beach.
Flagler and Florida Unemployment Numbers Released: The state’s Commerce Department released the previous month’s preliminary unemployment numbers for Florida and its 67 counties, at 10 a.m. See the data releases page here.
The Flagler County Library Board of Trustees meets at 4:30 p.m. at the Flagler County Public Library, 2500 Palm Coast Pkwy NW, Palm Coast. The meeting of the seven-member board is open to the public.
Nar-Anon Family Groups offers hope and help for families and friends of addicts through a 12-step program, 6 p.m. at St. Mark by the Sea Lutheran Church, 303 Palm Coast Pkwy NE, Palm Coast, Fellowship Hall Entrance. See the website, www.nar-anon.org, or call (800) 477-6291. Find virtual meetings here.
The Bunnell City Commission meets at 7 p.m. at the Government Services Building, 1769 East Moody Boulevard, Bunnell, where the City Commission is holding its meetings until it is able to occupy its own City Hall on Commerce Parkway likely in early 2023. To access meeting agendas, materials and minutes, go here.
 Keep Their Lights On Over the Holidays: Flagler Cares, the social service non-profit celebrating its 10th anniversary, is marking the occasion with a fund-raiser to "Keep the Holiday Lights On" by encouraging people to sponsor one or more struggling household's electric bill for a month over the Christmas season. Each sponsorship amounts to $100 donation, with every cent going toward payment of a local power bill. See the donation page here. Every time another household is sponsored, a light goes on on top of a house at Flagler Cares' fundraising page. The goal of the fun-raiser, which Flagler Cares would happily exceed, is to support at least 100 families (10 households for each of the 10 years that Flagler Cares has been in existence). Flagler Cares will start taking applications for the utility fund later this month. Because of its existing programs, the organization already has procedures in place to vet people for this type of assistance, ensuring that only the needy qualify. |
Notebook: In the 1990s, that carefree decade sandwiched between scares, the conspiracy theorists who found Arkansas land deals and Vincent Foster too complicated opted for UFOs and Area 51. More traditional conspiracies returned after 9/11, starting with that pretty obscene one by a Frenchman, picked up and believed in to this day by about one in four American, that it was an inside job. Then came the conspiracies about Obama’s birth, Sandy Hook having been a fabrication (Alex Jones paid millions for that one), the pizza joint thing, Democrats trafficking babies, and so on. It’s the sickness of paranoid times, when people see connections everywhere there aren’t any, with coincidences for scriptures. Speaking of which: it’s not a leap to generalize that people who accept conspiracy theories are easily swayed by belief systems, conspiracies being nothing more than a form of cultism (you feed from a group that believes in certain conspiracies, justifying your beliefs). Nor is it a leap to assume that conspiracy theorists tend also to go for the beliefs of least resistance–god, religion, sects. But here’s the puzzle: how does a conspiracy theorist believe in, say, the 9/11 conspiracy or the deep state or, as in Orleans in 1969, that infamous one about women kidnapped by Jews while trying on dresses in Jewish-owned clothing stores (they called it “la rumeur d’Orleans”), a theory that had the doubleheader punch of a conspiracy and of anti-Semitism (though conspiracy theories are never far from anti-Semitism), or Qanon’s bouillabaisse, or now the Taylor Swift things–how does a conspiracy theorist believe in any of this, yet find it so easy to go to church on Sunday, and swallow the Bible whole? Or are we talking about the same thing in the end, which is precisely why it’s so easy for theorists to also hang out in their chosen house of worship?
—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.
Coffee With Flagler Beach Commission Chair Scott Spradley
Flagler Beach Farmers Market
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Gamble Jam at Gamble Rogers Memorial State Recreation Area
ESL Bible Studies for Intermediate and Advanced Students
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Palm Coast Farmers’ Market at European Village
Al-Anon Family Groups
For the full calendar, go here.
Yet the Americans’ political sensitivities and their almost instinctive willingness to explain their crisis in terms of dark plots and sinister conspiracies require further explanation. They may have been brought to the edge of revolution by their conviction that they were the victims of an evil conspiracy, but what made them believe in the conspiracy, a conspiracy that had no basis in fact? Two sorts of circumstances conditioned these responses. The first was political; the second, religious or, more accurately, moral. For at least two generations politically aware Americans had been a suspicious lot, smelling plots and conspiracies in all sorts of circles, including those surrounding governors and royal officials serving in the colonies. Of course their politics gave them reason for entertaining suspicions; their politics bred a turbulent factionalism and an atmosphere, if not always the actuality, of conspiracy. The “outs” plotted to replace the “ins” who conspired to remain where they were. In fact, colonial politics possessed so much fluidity, with interest groups forming to achieve short-term objectives, then dissolving, only to coalesce once more in different alignments in the service of another set of temporary purposes, that no group maintained its hold on the government for long.
–From Robert Middlekauff’s The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 (2005).
Pogo says
@FWIW
“If you wait by the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will float by.”
― Sun Tzu
https://www.google.com/search?q=Sun+Tzu
Justbob says
Of course it must be the COVID vaccine causing gray matter shrinkage, the loss of rational thought and critical thinking and the overall dumbing down of America.
Spread the word… We will buy anything.