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Weather: Mostly cloudy. A chance of showers and thunderstorms. Highs in the lower 90s. Friday night: Lows in the upper 60s. Chance of rain 40 percent.
- Daily weather briefing from the National Weather Service in Jacksonville
- Flagler and Florida drought conditions. (What is the Keetch-Byram drought index?).
- Today’s tides in Flagler Beach here.
- Current tropical cyclone activity, with more details here.
Today at a Glance:
Free For All Fridays with Host David Ayres, an hour-long public affairs radio show featuring local newsmakers, personalities, public health updates and the occasional surprise guest, starts a little after 9 a.m. after FlaglerLive Editor Pierre Tristam’s Reality Check. On today’s show: Tom Leek, who is running for the Senate seat that includes Flagler County, and Darrel Boyer, who is running for the state House seat that includes Flagler County. Maybe Leek can tell us what all those crazy fliers about him being the next best thing since Lyndon Johnson and the Warren Court are all about. See previous podcasts here. On WNZF at 94.9 FM and 1550 AM.
The Blue 24 Forum, a discussion group organized by local Democrats, meets at 12:15 p.m. at the Palm Coast Community Center, 305 Palm Coast Parkway NE. Come and add your voice to local, state and national political issues.
LGBTQ+ Night at Flagler Beach’s Coquina Coast Brewing Company: The monthly LGBTQ+ social for adults is scheduled for every second Friday of the month from 8 to 11 p.m. at Coquina Coast Brewing Co., 318 Moody Boulevard, Flagler Beach. “Come together, make new friends and share some brews. Going strong since Oct 2021! We feature many genres of local LGBTQ+ talent in our community; comedy, burlesque, belly dance, drag, musicians, bingo games, etc. There is never a cover charge but donations are greatly appreciated! When you register, your email is used to keep you up to date on future LGBTQ+ friendly events.
Church Folks Ain’t Laughing Enough: 6 p.m. at the African American Cultural Society, 4422 North U.S. Highway 1, Palm Coast (just north of Whiteview Parkway). Comedy/ VarietyShow , Music, Dancing, Skits, Dining and More Back by Popular Demand! Reserve Now. Will be a Sell Out Show-$28.00 advance ticket sales $40.00@ the door. Proceeds Benefit the Palm Coast Democratic Club. Cash Bar.
“The Color Purple” Movie Matinee 1 p.m. at the Flagler County Public Library, 2500 Palm Coast Pkwy NW, Palm Coast. A decades-spanning tale of love and resilience and of one woman’s journey to independence. Celie faces many hardships in her life, but ultimately finds extraordinary strength and hope in the unbreakable bonds of sisterhood.
The St. Augustine Food and Wine Festival is ongoing this weekend. See details here.
The Romanza Festivale presents the Belle Fleur Ensemble, noon at the Memorial Presbyterian Church, 32 Sevilla Street, St. Augustine. The trio, Glynda Newton on violin, her husband Cliff Newton on trumpet, and Michael Dell on piano have all performed extensively with several ensembles. Glynda and Cliff retired from the Jacksonville Symphony after performing with that orchestra for more than 30 years. They both perform with a salon orchestra, the Newton Musical Palm Court Society Orchestra. Michael Dell is the Director of Music and Organist for the South Jacksonville Presbyterian Church and accompanies Jim Goodell’s Bella Voce, as their principal keyboardist.
‘First Date,’ at St. Augustine’s Limelight Theatre, 11 Old Mission Avenue, St. Augustine. 7:30 p.m., except on Sundays, at 2 p.m. Tickets are $32.50, including fees. Book tickets here. The 2012 musical takes the audience through the first meeting of Casey and Aaron, two 30-ish New York City singles set up by friends and family. The two have nothing in common: Aaron is a conservative banker, Jewish, and looking for a meaningful relationship, while Casey is an artist and a little too funky for Wall Street. With the influences of their friends and family (played out in their imaginations) as well as the effects of social media (Google, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube personified), this first date seems to be doomed. But with the help of a meddling but well-meaning waiter, Casey and Aaron might make a connection after all. With a contemporary rock score, FIRST DATE gleefully pokes fun at the mishaps and mistakes of blind dates and gives hope that there could be that one perfect moment.
 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. |
Notably: The oxygen level in my section of the P-Section–the Paris of Palm Coast–has dropped precipitously in the last few weeks. Half the reason is what you see above: the clearing for that 333-home subdivision to be called George Orwell Doublespeak Preserve, or as it’s recorded in plat books, Sabal Palm Preserve. A bit to the west, right smack in front of my house, is the clearing for the 72-home subdivision to be called Ponce Preserve. The more they’ll pave over, the more preserved we must feel. I can’t morally oppose home-building: I live in one on what used to be scrub just like what’s been wiped out above. But must they be so razing, so clear-cutting, so merciless? Of course not. They clear-cut because it’s easier, cheaper to build, and we’re not in a position to make it even more difficult–more expensive–to have a house. But there’s got to be a way to preserve some of the old canopy without segregating it in tiny little enclaves, as developers like to do when they shop for permits. As for the upside: maybe when the next wildfire season strikes, we’re less likely to be burned out of our homes,since there’s so little left to burn.
—P.T.
Now this: These 12 Lawmakers Agree: It’s Time to Leave Congress
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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.
Flagler Beach Farmers Market
Coffee With Flagler Beach Commission Chair Scott Spradley
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.
… the truth is Smokey doesn’t want you to burn the forest down because his employer, the Forest Service, wants to cut it down instead. You don’t see this when you drive through a national forest, because the government employs an enormous corps of landscape architects whose whole job is to make sure the clear-cuts are invisible. And you don’t see it on TV because it’s political, and a tree is a tree, and it’s time to look at the fur seals again.
–From Bill Mckibben’s The Age of Missing Information (1992).
MAGA says
Actually this election is very important in our lifetime due to the fact that China Joe and his administration have become dictators and are ruining our Country. If China Joe wins, or steals the election again our Country is ruined and will never recover. President Trump was the best President ever!!!
Ray W. says
MAGA presents as yet another of a ceaseless line of FlaglerLive commenters who comment in a style that my mother used to call “talking to hear one’s head roar.”
In my early adult years, computer lingo would describe MAGA’s comment as “GIGO” (garbage in, garbage out).
Centuries ago, MAGA’s commenting style would be best described as the rantings of the “pestilential” partisan member of faction among us, as opposed to reasoned thoughts of the virtuous partisan member of faction among us. This is not my original thinking. I borrowed it from James Madison, who wrote of many pestilential dangers posed by people like MAGA in the final paragraph of his Federalist Paper #37. Madison is considered today as one of the best educated and most intellectual of the founding fathers. That his peers later elected him president speaks to the level of their respect for him.
Deborah Coffey says
Yeah, you’re all wrong and you’ve got your dictators mixed up.
https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/politics/2024/02/19/biden-14th-in-scholars–presidential-rankings–trump-last
Mark says
Thank you Deb, though it’s like talking to the wall with his dwindling base of misfits.
Pogo says
@FWIW
An e-mail appealing for my subscription to The Atlantic:
“Anne Applebaum
STAFF WRITER
In the 20th Century, Communist Party propaganda was overwhelming and inspiring, or at least it was meant to be. The future it portrayed was shiny and idealized, a vision of clean factories, abundant produce, and healthy tractor drivers with large muscles and square jaws.
In the 21st century, authoritarian propaganda, whether coming from Russia, China, or the American far-right, has a very different goal: to create fear, cynicism, nihilism, and apathy. The point is to convince Americans that their democracy is degenerate, their elections illegitimate, their civilization dying. This story is told not only by Russian and Chinese bots and anonymous trolls, but by leading members of the Republican party, including the presidential candidate himself.
That’s the subject of my June cover story, “The New Propaganda War,” an article that is partially excerpted from my forthcoming book, Autocracy Inc. But it’s also a description of the obstacles that face Atlantic writers and editors, as well as our colleagues in the rest of the media, when trying to report and explain the modern world. Of course we want to find out what is true. But we also hope that by doing so we can combat the cynicism and nihilism. We want to persuade people that civic engagement is important, that public debate matters, and that American democracy has a future. And we couldn’t do any of that without the Atlantic’s subscribers – if you’re not already one, I hope you will consider lending your support…”
I hope FlaglerLive is able, and willing, to share it with all.
Ray W. says
A short while ago, a FlaglerLive commenter wrote that the one of the first things the current administration did was to raise energy prices. “Boom”, he exclaimed. “Fact” he typed. I commented that in February 2021, the 12-nation voting bloc in OPEC voted to voluntarily cut crude oil prices in order to raise their export income. Taking seven million barrels of crude oil per day out of the international energy marketplace, even if incrementally phased in, meant that just over 7% of the world’s production was lost. Gasoline prices began to rise. Diesel prices began to rise. War began in the Ukraine. Energy sanctions were placed on Russian oil and gas exports. OPEC’s production cuts are still in effect. The last OPEC vote extended some of the cuts through June 30. Boom, I say. Fact, I say.
Then along comes MAGA in his above comment, replete with irrational rantings. With some six months to go in a national election season, we can all expect a flood of irrational rantings by the many “pestilential” partisan members of faction among us.
I decided this morning to submit a series of comments titled: The Stupidity of the Political Absurdist, Part 1 to Infinity.
I address one facet of the current state of American electrical energy generation in my first submission.
From the outset, my view in any of my energy comments is consistently that we should have invested in clean energy projects decades ago. The widely accepted theory of my youth among American energy companies was termed “Peak Oil.” In the 50s, a geologist coined the term, stating that around 1970, American oil production would peak and then steadily decline. We believed that extracted levels of petroleum available to us all would steadily fade. There was no reason to believe that petroleum-based energy would remain cheap. When we reached a domestic crude oil peak of 10 million barrels per day in 1970, that was the time to begin investing in renewable energy sources. But we didn’t. When domestic crude oil production dropped below 5 million barrels per day just before the end of W’s second administration, that was the time to begin investing in renewable energy sources. But we didn’t. And here we are. Arguing over and over that the current administration actively raised energy prices as a priority and that the current administration has destroyed America.
Here we go.
“The Stupidity of the Political Absurdist, Part 1 to Infinity.”
Yesterday, the current administration announced the approval of a $1.5 billion loan guarantee to rebuild the infrastructure of a nuclear power plant in Michigan idled two years ago.
While the article I read does not list the reason for the idling of the plant, I know from years of reading that all power plants that operate under steam pressure receive a certificate of operation before they open. Why? Because pressurized steel pipes degrade at a molecular level over time. Pipes burst. Welds fail. Metal failure can cost lives and pollute the environment. Most certificates are good for 60 years of operation, but some are good for 50 years. Nuclear, coal and most natural gas turbine plants use steam to produce electricity. They have pressurized piping. When the certificate expires, they must be either idled or refitted with new piping. Coal-fired plants are expensive to run anyway. The cost to refit them is prohibitively expensive. Much of the cost of building a nuclear plant is up front. Compared to building a nuclear reactor, the cost of new pipes is not that much, and the electricity generated is relatively cheap. It makes financial sense to rebuild piping rather than build from scratch a completely new natural gas plant.
Most of our nation’s coal-fired plants were built during and after WWII to meet war needs and the demands of a rapidly growing boomer population and the concurring rise in demand for goods and services, such as HVAC homes. No one is rebuilding the aging plants or replacing them with new coal-fired plants because of the expense. This is why coal energy shares have dropped from 50% of total electricity produced to 17% in two decades and dropping fast. Hillary was right. The gullible were wrong.
The author of the article wrote:
“The plant would be the first in the United States to be successfully restarted and help pour $363 million into the regional economy.” “‘[T]here is a growing sense among officials in the industry and government that it may not be the last.” The article concludes as follows: “[T]wo of the country’s newest nuclear power plants, in Georgia, took more than 10 years to build and cost $35 billion.”
Yes, some argue that the Infrastructure Act is destroying America, and that the Biden administration is actively trying to raise energy prices. What do FlaglerLive readers think?
Thus concludes my initial submission of The Stupidity of the Political Absurdist, Part 1 to Infinity series.
Sherry says
In my opinion. . . it would be extremely interesting to read a piece on what our country would be like today if Al Gore had won the Presidency.
IMO- Solar is the way to go. Why don’t we require solar panels on the roofs of each and every new “commercial building’ in the US? Why are we not requiring new construction to use gray water for flushing toilets? Why can we not see beyond the end of our noses?
Ray W. says
Can it be argued that the human condition is to be reactive, not proactive? That we can’t see beyond the end of our noses?
As for mandating solar panels installed on roofs of all new commercial buildings, that is a political argument, not an economic one. With prices for solar panels dropping rapidly and the efficiency of solar panels increasing incrementally, it should be financially viable for all new commercial buildings to include solar into its architectural plans. Perhaps all we need is a political nudge via financial incentives to enable what you and I advocate.
The stupid political absurdist of two decades ago poisoned the well by exaggerating the financial failure of the Solyndra project for political gain. The “win” by the stupid political absurdists among us resulted in American industry ceding the future of the soon to be vast solar manufacturing industry to the Chinese. We hold some of the many new patents on the most advanced solar panel technology, but China is building the vast majority of the panels. Some of the politically stupid among us still insist that coal is the answer.
Does anyone think that with three million people added to Florida’s population every 10 years since 1970, Florida’s growth rate will suddenly stop? That Floridians will not consume more and more electricity every year? That Duke Power and FP&L will not have to increase electrical output each year?
I recently wrote of a 2023 paper published by the EIA about the total 30-year operating costs of different types of electrical plants. Using a 5-year construction period starting in 2023 and using a 30-year operating period, the total estimated cost of building and operating the latest technology coal plant is over 4 times the cost of a latest technology solar facility. Even with abundant supplies of natural gas due to increased efficiencies in drilling technology, a combined cycle gas turbine facility is expected to cost nearly twice as much as a brand-new solar farm. Solar technology is increasing in efficiency and decreasing in cost. But the politically stupid among us decided to cede the field to China.
What is in our foreseeable future? Solar power production will get cheaper and cheaper. Coal-fired power production will not. Natural gas-powered production will not. China will continue to dominate the solar manufacturing field. Americans will continue to obtain new patents on ever more efficient solar panels, but we won’t build them. Did we really give up all those manufacturing jobs solely because of political stupidity? How did the party of business, the once-proud Republican conservative party, allow this to happen? The fault is theirs and theirs alone.
I will state this over and over again. After studying the history of the conservative movement, I came to understand that I am more conservative than the vast majority of FlaglerLive readers who think themselves conservative. They may be Republican, but they aren’t conservative. Perhaps Nietzsche said it best: Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed.” Boom! Fact! (I borrowed this terminology from a recent stupid political absurdist who blamed the Biden administration for the 2021 rise in energy prices that persists to this day. He claimed the rise was intentional on Biden’s part. He ended his claim with: Boom! Fact! He was wrong. OPEC cut production. Later, Russia invaded the Ukraine. Energy prices rose because oil and natural gas are international commodities, not regional commodities.)
So ends the next chapter of the Stupidity of the Political Absurdist, Part 1 to Infinity.
Laurel says
Ray W.: If anyone told me, when I was in my 20’s, that we would still be driving on rubber tires, and not cushions of air, or we would still have electrical wires traveling from pole, to pole, fifty years later, I would have told them they were crazy. Even twenty or thirty years later! But that was just being naive with faith in human creativity.
Maybe you remember, decades ago, about the rumor that some man made an engine that ran on water, but his blueprint was bought and squashed. Who knows?
The vast majority, especially those who like it safe, are reactives. Used to drive me nuts at work. If someone came up with a really, really good idea, it was often ignored and the beat went on until something broke. People eventually learn this, and simply do what they are told instead.
Proactives move the world forward. I can say that Edison was proactive. Leonardo Da Vinci was proactive. Then, I can tell you that the female, Japanese macaque who was the first to try out a hot spring in winter was a proactive. Proactives are few and far in between. It’s just nature’s way, I think. Maybe if every creature was proactive, there would be chaos beyond any we’ve experienced.
The oil wells are owned. The coal mines are owned. Their markets are cornered. The owners are not proactive, they want what they have to continue. They have been politically successful at doing that. Those companies which turn towards alternatives have a few proactives on staff whose co-workers, business owners, did not dissuade them.
Ray W. says
Thank you, Laurel.