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Weather: A chance of showers, then showers and thunderstorms likely after 11am. Mostly sunny, with a high near 92. Heat index values as high as 103. Southeast wind 3 to 8 mph. Chance of precipitation is 60%. New rainfall amounts of less than a tenth of an inch, except higher amounts possible in thunderstorms. Wednesday Night: Showers and thunderstorms likely before 8pm. Partly cloudy, with a low around 76. South wind 3 to 6 mph. Chance of precipitation is 60%.
- Daily weather briefing from the National Weather Service in Jacksonville here.
- Drought conditions here. (What is the Keetch-Byram drought index?).
- Check today’s tides in Flagler Beach here.
- tropical cyclone activity here, and even more details here.
Today at a Glance:
The Flagler County Contractor Review Board meets at 5 p.m. at the Government Services Building, 1769 East Moody Boulevard, Bunnell. Staff liaison is Bo Snowden, Chief Building Official, who may be reached at (386) 313-4027. For agendas and details go here.
Flagler County’s Technical Review Committee Meeting at 9 a.m., first floor Conference Room, at the Government Services Building, 1769 East Moody Boulevard, Bunnell. The Technical Review Committee (TRC) is a quality control committee that provides technical review of project plans. Staff Liaison is Gina Lemon, 386-313-4067.
The Palm Coast Planning and Land Development Board meets at 5:30 p.m. at City Hall.
Separation Chat, Open Discussion: The Atlantic Chapter of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State hosts an open, freewheeling discussion on the topic here in our community, around Florida and throughout the United States, noon to 1 p.m. at Pine Lakes Golf Club Clubhouse Pub & Grillroom (no purchase is necessary), 400 Pine Lakes Pkwy, Palm Coast (0.7 miles from Belle Terre Parkway). Call (386) 445-0852 for best directions. All are welcome! Everyone’s voice is important. For further information email [email protected] or call Merrill at 804-914-4460.
Bridge and Games at Flagler Woman’s Club, 1 to 4 p.m. at 1524 S Central Ave, Flagler Beach. The Flagler Woman’s Club invites you to come and play Bridge (Progressive and Non-Progressive) or other games. Please be sure to call Susanne at 386-503-1893 to reserve your spot.
The Circle of Light Course in Miracles study group meets at a private residence in Palm Coast every Wednesday at 1:20 PM. There is a $2 love donation that goes to the store for the use of their room. If you have your own book, please bring it. All students of the Course are welcome. There is also an introductory group at 1:00 PM. The group is facilitated by Aynne McAvoy, who can be reached at [email protected] for location and information.
Weekly Chess Club for Teens, Ages 9-18, at the Flagler County Public Library: Do you enjoy Chess, trying out new moves, or even like some friendly competition? Come visit the Flagler County Public Library at the Teen Spot every Wednesday from 4 to 5 p.m. for Chess Club. Everyone is welcome, for beginners who want to learn how to play all the way to advanced players. For more information contact the Youth Service department 386-446-6763 ext. 3714 or email us at [email protected]
Notably: The Tour de France is four days from the finish line in Paris. To many of us it makes little sense to watch these cyclists pedaling for hours in what must be unbearably un-aromatic pelotons that produce, as in cricket, only bursts of excitement here and there, and almost always at the finish line. But there’s one reason to watch that never gets old: the sights of France, never dull, always enviable, almost always provoking unbearable cravings for baguettes and Bordeaux. The penultimate stage on July 20 is Saint Emilion in the Bordeaux region. It’s an excuse to go to ABC and splurge on a Saint Emilion. If cyclists are doping, we might as well join them for one stage. “On the way to his second Tour de France victory last year,” Statista reports, “Denmark’s Jonas Vingegaard was facing tough questions regarding his pace before he even arrived in Paris. How was he going so fast? How was it possible to be over seven minutes ahead of a cyclist of Tadej Pogačar’s caliber? Some reporters even explicitly asked: “Are you cheating?” Vingegaard completed the grueling 3-week, 3,401 kilometer competition at an average speed of 41.4 km/h (25.574 mph). Given cycling’s deservedly bad reputation, it is perhaps understandable that exceptional performances like that still raise suspicions. As this chart shows (above), the Tour de France has not slowed down since the doping-infested years of the early 2000s. Whether that’s due to super-fast carbon bikes, favorable routing or the use of performance-enhancing substances is a question the sport is not yet fully able to answer.
—P.T.
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Rotary’s Fantasy Lights Festival in Palm Coast’s Town Center
Rotary’s Fantasy Lights Festival in Palm Coast’s Town Center
For the full calendar, go here.
No medievalist would agree, of course, but a twenty-first-century man who is impressed by the rapidity of the change which encompasses him and the relative immobility of medieval society ought to reflect that the art which develops from the Romanesque of Charlemagne’s Aachen to the Flamboyant of fifteenth-century France was revolutionized in five or six centuries; in a period about ten times as long, the first known art, that of Upper Palaeolithic Europe, shows, by comparison, insignificant stylistic change. Further back, the pace is even slower as the long persistence of early tool types shows. Still more fundamental changes are even less easy to comprehend. So far as we know, the last 12,000 years register nothing new in human physiology comparable to the colossal transformations of the early Pleistocene which are registered for us in a handful of fossil relics of a few of nature’s experiments, yet those took hundreds of thousands of years.
–From —JM Roberts, The History of the World (2003).
LoomeD says
Disgusting.
Ray W. says
Thank you, Mr. Tristam. Competitors in the Tour de France may be evolving, i.e., morphing, into faster and faster riders, but as JM Roberts suggested, actual human evolution may be glacial in effect.
2500 years ago, a Greek dramatist was lauded for writing of a society changing from a basis of killing as a legal right into justice-based law provided by juries. Over the centuries, people saw to it that the plays be preserved; justice was that important an idea.
Where are we today? In comment after comment on the FlaglerLive forum, people are blaming one side or the other for the political violence we saw last week, as if they know of what they speak.
My thoughts? There are plenty of bad people out there on both sides.
In a 2022 study over thousands of participants, 32.8% “considered violence to be usually or always justified to advance at least one political objective.”
That means that millions of our fellow citizens, tens of millions, really, think that violence is theirs to dispense in furtherance of any one of the many political schisms that form their thoughts. Young, old, male, female, Republican, Democrat, there are many who fantasize about killing and maiming others to get what they want. Some may think so on a daily basis.
some of the gullible among us reads that the would-be assassin is currently a registered Republican. Hence, Republicans are to blame for the attempt. Other gullible commenters read that the would-be assassin donated $15 to a left-leaning voter registration group a few years ago. Hence, Democrats are to blame for the attempt. Not that much more is known of the deceased shooter.
Pretty thin gruel, but since when does political expediency require adequate nourishment to spread disinformation?
Me? Without more than the existing thin gruel, it strikes possible that this was a crime of opportunity. The shooter, perhaps disaffected like so many millions of others, never had the chance of acting out on his rich fantasy life. Suddenly comes the news to his youthful and not fully developed mind. A presidential candidate, suddenly, is coming to his neighborhood. He has only a few days to develop and refine the singular fantasy of killing a politician of national stature. Any politician will do. He has access to an AR-15, even if he doesn’t own one. He goes out and buys 50 rounds for the assault rifle. Nothing spectacular or complex about that! He drives to the location and gains access to grounds surrounding the stage. Also, easy.
Somehow, in what has repeatedly been described as a failure to secure buildings outside a perimeter, he uses a recently purchased ladder to climb onto the roof of a building that has law enforcement personnel inside. With a clean line of sight to his target, he shoots repeatedly into a crowd, wounding a candidate and killing and wounding others.
Was it a crime against the Trump candidacy? Not enough solid information to conclude that right now, but a crime against a candidate does not automatically mean it is also a crime in support of another candidate.
.
Was it a crime in support of the Biden candidacy? Not enough information to conclude that right now.
Was it a crime of opportunity? Not enough information to conclude that right now, either, but if it was, the likelihood that it was committed to further some political advantage drops. If the shooter was willing to kill a candidate, any candidate, but only if the candidate were to come within a 20-mile radius of his home, such a factor would radically change the narrative.
If we were to lessen the focus on policy schisms driving political violence and increase the focus on those perhaps many among us who await the opportunity to commit political violence, then the emphasis should be on just how many disaffected potential shooters are really out there.
In a story about a 2022 survey mentioned above, the author also wrote:
“Some groups were much more likely than others to endorse political violence: Republican and MAGA-supporting Republicans in particular; those who endorse QAnon, the white supremacy movement, Christian nationalists and other extreme right-wing organizations and movements; and firearm owners — but only by a small margin, unless they owned firearms, had bought firearms during the COVID pandemic or regularly carried loaded firearms in public.”
If the study is accurate, it does not prove that only Republicans endorse political violence. Far from it. It does find that certain subgroups of Republicans are more susceptible to the idea that political violence might be OK for them. Consider another quote from one of the authors of the study:
“In most cases, participants who were more supportive of political violence were also more willing to commit it themselves. Here’s one example: 8.8 percent of firearm owners who regularly carried loaded firearms in public, but only 0.5 percent of owners who never carried, thought it very likely or extremely likely that, at some time in the future, they would shoot someone to advance a political objective.”
I have long argued that we are still in the early years of a movement towards an age of political violence. Some three and a half years ago, a Flagler County Republican politician took to the airwaves to ask when would it be time to start beheading Democrats?
Before that radio comment, I almost never commented on the FlaglerLive site.
Just over two weeks ago, a Republican candidate for Lt. Governor told rally attendees that “some people need killing.” In between the two instances of incitement to murder, the leader of the Project 2025 movement commented that political violence could occur if liberals opposed his proposed policies. Our governor told supporters that if he were elected president, he would slit throats upon taking office. Our wounded candidate previously promised a bloodbath if he is not elected. There are many more instances of incitement to violence by so-called conservative politicians.
I suppose that many readers already know I am a Hegelian. Hegel, just after the turn of the 19th century, wrote his famous Hypothesis-Antithesis-Synthesis Trinity. Any hypothesis introduced by one group into a society-wide conversation automatically triggers an antithetical idea. It is the clash between the two groups that leads to societal change, i.e., the Synthesis.
I don’t propose to tell anyone which of the two groups hypothesized first that political violence directed towards its opponent was desirable, but to me it is easy to understand that the other side immediately reacted and proposed its own version of political violence directed towards their opponents. Today, a third of our adult population thinks it acceptable to engage in violence against each other and we are nowhere near to achieving the final Synthesis. Leaders of one political party routinely propose acts of violence towards perceived opponents.
In my opinion, we are not yet at a crescendo of political violence; we have decades to go. Civil war peeps over the distant horizon. We are sailing toward that horizon. The once unthinkable now beckons. The most gullible among us think that civil war will benefit society. In their rich fantasy life, they think that we all can engage in a violent pivot and emerge unscathed. Perhaps they need to read more about the Spanish Civil War and its many excesses.
That the first casualty of this rising wave of political violence was the capacity of so many of the gullible among us to exercise the intellectual rigor necessary for reasoned thought is the crime that will haunt us all.
Laurel says
Flagler Live: Ray W.’s comment here should not be buried in the comments section, it should be as an article up front. He has the ability to think clearly without confirmation bias, that is so invasively prevalent today. Maybe, just maybe, some will read it and stop and think. Please consider.
BillC says
That the shooter was a registered Republican is valuable to know. Imagine if he had been a registered Democrat, what conspiracy theories and retaliation (retribution) would have ensued. Also, his neighbors say there were multiple Trump signs on the lawn where he lived. The shooting was not consistent with a properly functioning mind. Agree he was more likely seeking fame/attention. Remember John Hinckley shot Reagan to “impress” Jodie Foster. Thomas Crooks will plead not guilty by reason of insanity.
Watcher says
Everything in your statement is false except he was a registered Repube. His mom is a registered Democrat, dad is libertarian. He donated $15 to a progressive action party (democrat) the day Biden was inaugurated. All the neighbors said there was never a political sign of any party in their yard. Thomas Crooks will not plead by reason of insanity, he’s dead. Do some research!
Ray W. says
While I don’t vouch for its accuracy, just as I cannot say much for Watcher’s accuracy, there is a report from a neighbor that months ago, the family yard contained Trump political signs.
If true, that could make sense. Many communities enact ordinances establishing time parameters for the placement of political yard signs. As I recall there was Pennsylvania presidential primary many months ago, which would be the time for the placement of political signs. Then, the signs are to be removed until the next political cycle. Can’t disagree with that rationale.
Had Watcher done his research, he would have found the article. Simple fact checking the claim. All kinds of articles pop up. Some say no signs in the yard. Maybe those claims are right. One says Trump signs in the yard. Maybe that one is right. I wasn’t there. Maybe Watcher was there, because that is the only way to be absolutely correct. Yet, Watcher acts as if he is absolutely correct.
Oy, vey!
BillC says
Thanks Ray. What is important is for both sides to stop the internecine vitriol and work together towards a more perfect union.
BillC says
yeah, forgot he’s dead already, more focused on Trump. You believe Crooks had a properly functioning mind? BTW “A neighbor of the 20-year-old who tried to assassinate former President Donald Trump said there have been pro-Trump signs on display in the yard”. -Newsweek 7/16
Ray W. says
Hello BillC.
A few hours ago, ABC NEWS reported that a search of Mr. Crooks’ phone yielded a post to a gaming platform called “Steam”.
“July 13 will be my premiere, watch as it unfolds.”
Interpret the post as you will.
Me? The gruel is still thin. Not much in known about Mr. Crooks, yet the internet seems busy with disinformation.
The article also reports that Crooks had searched the internet for knowledge about the specifics of the rally in Pennsylvania and about the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next month.
Perhaps, Mr. Crooks wanted an audience of what he thought were like-minded people, however small or large the Steam community is, for what he planned to do, but the post is cryptic about where and when, and even less revealing about why or what or who or how.
Just “watch.”
Skibum says
Ray, I read your comments with interest. The world is full of very bright, educated and experienced professionals who devote their entire careers in trying to determine what thoughts are in people’s heads, what motivates individuals to commit crimes, which ones are dangers to others or to society at large, etc. And yet, it is still sort of a crap shoot, with even the professionals not wanting to be held responsible for their professional opinion when an incarcerated, violent criminal who is released back into society ends up injuring or killing others. All these professionals would be able to say is that they had no way of knowing such an individual would in fact commit another crime in the future. All of this is to say that nobody can be certain what another human being is thinking or capable of doing, whether the individual has a history of committing crimes or no history at all, like Thomas Crooks.
Too many politicians continue to hide behind the 2nd Amendment and refuse to engage in discussions to legislate common sense gun reform, even after a national candidate for president has been injured and nearly killed by someone with an AR-15 style rifle that is notorious for being the weapon of choice of hundreds of mass shooters over the last 25+ years with many hundreds, possibly thousands of innocent lives lost in mass killings due to this deadly semi-automatic weapon.
I believe at some point, even some of the most conservative Republican politicians s will have to finally come around when the carnage impacts them or their loved ones directly. But for now, they love to say all America needs is “a good guy with a gun to thwart a bad guy with a gun”. How ridiculous and self-serving, when these elected politicians are surrounded where they work, either in state government buildings or federal government buildings by MANY good guys with guns, yet these politicians have enacted laws which prevent the average citizen from entering these politicians’ buildings with guns precisely because nobody really knows what they might do. If all they needed were “good guys with guns” to prevent anyone with a loaded weapon and bad intentions from doing harm, then the well-protected state and federal buildings would have no need for laws to prevent you and me from being near an elected politician while we were armed.
But there really is no way to look at anyone really and be able to tell who is a “good guy” and who is a “bad guy”. That is why America must, at some point, be willing to take a good hard look at the 2nd Amendment and make some common sense adjustments for today’s society, for the reality that we currently live in where innocent lives are being lost at an alarming rate by individuals who have easy access to AR-15 style weapons as well as bad intentions. Until mankind comes up with a way to see inside a person’s mind and we have the ability to tell the difference between someone who is not a threat to anyone and someone who is a ticking time bomb, the only thing we CAN, and should do, is to better regulate guns through common sense legislation in order to try and reduce the horrible loss of life these particular weapons inflict on regular Joe citizens as well as politicians like DJT, who was within an inch or two of his life the other day.
Ray W. says
I have long accepted the idea that if a spouse can hide things of great importance to the marriage for years or even decades, then a politician who does not swear to tell the truth when taking his or her oath of office can easily lie to anyone with abandon.
Ray W. says
I may have been in elementary school when I read in the school library a short book about the Stalfarfar, or Steel Grandfather, a 66-year-old Swedish bus driver who was denied entry due to age to Sweden’s 1951 annual 1010-mile professional bicycle race from Haparanda in the north to Ystad in the south each August.
Gustaf Hakansson rode the route anyway, with a homemade bib bearing #0, his unofficial racing number. He started after the professional riders left Haparanda. He pedaled throughout the day and night on his standard touring bicycle, complete with a handlebar basket and beat the pros by 24 hours. As I recall from the book, he became such a local celebrity that people lined the streets to cheer him on. I recall that people gifted wine and bread and cheese, which he put in his basket to eat and drink later during his short rests.
I looked him up online to make sure I had snippets of the story correct. The authorities, after a few days, forced him to undergo a physical. He passed without event, so they let him ride further. He received an audience with Sweden’s king after the race and lived to the age of 102. His wife lived to 105. In 1959, at 75, he rode his bicycle from northern Sweden to Israel and back, to visit many of the holy sites.
Thank you, Mr. Tristam for triggering the old memory.
Pierre Tristam says
Ray, it’s not god who works in mysterious ways, it’s our memories–which come to think of it are really god’s DNA.
Watcher says
German news publication “Compact” magazine was shut down by law enforcement, after conducting an interview with Russian Foreign Ministry official Maria Zakharova.
The publication was deemed “extremist”. Police confiscated computers, communication equipment, and bank accounts.
(Notably, this story would not read much differently if it had happened in 1938)
Thought you all would be happy!
Pierre Tristam says
Compact was not “deemed” extremist. It was extremist. Without condoning Germany’s ban—Germany has an uncomfortable relationship
with bigots, anti-semites especially, for understandable and defensible reasons—Compact was a sewer line of lies, xenophobia, Islamophobia and the rest of the neo-Nazi nationalist playbook. We may not agree with the ban of outright hate. But let’s not sugarcoat the magazine and bullshit about its content as if it were just an alternative point of view that Germany banned just because. Its bullshit would be banned on this site too, not because it’s 1938, but because we don’t play with 1933. 2024 is disgusting enough, as is the cynical disingenuousness of the “watcher.”
Watcher says
[Please comply with our comment policy. Thank you.–FL]
Tell me Pierre, does the current Antifa flag have any resemblance to the German Communist Party flag (see link) in 1932? Is it possible that you are supporting nazis? Have you done the research outside of the Soros think tank? Don’t be disingenuousness and censor this post.
https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/129065ae-040c-43b0-b1dd-25dcadda86c8_1024x503.jpeg
Pierre Tristam says
You made a point in a previous comment. I addressed the point. You now seek to bait me into a wholly different and preposterous direction soiled in white nationalist bigotry. Don’t waste my time or readers’ time, and follow this site’s comment policy.
Ray W. says
Watcher, I looked up your claimed antifa flag and its alleged resemblance, as you falsely claim, to a German communist party flag, circa 1932.
According to Snopes, a simple fact check reveals that the flag you claim is an antifa flag was actually created by an artist named “Linumhortulanus” as a means to denigrate Antifa. Linumhortulanus wrote:
“After hearing about the terrible revolts of far-left extremists in Hamburg (this year’s location of the G-20 summit), I felt like I had to make them a new … and more appropriate flag! It’s inspired by the national socialist war ensign of Germany. It’s supposed to symbolize that the extremism of far-left organizations like the ANTIFA is the same … or rather … as harmful as the extremism of far-right movements. …
“I think that far-left extremism is a big danger for the people of Germany. I made this to remind everyone that organizations like the ANTIFA are just as harmful and violent as neonazi gangs.”
Watcher just might be one of those people who defines right and wrong through the filter of whether he like something. If hie likes something, anything, it is automatically right. If he doesn’t like it, it is automatically wrong.
If this is how Watcher really thinks, then anyone reading his claim that someone else needs to do more research should remember that Watcher does not research his comments before posting. He simply looks for something. If he likes it, he posts it, whether it is right or not. Action without thought.
Ray W. says
As an aside, there has been since 2017 another meme popular on conservative blogs and websites about how an ANTIFA flag resembles Nazi-era German flag. The depicted flag, according to Snopes, is a digitally manipulated flag actually used by the National Front, a far-right fascist political party in the United Kingdom.
Ray W. says
Yesterday, the L.A. Times ran an article about incarceration rates for immigrants. The author built the article around a comprehensive study of reported incarceration rates between 1870 and 2020 for both U.S.-born citizens and immigrants.
One of the leading researchers, a Stanford University economist, replied to a query with an e-mail: “[A]s a group, immigrants have had lower incarceration rates than the US-born for 150 years.”
The study found that “relative to the US-born, immigrants’ incarceration rates have declined since 1960.”
Finally, the study found that “immigrants today are 60% less likely to be incarcerated” — and “30% less likely even relative to US-born whites.” The Standford economist added that the statistics held true for “immigrants from all regions.”
I understand that several FlaglerLive commenters believe that immigrants commit murder and rape and other crimes. And they are right. Immigrants do commit murder and rape and other crimes. They just do so at a rate less than half that of the US-born, even lower by 30% than US-born whites.
I will state this over and over again. Not a single elected politician swears an oath to tell the truth when they take their oath of office, excepting judges, of course, as they have ethical rules that must be followed.
James says
What’s interesting is the Biden administration is making progress on immigration, asylum status, etc… but apparently, the court system cannot keep up.
A problem that any administration would have if that administrations goal was to approach the problem in an ethical, just and humane way.
One tangential takeaway from this piece on Trump supporters…
https://lasvegassun.com/news/2024/jul/19/las-vegas-latinas-support-for-trump-amid-immigrati/
Ya know Ray, in light of a comment I made to you recently regarding history… one which made me think a bit more… it’s not too encouraging.
Since that time when that “dreamer” Columbus set sail,
to the time of the Revolutionary War, to our present day. I realized that there’s more history (300 years, give or take) prior to the Revolution, than there is after it.
One need not be an historian to realize this now… nor a sage to conclude that the “American Experiment” is indeed a fragile one. Still almost in it’s infancy, and always under threat… from both within and without. For there are always rivals from without, and those that live in… no, even more so, have a vested interest in… the past from within.
We Americans should realize this and take our rights and liberties seriously.
One might unfortunately argue that democracies have one problem in the end… they don’t work. But I’m of a different opinion, that it’s the people who choose to let them fail… democracies are hard work afterall. But then so is real progress of any kind… and so we delegate some of the work to others. Trust in those to whom we’ve elected as leaders, as our delegates, is a hard thing to regain once eroded… either by foolish folly, or deliberate subterfuge. At least amongst those that try to fulfill their part in this “grand experiment” as best they can… that is, by vote.
Just a current opinion… not a last word.
Ray W. says
Hello James.
Perhaps it would be good to restate Churchill’s famous comment on democracy.
“Many forms of government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms of government that have been tried from time to time.”
James says
Yes Ray, and I recall reading it… not only here by you… but elsewhere in many other forms over the years not always attributed to Churchill.
One of many things that a thinking person might… well… think about.
I’ve come to that collusion myself… best amongst the other alternatives. But that democracies fail is also a good point to consider and realize… that was the point of my statement. For those who also try to think, as you and I try to with the matter (once in a while at least) and for those that don’t now, but one day might desire to… to remind them… that that is always a possibility. And ultimately to loose that very right that is so natural to all, but so easily denied… to think.
So as I stated, it could be “argued” that democracies fail… just as the Earth will be consumed in the suns dying embrace one day… but my ultimate point being not without the help of human hands… at the voting booth.
Just say’n.