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Weather: Partly sunny. A chance of showers in the morning, then showers and thunderstorms likely in the afternoon. Highs around 90. Temperature falling into the mid 80s in the afternoon. Northeast winds around 5 mph. Chance of rain 70 percent. Monday Night: Mostly cloudy with showers and thunderstorms likely in the evening, then partly cloudy with a slight chance of showers and thunderstorms after midnight. Lows in the lower 70s. Chance of rain 70 percent.
- 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:
In Court: Circuit Judge Terence Perkins hears pleas and imposes several sentences throughout the day.
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.
In Coming Days: July 30: The Flagler Branch of the NAACP hosts a candidate forum at 6 p.m. at the African American Cultural Society, 4422 North U.S. Highway 1, Palm Coast (just north of Whiteview Parkway). The forum will feature candidates for Flagler County School Board and the County Commission. July 31: Flagler Cares hosts its quarterly Help Night from 3 to 7 p.m. at the Flagler County Village Community Room, 160 Cypress Point Parkway, Suite B304, Palm Coast. Help Night is organized and hosted by Flagler Cares and other community partners as a one-stop help event. Representatives from Flagler County Human Services, Early Learning Coalition, EasterSeals, Family Life Center, Florida Legal Services, Lions Club, and many other organizations will be available to provide information and resources. The event is open to the public, free to attend, and will offer assistance with obtaining various services including autism screenings, tablets (low-income qualification), fair housing legal consultations, Marketplace Navigation, childcare services, SNAP and Medicaid application assistance, behavioral health services, and much more. Flagler Cares is a non-profit agency focused on creating a vital, expansive social safety net that addresses virtually all the health and social needs of our community. Flagler Cares works with clients to identify needs and create solutions that address those unique needs. Flagler Cares is proud to have a wide range of community partners who are committed to providing high quality services to those who need them most. Flagler Cares is also passionate about filling gaps and bringing needed services into the county where they did not previously exist. For more information about this event, please call 386-319-9483 ext. 0, or email [email protected]. July 31: Flagler County School Board Candidate Debate 2024: A one-hour live-streamed debate is scheduled for 5 p.m. on July 31 at Flagler News Weekly's Facebook page, and is moderated by Flagler Parent's Carmen Stanford and FNW's Danielle Anderson. The debate features Flagler School Board candidates Derek Barrs, Lauren Ramirez, Janie Ruddy and Vincent Sullivan from District 3 and District 5. The event will be archived for future viewing. Parents and the community may submit questions to [email protected] with the subject line: SBDebate2024 no later than July 29, 2024. Ripple Coworking is a host sponsor. |
Notably: We’re losing our touch. Or did we lose it a long time ago? I recall (well, “recall” needs defining) seeing an article about Eisenhower’s farewell tour toward the end of his presidency in National Geographic. Obviously I recall the time when I saw that article in one of those eternal issues that linger in libraries all over the world years after the publication date, since I was not yet a glimmer in a gonad at the time of the tour in the late 1950s. (It was actually from the May 1960 issue, “When the President Goes Abroad,” written by Gilbert Grosvenor, the editor in chief.) One picture in particular: Eisenhower in a convertible (a convertible!) clearly very slowly making his way through throngs in the streets of Karachi. Karachi! As in Karachi, Pakistan. As in the city that beheaded Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter captured by Islamist terrorists of one sort or another. Karachi, where the State Department warns Americans against visiting. How times have changed. From Statista: The United States, “once a role model for democracy, is viewed in an increasingly negative light. According to the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Survey, the U.S. has lost its status as the shining light of democracy with the majority of respondents from 34 countries saying that the U.S. democracy is no longer or has never been a good example for other countries to follow. As our chart shows, respondents from France and Mexico were particularly critical of the U.S., as nearly 40 percent of respondents from both countries said that U.S. democracy has never been the shining example it’s often made out to be. In most countries, the United States’ reputation as a democracy has suffered in recent years, with more than 60 percent of respondents from Germany, the UK, Canada or Japan saying that the U.S. used to be a good example but hasn’t been in recent years.”
—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.
Nar-Anon Family Group
NAACP Candidate Forum
Random Acts of Insanity Standup Comedy
For the full calendar, go here.
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In the hands of [racist Darwinian missionary Josiah] Strong [Theodore] Roosevelt, and other expansionists, Manifest Destiny became practically indistinguishable, as a concept, from the imperialism being practiced by the nations of Europe. The contrast with the dominant ideas of a century earlier was striking. In the early days of the American republic, with France setting all Europe aflame with revolution, men like Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson could well hope that democracy was destined to spread throughout the world. Theirs was a belief in the power of ideas-particularly in the idea of liberty. Theodore Roosevelt, President in an era when Europeans were using force to subjugate much of the globe, was wedded instead to the idea of power.
–From James MacGregor Burns’s The Workshop of Democracy (1985).
.
Ray W. says
I argue that it wasn’t the power of ideas some much as it was the power of reason guided by intellectual rigor that drove our founding fathers to hope that for the first time in history, men (and women) could form a structure of government through reflection and choice that had never before successfully achieved permanence.
In the first paragraph of Federalist Paper #1, Hamilton posed what he called the “important” question:
“[W]hether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government by reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident or force.”
The Federalists who published their proposed Constitution opposed the exercise of power, which Hamilton termed “force.” They opposed “accident” of birth in royal governments. To them, the concept of checks and balances was to pit power against power. They never wanted one political party to ever gain unlimited political power for an indeterminate period of time.
Reason to be followed to whatever end it led them, regardless of party, was their polestar. Political power was not. Any judge who believes that one side should ever win fails to understand the original intent of our founding fathers. No one side is ever supposed to win. There was to be endless dispute, endless political clamor, endless “checks” on the other’s limited political powers, endless “balances” of political power against political power.
So, I propose an exercise in reason. In a recent Reuters article, the author addressed today’s higher prices:
“Even if price increases have been tamed by and large, higher prices are here to stay. Price level shocks don’t reverse, and even overall price drops from one month to the next are rare.
“Economists would argue that it wouldn’t even be healthy if they did, since deflation – a chronic drop in prices – can be even more corrosive to the economy than prices that rise too fast.
In fact guarding against deflation, and the falling wages and living standards that go with it, is why the central bank sets an inflation target to begin with.
“The Fed’s mandate from Congress is to keep prices ‘stable” While some have argued that implies no inflation, central banks globally feel a slow, steady rise in prices and wages – 2% is considered the norm for what amounts to background noise in the economy, though that is based more on intuition than formal modeling – keeps both households and businesses looking forward without distorting their decisions.”
Here’s the question: When FlaglerLive commenters clamor for a return to the $2.00 gasoline that they saw at the time of the onset of the pandemic when demand for gas plummeted and crude oil prices sank (I clamor for a return to the $1.49.9 gasoline I purchased during the Obama years), are they being realistic? Do they really prefer a deflationary economy, with all its potential dangers? The last time we experienced a deflationary economy, we ended up calling it the Great Depression. Would a deflationary economy really be better than a slightly and steadily rising inflationary economy? Would it be economically wise to return to an age of a McDonald’s cheeseburger costing 19 cents and a minimum wage of 1.25 per hour?