![clay jones trump vote](https://i0.wp.com/flaglerlive.com/wp-content/uploads/never-again.jpg?resize=1000%2C755&ssl=1)
To include your event in the Briefing and Live Calendar, please fill out this form.
Weather: Mostly sunny. A slight chance of showers and thunderstorms in the morning, then a chance of showers and thunderstorms in the afternoon. Highs in the mid 90s. Southwest winds around 5 mph, becoming southeast in the afternoon. Chance of rain 50 percent. Heat index values up to 108.
Thursday Night: Mostly cloudy with a chance of showers and thunderstorms in the evening, then partly cloudy after midnight. Lows in the mid 70s. Southeast winds around 5 mph in the evening, becoming light and variable. Chance of rain 50 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: No drug court today. Circuit Judge Terence Perkins holds a pair of sentencings and treatment hearings, and hears a motion to dismiss a care.
Health Clinic Scoring Meeting, 1 p.m. at the Government Services Building, 1769 East Moody Boulevard, Bunnell, for those interested in county government’s contracting with a health care provider.
Story Time for Preschoolers at Flagler Beach Public Library, 11 to 11:30 a.m. at the library, 315 South Seventh Street, Flagler Beach. It’s where the wild things are: Hop on for stories and songs with Miss Doris.
In Coming Days: Aug. 3: The annual Back to School Jam is scheduled for 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Flagler Palm Coast High School gym, 5500 State Rte 100 E, Palm Coast. Administrators from all of our schools will be on-site to answer questions. There will also be school shirts available for purchase at each school’s booth. District personnel will be on-hand to provide information on various programs and services, including after-school programs. Our Transportation department will be rolling up its booth to address bus schedules and our Food Services team will be available to answer questions about what you need to know about the free breakfast and lunch programs that are available to all students this coming school year. Additionally, dozens of local vendors will be on-hand with information about their youth-focused activities and programs. Be sure to get photos with various mascots and the always popular “Costumers With a Cause” roaming the gym. Food trucks and a bike rodeo will set up behind the gym. Aug. 5: Nexus Center/South Library Groundbreaking is scheduled for 1 p.m. on the acreage opposite the Sheriff's Operations Center on Commerce Parkway in Bunnell. The “Nexus Center” will be a multi-purpose facility to house a new library and the county’s Health and Human Services Department. See: "Flagler County Library’s $14 Million South Branch ‘Nexus Center’ Breaks Ground in August, Ending 10-Year Wait." Aug. 6: In Court: The resumption of a sentencing hearing is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. before Circuit Judge Terence Perkins in Courtroom 401 at the Flagler County Courthouse in the case of Brendan Depa, the former Matanzas High School special needs student accused of assaulting a paraprofessional, in an incident recorded on video. The first part of the sentencing hearing took place on May 1. Depa tendered an open plea in late October, leaving the judge wide discretion to sentence him either as an adult or as a youthful offender. See: "Despite Severe Autism, Judge Finds Depa, Ex-Matanzas High Student, Competent to Be Tried for Assault on Aide," "Brendan Depa’s Mother Tells Her Son’s Story," and "The Brendan Depa I Have Come To Know." |
Notably: The current cover to Charlie Hebdo in Paris: “Vote so it’s not for the last time.” At first glance it looks like a plea to save Charlie Hebdo. No. It was a plea to save the Republic, with the Rassemblement National, the neo-fascist party, breathing down the neck of the legislative elections last month. The French did their part. The cover works just as well for the American election, with that hand holding the ballot now no longer Biden’s thank heavens (otherwise the Democrats would have turned Jim Jones). The Charlie Hebdo cover is bitingly ironic in light of Trump’s assurance to an ostensibly Christian audience that if he’s elected in November, they “won’t have to vote anymore.” The fuller statement, in context: “And again, Christians get out and vote. Just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years. You know what? It’ll be fixed. It’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore my beautiful Christians. I love you Christians. I’m a Christian. I love you. Get out. You’ve got to get out and vote. In four years you don’t have to vote again we’ll have it fixed sop good you’re not gonna have to vote.” Not just once. Three times. This isn’t the sort of “bloodbath” statement his sycophants can claim was quoted out of context, misunderstood, not intended. It is as the Charlie Hebdo cover says, but to the other side.
—P.T.
View this profile on Instagram
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 County Drug Court Convenes
Story Time for Preschoolers at Flagler Beach Public Library
Free For All Fridays With Host David Ayres on WNZF
First Friday Garden Walks at Washington Oaks Gardens State Park
Blue 24 Forum
First Friday in Flagler Beach
Free Family Art Night at Ormond Memorial Art Museum and Gardens
For the full calendar, go here.
![FlaglerLive](https://i0.wp.com/flaglerlive.com/wp-content/uploads/TheNib.jpg?resize=200%2C206&ssl=1)
Voting is a simple act, but it is also an act of faith, a pledge of allegiance to the future of the country. All across America, people waited peacefully in long lines to vote-despite the disease, despite attempts to discredit or invalidate their vote, despite postal delays, despite threats of Russian or Iranian meddling, despite warnings from the White House that the president would not go quietly if he lost. They voted as if their country depended on it.
–From Lawrence Wright’s The Plague Year: America in the Time of Covid (2021).
Ray W. says
Every month I check the performance of the stock market during different presidential administrations.
Not because it is the best way to compare policies (it isn’t). Not because every administration faces the same headwinds (they don’t).
I do it because so many commenters seem to place great faith that their leaders are always best and that certain other leaders are destroying America.
Through July 31st (42 months into each president’s first term):
Clinton 67%
Obama 62.6%
HW Bush 44.9%
Biden 36.2%
Trump 33.o%
Reagan 17.7%
W Bush -6.9%
Make of it whatever you will.
Ray W. says
Given the facially provable idea that certain FlaglerLive commenters argue that food prices have doubled over the past three years (they haven’t), and that gasoline prices should be $2.00 per gallon (they shouldn’t), I looked up average inflation rates during presidential terms, dating from the Eisenhower years.
Eisenhower (1953-1961) 1.4%
Kennedy (1961-1963) 1.1%
Johnson (1963-1969) 2.6% (the early two years of “stagflation”)
Nixon (1969-1974) 5.7%
Ford (1974-1977) 8.0%
Carter (1977-1981) 9.9%
Reagan (1981-1989) 4.6% (the last two years of “stagflation”)
HW Bush (1989-1993) 4.3%
Clinton (1993-2001) 2.6%
W Bush (2001-2009) 2.8%
Obama (2009-2017) 1,4%
Trump (2017-2021) 1.9% (the first few months of pandemic inflation)
Biden (2021-present) 5.7%
Make of it what you will.
Ray W. says
Per today’s WSJ, in a June interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, former President Trump was reported as saying “the Fed’s current rate setting is ‘very tough’ for the economy but that moving to lower rates before the election is something central bank officials ‘know they shouldn’t be doing.'”
Does thing mean the Trump campaign is taking the position that reducing lending rates will look good for the opposition.
Per today’s WSJ, yesterday three Democratic Senators sent a letter to Fed Chairman Powell urging him to cut rates after yesterday’s end to the July meeting among 17 Fed economists, arguing that “because rates are unnecessarily high, failing to lower them would amount to ‘succumbing to political threats’ from Republicans.”
Does this mean that Democrats are taking the position that reducing lending rates now will look bad for the opposition.
What to do?
Chairman Powell apparently straddled the line. “Congress has, we believe, ordered us to conduct our business in a non-political way at all times, not just some of the time.”
The WSJ wrote: “Because inflation has come down a little faster than officials anticipated at their June meeting while the jobless rate is creeping higher, the Fed has a strong case to cut rates soon, said Eric Rosengren, who was president of the Boston Fed from 2007 until 2021.” He added, “The nonpolitical thing to do is, if you think policy will be too tight going into the end of the year, you should ease. … It is a political action to avoid taking what you think is the appropriate policy.”
Charles Evans, president of the Chicago Fed between 1995-2022, told the WSJ: “In all my experience, the way that the Fed has approached this is to keep their heads down, think about what the right policies were, and when they needed to make adjustments, they did what was necessary.”
So just what did Fed Chairman Powell say yesterday? The WSJ reported: “We never use our tools to support or oppose a political party, a politician or any political outcome. Anything that we do before, during or after the election will be based on the data, the outlook and the balance of risks, and not on anything else.”
The next Fed meeting is scheduled for September. The one after that? November, just after the election.
i
If in September the Fed cuts the lending rate, the Republican “pestilential” partisan members of faction on the FlaglerLive site will bray that the Fed is intentionally helping Democrats. If the Fed stays the course, without a rate cut, the Democratic “pestilential” partisan members of faction will howl that the Fed is intentionally helping Republicans. Me? I will argue that both are wrong. By law, the Fed has two mandates. Manage the national economy and maximize job growth. Bending to any political pressure, regardless of the source, would violate the mandates. If the seventeen economists who comprise the Fed’s brain trust think that the economic data supports a rate cut, cut the rates. If not, keep the rates the same.