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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 lower 90s. Southwest winds around 5 mph. Chance of rain 50 percent. Heat index values up to 108. Tuesday Night: Partly cloudy. A chance of showers and thunderstorms, mainly in the evening. 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:
Election Day today, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. You may vote at your own precinct only. 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. See a sample ballot here. See the Live Interviews with all local candidates below.
Flagler County School Board Derek Barrs, Dist. 3 Janie Ruddy, Dist. 3 Lauren Ramirez, Dist. 5 Vincent Sullivan, Dist. 5 Flagler County Commission Andy Dance, Dist. 1 Fernando Melendez, Dist. 1 Kim Carney, Dist. 3 Bill Clark, Dist. 3 Nick Klufas, Dist. 3 Ed Danko, Dist. 5 Pam Richardson, Dist. 5 Palm Coast Mayor David Alfin Peter Johnson Alan Lowe Cornelia Manfre Mike Norris Palm Coast City Council Kathy Austrino, Dist. 1 Shara Brodsky, Dist. 1 Ty Miller, Dist. 1 Jeffrey Seib, Dist. 1 Dana Stancel, Dist. 3 Ray Stevens, Dist. 3 Andrew Werner, Dist. 3 |
The Flagler County Canvassing Board meets today at noon and again at 6 p.m. at the Flagler County Supervisor of Elections office, Government Services Building, 1769 East Moody Boulevard, Bunnell. The meeting is open to the public. Check the time in the sidebar or in this chart, which includes the full year’s meeting schedule (the pdf schedule does not include the dates and times of required Canvassing Board meetings which may be necessary due to a recount called locally or statewide.) The board is chaired by County Judge Andrea Totten. This Election Year’s board members are Supervisor of Elections Kaiti Lenhart and County Commissioner Dave Sullivan. The alternates are County Judge Melissa Distler and County Commissioner Donald O’Brien. March-April meetings are for the presidential preference primary, such as it is. See all legal notices from the Supervisor of Elections, including updated lists of those ineligible to vote, here.
The Flagler County School Board meets at 1 p.m. in an information workshop, and again at 6 p.m. The board meets in the training room on the third floor of the Government Services Building for the afternoon meeting, in the first floor chamber for the evening meeting, 1769 East Moody Boulevard, Bunnell. Board meeting documents are available here.
The Flagler Beach Library Writers’ Club meets at 5 p.m. at the library, 315 South Seventh Street, Flagler Beach.
Food Truck Tuesdays is presented by the City of Palm Coast on the third Tuesday of every month from March to October. Held at Central Park in Town Center, visitors can enjoy gourmet food served out of trucks from 5 to 8 p.m.–mobile kitchens, canteens and catering trucks that offer up appetizers, main dishes, side dishes and desserts. Foods to be featured change monthly but have included lobster rolls, Portuguese cuisine, fish and chips, regional American, Latin food, ice cream, barbecue and much more. Many menus are kid-friendly. Proceeds from each Food Truck Tuesday event benefits a local charity.
Random Acts of Insanity Standup Comedy, 8 p.m. at Cinematique Theater, 242 South Beach Street, Daytona Beach. General admission is $8.50. Every Tuesday and on the first Saturday of every month the Random Acts of Insanity Comedy Improv Troupe specializes in performing fast-paced improvised comedy.
 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: One of the nations, unknown to most (including to me) that paraded down the Seine on July 26 in the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics was Kiribati, a nation formed of a little more than half a dozen atolls in the heart of the Pacific, with a population about that of Flagler County. It is not unknown to veterans of the Pacific War: Tarawa, where 40 percent of the Marines retaking the atoll in 1945 fell, was among the deadliest hellholes of that theater. It was colonized by Britain. It took its independence in 1979, taking the name Kirbati, which is Gilbertese for Gilberts, as in the Gilbert Islands, so named in the 19th century for Thomas Gilbert, a British captain who’d “discovered” the island in 1788–or rather, who was discovered by the island’s inhabitants in 1788. Kibati has one site listed among UNESCO’s World Heritage sites: “The Phoenix Island Protected Area (PIPA) is a 408,250 sq.km expanse of marine and terrestrial habitats in the Southern Pacific Ocean. The property encompasses the Phoenix Island Group, one of three island groups in Kiribati, and is the largest designated Marine Protected Area in the world. PIPA conserves one of the world’s largest intact oceanic coral archipelago ecosystems, together with 14 known underwater sea mounts (presumed to be extinct volcanoes) and other deep-sea habitats. The area contains approximately 800 known species of fauna, including about 200 coral species, 500 fish species, 18 marine mammals and 44 bird species. The structure and functioning of PIPA’s ecosystems illustrates its pristine nature and importance as a migration route and reservoir.”
—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.
Free For All Fridays With Host David Ayres on WNZF
Scenic A1A Pride Meeting
Blue 24 Forum
Acoustic Jam Circle At The Community Center In The Hammock
Flagler County’s Cold-Weather Shelter Opens
Flagler Beach Farmers Market
Coffee With Flagler Beach Commission Chair Scott Spradley
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
It’s Back! Gamble Jam at Gamble Rogers Memorial State Recreation Area
For the full calendar, go here.
The palau islands, about halfway between the marianas and the Philippines, are so remote that none of the European colonial powers had bothered to develop them. Indeed, except for a party of sixteenth-century conquistadores led by Ruy López de Villalobos, few outsiders were even aware of the mini-archipelago until the autumn of 1944. Peleliu is the southernmost isle in the Palau group. Roughly speaking, it was to the Palaus what Betio was to Tarawa — the key to the Japanese defense of the surrounding atolls and volcanic land masses. Today it is the least accessible of the central Pacific’s great battlefields, hidden away in the trackless deep like a guilty secret. And that is altogether appropriate. It was a bad battle, fought at a bad place and a bad time, with an enemy garrison that could have been left to wither on the vine without altering the course of the Pacific war in any way.
–From William Manchester’s Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War (2002).
Pogo says
@Or the Japanese could have surrendered
…instead of continuing the sin, war, they started.
Ray W. says
The Wall Street Journal reports that “U.S. gas prices hit a daily record of 105 billion cubic feet in December. …. An unusually warm winter left a lot of gas unburned during heating season. By spring, the market was swamped and prices tumbled. A round of production curtailments lifted prices but they were driven back down by resurgent output.”
I put this question before all FlaglerLive readers: If former President Trump promises to “Drill, Baby, Drill” if elected (he has, repeatedly), what does the concept of supply and demand say will happen when the additional gas and oil extracted all around the country by Trump-promised drilling do to prices charged by natural gas producers for their product?
The article led off with the insight that the natural gas glut has already depressed prices which in turn has triggered “fresh cutbacks in America’s drilling fields, despite one of the hottest summers on record.” And “[n]atural gas futures ended Monday … down 15% from a year ago. …”
A hurricane, it was reported, knocked out power to one of America’s big LNG exporters. American energy extractors are cutting back on the number of rigs drilling for gas. Natural gas storage facilities are at 13% higher than the national five-year average. Natural gas is being reinjected back into the ground in “storage caverns.” “Big producers … are choking back output, waiting to connect new wells to pipelines and delaying drilling projects.” “[T]here is enough gas stockpiled to warm the U.S. through even an unusually cold winter and leave a comfortable cushion for spring, …” “There were 98 rigs drilling in the U.S. specifically for natural gas last week, down from more than 120 in February, …” And still there is too much natural gas in the marketplace.
“We’re seeing markets function efficiently and producers responding the way you would expect them to respond, …”
What is the future? Yes, a number of new LNG export facilities are in the construction process and some of the older facilities are still expanding their existing plants. This will allow for even greater LNG export capacity, already at a record high and the largest in the world.
Make of this what you will. Me? In eight short years, we have gone from ZERO exporting capacity to becoming the largest LNG exporter in the world. All three administrations approved permits for new LNG facilities. Banks have provided loans to construct them. The marketplace is working. The American economy is bolstered by the changes. Trade imbalances are improved when American natural gas is sent to Germany, England, etc. America is not being destroyed.
Another Nietzsche quote: “The strength of a person’s spirit would then be measured by how much “truth” he could tolerate, or more precisely, to what extent he needs to have it diluted, disguised, sweetened, muted, falsified.”
Ray W. says
In case people with short memories have forgotten.
During an October 2023 CNN interview, retired Marine General John Kelly, former Chief of Staff during the Trump administration, stated:
“A person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all ‘suckers’ because ‘there is nothing in it for them.’ A person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because ‘it doesn’t look good for me.’ A person who displayed open contempt for a Gold Star family — for all Gold Star families — on TV during the 2016 campaign, and rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.
“A person who is not truthful regarding his position on the protection of unborn life, on women, on minorities, on evangelical Christians, on Jews, on working men and women. … A person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about. A person who cavalierly suggests that a selfless warrior who has served his country for 40 years in peacetime and war should lose his life for treason — in expectation that someone will take action. A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.
“There is nothing more that can be said.
“God help us.”
Make of this what you will.