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Weather: Partly sunny with a chance of showers and thunderstorms in the morning, then mostly cloudy with showers and thunderstorms likely in the afternoon. Highs in the upper 80s. Southeast winds 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70 percent. Thursday Night: Mostly cloudy. Showers and thunderstorms likely, mainly in the evening. Lows in the lower 70s. East winds around 5 mph. Chance of rain 60 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:
Drug Court convenes before Circuit Judge Terence Perkins at 10 a.m. in Courtroom 401 at the Flagler County courthouse, Kim C. Hammond Justice Center 1769 E Moody Blvd, Bldg 1, Bunnell. Drug Court is open to the public. See the Drug Court handbook here and the participation agreement here.
The Palm Coast Beautification and Environmental Advisory Committee meets at 5 p.m. at City Hall, 160 Lake Avenue, Palm Coast.
The Flagler Beach City Commission meets at 5:30 p.m. at City Hall, 105 South 2nd Street in Flagler Beach. Watch the meeting at the city’s YouTube channel here. Access meeting agenda and materials here. See a list of commission members and their email addresses here.
Flagler Tiger Bay Club’s sixth annual Wine Tasting Meet & Greet at the Palm Coast Community Center, 305 Palm Coast Parkway NE, begins with check-in at 5:30 p.m. and runs to 8:30 p.m. Help us celebrate our 6th Anniversary! Enjoy an evening of live entertainment, wine tasting, engaging conversations, and savory heavy hors d’oeuvres. Join more than 100 community leaders, club members, and guests as we toast our year of notable regional and national speakers, and unveil the next season’s lineup during the evening’s ‘Big Reveal’. Sample premium, world-class wines presented by La Piazza Cafe and international hors d’oeuvres by World Plate. Tickets: $40/Members
Future Members may apply their ticket toward their membership if initiated during the 5th Annual Wine Tasting Meet & Greet. Register today at www.FlaglerTigerBayClub.com.
 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. |
Musically: Do we ever tire of Scheherazade in any form–in her Arabian Nights, in Rimsky-Korsakov’s endlessly colorful creation (or Ravel’s lesser known version)? Netflix tells me there’s a French series called “Shéhérazade” from 2019: “Fresh out of juvenile detention in Marseille, 17-year-old Zach falls for a young prostitute and soon faces a dire dilemma while working as a pimp.” Not the Scheherazade I remember from my harem days of the imagination. As I recall she was the harem girls for some monarch who took his revenge on his unfaithful wife by bedding a different virgin every night and beheading her by dawn. You can never understand the cruelty of nymphomaniac monarchs, and certainly not just in the Mideast (“The dark, unrelenting Tiberius, the furious Caligula, the feeble Claudius, the profligate and cruel Nero, the beastly Vitellius, 50 and the timid, inhuman Domitian,” Gibbon wrote, were all in his judgment “condemned to everlasting infamy”). Anyway, in came Scheherazade. She was not interested in attending her beheading. She beguiled the monarch with a tale that invented the life-saving cliffhanger. He decided to kill her when she was finished the following night. But one tale led to another, one cliff hanging to another, and by the end of her thousand and one night of course, the monarch had fallen in love and married Scheherazade instead of beheading her.
—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.
With the book souk still on my mind, I took a trip to see the riverside statue of Scheherazade, the storyteller of the 1,001 Arabian nights. Only in Baghdad, said friends who know the Arab world, would there be such a statue at all — not only of a woman but of a woman renowned for decidedly un-Islamic reasons. Scheherazade stood 20 feet high in black stone, hands extended, weaving her spell to an equally immense sculpture of her husband, the Sultan Shahryar, reclining entranced at a safe distance. Her eyes were large, her gown flowing, her expression modest; but there was no doubt that she dominated the scene, a woman harnessing the power of fiction to her own salvation.
–From “Remaindering Baghdad,” by Shahi Tharoor, New York Times Book Review, March 29, 1998.
Ray W. says
Thank you, Mr. Tristam, for highlighting via the ancient example of Scheherazade the power of storytelling, the art of persuasion, and the hope of the helpless in their moments of great despair.
Ray W. says
Speaking of storytelling and desperation, the HuffPost UK reports that in mid-February 2022 Vice-President Harris attended the Munich Security Conference, at which she met with US allies and Ukrainian President Zelenskyy. She did not meet with Russian President Putin. The publication also wrote that a Kremlin spokesperson confirmed that Putin and Harris had yet to meet: “Frankly speaking, I cannot recall a single contact between President Putin and Mrs Harris.”
Why is this of any significance? Yesterday, while speaking at a North Carolina rally, former President Trump uttered a string of falsehoods:
“Remember when Biden sent Kamala to Europe to stop the war in Ukraine?
“She met with Putin, and then three days later, he attacked. How did she do? Do you think she did a great job. She met with Putin to tell him, ‘Don’t do it.’
“And three days later, he attacked; that’s when the attack started. Do you know that, General?” (He was speaking to rally attendee retired U.S. Army Lieutenant General Keith Kellog.
Laurel says
Trump is outdoing himself with lying. It has worked for him so far, and to a disappointingly large extent, still works. This Trump cultism is actually a study in real time. Narcissistic Personality Disorder is defined as a mental issue by Mayo Clinic.
Pogo says
@Elsewhere
“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.”
― Omar Khayyám
https://www.google.com/search?q=Omar+Khayyám
Ray W. says
Yes, Pogo, I regret my error in a recent FlaglerLive comment about Dodge’s new Ramcharger truck series that adapts much older locomotive technology. The combined output of the two electric drive motors is 690 HP, not “over 300.” I was wrong. I apologize.
Additional reading reveals that Nissan has developed a three-cylinder engine specifically to generate electricity at its most efficient running speed for its car line. The engine does not have a variable throttle; it either idles or runs at 2500 rpm. Lacking a transmission, the engine remains off during battery drive mode and does not start to generate electricity until battery capacity drops to a set level. A “series” hybrid vehicle drives the wheels either by battery or by engine, but never at the same time. These are not “series” cars. The electric motor drives the wheels all the time.
Pogo says
@Hello RW
Okay. The wheel, a great idea that constantly improves; alas, the same may not be said of its uses.
Anyway, your comments continue to inform, improve any conversation, and are always attended by me.
Sincerely, all respect and gratitude. Be well.
Laurel, you too.
Laurel says
I am honored!
:)
Ray W. says
The Motley Fool reports that ExxonMobil and Chevron are in arbitration over oil rights in a field off the coast of Guyana.
In October of last year, Chevron started the process of purchasing the assets and assuming the debts of Hess for $60 billion. Less than two weeks earlier, ExxonMobil had started the process of purchasing the assets and assuming the debt of Pioneer Natural Resources for $59.5 billion.
The prize of the Hess deal with Chevron is the large Stabroek oil field off the coast of Guyana. Last year, a three-company collaboration earned $6.3 billion from the field, with anticipation of production tripling to 1.3 million barrels per day by 2027.
The problem? Exxon already owns 45% of the field. Hess owns 30%. A Chinese company owns 25%. Exxon argues that Chevron buying Hess’s share of the field triggers a buyout clause in the three-corporation collaborative agreement, allowing Exxon to preempt that portion of Chevron’s purchase; it can make its own offer by contractual right for all of Hess’s rights in the field.
Why is this of any import? I submit to all FlaglerLive readers the idea that companies are bidding billions, in this case a combined $119.5 billion, to purchase the assets and debts of two smaller oil-producers. Other large producers are buying up assets and debts of other smaller companies. The oil industry in America appears to be consolidating. Why? Does effective competition dwindle with each purchase?
I have long argued that the giant in the room, OPEC+, has been manipulating the international oil marketplace since February 2021, and that the manipulation continues today, to the detriment of every person at the gas pump. More recently, I stumbled across a developing storyline from an article in the Wall Street Journal that American energy companies have allegedly allied with OPEC+ to add their own weight to the international manipulation of the American consumer for corporate profit.
Have American energy producers developed a legally defensible method to continue to manipulate crude oil prices, if only they can keep their mouths shut? CEO after CEO is on record as telling shareholders that they intend to limit additional drilling in order to enhance shareholder profits. One went so far as saying that he would not change his company’s plan to increase production that year by no more than 5%, even if prices were to hit $200 per barrel. Yes, we are extracting more oil than ever before, yet international crude oil prices continue to hover around $80 per barrel. We continue to pay more than $3 per gallon. OPEC+ continues to limit its output. American oil industry heavyweights absorbing smaller companies means less competition in the American energy industry, means fewer smaller companies that could significantly boost their own production in the pursuit of profits caused by OPEC+ production cuts.
Make of this what you will. Me? Some of the gullible among us repeatedly comment on FlaglerLive that presidents control oil companies. To them, any rise in gas prices, therefore, is a president’s fault.
Other of the many gullible FlaglerLive commenters hysterically claim that we will soon be a socialist or communist country should Democrats win in November. Maybe they are right. After all, if our government were ever to nationalize the energy industry, an undeniably socialist act, then the new government master could order that we “Drill, Baby, Drill!” with abandon. The resulting increase in the outflow of American oil might drive energy prices down, thereby reducing oil company profits, which would be very popular with voters. Leaving the choice of when and where to drill to private industry doesn’t seem to work for the everyday Flagler energy consumer when certain American oil company executives decide to manipulate the international energy marketplace for corporate gain.
Sherry says
Brilliant! Simply Brilliant!
British Writer Pens The Best Description Of Trump I’ve Read
A few things spring to mind. Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed. So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.
Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever. I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman. But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.
Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers. And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness.
There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface. Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront. Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul. And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat. He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.
And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead. There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless – and he kicks them when they are down.
So the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a third – of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think ‘Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:
• Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are.
• You don’t need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.
This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss. After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum. God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart. In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws – he would make a Trump.
And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish: ‘My God… what… have… I… created?’ If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set.
Ray W. says
Thank you, Sherry.
Another Brit, Winston Churchill, comes to mind, re: Trump: “He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.”
Sherry says
Hello Ray W. very clever that Winston! Thanks for the chuckle, and happy Saturday evening!
Laurel says
Sherry: Yes, and the world was both confounded by us, and laughed at us while Trump was President. I am hoping the world is more resilient, and forgives us this bump in the road. Now, let’s see if this bump in the road will be repaired by us, or become a canyon.
Sherry says
Hi Laurel,
During the time trump was in office, our many friends in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean. . . every last one of them, wanted to know if the people of the USA had gone around the bend having such a person as President.
Even our conservative UK friend who voted to leave the EU thought trump was “too much of a playboy and not up to the task” in 2016. Now, she thinks he is “dangerously insane, and isn’t he going to jail?” When she says that, I don’t know what to say.
Our judicial system certainly appears weak at best and corrupt at worst, to our friends in other countries. Generally, they are also concerned that conspiracy theories/disinformation spreading across the internet either originates in the US or is made “viral” by US citizens. They are worried about the spread of “nationalism” across Europe. In addition they are wondering why the US is not taking on a stronger leadership role on the climate crisis.
Personally, I’m hoping and praying that trumpism is burning itself out, and that sanity will return to enough US voters so that trump will “again” be defeated. Of course, he and his cult followers will raise holy hell when that happens, but hopefully dikes of the ethics behind the “rule of law” will hold up and keep our election honest. Hopefully our democracy will prevail!
Ray W. says
I consider this emerging story to be one of potential significance to the American economy.
Canada’s two larger rail companies just idled their 9,000 Teamster employees, locking them out to preempt a possible strike. Two-thirds of their rail capacity crosses the border into the U.S. economy. For example, American automobile factories adopted long ago a “just in time” delivery model to save on warehousing costs. If Stihl assembles edgers at a Virginia factory, but relies on Chinese-made valve springs, any interruption in valve spring supply stops engine production cold if a ship is held up outside the Port of Los Angeles during the pandemic. Much of our pandemic-induced inflation was triggered by such supply chain disruptions. Of course, profligate spending by both administrations didn’t help.
American car and truck factories, reliant on Canadian-made engines, transmissions, and other parts, will shut down when the supply of parts already in transit runs out.
Canada lacks the American statutory scheme for settling rail labor disputes. Many decades ago, Congress deemed the rail industry as too important to the overall economy and created rules to lessen the possibility of strikes or lockdowns. When American unions vote to strike, they must first submit their dispute to a government panel for discussion. The statutes are similar, but different, from statutes controlling arbitration and mediation. A 90-day cooling off period starts, during which negotiating sessions are conducted before the panel. The panel makes suggestions, but neither side is bound by the suggestions. In 2022, both Congress and the Biden administration intervened in a labor dispute between the four national rail companies and their employees’ thirteen unions. The issue was resolved without disruption to the economy.
One rail company spokesman said it was better to shut down now than during the peak fall shipping season, when freighters carrying Christmas-related products arrive in ports for transfer of cargo onto trains.
Canadian and American chambers of commerce issued a joint statement:
“A stoppage of rail service will be devastating to Canadian businesses and families and impose significant impacts on the US economy. Significant two-way trade and deeply integrated supply chains between Canada and the United States mean that any significant rail disruption will jeopardize the livelihoods of workers across multiple industries on both sides of the border.”
Make of this what you will. Me? The many gullible FlaglerLive commenters, besotted by “pestilential” partisan thought, will blame the current administration for not settling labor disputes taking place in other countries, should the lockout last long enough to shut down American factories and put American workers out. The reasoning readers among us will see the politically motivated deceptions for what they are. Dennis C. Rathsam won’t understand any of it; he will rattle off on whatever tangent strikes his fancy. He isn’t swayed by “pestilential” ideas espoused by others; he just makes up his own “pestilential” claims.
Ray W. says
In a July 2023 assessment, the Marshall Project focused on a transition by the FBI from a century-old police department crime reporting method (Uniform Crime Reporting Program) to a new reporting method (National Incident-Based Reporting System).
The issue? While almost all of the nation’s 18,000 police department had been reporting crime statistics to the FBI for decades using the older reporting model, many agencies had yet to comply with the standards set by the new system, which was to transition starting in January 2021.
Florida, for example, did not meet criteria for certification to use the new system by the end of 2021. California was the only other non-certifying state. That meant that neither state could submit crime statistics to the FBI for 2021. But failing to attain certification differs from failing to report data. Florida is now certified to submit statistics, but at the end of 2022, fewer than 8% of Florida police agencies had yet to adapt to the new standards, much less report crime data. Many of Florida’s larger agencies were not submitting data. Seventeen states had “near-perfect” compliance with the new system. Both New York City and Los Angeles, according to the authors, were struggling to change over to the new system.
Given Florida’s lack of reliable crime data, the authors pointed out, when Governer DeSantis announced his presidential campaign, he stated that Florida’s crime rate had hit a 50-year low. With more than 40% of the state’s population missing from the data due to non-reporting agencies, the author’s explained that the Governer’s statement relied on “incomplete data.”
“‘People will use crime data to say whatever they want,’ said Jeff Asher, a criminologist and co-founder of AH Datalytics. ‘When you don’t have that certainty of having nearly every agency reporting data, it means that you need a lot of literacy to be able to combat items that are being stated in bad faith.'”
Make of this what you will. Me? The issue is cast as one of “literacy” by Mr. Asher. The illiterate can be manipulated by those acting in bad faith. I cast it differently. The mathematical equivalent to illiteracy is “innumeracy.” A person who does not understand numbers is innumerate, not illiterate. Just because a person understands the multiplication tables does not mean he or she is numerate in the abstract mathematics of three-dimensional calculus, or statistics, for that matter.
When Democrats claim that crime is down during the Biden years, are they acting from a perspective of numeracy? For that matter, I have been innumerate about crime data for the past three years, because I was not aware of the FBI transition from one model to another. Now that I am a bit closer to statistical numeracy, I now know that when former President Trump claims that America’s murder rate is up compared to his time in office, he is displaying a measure of innumeracy. He doesn’t know. No one knows. The data is incomplete, i.e., lacking. The only question is whether Trump is acting in bad faith when he utters his unsupported claims or whether he is ignorant of his innumeracy.
Have nearly 100r% of the nation’s agencies now switched over to the new system? As I type this, I don’t know. The article focuses on 2022 reporting rates. All if know is that if fewer than 100% of all police agencies reported 2023 crime data to the FBI, any politicized claims about comparative crime rates are useless. Garbage in, garbage out.
Ray W. says
Verify, one of several fact-checking sites, used BLS jobs data, combined with data published by the St. Louis Fed, to determine whether former President Clinton’s assertion that since 1989, a period of 35 years, jobs created during the 16 years that Republicans held the White House totaled one million. During the 19 years that Democrats have held the office? 50 million jobs created.
Verify rated Clinton’s claim as True, though the site pointed out that the totals were actually 1.3 million Republican jobs created and 50.3 million Democratic jobs created.
Verify did qualify its findings. During the latter part of the George H. W. Bush administration, the economy went into recession (the S&L Crisis), which cost jobs. During the early part of the first George W. Bush administration, the economy went into recession (the Dot.com Crash and 9/11). During the latter part of the second George W. Bush administration, the economy entered into the Great Recession, which cost jobs. Finally, during the Trump administration, the economy went into the pandemic-caused recession, which cost millions of jobs (thankfully, the Trump administration distributed trillions in his effort to stimulate the rapidly cooling economy, and we emerged from recession prior to Biden taking office).
Pointing out the obvious, there were ZERO recessions during the Clinton, Obama and Biden administrations.
Make of this what you will. Me? Democrats don’t need to instill a communist or socialist economy while in office. They do quite well with their capitalist policies.
Laurel says
Bill Maher stated to James Carville that the jobs comparison was “bullshit data.” I don’t know how he knew this without checking, he just pulled his reasoning out of his…pocket. A common practice these days. If it weren’t for fact checking, we’d all be living in swirling darkness!