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Weather: Partly sunny with a 40 percent chance of showers. Highs around 80. Northeast winds 10 to 15 mph with gusts up to 25 mph. Sunday Night: Mostly cloudy with a chance of showers in the evening, then partly cloudy with a slight chance of showers after midnight. Lows in the upper 60s. North winds 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 40 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 Daytona Beach (a few minutes off from Flagler Beach) here.
- Tropical cyclone activity here, and even more details here.
Today at a Glance:
Palm Coast Farmers’ Market at European Village: The city’s only farmers’ market is open every Sunday from noon to 4 p.m. at European Village, 101 Palm Harbor Pkwy, Palm Coast. With fruit, veggies, other goodies and live music. For Vendor Information email [email protected]
ESL Bible Studies for Intermediate and Advanced Students: 9:30 to 10:25 a.m. at Grace Presbyterian Church, 1225 Royal Palms Parkway, Palm Coast. Improve your English skills while studying the Bible. This study is geared toward intermediate and advanced level English Language Learners.
Bunnell’s Italian Festival, from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. at Flagler County Fairgrounds, 150 Sawgrass Road, Bunnell. The Italian Festival will be a weekend long event with both indoor & outdoor booths/activities. The City is planning a family festival for people to enjoy affordable, healthy, and wholesome fun. Admission to the Festival is FREE with parking being a $1.00 per car donation to the non-profit organization working the parking area. From classic comfort foods to exotic flavors, Bunnell Italian Festival offers a wide range of street food options. We also have a variety of craft beers, wines and cocktails available for purchase. Come hungry and ready to explore. In addition to amazing food, Bunnell Italian Festival also features live music, games and activities for all ages. You can enjoy everything from local bands to international performers.
Maze Days at Cowart Ranch, Fridays from 5 to 10 p.m., Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., Sundays from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., Cowart Ranch and Farms, 8185 West Highway 100, Bunnell. $15 per person, children 2 and under free. Get lost on a 5 acre walk through maze (approximately 30-60 minute adventure). Pick the perfect carver or edible pumpkin at our Pumpkin Patch with lots of sunflowers and of picture opportunities! Some pumpkins grown right here on the farm. Try to spot the cattle herd on the Tractor driven Hayrides (approximately 15 minutes). Get up close and friendly with farm animals. (Chickens, goats, calves, pigs and more!) Pony Rides! (Not included with entry- $8 or 2 for $15 & legal guardian must sign waiver). Challenge your friends and family at our hand pumped water driven Ducky Dash game. Roll and Race down our NEW Rat Race game that’s a Ratatoullie blast. And plenty more.
Grace Community Food Pantry, 245 Education Way, Bunnell, drive-thru open today from noon to 3 p.m. The food pantry is organized by Pastor Charles Silano and Grace Community Food Pantry, a Disaster Relief Agency in Flagler County. Feeding Northeast Florida helps local children and families, seniors and active and retired military members who struggle to put food on the table. Working with local grocery stores, manufacturers, and farms we rescue high-quality food that would normally be wasted and transform it into meals for those in need. The Flagler County School District provides space for much of the food pantry storage and operations. Call 386-586-2653 to help, volunteer or donate.
Al-Anon Family Groups: Help and hope for families and friends of alcoholics. Meetings are every Sunday at Silver Dollar II Club, Suite 707, 2729 E Moody Blvd., Bunnell, and on zoom. More local meetings available and online too. Call 904-315-0233 or see the list of Flagler, Volusia, Putnam and St. Johns County meetings here.
In Coming Days: Oct. 30-31: The Halloween Hall of Terror is back at Palm Coast Fire Station 21, 9 Corporate Drive in Palm Coast. Monday, Oct. 30 and Tuesday, Oct.31 from 7 to 10 p.m. This year’s event promises to be better than ever with a ‘Greatest Slashers’ theme, incorporating some of the horror genres biggest icons of the past 50 years. And new for 2024, visitors can indulge in a variety of delicious offerings from food trucks as they await their turn to tour the spine-chilling haunted house. Parking is available in the lot adjacent to the firehouse on corporate drive, with overflow parking available in the Kohl’s parking lot. This year, the City of Palm Coast is offering a limited number of ‘RIP’ fast pass tickets again, giving winners front-of-the-line access. To enter, follow the City of Palm Coast’s Facebook page during the week of October 21-25 and answer daily horror film trivia questions. Winners will be announced each day, so don’t miss your chance to skip the line and dive straight into the horror. Last year’s Hall of Terror set a new attendance record with nearly 5,000 visitors over the two-day span, and this year is expected to draw an even larger crowd. As always, the event is free and open to all ages, though adult supervision is recommended for attendees under 13. Please note that the event features strobe lights, fog, and other special effects. Those with epilepsy or sensory sensitivities are invited to join us for a special sensory-friendly walkthrough of the Hall of Terror from 6-7pm on both nights of the event. |
Readings: The New York Times columnist David Brooks, a conservative who cannot stomach Trump, asked the question a few hundred million people here and abroad are asking themselves about Kamala Harris: “Why the Heck Isn’t She Running Away With This?” He provides some strong answers: “In days gone by, parties were political organizations designed to win elections and gain power. Party leaders would expand their coalitions toward that end. Today, on the other hand, in an increasingly secular age, political parties are better seen as religious organizations that exist to provide believers with meaning, membership and moral sanctification. If that’s your purpose, of course you have to stick to the existing gospel. You have to focus your attention on affirming the creed of the current true believers. You get so buried within the walls of your own catechism, you can’t even imagine what it would be like to think outside it. When parties were primarily political organizations, they were led by elected officials and party bosses. Now that parties are more like quasi-religions, power lies with priesthood — the dispersed array of media figures, podcast hosts and activists who run the conversation, define party orthodoxy and determine the boundaries of acceptable belief. […] Harris clearly understands the problem. She has tried to run her campaign to show she is in tune with majority opinions. In a classic 2018 More in Common report, only 45 percent of the most liberal group in the survey said they were proud to be American. But Harris festooned her convention with patriotic symbols to the rafters. She’s now explicitly running on the theme: country before party. But in just the few months she has had to campaign, Harris can’t turn around the Democratic Party’s entire identity. Plus, her gestures have all been stylistic; she hasn’t challenged Democratic orthodoxy on any substantive issue. Finally, candidates no longer have the ultimate power over what the party stands for. The priesthood — the people who dominate the national conversation — has the power.” Meanwhile: the polls tighten further.
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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.
Tourist Development Council Meeting
ESL Bible Studies for Intermediate and Advanced Students
Bunnell’s Italian Festival
Maze Days at Cowart Ranch
Palm Coast Farmers’ Market at European Village
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Al-Anon Family Groups
East Flagler Mosquito Control District Board Meeting
Flagler County Canvassing Board Meeting
Flagler County Commission Workshop
Flagler County Commission Evening Meeting
Nar-Anon Family Group
For the full calendar, go here.
Men are and always have been myth makers, seizing upon the significant by leaving out the trivial, so as to make the world intelligible. If professional historians balk and refuse the role of global myth maker, whether from inertia or some mistaken scruple about supposed vagueness, others will surely move in to fill the void. For human minds imperiously demand historical experience to have shape and meaning–at least in retrospect–just because events as actually experienced in the present are so tumultuous, surprising, and unintelligible. They simply have to be given shape afterwards, or else are banished from human consciousness. After all, we have quite enough background noise to distract us, without worrying about the jumble that assailed our predecessors, unless, that is, their encounter with the world can be made intelligible by competent and conscientious historians.
–From William H. McNeill’s Mythistory and Other Essays (1986).
MillennialsForTrump says
lmao read the room, Flagler is voting for Trump, your cartoon only works in brainrot sites like reddit. This wont fly here, take it elsewhere.
MillennialsForTrump says
Deleting my comments because I disagreed with the comic. Wow.
Talk about suppression of freedom of speech and censorship by the left.
Your brainrot will soon be washed away by TRUMP!
Pierre Tristam says
Such champions of freedom and tolerance (and hypocritical doublebacks) to look forward to. But the Millennial is (sadly) right about the election: all hopes for Harris are lost in a nation with thinking like MFs.
Ray W, says
Thank you, Mr. Tristam, for yet another thought-provoking set of observations.
As for the morning cartoon, for years I have stated on FlaglerLive that we all should oppose the vengeful among us, regardless of party. Synonyms for vengeance include reprisal, retribution, and revenge.
Vengeance is not a solid foundation on which to build a stable society; it leads to the never-ending law of the debt of blood vengeance that so horrified ancient Greek audiences some 2500 years ago.
This stark warning to humanity was deemed so important that people of many different civilizations saw fit to save the three plays of Agamemnon in their original Greek for centuries, enough so that our founding fathers could gain sufficient insight to insist on a proposed liberal democratic Constitutional republic as the only possible means to ensure the continuity of a nation founded on reason and choice, not accident of birth or tyranny.
Ray W, says
In an article titled, “Here’s the trading playbook as data piles up in support of a ‘no landing’ for the US economy”, Markets Insider makes the case that this past week’s economic data points to a possible future economy that does not dip despite relatively high lending rates set by the Fed.
Here are a few bullet points from the article.
– “[T]his week’s robust retail data shows that consumer spending has stayed strong, as real core control retail sales climbed 0.4%, compared to 0.1% in August and above estimates of 0.3%.”
– “Real core control retail sales were likely up more than 4% annualized from Mar to Sep 2024.”
– “Recent GDP and gross domestic income revisions have also been ‘overwhelmingly positive.'”
“September’s blowout jobs print, which showed employers added a stunning 254,000 new positions and pulled the unemployment rate down to 4.1%.”
Here are a few observations from the article.
– “As Wall Street engaged in a forecasting tug-of-war over the path of the US economy, few predicted anything other than a soft landing or a recession this year — but in the past month, a streak of hot macro data has placed a third option on the table”
– “Odds of a ‘no landing’ scenario for the economy are rising amid continued strong economic data.”
– “The ‘no landing’ scenario entails a continued run of hot economic data and growth that boosts markets but also precludes a steep rate-cutting cycle from the Federal Reserve.”
– “Institutions such as Bank of America and UBS have recently noted rising odds of a ‘no landing’ outcome. In this scenario, US growth remains stronger than estimated, keeping inflation above target and interest rates elevated.”
– “According to BofA, a no landing scenario is bullish for stocks as long as inflation doesn’t flare up again.”
– “Harris Financial Group’s Jamie Cox told Business Insider than an inflation rebound is unlikely. In his view, inflation will continue to come down, allowing the Fed to lower rates gradually.”
– “[A] no landing scenario is the best outcome for the economy, Cox said, and given hot growth, the situation effectively tosses recession fears out the window.”
– “This would be just the fourth time in US history that the Fed has cut interest rates without a downturn, he added. In each case, markets were incredibly strong two or three years out, he said.”
Make of this what you will. Me? As long as I have been commenting on this site, I have argued that in just about every significant economic downturn, starting with the Great Depression, our government has relied on stimulus spending, funded or unfunded, to heat a rapidly cooling or cold economy.
In the short Pandemic Recession of 2020, the economic downturn was the greatest on record. So, too, was the recovery, once the initial $2 trillion in unfunded stimulus money began flowing into every aspect of our spending. The two trillion matched the greatest set of stimulus packages in history, signed into law by President Bush during the Great Recession. But we went further. Trump signed another $900 billion in unfunded stimulus money. Biden signed another set of unfunded stimulus bills, totaling roughly $3 trillion.
Never in history has so much money been thrown at a problem. No one had an algorithm to measure the effects of spending so much money. Many economists argued in 2009 that the stimulus money approved by Congress was too small and that had more money be approved, the economic recovery would have been quicker and more robust.
At first, based on economic theory of smaller stimulus packages, nearly every economist predicted quick recession, because the money thrown into the economy was anticipated to so heat it that the Fed would have to raise lending rates. The higher lending rates would so cool the economy that recession, i.e. a “hard landing”, was inevitable. But the money kept flowing and the economy kept growing. The job market remained healthy.
One by one, the economists had to accept the positive economic data, month after month, year after year. Fewer and fewer predicted immediate recession, but a longer-term recession remained inevitable, they said. Month after month, the economy kept defying predictions.
Economists began backing away from a more distant recession hypothesis, and a few began talking of a “soft landing” of a type that had never happened before.
In time, less than half of economists were predicting future recession.
Economists began pushing the idea that a “soft landing” was more and more likely.
Now, economists are starting to embrace the idea of a “no landing” future in which the economy just keeps going for years without slowing enough to land, soft or hard.
Which hypothesis will prevail? I don’t know.
All I can say is that we have lived through the strongest economic rebound from the pandemic when compared to all the other economies in the developed world. The dollar is the strongest currency in the developed world. Our overall economy is the strongest in the developed world.
We are far better off economically than we were four years ago. We have not been destroyed. We did not turn into Socialists or communists or Marxists or Leninists. Enlightened capitalism remains the motivating force of our economy.