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Weather: Sunny. Highs in the lower 80s. East winds 5 to 10 mph with gusts up to 20 mph. Thursday Night: Mostly clear. Lows in the upper 60s. East winds 5 to 10 mph.
- 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:
General Election Early Voting is available today in Bunnell, Palm Coast and Flagler Beach from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at five locations. Any registered and qualified voter who is eligible to vote in a county-wide election may vote in person at any of the early voting site, regardless of assigned precinct. 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. The locations are as follows:
- Flagler County Elections Supervisor’s Office, Government Services Building, 1769 East Moody Boulevard, Bunnell.
- Flagler County Public Library, 2500 Palm Coast Pkwy NW, Palm Coast.
- Palm Coast Community Center, 305 Palm Coast Parkway NE.
- Palm Coast’s Southern Recreation Center, 1290 Belle Terre Parkway.
- Flagler Beach United Methodist Church, 1520 South Daytona Avenue, Flagler Beach.
See a sample ballot here. See the Live Interviews with all local candidates below.
Palm Coast Mayor Cornelia Manfre Mike Norris Palm Coast City Council Ty Miller, Dist. 1 Jeffrey Seib, Dist. 1 Ray Stevens, Dist. 3 Andrew Werner, Dist. 3 Backgrounders Manfre’s and Norris’s Final Clash Temper and Temperament at Tiger Bay Forum Stevens and Werner Sharpen Differences |
Drug Court convenes before Circuit Judge Dawn Nichols 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.
Model Yacht Club Races at the Pond in Palm Coast’s Central Park, from noon to 2 p.m. in Central Park in Town Center, 975 Central Ave. Join Bill Wells, Bob Rupp and other members of the Palm Coast Model Yacht Club, watch them race or join the races with your own model yacht. No dues to join the club, which meets at the pond in Central Park every Thursday.
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.
 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: The hysteria of fabrications about critical race theory has thankfully passed, as has, according to a statistical analysis of news reports by The Economist, the wokeness fever. The important ideas that critical race theory synthesized are not going away. It’s still a valid theory, made more so by its observable symptoms all around. It can be grossly misapplied. There is a good deal of ill-placed determinism in CRT, and like all determinism, it’s off-putting: we do not like to be considered cogs in anything, whether it’s creation or systemic racism, even though, as irritating as that may be, the reality may be closer to determinism than not: none of us chose to be born. That alone suggests that our origins are deterministic. None of us chose to be born in the country in which we were born, to the parents and in the culture to which we were born. More determinism right upfront. We can make some choices and, if we are fortunate, if we have the means, apply some changes. But no change can alter the DNA we are born with, nor the character, nor that mysterious gene that makes some of us geniuses and some of us terrorists: where there’s a will, there’s a way, but who gave us that will? We are not its creator, and when one is more agnostic than not on the idea of a Creator, or, to be more democratic, Creators, it complicates matters even more. Where the hell does that randomness come from? At heart, the world, the universe, creation itself, could be one big fat irresponsible, unaccountable thing that just is, and that one day will just not be. But I was getting at something, and that is Wendell Berry’s struggle with being a white man, a white man who grew up in Kentucky saying the N-word “without any consciousness that I was participating in a judgment and a condemnation,” he writes in The Hidden Wound. But is that statement tenable? Leave that for another day. Berry’s insights can be as simple and profound and elegant as his generalities can have the grating irritation of a deterministic boor. In the same chapter, he writes what, after all these years of Ruffo-ecoli (Ruffo, if you need a quick refresher, is the intellectual terrorist who invented the falsehoods about CRT and is among the destroyers of Florida’s New College), I found to be a beautiful summation or definition of the paradoxes of CRT, before he had any reason to know what it was (it was not yet emerging in the universities: Berry wrote The Hidden Wound in 1970. Derrick Bell published Race, Racism and American Law, the origin of CRT, in 1973.) “I am trying to establish the outlines of an understanding of myself in regard to what was fated to be the continuing crisis of my life,” Berry writes, “the crisis of racial awareness–the sense of being doomed by my history to be, if not always a racist, then a man always limited by the inheritance of racism, condemned to be always conscious of the necessity not to be a racist, to be always dealing deliberately with the reflexes of racism that are embedded in my mind as deeply at least as the language I speak.” He doesn’t resolve the paradox. I am getting the sense that a lot of Berry is not about resolution. It is about an accounting–what creation is not allowing for itself. It is enough.
—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.
Coffee With Flagler Beach Commission Chair Scott Spradley
Flagler Beach Farmers Market
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Gamble Jam at Gamble Rogers Memorial State Recreation Area
ESL Bible Studies for Intermediate and Advanced Students
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Palm Coast Farmers’ Market at European Village
Al-Anon Family Groups
For the full calendar, go here.
(In the Western tradition of individualism there is the assumption that art can grow out of a personal or a cultural dis-ease, and triumph over it. I no longer believe that. It is related to the idea that a man can achieve personal immortality in a work of art, which I also no longer believe. Though I believe that the liveliest art is suffused with the energy of the creation, and in that sense participates in immortality, I do not believe that any one work of art is immortal any more than I believe that a grove of trees or a nation is immortal. A man cannot be immortal except by saving his soul, and he cannot save his soul except by freeing his body and mind from the destructive forces in his history. A work of art that grows out of a diseased culture has not only the limits of art but the limits of the disease–if it is not an affirmation of the disease, it is a reaction against it. The art of a man divided within himself and against his neighbors, no matter how sophisticated its techniques or how beautiful its forms and textures, will never have the communal power of the simplest tribal song.)
–From Wendell Berry’ The Hidden Wound (1970). .
Pogo says
@FWIW
The Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell – Oct. 29 | Audio Only
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vn8FcWPlFEc
‘Caste’ Argues Its Most Violent Manifestation Is In Treatment Of Black Americans
By Hope Wabuke
https://www.npr.org/2020/08/10/900274938/caste-argues-its-most-violent-manifestation-is-in-treatment-of-black-americans
As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance.
— Isabel Wilkerson, Caste
https://www.google.com/search?q=Isabel+Wilkerson
Pat Stote says
I love Lawrence O’Donnell
Ray W, says
The LA Times fact-checked a number of former President Trump’s statements about immigration. Here are some bullet points:
– During his four years in office, border crossings hit a low in April 2020, which coincided with the most labor force job losses during the pandemic; border crossing began rising again before the end of his term. I have commented that according to immigration data, immigration rose during each of the first three years of the Trump administration before dropping in early in 2020.
What did Trump claim? Immigration was at a low when he left office (it wasn’t).
– During his four years in office, 85 miles of new border wall were built and another 373 repaired miles of wall replaced existing outdated or deteriorating wall.
What did Trump claim? He built 571 miles of wall.
– During the first three years of the Biden administration, about 10.5 million “encounters” with border agents occurred at all points of entry in the U.S., not just at the southern border. Encounters include people who try to enter more than one time. Millions of encountered immigrants were immediately expelled and others were detained and later deported. According to House Republicans, some two million immigrants evaded detection.
What did Trump claim? 21 million people entered the country.
– As reported in the Times and elsewhere, according to data compiled over the last 40+ years by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, 13,099 immigrants who were at one time accused of committing or actually did commit murder are now on the agency’s “non-detained” list, which means only that ICE is not currently detaining them. That means some of them already served their sentences long ago and were released, some of them entered the country during the four years of the Trump administration and were convicted or are awaiting resolution of their charges, some of them are still in state or federal custody serving their sentences, and some of them cannot be deported because certain nations refuse to accept any former national the U.S. wants to deport. As an aside, the Times points out, undocumented immigrants commit “substantially lower rates” of crime than do native born Americans.
What did Trump say? “13,000 convicted murderers” came in under Biden.
– According to the Times, data “overwhelmingly suggest[s]” that migrants fill vacant jobs, aid in job creation, and increase the inflow of tax dollars. Two in three farm laborers are migrant workers, which suggests that immigrants take labor-intensive jobs that native-born Americans are unwilling to take. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that employment in California between 2021 and 2023 rose by 725,000 workers, yet the 16 and older U.S. citizen pool of laborers dropped by 625,000.
What did Trump say? “Your jobs are being taken away.” He specifically named “Black” jobs, “Hispanic” jobs, and “union” jobs.
– As of July of this year, 139 people on a DHS terrorist watchlist were stopped at the southern border of Texas, with another 283 at the Canadian border. The list includes people possibly believed to be engaged in or supporting terrorism, plus people associated with them, plus their family members. According to the Cato Institute, from 1975 through 2023, 230 foreign-born terrorists planned, attempted, or carried out terrorist acts. Nine were undocumented, 13 had sought asylum, 29 were refugees, 79 were permanent residents and the rest didn’t need visas or had visas. 15 terrorists could not be categorized.
What did Trump say? “We have thousands of terrorists coming into our country.”
– A Brennan Center for Justice study of the 2016 election revealed that “officials referred about 30 cases of suspected noncitizen voting for investigation or prosecution.”
What did Trump say? Democrats allow migrants to enter “to sign these people up to vote. They can’t speak a word of English for the most part, but they’re signing them up.”
– According to DHS data, between 2019 and 2023, 32,000 unaccompanied children failed to appear for their court hearings. According to the same report, another 291,000 children had not yet received notices to appear for their court hearings, as of May 2024 for a variety of reasons.
What did Trump say last Sunday? “325,000 children are missing, dead, sex slaves, or slaves. They came through the open border and they’re gone.”
– There are no credible reports substantiating fabricated claims that Haitian legal immigrants are eating pets.
What did Trump say? No need to repeat this type of created story.
– Congress appropriated $650 million to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, a sub-agency administered by FEMA, to help state and local governments shelter and service legal migrants after release from federal detention sites near the border. A separate $36 billion was appropriated to FEMA for disaster relief funding, which has not yet all been spent.
What did Trump say? “It’s all gone. They’ve spent it on illegal immigrants.”
Make of this what you will.
Pogo says
@P.T.
Concerning, In Conversation: Crystal Wilkinson and Wendell Berry – 2018 NEA Big Read/KALD Keynote*, I can’t thank you enough.
Thank you, thank you.
*Encore
Ray W, says
The Wall Street Journal just published in its news section, not its editorial section, an article titled: “The Next President Inherits a Remarkable Economy.”
Here’s how the news begins:
“Whoever wins the White House next week will take office with no shortage of challenges, but at least one huge asset: an economy that is putting its peers to shame.
“With another solid performance in the third quarter, the U.S. has grown 2.7% over the past year. It is outrunning every other major developed economy, not to mention its own historical growth rate.
“More impressive than the rate of growth is its quality. This growth didn’t come solely from using up finite supplies of labor and other resources, which could fuel inflation. Instead, it came from making people and businesses more productive.”
Here are some other bullet points.
– Except for Trump, three of the last four incoming presidents inherited the effects of a recession.
– Higher productivity growth theoretically makes an economy more recession-proof.
– 62% of Americans rate the economy not so good or poor, mainly because of the era of inflation from 2022-23.
“When you are unhappy at home, you can gain perspective by checking in on your neighbors. The whole world has been through the wringer since 2020; any country’s performance alone is less revealing that how it compares with its peers.
“Most leaders from around the world would trade their economies for the U.S.’s in a heartbeat. Through the second quarter, the U.S grew 3%; none of the world’s next six largest advanced economies grew more that 1%. Even China is struggling.”
– Inflation fell over the past year to 2.7% without growth flagging. According to Robin Vince, chief executive of BNY: “That’s pretty impressive. That’s a bit of a Goldilocks outcome. A year, two years ago, very few commenters actually thought that was going to happen.”
– “Some of that growth was due to the labor force swelling with inflows of unauthorized migrants. Payroll employment was up 2.4 million in the year through the third quarter, or 1.6%. That, however, overstates the contribution of labor because on average each employee worked slightly less hours.
“Adjusted for that, productivity — i.e., output per hour — probably rose 2% to 2.5% in the past year, well above the average 1.5% average annual rate from 2007 to 2019.
“Economic growth is unlikely to sustain its recent pace because migrant flows have already slowed. …”
– While productivity growth can be volatile, it is encouraging in context that no other country has witnessed such growth.
– “‘Productivity is really bad across the world,’ said Hyun Song Shin, the BIS’s economic advisor. ‘The U.S. is an outlier.'”
– An umbrella group for central banks, the Bank for International Settlements, “calculates that from the end of 2019 to the end of 2023, total output rose 7.9% in the U.S., of which 1.2% came from more hours worked and 6.7% from productivity — more output per hour. In the eurozone, output was up 3% in the same period, entirely due to more hours.”
– One reason other than the inflow of immigrants for the productivity growth in the U.S. is our surge in energy supply during the Biden years. EU companies pay two to three times what American companies pay for electricity and four to five times more for natural gas than American companies pay.
– A second reason other than the inflow of immigrants is that over the past 50 years, the six companies in the U.S. that are now worth more than a trillion dollars were started from scratch. No European company has done that. That is from innovation. Adapting new technologies, such as AI, has helped U.S. companies more than European companies. Trump tried to foster such growth by tax cuts. Biden tried to foster growth by “directing federal dollars and tax credits to semiconductor manufacturing, low-carbon energy, and infrastructure.”
Make of this what you will.
Me? The WSJ is considered one of the major conservative business-oriented publications in the U.S. The editors consider this news, not opinion. And the inflow of immigrations is driving this remarkable resurgence in the economy after the pandemic recession.
I have been commenting for years that something unusual was happening in our economy. I have repeatedly argued that you can’t just throw $6 trillion in unfunded stimulus money and $3 trillion in loanable credit, something that has never been tried before at such scale, and not have something unusual happen.
Former President Trump deserves plaudits for signing $2.9 trillion in unfunded stimulus money into law.
President Biden deserves plaudits for signing $3.0 trillion in unfunded stimulus money into law.
Federal Reserve Chairman Powell deserves plaudits for authorizing $3 trillion of stimulus funds into the credit side of the economy, for slowly lowering the lending rate to zero in the early stages of the pandemic recession and for later raising the lending rate to up to 5.5% after the economy began to overheat.
So here we are. We are almost certainly heading for the mythical soft landing and perhaps even no landing at all. Our economy is the envy of the world. We have not been destroyed.
The several gullible FlaglerLive commenters among us have been wrong all along. You know who you are. Each of you has been wandering through life fooling yourself. Blaming Biden for the worldwide economic turmoil triggered by the pandemic was your fool’s choice. Please study causation more closely.
And one of the major reasons for this positive economic outcome? We needed every last one of the millions of immigrants who came into the country since the pandemic. Without them, we might be in recession right now. For those who buy into the lie that immigrants are harming the country, you are being manipulated for political gain. Economist after economist say the same thing. Our national economy benefits more from immigration than it costs.
Ray W, says
Per the Daily Caller, “Ohio GOP Gov. Mike DeWine claimed that the economic progress made in Springfield would be lost if the thousands of Haitians currently living in Springfield would be lost if the thousands of Haitians currently living there were to leave.” Per the reporter, he added Wednesday “that the thousands of Haitians who’ve made Springfield home are essential for the city’s job sector.”
“‘I was asked the question several weeks ago: What would happen if all the Haitians were gone from Springfield?’ DeWine said during a press conference that pertained to declining overdose deaths in Ohio. ‘And the reality is that some of the economic progress that we have made at Springfield will go away.'”
Make of this what you will.