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Weather: Sunny. Highs in the lower 70s. West winds 5 to 10 mph. Thursday Night: Partly cloudy in the evening, then becoming mostly cloudy. Lows around 50.
- 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:
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.
John Garrison Sentencing: John Garrison, whose reckless driving caused a head-on collision on State Road 11 in April 2022, killing 59-year-old Debra Ashrafi, is sentenced by Circuit Judge Dawn Nichols at 1:30 p.m. in Courtroom 401 at the Flagler County courthouse. Garrison pleaded, and will be sentenced to three years in prison, 10 years on probation, and a lifetime driving ban.
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.
Ashley Estevez at The Stage in Palm Coast’s Town Center: Free live music as the City of Palm Coast presents The Holiday Concert at The Stage at Town Center, at 1500 Central Ave, Palm Coast, December 5, from 6 to 8 p.m., featuring singer-songwriter Ashley Estevez performing beloved holiday classics in a cozy, outdoor setting. Ashley Estevez, originally from North Georgia, released her debut album, No Lies, in 2020. Working alongside blues rock musician Dyer Davis and her husband, musician and songwriter Len Estevez, Ashley developed a collection of songs that reflect her life experiences. Ashley’s music combines heartfelt lyrics with the spirit of country music.
‘The Country Girl’ at City Repertory Theatre: CRT features “The Country Girl” by Clifford Odet as a staged reading at 7:30 p.m. Thursday Dec. 5, Friday Dec. 6 and Saturday Dec. 7, and at 3 p.m. Sunday Dec. 8. Performances will be in CRT’s black box theater at City Marketplace, 160 Cypress Point Parkway, Suite B207, Palm Coast. Tickets are $25 adults and $15 students, available online at crtpalmcoast.com or by calling 386-585-9415. Tickets also will be available at the venue just before curtain time. Odets’s play tells the story of Frank Elgin, a once-lauded actor who’s become mired in booze even as he’s hoping to return to his past glory, while his ever-faithful wife, Georgie, struggles to keep him from tumbling into an alcoholic abyss. CRT is staging some of its leading stars and veterans, including Director John Sbordone.
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.
Rotary’s Fantasy Lights Festival in Palm Coast’s Town Center: Nightly from 6 to 9 p.m. at Palm Coast’s Central Park, with 55 lighted displays you can enjoy with a leisurely stroll around the pond in the park. Admission to Fantasy Lights is free, but donations to support Rotary’s service work are gladly accepted. Holiday music will pipe through the speaker system throughout the park, Santa’s Village, which has several elf houses for the kids to explore, will be open, with Santa’s Merry Train Ride nightly (weather permitting), and Santa will be there every Sunday night until Christmas, plus snow on weekends! On certain nights, live musical performances will be held on the stage.
A Christmas Carol at Athens Theatre, 124 North Florida Avenue, DeLand, Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., Sundays at 2:30 p.m. Adult $30, Senior $28, Student/Child $12; Groups of 8 or more, $25 per ticket. A $5 per ticket processing charge is added to all purchases. As the historic Athens Theatre does not have an elevator, the balcony is not accessible to anyone with a wheelchair or walker. Get ready to unwrap the true spirit of the holidays in an unforgettable experience with A Christmas Carol, a musical adorned with original enchanting melodies by the maestro Milton Granger and performed by a live band. This festive explosion of joy and redemption promises to transport you into the heart of Dickens’ timeless tale. With a live band providing the soul-stirring soundtrack, this production transforms into a captivating celebration of the season, weaving together the magic of music and the power of Dickens’ iconic story. Join the festivities as you embark on Scrooge’s transformative journey.
Readings: One of the great myths of post-1967 Israel, like those many great myths of American history (“the oldest democracy on earth,” etc.) is that while apartheid is a fact of life (and death) in the territories Israel occupies, the 2 million Arabs who live as Israeli citizens in Israel proper, within its non-illegal borders, are equal citizens, and therefore beyond the victimization of apartheid. It’s not true of course. It’s not apartheid as imported from South Africa (a nation with whom, at the height of its apartheid regime, Israel traded with abandon, for arms especially), but it’s apartheid as defined by the basic meaning of the world: Arabs are second or third-class citizens denied most fundamental rights assumed by Jewish Israelis. Jesse Barron in the New York Times Magazine in early November illustrated that reality with a rare piece looking past Israeli propaganda about its “citizens,” a word that should, like Nabokov’s “reality,” always be in quotes when referring to Israeli “citizenship.” “How Four Posts on Instagram Destroyed Her Life” is about an Arab-Israeli college student, an atheist who’s never embraced the Hamas ideology or its misogyny, who believes in Palestinian rights–but not at the expense of Israeli rights. She is the kind of model citizen Israel should be proud of, whether Israeli, Arab, Asian or anything else. Immediately after she woke up in late morning on Oct. 7, 2023, before the extent of the Hamas atrocities were apparent, but with Israeli retaliations already under way, she reposted four “stories” on her Instagram account that repeated the same ideas she’d posted about and believed in the past, along the lines of Palestinian complaints such as “Where were your tears when we were murdered?” and something from an “Italian American socialist” who posted this quote: “Do you support decolonization as an abstract academic theory? Or as a tangible event?” She was arrested, imprisoned, declared a Hamas-sympathizer, and expelled from her university. All for thoughts, because that’s what Israel is prosecuting now: what it deems thought crimes, though in her case it was no crime, and what she posted, but for the day when they were posted, would have validity under any interpretation of rights. To her dismay, she was released from prison in a prisoner exchange with Hamas, which she tried to resist: she did not want to be part of that kind of deal, and she wanted her day in court to disprove the accusations against her. She never got it. Her life is now marked as a Hamas sympathizer. Her life is over.
—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.
Flagler Beach Farmers Market
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Second Saturday Plant Sale at Washington Oaks Gardens State Park
American Association of University Women (AAUW) Meeting
Gamble Jam at Gamble Rogers Memorial State Recreation Area
The Isaacs at the Fitzgerald Performing Arts Center (Flagler Auditorium)
‘Exit Laughing,’ at Daytona Playhouse
ESL Bible Studies for Intermediate and Advanced Students
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Palm Coast Farmers’ Market at European Village
Democratic Party Congressional Candidates Meet and Greet
‘Exit Laughing,’ at Daytona Playhouse
Al-Anon Family Groups
For the full calendar, go here.
There are jobs at a strip of factories to the north, making cabinets or truck bodies, but the tax district is drawn so that revenues flow not to the Arab areas, but to Nof HaGalil. This is one reason that the four-lane road that divides the two cities is actually a barrier between one political reality and another. On the Nazareth side, the streets are busy with activity, and seamstresses and electronics-repair shops dominate the first floors of the buildings, but the trash isn’t collected regularly, and there are hardly any public parks or playgrounds. On the Nof HaGalil side, a sterile quiet pervades, but the smoothly paved streets run past children playing in parks, and office buildings and shopping malls loom over the surrounding hills. Murad was in high school when she started taking the bus ride from Nazareth to Haifa — up to 70 minutes each way, twice a week — to attend a gifted-and-talented program at the Technion. A train would have been faster, but the national train service only stops in the Jewish towns and cities, not Arab ones. An American teenager might have described this experience in a college essay, but the Technion doesn’t require essays for admission; the school didn’t care about a student’s personal background at all. The only things that mattered were your scores on a national exam and your grades. Murad had the numbers, so they offered her a place. She thought her degree would put her in the best position to later get a job in tech, a booming field in Israel. “I was proud of being there,” Murad told me. “It’s like Israel’s M.I.T.”
–From Jesse Barron’s “How Four Posts on Instagram Destroyed Her Life,” New York Times Magazine, Nov. 4, 2024.
Pogo says
@FWIW
Ray W, says
Hello Pogo.
Thank you for the link. This reply may not directly be on point, but ZME Science published an article about researchers using AI software to locate abandoned oil wells that may be leaking methane or toxic chemicals or crude oil into the environment.
Here are some bullet points:
– As of recently, the estimated number of “orphan wells” that have been abandoned by energy companies across the country is between 310,000 and 800,000 wells.
– A team of researchers, using a United States Geological Survey (USGS) database drawn from scans of 190,000 topographic maps made between 1884 and 2006, taught the AI software program in only two hours how to identify possible abandoned oil wells from symbols associated with oil wells on the old maps. The software was then used to compare symbols on the old maps with the symbols of known oil wells on the latest maps.
– If the program detected a symbol on an old map that was more than 100 meters from a documented well on the new map, the symbol was flagged as a potential undocumented orphan well.
– The researchers then selected a total of four counties in two states. Kern and Los Angeles counties in California and Osage and Oklahoma counties in Oklahoma. All four counties were known to have many old oil wells. All told, between the four counties, 1,301 possible orphan wells were identified by the software.
– According to the researchers, regulatory agencies can use the software to prioritize “high risk” wells for remediation. Identifying and plugging natural gas wells that are leaking is considered “low hanging fruit.”
– Developing low-cost methane gas sensors is the process of determining which wells to plug first, a task assigned to a researcher at Berkeley Lab, who told the reporter:
“We don’t need to know if it’s leaking exactly 2.3 grams per hour. We need to know if it’s not leaking, if it’s leaking between 10 and 100 grams per hour, or it it’s leaking kilograms per hour. And we need to be able to do it in five minutes.”
– The new low-cost sensors will let people locate the “biggest culprits” and start plugging them first.
– The estimated cost of plugging all the leaking wells will be billions of dollars.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
Some complain that subsidies for EVs are too expensive. Maybe they are.
I argue that if the estimates that the U.S. gives over $20 billion per year in subsidies, tax breaks, low lease price, etc., to the crude oil and natural gas industry every year are true, just so we can delude ourselves into engaging in backwards thinking to the detriment of our environment, then we will continue to lose the EV wars. It seems the oil and gas industries have taken all the subsidies year after year, yet the industry has abandoned hundreds of thousands of wells for the taxpayer to pay to plug.
Ray W, says
Hello Mr. Tristam.
When I read your comment about the many American political myths that have long percolated throughout our collective thoughts, I recalled the several FlaglerLive commenters who stupidly argued that General Milley ought to be tried and executed for treason after it was reported that he, as Chief of Staff, had called his Chinese counterpart to reassure the Chinese military class that then-President Trump’s foment of insurgency on January 6th had not destabilized the American military class; it was an attempted coup by one party’s political class; it was not one supported by the military class. The goal of the call was to dispel possible Chinese military class misunderstandings or misinterpretations of an unprecedented and unfolding American political class event.
Upon learning of the reporting by the media class, the professional lying class of one of our two political parties immediately began to spread disinformation that equated calling one’s counterpart during a time of crisis as tantamount to treason punishable by death.
The gullibly stupid among us, those who are incapable of exercising the intellectual rigor so necessary to the utilization of the three forms of reason in the manner taught to our founding fathers, picked up on the disinformation and tried to spread it further throughout the FlaglerLive community.
I responded to the most stupid of the several gullible commenters by referring to a comment from one of our military academy’s professors. The professor stated that our Chief of Staff calling another nation’s Chief of Staff in order to allay any potential misunderstandings of unfolding events would not only be proper, but possibly necessary, so long as long-established protocols were followed.
One of my favorite Churchill quotes is that it is better to jaw-jaw than it is to war-war.
There is a long history of military exchanges of officers. During the Civil War, a German Army attaché officer was detached from his assigned German unit to travel with General Sherman on his March to the Sea, with access to American sessions on strategy and tactics. He returned to Germany well-informed of Sherman’s novel concept of total war on the political, military, industrial, transportation and agricultural sectors of the Confederacy. Sherman’s ideas revolutionized German military thought on the subject of “total war”.
Prior to the outbreak of WWII, it was common policy for nations to send military attachés from each branch of the military to serve as liaisons between the military class of other nations; they were linked to the diplomatic corps. The practice dates back centuries. The recent Midway movie opens with a scene dating from several years prior to Pearl Harbor in which scene the American naval attaché dines with Japan’s Admiral Yamamoto and his naval staff alongside the American’s counterparts from the British Navy. After the dinner the American naval attaché discusses, while alone in a parlor with Admiral Yamamoto, the current frictions not only between the two nations but between the Japanese military class and the Japanese political class.
The reason I write all of this is that current media class commentary links the introduction by the Russian Army of North Korean soldiers into the Ukrainian battlefield to an escalation of the “balance” of the war such that the Biden administration had to respond to the move by approving the use of U.S. ATACMS missiles into Russian territory. This description of escalation followed by counter escalation seems to be true. But the media class is now linking the Russian decision to use its new hypersonic medium-range Oreshnik missiles on Ukrainian territory as a third recent escalation of the conflict.
The New York Times now reports that the Russian Chief of Staff called his American counterpart on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving to inform the American military class that the decision to fire the new missile was made prior to the American decision to authorize use of ATACMS on Russian territory.
I am not arguing that what we were told by the Russian general is the truth. I am arguing that the Russian military class thought it important enough to call so that the situation not escalate further due to misunderstanding or misinterpretation. People have long lied in order to achieve goals, be they military, political, economic, etc.
The gullible among us simply do not care whether it is a lie they are spreading; their goal is to further the perspective.
There is a moral imperative to oppose liars, just as there is a moral imperative to oppose the vengeful among us.
It is not an issue of moral superiority no matter what the poorly educated say.
I did not begin commenting in earnest on this site until I learned of the local Republican politician who took to the radio waves to ask just when it would be time to begin beheading Democrats. If anyone thinks that style of statement does not impose a moral imperative to oppose that particular Republican, they are simply wandering through life fooling themselves.
I don’t comment on who should be elected to a school board unless the candidate is vengeful. I don’t comment about whether development should proceed west of US-1 or whether 340 or 270 homes should be built on pristine land located west of Flagler Beach.
I comment because I oppose the vengeful among us. I oppose the professional lying class of one of our two political parties. I oppose the gullible among us who are willing to spread political lies without the proper exercise of reason guided by intellectual rigor and curiosity.
I also comment on economic issues, on legal issues, on transportation issues, on energy issues, on immigration issues, on Middle East issues among other foreign policy issues because these are the issues that form the focal points of so many of the lies disseminated by the professional lying class of one of our two political parties.
As an aside, if a FlaglerLive commenter repeatedly engages in misinformation laundering, I find curious the concept that he even raises the idea of moral superiority. Hypocrisy does not become him.
Laurel says
Ray W.: You bless us with facts, history, truths, logic and sincerity. Thank you! You are a gem!
The American public’s attention span is, today, measured in seconds, not minutes. Intellectual rigor is not valued by those who wish to dumb us down, and who are succeeding.
This short attention span is intentional. Keep the middle class overwhelmed, and in debt, and they can be controlled. The middle class, when thriving, is extremely hard to control. Now we are being bombarded with stupid, which is easy for those who backslap at the water cooler to absorb. Social acceptance is very important as well.
Now, if you would just summarize…
Sherry says
Thank You Ray W., and Happy Holidays!
Ray W, says
I wish Happy Holidays to you, Laurel, and to everyone.
Ray W, says
More on President-elect Donald Trump’s promise to cut gasoline prices in half during his first year back in office because the nation’s oil and gas companies are going to “Drill, Baby, Drill.”
Chevron released its fiscal plan for 2025 today, per Bloomberg.
Here are some bullet points from the article:
– “Chevron Corp. plans to slow production growth in the biggest US oil field next year in the most definitive sign yet that President-elect Donald Trump faces an uphill battle to ramp up American energy output.”
– “The Permian region of West Texas and New Mexico has been one of the world’s fastest-growing sources of oil over the past decade and now pumps more than 6 million barrels a day, putting it ahead of Iraq, the No. 2 OPEC producer. Independent drillers drove the initial shale revolution but supermajors such as Chevron eventually glommed on to the basin’s potential.”
– “Chevron still plans to increase production from the Permian next year, but growth will significantly decelerate from the 15% annual increase since 2021 as the oil driller nears its million-barrels-a-day target.”
– “Chief Executive Officer Mike Wirth last month indicated production from the basin will stop growing and plateau in the late 2020s to ‘really open up the free cash flow.’ The company’s overall US production is likely to increase until then in part due to projects in the Gulf of Mexico over the next few years.”
– “Analysts and traders surveyed by Bloomberg last month saw the US adding just 215,000 barrels of daily output from the end of this year through 2025, which would be the slowest pace since the pandemic-driven drop in 2020. Exxon Mobil Corp. last week forecast a deceleration in US output over the coming years as companies focus on profits over production. Exxon plans [to] announce its 2025 budget on Dec. 11.”
– “The slowdown will be welcome news for the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies as they struggle to contain a glut of crude from the US and elsewhere that has pushed oil prices down 18% since the end of April. …”
– “West Texas Intermediate fell 0.4% to $68.30 in New York on Thursday, bringing the 12-month loss to almost 5.6%. US shale is profitable at such prices but absent more robust demand growth most executives prefer to return cash to shareholders and grow through acquisitions rather than spend money ramping up output.”
Make of this what you will.
Me?
American oil companies know how to drill for oil, and they possess the resources to rapidly expand output. They have done that in the past, to their financial detriment. Simple capitalist theory commands that producers maximize profits.
American oil companies have become accustomed to the profits that flow from restrained production, i.e., they like oil prices at or above $80 per barrel.
OPEC+ nations have been manipulating crude oil prices for the past nearly four years in an effort to keep crude prices at or above that figure. American oil companies may have colluded with OPEC to profit alongside it.
What makes anyone think that American oil producers, now that they know how good it feels to make record profits, will suddenly reverse course and drive prices down to $30 per barrel by drilling, baby, drilling. Crude oil prices briefly dropped below $30 per barrel when OPEC opened the pumps and engaged in a price war with American shale oil companies. That was when which the price at BJ’s briefly dropped to $1.50 per gallon.
Trump made a political promise to cut gas prices in half withing a year. Gasoline is just above $3 per gallon. Who in their right mind thinks the oil companies will drill so much that a huge glut of crude oil will force a drop to $30 per barrel?
Here are two questions for FlaglerLive readers:
Who thinks that oil companies will restrain output growth in order to save exploration money and keep profits high?
Who thinks oil companies will increase spending on exploration for more oil so they can increase output in order to lose money on each barrel they sell?
I have repeatedly commented that the oil companies have so increased efficiencies in extraction that, on average, oil pumped out of the Permian costs about $25-30 per barrel. But that is only the extraction costs. The companies have to pay to get the oil to Houston. They have normal business costs. They pay for insurance, payroll, taxes, lawyers, accountants and the thousands of other employees that make a company thrive. I have read estimates that overall company expenditures range somewhat above $50 per barrel. That means they are losing money if prices drop that low. And much of the extraction costs occur up front. You have to pay a company to drill. Drilling rigs don’t come cheap. But once the well is producing, extraction costs go way down. Maintaining an existing flow costs a lot less than increasing flow.
Let’s face facts. China is in an economic slump. Its amount of crude oil imports is down and is not expected to rise significantly any time soon. Worldwide demand is rising, but only slowly. There is already a rising glut of crude oil, which is why crude oil prices are already down 18% since April.
Laurel says
Basically, Chevron told Trump to pound sand. As you mentioned, Chevron is not going to lose money just to make Trump look good! Oh, oh, the Penguin will be out for revenge. Should be a very, very busy four years for the court system in Gotham City. Let’s see how long the appointees can take it!
Ray W, says
Intellinews reports that Russian crude oil no longer flows through the Druzhba pipeline to Czechia. Prior to the cessation of delivery, Russia supplied 58% of Czechia’s crude oil needs.
A Poland-based company owns both of Czechia’s refineries. The Czechian government, should one of the two refineries run out of stockpiled crude oil, agreed to lend up to 330,000 barrels of crude oil per day from its 86-day national crude oil reserve to the company in an effort to tide it through to the middle of next year, at which time a construction project to expand crude oil pipeline capacity from Germany into Czechia is scheduled to be completed.
A Czechian envoy for energy security opined that the “Russians are playing again”; he noted that Russian oil was still flowing through the Bruzhda pipeline to Hungary and Slovakia. He added: “Czechia needs to tell Russia now that we don’t see a single reason to be worried — we have reserves, pipelines from the West and we don’t see a single reason to talk to them.”
Make of this what you will.
Me?
When the Russian army invaded the Ukraine, most Western experts thought the Ukrainian army could hold out for a few days. Arguably, the Russians thought the same.
Much of Russia’s economy runs on energy exports. Putin had set aside a $350 billion “rainy-day” fund out of money diverted from energy exports prior to invading, suggesting that he had been planning the invasion for many years.
Years of war later, the rainy-day fund is almost completely depleted and Western sanctions have throttled the Russian economy. The two Nordstream undersea pipelines from Russia to Germany appear to have been dynamited. Germany rapidly built a regasification port to import American LNG and hook it into the country’s compressed natural gas pipeline network, so Germany no longer needs Russian natural gas. Portugal did the same, complete with building a natural gas pipeline through the Pyrenees to hook American LNG into the French compressed natural gas pipeline network. Czechia began building a pipeline expansion to provide energy independence from Russian crude oil.
Is it feasible to believe that Russia never anticipated what has happened to its economy? That Russia may never regain its lost market share of EU energy needs, that this is going to be a permanent diminution of the Russian export sector?
The Russian economy faces serious headwinds. Inflation has reach 0.4% per week. Russia’s central bank has raised the lending rate to 21% and is expected to raise it again to 23% at the next scheduled meeting. Russian businesses can no longer afford to borrow money to expand. After a bombing in a public building, Russia expelled hundreds of thousands of Central Asian Muslim immigrants. Its unemployment rate last month was 2.1%, due to a lack of manpower. Wages in certain sectors have skyrocketed. Some 120,000 men had been killed in the Ukraine with hundreds of thousands more wounded. Without immigrant labor, some regions in Russia were not able to harvest crops this year. Russian milkmaids command salaries commensurate with lower-tier IT personnel. Butter shortages have led to a rash of butter robberies from dairy stores. Storeowners are putting their butter under lock and key. Immigrants can no longer be recruited from India or Bangladesh because Russian sweeps round up the immigrants so that they can be sent to fight in the Ukraine. Over a million young Russian men, some of them well-educated, have left the country.
What reasons exists to justify negotiations with Russia. The only reasonable position is for Russia to agree to withdraw all forces from the Ukraine and return Crimea to Ukrainian sovereignty. Russia needs to agree to Ukrainian membership in the EU and in NATO. Any appeasement by the West ceding sovereign Ukrainian soil will only lead to future Russian aggression.