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Weather: Mostly clear. Highs in the mid 70s. 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:
The Saturday Flagler Beach Farmers Market is scheduled for 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. today at Wickline Park, 315 South 7th Street, featuring prepared food, fruit, vegetables , handmade products and local arts from more than 30 local merchants. The market is hosted by Flagler Strong, a non-profit.
Coffee With Commissioner Scott Spradley: Flagler Beach Commission Chairman Scott Spradley hosts his weekly informal town hall with coffee and doughnuts at 9 a.m. at his law office at 301 South Central Avenue, Flagler Beach. All subjects, all interested residents or non-residents welcome. The gatherings usually feature a special guest.
Second Saturday Plant Sale at Washington Oaks Gardens State Park, 6400 North Oceanshore Blvd., Palm Coast, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Flowers, bushes and hard to find plants. The event is sponsored by the Friends of Washington Oaks. Regular entrance fee applies: $4 per vehicle with one person aboard, $5 for vehicles with more than one person.
American Association of University Women (AAUW) Monthly Meeting, 11 a.m. at Cypress Knoll Golf Club, 53 Easthampton Blvd, Palm Coast. A monthly speaker is featured. Lunch is available for $20 in cash, $21 by credit card, but must be ordered in advance. The lunch menu is available on our website. Lunch may be ordered by sending an email to: AAUWFlagler1984@gmail.com.
Gamble Jam: Musicians of all ages can bring instruments and chairs and join in the jam session, 2 to 4 p.m. The program is free with park admission! Gamble Rogers Memorial State Recreation Area at Flagler Beach, 3100 S. Oceanshore Blvd., Flagler Beach, FL. Call the Ranger Station at (386) 517-2086 for more information. The Gamble Jam is a family-friendly event that occurs every second and fourth Saturday of the month. The park hosts this acoustic jam session at one of the pavilions along the river to honor the memory of James Gamble Rogers IV, the Florida folk musician who lost his life in 1991 while trying to rescue a swimmer in the rough surf.
“Something Rotten,” at the Daytona Playhouse, 100 Jessamine Blvd., Daytona Beach. Box office: (386) 255-2431. Two shows today, at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Adults $30, Seniors $29, Youth $20 It’s 1595 and the Bottom brothers struggle to find success in the London theatrical world as they compete with the rock star popularity of William Shakespeare. Can they come up with their own best seller? Maybe something called a musical?
‘Sense and Sensibility’ at St. Augustine’s Limelight Theatre, 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays, with a Tuesday, April 15 performance at 7:30 p.m. Oh the story of the impoverished Dashwood family! Based on Jane Austen’s novel, this play follows Elinor and Marianne who become destitute upon the death of their father, who leaves his estate to their half-brother, John. Due to his wife’s interference, they must survive on a meager allowance.
Grace Community Food Pantry, 245 Education Way, Bunnell, drive-thru open today from 10 a.m. to 1 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.
Editorial Notebook: U.S. Rep. Earl Carter, the Georgia Republican who, of course, goes by “Buddy” (because how else do you whiten yourself more than your whiteness?), was elected to Congress in 2014 after a decade in the state legislature. He’s a pharmacist, so he’s all for deregulating the industry, and being a pill-peddler (not that there’s anything wrong with that: we’re all pill-poppers), he considers himself a health care expert. Naturally, his whiteness is a big believer in the Big Lie. (He’s one of three Carters in the House. There’s one from Louisiana and one from Texas. Buddies, all.) He voted against certifying Joe Biden’s election. He wanted the unemployed drug-tested. He also thought it elegant to respond, to a question about a Republican senator who was opposing the shah of maga on one thing or another, with this: “Somebody needs to go over there to that Senate and snatch a knot in their ass.” Of course he wants to prohibit same-sex marriage, and so on: in sum, your ordinary revolting maga Republican parroting talking points from The Idiot’s Guide to Being an Idiot. Nothing in his background, his politics or his vacant smile suggests that he has a sense of humor. So when on Feb. 11 he introduced a bill to “authorize” the president to seize Greenland and rename it “Red, White and Blueland,” you couldn’t unfortunately take it as what would otherwise have been a superb send-up of the shah’s moronic fuckery with fuckery of his own, reminiscent of his equally moronic colleague who after France refused to join the Edsel-inspired invasion of Iraq in 2002 sought to rename french fries in the congressional cafeteria to “freedom fries.” The bill’s wording is evocative of those British imperial lords who drew boundaries in the Middle East to create Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and so on: “The President is authorized to enter into negotiations with the Government of Denmark to purchase or otherwise acquire Greenland.” Authorized by whom? Then there’s this: “Any reference in a law, map, regulation, document, paper, or other record of the United States to Greenland shall be deemed to be a reference to “Red, White, and Blueland”. When he introduced the bill on the floor of the House he only referred it to a couple of committees. His floor remarks that day, according to the Congressional Record—America’s Illiad—were limited to honoring the life of Lila Cay Williams Critz, a Tallahassee native who moved with her husband to Savannah–Buddy’s hometown–after graduating from Duke. She died at 89. He did not ask that Thule, the American air base in Greenland where a B-52 carrying four nuclear bombs crashed in 1968, the same day a restored Ford’s Theater, where Lincoln was assassinated, reopened in Washington (the soil of the crash site was flown to the Nevada Test Site for clean-up), be renamed Critz.
—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.
May 2025
Flagler Beach Farmers Market
Coffee With Flagler Beach Commission Chair Scott Spradley
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Second Saturday Plant Sale at Washington Oaks Gardens State Park
American Association of University Women (AAUW) Meeting
Peps Art Walk Near Beachfront Grille
Murder at Shivering Timbers Murder Mystery Dinner Show Fundraiser
RockabillieWillie At City Repertory Theatre
ESL Bible Studies for Intermediate and Advanced Students
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Palm Coast Farmers’ Market at European Village
Gamble Jam at Gamble Rogers Memorial State Recreation Area
Al-Anon Family Groups
RockabillieWillie At City Repertory Theatre
For the full calendar, go here.
Fifty years ago, on Jan. 21, 1968, the Cold War grew significantly colder. It was on this day that an American B-52G Stratofortress bomber, carrying four nuclear bombs, crashed onto the sea ice of Wolstenholme Fjord in the northwest corner of Greenland, one of the coldest places on Earth. Greenland is part of the Kingdom of Denmark, and the Danes were not pleased. The bomber – call sign HOBO 28 – had crashed due to human error. One of the crew members had stuffed some seat cushions in front of a heating vent, and they subsequently caught fire. The smoke quickly became so thick that the crew needed to eject. Six of the 7 crew members parachuted out safely before the plane crashed onto the frozen fjord 7 miles west of Thule Air Base – America’s most northern military base, 700 miles north of the Arctic Circle. The island of Greenland, situated about halfway between Washington D.C. and Moscow, has strategic importance to the American military – so much so that the United States had, in 1946, made an unsuccessful bid to buy it from Denmark. Nevertheless, Denmark, a strong ally of the United States, did allow the American military to operate an air base at Thule. The crash severely strained the United States’ relationship with Denmark, since Denmark’s 1957 nuclear-free zone policy had prohibited the presence of any nuclear weapons in Denmark or its territories. The Thule crash revealed that the United States had actually been routinely flying planes carrying nuclear bombs over Greenland, and one of those illicit flights had now resulted in the radioactive contamination of a fjord. The radioactivity was released because the nuclear warheads had been compromised. The impact from the crash and the subsequent fire had broken open the weapons and released their radioactive contents, but luckily, there was no nuclear detonation.
–From “50 years ago, a U.S. military jet crashed in Greenland – with 4 nuclear bombs on board,” PBS, Jan. 21, 2018.
Ray W, says
President Trump repeatedly states that his tariffs are intended to address unfavorable international trade imbalances in goods, not services, against the U.S. In essence, he says he wants balanced international trade with each country. China, it is true, has a trade imbalance with the U.S. that favors China.
If the given premise is true, then what reason exists to support Trump’s decision to impose a 10% tariff on Australian goods imported into the U.S., given the irrefutable fact that Australia’s trade imbalance in goods with the U.S. in 2024 favored the U.S. to the tune of $17.9 billion. There is an American trade surplus with Australia, not a trade deficit.
And, American already has a free-trade agreement with Australia. Any dispute over trade can be submitted to mediation according to the terms of the agreement.
As background, Australia has been one of America’s staunchest of allies since WWI; the two countries celebrated a century of alliance in 2018.
Australia repeatedly sends troops to fight and die in America’s wars and it never sends us a bill.
Australia provides land to the U.S. on which bases have been built.
Australia just entered into a long-term relationship with the U.S. to purchase American-built nuclear submarines, which are to be crewed by joint American/Australian sailors and are to be based at soon-to-be built Australian submarine pens.
Again, what reason exists to impose a 10% tax on Australian products imported into the U.S.?
The only trade dispute that I could find centers on imports of Australian beef.
When “mad cow” was diagnosed in American cattle some 15 years ago, having travelled to the U.S. from Great Britain, Australia not only banned imports of U.S. beef, for obvious biosecurity reasons, but it also adopted a tracing regulation on all imported beef, so that it could better trace any outbreak of disease in cattle back to its source. The ban on imported beef from American was dropped about six years ago. However, the biosecurity regulation that requires cattle ranchers anywhere else in the world to document the travels of the beef they wish to export to Australia, so that any outbreak of disease in cattle can be more easily traced to its point of origin, remains.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
A regulation passed to better permit traceability of disease in mammals back to its origin strikes me as a valid regulation, given the deadly nature to both humans and cattle of “mad cow” disease. And it should not be difficult to create a tracing program in the U.S. if U.S. ranchers wish to comply with the regulation.
As an aside, while I knew that American’s favored well-marbled beef products that are higher in fat content such as ribs, Delmonico and New York Strip and T-bone steaks, I did not realize that the main reason America imports any Australian beef at all is not to supplement our American supply of fattier beef products; it is to bring in leaner cuts of Australian beef that permit grocers and meat distributors to create leaner blends of ground beef. It is easy to make 73% ground beef solely from American cattle bred and fed so as to be higher in fat content, but the 90% lean forms of ground beef available at meat counters in grocery stores may contain higher concentrations of lean Australian beef.
Laurel says
Oh, go ahead. Push the button.
This morning, hubby said, “I’m so tired of people crying that China has taken such advantage of us. Didn’t we agree to buy the stuff? Don’t we come back from shopping with bags of cheap stuff? Aren’t we happy with our inexpensive finds?”
Good point.
Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent stated China exports five times as much as we do. No kidding. They export dirt, cheap, five plastic combs to our exports. Our main exports are aircraft parts, oil and fuels. We also excel in services. We don’t compete on the same level. Brilliant, Scott.
You can’t bring manufacturing back. We don’t have the resources, poverty level, third world low wages, the will, and robotics will do most of the work anyway. It’s not the 1950’s anymore.
Yeah, give that button a push. You’ve already blown up the world’s trust in us.
Dumb, damn stuff.
Trust in treason says
Every evil dictator wants trade to go through them. I’ll be celebrating when these Nazis off themselves like the cowards they are. Let’s go Brics! Gotta love the gun totin morons celebrating treason and felons. Bout time the capitol gets some more love?
Sherry says
China is playing Chess, while trump is fumbling with “Tiddlywinks”. . . LOL!
This from Politico:
Beijing is showing the Trump administration that tariffs aren’t the only weapon in a trade war.
Long before President Donald Trump fired the opening shots of a new U.S.-China trade war from the White House Rose Garden last week, Beijing had been working to perfect its stealth campaign blocking key U.S. agriculture and energy exports. The Chinese government over the past four months has halted or significantly curtailed direct exports of major U.S. commodities including beef, poultry and liquified natural gas through an array of bureaucratic blocks and tricky third-party sales deals.
The so-called nontariff barriers to trade are even stickier than the escalating tariffs rippling across the global economy, analysts said. All together, the moves are an escalation of the curbs China has been honing since its bans on genetically modified foods a decade ago. And they provide Beijing added firepower in the ongoing U.S.-China trade war by targeting exports from Trump-friendly, deep-red states — think Iowa and Nebraska — with restrictions immune to possible workarounds for tariff barriers.
“A tariff, you can just pay it, and things just get more costly,” said Ben Lilliston, director of rural strategies and climate change at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. “But this is a full restriction on your ability to send product to that country.”
The Chinese government knows where it can pinch U.S. exporters hardest. It has already declined to renew export licenses for hundreds of meatpacking plants, alleged that some U.S. chicken products contain unwanted drugs and stopped importing U.S. natural gas. Those industry targets also happen to be some of the president’s most ardent political supporters.
Skibum says
Well go ahead, you fat, ignorant, cheetoey, criminal minded bag of slop. I don’t think that button in your little hand works anyway, and your crying “wolf” about what you’re gonna do, then having to take it all back, then on again, and then off again because even your own sycophant admin officials and members of congress are warning you about the dire consequences of your repeated threats have ALREADY caused calamitous damage to the markets, our economy and probably most importantly, our nation’s reputation around the world. So go ahead… make my day! I’d love to see the resulting explosion (maybe implosion), spewing orangish globs of fatty pieces of shit in all directions, leaving nothing but little blotches of red ketchup stains on the ground as the final, unforgivable remnants of your circus presidency 2.0 goes up in smoke while the midterm elections begin to come into focus for those of us who are sane enough not to have bought into the maga doomsday cult.