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Weather: Showers and thunderstorms. High near 88. Chance of precipitation is 80%. Sunday Night: Showers and thunderstorms. Low around 72. Chance of precipitation is 80%.
- 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]
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.
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.
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.
Notebook: Sometimes I think we’re nearing the time when, with the decline and fall of the 4th Amendment and the Supreme Court’s despotification of the executive, our personal libraries–not just our sexuality, our ethnicity, our published opinions and some of our job titles–and may start to be a liability. How would I explain having on my shelves Al-Qaeda in Its Own Words? It doesn’t help that Harvard and Presses Universitaires de France, essentially two of the world’s two most prestigious university presses (only Oxford and Cambridge are missing), are the publishers. The book was put out in 2005, edited by Gilles Kepel in France, then translated by Pascale Ghazaleh for publication here in 2006, a useful, necessary direct line to the enemy’s thinking (just as journalists’ interviews with binb Laden, like the ones conducted by Robert Fisk and Peter Arnett a quarter century ago (an excerpt of the Arnett interview is included, without naming Arnett), seemed to me as they should have seemed to the State Department and every American intelligence agency, extremely useful windows, not treasonous exercises as the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Times would have you believe). And not just to understand the “Moral Jurisprudence of Jihad,” but for the same reason that it’s essential to keep up with CPAC conferences’ propaganda and the shah’s Truth Social account, and for the same reason that we immunize against the worst diseases. If we are to speak with clarity against the more destructive forces around us, we ought at least to try to understand them in order better to oppose them. Along the same lines, and in the spirit of the ongoing fascistication of the country, I just received Defending Slavery: Proslavery Thought in the Old South, a surprisingly slim book (because it doesn’t include Plato, Aristotle, parts of the Bible, Paul, Augustine and other pre-Colonial standards of the genre) edited by Paul Finkleman of the University of Tulsa College of Law, from 2003 (when white Christian power was marching into Baghdad). Familiar territory, this book: Thomas Jefferson, John Calhoun, Edmud Ruffin, the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision, Thomas R.R. Cobb (who thought slavery was part of natural law), and so on. Not bedside reading exactly. More along the lines of reading–and preparing for–the abyss, to the extent possible, assuming we are not so deluded as to think we are not yet halfway down. You don’t have to look far. Scroll down to the quote below, from the Dred Scott decision, and tell me if it isn’t the mirror image–the carbon copy, the audio double, the parroting–of the shah’s current war on birthright citizenship.Â
—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.
July 2025
Tourist Development Council Meeting
Separation Chat: Open Discussion
The Circle of Light A Course in Miracles Study Group
One-Stop Help Night on Range of Social, Medical and Legal Services at Flagler Cares
Weekly Chess Club for Teens, Ages 9-18, at the Flagler County Public Library
Flagler County Drug Court Convenes
Model Yacht Club Races at the Pond in Palm Coast’s Town Center
Palm Coast Concert Series
For the full calendar, go here.
The words “people of the United States” and “citizens” are synonymous terms, and mean the same thing. They both describe the political body who, according to our republican institutions, form the sovereignty, and who hold the power and conduct the Government through their representatives. They are what we familiarly call the “sovereign people,” and every citizen is one of this people and a constituent member of this sovereignty. The question before us is, whether the class of persons described in the plea in abatement compose a portion of this people, and are constituent members of this sovereignty? We think they are not, and that they are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word “citizens” in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States. On the contrary, they were at that time considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings, who had been subjugated by the dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the government might choose to grant them.
–From Chief Justice Taney’s opinion in Dred Scott v. Sandford, 1857.Â
Dennis C Rathsam says
All the aid in the world wont help the people of Gaza. Without wiping out Hammas, there will never be peace. Don’t stop BIBI, you,LL be sorry! Finish the job you started!
Pogo says
@least the genocidal Democratic Party
…was punished.
Last stop — you don’t have to go home, but you won’t be able to live here, on this planet, anymore; not after trump, putin, xi, ali, kim, and the rest of the shit stains are done being great — their god$ willing.
From the river to the sea, from pole to pole — no person left behind. Or whatever.
Ray W, says
For months I have been cautioning FlaglerLive commenters like Ed P. to not overreact to short-term economic reports, as such reports are prone to volatility. Indeed, I have repeatedly argued that an economy 70% based on the spending of 340 million Americans shouldn’t rapidly improve or decline and the patience is the wisest choice. But that doesn’t mean that I stopped looking for reports, assessments, articles, and so on, that offer a rational explanation of what is going on in the economy.
This morning, I came across an article published in The Atlantic, titled: Trump’s Only-Okay Economy.
Here’s the initial paragraph:
“If you’ve been listening to Donald Trump and his critics over the past six months, they have found one thing they can agree on: Trump’s presidency would have a dramatic impact on the U.S. economy. Elected in part because of voters’ anger over high prices, Trump promised that he would ‘immediately bring prices down, starting on Day One.’ He said that his deregulatory policies would encourage domestic oil producers to ‘drill, baby, drill,’ and that lower energy prices would ‘bring down’ the ‘prices of everything.’ His tariffs, he said would make the United States ‘rich as hell,’ and ‘bring our country’s businesses back to us,’ boosting investment and employment. And his campaign of deporting undocumented immigrants would, he claimed, cut the price of housing and create new job opportunities for native-born Americans. A statement from the White House on the day Trump was inaugurated summed up his hyperbolic visions of future prosperity: ‘This will truly be the golden age of America.'”
Thus far into the article, I don’t think any FlaglerLive reader could find fault with the author’s summation of what had been promised to the American people prior to and at the time of the inauguration.
So, what has happened to the American economy since January 20th?
Here is the author’s take:
“Five months into Trump’s presidency, though, something interesting has happened: nothing much. The economy has changed remarkably little. Unemployment is at 4.2 percent, right around where it’s been for the past year. Inflation has fallen slightly since Trump took office, but at 2.4 percent, it’s exactly where it was last September. The economy did shrink slightly in the first quarter of this year, but estimates suggest that it grew at an annualized rate of about 2.5 percent in the second quarter, which would put the aggregate growth for the first half of the year in the 1 to 2 percent range, forecast to even out at roughly 1.4 percent for the year. That’s slower than last year’s 2.8 percent GDP-growth rate, but again, not a radical shift. Real wages and household income are both up year on year, at a slightly slower clip. And although the stock market has seen some sharp gyrations — booming over the past two months, after its post-Liberation Day plunge — it is now posting a modest rise of a little more than 1 percent since Inauguration Day.”
Again, nothing gleaned from these data points suggests that the economy is poised for significant change one way or the other. One could add that the number of persons applying for unemployment insurance benefits remains within normal parameters, and the quits rate in slightly down in recent weeks, suggesting that workers are holding onto their jobs instead of seeking better opportunities elsewhere. The posted unfilled job openings reports was “unexpectedly” up last month, but at a ratio of 1.1 to 1 of unfilled jobs to unemployed workers, this data point remains in an ideal range.
What follows is the reporter’s summary:
“In sum, the U. S. economy today looks pretty much like the one we had before Trump took over. He has brought more uncertainty and generated less trade — Trump’s tariffs, and other countries’ response to them, have reduced U.S. imports and exports — but the differences are not that dramatic. The economy as a whole is growing more slowly than it did last year, but seems to be chugging along at an adequate pace. Things are neither great nor terrible. The Trump economy is just okay — in large part because, in the short term, American businesses and consumers have simply kept doing what they were doing, even in the face of enormous uncertainty.”
Make of this what you will.
Laurel says
I’ve often wondered what the world would be like if run by sociopaths. Clearly they are here, and now we know.
Look at Vance. Puppet with high hopes.
Kennan says
Put your pants back on Dennis. You’re embarrassing yourself. The sad part is they are more like-minded, ignorant, never mind what I’m seeing, it can’t be true folks like you.
Hamas is a militant organization. A terrorist organization, that nobody condones in any way shape or form.
Israel has shown time and time again, that they can pinpoint Hamas leaders and strike no matter where. They are an industrial strength superpower in the Middle East. The only one with nukes by the way.
Israel, whether you like it or not, is the biggest terrorist in the Middle East right now. Conflating Palestinians and Hamas to conveniently kill every Arab in sight. The only country supporting this is our leaders here in the US. After two years of killing with very little pushback by Hamas, Israel has turned Gaza in the powder. President Donald Trump says he wants a piece agreement and then walks away from negotiations at the behest of Israel. Israel does not want peace. Period.
The Gaza humanitarian foundation is an absolute joke and smoke screen. The depravity and desperation by Israel to disguise an opportunity to kill more Gazans with a name, a lie as disgusting as The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is so beyond the pale. The world sees it. The world knows it. There is a little to no support for Israel, and rightfully so. You are now an antisemite if you are a humanitarian, and call this almost 2 year old HOLOCAUST what it is.
It’s getting old people. Feeding reality to folks that continually deny it.
Sorry guys! If you think any of this has been necessary, after almost 2 years of manipulated and targeted killing of men, women and mostly children, then I have very little hope for you.
Ray W, says
During yesterday’s OPEC meeting, the member nations with voting privileges chose to jointly boost crude oil output this coming August by 548,000 barrels per day. The coming boost will follow April’s increase of 138,000 barrels per day, May’s 411,000 barrels per day, June’s 411,000 barrels per day, and July’s 411,000 barrels per day.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
OPEC votes to increase total daily output by the end of August by over 1.9 million barrels. Absent other factors changing, there is every reason to believe that the output boost will lead to a glut in crude oil supply, which should slowly translate into lower prices at the pump.
But whatever OPEC giveth, it can take away.
Ray W, says
A publication named the Daily Galaxy reports that, without government mandate, Iceland introduced in 2019 a pilot four-day work week totaling between 35 or 36 hours per week per worker. By 2021, the program had gone national, with 86% of the country’s workforce having switched to the experimental process.
Studies show that worker productivity either “remained stable or even improved in many cases.” Instances of reported worker burnout declined and stress levels noticeably dropped.”
As of 2023, Iceland’s unemployment rate remained “impressively low at 3.4%” and its GDP growth for the year was 5%.
According to the reporter:
“These figures suggest that, contrary to initial fears, the transition to a shorter workweek did not just maintain Iceland’s economic stability but actually contributed to economic resilience.”
And “[a] key reason for this success lies in the improved motivation and focus of workers, who were no longer overburdened with excessive hours. Companies reported that the engagement of their employees increased, and workers felt more connected to their work and their teams. This was not just a benefit for employees; businesses began to see tangible improvements in output, suggesting that a well-rested workforce is more effective and efficient.”
Make of this what you will.
Me?
I do not argue for or against adoption of this type of workforce reform in the U.S.
However, it bears consideration. Remember, during and after the pandemic, many companies resorted to some or most of their employees working from home. I have read two or three articles, by my recollection, about increased worker productivity coming from the practice, coupled with greater work satisfaction.
My elder daughter had timely presented a study about at-home work just prior to the outbreak of the pandemic to her company’s management team; it was implemented during the outbreak. Employees there, too, increased their overall productivity while working from home. Some workers still spend most of their weeks working from home.
Ray W, says
The Wall Street Journal reports that global output estimates for grain (corn, wheat, rice, soybeans) production should hit a record high yield of 2.313 billion metric tons, more than the 2023-2024 grain harvest by 3 million tons.
Make of this what you will.
Ray W, says
According to The Cool Down, the British Channel Island of Jersey opened its first solar farm, one capable of powering more than 600 homes, or roughly 14% of the island’s electrical needs. Demand for electricity imported from the mainland will be reduced.
Featuring 7,500 solar panels, the 12-acre sheep-grazing farm features panel support posts tall enough for the farm’s more than 100 sheep to shelter in the shade or from foul weather as they graze. This method allows the farmer to lease his land to the solar company and still raise livestock, i.e., a dual-revenue-stream operation.
Make of this what you will.