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Weather: A chance of showers, then showers and thunderstorms likely after 11am. Mostly sunny, with a high near 89. Chance of precipitation is 70%. Thursday Night: Showers and thunderstorms likely, mainly before 8pm. Partly cloudy, with a low around 76. Chance of precipitation is 60%.
- 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.
The Palm Coast Beautification and Environmental Advisory Committee meets at 5 p.m. at City Hall, 160 Lake Avenue, Palm Coast.
‘Let’s Talk Palm Coast’ Town Halls with Council Member Ty Miller: The City of Palm Coast is hosting a series of town halls, offering residents the chance to meet face-to-face with their City Council Members, ask questions, and learn more about the inner workings of their local government. At 5 p.m. today, Council Member Ty Miller, at the Southern Recreation Center’s second floor.
The Flagler Beach City Commission meets at 5:30 p.m. at City Hall, 105 South 2nd Street in Flagler Beach. Watch the meeting at the city’s YouTube channel here. Access meeting agenda and materials here. See a list of commission members and their email addresses 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.
Notably: Bret Stephens, the former editor of the Jerusalem Post, a former columnist for the Wall Street Journal (where he won a Pulitzer), and now one of the New York Times’s conservative (albeit anti-Trump) columnists, with whom I happen to share a birthday, is part of Israel’s amen corner in the United States, an apologist’s apologist. Trump’s infamous line about standing on Fifth Avenue, killing somebody and not losing any votes applies to Stephen’s view of Israel: Israel could nuke a country (or a non-entity like Gaza or the West Bank, since Israel doesn’t recognize Palestinians’ right to exist, let alone their territories or potential countries) and not lose Stephens’s support. It could commit genocide and not lose his support. To the contrary. Stephens in his latest column offers a shocking apology for Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza by simply defining genocide as not what’s going on in Gaza. Israel is not killing enough people to call it genocide. I thought I was reading a Jonathan Swift satire. But no. Stephens is dead serious: “If the Israeli government’s intentions and actions are truly genocidal — if it is so malevolent that it is committed to the annihilation of Gazans — why hasn’t it been more methodical and vastly more deadly? Why not, say, hundreds of thousands of deaths, as opposed to the nearly 60,000 that Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatant and civilian deaths, has cited so far in nearly two years of war?” Why not. Israel warns its victims first. We should be thankful. Israel could do so much worse. We should be thankful. He then throws this strange line in there: “As for the threat of economic boycotts, the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange has been the world’s best-performing major stock index since Oct. 7. 2023.” In a column on the non-genocide-but-60,000-deaths in Gaza. 60,000 out of 2 million, the equivalent of 10.5 million Americans based on today’s population estimates (illegals not included), but it’s not genocide. Because it is not matching the UN definition of genocide: Israel, in his view, is not displaying the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.” The razing of Gaza is not that kind of destruction. The denial of a people’s right to eat is not that kind of destruction. The ultimate goal–expulsion of 2 million Gazans out of Gaza–is not that kind of destruction. “Genocide does not mean simply ‘too many civilian deaths,'” he writes, and “too many civilian deaths” isn’t that notable anyway. It’s “a heartbreaking fact of nearly every war, including the one in Gaza.” I like this comment I read, one of 1,400 for that column: “Actual human suffering, on both sides, is being swept under the rug while we all argue on semantics.”
—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
Florida Ethics Commission Meeting
Free For All Fridays With Host David Ayres on WNZF
Scenic A1A Pride Meeting
Friday Blue Forum
Acoustic Jam Circle At The Community Center In The Hammock
Flagler Beach Farmers Market
Coffee With Flagler Beach Commission Chair Scott Spradley
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Peps Art Walk Near Beachfront Grille
For the full calendar, go here.
My inescapable conclusion has become that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people. Having grown up in a Zionist home, lived the first half of my life in Israel, served in the I.D.F. as a soldier and officer and spent most of my career researching and writing on war crimes and the Holocaust, this was a painful conclusion to reach, and one that I resisted as long as I could. But I have been teaching classes on genocide for a quarter of a century. I can recognize one when I see one. […] The crime of genocide was defined in 1948 by the United Nations as the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.” In determining what constitutes genocide, therefore, we must both establish intent and show that it is being carried out. In Israel’s case, that intent has been publicly expressed by numerous officials and leaders. But intent can also be derived from a pattern of operations on the ground, and this pattern became clear by May 2024 — and has since become ever clearer — as the I.D.F. has systematically destroyed the Gaza Strip. […] In fact, the systematic destruction in Gaza not only of housing but also of other infrastructure — government buildings, hospitals, universities, schools, mosques, cultural heritage sites, water treatment plants, agriculture areas, and parks — reflects a policy aimed at making the revival of Palestinian life in the territory highly unlikely. […] Today the I.D.F. is primarily engaged in an operation of demolition and ethnic cleansing. That’s how Mr. Netanyahu’s own former chief of staff and minister of defense, the hard-liner Moshe Yaalon, in November described on Israel’s Democrat TV and in subsequent articles and interviews the attempt to clear northern Gaza of its population.
–From “I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It,” by Omer Bartov, The New York Times, July 15, 2025.
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Pogo says
@The homicidal tyrants
… who rule Russia, China, North Korea, Iran (and those aligned with them) — or something else: now choose — and live with it.
As trump, floats over everything on a cloud of poison; the most unworthy leader in US history, depraved criminal, tin plated plastic carnival prize, waste of air, water and dirt — drives us to hell — what comes first?
Choose, and live with it.
Also, it’s Thursday.
Ray W, says
Reuters just published an article focused on the most recent Labor Department weekly jobless claims report.
I repeatedly comment that weekly reports are considered by many economists as too volatile, and therefore, too unreliable, but that opinion doesn’t mean that the Fed and other agencies and businesses don’t look at weekly reports.
And there can be good language in articles about the weekly economic reports that warrant consideration.
For example, the Newsweek article points out that American automakers commonly shut down factories each July, and that the annual work stoppages may impact various weekly or monthly economic reports, particularly when the factory shutdowns coincide with the period within which the number of people receiving paychecks is counted.
The reporter explains that this factory shutdown process can be a reason why economists who prepare the short-term economic reports write of both raw reports and also of seasonally adjusted reports. Not being an expert in economics and being a curious student of economic reports, I look forward to reading such reports.
Another economic issue on which I have occasionally commented is the monthly “breakeven” rate for jobs created. The breakeven rate changes each month, depending on a variety of factors.
When the supply of labor is relatively low, the breakeven rate for the number of paychecks added each month might drop. As an example, for a number of years, the breakeven rate was relatively high, sometimes above 150,000 paychecks added each month, because there was a high supply of immigrant labor. Right now, with the labor market cooling and with the number of immigrants entering the country slowing down, the breakeven rate for the rest of the year was recently estimated to be 90,000 new paychecks created each month. The estimate has been revised down to 70,000 new paychecks each month on average, according to a Goldman Sachs investor note by economist Elsie Peng.
Here is language from her note:
“Looking ahead, we expect the gradual slowdown in immigration to bring down the breakeven rate, the rate of payroll growth needed to keep the unemployment rate stable, down to 70,000 per month by the end of 2025 for our 90,000 estimate of the current pace. …”
What this means, as I understand the explanations given by the reporter and from many other sources, is that for most of the past several years, due to continually changing but positie economic conditions, anything under roughly 150,000 new paychecks being generated each month, give or take a few thousand new jobs, was considered reliable evidence of a weakening labor market. Now, I am reading that anything under 70,000 new paychecks being created in a month is going to be considered evidence of a weakening labor market.
Based on this type of economic reasoning, among many other reasonings, the Fed has been, for about four years now been stating that the labor market has remained strong and that there has been little need to act too quickly on lowering lending rates.
Here are some bullet points from the article:
– Despite a forecast of 226,000 initial claims for state unemployment benefits, the actual number for the week came in at 217,000 new claims.
– In June, new claims had gone up to an eight-month high before receding in July.
– “Though job growth has slowed from last year, the labor market remains stable and has provided scope for the Federal Reserve to delay resuming cutting interest rates while watching for potential inflation from the import duties.”
– “Economists expect the Fed will keep its benchmark overnight interest rate in the 4.25-4.50% range next Wednesday.”
– Continuing claims for unemployment benefits differs from initial claims for benefits, cautioned the reporter. The number of those who fall into the category of continuing claims rose by 4,000 to a seasonally adjusted 1.955 million recipients. The reporter wrote: “…[T]he elevated continuing claims reading posed an upside risk to the unemployment rate, … [but economists] mostly expected it to hold steady at 4.1% this month. A decline in labor supply amid reduced immigrant flows means that the economy now only needs to create roughly 100,000 or less per month to keep up with growth in the working age population.”
Make of this what you will.
Me?
Next week, seventeen Fed economists and researchers will attend an FOMC meeting. Twelve of them will vote on whether the Fed should raise, lower or leave the same the current lending rates, although all seventeen attendees will offer opinions and suggestions.
At the last FOMC meeting, only two of the twelve voting members voted to lower lending rates. It takes a majority of those twelve voting members, or seven votes, for the Fed to lower the lending rates. Replacing Fed Chair Powell means only one vote might change. However, the incoming Fed Chair might think before the meeting that the Fed should lower rates. During the meeting, he or she might change their mind.
There is a difference between economic necessity and political necessity. There appears to be scant economic need to lower lending rates. There also seems to be an intense political need to lower lending rates, despite the risks to the economy that lowering the lending rates for political reasons, and not for economic reasons, might trigger.
A short time ago, a commenter wrote to FlaglerLive readers that in his opinion Trump was playing chess when others were playing checkers. And he might be right. Not enough time has passed. But what if Trump is playing with fire instead of playing chess? Lose a round of chess and little bad usually comes from the loss. One can always play another game. Play with fire and lose and we all may suffer for a long, long time.
Ray W, says
According to Business Insider a new paradigm in military equipment support for the Ukrainian war effort is coming into focus.
From the beginning of the Russian invasion of the Ukraine, most Western nations provided weapons and ammunition to the Ukraine from existing stocks or they paid their own industry to build more weapons and ammunition. But the West knew that the Ukraine was long the manufacturing powerhouse of the Soviet Union, and that the Ukraine still holds the regions in which many heavy industry plants operate, despite Russia’s efforts to take them.
Denmark bucked the Western trend and began hiring Ukrainian heavy industry owners to manufacture military equipment instead of emptying Danish military stocks.
Other Western nations are following Denmark’s lead.
According to the reporter, in 2024, Ukrainian manufactured 30% of its military needs. This year, the manufacturing percentage is up to 40 percent.
As an example, in 2023, the Kramatorsk Heavy Duty Machine Tool Building Plant was constructing a NATO-standard self-propelled 155mm howitzer at a rate of six wheeled systems per month. Now, it is up to an output of 20 units per month. Many other manufacturers of weapons and weapons system are scaling up their production capabilities, too.
According to Ukrainian sources, procurement contracts using Western money rose to $550 million in value in 2024, with a prediction that the amount will rise to $1.7 billion this year.
Denmark’s method is now known as the Denmark Model and the reporter writes that a “host” of other countries, including Iceland and Sweden, have joined the trend.
According to the Danish defense minister, the Model has been a “success story”, in part because Denmark gets more bang for its buck, i.e., the self-propelled howitzer costs less to make per unit in the Ukraine than it costs to purchase from EU howitzer manufacturers; he told the reporter that weapons prices are “quite low compared to buying the artillery systems in Europe.”
Denmark is looking into funding other weapons from Ukrainian manufacturers, such as drones and anti-tank and anti-ship missile systems.
Some 700 Ukrainian companies comprise the nation’s weapons industry, with 76 of them being state-owned. The CEO of the Ukraine’s national association of defense industries told the reporter that the nation has the capability of making three times what the government can presently afford to buy. The Danish Model, by buying directly from Ukrainian manufacturers, stretches Danish money and directly helps the Ukrainian economy in this way.
Make of this what you will.
Ray W, says
According to Jato Dynamics, an automotive industry journal, and as reported by Reuters, June’s European vehicle sales dropped by 4.4% year-over-year to 1.25 million units. But Chinese vehicle sales of all types in Europe, after only a few years in the region, doubled over the past 12 months to a 5.1% share of the marketplace.
Traditionally, European and American legacy makers dominate the European scene. For comparison, Mercedes-Benz took a 5.2% market share this June.
Amid the Chinese surge in sales, the biggest European legacy carmaker, Stellantis, saw sales share drop from 16.7% of the total market last June to a 15.3% share this June. Tesla dropped from 2.4% last June to a 1.6% share this year.
Among Chinese carmakers, BYD saw its sales figure rise by 311% over the past 12 months to 70,600 units. From the beginning of 2025 through June, Chinese-made vehicle sales figures from all makers rose 91%.
European BEV registrations from all carmakers rose 25% in the first six months of the year, hitting 1.19 million units, or 17.4% of the overall market.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
According to many of the industry journals that I have read, over 40 years ago the Chinese government announced a long-term plan to build a car industry from scratch that would match or exceed the quality of the rest of the world’s internal combustion engine technology.
In 2008, the government announced failure and stated that its new goal was to match or exceed the best of the EVs that the rest of the world could produce. ICE technology would be allowed to wither without additional investment.
In 17 short years, China’s nearly non-existent EV industry has turned itself into an international giant, going from nearly zero EV units sold to over 17 million units sold, which is more EVs sold than are all of the types of vehicles sold in the U.S. Including the ICE vehicles China still produces, the overall industry sales total for 2024 was over 30 million vehicles. And industry publications repeatedly report that the Chinese carmakers now match or exceed both build quality and the highly vaunted NVH (noise, vibration, harshness) quality of any of the rest of the carmakers of the world.
There is a reason that last year former President Biden placed a 100% tariff on Chinese-made EVs.
There is a reason that Ford’s CEO said that when American legacy car builders started designing EVs, all three of them looked backwards for many years before they realized their collective mistake.
The money, Ford’s CEO said, was not in building expensive large vehicles and trucks that use outdated battery technologies and less efficient electric motor designs. The money is in designing affordable smaller vehicles that can be manufactured at scale using the best available battery technology and the best available electric motor technology.
But Ford’s CEO also said that the American Big Three were ten years behind China’s EV automakers and that if American carmakers did not catch up it will spell the end of the American automobile industry; he termed the process an “extinction-level-event.” Internal combustion engines are the past, he says. Electric vehicles are the future.
Ray W, says
Global Data reports that of BYD’s two new manufacturing plants, one in Manisa, Turkey, and one in Szeged, Hungary, BYD intends to ramp up production at its Manisa-based factory first, due to lower labor costs and due to recent currency fluctuations. Since the beginning of 2025, the Euro has gained 11% against the yuan, while the Turkish lira has dropped 16% in value against the yuan.
By 2027, the $1 billion investment Manisa factory is expected to “far exceed” 150,000 units per year. 2028 output should “greatly increase” over that of 2027.
The $4 billion investment Szeged factory will see production of a “few tens of thousands of vehicles” in 2026, even though it could start making vehicles this year. According to the reporter, 2027 production at the Szeged factory will remain below initial plant capacity of 150,000 units per year.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
I am old enough to remember when Honda first began selling a tiny 660cc-powered car in Daytona Beach. It was underpowered and undersized, and it rusted far too fast. Not very many were sold that year. Few of my peers, and me among them, could see then what Honda would be today.
Chinese-made cars, on the other hand, have far better build quality than those old Honda’s. They have plenty of power and offer an exceptional ride, according to automotive press test reviewers.
Chinese manufacturers can tailor a product to market demands and they can do it for less money. Chinese carmakers can make money in the European market while selling their cars for less than the legacy carmakers can charge. Cheaper to buy, cheaper to drive, cheaper to maintain, cheaper to repair, cheaper to insure; it is no wonder that Europe and America have tariffs on Chinese EVs that are imported from factories in China. So BYD, to get around EU tariffs, builds two European factories with enough initial capacity to supply Europe with EVs as it builds up its market presence in the region.
Ray W, says
A couple of days ago, I commented on an article about Pokrovsk, Ukraine, finally falling to Russian forces after some 16 months of effort.
It turns out that the report may have been premature.
One Ukrainian source claims that “enemy sabotage and reconnaissance groups” entered the outskirts of Pokrovsk from the southwest, but these forces were comprised of five or six soldiers each and that there were four or five such units attempting the enter the town.
As of today, the situation in Pokrovsk has “stabilized”, and that “clearing operations” by Ukrainian units are in operation.
According to the reporter, Russian forces reached the outskirts of Pokrovsk in December 2024, but they were driven back months later in a counter-offensive stretching from February to April 2025.
After Russia directed reinforcements to units facing the town, the Russian offensive was renewed.
From another source, a reporter writes, “[c]urrently, the fighting is not for Pokrovsk itself. These are the southern outskirts: fields, outskirts of the settlement of Shevchenko, where the enemy is trying to accumulate. …”
A recent Russian force attacked using motorcycles and “boxes”; it was repelled.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
Multiple reports support the argument that the Russian army is running out of tanks and armored personnel carriers and other armored support vehicles. Supplies, food and ammunition are being carried to the Russian front on donkeys and mules. Russian soldiers are advancing in small units on motorcycles and ATVs and electric bicycles, unsupported by armor. Combat is more and more like WWI, static with deep defensive lines of trenches, with drones dominating the field.
Ed P says
The future linch pin effecting employment that is being overlooked is AI. Economists don’t understand its potential. Think of it like the internet/Wi-Fi. Most people can’t explain how it works, how it was started but use it daily. Who even knows what Wi-Fi stands for? The continual drone that we need immigrants to “boost” our low birth rates and to perform the lower skilled unwanted employment that Americans shy away from is conventional thinking leading economists to draw erroneous conclusions. The size of the total job market may shrink.
As AI quickly becomes engrained in commerce, there will be the need to up skill or retrain a portion of the workforce. Those unable or unwilling to make that transition to the new requirements of employment, well, they will fall to some of those lower skilled positions simply by default. People have to eat, ie need employment. The non English speaking, unskilled immigrant surge may not have a long enough time line to catch the AI wave and will be displaced by those American workers. There will become a rich pool of employees competing with the immigrant workforce placing pressure upon the immigrants.
Conventional wisdom has not provided any economic accuracy of late. Experts are perplexed by the strength of our economy, lack of inflation, or the unpredictable small effect of tariffs. No one could forecast the willingness of the rest of the world to lower their restrictive trade programs and cooperate with the United States similar to Japan’s tariff deal.
Now onto the federal reserve. It must be perceived by the world as an independent body. The smooth transition of power would be better overall. Allowing Fed Chairman Powell to finish his term would sooth every financial market. But, he is not without fault. The fed has not been perfect. They mis-read the Biden inflation debacle and quite possibly have been stubbornly late resisting lowering interest rates. The “experts” claim it will heat up inflation again. Will it? Conventional wisdom has been repeatedly wrong, the world economy has been reset first by Covid, and now by Trump. A 3% reduction would be unheard of, but a 1% reduction at the next fed meeting might be enough to start the boom and save Powell. Jerome Powell is feeling the pressure. Only Trump knows if Powell stays.