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Weather: Sunny. A slight chance of showers and thunderstorms in the morning, then showers and thunderstorms likely in the afternoon. Highs in the lower 90s. Chance of rain 60 percent. Thursday Night: Partly cloudy. Showers and thunderstorms likely, mainly in the evening. Lows in the mid 70s. Chance of rain 60 percent.
- 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:
In Court: Whitfield v. Flagler County: A case management conference is scheduled at 1:30 p.m. before Circuit Court Judge Dawn Nichols in Courtroom 401 in the civil, whistleblower case of Samantha Whitfield against Flagler County government, her former employer. Whitfield claims she was terminated in 2023 in retaliation for reporting violations of rules and misconduct by one of her colleagues. See: “Flagler Government’s Former HR Manager Sues the County, Describing Hostile and Indifferent Environment.”
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 Flagler County Industrial Development Authority meets at 2 p.m. at the Tourism Development Conference Room, 120 Airport Road, Suite 3 (third floor).
‘Let’s Talk Palm Coast’ Town Halls with Council Members: Today, Council member Charles Gambaro at 5 p.m. at the Southern Recreation Center. 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. This new initiative provides an open forum for residents to share feedback, ask questions, and engage in meaningful dialogue about city services, community development, and the future of Palm Coast.
Town of Marineland Commission Meeting, 6 p.m. in the main conference room at the GTMNERR Marineland, 9741 N Oceanshore Boulevard, St. Augustine. See the town’s website 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.
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.
The Palm Coast Democratic Club holds an “After Dark” Recap Meeting (previous daytime business meeting) at 6 p.m. on the third Thursday of each month to accommodate working Democrats. We will meet at the Flagler Democratic Party Headquarters in City Marketplace, 160 Cypress Point Parkway, Suite C214, Palm Coast. Hope you will join us. This gathering is open to the public at no charge. No advance arrangements are necessary. Call (386) 283-4883 for best directions or (561)-235-2065 for more information.
Notebook: some of us are Depression babies, some are World War II babies, some even 9/11 babies no doubt. I’m a Sullivan v. New York Times baby, I discovered (much like I discovered what my DNA was made of some years ago) as I put 9 and 21 together. I was born on Nov. 21–a birth date, I never tire of boasting, since it’s all I have–I share with Voltaire (down to our cabbalism: him 1694, me 1964). The Supreme Court announced the Sullivan decision on March 9, 1964. Herbert Wechler was teaching his constitutional law class at Columbia. He had argued the case for the New York Times on January 6. His secretary Rhoda Bauch interrupted class to hand him a note. He read the note to the class: “Judgment reversed. Decision unanimous.” Big applause. Six time zones away, my father and mother, not stopping at handholding and miscalculating their love rhythms (for I was not planned and was, for a period, the possible subject of an abortion) pleased each other enough for a parable of the seeds to make my front page (The Beatles’ “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” “She Loves You” and “Please Please Me” were Number 1, 2 and 3, in that order, on Billboard that week). Nine months later, here I was. My mother wasn’t yet a journalist back then, and my father not yet a professional photographer. I doubt either of them knew Sullivan from Alabama bigotry, though the Sullivan decision surely made the front page of either L’Orient or Le Jour, the two French dailies in Beirut at the time (L’Orient was born in 1924, Le Jour in 1934, they would merged into L’Orient-Le Jour in 1971, about the time my mother became a columnist there, but not yet of politics; the paper celebrated its 100th anniversary last March), and my parents, who liked to think of themselves as open-minded, may have said a word or two about it over those fresh breakfast baguettes from the baker downstairs, though not knowing the import of the decision. No one knew it back then, just as Ms. Bauch’s note “could hardly suggest the scope of what the Supreme Court had done,” in Anthony Lewis’s words in Make No Law, his fabulous 1991 history of the case. Even the Times didn’t. It gave it the lead spot in the March 10 editions, but just one column. Lewis had been the paper’s Supreme Court correspondent then. “The Supreme Court held today that a public official cannot recover liable damages for criticism of his official performance unless he proves that the statement was made with the deliberate malice,” wrote Lewis. “This constitutional landmark for freedom of the press and speech came in a decision throwing out a $500,000 Alabama liable judgment against The New York Times and four Negro ministers.” The Times did not mention my parents’ Hello Dolly! to my immaculate conception (Armstrong’s hit was 13th on that week’s chart), but serendipity’s knot would be tied soon enough. Anthony Lewis became one of my seven principal journalism professors in the seven years I spent commuting first to the UN school then to NYU on the 7 train through Queens and Manhattan, reading the Times every morning and always starting by reading every word on the OpEd page, which back then featured as the paper’s columnists Lewis with his Abroad At Home column, Tom Wicker, whom I found less scholarly but more perceptive and often a better writer, James Reston, whose smugness and dullness, I would (years later) discover was his Walter Lippman act (a writer I cannot stand much more), the reliably boring Flora Lewis writing the Foreign Affairs column, the insufferably sharp but fact-challenged William Safire, who liked to scoop the news pages but with such zeal that his scandal-mongering often misfired, ruining lives along the way (Bert Lance comes to mind), Sydney Schanberg, the Pulitzer Prize winner for his coverage of the fall of Phnom Penh and the killing fields, who became my favorite even though he wrote mostly about New York, and was fired by the despicable Abe Rosenthal when Schanberg dared question the sleazy deals of Rosenthal’s real estate buddies surrounding the ill-fated West Side Highway, of course Russell Baker, the fabulous Russell Baker, who was dubbed a humorist but was a lot more. It is from those seven that I learned the basics of my journalism, along with the stable of the Times’s reporters. My education was too one-sided back then, though I occasionally picked up the Wall Street Journal for show. I did not know, until I read it in Lewis’s book just last week, that I was a Sullivan baby. It all falls in place, right in time for the current effluence in the White House and his six Supreme Court mullahs to tear Sullivan apart. It is a matter of time.
—P.T.
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.
August 2025
Flagler County Drug Court Convenes
Story Time for Preschoolers at Flagler Beach Public Library
Model Yacht Club Races at the Pond in Palm Coast’s Town Center
In Court: Whitfield v. Flagler County
Flagler County Industrial Development Authority Meeting
‘Let’s Talk Palm Coast’ Town Halls with Council Members
Palm Coast Democratic Club Recap Meeting
Town of Marineland 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
For the full calendar, go here.
First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility. Secondly, though the silenced opinion be in error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of the truth; and since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied. Thirdly, even if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds. …
–From John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty (1859).
Dennis C Rathsam says
Just in….. for all my energetic members of the Grand Ole Party! America has finally seen the light. No longer will they be fooled by lies that surround the Jackass party! Between 2020 & 2024, across 30 states democrats lost 2.1 million voters! { thanks Joe Biden}! Republicans agained 2.4 million voters. AH yes, the sun shines britely, birds are singing…. The golden age of America is just around the corner.What a great day in the USA!
Ray W, says
Over the past few years, egg prices have varied widely, hitting a record high this past March. A number of FlaglerLive commenters have vomited erroneous sound bites onto the FlaglerLive community, and some of the commenters have repeatedly vomited the erroneous sound bites, just to support their false blame of former President Biden’s policies, re: egg prices.
I use the vomitous expression because Ed P. recently used that type of language against another FlaglerLive commenter, with whose opinion he disagreed.
Unfortunately for Ed P. a few days before he used that language, he had idiotically described the statistically accurate monthly BLS estimate of jobs add as wrong or inaccurate, when it never has been wrong in all the months since the creation of the estimate as a statistical source of data in 1981.
All Ed P. was doing in his earlier comment was vomiting to FlaglerLive readers garbage that had been spewed by an untrue presidential sound bite. More on Ed P.’s vomitous garbage later.
In response to the repetitive vomited garbage spewed by the certain FlaglerLive commenters, I have repeatedly posted factually accurate information about the spread of a highly virulent variant of the avian flu virus by migrating wild birds.
I commonly go to USDA sites for that factually accurate information. I have also turned to industry journals and news outlets for my points. Each time, I name the sources and set out quotes or paraphrase writings from those sources. Anyone can check the sources for themselves.
This morning, I went to the USDA site to look for the most recent available data about the avian flu.
From the USDA’s link to an Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) site, I learned that thus far in August, only one outbreak of avian flu has been detected, this one in a backyard flock. Since the site rounds off to the closest 10,000 figure, that one outbreak affected too few birds to be rounded up to 10,000 birds affected.
In July, one outbreak of avian flu in a commercial flock was detected, with the number of birds affected being rounded off to 30,000.
In June, one commercial outbreak of the avian flu and two more outbreaks in backyard flocks affected 340,000 birds, rounded off to the closest 10,000.
In May, four outbreaks in commercial flocks and eight more outbreaks in backyard flocks affected 5.2 million birds.
Here’s how APHIS describes this particular variant of avian flu:
“APHIS confirmed highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) in a commercial flock in the United States on February 8, 2022. Since then, we have worked swiftly to identify and respond to detections and mitigate the virus’ impact on U.S. poultry production and trade.
“Detections are higher in the fall and spring, because we continue to see wild birds spreading virus as they migrate to their seasonal homes. APHIS continues to work closely with State animal health officials on surveillance efforts to look for the virus in commercial, backyard, and wild birds. …
“To provide context on the overall size of the U.S. poultry flock, there are more than 378.5 million egg-laying hens in the United States. …”
To sum this part of the comment up, egg prices began to rise in 2022 after researchers confirmed the existence of a new and extremely virulent form of the avian flu. Researchers described it as a “highly pathogenic” form of the virus. Since early 2022, wild birds have been spreading the virus as they seasonally migrate. Outbreaks in commercial and backyard flocks increase in the months during and shortly after the migrations. Egg prices rise in accord with the seasonal outbreaks, and prices fall during the months between migrations. Right now, egg prices are down. The most vomitous FlaglerLive commenters among us consistently blame President Biden for any rise in egg prices. They praised President Trump when egg prices fell after this spring’s migrations ended. What idiots these commenters have been.
Back to Ed P. Many, many months ago, Ed P. vomited garbage on the FlaglerLive comment site when he spread a false sound bite that America was sitting on crude oil sufficient to supply the world’s needs for 300 years. In reality, the U.S. was sitting on an estimated crude oil reserve sufficient to supply the world’s needs for barely less than 10 years. Ed P’s vomitous garbage was off by more than 96%. A fact-checking site confirmed that the fake claim Ed P. had parroted had been created years earlier and had since then been spread by gullible readers. Ed P. was just another of the gullible readers.
Since that initial vomitous comment, Ed P. over and over again spread even more vomit. I repeatedly cleaned up his vomit. In the vomitous comment that I referenced above, after the current administration branded BLS monthly jobs estimates as false and, therefore, in need of being changed, Ed P. repeated the fake sound bite. With specificity, E P. argued that over the past 30 months the BLS jobs data had been revised up 6 times and down 24 times. This, he argued, made the data inaccurate and therefor unworthy of belief.
So, I checked. I found a site dating back to January 2001, a term of 295 months, that detailed the number of times the monthly BLS jobs estimate had been revised up or down. The number of revisions was 295. That is because the statistical model is set up to be revised each month. Since it was set up to be revised, it is never inaccurate. It can be less accurate than a succeeding estimate, but it can never be inaccurate.
Every month since 1981, BLS surveyors send out surveys to business owners and personally call more business owners. The effort takes place each month during the week in which the 12th of the month falls. Over 600,000 surveys are sent out and phone calls are made each month.
Because not every one of the 600,000 business owners responds in time for inclusion in the initial jobs estimate, the initial estimate is correctly identified as an “estimate.” It is statistically accurate for what it is, but it is less than complete. That doesn’t mean that the estimate is wrong in any way. All it means that the estimate is good enough for planning use by others, including the Fed.
The succeeding month sees a first revised estimate. More job owners have by that time responded to the monthly survey questions. While the initial estimate remains statistically accurate and therefor good for what it is, the revised estimate is better.
The next month a second revised estimate is released. Even more job owners will have by that time responded to the monthly survey. The initial jobs estimate remains statistically accurate for what it is and therefor good. The second revised estimate is even better than the first revised estimate.
After all this, the second revised workplace survey is merged into a second and provisional statistical model derived from state unemployment records. This merged model is even more accurate than the second revised workplace estimate, but the initial jobs estimate remains statistically accurate for what it is and therefore good.
In time, a fourth revisional step occurs, as designed, when the provisional statistical model is finalized into a final statistical model. It is only then that a particular month’s initial estimate turns from an initial estimate into a final jobs number.
As an aside, checking each of the 295 revisions, it turns out that the first revision of the initial estimate went up 174 times and it went down 121 times. And in the final 30 revisions, up or down, the revisions went up 9 times and went down 21 times. Ed P. claimed the number was 24 down and 6 up. I have tried but I cannot find a source for Ed P.s claim.
I then went to another statistical source, this one for the number of times over the past 30 months that the fifth and final revision to the original estimate based on limited data had gone up or had gone down. Of those 30 months, 16 of the final revisions were higher than the original estimate and 14 of the 30 were lower. Because the last six months of the 30 are not yet final, the site cautions all readers that the numbers may still change.
Never once has an original BLS jobs estimate been wrong, as this kind of estimate was always intended to be nothing more than what it was designed to be, i.e., a short-term number based on limited data for short-term use. In that need for short-term data, the BLS releases estimates each month, knowing that the estimates will change up or down the following month, and then up or down again the next following month.
Please, Ed P., stop vomiting garbage gleaned from fake “sound bites” spouted by professional liars onto the FlaglerLive site. You are laundering lies. Lie laundering is not a virtuous act. Don’t act as if it is. Laundering lies is not just the expression of an opinion; it is an act of moral turpitude.
Yes, I will continue to clean up your vomitous garbage, should you keep at it, just as I have done so many other times already. Not once so far have I been wrong in correcting your false or erroneous comments.
Yes, I will continue to hope that you will internalize the fact that there lies at the top on one of our two political parties a professional lying class, and that you should never take what any of them say at face value. BLS jobs estimates are not fake, they are not wrong, they are not erroneous. They are accurate for what they are designed to be, and therefore they are good. No one should be fired for approving for publication the estimates.
I don’t intend to continue to use the “vomitous garbage” language, as its value only arose from your single use of vomit in one of your comments. It just seemed apropos to use your own language against you. You have been wrong far too often in past comments for you to be so hateful against someone else with whom you disagree.
Tonya says
Great a abusing children
Kelby says
Sounds like every republican. They have no issues supporting child predators and stealing trillions of dollars from the people!
The pedo gang will spend double the amount to harass the homeless rather than help them. As republicans purposely make everything more expensive! Normal is unaffordable and unattainable for the majority! time for a revolution!