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Weather: Mostly sunny. A chance of showers with a slight chance of thunderstorms in the morning, then showers likely with a chance of thunderstorms in the afternoon. Highs in the upper 80s. Chance of rain 70 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:
Road closure today, Buffalo Grove Drive: The City of Palm Coast is announcing a temporary road closure on Buffalo Grove Drive to facilitate a critical stormwater infrastructure replacement project. Crews will close 5 Buffalo Grove Drive on Wednesday, September 3, 2025, from 7:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. This closure is necessary to allow for the safe replacement of the stormwater infrastructure located beneath the roadway. During the closure, traffic will be detoured to Bud Hollow Drive using Buffalo View Lane.
The Palm Coast Code Enforcement Board meets at 10 a.m. every first Wednesday of the month at City Hall. For agendas, minutes, and audio access to the meetings, go here. For details about the city’s code enforcement regulations, go here.
Separation Chat, Open Discussion: The Atlantic Chapter of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State hosts an open, freewheeling discussion on the topic here in our community, around Florida and throughout the United States, noon to 1 p.m. at Pine Lakes Golf Club Clubhouse Pub & Grillroom (no purchase is necessary), 400 Pine Lakes Pkwy, Palm Coast (0.7 miles from Belle Terre Parkway). Call (386) 445-0852 for best directions. All are welcome! Everyone’s voice is important. For further information email [email protected] or call Merrill at 804-914-4460.
The Flagler Beach Parks Ad Hoc Committee meets at 6 p.m. at City Hall, 105 S 2nd St, Flagler Beach. The Committee’s six members, appointed by the City Commission, provide recommendations related to the maintenance of existing parks and equipment and recommendations for new or replacement equipment and other duties as assigned by the City Commission.
The Flagler Beach Library Book Club meets at 1 p.m. at the library, 315 South Seventh Street, Flagler Beach.
Weekly Chess Club for Teens, Ages 9-18, at the Flagler County Public Library: Do you enjoy Chess, trying out new moves, or even like some friendly competition? Come visit the Flagler County Public Library at the Teen Spot every Wednesday from 4 to 5 p.m. for Chess Club. Everyone is welcome, for beginners who want to learn how to play all the way to advanced players. For more information contact the Youth Service department 386-446-6763 ext. 3714 or email us at [email protected]
The Flagler County Republican Club holds its monthly meeting starting with a social hour at 5 and the business meeting at 6 p.m. at the Hilton Garden Inn, 55 Town Center Blvd., Palm Coast. The club is the social arm of the Republican Party of Flagler County, which represents over 40,000 registered Republicans. Meetings are open to Republicans only.
The Circle of Light Course in Miracles study group meets at a private residence in Palm Coast every Wednesday at 1:20 PM. There is a $2 love donation that goes to the store for the use of their room. If you have your own book, please bring it. All students of the Course are welcome. There is also an introductory group at 1:00 PM. The group is facilitated by Aynne McAvoy, who can be reached at [email protected] for location and information.
Notably: Enjoy the stats while you can still believe them. From Statista: “After the sharp rebound from the pandemic, when businesses rapidly rehired and demand for workers exceed supply by unprecedented margins, the U.S. labor market has gradually cooled. Job growth, which averaged several hundred thousand new positions per month between 2021 and 2023, has slowed notably as the economy adjusted to reduced consumer spending momentum, tighter financial conditions and a high degree of macroeconomic uncertainty. Faced with tariff uncertainty and nagging recession fears, employers became increasingly cautious about adding staff, and while unemployment is still relatively low, hiring has moderated and layoffs have inched up in certain sectors. Following a steep downward revision of employment gains in May and June, it looks like job growth has nearly dried up halfway through 2025, with the three-month moving average of job additions falling from 232,000 in January to just 35,000 in July. Throughout this trend, the unemployment rate has remained remarkably stable, hovering between 4.0 and 4.2 percent since May 2024. Still, the continued cooling of the labor market is considered a prerequisite for the Fed to start cutting rates again, with investors currently expecting a first 25-point cut in September.”
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.
October 2025
Flagler Beach Farmers Market
Coffee With Flagler Beach Commission Chair Scott Spradley
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Palm Coast Founders’ Day
Peps Art Walk Near Beachfront Grille
Thornton Wilder’s ‘Our Town,’ at Limelight Theatre in St. Augustine
‘The 39 Steps,’ at the Daytona Playhouse
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
Thornton Wilder’s ‘Our Town,’ at Limelight Theatre in St. Augustine
‘The 39 Steps,’ at the Daytona Playhouse
Al-Anon Family Groups
For the full calendar, go here.
The undistinguished years of the early and middle eighteenth century, rude and drab in their insularity, were the creative springtime of democratic America – plebeian years that sowed what after times were to reap. The forgotten men and women of those silent decades wrote little, debated little, very likely thought little; they were plain workmen with whom ideas counted for less than the day’s work. The stir of achievement filled the land, daily penetrating farther into the backwoods and bringing new farmlands under the plow. The stern demands of necessity held men in their grip, narrowing the horizon of their minds, and obscuring the vision of their larger accomplishment. Along the Appalachian watershed a vast drama, magnificent in the breadth and sweep of its movement, was being enacted by players unconscious of their parts. Not until long after they had gone to their graves were the broad lines of that drama revealed. Today it is plain that those unremembered years were engaged in clearing away encumbrances more significant than the great oaks and maples of the virgin wilderness: they were uprooting ancient habits of thought, destroying social customs that had grown old and dignified in class -ridden Europe. A new psychology was being created by the wide spaces that was to be enormously significant when it came to self-consciousness. If this middle eighteenth century wrote little literature, it created and spread among a vigorous people something of far greater importance to America, the psychology of democratic individualism.
–From Vernon Parrington’s Main Currents in American Thought (1927).
Pogo says
@P.T.
Thank you for introducing coach Parrington, to this 72-year-old kid.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernon_Louis_Parrington
Sherry says
On the Epstein “Smoke and Mirrors- Illusion of Transparency”. . . just what are they trying so hard to hide? Take a good read:
US District Judge Paul Engelmayer said the public “might conclude” the administration’s real purpose “was aimed not at ‘transparency’ but at diversion — aimed not at full disclosure but at the illusion of such.”
A week later, another judge also used the d-word.
US District Judge Richard Berman said that the administration’s move “appears to be a ‘diversion’ from the breath and scope of the Epstein files in the Government’s possession.”
Crucially, Berman repeatedly noted that, to the extent the administration wanted to inform the public about such matters, it had much better and more fulsome information it could provide.
“The Government’s complete information trove would better inform the public about the Epstein case,” Berman wrote. He called the administration “a logical party to make comprehensive disclosure to the public of the Epstein files.”
And that’s the rub here. If the administration wants to get this stuff out, it can. But it has repeatedly had to be dragged into taking steps toward disclosure that have looked more like messaging exercises than anything else.
The increasing question for House Republicans is whether they’re mollified by all of these apparent diversions and symbolic moves – or if they see them as efforts by an administration to avoid full disclosure.
Sherry says
Criminal minds. . .trump’s extortion plans and activities! This from wonderful Robert Reich:
Friends,
Today the Senate Banking Committee will consider Trump’s nomination of economic adviser Stephen Miran to be a governor of the Federal Reserve. Trump would like to get Miran confirmed in time for the Fed’s rate-setting meeting in two weeks.
Meanwhile, a federal judge has asked lawyers for Lisa Cook, the Fed governor whom Trump is trying to fire, to file more briefs as she pushes back against Trump. The law says a president can fire a member of the board only “for cause,” which normally means professional neglect or malfeasance. Trump alleges that Cook has committed mortgage fraud, but she has not been charged with any crime or convicted of any wrongdoing.
If Trump succeeds in getting Miran confirmed and firing Cook, he would be on track to have a majority on the Fed board. He’ll get a chance to name a new chair in May when Jerome Powell’s term ends.
Given everything else Trump is doing, why worry about the Fed?
Control over the Fed will give Trump power over the central bank’s decisions on interest rates.
He says he wants to lower borrowing costs — making it cheaper for America to pay interest on the national debt, for businesses to get loans, and for Americans to buy homes.
But if he controls the Fed and reduces borrowing costs, lenders will correctly assume that the Fed can no longer be relied on to control inflation. As a result, lenders will charge more to lend money — a higher “risk premium” — whether lending to the United States or to businesses seeking commercial loans or individuals getting mortgages.
In other words, if Trump controls the Fed, he’ll end up with the opposite of what he says he seeks. Longer-term interest rates will rise (it’s already starting to happen). And as longer-term rates rise, the stock market will fall (put on your seatbelts, folks).
So maybe lower interest rates isn’t the real reason Trump is so intent on controlling the Fed. What else could be on his mind?
With control over the Fed, Trump also gets the Fed’s power to oversee Wall Street — making the rules that big banks must follow to operate safely and manage risks appropriately. The Fed is also a lender of last resort during crises.
And why does he want these things? Trump operates on such a different plane of policymaking that it’s often hard to understand what he’s doing and why. Let me try to put it together.
Think of all his moves — whether controlling the Fed, or occupying American cities, or unleashing ICE on immigrants, or imposing import taxes (tariffs) on American consumers, or attacking American universities and museums, or shaking down CEOs, or punishing his “enemies” — as motivated by an unquenchable thirst to accumulate bargaining power over every other actor and institution in the world.
The more bargaining power he has, the more he can extort from them the things he most cares about: money and subservience.
We are dealing with a sociopath who is continuously seeking new ways to force others to reward him with personal wealth and total domination.
Money is not enough. He relishes the submission of others. He craves obsequiousness, groveling servility, and ass-kissing. He detests criticism. He wants to get even. He wants a Nobel Prize and his face carved on Mount Rushmore.
His goal is to achieve, or be perceived to have achieved, omnipotence.
Trump’s art of extortion involves finding things that other powerful actors and institutions depend on — research funding for Harvard (and other universities); access to the American market for Canada (and other countries); avoidance of environmental regulations for Big Oil; access to the government for Big Law; federal funding and freedom to operate without federal troops for mayors of “blue” cities and governors of “blue” states; supplies and components from abroad for big corporations.
Then he uses that dependence as pressure points to extort more money and submission.
Control over the Fed gives Trump way more tools for extortion. With control over interest rates, he can get America’s biggest corporations and the world’s biggest nations to bend to his will. With control over the big banks, he can get Wall Street to submit to his whims.
Normal policy debates are over what’s good for the public (hence “public” policy). But we’re no longer in a world of normal policy debate. The central question inside the Oval Office — and among Trump’s enablers in the White House and Congress — is what will enrich Trump and strengthen his dominance over everyone and everything else.
The most important public policy debate we ought to be having is how to peacefully and lawfully rid America and the world of this menace.